The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell(35)

“What is it?” my mother asked.

“Just something.”

“Okay, let’s go back.”

“No,” I said. “I can do this on my own.”

I needed to find out if my white lie had been okay. I didn’t want to go to hell, especially now that I was certain David Bateman had been damned to eternal torment. I made my way back to the conference room, but Father Brogan had departed. Sister Beatrice stood with her back to the door. I watched as she pulled a small metal flask from the pouch at the front of her habit, twisted off the top, and took a long drink. Then, as if sensing my presence, she turned and looked at me. If she were embarrassed, or even the slightest bit self-conscious about what I had witnessed, she did not show it. She did not flinch in surprise or call out or try to hide the flask and make some excuse like she was drinking water or she had a cold and this was medicine. She raised the flask and took another, almost defiant, sip. When she lowered it, her eyes narrowed, as David Bateman’s eyes had narrowed. It was a warning, and I realized that while David Bateman would no longer haunt my school days, Sister Beatrice very much would.





PART THREE

THE MICK





1





1989


Burlingame, California

Trina Crouch stood rigid in my treatment room, her daughter seated on the table, clinging close to her side. Crouch had blanched and stiffened when I mentioned the name of her ex-husband, David Bateman. I saw more than just surprise in her reaction. I saw fear.

“How do you know him?” she asked.

“We went to grammar school together for a while.”

Crouch squinted, considering me. “You’re not the kid. No.”

“I am,” I said and felt a twinge of fear that Crouch would know my history with her husband. If Crouch knew, Bateman had clearly not forgotten.

She shook her head. “You couldn’t be.”

“I’m the kid with the red eyes. I wear brown contact lenses.”

I began wearing brown contact lenses not long after my father’s stroke. That was also the day I vowed to never again set foot in a church or to pray. I no longer believed in God’s will. I had stomached the refrain throughout my youth as an explanation for the bullying and general lack of compassion I had endured, because I wanted to believe that my mother’s ardent faith that I was destined to lead an extraordinary life had some glimmer of truth. But if believing in God’s will also meant believing my father’s stroke had a purpose, that something good would come from striking down a good man at so young an age, well, that was a proposition I could not accept. To strike my father down in his prime was simply cruel, and all the doctors’ rationalizations of bad genetics didn’t change that assessment.

“Was Daniela with her father when she fell off her bike?” I asked.

Trina Crouch looked away.

Daniela nuzzled against her mother’s side, timid as a mouse. Long blonde strands of hair partially covered her face. “Daniela, would you mind if your mom and I stepped into the hall to talk for a minute?”

Daniela’s wide-eyed look conveyed that she didn’t want her mother out of her sight, not for a moment. I rolled my chair across the room to a glass jar with assorted candies—everything except Tootsie Pops—and held it out for Daniela to choose. She looked from the jar to her mother, who nodded her consent. Daniela reached her delicate hand inside and chose a red sucker. I wondered if it was prophetic.

“Red,” I said. “My favorite color is purple.”

Daniela lowered her eyes.

I joined Trina Crouch in the hall and had no sooner shut the door when she said, “I don’t have much time.”

“I won’t keep you. Has Daniela had any other accidents while she’s been at her father’s house?”

Crouch folded her arms and raised her chin. “Why would you ask me that?”

What was I to say? That I had once sustained a beating administered by her former husband and I, too, had lied and said I’d had a bike accident? Or was I to say that I suspected her husband was beaten as a child and medical literature suggests a link between abused children and adults who abuse children? “The emergency room report . . . your daughter’s injuries from the bike accident seem rather mild.”

Crouch looked to a print on the wall. “What are you saying?”

“I’m not saying anything, Mrs. Crouch. It’s just that, well, I guess I would have expected her injuries to be more severe, given the description of the accident and the force of the blow to the head required to cause this type of injury.”

Crouch looked up and down the hall. Then she locked on me with a burning gaze. “What kind of mother do you think I am?”

“I’m sure you’re a very good mother, Mrs. Crouch.”

“Then what?”

“Your daughter is losing her vision. I might be able to save it, but if she sustains any more accidents, any more blows to the head—”

She uncrossed her arms. Her eyes had filled with tears. “She fell off her bike.” Her voice cracked. “I told you she fell off her bike. That’s what the police report says, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s what the police report says.”

“Then that’s the end of it.”