A Lesson in Lifesaving

William worries the rest of the weekend about what he will tell Mr. Harris. By Monday, he realizes he can’t do it. What would he say?

Even though he has no intention of confronting the girl’s father, he does stop by the bank at lunch. While he waits behind the velvet rope for a teller, he watches Mr. Harris and a clerk pore over a ledger. It surprises him they still use ledgers, bankers with all their computers.

On his way out, the man hears his name. “Mr. Stevenson.” Mr. Harris is waving to him across the lobby.

There is something about Cindy’s father that feels sly to William. Maybe it’s the smug little smile just at the corners of the mouth. He can’t say for sure what it is, but Mr. Harris is getting away with something. That much seems obvious.

He gives the banker a wave in return.

“Bill, it’s for you,” Gina shouts from the foot of the stairs.

He has retreated to the bedroom after dinner to work on one of his accounts. “Who is it?” he calls back.

“Cindy,” his wife answers, “the babysitter.”

He feels weak, like when he was a boy and his teacher called home to tell his mother about the trouble he had gotten into at school. He lifts the phone and says, “I got it.” He waits until he hears the click when Gina hangs up. “Hello?”

“It’s me, Cindy,” the voice of a child tells him. “Daddy told me he saw you at work today.”

“Yeah, I went to the bank during lunch.”

“So what did he say when you told him?”

“I couldn’t talk to him, Cindy. He was with somebody.”

“But you could have made him go out in the parking lot.”

“No, grown-ups don’t do things that way.”

“So when are you going to talk to him?” He can hear the teenager is upset.

“Look, Cindy, I’ve been thinking it over. Maybe I’m not the right person to have a talk with your father. I barely know him. What about your mother?”

The girl laughs. “Momma? Are you kidding?”

“Well, how about an uncle? You must have an uncle.”

“It’s got to be you. You’re the only one I can trust, Mr. Stevenson. You promised.” The girl draws out the last word into a whine.

“Now, look, I didn’t actually promise anything. We were just talking.”

The voice on the phone thickens into that older voice he heard in the car Friday night. “That’s not all we were just doing.”

“I was teaching you lifesaving,” he objects, beginning to panic.

“And you were going to save me,” she pouts, a little girl again. “You said so.”

At first, he doesn’t know what he is listening to, the sounds over the phone. Then he realizes she is crying. “Cindy, calm down. We’ll figure something out. Maybe I can write a letter.”

“No, that’s no good.” William imagines her sitting on the floor next to her bed. “He’ll think I wrote it.”

“OK, I’ll talk to him. But it’s got to be the right moment.”

She sniffs, trying to stop her tears. “You’ll talk to him? You promise?”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “I promise.”

“Good,” she almost squeals. “You talk to him.”

As he lowers the receiver into its cradle, he notices Gina, standing in the doorway.

“What did Cindy want?”

“Oh,” he says, turning back to his files, “it was something for school.” He hopes that will satisfy his wife.

It doesn’t. “She called you about school?”

He is thinking as fast as he can, but he is still flustered from the girl’s call. “They’re having a career day. Some kind of career fair.” He looks and sees Gina is waiting for the rest. “They need an insurance agent.”

Her face is skeptical. “An insurance agent?”

“For the fair,” he pushes on, “the career fair.”

Gina nods. “I’d better check on the kids.”

She doesn’t believe him. He feels a quiver run through the house.

William sees the pink phone message clipped to his in-basket when he returns from lunch the next day. Vickie, his secretary, looks up as he makes a joke of trying to decipher her scribble. “I was busy,” she smirks, taking the note out of his hand. Annoyed, she reads it aloud: “So what did he say?”

He realizes who has left the message even before Vickie reads Cindy’s name. “Ms. Harris said to call her after school. The number’s here.” The secretary pauses as she hands her boss the note. “What is she, some kind of teacher?”

Now, he thinks as he stares at the pink paper he has dropped onto his desk, the girl’s name is in the company’s phone log. Now there is a record, he worries.

