She was writing to her ten-year-old brother, Jason, but she wasn’t going to mail the letter to their home for fear that Tremblay would intercept it. That would be a disaster. No, she would send it to Jason in care of a friend of his in school as she had done before. She tried to write three times a week, telling Jason the news and how their plans were progressing. She described how the headmaster had spoken to the students that morning, saying all the stuff he would do for them. Jessica hadn’t believed it but at least Hawthorne hadn’t talked down to them. And when some of the students acted silly, Hawthorne hadn’t gotten mad but just waited for them to finish.
And now she was telling Jason about her intentions. “There’s a man here who I think will help us. I’ve only talked to him a little but I’ve been watching him. He works in the kitchen but he’s not like that. Not like a kitchen person, if you know what I mean. I like him. After all, I’ll be paying him $2,000 and he doesn’t have to do much. Just get you out of the house and I’ll do the rest.”
She considered what “the rest” might be. Her father’s younger half brother, Matthew, lived in Washington and worked for the government, something in the Department of Labor, although she didn’t know what. He wasn’t in charge, she knew that much. She hadn’t seen Matthew since her father’s funeral, but she’d talked to him on the phone and had written to him. Now, however, she meant to appear on his doorstep with Jason. Surely if Matthew knew what Tremblay had done, he would protect them. He’d probably kill Tremblay, smash him with an ax, so she knew that she shouldn’t tell Matthew just yet. He certainly knew that her mother wasn’t good for much. Even if Dolly was sober and not taking pills, she was still frightened. A sodden chipmunk, that’s what she was. She wouldn’t stop Tremblay. She didn’t care what he had done. And though that wasn’t completely true, it was at least true that Dolly was too scared to protect them.
Again Jessica thought of how Tremblay would come to her room at night. She didn’t mean to think of it but the pictures seemed trapped in her head. Now he said he’d do the same to Jason unless she stayed at Bishop’s Hill and kept quiet. And she knew he would; he wasn’t scared. Jessica thought of how she used to hear him getting up to go to the bathroom, how she would count his steps—one, two, three—it was twelve steps from his bedroom to the bathroom, and if there was a thirteenth step, then her whole stomach felt nauseous because it meant he was coming to her room. Four, five, six—she could tell by his steps how much he’d been drinking and sometimes she knew there would be a thirteenth step even before she heard it.
She’d kill him if she could, and if he touched Jason, she would kill him for sure. When Jessica was smaller, she would think of spraying bug spray in Tremblay’s mouth when he was passed out. Now she would use a knife from the kitchen, one of those expensive butcher knives he liked to brag about. He’d promised he wouldn’t touch Jason as long as she stayed at Bishop’s Hill, but he had always promised her things and then come to her room anyway. Seven, eight, nine—hearing him stumble into the wall, sometimes knocking down a picture. Then Tremblay would pause and Jessica would listen to him breathe heavily, already knowing what he wanted, that he wouldn’t stop at the bathroom but would continue down the hall. Ten, eleven, twelve. And she would look at the light under her door and wait to see his shadow fall across it.
“Just make sure you don’t make Tremblay suspicious,” she wrote. “It would be best to do it when he is away on a business trip, so you need to find out about his schedule. Don’t ask him about it. Maybe Dolly knows.”
Jessica had stopped referring to her as “mother” when she married Tremblay. She’d become Dolly—a stupid big sister with whom Jessica was obliged to live. The candle flickered and she stared at the page. LeBrun could fuck her if that’s what he wanted; she’d do anything to get him to help. But the thought of sex was awful to her. Men’s moist, fat hands, their awful knees; their underwear that smelled of pee. At the club men would wiggle their tongues at her to show how much they wanted her, as if that would make her excited and dance even wilder rather than make her sick and want to puke on them. With LeBrun, she hoped the money would be enough—four thousand saved from table dancing, from pushing her small breasts into the faces of drunken men. Two thousand for LeBrun and two thousand for her and Jason to get to Washington and maybe beyond.
She hadn’t asked LeBrun yet. She had to be sure. Yet the more she waited, the more dangerous it was for her brother. Even if Matthew wouldn’t hide them, she could still go back to the titty bars. She had her fake ID. They would go to the West Coast, someplace warm. In December she’d be sixteen. Then she’d have five years until she came into her trust fund. She and Jason each had one and they had to be twenty-one before they got the money. And then Tremblay would have nothing because Dolly would no longer get an allowance or be paid child support. Jessica hoped Tremblay would be dead by that time. How brilliant if she could get LeBrun to kill him. But she was letting her fantasies get in the way. It would be hard enough to get him to rescue Jason, much less kill someone.
“Unless he’s going on a business trip, the best time to get you out of the house is between Thanksgiving and Christmas,” wrote Jessica. “Both Tremblay and Dolly drink more then. A few days before, you need to put a bag with some of your stuff over at Chuckie’s. You can’t take too much. No trucks or stuffed animals.”
What she liked about her Uncle Matthew was that he looked like her father, even though he was only a half brother. There was another half brother, Eddie, in Tucson, but he never wrote or showed any interest. Even here at Bishop’s Hill, Jessica had already gotten a letter from Matthew, a note really, saying he was glad she was safe and he hoped to see her sometime during the year but he was very busy right at the time.
“A few people here aren’t bad. I like my Spanish teacher but my English teacher is a dope. He’s also the librarian and he reads us dumb books. The kids are absolute nothings. My roommate cuts her arm with a razor blade. I don’t know if she thinks it’s cool or what. Some kids try to talk to me but I ignore them. They’re all babies. But the woods are pretty and the trees right now are really beautiful. A couple of times I’ve gone for long walks by myself. People say there are moose and black bears, I haven’t seen any, but LeBrun said they can’t leave the garbage cans outside because the bears will get them and make a mess—”
The blanket curtain was suddenly pulled aside. Jessica looked up and saw the upside-down head of her roommate, her brown hair hanging down. She almost yelled she was so startled. Helen was talking but Jessica couldn’t hear over the Walkman. She took off her earphones.
“. . . completely crazy,” Helen was saying. “You could start a fire with that candle. We could burn up. I knew I smelled something. If you don’t put it out immediately, I’ll tell Miss Standish. I’ll go down there right now. What’s wrong with you?”
Jessica leaned forward and blew out the candle, leaving Helen in the dark. Then she put on the earphones again so the bass repetitions of the song filled her ears. “Bitch,” she said, but even she couldn’t hear the word, it was so soft with her earphones on, almost a kiss. The song “Spiritual” had again reached the part that she liked—Dut-dut-dut-dut . . .
—
The French windows of the headmaster’s apartment opened onto a terrace that looked out across the school’s playing fields. The apartment was in Adams Hall, where classes were held, but it seemed homelike and included enough bedrooms for a big family—a feature that Hawthorne, now that he was single again, couldn’t consider without bitter irony. At the moment he was leaning against the balustrade that divided the terrace from the lawn some half-dozen feet below. The night was cloudy and windless. In the distance he could hear coyotes yapping.