by Lisa Unger
“You’re a teacher, not a truant officer.”
He blew out a breath. “Do you have a better idea?”
“Let’s call Leila. She can send the boys over to connect with Marshall. It’s less confrontational.”
Another silence; in the background she heard the bell that announced the end of class, a sudden wave of voices and footfalls.
“Okay,” he said. “You’ll call her?”
“I will.”
But she hadn’t called right away. Her next patient had arrived early. There was a court-ordered evaluation she had to complete after that. And the next thing she knew, she was sitting in the dark of her office, the space lit only by the glow of her computer screen. She picked up the phone without bothering to turn on the light. Leila answered after just two rings.
“It’s Maggie.”
Leila expelled a tired breath. “I’ve been expecting your call.”
Maggie told her about her last session with Marshall, suggested that she send Tim and Ryan over to reach out. But she didn’t get the reaction she expected.
“I don’t think so, Maggie. I’m sorry. We’re overextended in this area to begin with. The boys-they haven’t said much, but they’ve been keeping their distance from Marshall.”
“But, Leila…,” Maggie began. When Leila didn’t let her finish, Maggie felt a rush of something desperate. When you feel that, Dr. Willough warned, you know you’re over the line internally. Maggie could almost see Leila lifting a hand and closing her eyes. Over the years, they’d been friends, rivals, and then friends again.
“You know Travis, Maggie,” Leila said. “He’s toxic. Like, you can’t touch him-it burns. And Marshall. He’s just different when his father’s around. I hate to say it. I’m afraid of him. Of both of them. My own brother and nephew.” She paused here, seemed to collect herself with a deep inhale. “I need to protect my boys from their… poison.”
Maggie was quiet now. The thing was, she did know Travis and other men like him. Leila was right to protect herself and her sons. Maggie stopped short of saying so.
“I think my family has done everything we can for Marshall,” said Leila when Maggie stayed silent. “He’s almost an adult. We have to save ourselves sometimes, Maggie. You should know that.”
“A boy like Marshall might not have the tools to save himself.”
“I’m sorry,” Leila said. Maggie felt as much as she heard Leila hang up the phone.
After that, Maggie called Marshall’s mother and got her voice mail. She left a message, thinking that she heard doors closing, windows latching all around Marshall. This was what happened. Abused boys became dangerous men. Those around them with a self-preservation instinct-even the people who loved them-started to move away.
• • •
Maggie was thinking about all of this, staring at but not seeing or hearing the television, when the front door opened and then shut hard. She heard heavy footfalls on the staircase. By the time she got to the foyer, she saw only her son’s feet at the top, turning the corner to his room.
“I ordered pizza,” she called.
“Not hungry,” he yelled back and slammed his door.
A moment later angry waves of thrash metal washed down the stairs-high-speed riffing and aggressive bass beats. Sometimes Maggie felt separated from her son by a wave of noise, harsh, ugly music she didn’t like and couldn’t understand. Even when he was down in the basement, pounding on his drum set, the sound kept her at bay. She remembered the music she used to listen to when she was his age, finding herself-The Smiths, The Cure, Joy Division-characterized by the typical angst and yearning, maybe even a bit of anger. Ricky’s music seemed so full of rage; she wondered what that said about him, if there was a whole universe inside him that she just couldn’t visit.
Jones had been an angry young man-furious at a father who’d neglected and eventually abandoned him, resentful of a mother who smothered and clung to him in the absence of her husband. Maggie remembered bar fights and road rage, a few on-the-job complaints, one even making it as far as civilian review. But he’d mellowed over time, even though she could still see that younger man when Jones and Ricky went at it. Maybe it was hereditary, anger. Maybe it lay dormant in boyhood, the disease taking hold in late adolescence. Then it either burned out before any damage was done, or took control.
She walked up the stairs, stood at the door, and put her hand on the wall, feeling the textured sunshine yellow paint with her fingertips. The wall vibrated with the sound coming from inside her son’s room. She offered a tentative knock on his door. No response. She knocked louder.
“What?” he called from inside.
“Want to talk about it?”
“No. I don’t.”
The volume of the music increased. She could push inside or walk away. She could force a conversation, which might turn into a fight. Or just let him come to her when he was ready. She hesitated a moment, conflicted. Then she opted for the latter, moving quietly down the stairs, feeling that strange loneliness again. Uselessness, she thought, was the permanent condition of parenthood. In her office, with her patients, she always knew what do to, what to say. Why, then, with her own family did she so often feel at a complete loss?
