Monday, March 13
Clare came with Mrs. Marshall to the clinic the next Monday. “You really don’t have to do this, dear,” Mrs. Marshall said, pulling on her black kidskin gloves and setting her hat at an angle on the silver waves of her hair.
Clare brought her attention back from her look-around at the airy foyer of the Marshall house, one of several “executive mansions” outside Millers Kill that had been built for high-level General Electric people in the sixties. It was decorated—tastefully and expensively—at the same time and had never been changed again. Clare hadn’t seen so much Danish modern and smoked glass since her last visit to an Ikea store.
“I know,” she said, fishing into her pocket for her own bulky Polarplus gloves. “You don’t have to tell the clinic director about your decision in person, either. But you are.”
Mrs. Marshall smiled. She had on fuchsia lipstick today, and the effect against her paper white skin was startling. “I suspect we were both raised to do the right thing, whether we want to or not.”
“You should have met my grandmother Fergusson.” Clare opened the front door. “Do you want to take my car or yours?”
Mrs. Marshall paused on the steps to consider the Shelby Cobra, badly in need of a trip to the car wash, parked next to her Lincoln Town Car. “Mine, I think.”
They didn’t talk much on the ride into town. Clare watched the landscape, covered with sodden, tired snow, and tried to shake off the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She could handle disagreement, disapproval, even, she supposed, disdain, with equanimity. But she hated disappointing anyone. She dreaded it with the same nauseating plunge she had felt as a child, standing in front of her mother or grandmother and admitting, yes, she had lost her new shoes, yes, she had let the twins out of her sight, yes, she had brought home a report card full of low grades and slack effort.
Mrs. Marshall could evidently read minds. “It’s hard to deliver bad news, isn’t it?”
“It’s not that, exactly,” Clare said. “You can’t be in the army and then the ministry without learning how to say things people don’t want to hear. It’s this feeling that I’m the cause of the bad news. That’s hard to live with.”
Mrs. Marshall slowed the car to turn onto Route 51. “You might be taking a little too much responsibility for this, don’t you think? You’re a wonderful priest; a little rough around the edges, of course, but experience will help with that—” Clare sat up straighter in the crushed velvet seat and surreptitiously checked her black blouse for any traces of breakfast.
“But you aren’t St. Alban’s, dear, and you mustn’t go around confusing yourself with the institution.” The scenery was more crowded now as they neared the center of town. They passed an auto repair shop, a tire store, a barren plant nursery hunkered down for the long, cold spell between Valentine’s and Mother’s Day. “If anyone should feel responsible, I should. It’s my decision, ultimately. But even so, I came to it as part of the group, not as an individual. Neither you nor I can carry the day all by ourselves. We’re part of a democracy.”
“An oligarchy,” Clare said under her breath.
“Perhaps.” Mrs. Marshall sounded amused. “But you’ll concede me my point.”
Clare flipped her hand over. Mrs. Marshall turned onto Barkley Avenue.
“What the devil?” Mrs. Marshall said. From the opposite end of the avenue, two squad cars raced toward them. The elderly woman yanked the steering wheel, plowing them nose first into the nearest parking spot, but instead of racing past them, the black-and-whites skidded to a stop in front of the clinic. Clare popped open her door and jumped out in time to see the chief of police and the department’s youngest officer, Kevin Flynn, pounding up the steps into the building.
Clare started forward across the street, recollected herself, and turned back to see if Mrs. Marshall needed any help. The driver’s side window unrolled smoothly and Mrs. Marshall said, “I’ve got to do a better job of parking. You go ahead, I’ll be right there. Be careful, dear.”
She didn’t need any more permission than that. Clare ran toward the clinic, her boots slapping through slush. One of the wide double doors had been left hanging open, and she slipped through it into a tiny foyer papered over with leaflets on AIDS prevention, domestic violence, immunization schedules, and flu shots. The inner doors—heavy, modern fireproof slabs that had undoubtedly replaced something older and more elegant—had swung firmly shut, but Clare could hear shrieking and bellowing coming from inside.
She pushed into the clinic. She was in a wood-floored hall, with pocket doors opened wide on the right revealing a waiting room. Its orange plastic chairs were knocked over and children’s toys had been kicked everywhere. Immediately in front of her, a mahogany staircase swept up to a landing, where a redheaded woman in a medical jacket clutched a newel post and looked down an unseen hallway. The sounds, much louder now, came from whatever she was watching.