At four o’clock he takes a walk downstairs and uses a pay phone to dial the number. Mrs. Harris answers the phone. Disguising his voice to sound like a high-pitched teenager’s, he asks to speak with Cindy.

When she picks up the extension in her room, she hisses, “All right, Momma, you can hang up now,” and waits for the click before she flutes her “Hi” as if it’s got two syllables.

“Cindy,” he says in his false voice, then realizes what he is doing and shifts to his normal tone. “It’s me, Mr. Stevenson.”

“Oh, hi. You got my message, huh?”

“Look, Cindy, I couldn’t go today. We had this meeting at lunch.”

He hears her tone hardening. “Then why don’t you go right now?”

“The bank is closed.” The silence on the other end demands more. “It closes at three. I couldn’t get away.”

“You promised,” she pouts.

“Tomorrow. I think I can go tomorrow.”

“You promised me last night. Remember?”

“But I didn’t promise it would be today.” He waits for her to say something, but she doesn’t. “Tomorrow. Tomorrow looks clear.”

“You promise?”

“Yeah, I promise.” He takes her silence for approval. “And look, Cindy, it would be better not to call me at work.”

The girl sounds surprised. “You want me to call you at home?”

“No, don’t call me at all. I’ll call you.”

“Why not? Why can’t I call you?”

He doesn’t want to say it. “I don’t know, it just seems strange, a sixteen-year-old calling a forty-year-old.”

“You’re not forty,” she giggles. “You’re thirty-eight.”

How does she know that, he thinks. “It would just be better if you didn’t call.”

“Well, as long as you call me … ”

“Yeah, sure,” he promises.

He understands that he has to stop her somehow.

The next day, he reschedules a meeting with two colleagues and drops by the bank, but Mr. Harris is at lunch. The banker has just left, and, no, nobody knows where he is eating.

William decides to grab some lunch himself and catch Cindy’s father on the way back to work. He tries the sandwich shop three blocks over and wolfs down a Reuben.

He need not have rushed his meal, it turns out; Mr. Harris, he discovers upon his return to the bank, is still at lunch. William waits on the backless bench in front of the railing that separates officers from tellers. He reads one brochure after another about home equity loans and the variety of checking accounts offered by the institution.

William is already ten minutes late for his rescheduled meeting back at the office when Mr. Harris strolls in. “Why, Mr. Stevenson, how nice to see you,” the banker says, clapping the man on the back.

He isn’t sure what to say. “Is there someplace we can speak in private?” he whispers.

Mr. Harris looks around, stumped. “Well, we can sit at my desk.”

“You see, the thing is,” William begins as he settles into a leather armchair near the open vault, “your daughter babysits for us.”

“Yes, you can’t put a child on the road to fiscal responsibility too soon. Mrs. Harris and I insist that Cindy learn all about the world of work.” He leans across the desk, nodding. “And all about putting something away for a rainy day.”

“Yes, that’s very important,” William agrees, “but I wanted to talk to you about something else. In fact, Cindy asked me to talk to you … ” He hopes he doesn’t have to say another word. He hopes Mr. Harris will break down and start to weep, right here at this desk, on top of the green blotter.

But Mr. Harris has no tears in his eyes. Instead, that slight smile creeps into the corners of his mouth. It infuriates William, the smugness.

“Your daughter wanted me to talk to you about what’s been going on,” he says calmly. “She wants it to stop.”

Mr. Harris looks across the desk with the bared teeth of a smile curling into a snarl. “What are you talking about?” he growls under his breath.

William senses his advantage. “You know what I’m talking about. Cindy says, ‘No more.’ ” He’s sure Harris can see the contempt on his face. “No more, you sick bastard.”

Harris’ startled incomprehension emboldens William. “You thought you were getting away with something, but you’re not.” He smiles his own smug smile.

Mr. Harris narrows his eyes. “What are you talking about?” The steadiness of his voice unsettles William. “And what the hell do you have to do with my daughter?”

William pales. The dimensions of his accusation, for the first time, are laid out clearly before him. He realizes he has crossed a frontier. Standing uncertainly, he repeats, because he doesn’t know what else to say, “No more.”

