I looked at the house again. Again, I thought of some huge beast, slumberous yet watchful. I turned from the big house in front of me to the small boy next to me. “You really don’t want to go home?”
“It’s not my home,” he said simply. “It used to be, but it’s not. I wouldn’t care if I never went back again.”
I thought for a moment. “Do you have anyone you could stay with around here? If you had to?”
He considered this. “My mom’s sister lives in Carmel. I like them, and her kids are my favorite cousins. Why?”
I made up my mind. “I’m going to talk to your dad for you. Wait here, okay?”
“No!” In his urgency he was clutching my arm with both hands, and for the first time I saw the bruises formerly hidden by his T-shirt sleeve. “It’ll just make everything worse after you leave me!” he pleaded. “He’ll blame me. Just forget it, okay?”
The intensity in his voice reaffirmed my suspicions. Usually people came to me for help. Needing help. But Mason was a child. It was different. It wasn’t healthy for him to stay in this house. The house was bad for him. Somewhere tonight I had realized that fact. Which meant I had to make sure he could be somewhere else. Somewhere safe.
“It’s okay,” I said. Feeling that strange, familiar calm. That sensation of building, anticipation. “Stay outside, okay?” I said. “Just a few minutes. I’ll be out soon.”
There was a little nameplate by the door. DUNN. The front door was unlocked. I didn’t ring the bell or knock. There were some nights when I asked for permission. Others when I didn’t bother.
I stepped inside.
19
I found myself in a cheerless foyer lit by a pair of dim wall sconces. The first thing I saw facing me was an oil painting. A big one. About four feet by six. A delicate, raven-haired woman stood next to a tall, stern man with cropped hair. There was a little girl in a yellow dress next to the woman, her smile showing a slight gap between her front teeth that braces would have one day erased. One of the man’s hands rested on the girl’s shoulder, and the other was around the woman’s waist, pulling her close. There was a lilac bush painted next to the little girl, its leaves nearly brushing her dress. Almost where a fourth person, say, a small boy, could have gone. But it was just the three of them.
Bemused, I walked further into the home.
The house was cavernous and somber. A house so full of the past that the present could barely find oxygen and the future had died stillborn. Too much past here, I felt with unease. The past was dangerous when it thrived uncontrolled. Like hedgerows pressed against window glass, the past had to be contained, trimmed, actively subdued. Else it would develop wildly, overrun.
The way my past once had done to me.
The knife on the kitchen floor. The two bodies. The pair of eyes peering at me from under the couch—eyes as familiar as my own.
My parents. My brother.
After the entranceway came a parlor, lit from above by a chandelier oozing yellow light. Mahogany walls were covered with framed photographs. The three figures from the oil painting. A family. Ice-skating in Union Square, festive holiday lights strung up in the background. High up on the Statue of Liberty. The little girl on a soccer field, a beach, a playground. Three happy people doing happy family things.
Mason was nowhere to be seen.
I felt the back of my neck prickle.
He had been edited out of his own family. Erased so completely that I had to wonder if I was in the right place; if I hadn’t accidentally entered some other house, some other set of lives. There was no proof of his existence.
My pulse was starting to beat a lazy rhythm in my temple. Blood moving a bit faster, heart speeding up. A feeling of wakening, unfurling.
A familiar feeling.
A feeling that I had been trying to contain since the sixth grade. A feeling so specific and intense it was like some drug had been injected into my veins.
“Mr. Dunn?” I called out into the gloom.
No answer. My words floated away.
I walked through a kitchen that was too spotless, too perfect. A bowl of apples on the counter, so shiny green and unblemished they could have been plastic. No food stains on the counter or coffee grounds by the machine or dishes in the sink. Sterile.
“Mr. Dunn?” I called. “Are you here?”