For a while, she’d held on to some illusion of control. And then, right about the time Ricky gave up his afternoon nap, she finally understood that for all the schedules and consistency, the rewards and reprimands, ultimately it’s the child who chooses how to behave. It’s the parent’s responsibility to provide the safe environment, the predictable rules, the loving discipline, and the healthy meals, but ultimately the child has to be the one to put the broccoli in his mouth, chew, and swallow. Jones still labored under the delusion that he could bend Ricky to his way of thinking, that with anger, hard words, and harsh punishment he could force their son to do and be what he wanted-in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
When Maggie reached the foyer, the twin beam of headlights swept across the far wall. She walked to the window and saw the pizza delivery car in her drive. She glanced at her watch, then went to the kitchen for her wallet. When she returned, the delivery boy was peering in one of the windows. She opened the door, was surprised by how cool the air had turned once the sun had set.
“Hey, Dr. Cooper.” The delivery boy went on to say something else, something about a cold front moving in, but she barely heard him. Her eyes fell on a figure standing across the street. He leaned against a tall, old oak, washed in the glow of lamplight. It was too dim and he was too far, so she couldn’t quite read his expression, though she recognized his bearing, those permanently slouched shoulders.
She stepped through the doorway and came to stand beside the delivery boy. She could smell warm pizza, cheap aftershave, wood burning on the air. She crossed her arms against the chill.
“Marshall?” she called.
She waited for a hand raised in greeting, or for him to start walking across the street. Maybe he felt bad about their session, wanted to talk about it. That would be a good sign. But he stood rooted.
“Marshall, is everything all right?”
She felt the quickening of her pulse when he still stayed silent. She was about to move toward him, to cross the street and bring him inside. She’d confront him head-on. She needed to show him that he didn’t intimidate her, if that was what he was after. But then he took off at a run. She looked after him until he was just a pair of white sneakers, then was swallowed by the night. A moment later she heard a car door slam, an engine rumbling to life.
“Twenty-four fifty,” the pizza boy said. “Dr. Cooper?”
“Yes. Sorry.” She handed him thirty, told him to keep the rest, and he, too, took off at a brisk jog, toward his parked car. Just a kid, he looked barely old enough to be driving. He didn’t seem to think much of the strange encounter, was only concerned with his next delivery. She held the hot pizza boxes and salad, still looking after Marshall. She had no reason to be afraid. But she found that she was
.
An hour later, Maggie was still waiting on Jones. The pizza boxes sat one on top of the other on the cold burners of the stovetop. The salad was in the fridge. Ricky wouldn’t come down. Jones hadn’t answered at the station; his assistant, Claire, was obviously gone for the evening. There was still no answer on his cell phone. She tried not to worry. As a cop’s wife, she’d learned not to. Jones had taught her early in their marriage that if there were something to worry about, she’d know right away. That was when he worked patrol. Now that he headed the detective division in a relatively small department, there was less reason to worry than ever.
The Hollows was a small, relatively affluent town, about a hundred miles outside of New York City. There were some challenged areas in the district, daily problems with drug dealers, domestic violence; there had been an armed robbery at a liquor store a few months earlier. Recently, a man had killed his wife and then himself, suffering a breakdown after learning she’d had an affair. There were the usual break-ins and petty crimes. It wasn’t the kind of small town where everyone knew one another and nothing ever happened. But it was a relatively safe and quiet community. People who had grown up in The Hollows often returned after college to raise families. Doctors, lawyers, businesspeople who worked in the city commuted home by train on weekday nights. It had that quaintness to it, the kind that rich urbanites started to crave in their forties, when the glitz of the city ceased to glamour them. It was a nice place to live, with good schools, a lively center with trendy boutiques, an independent bookstore, a couple of nice restaurants, and The Hollows Brew, an upscale coffee shop that hosted a weekly poetry reading, showed the work of local artists on its walls, and had become a kind of general meeting place.
Maggie had never thought in a million years that she’d end up back in The Hollows. But she had. She didn’t regret leaving the city behind and starting a practice here, in the town where she grew up. But sometimes, in a low moment, she wondered what would have happened if her father hadn’t died, leaving her mother alone. Would she ever have come back here?
