The Body Human Read Free Page A

you are. Are now. You and your husband are law-abiding people, you vote, you make a contribution to the Orphans of AIDS Fund, you—”
    “How did you know about that? That’s supposed to be a secret contribution!”
    “—you signed the petition to protect the homeless from harassment. Your husband served on the jury that co n victed Paul Keene of fraud, even though his real-estate scheme was so good for the economy of Emerton . You—”
    “Stop it,” I say. “You don’t have any right to investigate me like I was some criminal!”
    Only, of course, I was. Once. Not now. Sylvia’s right about that—Jack and I believe in law and order, but for different reasons. Jack because that’s what his father b e lieved in, and his grandfather. Me, because I learned in Bedford that enforced rules are the only thing that even halfway restrains the kind of predators Sylvia James never dreamed of. The kind I want kept away from my children.
    Sylvia says, “We have a lot of people on our side, Betty. People who don’t want to see this town slide into the same kind of violence there is in Albany and Syracuse and, worst case, New York.”
    A month ago, New York Hospital in Queens was blown up. The whole thing, with a series of coordinated timed bombs. Seventeen hundred people dead in less than a m i nute.
    “It’s a varied group,” she continues. “Some town lea d ers, some housewives, some teachers, nearly all the med i cal personnel at the hospital. All people who care what happens to Emerton .”
    “Then you’ve got the wrong person here,” I say, and it comes out harsher than I want to reveal. “I don’t care about Emerton .”
    “You have reasons,” Sylvia says evenly. “And I’m part of your reasons, I know. But I think you’ll help us, Eliz a beth. I know you must be concerned about your son—we’ve all observed what a good mother you are.”
    So she brought up Sean’s name first. I say, “You’re wrong again, Sylvia. I don’t need you to protect Sean, and if you’ve let him get involved in helping you, you’ll wish you’d never been born. I’ve worked damn hard to make sure that what happened seventeen years ago never touches him. He doesn’t need to get mixed up in any way with your ‘medical personnel at the hospital.’ And Sean sure the hell doesn’t owe this town anything, there wasn’t even anybody who would take him in after my aunt died, he had to go to—”
    The look on her face stops me. Pure surprise. And then something else.
    “Oh my God,” she says. “Is it possible you don’t know? Hasn’t Sean told you?”
    “Told me what?” I stand up, and I’m seventeen years old again, and just that scared. Sylvia-and-Elizabeth.
    “Your son isn’t helping our side. He’s working for Dan Moore and Mike Dyer. They use juveniles because if they’re caught, they won’t be tried as severely as adults. We think Sean was one of the kids they used to blow up the bridge over the river.”
     
    I look first at the high school. Sean isn’t there; he hadn’t even shown up for homeroom. No one’s home at his friend Tom’s house, or at Keith’s. He isn’t at the Billiard Ball or the Emerton Diner or the American Bowl. After that, I run out of places to search.
    This doesn’t happen in places like Emerton . We have fights at basketball games and grand theft auto and smashed store windows on Halloween and sometimes a drunken tragic car crash on prom night. But not secret terrorists, not counter-terrorist vigilante groups. Not in Emerton .
    Not with my son.
    I drive to the factory and make them page Jack.
    He comes off the line, face creased with sweat and dirt. The air is filled with clanging machinery and grinding drills. I pull him outside the door, where there are benches and picnic tables for workers on break. “Betty! What is it?”
    “Sean,” I gasp. “He’s in danger.”
    Something shifts behind Jack’s eyes. “What kind of danger?”
    “Sylvia Goddard came to see me today.