Through a formal dining room. Another painting. Husband, wife, daughter. A family of three. My pulse was banging faster. Thinking of the boy with his glasses and little notebook and unruly hair crying out for a wet comb. A boy so desperate to escape that he spent his free time sitting at an airport watching planes soar off the tarmac. A boy who took refuge in books because there was nowhere else to find sanctuary. A boy forced to grow up in this house. Eating and walking and sleeping and living among these pictures.
I raised my voice. “Mr. Dunn? I’d like to talk to you.”
This time there was an answer. “Who is that?”
His voice.
Now that it was starting I felt all the familiar feelings kick in.
“Who’s here?” he called again. “Who are you?”
“My name’s Nikki,” I said. Coming closer. Following the voice.
I stepped around a door and saw him.
He was in his study, all dark wood and dim light. Physically, he wasn’t so much older than the man in the photographs. I saw the same stern gray eyes, the cropped hair, the high forehead and sharp nose and bony neck, his face showing the reddened capillaries of a drinker. He had a glass in one hand and his phone in the other.
He stared at me. “Who are you and why are you in my house?”
“I can explain.”
“I’m calling 9-1-1. Explain to the police.”
“I want to talk to you about Mason,” I said.
His face changed, from suspicion to understanding. “You must be one of his teachers, is that it? Is he misbehaving?” His voice sounded almost hopeful.
“He’s not, no.”
Understanding was replaced by hostility. “Oh, I see, the so-called bullying. Everyone teasing him, everyone else at fault. Let me guess—you’re coming over with some misguided idea about your role in his life? A protector, is that it? Ready to preach about parental expectations in twenty-first-century education or some new-age jibber-jabber about nurturing and support? Do they really pay you enough to be working nights?”
I said, “Sometimes it’s not about the money.”
He set the phone down with a look of irritation. “Well, you might as well get on with it. What did he do this time?”
“You’re not hearing me. He didn’t do anything.”
His eyes hardened. “So why are you here?”
“Why do you want him to be miserable?” I returned.
His knuckles tightened around his glass. “What did you just say to me?”
“It was a question. You heard it.”
“I don’t want him to be anything,” Dunn finally said.
“Except invisible,” I replied. Thinking again of the oil painting. A bush, where a boy used to stand. Transformed like some Ovidian myth.
Dunn’s mouth twisted in disgust. “Oh, that’s what he’s gone and complained about? Not getting enough attention?” He took a slug off his drink and shook the glass at me. “You all coddle these kids so much. It’s absurd. The boy has an allowance, toys, games, camps, classes, every comfort he could ever want—and he has the nerve to complain to his teacher about his horrible, lonely life?”
I sat down in an armchair uninvited. “Why do you hate your son so much?”
“I don’t hate him. I ensure that he has everything he could possibly want.”
“He doesn’t!” I exclaimed. Feeling my pulse kicking up into a higher gear. “You think a bunch of toys and games add up to love? To warmth? After what he’s been through?”
“After what he’s been through?” Dunn snarled.
“You’re his father. You’re supposed to love your son—not buy him off like a
cheap date.”
“I won’t tolerate much more of this,” Dunn said. “I don’t care if you’re his teacher. None of this is your business. In fact, I think it’s high time you left. And I’ll be calling your principal tomorrow morning about this bizarre nocturnal visit. I give too much money to your school to have to put up with this kind of misguided, psychoanalytic guilt trip.”
“It was an accident,” I said. “It was tragic. Horrible. Every bad word in the book. But why blame your son?”
Dunn’s eyes flared. “What do you know about any of that?”
“He told me,” I said. “You think it doesn’t tear him to pieces every single day?”
“What exactly did he tell you?”
“Everything,” I said. “The intersection—the car running the red light. We can’t control tragedies. But you still have a son. Why cripple him when he’s just getting started?”
“Because they’d be alive—if not for him!”
I leaned forward, startled. “What are you talking about?”
Dunn’s face shone in vicious triumph. “He didn’t tell you that part, I see.”
“What part?”
“The driver who ran the red light. That wasn’t the other car.”
“What?”
