999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [26]
Occasionally, beginning in late June, visitors came to Cross Hill to see Father. Their long, dark, shiny cars seemed to appear out of nowhere, driving hesitantly up the rutted gravel lane. Perhaps these visitors were lawyers. Perhaps they were state investigators. On at least one disturbing occasion, they were a TV camera crew and a woman reporter; Mother barred the reporter from entering the house but was powerless to do much about the TV crew, who simply filmed her as she stood shrinking in the doorway crying angrily, “Go away! Haven’t you done enough! Leave us alone!” We were not allowed to speak with these strangers, and we were discouraged from observing them. We were discouraged even from recalling that we’d observed them. When one of Father’s invited visitors left the house late one afternoon, though he’d exchanged greetings with Stephen (who was working alongside Mr. Dulne in the tall grass beside the front walkway, clearing away brambles, bare-chested in the sun), it was Mother’s pretext that there hadn’t been anyone there at all; at least no one Stephen would have known. In fact, Stephen was sure he’d recognized his father’s visitor; he’d seen him at our house in the city several times; one of Stephen’s classmates at his old school was the man’s son; yet, to Stephen’s bewilderment, he couldn’t remember the man’s name. And when Stephen asked Mother about him, Mother professed ignorance: “Who? I didn’t notice. I was napping. This heat …” Stephen asked if Father would be presenting his case in court soon, and Mother said nervously, “Stephen, how would I know? I’m not allowed such information. But please don’t ask your father, dear. Promise!” As if any of us, particularly Stephen, required such a warning.
So the days, and the nights, were tense and unpredictable. For the first time in our lives, we Matheson children hadn’t anything to “do"—no friends to see, no private lessons, no school, no TV, no VCR, no video games, no computers (except for Graeme’s increasingly faulty computer), no movies, no malls; some of us were allowed to ride with Mother, and less frequently Father, into Contracoeur to make necessary purchases; but we were forbidden to wander about the town, above all we were forbidden to strike up conversations with strangers. To our surprise, we were assigned chores—as we’d never been assigned chores before in our lives, with our generous allowances and credit cards. Here at Cross Hill, so unjustly, we were given work but no allowances at all! Even ten-year-old Neale and Ellen had chores! Sternly, Mother told us that we must accept the fact that, for the time being, we weren’t the people we’d once been. She said, in a lowered voice, as if reciting words she’d been told by another, “We’ve become, temporarily, other people.”
Other people! We were shocked, embarrassed. We knew ourselves cheated. Recalling how Mother used to smile sadly and pityingly when speaking of the “poor;” those who dwelled in ghettos in the United States or in the strangely named Third World; seeing depressing, repetitive footage on television of famine-stricken or war-ravaged people in Africa, India, Bosnia, for instance. Both Father and Mother had been sympathetic with these tragic people but scornful of others, closely resembling ourselves, who had less money and prestige than the Mathesons; men in Father’s profession who’d failed to succeed quite as he had, and women who’d failed socially, unlike Mother with her countless friends, clubs, activities; those who’d tried, and failed, to achieve the Mathesons’ rank; failed through some moral flaw of their own, and so deserving of scorn.
Except, had we become