Chapter Five

For the past two days Franny had been perky enough, having shed her gloom as soon as we left the farm. However, she didn’t say at any time that she didn’t want to go back there. I’m sure it would have influenced me if she had mentioned anything like that before I signed the rental papers, but she didn’t suggest it even now. She only became more pensive and morose as the miles passed. Finally I asked her what was wrong.

She didn’t answer that, but instead asked if she had to continue sleeping upstairs at the farm. I replied that it might be difficult to make other arrangements right now, since her father was crippled and Stephanie was with us, but that I would see what could be done.

“Why don’t you want to sleep upstairs anymore? Is it because it’s a strange house?”

“No.”

“Maybe you’ve been having bad dreams like Duff had the other night.”

“No, I haven’t had any dreams.”

“What is it then?”

She paused and sighed. “I don’t like Duff anymore.”

“You don’t like your own brother?”

“No. Also sometimes I’m afraid of him.”

“But why?”

She paused again for a long while as I tried to watch her and the road at the same time. Then she said, “He’s mean.”

“Mean?” I suppose I smiled. I assumed they’d had a dis­agreement over some trivial matter and Duff had put her down. “What did he say to you?”

“It wasn’t what he said. He doesn’t say much at all to me lately. It was what he did.”

“Well?”

“He hit me.”

“Oh, Franny.” I couldn’t believe a blow from Duff would ever be anything more than playful.

“Also, he tried to take my clothes off.”

I almost went onto the shoulder of the road, but then I recovered control quickly. A sign said a service area was a mile away.

“Don’t say any more,” I told her. “We’ll stop and have something to eat.”

I pulled into the service area and we went into the Howard Johnson’s. Franny had her usual away-­from-­home lunch—hamburger, french fries and ice cream. Then she ate my hamburger and fries and, on the way out, selected a candy bar.

Back in the car again, I said, “Okay, tell me.”

She unwrapped her candy bar. “Well maybe he was only joking. That’s what he told me afterwards anyway.”

“What did he do exactly?” I was trying, not too successfully, to keep my voice down.

“Well it was that night after we all went to the hospital with Dad. On the way home Duff stopped the car suddenly, which scared me right off because the road was so dark and deserted looking. Then he put his arm around me and kissed me—which was all right, I suppose, but it did seem sort of ridiculous for my own brother to be doing it. After that he pulled my sweater off and pulled down my underwear. Then I cried, mainly because I was cold, I think. Then he slapped me.”

“Then what?”

“Don’t scream, Mama.”

“What!”

“Well, I suppose I ought to include the fact that I bit him. I grabbed his finger and bit it and that’s when he slapped me. Then I put my sweater back on and we drove home. You may have noticed that Duff had a Band-­Aid on his finger the next couple of days.”

“No, I didn’t notice.”

“Maybe he took it off when you were around. Anyway, I was going to tell you before, but he kept insisting he’d only been joking.”

“Well, I’m sure he was joking.”

She shook her head doubtfully. “It sure didn’t seem that way at the time. People don’t usually hit you that hard when they’re joking, at least that’s been my experience.”

“It wasn’t a very nice joke, that’s certain. I’ll speak to Duff about it as soon as we get back.”

“Oh, Mama, don’t make me a squealer.” She finished the candy bar and licked her fingers. “I’m sure he won’t try the same joke again, now that I’d be expecting it.”

“Do two things for me,” I said. “Don’t say anything to your father about this. We don’t want to worry him with the problems of you kids. And don’t go anywhere alone with Duff for a while—just in case he might try the joke again.”

“Okay,” she said. She seemed more cheerful now that she had unburdened herself. “Actually Duff has gotten so weird lately that I don’t even like to be near him. Sometimes he acts as though he doesn’t know where he is—the way he goes around mumbling to himself. Have you noticed?”

I hadn’t. I was heartsick as I drove back on to the turnpike. I just didn’t know what to do, what to say to Duff, or even Jack. It was obvious that I had to get Duff to a psychiatrist as quickly as possible. But was there a psychiatrist in Cainesville or Ashland? There were certainly competent men around Scarsdale, but our house was gone, signed away for six months. Would Mr. Shaffer reconsider? Should we tell him that he had to reconsider because our son had molested his sister—

“Mama, watch that truck!”

We got back to the farm somehow. It was shortly after eight in the evening when I pulled in the drive. Duff came rushing out to greet us and began asking rapid and half incoherent questions about the trip and our states of health. Did we have a good time? Were we tired? Was the weather good? Then he looked directly at me and he knew that I knew.

“How’s Dad?” Franny asked him. She seemed willing to be his friend again.

