“Thanks for your advice.”
“Honestly, Rachel, you don’t know how much I hate to do this to you.”
“Not as much as I hate to have it done.”
She hung up and reached for a sheet of the school’s best stationery.
I hereby request an indefinite leave of absence from my duties as principal of Holbrook Hall.
She signed her name, put the sheet of paper in an envelope and addressed the envelope to the president of the board of directors. Then she went outside by the back door.
Nothing seemed to have changed. There were the usual sounds: screams and laughter from the pool area, the whinnying of a horse, the excited barking of dogs.
Gretchen was polishing the leaves of a camellia planted in a redwood tub. Only such sturdy leaves as a camellia’s could have withstood her loving attack.
“Good morning, Gretchen. I see you’re working hard.”
“I always do,” Gretchen said brusquely, as if she’d been accused of laziness. “Somebody has to.”
The fig tree was dropping its fruit like small brown eggs onto the grass. As they fell, two boys wearing cowboy boots were squashing the eggs into little yellow omelets.
The round-eyed girl, Sandy, was shelling peanuts to feed to the scrub jay watching impatiently from the edge of the roof. Sandy would place a peanut on her head and the bird would swoop down, grab it with his beak and fly off to hide it. There were pounds and pounds of nuts scattered throughout the grounds, buried in the grass or the vegetable garden, stuffed in the crevices between flagstones and the hollows of trees and underneath the shingles of the roof, dropped into chimneys and even into the goldfish pond. The bird always tired of the game before the girl did and flew off to seek more challenging pastimes.
In the playground the quiet boy, Michael, sat in the middle of the teeter-totter, using his feet to pump it up and down. Bang thump. Bang thump. He wore a knitted headband which had fallen or been pulled down over his eyes.
“Michael, I’m going away. I wanted to say goodbye to you. I probably won’t be seeing you for a long time.”
Bang thump. Bang thump.
“Michael?”
“I hate you.”
“I know you do. I thought you might say goodbye to me anyway.”
“Goodbye,” Michael said. “Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.”
“Thank you, Michael. That’s enough.”
“Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.”
She walked away as fast as possible. But she couldn’t get out of earshot. The others had taken up Michael’s chant. Sandy and the two boys under the fig tree and Gretchen were all chanting in unison with Michael.
“Good... bye... good... bye... good...”
When she reached the corner of the building Rachel Holbrook turned and waved. They waved back, Gretchen and the two boys and Sandy and even Michael. It was an encouraging sign that Michael had responded at all. Perhaps as he grew older, under the guidance of a new principal... No, I really mustn’t think about any of them. I must go away and forget them for a long time...
“Goodbye,” she said firmly.
The room was small and bare except for three steel chairs and a table, all bolted to the floor. The door had a barred window through which a uniformed policeman glanced every few minutes.
A previous occupant had damaged the thermostat and the air-conditioning couldn’t be regulated. Cold air kept blasting in from a vent high in the wall, making the room as cold as a walk-in refrigerator. Donny sat on the table dangling his legs.
“How about that,” he said, gesturing toward the door. “My own personal guard. Man oh man, they must think I’m public enemy numero uno. Did you bring me any money?”
Whitfield shook his head. “They wouldn’t let me hand you any, so I tried to deposit some in an account at the commissary. But they don’t have that system at Juvenile Hall, just at the adult — ah, facility.”
“So what system are us poor jerks in here stuck with?”
“You have to earn points.”
“How?”
“Good behavior, doing work, et cetera. You earn so many points by doing such and such a job and then you can spend the points like money. If you work and behave yourself you’ll be able to get candy bars and cigarettes, things like that. The idea is to treat rich and poor alike.”
“Jee-sus.”
“Well, goddammit, son, this isn’t a hotel. And I didn’t put you here.”
“You sent the cops after your precious boat.”
“I didn’t,” Whitfield said. “I swear I didn’t. I would have let you take a little cruise, knowing you’d come back.”
“So you think I’d come back. Don’t kid yourself. I was heading for the moon, man, straight for the moon.”
Whitfield focused his eyes on a spot on the bare grey wall. This was his son, his only child, and he couldn’t bear to look at him, to touch him, even to be in the same room with him. “I didn’t put you here, Donny.”
“But I bet you don’t mind if they keep me here. It’s cheaper than Holbrook Hall.”
“Listen, son. I’ve hired a lawyer from L.A., the best money can buy. But he can’t get you out on bail. There’s no bail for juveniles, especially ones with a record like yours. And the charges against you are pretty bad.”
“Like how bad?”
“I don’t even know if I can remember them all. Kidnapping — that’s the worst. Then there’s grand theft, assault with a deadly weapon, assault with intent to do great bodily harm, assault with intent to commit murder—”
“Okay, okay.”
“Although you were brought here to Juvenile Hall because you’re not yet eighteen, the chances are ninety-nine to a hundred that you’ll be tried as an adult. That makes things even worse.” The room was so cold that Whitfield’s voice was trembling. “Donny, if you could only show remorse, if you could convey to the authorities that you’re sorry for what you’ve done, that you didn’t mean to—”
“I meant to,” Donny said. “And I’m not sorry.”
“Son, please.”
“Screw the son bit. It makes me puke... You got any chocolate bars on you?”
“I brought you two pounds of See’s candies but they wouldn’t let me bring them in.”
“Those stinking cops are probably gobbling them up right now.” Donny slid off the table. He looked impassive except for a tic in his left eyelid which he concealed by averting his face. “Well, I guess that’s all. You might as well leave. You’ll be late getting to Ensenada.”
Whitfield once more studied an invisible spot on the wall. “I was going to cancel the trip to make sure I’d be here for your trial. But the lawyer told me not to bother. He said there’d probably be one delay after another, so your case might not come up for as long as a year, and it would be a waste of time for me to wait around and...” His voice faded as if suddenly he knew he’d hit the wrong note but there was no right one. “I’m sorry. I’m doing everything I can, everything I possibly can.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Donny. Donny, couldn’t you at least pretend to be remorseful?”
“I’m remorseful all right when I think of those damn cops gobbling up all my candies. What kind were they? Any marshmints? Chocolate cherries? Peanut butter crackle?”
“For God’s sake, Donny, haven’t you anything else to say to me?”
“Marshmints are my favorites,” Donny said.
Cleo was still wearing the stained jeans and T-shirt and sneakers without laces when Hilton went to the county jail to take her home.