Everyone looks up to him like he’s some sort of hero or freezes in terror when he comes close. No one wants to piss him off. I’ve never seen eyes like his. They’re like tunnels of darkness. So black. I’m pretty sure he’s pure evil.
He gets sent to the quiet room all the time. The walls are padded in there and there’s only a small peephole to look out. You have to bang on the door to get let out to go the bathroom and if they don’t come, you have no choice but to go in the bucket in the corner. There’s a mattress on the floor where you sleep like a dog. I’ve seen what the kids look like when they come out of there—manic and wild-eyed—but not Joe. He comes out with a big smile on his face like it didn’t faze him in the least.
It’s still a shock to my system every morning when I wake up that I’m here. I don’t think that part will ever get easier. And as much as I try to convince myself that I’m not as bad as they are, I’m here. I’m locked up with them, and that means I’m one of them.
3
“What do you think?” I asked.
Katie stood in the living room in her pink leotard, clutching her backpack close to her chest as she surveyed the battered couch I got from Goodwill and the old TV with a box behind it despite its flat screen.
“It’s okay.” It was the closest she could get to lying. She couldn’t bring herself to say it looked good, but she cared too much about hurting my feelings to say it looked awful.
I tousled her short hair, cut to a pixie length framing her petite face. She refused to grow her hair long. She said it itched her ears too much.
Last night Lucas and I told her that I would be moving into an apartment with Noah after he gets released. I spent yesterday preparing for the conversation. I researched how to minimize the impact of telling a young child about divorce since it was the only topic that came close to describing our living situation. Everything I read stressed the importance of the parents talking to the child together and making it clear they still loved them. The most critical piece of the conversation was to make sure the child felt loved and understood none of the changes in their living situation were their fault. However, in the context of a real divorce children spent time in each of the households, but Katie wouldn’t be spending the night in the apartment with Noah and me. Lucas was against any sleepovers. I emailed him some of the major talking points while he was at work and told him to review them before he got home.
I cooked her favorite dinner, spaghetti and meatballs, hoping it would put her in a good mood. We splurged and had ice cream for dessert, complete with rainbow sprinkles on hers. Lucas and I tumbled over each other with questions about her day and how she was feeling.
“What’s going on?” she asked, looking back and forth between us when we moved to the living room. She never missed anything.
“Daddy and I have something we need to talk to you about.” I looked toward him. He nodded, and I continued. “Noah is getting out of treatment in three days, and we’re going to have to make some changes in our family.”
“We want you to know we love you very much.” Lucas put his arm around her, squeezing her tightly.
“We love Noah, too. Both of you are the most important things to us,” I said.
Her face was expressionless as she waited to hear the next big change in her life.
“Noah isn’t going to live in this house when he gets out. Our family is going to have two places to live. Mommy got an apartment for her and Noah. They are going to live in the apartment and you and I are going to live in this house. We’ll see each other all the time and spend time together even though we’re not going to live together. We’re still going to be a family. It’s just that our family is going to look different than it did before.” His voice was tender.
I wished I believed him. Katie eyed him suspiciously, not believing his words any more than I did. I kissed her on the top of her head. I reminded myself of the importance of maintaining a united front.
“Some of the kids you go to school with live in different houses—”
“But their parents are divorced. Are you guys getting a divorce?” Her pale blue eyes were wet.
“No, of course, not. Daddy and I are still going to be married.” I swallowed my fear that she was right, and it was where we were headed when all this was over.
“Then, why are we living in two houses? I don’t understand. Why can’t Noah come home?” Her lower lip quivered. It was only a matter of time before she crumbled into tears.
I looked at Lucas, directing the question back at him. This was his idea, not mine. I felt the same way she did. Noah was still our family. Nothing changed that.
He cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable as both our gazes fixed on him, searching for answers. “Katie, there’s some things you’re too young to understand. Remember how we’ve talked about the difference between adult and kid issues?”
She nodded her head, the distrust still in her eyes.
“Our decision to live in separate houses is an adult issue. We don’t want you to have to worry about it. All you need to know is how much we love you and that none of this is your fault. We’re doing the best thing for our family. We have to keep you safe.”
“Safe from what?” She turned toward me. “Mommy, what’s there to be afraid of?”
I didn’t have the strength to tell her. The air hung heavy with her unanswered question. Lucas finally broke the silence. “We need to make sure you’re safe from Noah.”
“Why would Noah hurt me?” Her face crumpled in confusion.
I fought the urge to cry. I wanted to wrap my arms around her and assure her Noah would never hurt her, tell her that she was right, and there was no reason to be afraid of her big brother. Her hero. I forced myself to be strong for her. I wouldn’t cry.
“Noah has made some bad decisions that hurt other people. We have to make sure he doesn’t hurt you too,” Lucas said.
She shook her head back and forth. “Noah would never hurt me. Ever.”