“Okay.” He looked away and began unloading the luggage.

I went into the house and found Jack sitting in the wheelchair in his bedroom. There was a paperback book on his lap and he picked it up and opened it as I entered.

“Hi,” he said, not very enthusiastically.

“Hi,” I said. “Reading your own thrillers now? Where’s Stephanie?”

“Taking a walk, I guess.”

“How can you manage to get along without her?” No reaction. “Well, we did what we set out to do. We are now homeless for six months, except for this place. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“I guess so.”

“You guess so!”

“Well, maybe this isn’t the best place for us . . .”

“What’s wrong? Is it Duff? Something Duff did?”

He stared at me. “Why do you ask that?”

“No reason. Tell me what happened.”

He closed the book, which was upside down anyway. “There was some trouble with Stephanie.”

“And Duff?”

He nodded. “Don’t get excited, Maggie. Stephanie’s not going to say anything.”

“He attacked her!”

“Not so loud—Franny might hear. What I’m trying to tell you is Stephanie may have invited it. Anyway, it’s all over now and Duff has promised it won’t happen again.”

“Tell me what happened!”

Jack paused and took a deep breath. “I don’t see why you need the details. He was trying to—or possibly did—make love to her, that’s all. It’s really not surprising in a boy his age. He’s almost seventeen and they say that’s the time of peak sexual power. I remember when I was his age—”

“Where did it happen?”

“In the front room, yesterday afternoon. After lunch Stephanie went to the kitchen to do the dishes. Duff was helping her, I thought. I was half asleep here when I heard a noise from the front—moaning and then screaming. I wheeled myself in there. Duff had her on the floor, holding her down . . .”

“My God, she’s twice his size!”

“Not quite that, but maybe a few pounds heavier. Anyway, Duff’s a lot stronger than you think.”

“He’d have to be. She’s an amazon.” She must have cooperated, I told myself. “What else?”

“What else could there be?”

“I can tell from looking at you that there’s more to it.”

“Maggie, I could understand it, if it was just a case of the family heir having a sly one with the hired help. No harm done and everybody happy. But Duff . . . well I think he was trying to hurt her. It seemed that way, anyway. And he was holding her down. She was trying hard to get loose and sobbing and yelling.” Jack paused and shook his head. “The worst thing was when he saw me, Maggie . . . and he didn’t stop. He turned his head and grinned at me . . . and kept right on with it . . .”

He began to weep.

“Don’t say any more,” I told him.

“Maggie, he didn’t even look like Duff. His face was dark and twisted. I thought for a second it was someone else. I wheeled forward and kicked him with my good leg and he got up and raised his hand to hit me. Then his whole expression changed and he began to cry, the way I haven’t heard him cry since he was five or six years old, and he ran out of the room. After a while Stephanie got up and fixed her clothes and she said, ‘It’s all right, Mr. Caine. It wasn’t his fault.’ ”

“If she said it wasn’t, it wasn’t.”

“Except he really was holding her down and really hurting her. It was really vicious, Maggie.”

“I’m surprised she didn’t leave immediately. I suppose it was good of her to stay until Franny and I got back.”

“I talked to her about that last night. She’s willing to stay on here. She doesn’t want to go home. And Duff’s sorry about the whole thing. He says he doesn’t know what made him do it. Apparently it was a spur of the moment thing, an impulse he couldn’t control. And, as I said, he’s promised it won’t happen again.”

“If it was an uncontrollable impulse, what good is his promise? As long as Stephanie is around, she’ll be a temptation for him.”

“All right, you talk to her then. Send her away, if you feel you must, although I’d hate for her parents and her grandmother to know about it.”

“They probably should be told anyway. What if he made her pregnant? And the solution is not just to pack Stephanie off, but to get away from here ourselves. You’ll have to get in touch with the people in Scarsdale and arrange to cancel the lease. I wish you had phoned me yesterday when the thing happened. It might have been easier then.”

Jack shook his head. “Duff doesn’t want to go back to Scarsdale, Maggie. He wants to stay here.”

“What do we care what he wants? He’s a sixteen-­year-­old child. He’ll do what we think best for him.”

“You talk with him then.”

“I intend to do just that.”

I was angry now, as well as horrified at what had happened. I knew Jack was incapacitated, but I felt he was acting spinelessly. In my opinion, he not only should have given the girl notice, but also ordered Duff to start packing immediately for the return to Scarsdale.

I went back out to the car where Duff was unloading the last of the luggage. Franny had apparently gone up to her room. Duff tried to avoid my gaze.

“Your father told me what happened yesterday,” I said without preamble.

“I figured he would.”

