“Oh, my.”

“Happiness for a time, they married, had children, wrote poetry, made names for themselves. But ultimately he cheated and left her poor with two kids, and she lashed out against him in her work. Many of the women critics blame what happened next on the husband.”

“Tell me.”

“Well, there’s a disturbing strain of Holocaust imagery in her poems. She seemed to strongly identify with the Jews marched by the Nazis into the gas chambers. It might be because her father was a German, though certainly no Nazi, having emigrated to America at the century’s turn. Anyway, one night, after her husband had left her, she put out bread and milk for her two children and then stuck her head in a gas oven and killed herself.”

“My God,” I said.

“She was thirty.”

I felt a chill, just then. It wasn’t only that Hailey had quoted a Plath poem, or even the shocking coincidence of both she and Sylvia Plath losing their fathers at age eight, it was something deeper. I sensed a desperation in Hailey, and a sadness, and an urgency, and I suddenly feared where that sad, desperate urgency might lead her. What was it that was eating at her, and would it drive her to some horrible mistake? I hoped she would come in again to talk, so I could maybe calm her or help her. Things would be different if she came in again. I would be more forthright. I would talk to her about Sylvia Plath. I would step in forcefully. I waited for her to come and see me. But she didn’t, as if she was avoiding me, and, for whatever reason, I didn’t go to her. And then I learned, through the normal channels of gossip, that something terrible had happened in the Prouix household.

IT IS a peculiar thing, sitting by the bedside, chatting amiably about this and that, nothing of any import, chatting oh, so amiably, all the while unsuccessfully trying not to stare at the white bandages that cover a young girl’s wrists. You try to be cheery and funny, you tell stories and both of you laugh, you talk about the exciting events coming up in the near future, and still, all the time, there are those bandages. That’s what it was like for me, sitting beside Roylynn Prouix’s bedside after she was found in the bathtub up to her neck with red-stained water, horizontal gashes on her forearms.

The house the Prouixs lived in is now owned by the Liptons, and I have since been there many times, and it is pleasant and sunny, but I felt no sun in the house that day. There was a darkness, darker than the familiar black mood of a house visited by tragedy. Mrs. Prouix thanked me for coming and offered me a cup of tea, and I sat with her in mostly silence in the kitchen as she made it and I drank it. She smiled tightly and hugged herself as if she wanted to disappear, and I saw not a spark of life in her eyes. When she talked about her daughter, she spoke softly, in phrases so common they were devoid of meaning. “She’s feeling better now.” “Everything will be all right, I am sure.” “It is so nice when friends come to visit.” “More tea, Reverend, or a cookie?” Mrs. Prouix was unable to confront the fact that her daughter had stood on the precipice between her life and her death and had chosen to step through. Hailey came into the kitchen and joined us, subdued, as if her normal energy had been drawn out of her. I tried to start a conversation with her, but she let all my openings fall to the floor and flop there, like fish in the throes of death. It was awkward, more than that, it was unpleasant and frightening, the way she changed inside that house. And then we heard footsteps, coming up the stoop, heavy footsteps, and something strange occurred when we heard them. Mrs. Prouix seemed to shrink, if that was possible, and Hailey brightened as if a candle inside had been lit.

He came into the house with his overalls spattered with blood. And however dark the house had felt before he entered, it felt darker still with his presence. I stood, instinctively, pushed to my feet by a strange fear. He yelled something crude before he saw me, and when he did finally spy me, he quieted, as if daunted by my collar. Tall, gaunt, his broad shoulders leaning aggressively forward, his hands curled into near fists, his huge knuckles covered with thick black hairs. Lawrence Cutlip. When he saw me, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stared for a moment before he smiled and called me by my honorific and thanked me for visiting his dear ill niece. There was a chilling warmth, chilling because it came too quickly and without effort and was only almost convincing. I felt the urge to leave, to run, to get away from that house, but I stilled my heart and fought my urges and sat down with him. When he offered a beer, I took it and drank, as did he, straight from the bottle. When, in the course of our conversation, he asked me if I played poker, I lied and said only a little, and he brightened even more and invited me into his game at the local Chrysler dealership, and I accepted with an expression of gratitude. When we talked, we agreed on important civic matters, even when I thought him dead wrong. I even laughed at his jokes, no matter how cruel. And all the time I sensed that the darkness I had felt in that house emanated straight from some black abscess in his heart.

Why did I stay in that house and let the likes of Larry Cutlip ply his charm on me? Guilt, pure and simple, a guilt that I felt as soon as I had heard the disastrous news about Roylynn and that I still believe was utterly deserved. I had missed what it was that was happening with her, missed it completely. I had been worried about Hailey, pretty, provocative Hailey, with her dazzling smile and suggestive questions, and the whole time I had assumed all was right with her quiet, dutiful sister. But that was blind of me, wasn’t it? They were twins, after all, weren’t they? And what it was that afflicted the one was sure to afflict the other. They expressed it differently, obviously, for reasons of their own, but they were both equally at risk, and I, feeling so proud of my forbearance, still had been seduced by the one to the point that I ignored the other. And so, I suppose you could say it was the guilt that sent me searching for an answer.

Roylynn was referred by the state to a county home for troubled girls, where she could be watched more closely, and I was glad to have convinced the welfare worker of such a move being necessary. She was well out of danger for the moment, I figured, though Hailey was still in that house, with that man, still in need of saving. And so I set my plan. I would identify the affliction and do all in my power to heal those children, that household, that family. The death of the father was part of it, I was sure, and there was precious little I could do about that. But this other, this Lawrence Cutlip, he was part of it, too, I sensed. Part of the darkness came straight from him, I sensed. And so I would do my scouting on his turf, drink with him, laugh at his jokes, play in his game, and all the time hope to gain a glimpse of what was afflicting those girls.

I lost in the card game. Larry Cutlip was a gambler, hard-core, who was in it, I could instantly tell, not for the conviviality or the conversation but for the money. He wanted me in the game only as long as I swam like a fish, and so as a fish I swam. But I didn’t lose more than I could afford to lose, I hadn’t put myself through college playing poker against private-school boys without learning my way around a deck of cards. So I played, and I lost, and I kept my eyes narrowed as I watched. And what I saw across the green felt table from me was a glimpse of something evil.

You look at me aghast, as if I am saying it was Satan sitting across from me, but I tell you a man can be evil without cleft feet and a tail. What is it to be evil in this world? It is to have an unsubmitted will, to swear allegiance to nothing but the inner demons of one’s self, and to use every possible means to bend others to those same demons. Most of the people I see have given themselves over to some other good, to their children, their spouses, their friends or families, their business maybe, or their community or country, their people, their God. You, Mr. Carl, as a lawyer, have submitted your will to the workings of our country’s legal system. You, Detective Breger, have submitted your will to the pursuit of justice. Both of you, I assume, have submitted your wills if not to God then to the simple ideal of trying to do the right thing. The submission of will is the start of goodness. Matthew five, verse three: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”