He sat back in his chair. “My son used to be quite the whiny little brat, you know. Always wanting attention, always sniveling for something. Never content. Never satisfied.”
“What are you getting at?”
“That day, it seems the music my wife chose to play in the car wasn’t good enough. He wanted his music. He demanded, and demanded, and demanded, until my wife, God rest her soul, finally turned around and said, ‘Mason! Wait your turn!’ ” Dunn’s eyes burned. “Those were her last words. By the time she turned back, the light had changed and it was too late to stop. She ran the intersection, the truck hit them, and she and my daughter were killed instantly. While he sat in the back crying with a bloody nose.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I was on speaker phone with them when they died.” The muscles in his face twitched. “I heard everything. Even her last scream.”
I had seen a lot of unpleasantness during the course of my life. But in this house of gloom I was filled with a special sense of horror.
I raised my eyes. “You blame a six-year-old boy for that? Because he wanted the radio station changed? You don’t think he’s suffered enough? Knowing what he must know?” I bit my lip, my eyes swelling with sudden tears. Wanting to go find the boy and put my arms around him and tell him that life wasn’t always cold and aloof and sterile. That adults could offer cheer as well as poison.
Dunn said, “I’ll provide for him. He won’t go hungry or lack for any comfort. But I’ll burn in hellfire before I forget that he took them from me.”
I was aware that I was standing. “You’ve tortured him emotionally for years. Do you have any idea what kind of damage that causes? And not just emotionally. You’ve hit him—haven’t you?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” His lips tightened. Not denying it. “You’re a teacher.” His smile was a razor streak across his face. “I know all about mandated reporting laws. You think I’m going to pour my heart out to you? Now get out of my house.”
“You said I was his teacher. I didn’t.”
Maybe he saw something in my eyes. Maybe it was just what I said.
His expression changed. More watchful now. “What do you mean, not his teacher?”
“I have a deal for you.” I had made up my mind. The blood was singing in my head. “There’s a boarding school up in the Bay Area. The Athenian School, in East Bay. Grades six through twelve. Send him there. You’ll both be happier.”
“How dare you come into my home and presume to suggest where I—”
“Not suggest. Tell. I’m telling you. This home doesn’t deserve that boy.”
My foster father, Darren. What he had done to me. Two years. Seventh and eighth grade. Two years I’d never shed.
I wouldn’t let Mason be poisoned the way I had been.
“Give the okay and I leave right now,” I told him. “He can stay at his aunt’s in the meantime. Maybe that’s better for both of you.”
Dunn stood, too, his phone in his hand. “I’m calling the police. I’ve been far too kind to my son. Letting him run around unsupervised with strangers—whoever you are. Tonight, a new regimen will begin.” His face twitched with anger. “My son has been spoiled for the last time.”
“I should tell you something about how I work,” I said. “I came in here to talk. To try to fix this.”
Dunn pressed numbers on his keypad. “If you’re here when they arrive, you’ll be arrested for trespassing. I intend to find you and press charges regardless.” He looked up at me. “What do you think about that?”
“I think I tried,” I told him. Then I stepped to his left and hit him in the kidney.
The phone fell from his hands. He gasped and doubled over.
I kept circling him, only pausing to square my weight into the balls of my feet as I hit him again. The liver, this time. Bending my knees and twisting my torso into a driving left uppercut. Stepping around him, placing my feet. Twice more. In the stomach. Hard, savage blows with my full weight behind them.
He collapsed to the floor.
“You do a good job at inflicting invisible damage, don’t you?” I said. “The kind of stuff that doesn’t show unless someone looks close.”
Putting him in good company with many of the worst abusers. People who seemed to delight not just in causing pain, but keeping it a raw secret from the outside world. From the people who might care enough to stop it.
I kicked him in the ribs. He coughed and wheezed and caterpillar-curled on the floor.
I kept talking, feeling the singing at full volume in my ears. “The kind of damage that makes life hell on earth—and no one even knows you’re in pain.”