“Under the circumstances, maybe you’d better put all our belongings back in the car. We’re going home.”

“Tonight?”

That was ridiculous and we both knew it. It was almost dark.

“The first thing in the morning then.”

“Is Dad able to travel in the car?”

He had me again.

“Dad and Franny can fly back and you and I will drive.”

“Maybe I could drive back alone and you three could go by plane,” he said guilelessly.

“No thanks.”

“But who will look after Dad between the airport and home? Franny’s a little kid.”

“I’m surprised you remembered that.”

He blushed then and his lip trembled. He ran to me and clutched me.

“Oh, Mama, I’m so sorry,” he sobbed. “It started as a joke both times and that’s all it ever was with Franny, but I guess Stephanie thought I was serious . . .”

I hugged him. What else could I do? He was my little boy. It was going to become increasingly hard for me to remember that.

“There’s no point in crying over what happened, Duff,” I said. “We’ll just make sure it doesn’t happen again. We’ll take you to a doctor.”

“You mean a shrink? What for—I’m not crazy.” He pulled away from me and gripped my arms. “I don’t need a psychiatrist, Mother. All I need is your trust in me. Give me a chance to prove myself.”

“Why don’t you want to go back to Scarsdale, Duff?”

“I do eventually, of course. But I don’t want to go now, having failed you. Also, I’m doing some research here that I’d like to finish.”

“What kind of research?”

“On the Caine family. There’s a lot of fascinating material here on the family and the region. Lots about the Civil War too. I’m thinking of switching my college major from one of the sciences to history or sociology. What do you think, Mother?”

“I think there’s plenty of time to decide that.”

“How about it, Mama? Must we go back tomorrow?”

I hesitated. “I’ll talk some more with your father. However, you’ve got to understand that, whatever we decide, it won’t be in the nature of punishment, but rather what’s best for you. Also, there are others to be considered. Franny apparently wasn’t seriously harmed, thankfully, but what about Stephanie?”

“She wasn’t a virgin, Mama.”

I slapped him—hard. He began to weep again.

“Never mind what she was. You’ve violated her. You’ve taken something away from her—her dignity, if nothing else.”

“But, Mama, she wanted me to do it.”

“That’s not what your father says. Also it’s a sin.”

“I’m not sure I believe in things like that.”

I knew he didn’t and it was my fault. I hadn’t attempted to provide my children with any religious education, and neither had Jack. For a while we saw to it that Duff said the Lord’s Prayer before going to bed at night, but by the time he was six we had begun to neglect that and we never started it with Franny. They both had vague notions about the origins of Christmas and Easter, and that, I assumed, was about the extent of their religious knowledge. On the other hand, we thought we had instilled in them the elements of morality. They supposedly knew the difference between right and wrong. Still, I felt guilty about not doing more.

“I know I’m to blame, Duff,” I said. “You were never properly guided, I guess. We’ll try to do something about it when we get home.”

“As a matter of fact, I know about the Ten Commandments and Judeo-­Christian ethics and all that. We had History of the Middle East last year in school.”

“I’m afraid more than that is needed.”

While he carried the remaining bags to the bedrooms, I went to the kitchen and made sandwiches for Franny and me. It seemed that Stephanie had fixed dinner as usual for Jack and Duff.

Later Franny went to Jack’s bedroom to sit with him a while, and I did the washing up. It was almost dark and I was turning on the lights when Stephanie rapped at the back door and came in. She seemed agitated, even more so when she saw me. I hadn’t liked her much, but I felt sorry for her now.

“Did you have a nice walk, Stephanie?” I said.

“It was all right,” she said. Her head was jerking, as though she felt compelled to examine every corner of the room.

“Would you like some coffee? Franny doesn’t drink it, and I made too much for myself.”

“All right.” She was trembling, although it was a warm night and she was wearing a sweater.

I poured her coffee. “Where did you go on your walk?”

“Nowhere in particular. Up the road a bit.”

“I’ve been walking quite a lot myself since we came here. Sometimes I take that path down to the woods.”

“At night?”

“At twilight sometimes. It’s nice then when the birds are going to sleep.”

“You shouldn’t walk down there at night.”

“I suppose it isn’t too safe. It would be easy to trip over something and break a leg. Then you’d have two cripples on your hands.” I sat down across from her. “I know what happened yesterday, Stephanie, and I’m sorry.”

“You shouldn’t blame Duff too much.”

“We do blame him, and it seems we must blame you too, if you’re implying that you encouraged him.”

She sipped her coffee and thought for a while. “You don’t understand, Mrs. Caine. It’s not a question of what I did or what Duff did. It was out of my hands, and his too.”