“Oh!” She spotted Clare and hurried down the stairs. She was a tiny thing, a head shorter than Clare, and with her sneakers, jeans, and hair braided down her back, Clare would have thought her some sort of teenage volunteer if not for the fine lines around her sharp, skeptical eyes and her white coat embroidered L. RAYFIELD, N.P.
“I’m afraid we’re having a bit of trouble right now. You can—” L. Rayfield, N.P., glanced around, frowning. “You can wait in the office, back here. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”
“It’s okay,” Clare said. “I’m a priest.” Without waiting to see what effect that complete irrelevance had on the woman, Clare charged up the stairs.
“You’re a what? Hey—wait! Come back here!”
The hallway off the landing ran the length of the house to a single dull gray elevator, jarringly at odds with the mahogany six-panel doors opened, two to each side, onto the hall. Above the shrieking and shouting coming from the last room on the right, Clare could hear Russ Van Alstyne’s voice, hard with authority, pitched to control.
“Put the stool down! Back away from the cabinet!”
She felt a thud vibrate through her feet and turned to see the nurse headed up the stairs. Clare ran down the hall, skidding to a stop in front of the open door.
Russ and Kevin Flynn, backs to the door, were angling to box in a wild-eyed Debba Clow, who brandished a metal stool like a battering ram against a glass-fronted cabinet filled with medical supplies. “—defend myself against this monster who wants my children taken away from me!” she was saying, her words a high-pitched screech.
“And you’ve proven me right,” roared Dr. Rouse, rearing up from his shelter behind the examination table. “You’re so obsessed with revenge for nonexistent wrongs you can’t even stop to think about your kids!”
Debba shrieked and raised the stool.
“Debba, stop!” Clare stepped forward into view, her hands raised. Officer Flynn twisted around to stare at her, but Russ never took his eyes from Debba.
“We’re handling this, Clare,” he said, his voice tight.
Clare ignored him, fumbling with her parka’s zipper to yank it down like Superman revealing the S on his chest. “Remember me? From St. Alban’s? We talked the other day.” Debba stared at her, pulling the stool in tightly against her chest. Clare took another step into the room. “You don’t want to do this.” She could hear the sound of the nurse’s shoes as she reached the doorway and stopped. “I bet you don’t hit your children to discipline them, do you?”
“Of course not!”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if she—”
“Not now, Al!” The whispered command from the woman behind Clare cut Dr. Rouse off.
Clare reached one hand out slowly. “Then you already know that violence isn’t the answer.”
“You don’t know what he did,” Debba said. “He wrote my goddamn ex-husband and told him I was endangering the children. Today I was served with papers—he’s suing me for full custody! Except he doesn’t want to keep Skylar, he wants to institutionalize him!” She shifted the stool in her grip as if she might throw it at the doctor. “Did you know that? Did you know that before you wrote him, you bastard?”
Clare took another step forward. She was almost shoulder to shoulder with Russ. “You’re so angry and frustrated you want to hurt Dr. Rouse, don’t you? But I bet you’ve felt that way before, haven’t you? Every mother I’ve ever met has felt like that. Has been pushed so hard she wanted to lash out at her kids. To hit them. To hurt them.”
“Clare . . .” Russ’s hiss warned her to shut up.
“But you didn’t give in to that feeling, did you? You didn’t hurt anyone. You controlled yourself.” She stepped forward. Almost close enough to touch the stool if she stretched out her arm. “You controlled yourself. You are in control.” She deliberately looked away from Debba and laid her hand on Russ’s arm. Under the slick nylon of his parka, his muscles were tensed. “Chief Van Alstyne is a good man. Why don’t you let him help you? Before you get yourself into real trouble.”
Debba’s eyes grew larger. “I’m going to get arrested, aren’t I? Oh, God.” Her lower lip bowed down like a toddler’s caught between anger and anguish.
“Put the stool down, Deborah,” Russ said. “And we’ll talk about it.”
Hands shaking, Debba lowered the stool. As soon as it touched the ground, Russ stepped past Clare and took the trembling woman by her upper arms. “Okay, Deborah, listen to me.” He looked directly into her eyes. “I’m going to have you sit in another room while I talk to Dr. Rouse. Officer Flynn will stay with you.” He flicked a glance toward Clare. “As will Reverend Fergusson.” He reached to the small of his back and unsnapped his handcuffs. “Now. I don’t want you to get alarmed, but I am going to cuff you.”