I pulled her onto my lap and wrapped my arms around her. I felt her heart pounding in her back. Her frail body shook. The tears she’d fought so hard against wet my shirt. “I know, sweetie, Noah loves you. He does. He’s going to be so sad about this too. I can promise you that.” I couldn’t help myself and whispered in her ear, hoping Lucas couldn’t hear, “You’re right. Noah would never hurt you.”
Lucas didn’t speak to me the rest of the night. We went to bed in what was becoming our usual position—each on our side with our backs facing each other.
“You should’ve backed me up,” he snapped as we made coffee this morning.
“I agree with her.”
I couldn’t explain how I knew he wouldn’t hurt her, but a mother’s love was unexplainable and I knew Noah. I did. His heart was good even if I couldn’t reconcile it with what he’d done. Lucas glared at me, grabbed his travel mug, and stomped out the door, slamming it behind him. I texted him this afternoon to tell him I was going to take Katie to the apartment after I picked her up from school.
I didn’t want her to be scared of Noah. It might be naive, and there were lots of people who might share Lucas’s feelings, but his counselors always stressed the importance of loving him despite his mistakes. Besides his counselors and myself, Katie was the only other person who didn’t look at him like he was a vile creature. She looked at him with kindness, and he needed that.
“Are you hungry? Can I make you something?” I asked her. I went shopping earlier in the day and stocked up on all of Noah’s favorites. I was going to make him my special pancakes every morning for the first week.
“I’m not hungry,” she said, shaking her head.
I led her through the rest of the apartment, showing her the bedrooms on each side of the hallway with a bathroom at the end.
She turned up her nose. “You have to share a bathroom with him? He’s going to leave all his gross hairs in the sink. Eww!”
I burst out laughing. “Maybe I’ll start peeing in a bucke
t in my room.” I grabbed her and tickled her sides. She squealed. I wrestled her into my bedroom, tumbling onto my bed, and cuddled her next to me.
“Your room smells funny,” she said, turning up her nose.
“The people who lived here before were smokers. I tried to get the smell out.”
“Not funny bad. Just different. I miss our old house.”
“The one in Buffalo Grove?”
She nodded.
I was glad she remembered it. One of my biggest fears was that she wouldn’t have any memory of when her family was intact or the times we were happy, and our house was filled with laughter. She was too young to remember choosing the paint colors for each room, the games of tag in the backyard, or roasting marshmallows over the fire in the living room during the brutal winters when we longed to be outside again. I talked about them all the time, trying to keep them alive for her. I’d told her about every camping trip we’d taken, and she loved to hear stories about our Disneyland vacation when she was three. I’d told them so many times I’d created the memories for her even if she didn’t have any real memory of them.
I held her close, breathing in the scent of her strawberry tear-free shampoo. It was hard to believe I almost passed on the opportunity to have her. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to have another child, but I didn’t think it was possible to love another child as much as I loved Noah.
I fell in love with him instantly, marveling at his perfection and that I’d grown him cell by cell in my body. My feelings stemmed from the deepest parts of me, parts I didn’t know existed until I had him. He wasn’t a stranger when they placed him in my arms. It was like a missing piece of myself had been returned.
I spent his early days staring at him while he slept. He was one of those perfect babies that other mothers hated. He slept so much I had to tickle his feet to wake him up to eat. He only cried when he was hungry and was easily soothed unlike other horror stories I heard. I’d stare at his tiny clasped fingers that he always kept close to his chest, marveling at how tiny they were. I knew every part of him, from the way he smelled to the way he snorted as he was falling asleep. He was my heart, living and breathing outside my body. I always felt guilty when other mothers complained about how difficult the first months were while I was in a state of bliss and more in love than I’d ever been.
I didn’t care what other people said. He wasn’t born bad. He was born beautiful and perfect. I could picture him at every age. He inherited Lucas’s build, so he was off the growth charts from birth. He was a roly-poly baby with dimples in both cheeks. His giggle lit up the room, and strangers stopped to smile at him. At two, he climbed everything in our house, from the refrigerator to the desk in Lucas’s office. We used to joke that he had suction cups on his fingers because of all the times we’d find him splayed out, hanging like Spider-Man from pieces of our furniture. As a toddler, he picked flowers for me on his walks and brought them home to put in a vase on the table. He drew pictures of hearts with Lucas and me inside of them in kindergarten. I could see his toothless grin that lasted through second grade until his teeth finally grew in. Teeth that required braces when he was twelve to straighten out. Unlike other tweens, he went along easily with the braces, making fun of himself by calling himself metal mouth.
“I’ve never loved a single thing in my life more than you,” I wrote in his baby book the day I brought him home from the hospital. By the time he was seven, I’d written it over a hundred times and said it just as many.
It was why I’d waited so long to have a second child. I didn’t think it’d be fair to relegate another child to second place. I shared my fears with Lucas, and he laughed at me. He told me I was being ridiculous, that I was born to be a mother, and it was selfish to spend all my love on one child when I had so much to give. I eventually agreed to have another child but secretly harbored my fears throughout my pregnancy.
I didn’t know it was possible that I had more love to give, but I did. All my fears disappeared after Katie was born. My heart swelled and expanded. I fell in love with her in the same way I’d fallen for Noah.
