Saving Noah

by Berry, Lucinda

  I missed the days when I had friends to call who’d help me feel better. It still hurt that the women I thought were my friends weren’t who I thought they were. Once I had children, I naturally developed relationships with other mothers because it made my life easier. All of my friends were mothers with kids around the same ages as mine, and they all shunned me as soon as Noah’s story got out. No one said good-bye. They were there one day and gone the next. It was that quick.

  I occasionally talked to my childhood best friend, Tracey. She used to ask how I was doing since it was her obligation as my best friend, but she didn’t really want to know the answer. In the beginning, I unloaded all the pain and questions I kept locked inside during the day as soon as she picked up the phone. I rambled until I exhausted myself and then there was silence—the horrible silence—until one of us started talking about something completely unrelated, which only made it more awkward. I didn’t blame her for not knowing what to say to me. Eventually, I stopped sharing how I felt to save us both from the embarrassment. Now I dodged the questions about myself and volleyed the conversation back at her life, but even that was uncomfortable because I could hear the guilt and hesitation in her voice as she shared the good things happening in her life. The length between our conversations stretched further and further apart.

  My mom only lived thirty minutes away and was a huge help with Katie, but she was a strong Catholic woman who didn’t believe in talking about problems. Never had. While Noah was in treatment, she always asked how he was doing and when he was coming home, but in a singsong voice like he was away at summer camp.

  In the past few years, Lucas spent more time with her than I did. He’d been taking care of her since my father died. My parents were together for thirty-eight years, and she had relied on my dad for everything. He’d always taken care of her, and she was lost without him. I expected it to get easier for her over time, but it didn’t. It’d been five years since he died, but my mother struggled to make it through each day. I used to think it was sweet that Lucas was there for her like he was—shoveling her snow in the winter, mowing her lawn in the summer, fixing things around the house, managing her finances—but it all changed when our family needed him, and he couldn’t be there for us in the same way. How could he care for her like he did and ignore his own son?

  Lucas could do no wrong in her eyes. He was like the son she never had, and he cherished their maternal relationship since his parents were gone. Lucas’s parents passed away shortly after we got married, and taking care of my mother helped fill the void they left. I’d pushed her to try to approach him about how he responded to Noah, but she refused.

  “Oh heavens, Adrianne. Leave the poor boy alone. He has so much on his plate. He’ll come around,” she said each time I tried.

  But he wasn’t coming around. I hoped seeing Noah after so much time had passed would kickstart his deadened parental instincts, because how could he watch Noah interact with Katie last night and not have his heart soften at least a little? What was I going to do if things stayed this way? Even if I lived separately with Noah until he went to college, he was still going to be part of our lives. He’d be going away to college, not dying.

  Lucas’s actions would be easier to understand if he was a man naturally cut off from his emotions, but he wasn’t, despite working with numbers and math formulas all day. He’d always been openly affectionate, free with his smiles, and easily moved to tears by things the kids did like when Katie created her first comic book, or Noah read a sentence all by himself without any help. He was also fiercely protective over them. When Katie was in preschool, there was a toddler who bit the other kids and Lucas organized a group of parents to get the child removed from school even though the kids were only three years old. In third grade, Noah’s teacher questioned whether he’d read the number of books he’d read in order to win a reading competition. Lucas was furious she’d doubted his integrity and ability. He set up a meeting with her and sent the assistant principal a letter detailing his concerns. His efforts resulted in an apology to Noah from his teacher along with a free pizza from Pizza Hut for winning the reading competition.

  I was unbelievably lonely but rarely allowed myself to admit it. There were times when the debilitating aloneness threatened to swallow me like a black hole and today was one of those days, but I’d gotten used to breaking up my days into manageable moments to get through them. It was the only way I’d survived the last two years. When I was paralyzed with fear and assaulted with my emotions, I stopped and asked myself, what do I need to do right now? And then I did it.

  It got me through the early days when I was afraid of falling apart and not being put back together again. It was like a death occurred in our family, but unlike most losses, there was nobody to help and support us through it. There weren’t any calls or visits. No meals dropped off on our porch. There wasn’t a service or a ceremony. No kind words or condolences. Usually, when you were in a state of grief, people stepped gingerly around you. They were careful not to break you any more than you’d already been broken. They were gentle and kind, speaking in quiet tones as if you might crumble if they spoke too loudly. Not so with us. There was no kindness. No sympathy. Nobody acknowledged our world had been destroyed. I was completely alone in my grief and loss.

  Time had dragged. Nobody told me time slowed down with tragedy and how each minute became excruciating when it was painful to merely exist. Just when I was gaining my footing, something would remind me of it and send me into an emotional tailspin. Most of the time it was the little things, like a college admission packet in the mail, an email about ordering hot lunches for the next month, or lyrics to a song he liked. The grief would pummel me, and I had no choice except to succumb to it until it passed.

  I felt the talons of it reaching out to me now and pushed it aside like it was a real entity. I grabbed my phone and tapped out Lucas’s number. He answered on the third ring.