At the sight of the handcuffs, Debba burst into tears. She shook her head wildly, sending clouds of kinky blond hair flying everywhere. “I’m going to cuff you while you’re with Officer Flynn,” Russ said, his voice steady. “When I come back in to talk with you, I’ll take these off.”
Debba gasped out, “No, no,” but obediently held out her wrists. Russ snapped the metal constraints on her. “Kevin,” he said. Officer Flynn appeared and put his hands on Debba’s shoulders. Russ pivoted. “Laura,” he said to the nurse, “is there a place where Ms. Clow can sit down in private?”
“We’ve got an old-fashioned ladies’ lounge with a sofa and everything.” The nurse beckoned. “Follow me.”
Officer Flynn guided Debba out of the examination room and down the hall, with Clare close on his heels. The nurse—Laura—opened the door closest to the stairs. It was indeed an old-fashioned ladies’ lounge, with the toilets and sinks discreetly behind a second, interior door. “Come here, honey, and sit down.” Laura patted the sofa, an overstuffed red velvet monstrosity that looked as if it had been taken from a whorehouse. Clare recognized it immediately as the soul mate to her own office’s sagging love seat—the one piece of furniture that couldn’t be auctioned off. Debba sat down shakily, still weeping. Officer Flynn perched on the edge next to her, somewhere between guarding and comforting her.
“Don’t feel so bad,” the nurse said. “I’ve been arrested plenty of times. They’ll have the bail bondsman over at the station half an hour after you get there and you’ll be home in time to make supper.”
Clare took a closer look at the tiny redhead. “Wait a minute—haven’t I seen you before? Weren’t you part of the environmental action group protesting the Adirondack Spa development last summer?”
“That was me! Laura Rayfield.” She held out her hand and grinned as Clare shook it. Clare pulled her a little away from the sofa.
“So what happened?” Clare asked.
The nurse sighed. “I think Dr. Rouse overreacted to Deb’s antivaccination crusade. He’s been under tremendous stress lately, and everything seems to set him off. Thank God he didn’t grab his gun when she came charging in here.”
“You have a gun? At the clinic?”
“Al has a gun. In his desk.” She made a face. “It makes him feel safer. We’ve had a few break-ins, addicts looking for Oxy, stuff like that. Me, I think you’re more likely to shoot yourself than an intruder.”
“Have you talked to him? About his stress?”
“I told him the best thing to do would be to schedule a couple of evening meetings where he could ease anybody’s fears about vaccinations, but does he listen to me? Not hardly. He’s always practiced by the ‘Me doctor, you patient’ model, and now he’s got women coming in and questioning him about their kids’ immunizations, and about flu shots, and this, that, and the other thing.”
“Is that bad?”
“Hell no. But Al still thinks he’s living in a world where a white coat makes you bulletproof and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”
Clare reflexively reached back and twisted her hair more tightly into its knot. “Last summer, I saw you hauled off getting the word out about the dangers of PCBs. How come you’re not helping Debba spread the alarm about this vaccination thing?”
“Because, unlike the known link between PCBs and cancer, there’s not a shred of scientific evidence to back up the autism-vaccination connection.” Laura looked over to the sofa, where Debba had subsided into sharp, deep breaths. “Autism can be so cruel to a family. I can’t blame parents for searching for something, anything, to explain how their perfectly normal one-year-old grows into a child trapped inside his own mind. It’s like the changelings in a fairy tale. You know, where the baby starts out healthy and is replaced by a sickly imposter? Except nowadays, instead of saying ‘Fairies stole my son,’ parents are crying that mercury-contaminated vaccines did the deed.” She shook her head, thumping her braid along her back. “If I thought that were true, I’d be breaking into warehouses to destroy any stockpiles myself.”
“But you don’t blame Debba for what she’s been doing.”
“I don’t. But that doesn’t change the fact that she’s wrong. And she’s wasting her time fighting a war that doesn’t need to be won.” She squeezed Clare’s hand. “I’d better get back there. I know he sounded in fine fettle, but Al was really shaken up when she came at him like that.”