“You’re right, I don’t understand.”

She spread her hands. “It’s this house,” she said.

“What’s wrong with this house?”

“There are bad things in it.”

“Oh come on, Stephanie,” I said irritably. “You can’t get off that easily, and neither can Duff. This place isn’t haunted.”

She shook her head hopelessly. “This house can cause people to do strange things.”

“Did strange things happen when your grandmother was living here?”

She shook her head again and stared at the table.

“There is one thing I should ask you.” I hesitated.

“I take the Pill,” she said. “I have a boyfriend, although I don’t see him very often. He’s married.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“No need to be. I don’t want him as a husband.” She paused. “I would like a home of my own though.”

“Why don’t you rent an apartment in Cainesville or Ashland?”

“My folks wouldn’t like it. Gran and Ma like me to be at home in between jobs, not that I get that many patients lately. Mr. Caine is the first one in a long time.”

“Why? There seemed to be plenty of people in that hospital who would need home care.”

“Some folks don’t like my family. They think my grandmother is odd. My mother too, though not as much as Gran.”

“Odd in what way?”

“They’re sort of . . . spiritualists, I guess you could call them.”

“And people disapprove of that?”

“Around here, some people. Anyway I don’t go in for it—talking to the dead and all that—but I guess Gran and Ma get a kick out of it.”

“What about your father?”

“He always goes along with whatever they say.”

Suddenly I remembered something. “Has your grandmother been back to this place recently, Stephanie?”

“I don’t think so. Why?” It seemed to me she grew paler.

“I saw two people out by the barn one night before you came. I thought one of them was your grandmother and the other one was Duff, but it turned out I was wrong about him.”

“How do you know?”

“I checked upstairs and he was in bed.”

“That doesn’t mean—” She closed her eyes and bit her lower lip. “You’d better go away from here, Mrs. Caine. What happened with me could happen with someone else.”

“He’s not an animal,” I said angrily. “He never did anything like this before we came here.”

“That’s what I’m telling you. It’s this place.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“All right, Mrs. Caine.” She went to the sink and rinsed her cup and saucer. “I’ll get Mr. Caine ready for bed.”

“Wait, Stephanie. You’ll have to tell me more. What’s in this house that’s affecting Duff?”

She hesitated. “Evil things,” she said finally.

“What are they?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Why would they have an effect only on Duff’s actions? Why not on Franny’s too, or on mine or my husband’s?”

“Maybe they will.”

“But people have lived in this house for years. Has anything like this ever happened before?”

She hesitated again. “I don’t know.”

“I’m sure it hasn’t. My husband’s aunt lived here all her life—a good deal of the time under the care of your grandmother—and Aunt Hannah was certainly never affected by the house or whatever you say is in it.”

“No, I guess she wasn’t.”

“Why are you so sure that Duff will be affected then?”

“He’s already been affected, hasn’t he?”

“But that was the result of perfectly natural causes—his age, your presence . . .” I was trying not to think of the episode with Franny. But even that, I told myself, could have happened to a lot of sixteen-­year-­old boys with younger sisters.

“All right, Mrs. Caine.”

“Stephanie, I think you’re sincere in what you’re saying, but I also think you’re wrong. We do intend to leave here very soon, but we won’t be driven away by such nonsense.”

“I’m glad you’re going, whatever your reasons.”

“On the other hand, you’ve stimulated my curiosity. I’d like to find out more about these evil things. Could your grandmother tell me any more about them?”

“No, I’m sure she couldn’t.” Her voice was shrill now.

“But she lived here for a long time.”

“Please don’t go to my grandmother, Mrs. Caine. She’ll know I told you.”

“Why shouldn’t she know?”

“Well, she wants you to stay here. She and my mother want this house occupied. They’d be angry if I frightened you away.”

“But I told you we’re not going to be frightened away. And you’re a big girl, Stephanie, why should you be afraid of them? Of course, I can appreciate your not wanting trouble at home.”

“That’s it. I don’t want trouble.”

She waited another moment, as though she wanted to say more, then turned and went out. I stayed in the kitchen for a while, wondering if she was slightly unbalanced. Then I heard the sound of Duff’s flute. He was playing a Haydn sonata.

I went upstairs. The door to the bedroom I shared with Franny was partly open and she was in bed.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” she said smiling. “Duff’s playing.”

“Yes,” I said, “it’s very nice.”

His door was open too. He was sitting cross-­legged on the bed, with the score propped on a pillow in front of him. He lowered his flute now and looked at me questioningly.

“It’s nothing,” I said. I put my arm around him and kissed him. He began to play again as I went downstairs. It was the last time I heard him play his flute until the night he died.