“So what did he say when you told him?” William can hear the satisfaction in Cindy’s voice.

The man is hunched in front of the pay phone for the second day in a row. “Your father pretended he didn’t know what I was talking about.” William still feels queasy. “But he got the message.” He wants it all to be over with. He never wants to hear Cindy’s whiny voice again. “I’m pretty sure he won’t be giving you any more trouble.”

“Good,” the girl says firmly. “That should teach him a lesson.”

“A lesson?” William repeats weakly.

“Yeah, that’ll teach him.”

“Teach him?” The man is beginning to grasp an awful possibility. “Teach him what?”

“Not to act that way anymore.”

“What way?”

“Momma’s coming. Gotta go. I’ll see you Friday night.”

Gina is sitting at the table waiting for her husband when he gets home. She dodges his kiss. “Mrs. Harris called a little while ago,” she says softly, not looking at him. “Cindy’s not going to babysit for us anymore.”

“Why?” he objects, though it is as much a sigh of relief as a question.

“Because Cindy told her parents you pawed her Friday night.”

“Pawed?” He laughs nervously. “Who talks that way? Pawed?”

“She said you pulled over on the way home and kissed her.”

“Why would she make up something like that?”

Gina finally looks at him. “You tell me.”

“How should I know? She’s a teenager—maybe she’s got a crush on me or something. You know how they are.”

Gina’s voice tenses. “Why did Cindy really call you Monday night?”

“I told you,” he fumbles, trying to remember what he said. “The science fair. I mean the career fair.”

“And she told her parents she came over here Saturday morning, while we were at Suzuki.”

“Yeah, sure, she forgot a book. She needed it for homework. Didn’t I tell you she’d been over?”

“You son of a bitch,” Gina nearly whispers, slowly pronouncing each syllable. “How could you?”

“How could I what? I didn’t do anything.” He sees it is hopeless, and he panics. “It’s her father, he’s the one. I was just trying to stop him. He got Cindy’s mother to call.”

“What? What are you saying?” Tears are coursing down her cheeks.

He tells his wife the whole story, but she shakes her head. “The children are already at my mother’s.” She stands up, and he notices the suitcase next to her chair. “Don’t try to come get us. I’ll call you this weekend.”

Friday night, William is sitting on his sofa, drinking bourbon from the bottle, when the bell rings. He thinks maybe it is Gina, but when he throws open the door, Cindy is standing there, her book bag slung over her shoulder.

“I told Momma I was going to study at Muffin’s,” she explains with a mischievous grin, pushing past him into the living room.

“The kids aren’t here,” he slurs. “They’re at their grandparents’.”

The girl flops down onto the sofa. “I know.”

“Then what are you doing here?” He senses this is a bad thing, being alone with her in the house.

“I missed you, Bill.” She pretends to pout. “Didn’t you miss me?”

“You have to go,” he insists, grabbing her by the wrist.

The teenager pulls away. “You’re hurting me.” She eyes the man leaning over her. “I just wanted to teach Daddy a lesson, that’s all.”

“A lesson?”

“It had to stop. He couldn’t go on doing that to me.”

William, exhausted and drunk, lowers himself onto the sofa. He shakes his head.

“You saved me, you really did,” Cindy assures him. “I always knew you would.”

“Then why did you tell your mother I—what did she call it?”

“That you pawed me?” The girl regards him with wide eyes. “Hello, this is planet earth calling Mr. Stevenson. You did paw me.”

“I was teaching you artificial respiration,” the man protests.

“Mrs. Stevenson thinks you were teaching me artificial something else.”

“She left me,” William confesses, broken.

Cindy nods smugly and climbs up onto her knees. The man lets his face be kissed. “We’re going to so happy,” the girl murmurs, snuggling against him.

It is the first lesson in lifesaving, he remembers as she leans her head on his shoulder. When you reach out for the drowning swimmer, the victim, in panic, will clutch you so desperately you won’t be able to fight off the death grip as she pulls you under—and you will drown, too, along with her.

“I love you,” she whispers.

He feels the arms tighten around his neck.