Clare lifted a hand in parting and turned back to the sofa. She shucked off her heavy parka and draped it over the back of one of a pair of orange plastic chairs appropriated from the waiting room. She dragged the chair over to Debba and plopped down, flashing a smile at Kevin Flynn, who was looking even younger than his twenty-one years this morning. Then she touched Debba’s hands, twisting together beneath the steel shine of the handcuffs.
“Debba, tell me about your kids.” The woman looked up. “How old are they? What are their names?”
“Um, I have two. Skylar, he’s my son, he’s six. And Whitley’s my little girl. She’s three and a half.”
“Where are they right now?”
“At my mother’s house. We all live there. I moved in a few years ago when Jeremy left us.” Debba drew a deep breath. “We’ve never had any problems before. He made his support payments, he got his visits with Whitley, and other than that he left us alone.”
“No visits with Skylar?”
Debba shook her head. “No. Jeremy couldn’t handle being a father to an autistic kid. He divorced me when Whitley was a baby. He was dead sure that she’d turn out to be like her brother.”
“That’s terrible!” Kevin Flynn’s outburst made both women look over at him. He reddened. “I mean, a guy turning his back on his handicapped kid and his baby.”
Debba nodded. “Your preaching to the choir here.”
“So why is he suddenly set on taking full custody of both the children?” Clare asked.
Debba clenched her fists. The handcuffs clicked. “He always wanted to institutionalize Skylar. After it was obvious that Whitley was . . . normal, he used to bring it up every now and again. Said it would give me more time for her. The implication being, of course, that time spent on Skylar was wasted. But he never said anything about taking her himself.” She pulled her arms apart, watching as the handcuffs dug into her flesh.
Clare laid her hands over Debba’s. “Stop it. Hurting yourself isn’t going to help your kids, any more than hurting Dr. Rouse will.”
“I just don’t know how I’m going to fight him. It’s not like I’ve got the money to hire a decent attorney. Or any attorney. God. My mom said I ought to give up my art and get a real job.”
Clare’s mouth quirked up in a one-sided smile. “My mom said I ought to give up flying helicopters and get a real job. Then I became a priest. Now she wishes I had the army job back.”
Debba smiled a ghostly version of the smile Clare had seen on her last Thursday.
Clare interlaced her fingers and pressed her hands against her chin. “I know a good lawyer who could help you. She works part time from her home.”
“You don’t understand. When I say I don’t have the money, I mean I don’t have any money. At least if I’m charged with assault, the state will get me a lawyer for free.”
Kevin Flynn nodded. “That’s right.”
“I think she’ll waive her usual fee. She owes me a favor.”
“What did you do? Forgive her all her sins?”
Clare thought of Karen Burns’s face as she held Cody after the month-old baby had been rescued from drowning. “I helped her when she and her husband were trying to adopt their baby boy. If you’ll let me, I’ll set up a meeting.”
There was a knock on the door, and Russ entered. He reached behind his back and unsnapped the handcuff key from his belt. “Deborah Clow,” he said, kneeling down to unlock her, “you’re free to go.”
“What?” Kevin and Debba spoke at the same time.
“You talked to Dr. Rouse,” Clare said. She tried not to sound like a teacher whose protégé has done something terribly clever.
“I talked to Dr. Rouse,” he agreed.
“And he’s not pressing any charges? I threatened to kill him, for God’s sake. I nearly smashed up his examination room.”
Russ put a hand on his knee and levered himself up. “I’m glad to hear you can appreciate the seriousness of what you did today.” He hitched his thumbs in his gun belt. “Dr. Rouse has been extremely generous in not pressing charges. Seeing as how he’s willing to let the assault and criminal threatening go, I’m willing to take a pass on resisting arrest. But.” He stabbed toward Debba with one finger. “I’ve told Dr. Rouse that if he wants to swear out a restraining order against you I’ll support his motion before the judge.”
Debba was very still. Clare suspected she had never considered herself as the sort of woman another person needed a restraining order against.
“And restraining order or no, I don’t want to see you within two blocks of the clinic or anywhere near Dr. Rouse. In fact, if you so much as jaywalk in the next few months, I’ll haul you in and see if some jail time will help you to think before you act.” He hooked his thumbs in his pants pockets. “Are you going to be okay to drive yourself home? If you’re feeling too shaky, Officer Flynn here will be glad to give you a ride.”
“I . . . I . . .” Looking back and forth from Russ to Kevin to Clare, Debba started to cry again.
