God Save the Child

The boy’s room was second floor front, looking out over the broad front lawn and the quiet curving street beyond it. The bed was against the far wall, a low, headboardless affair that the stores insist on calling a Hollywood bed. It was covered with a red and black spread. There was a matching plaid rug on the floor and drapes of the same material as the spread on the windows. To the left of the door as we entered the room was a built-in counter that covered the entire wall. Beneath it were bureau drawers, and atop it were books and paper and some pencils and a modular animal cage of clear plastic with an orange plastic base. There was a water bottle still nearly full in its slot and some food in the dish. The perforated metal cover was open, and the cage was empty. Beside the cage was a cardboard box with the cover on. Bartlett opened the box. Inside was a package of guinea pig food pellets, a package of Guinea Pig Treat, and a blue cardboard box with a carry handle and a yellow picture of a satisfied-looking guinea pig on the outside.

Bartlett said, “That box is what they give you at the pet store to bring them home in. Kevin kept it to carry him around in.”

The two packages of food, both open, and the carry box occupied all the space in the shoe box.

I said, “Can you tell if there’s any food missing?”

“I don’t think so. This is where he kept it, and it’s still there.”

I stared around the room. It was very neat. A pair of brown loafers was lined up under the bed, and a pair of blue canvas bedroom slippers beside them, geometrically parallel. The bedside table had a reading lamp and a small red portable radio and nothing else. At the far end of the counter top was a brown and beige portable TV set. Neatly on top, one edge squared with the edge of the television, was a current TV Guide. I opened the closet door. The clothes were hung in precise order, each item on its hanger, each shirt buttoned up on the hanger, the pants each neatly creased on a pants hanger; a pair of Frye boots was the only thing on the floor.

“Who does his room?” I asked.

“He does,” his father said. “Isn’t he neat? Never saw a kid as neat as he is. Neat as a bastard, ya know?”

I nodded and began to look through the bureau drawers. They were as neat as the rest of the room. Folded underwear, rolled socks, six polo shirts of different colors with the sleeves neatly folded under. Two of the drawers were entirely empty.

“What was in these drawers?” I asked.

“Nothing, I think. I don’t think he ever kept anything in there.”

“Are you sure?”

“No. Like I say, he kept care of his own room, mostly.”

“How about your wife; would she know?”

“No.”

“Okay.” I looked around the room in case there was a secret panel or a note written in code and scratched on the window with the edge of a diamond. I saw neither. In fact there was nothing else in the room. No pictures on the wall, no nude pictures, no pot, no baseballs autographed by Carl Yastrzemski. It was like the sample rooms that furniture departments put up in big department stores: neat, symmetrical, color-coordinated, and empty.

“What are you looking for?” Bartlett asked me.

“Whatever’s here,” I said. “I don’t know until I see it.”

“Well, you through?”

“Yeah,” I said, and we went back downstairs.

When we came back to the kitchen, Trask was at the counter mixing another gin and tonic for Marge Bartlett. There were two more empty half-quart cans before his empty chair at the table, and Marge Bartlett’s voice had gotten louder.

“Well, we put it on in front of a group of young high school kids out in Bolton,” she was saying, “and the reception was fantastic. If you give children a chance to see creative drama, they’ll respond.”

Trask belched, less softly than he had the last time. “ ’Scuse me, Marge,” he said.

“Lotta gas in that Gansett,” Roger Bartlett said. “It’s a real gassy beer I don’t know why I buy it; it’s really gassy, ya know?”

Bartlett made himself another gin and tonic as he spoke. I opened my second can of beer and swallowed a little. Gassy, I thought.

Marge Bartlett got up and bumped her hip against the table as she did. She crossed the kitchen toward me with an unlighted cigarette in her mouth and said quite close to my face, “Gotta match?”

I said, “No.” She was leaning her thighs against me as I sat on the barstool, and the smell of gin was quite strong. I wondered if the gin was gassy too. She looked at me out of the corners of her eyes with her eyelids dropped down so her eyes were just slits and spoke to her husband.

“Why don’t you have shoulders like Mr. Spenser, Rog? I bet he looks great with his shirt off. Do you look great with your shirt off, Mr. Spenser?” Her unlit cigarette bobbed up and down in her mouth as she talked.

“Yeah, but I usually wear one because my tommy gun tends to cut into my skin when I don’t.”