I kicked him again, the reinforced toe of my motorcycle boot striking his shoulder. Then the small of his back. Staying away from his face. Someone might see him tomorrow and not have any idea of how much he was hurting. “The kind of invisible pain that people have to walk around with,” I continued. “Pretending everything’s fine when it’s not.” Two more kicks, one side of his body, then the other. He lay there gasping.
I let him. Forced myself to step back.
When he could talk again, he said, “I’m calling the police as soon as you leave. You’ll do ten years for this. I’ll be laughing in the witness stand during your whole trial.”
I kicked his phone over to his hand. “Don’t let me stop you.”
He stared at me, looking for the trap. Tentatively clutching the phone. When I made no effort to move he dialed greedily. Finger about to press Talk.
“Child services,” I told him, “has a twenty-four-hour hotline, county by county. Did you know that? You make your call. I’ll make mine. You think you’re miserable here? Wait until they drag you out of this nice big house, put your picture in the paper, and stick you in a smelly, dirty cell with ten other people while you wait to beg a judge for bail. I don’t care how miserable you think you are. Everything can get worse.”
His finger hovered over the screen.
“Maybe I’ll go to prison for assault. You’ll go for child abuse.”
He looked at me, unsure.
I added, “Unless I’m wrong?”
He let go of the phone.
There was something new in his eyes. Defeat.
“One more thing.” I squatted down.
He was gasping and wheezing. “What?”
“Until your son leaves for boarding school—which he will, as soon as the application goes through—you leave him alone. Don’t go trying to win Parent of the Year and don’t try to get even. Leave him alone. Don’t poison him any more than you have.” I rapped the floor next to his face with my Beretta. “Because I’ll kill you next time.”
I stood. “I’ll see myself
out.”
His voice came after me. “You’d really kill me? You think I deserve to die?”
I stopped and looked back at the gaunt, twisted man on the floor.
“No. I don’t. For what it’s worth, I hope you drag yourself out of whatever hell you’ve locked yourself into. But I won’t let you take that kid down with you. He gets to have a chance. He gets a future.” Walking away, I said, “And you wouldn’t be the first person in history to die without deserving it.”
* * *
By the time I dropped Mason at his aunt’s in Carmel, waited while he explained things to her, and got back to the Cypress, it was late in the night. If police had been at the inn earlier, there was no sign of them now. The tollbooth was deserted, its gate down. Which wasn’t a problem. The gate was meant for cars. I just maneuvered my motorcycle to the edge of the driveway and around. Everything was quiet. Shut down. Which suited me. I was exhausted. I fell into bed, barely having the energy to set an alarm.
THURSDAY
20
The surfers call them bluebird days. A blue sky, blue so total it’s more feeling than color, not a shred of cloud, the whole world alive and full of energy. The beach is crowded. Kids build elaborate sandcastles while dogs race after Frisbees, paws churning up little explosions of sand.
“Give it back, Nik!”
I laugh, bare feet dancing on warm sand, holding the toy truck out of reach.
“Nikki, don’t tease your brother.” My father sits on our red-and-white picnic blanket, one arm resting against my mother’s smooth, bare leg.
“Fine.” I toss the truck back to my brother, who throws himself onto the ground, rev-revving the plastic tires over the sand. I’m in one of those moods where I’m so happy that the only proper way to show it seems through petulance. “I’m famished,” I announce. It’s a word I learned recently and I’ve been using it constantly. “When’s lunch?”
My mother looks up from her book and the sun catches her blond hair, spinning it into the most delicate wire. My mother is beautiful, everyone is always saying so, and I’m very proud of this. Secretly I hope it means that I’ll grow up to be beautiful, too, even if I don’t have her blond hair and my skin is naturally pale—I glance at my father, thinking resentfully of being stuck my whole life with his pale complexion—but I don’t tell people this because it’s vain, and also because I’m superstitious. I think growing up to be pretty is like a birthday wish. Admitting what you want means you might not get it.
One Got Away Page 15