CHAPTER 53

Bear not false witness, nor belie
Thy neighbor by foul calumny …

From a hymn by Martin Luther

In his office Martin Kraeger could hear the organ guild experimenting. The building quivered. Behind him a book fell from a shelf with a thump.

He paid no attention. All he could think of was the grotesque suit brought against him by his ex-wife. He sat at his desk staring into his crystal ball, visualizing one face after another, the scandalized members of his congregation. By now the entire parish must have heard that he was doing repulsive things to his little daughter. His name in the city of Boston must be mud. Worse than mud—filth, foulness and obscenity.

But surely the people who had known his ex-wife were aware she was a nutcase. And surely little Pansy would stick up for him. Pansy and I know better, Kay had said, as if Pansy were on her side.

Then it occurred to Kraeger that Pansy was enrolled in the daycare center in the church basement. At this moment she was probably frolicking with the other children, playing ring-around-the-rosy, or whatever it was they did down there.

He leaped up from his desk and ran past Loretta, who had just arrived. She was taking off her coat. “Good morning,” he called over his shoulder, but from the way she looked back at him with huge accusing eyes, he knew she had heard the story too.

It was the same with Ruth Raymond. When Martin opened the door to the daycare center, she looked at him blankly and clutched the child in her lap, as if he might snatch it from her and do something unseemly. It was naptime. Most of the children were stretched out on blankets on the floor. Pansy was not among them.

“Pansy isn’t here today?” he whispered to Ruth.

She looked at him suspiciously. Her manner was defiant. “I’m sorry, but I’m not supposed to tell you where she is.”

“But she’s my own daughter.”

“I’m sorry.” Ruth looked away and hissed at one of the children, “Cecily, lie still.”

But Cecily was kneeling upright on her blanket. “Pansy’s at Mother Goose Land,” she said brightly. “They have a pony at Mother Goose Land.”

“Cecily, lie down!”

Martin went back to his office and looked it up in the phone book. Mother Goose Land was on Hereford Street, not far away. He ran as far as Exeter, then slowed down and walked the rest of the way.

Mother Goose Land occupied a basement below the level of the pavement, like the daycare center in the church. Martin opened the door and entered a sunny room with windows overlooking the alley. Through one window he could see a small paved area at the back, where an aged donkey hung its head, its winter coat coming off in patches.

There was a cheerful babble of childish voices, a tumble of small children doing exercises on rubber mats. Two hardworking women were stuffing some of their charges into jackets and tying their shoes. One of the children was Pansy. At once she ran over to hug Martin’s knees and give him a huge gap-toothed smile.

He picked her up and hoisted her over his head. Then he sat down on a small chair and held her on his lap and inserted her feet into her Donald Duck cowboy boots.

“You’re Mr. Kraeger?” said one of the women, smiling at him, apparently unaware he was a lecherous monster. “I can see you’re an old hand.”

Martin set Pansy on her feet and drew her toward him until her small face was close to his. “Listen, Pansy, dear,” he whispered, “your mother says I was mean to you. What did I do, Pansy? Can you tell me? I don’t think I was ever mean.”

Pansy lowered her eyes. “My panties,” she whispered. “You took off my panties.”

“Well, of course I took off your panties. Because—you remember, Pansy—they were wet. They needed to be changed.”

Pansy was silent. She stopped up her mouth with her thumb. At once she was swept up by a whirlwind.

“Pansy, don’t you speak to him,” cried her mother. “I told you, Pansy, not one word.” Kraeger’s ex-wife looked at him, clutching Pansy to the front of her coat. “How dare you? How dare you talk to Pansy behind my back?”

The children of Mother Goose Land stopped milling around. They stared. The two teachers exchanged glances, then went on shepherding their flock out to the playground. Through the window Martin could see the donkey shamble away into the farthest corner.

“For heaven’s sake, Kay, I’m just trying to find out what this is all about. Pansy says I took off her panties. Well, of course I did, but Pansy knows why. She wet her panties, that’s why.”

“Pansy does not wet her panties. That is a complete fabrication. Pansy is completely toilet-trained. She has been toilet-trained since she was one year old.”

“Oh, now, Kay, you know she has accidents all the time.”

“I know no such thing. You took her panties off, you pervert, and did something to her!”

“Did something to her? I put on clean panties, that’s what I did to her.”

“Pansy,” said Kay Kraeger, plopping Pansy down on the floor again and looking at her fiercely, “did you wet your panties?”

Pansy shook her head violently, and looked at the floor.

“Pansy, did your father do something to you?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Pansy,” said Kraeger, “tell your mother what happened.”

“Pansy,” whispered her mother, “you told me he did something to you, something unspeakable, didn’t he, Pansy? Didn’t he?”

Pansy was trapped. It had been unspeakable, what had happened, and she couldn’t possibly mention it. Her mother had threatened that if she ever wet her panties again she would be spanked. So Pansy had suppressed the evidence.

Her mother’s threats about lapses in perfect behavior had made her an adept at concealment. There were petrified meat patties tucked behind the furniture, and fossilized baked potatoes in the back of the bookcase, and dusty brussels sprouts under the grandfather clock. One day last month when her father had been taking care of Pansy in her mother’s house, repairing a plugged-up sink at the same time, there had been an unfortunate calamity. Her father had tut-tutted gently and cleaned her up and found her a pair of clean panties, and then he had washed out the old ones and put them in the laundry basket. Afterward Pansy had removed them carefully and tiptoed downstairs and carried them under her sweater to the trash barrel. With her fragile fingers she undid the plastic tie of one of the trash bags, dropped the panties inside and twisted it shut again.

The case against her had vanished. Not until her mother undressed her that evening did she discover that Pansy was wearing panties with bunnies on them instead of teddies. Pansy had answered her mother’s outraged questions as cautiously as she could, and by saying as little as possible had shifted the blame to her father.

Now Pansy looked sideways, left, then right, and then, slyly, she nodded.

“Oh, Pansy,” moaned Kraeger.

“You beast, you beast,” cried Kay, making shuddering sounds of revulsion. “I’ll see you in court.” Snatching her daughter’s hand, she rushed away, with Pansy half-flying behind her.