Needful Things (Page 99)

In the end she went home to do what Mr. Gaunt had advised (although she no longer precisely remembered the advice). She would check her mail, and then she would call Alan and tell him what Mr. Gaunt wanted her to do.

If you do that, the interior voice said grimly, the azka really will stop working. And you know it.

Yes-but there was still the question of right and wrong. There was still that. She would call Alan, and apologize for being so short with him, and then tell him what Mr. Gaunt wanted of her. Perhaps she would even give him the envelope Mr. Gaunt had given her, the one she was supposed to put in the tin can.

Perhaps.

Feeling a little better, Polly put her key in the front door of her house-again rejoicing at the ease of this operation, almost without being aware of it-and turned it. The mail was in its usual place on the carpet-not very much today. Usually there was more junk mail after the Post Office had taken a day off. She bent and picked it up. A cable-TV brochure with Tom Cruise’s smiling, impossibly handsome face on the front; one catalogue from the Horchow Collection and another from The Sharper Image. AlsoPolly saw the one letter and a ball of dread began to grow deep in her stomach. To Patricia Chalmers of Castle Rock, from the San Francisco Department of Child Welfare… from 666 Geary. She remembered 666 Geary so very well from her trips down there.

Three trips in all, Three interviews with three Aid to Dependent Children bureaucrats, two of whom had been men-men who had looked at her the way you looked at a candy-wrapper that’s gotten stuck on one of your best shoes. The third bureaucrat had been an extremely large black woman, a woman who had known how to listen and how to laugh, and it was from this woman that Polly had finally gotten an approval. But she remembered 666 Geary, second floor, so very, very well. She remembered the way the light from the big window at the end of the hall had laid a long, milky stain on the linoleum; she remembered the echoey sound of typewriters from offices where the doors always stood open; she remembered the cluster of men smoking cigarettes by the sand-filled urn at the far end of the hall, and how they had looked at her. Most of all she remembered how it had felt to be dressed in her one good outfita dark polyester pants suit, a white silk blouse, L’Eggs Nearly Nude pantyhose, her low heels-and how terrified and lonely she had felt, for the dim second-floor corridor of 666 Geary seemed to be a place with neither heart nor soul. Her A.D.C application had finally been approved there, but it was the turndowns she remembered, of course-the eyes of the men, how they had crawled across her br**sts (they were better dressed than Norville down at the diner, but otherwise, she thought, not really much different); the mouths of the men, how they had pursed in decorous disapproval as they considered the problem of Kelton Chalmers, the bastard offspring of this little trollop, this janey-come-lately who didn’t look like a hippie now, oh no, but who would undoubtedly take off her silk blouse and nice pants suit as soon as she got out of here, not to mention her brassiere, and put on a pair of tight bellbottom jeans and a tie-dyed blouse that would showcase her ni**les. Their eyes said all that and more, and although the response of the Department had come in the mail, Polly had known immediately that she would be turned down. She had wept as she left the building on each of those first two occasions, and it seemed to her now that she could remember the acid-trickle of each tear as it slid down her cheek.

That, and the way the people on the street had looked at her. No caring in their eyes; just a certain dull curiosity.

She had never wanted to think about those times or that dim second-floor hallway again, but now it was back with her-so clearly she could smell the floor polish, could see the milky reflected light from the big window, could hear the echoey, dreamy sound of old manual typewriters chewing through another day in the bowels of the bureaucracy.

What did they want? Dear God, what could the people at 666

Geary want with her at this late date?

Tear it up! a voice inside nearly screamed, and the command was so imperative that she came very close to doing just that. She ripped the envelope open instead. There was a single sheet of paper inside.

It was a Xerox. And although the envelope had been addressed to her, she saw with astonishment that the letter was not; it was addressed to Sheriff Alan Pangborn.

Her eyes dropped to the foot of the letter. The name typed below the scrawled signature was John L. Perlmutter, and this name rang a very faint bell for her. Her eyes dropped a little further and she saw, at the very foot of the letter, the notation "cc: Patricia Chalmers." Well, this was a Xerox, not a carbon, but it still cleared up the puzzling matter of this being Alan’s letter (and settled her first confused idea that it had been delivered to her by mistake).