“Yeah, I thought so. Kevin, take this lady home, make sure she gets in safe, and come back to fetch me.”
“Yes sir.”
Clare grabbed her parka and made to follow Kevin and Debba out the ladies’ lounge door. Russ snagged her by the arm. “Reverend? A word?”
“Busted,” she said under her breath.
He crossed his arms. “Not that I don’t have the greatest respect for your people skills, but next time you see me talking a potentially dangerous person down, stay the hell out of it. Okay?”
“Debba Clow was not potentially dangerous.”
“Yes. She was. And you’re just going to have to yield to my more extensive experience on this.” He pulled his glasses off and rubbed them against his uniform shirt. “There’s a certain look. Don’t ask me to describe it. I just know it when I see it. Someone goes over the line and is willing—is going to do something scary.” He replaced his glasses. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Oh! Mrs. Marshall!” She whirled and banged through the door. Russ followed. “I completely forgot about her.” She rattled down the stairs. “Mrs. Marshall? Are you—”
“Here I am, dear.” The elderly woman came out of the office, still in her Republican cloth coat and velvet beret. “I didn’t know what was going on, but I thought I had best stay out of the way.”
Clare ignored Russ’s pointed look.
“Is everyone okay? There was a young woman crying as she left.”
“Everyone’s fine,” Russ answered. “There was a little excitement, but no one was hurt.”
“Mrs. Marshall, this is Chief Van Alstyne. Russ, this is Mrs. Henry Marshall, one of my vestry.”
Russ nodded. “I believe you’re on our drive-by list, Mrs. Marshall.”
“Yes, I am.” She looked at Clare. “The police department comes around to check up on us old ladies during the winter months.”
“I like to think of you as women of a certain age.” He smiled at Mrs. Marshall. He had a breathtakingly charming smile when he used it. “And we also have a few gentlemen on our list as well. Folks who live by themselves. Did you come by for a checkup?” His voice sounded doubtful.
“No, Clare and I came to deliver some bad news to Allan Rouse in person.” There was a noise from the second floor and they all looked up. “Although perhaps this isn’t the best time.”
“Mrs. Marshall runs a trust that’s been giving money to the clinic for years,” Clare explained. “She’s decided to dissolve it and sink the principal into the repairs at St. Alban’s.”
“I’d have to agree with you then, Mrs. Marshall. I don’t think now is the time to tell Dr. Rouse his funding is getting cut.”
There was another noise upstairs. It sounded like someone stomping back and forth. Mrs. Marshall pinched her fuchsia-colored lips together. “Tomorrow, then. Clare, I think I’ll just powder my nose and then we can go.”
Clare nodded. She and Russ stood silent while Mrs. Marshall made her way around the corner of the back hall, where an arrow under the universal male and female symbols pointed visitors to the bathrooms.
“So you found a way to get the money to fix your leaky roof,” he said when they were alone. His voice was neutral.
“It’s more than a leaky roof,” she said. She knew she sounded defensive, but she couldn’t help it. “It’s the roof, the stained-glass-window setting, there’s damage to the exterior wall, and we need new guttering to redirect the water away from the foundations. It’s the most expensive work St. Alban’s has undertaken since the ’93 parish hall restoration.”
“Don’t churches usually raise money from their members for this sort of thing?”
“It wasn’t my idea,” she burst out. “I wanted to apply for a couple of loans. But it turns out St. Alban’s is in hock too deep to take on any more debt. And it’ll take months and months to raise sufficient monies from a capital campaign. Maybe a year. We don’t have that kind of time. The repair work needs to begin now.”
He looked down at her, carefully, as if he was trying to understand her. “So you’re taking money away from the free clinic.”
She wanted to explain, to tell him all about Mrs. Marshall’s trust, and her family history, and the architectural heritage of St. Alban’s. But when it came down to it, those were all just excuses, meant to make her look better. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I am.”
The thunk-thunk of Mrs. Marshall’s old-fashioned rubber-heeled snow boots interrupted anything he might have said. “Ready to go, dear?” the old woman said.
“Yes.” Clare fished in her pockets for her gloves.
Mrs. Marshall took her arm. “It looks like I’ve wasted your morning, dragging you down here for nothing.”
Clare met Russ’s bright blue eyes, then let her gaze slide away. “It wasn’t for nothing,” she said. “There’s always time to deliver bad news.”