“I want to go to the hospital,” Jeanette announced. “Now, please.”
Chet felt his stomach tighten as he helped his wife back into the car. She insisted on being taken to see her child and would not be dissuaded.
Straws, Chet thought. She’s grasping at straws. But he knew that for now there was nothing he could say to her, that all he could do was stay with her, offering her whatever support she needed while she came to grips in her own way with what had happened.
And yet, he reflected, what about him? To whom was he supposed to turn? The knot of grief that had begun forming inside him from the second he’d opened the door and seen the look on Hildie Kramer’s face now threatened to strangle him. How long had it been? Half an hour? He glanced at his watch, wondering if it was possible that only thirty minutes had passed since he’d heard of his son’s death.
And in those thirty minutes, he’d felt himself turning numb, dealing with the cold reality of Adam’s death by turning cold himself, going through the motions of dealing with the situation even while he, in his own way, rejected the reality of it no less than Jeanette.
Was it really possible that Adam was dead? That he was never going to see his son’s face, so different from Jeff’s, yet so much the same, again?
An image of Adam came into his mind, a quiet image, of Adam as he so often was, alone, exploring some world within his own mind that was totally unknown to anyone else, even his twin brother. For it had always been Jeff who was the extroverted one, Jeff who made friends with other kids, and dragged Adam, often protesting, into his games.
Was what had happened this morning Adam’s Anal pro test, his final rejection of a world he’d never really been a part of? Or had it been just a momentary whim that he would have gotten over, given enough time?
Chet realized that he would now never know. Adam was, irretrievably, gone.
They arrived finally at the hospital’s emergency entrance. Together, the Aldriches went inside, where they were met by a pale, lanky man in a rumpled white coat, a resident whose young face reflected the ravages of the long hours he’d put in during the night. He came toward them almost reluctantly, and Chet caught himself abstractly wondering if this was the first time this doctor had ever had to deal with parents who had just lost a child.
“Mr. Aldrich? Mrs. Aldrich?” he heard the doctor saying. “I’m Joel Berman. I was on duty when they brought your son in.” He gestured toward a sofa and two chairs arranged around a messy coffee table in the reception area. “If you’d like to sit down …?”
Jeanette shook her head. “I want to see Adam,” she said, but her nerves were beginning to betray her, and her voice was unsteady as she uttered the words. “Please, I have to see my son.”
Joel Berman’s face tightened. “I — Mrs. Aldrich, I’m not sure you want to see him.”
“I do,” Jeanette said simply. “I have to.”
Berman seemed about to object further, then apparently changed his mind. “This way,” he said softly. He led them down a short corridor and then into an examining room. On a gurney, covered by a sheet, was the form of a body. Jeanette paused at the door, but then steeled herself. Moving across to the gurney, she hesitantly touched the cover, then gently pulled it back.
She stared into Adam’s face.
Smeared with blood, and battered by the impact of the locomotive, it was barely recognizable, and yet she knew instantly that it was her son. At last the wall she’d built inside her broke and she began sobbing. “Oh, Adam,” she whispered, the words choking in her constricted throat. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you just come home? I would have made it right, honey. I would have taken care of you.” Her tears flowing freely, she bent down and, oblivious of the blood that still stained her son’s cheeks, gently kissed him.
Only then did she allow the doctor to cover her son’s face once again, and her husband to lead her out of the room.
A few minutes later, her hands trembling, she tried to force herself to drink a cup of scalding hot coffee while the doctor did his best to reassure her that Adam hadn’t suffered.
“He would have died instantly. Apparently he was sitting in the middle of the tracks, his back to the train. The first contact would have killed him. I’m sure he felt nothing at all.”
Through it all, she’d never once, until that very instant, realized she’d left the house without dressing. Shakily, she put the coffee cup down. “Take me home, Chet.”
As her husband led her out of the emergency room and back to the waiting police car, grief at last began closing in on Jeanette Aldrich.
At a little after seven o’clock that morning, Steve Conners arrived at the Academy, and knew at once that something was wrong. Two police cars were pulled up in the driveway in front of the main building, and he could see Dr. Engersol’s dark blue Oldsmobile as well. Ignoring his usual morning routine of going first to his classroom in the west wing building, he parked next to one of the black-and-whites and mounted the steps to the broad loggia. As he let himself in through the front door, the first person he saw was Hildie Kramer, talking to one of the policemen. Near the foot of the stairs a knot of children whispered among themselves, their eyes wide as they watched the policeman talking to their housemother.
“What’s going on?” Steve asked as he joined Hildie.
Hildie’s eyes shot briefly toward the group of children by the stairs, but then she decided there was no point in retreating to her office. Certainly, there wasn’t a child in the house who didn’t already know what had happened. “It’s Adam Aldrich,” she said. “I’m afraid he killed himself last night.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Steve groaned. Suddenly he remembered the things he hadn’t done yesterday.
He hadn’t mentioned either to Hildie or to George Engersol his concerns about the boy. He’d intended to, but then something had come up — he couldn’t even remember what it had been right now — and the whole thing had slipped his mind.
Slipped his mind! And now Adam Aldrich was dead.
His horror at the thought must have showed clearly on his face, for Hildie was staring curiously at him. “Steve, what is it?”
Steve shook his head as if to push back the tide of guilt that was washing over him, but the gesture did no good. “I should have done something,” he said. “I knew something was wrong. I was going to talk to you about him. And George, too.”
Now the policeman’s eyes were fixed on him. “You know something about the boy?”
Steve nodded unhappily. “He’s in my English class.” Briefly, he filled in the policeman — and Hildie Kramer, too — on what had happened in his class the previous morning. “I knew he was upset about something, and I was going to talk to you about it, but it just went out of my mind. And now—”
“And now you feel as though you could have prevented it,” Hildie finished for him. Her attention shifted momentarily back to the police officer. “If you’re finished with me for now, I think I’d better have a talk with Mr. Conners.”
The officer nodded, closing his notebook. “I think I’ve got all there is to get. It doesn’t seem like anyone talked to him or heard him leave. And the note on his computer is pretty clear. If there’s anything else, I’ll call you.”
When he was gone, Hildie took Steve Conners into her office, and gestured him into a chair. “Steve, I’m not going to pretend that your forgetting to speak to me about Adam wouldn’t have made any difference. It probably would, at least in the short run. But there’s something else you’ve got to understand, or you’ll never be able to deal with this school.” She paused, as if waiting for a response from the young teacher. When there was none, she went on. “This isn’t the first time we’ve lost a student this way, and it won’t be the last. In fact, it’s one of the reasons we exist. Our students almost all have problems of one sort or another, and several of them have tried to kill themselves in the past. Adam was among them. And, of course, had you told me what happened yesterday, I would have talked to him, possibly even put him into counseling immediately. But I probably wouldn’t have put him under a twenty-four-hour watch.”
Conners frowned. “But why not? If he’d tried something like this before—”