But what, in God’s name…

Polly sat on the Shaker bench in the hallway and began to read the letter. As she did so, a remarkable series of emotions lensed across her face, like cloud formations on an unsettled, windy day: puzzlement, understanding, shame, horror, anger, and finally fury.

She screamed aloud once "No!"-and then went back and forced herself to read the letter again, slowly, all the way to the end.

San Francisco Department of Child Welfare 666 Geary Street San Francisco, California 94112

September 23, 1991

Sheriff Alan J. Pangborn Castle County Sheriff’s Office 2 The Municipal Building Castle Rock, Maine 04055

Dear Sheriff Pangborn:

I am in receipt of your letter of September 1, and am writing to tell you I can offer you no help whatever in this matter. It is the policy of this Department to give out information on applicants for Aid to Dependent Children (A.D.C) only when we are compelled to do so by a valid court order. I have shown your letter to Martin D. Chung, our chief legal counsel, who instructs me to tell you that a copy of your letter has been forwarded to the California Attorney General’s Office.

Mr. Chung has asked for an opinion as to whether your request may be illegal in and of itself. Whatever the result of that inquiry, I must tell you that I find your curiosity about this woman’s life in San Francisco to be both inappropriate and offensive.

I suggest, Sheriff Pangborn, that you lay this matter to rest before you incur legal difficulties.

Sincerely, John L. Perlmutter Deputy Director cc: Patricia Chalmers After her fourth reading of this terrible letter, Polly rose from the bench and walked into the kitchen. She walked slowly and gracefully, more like one who swims than one who walks. At first her eyes were dazed and confused, but by the time she had taken the handset from the wall-mounted phone and tapped out the number of the Sheriff’s Office on the oversized pads, they had cleared.

The look which lit them was simple and unmistakable: an anger so strong it was nearly hate.

Her lover had been sniffing around in her past-she found the idea simultaneously unbelievable and strangely, hideously plausible.

She had done a lot of comparing herself to Alan Pangborn in the last four or five months, and that meant she had done a lot of coming off second best. His tears; her deceptive calm, which hid so much shame and hurt and secret defiant pride. His honesty; her little stack of lies. How saintlike he had seemed! How dauntingly perfect!

How hypocritical her own insistence that he put the past away!

And all the time he had been sniffing around, trying to find out the real story on Kelton Chalmers.

"You bastard," she whispered, and as the telephone began to ring, the knuckles of the hand holding the telephone turned white with strain.

14

Lester Pratt usually left Castle Rock High in the company of several friends; they would all go down to Hemphill’s Market for sodas, then head off to someone’s house or apartment for a couple of hours to sing hymns or play games or just shoot the bull. Today, however, Lester left school alone with his knapsack on his back (he disdained the traditional teacher’s briefcase) and his head down. If Alan had been there to watch Lester walk slowly across the school lawn toward the faculty parking lot, he would have been struck by the man’s resemblance to Brian Rusk.

Three times that day Lester had tried to get in touch with Sally, to find out what in the land of Goshen had made her so mad. The last time had been during his period five lunch-break. He knew she was at the Middle School, but the closest he got to her was a callback from Mona Lawless, who taught sixth- and seventh-grade math and chummed with Sally.

"She can’t come to the phone," Mona told him, displaying all the warmth of a deep-freeze stuffed with Popsicles.

"Why not?" he had asked-almost whined. "Come on, Monagive!

"I don’t know." Mona’s tone had progressed from Popsicies in the deep-freeze to the verbal equivalent of liquid nitrogen. "All I know is that she’s been staying with Irene Lutjens, she looks like she spent all last night crying, and she says she doesn’t want to talk to you."

And this is all your fault, Mona’s frozen tone said. I know that because you’re a man and all men are dogshit-this is just another specific example illustrating the general case.

"Well I don’t have the slightest idea what it’s all about!"

Lester shouted. "Will you tell her that, at least? Tell her I don’t know why she’s mad at me! Tell her whatever it is, it must be a misunderstanding, because I don’t get it!"

There was a long pause. When Mona spoke again, her voice had warmed up a little. Not much, but it was a lot better than liquid nitrogen. "All right, Lester. I’ll tell her."

Now he raised his head, half-hoping Sally might be sitting in the passenger seat of the Mustang, ready to kiss and make up, but the car was empty. The only person close to it was soft-headed Slopey Dodd, goofing around on his skateboard.