Free In the Absence of Angels by Hortense Calisher

pressed formally against his chest, almost in the attitude of one of the minor placatory figures in a Pietà, the visitor went on. “I have the usual private practice,” he said, “and clinic affiliations. As a favor to an old friend of mine, headmaster of a boys’ school nearby, I’ve acted as guidance consultant there for some years. The school caters to boys of above average intelligence and is run along progressive lines. Nothing’s ever cropped up except run-of-the-mill adolescent problems, colored a little, perhaps, by the type of parents who tend to send their children to a school like that — people who are — well — one might say, almost tediously aware of their commitments as parents.”
    The doctor grunted. He was that kind of parent himself.
    “Shortly after the second term began, the head asked me to come down. He was worried over a sharp drop of morale which seemed to extend over the whole school — general inattention in classes, excited note-passing, nightly disturbances in the dorms — all pointing, he had thought at first, to the existence of some fancier than usual form of hazing, or to one of those secret societies, sometimes laughable, sometimes with overtones of the corrupt, with which all schools are familiar. Except for one thing. One after the other, a long list of boys had been sent to the infirmary by the various teachers who presided in the dining room. Each of the boys had shown a marked debility, and what the resident doctor called ‘All the stigmata of pure fright. Complete unwillingness to confide.’ Each of the boys pleaded stubbornly for his own release, and a few broke out of their own accord. The interesting thing was that each child did recover shortly after his own release, and it was only after this that another boy was seen to fall ill. No two were afflicted at the same time.”
    “Check the food?” said the doctor.
    “All done before I got there. According to my friend, all the trouble seemed to have started with the advent of one boy, John Hallowell, a kid of about fifteen, who had come to the school late in the term with a history of having run away from four other schools. Records at these classed him as very bright, but made oblique references to ‘personality difficulties’ which were not defined. My friend’s school, ordinarily pretty independent, had taken the boy at the insistence of old Simon Hallowell, the boy’s uncle, who is a trustee. His brother, the boy’s father, is well known for his marital exploits which have nourished the tabloids for years. The mother lives mostly in France and South America. One of these perennial dryads, apparently, with a youthfulness maintained by money and a yearly immersion in the fountains of American plastic surgery. Only time she sees the boy …Well, you can imagine. What the feature articles call a Broken Home.”
    The doctor shifted in his chair and lit a cigarette.
    “I won’t keep you much longer,” said the visitor. “I saw the boy.” A violent fit of coughing interrupted him. This time his curious writhing motion went frankly unconcealed. He got up from his chair and stood at the window, gripping the sill and breathing heavily until he had regained control, and went on, one hand pulling unconsciously at his collar. “Or, at least, I think I saw him. On my way to visit him in his room I bumped into a tall red-headed boy in a football sweater, hurrying down the hall with a windbreaker and a poncho slung over his shoulder. I asked for Hallowell’s room; he jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the door just behind him, and continued past me. It never occurred to me …I was expecting some adenoidal gangler with acne …or one of these sinister little angel faces, full of neurotic sensibility.
    “The room was empty. Except for its finicky neatness, and a rather large amount of livestock, there was nothing unusual about it. The school, according to the current trend, is run like a farm, with the boys doing the