She fit right into our home, and Noah was never jealous. All of us doted on her together, marveling at each new thing she did and every milestone she met. Noah used to jump in the car when I picked him up from school and the first thing he’d ask was, “Did she do anything new today?”
He helped me create her baby book and scribbled letters to her right along with me. In preschool when they asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she said Noah, and she begged to bring him as her date on tea party day. Despite being a teenager, he went along happily. None of us could say no to her.
Katie spent the night in the new apartment with me. We popped popcorn and watched Charlotte’s Web even though we knew most of the lines by heart. She cuddled up next to me, and I rubbed her back in circles until she fell asleep. How was I going to live a year without seeing her every day?
I’d lived eighteen months separated from my first child, and now I was going to have to spend a year apart from my second. It wasn’t fair. Things like this weren’t supposed to happen to families like ours. Not when you did everything right. We lived in a nice neighborhood and sent them to the best private schools in the state. We took them to mass every Sunday. We prayed before every meal and each night before they went to bed. We took family vacations and camping trips. We still had family game nights.
How was it possible that this happened to us? I considered praying, but decided against it. If someone would’ve asked me two years ago if I believed in God, I wouldn’t have thought twice about my yes. But I wasn’t sure anymore. I hadn’t been sure about anything in a long time. If you did everything right and it still turned out wrong, then what was the point?
4
Time crawled as I made the four-hour drive to Marsh on the day of his release. I couldn’t help but remember the first time I made the drive, back when I was still reeling from his conviction and unable to wrap my brain around everything that had happened. His arrest went far beyond anything we’d ever imagined having to deal with, and we needed someone to help us navigate the legal minefield, so the first step was finding a lawyer.
There wasn’t anyone in Buffalo Grove willing to take our case. I scoured LinkedIn profiles for someone specializing in defending juveniles for sex crimes. Most of the top-notch lawyers were ones who only defended high-profile cases and whose fees far exceeded anything we could pay. I finally found a semiretired lawyer, Meryl, who lived in the northern part of the state. He’d worked sex crimes for years in downtown Chicago and agreed to take on our case for a fifteen-thousand-dollar retainer fee.
My biggest concern was keeping Noah out of jail. He’d already spent one night in jail, and I couldn’t stomach the idea of him spending another. They’d kept him in an isolated cell away from the other inmates until his arraignment because of his age. I watched as they led him into court in handcuffs with his head hung low and hair falling forward on his face in the same way they’d taken him out of our house. He sat slumped in the metal chair, defeated and despondent as the formalities of his bail were discussed. They released him on his own recognizance because he was a juvenile and didn’t have a criminal record or outstanding warrants.
I’d expected him to be relieved to see me, but he was seething with anger when he got in the car. He slammed the door behind him. “How could you do that?”
“What are you talking about?”
“That,” he spat and pointed behind him toward the courthouse. “That lawyer.”
“I know he doesn’t look like your typical lawyer, but you’ve got to cut him some slack. I just found him last night.”
I couldn’t blame him for being upset. I’d been shocked by Meryl’s appearance too. He’d arrived at four in the morning reeking of old booze and smelling like he hadn’t showered for days. He’d sworn there was nothing to the arraignment, and he’d be put together in a few days. I offered him our shower, but despite the shower, he
still looked unkempt. He hadn’t shaved in days and stubble covered his chin. His hair was unruly and in desperate need of a haircut. I’d expected him to put on a suit, but instead, he showed up at the courthouse in jeans and a flannel shirt.
“He told them I wasn’t guilty. Why’d you let him do that? I’m guilty. I did it. I’m not going to say I didn’t.” His eyes flashed with anger.
I didn’t know what was going on or how to proceed. I’d never even had a speeding ticket. Meryl told Lucas and me an arraignment was only a legal formality to get him released, and almost everyone pleaded not guilty. I didn’t know if there were options other than what he’d presented us with. I trusted his advice because it was what we paid him for.
“The next time we go to court I’m telling the judge I’m guilty. I don’t care what that stupid lawyer says,” he said.
I reached over and took his hand, keeping my other hand on the wheel. “Honey, I know none of this makes sense, and it’s really scary. I’m scared too. I have no idea what’s going on or how any of this works. My only concern for the last twenty-four hours has been finding a lawyer to help us. I didn’t think any further than that. I just wanted to get you out of jail.”
He looked up at me. Dark bags circled his tear-filled eyes. “You should’ve just left me there. I deserve to be locked up. They need to put me in jail and throw away the key.”
I took a left and pulled over on the side of the road, putting the car in park. “Come here.” I reached for him, but he pulled away.
“Don’t. Don’t touch me.” His face was pinched.
I grabbed him and pulled him close to me, wrapping my arms around him. His body was stiff and rigid. He tried to push me away again, but I refused to let him go. “I love you no matter what,” I said as I kissed the top of his head. “We’ll get through this. You’re going to be okay.”
Saving Noah Page 4