  “I was waiting for you to call,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you call, then?”

  “I didn’t want to disrupt your morning. I thought maybe you had a lot of work to do.”

  He knew me better than that. Even if I had a stack of reports piling up, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate. Not when something important was going on with one of my kids.

  “What’d you think of last night?” I didn’t bother with small talk. I didn’t have it in me today.

  Dead air, then finally, “He looked weird.”

  “I know, right? It’s so strange to see him with short hair.”

  “I don’t know. It’s not just the hair. He doesn’t really look like himself anymore. He’s so tall.”

  Of course he looked different. He hadn’t seen him in over a year, but I didn’t want to fight so I kept my comments to myself. More than anything, I just wanted to talk about our kids like we used to.

  “I think it’s safe to say he made it through the awkward phase okay,” I said.

  We always joked about how distorted boys looked when they went through puberty—nothing right-sized or in proportion as they morphed from boys to men.

  He laughed, but it was strained. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Katie was so happy, huh? Are you really going to get a dog?”

  He laughed. This time, it sounded real. “I made the mistake of suggesting it one night when she was really bummed. You know how she is. She latched onto it and hasn’t let go since.”

  “Do you want to do dinner again tonight?”

  “I don’t think we can.”

  I knew Katie’s schedule and there wasn’t anything going on, but I didn’t push.

  “Okay. Maybe tomorrow,” I said.

  “Maybe...” He cleared his throat. “Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ve got a meeting in a few minutes.”

  “Okay. Love you.”

  “Bye.”

  He didn’t say he loved me too. I couldn’t remember the last time he had.

  HIM(THEN)

  Mark
tried to kill himself yesterday. He was only thirteen, one of the youngest boys here. The others picked on him constantly. Joe started it. He always does. He targeted Mark as soon as he found out Mark had molested his younger sister. Joe’s reasoning about right and wrong defies all logic. Even though he’s here for raping a ten-year-old boy while he was in foster care and threatening to kill him, he thinks people that mess with their female relatives are sick and disgusting. Like they’re the ones with a problem and should be punished. There’s a strange hierarchy of crimes here, and I still don’t understand it. I’m not sure I want to.

  I wish there was a way to keep our crimes a secret but we can’t. Telling the group what we did is part of our treatment process. Staff calls it Disclosure and says it’s to teach us accountability. You can’t get past level one until you complete Disclosure, which means admitting to your core treatment group the crimes you committed, the names of your victims, and what you did to them. Some of the boys stay on level one for months because they won’t do it or they only tell half-truths. I don’t know why they refuse or try to hide anything. It’s not like our counselors don’t already know our rap sheets. We bring them with us when we come.

  Mark was quick to disclose his crime, and I watched Joe’s eyes fill with fury as Mark described molesting his youngest sister. Joe has five sisters, and he says you don’t mess with blood, so Mark never stood a chance. I wanted to warn him because he seemed so innocent, but I didn’t dare. I’m still one of the lucky ones who has never been on the receiving end of Joe’s wrath.

  Joe made his life miserable. He raped him in the shower the way he does to the young ones, but his torture didn’t stop there. He took every opportunity he could to hurt him. He spat in his lunch tray as if the food wasn’t disgusting enough as it was and during school, he’d walk by and smear boogers on his desk while he worked. On the yard, he hit him with balls over and over again, laughing about how he’d overthrown the basket, but we all knew he did it on purpose. Mark didn’t dare tell. We all know better than to snitch. It didn’t take long for Mark to crumble.

  They found him in his room with a belt around his neck. He’d tied it to his doorknob and shut the door. He was unconscious by the time staff arrived, and I’ve never seen them move so fast. The paramedics stuck a weird tube down his throat while we all huddled in the doorway to watch. The counselors called an emergency meeting this afternoon and told us he’s going to make it, but he won’t be coming back here after he gets out of the hospital. He’s going to be transferred to a psychiatric unit instead.

  It’s all anyone talked about today. Everyone keeps saying he was a wimp and calling him crazy, laughing about how weak he was. I kept my mouth shut like I always do, but they’re wrong. He isn’t a wimp. He’s brave. I wish I wasn’t so afraid to take my own life, but I’m terrified of what comes after. I don’t know what scares me more­—some kind of afterlife or nothing at all. I think about what it would be like to do it all the time. It’s been that way ever since I hurt those girls. Sometimes the only way I can fall asleep at night is to pretend I’m dead.

  He also wasn’t crazy. It’s not insane to want to die when you don’t have anything to live for and he didn’t. Why should be bother staying alive? Why am I?

  I hate days like this when the darkness overtakes me. It’s so heavy. I try to think about something happy, but all my memories are tainted now. Nothing is pure. Everything is as dirty as I am.

  8

  Noah and I fell into a routine with each day blending into the next. It was easier than I expected. He came home from school sullen and depressed while I made dinner and nagged him to do his homework, something I’d never had to do before. I tried to get him to talk while we ate, but each attempt only pushed him further into silence. He was relieved when dinner was over, and we settled on the couch to watch TV where our conversations centered on whatever show we were currently binge-watching on Netflix.

  He was struggling at school even though he wouldn’t talk about it. He hadn’t made any friends. High school never changed despite all the changes in the world around it. It was heaven for those who were in and hell for those who weren’t. Noah never had to contend with being on the outside. He’d been the center of things with everyone else orbiting around him. He didn’t have the skills for infiltrating groups and merging into social circles when he’d always been the one who created them. He was utterly alone at a time when friends were the most important thing in your life. Not being allowed on the Internet only made his situation worse and increased his sense of isolation.

  I toyed with the idea of contacting his former best friend, Kyle. He was the closest thing he had to a sibling like before Katie came along. Kyle spent so much time at our house he had his own toothbrush in the bathroom. They developed a secret language that they used until fifth grade. The two of them rarely fought. When they did, they tangled like cats until they were pulled apart, but it was over quickly, and they were back to doing whatever they’d been doing before. They finished each other’s sentences, laughed at the same jokes, and played the same sports. They started running cross country together in seventh grade and during every race they ran side by side for the first three miles pacing each other. They only broke stride in the last fifty meters before the finish line, where they sprinted to the end.

  Kyle’s mom, Janice, and I took turns lugging them to and from practice. She was someone I wouldn’t have been friends with if our children weren’t friends. I’d always been like Katie, quiet and reserved, so Janice’s loud and outspoken personality wasn’t one I normally bonded with. She dressed as wildly as she talked, but we grew close over the years since we spent so much time together.

  Those relationships were gone. Janice was one of the leaders who organized the committee to flyer our neighborhood. She forbade Kyle to have any contact with Noah and didn’t allow them to say good-bye to each other. Noah tried to call him once shortly after it happened, and she told him never to call their house again or speak to Kyle if he saw him anywhere. He was devastated.

  Had Noah’s time away changed things? What would happen if I called Kyle and tested the waters? Maybe Janice would be more relaxed since he’d completed his treatment, but my hopes fell when I remembered the locker room incident. Kyle wasn’t part of beating Noah, but he watched and did nothing. No amount of time would change that.

  Noah was the happiest when Katie was around. I was too. She was the bright spot in our week. We looked forward to her visits at the apartment. It’d been weeks since we’d gone to Lucas’s house. His house was too depressing and his constant hovering overshadowed everything. It was easier to have her here where he wouldn’t bother us. He left us alone at the apartment and hadn’t stepped foot in the door since he helped me move in. He wouldn’t even come inside when he dropped her off.

  I picked her up from school on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. She squealed with delight each time she got in the car and saw Noah. They helped me prepare dinner when we got home, and her chatter was a welcome break from trying to fill the empty silence that surrounded Noah and me while we ate. She prattled about her day, and the stories she was working on. She wanted to be a graphic novelist when she grew up, and she created elaborate fantasies and fairy tales. She was a great storyteller, and we loved listening to her describe the characters. Noah relaxed in her presence. It was the only time the rigidity left his body. His words flowed easily and naturally with her. I loved the effect she had on him.

  After we ate, we cleaned the dishes and set the table with the cards for Forbidden Island. It was a new game Katie discovered while playing at her friend’s house and advanced enough that we didn’t feel like we were playing a children’s game. The goal was to capture all the treasures on the island before the island sank into the flood waters and all was lost. Unlike most games, we worked as a team rather than competing against each another. We giggled and laughed as we moved our pieces across the board.

  Hope rose inside me on the nights she visited. T
hey lit up in each other’s presence like they’d always done, and the Noah I remembered came out as he joked with her. He had a kind-hearted way of teasing her that always made her feel special and like she was the most important person in the room. It filled my heart with warmth to watch them. I wished Lucas could see it. It was the one thing that kept it from being perfect.

  “Mommy, can I please stay overnight with you guys? Please?” she begged as I got her things ready for her to go home the following Friday.

  “I’m sorry. You can’t.” It was so hard taking her back to Lucas. I hated it and wanted her to stay as much as she did.

  “Please? It’s the weekend. I don’t have school tomorrow.” She stuck her lip out in an exaggerated pout, her brow furrowed with anger.

  I shook my head.

  “I want to stay.” She wasn’t one to argue, so her persistence was surprising. “He’s not going to hurt me.” She put her hands on her hips.

  I patted her on the top of her silky blond hair. “I know it’s hard to understand, but it’s what’s best for you.”

  She jerked away from my touch. “No, it’s not. You both are so worried about him hurting me. He’s not going to hurt me. He loves me.”

  I cringed. “Katie, please stop. I don’t want to get into this with you. There’s a lot about the situation that you don’t understand.”

  She vehemently shook her head. “Yes, I do. You think I don’t know what’s going on?” She stared at me, daring me to speak. I turned away, putting the rest of the things that she’d need for tomorrow in her backpack. “He hurt those little girls. He touched them on their private parts. I don’t care if he touches me on my private parts.”