She picked up the phone and dialed her mother. It wasn’t until the fourth ring that Elizabeth picked up. Maggie had noticed over the last couple of weeks that it was taking her mother longer and longer to get to the phone.
“Hey, Mom,” she said. She tried to sound upbeat even though she knew it was pointless. Elizabeth always knew what Maggie was feeling, no matter how she tried to hide it.
“Hello, Magpie.”
“How are your attic guests?”
“Quiet, too quiet,” said her mother, mock-ominous. “And possibly raccoons.”
“Did someone come out?”
“Yes, a young fellow. Laid out a few traps, said he’d come back tomorrow.”
Maggie nodded but didn’t say anything, half forgetting she was on the phone.
“What’s wrong?” asked her mother.
“Probably nothing.” She told her mother about Marshall Crosby lingering across the street, running off when she called his name.
“That boy was always trouble.”
“You don’t even know him.” She knew her mother wasn’t talking about Marshall.
“I meant Travis.”
“Marshall is not Travis.”
“Not yet.”
Maggie felt the familiar rise of annoyance and defensiveness at her mother’s superior, knowing tone. It bordered on imperious. Elizabeth Monroe thought that her seventy-five years of life, twenty-five of which she’d spent as the principal of Hollows High, had taught her everything she needed to know about human nature. Why had Maggie even bothered saying anything?
“Did you call your husband?” Elizabeth asked when Maggie didn’t respond.
“Can’t reach him.”
Now it was Elizabeth’s turn to keep her mouth shut. Between mothers and daughters, it seemed to Maggie, there was so much more meaning in silence than in any words spoken.
“And Ricky?” Elizabeth said finally. Can’t reach him, either, Maggie thought but didn’t say, for different reasons altogether.
“He’s upstairs studying,” she said.
“Well.” A pause, a sigh. “Lock the door. If he comes back, call 911.”
Elizabeth was always unemotional, pragmatic. Maggie had long ago stopped looking for tea and sympathy from her mother, had actually come to accept and even appreciate Elizabeth for exactly who she was-most of the time. Not easy work, not even for a shrink.
“I will.” Maggie walked back over to the door, peered out. Just the quiet street, the glowing orange of porch lights, the sway of trees. “Good night.”
“Maggie.” Her mother’s voice carried small and tinny over the air as Maggie took the phone from her ear.
“Yeah, Mom?”
“Call if you need me.”
She felt a smile lift the corners of her mouth. Her mother was five foot two, a hundred pounds soaking wet.
“Would you come over and defend me with your cane?” Maggie said.
Elizabeth gave a throaty chuckle at that. “If I had to.”
“Thanks, Mom. Good night.”
“Good night, dear.” Was there something wistful in her voice? Or maybe Maggie was just imagining things… her husband sounded strained and tense, her son angry, her mother lonely. Was she just projecting? When everyone close seemed to be suffering, maybe it was time to look in the mirror.
Just as she hung up the phone, Maggie heard Jones pull into the drive in his big government-issue SUV. It was a gas-guzzling maroon monstrosity, with big silver stars emblazoned on the doors. HOLLOWS POLICE DEPARTMENT. A rack of lights sat on top. At the door she watched her husband turn off the ignition and then just sit there a moment, looking straight ahead. In the light from the garage, she could just see his arm and the shadow of his head. She saw him put his hands to his temples and rub. She felt a gnawing sadness watching him there. Sometimes, even when they were only separated by feet or inches, he seemed so far away, untouchable. When did it happen? When did this strange distance grow between them, and why didn’t she have the energy to open the door, walk out to his car, and bring him home?
6
It was one of the things Amber hated most about autumn, the early fall of darkness. Summer days reached lazily on into summer nights, stretching orange fingers against the encroaching black, then surrendering with a shrug. In autumn, the light snuck out early, like it was late for something, like it might not be coming back. After lunch, she started to feel uneasy, had a sense that the day was racing away and she was being left behind. Her mother said that she was too young to feel like that, that she had all the time in the world. But she couldn’t shake the feeling when, even on the bus ride home, the sky was already growing dark.
It was dark now, as dark as it would be at midnight, and it wasn’t even dinnertime yet. As she got farther from her house, she slipped a cigarette from the pack in her jeans and cupped her hand to light it. It wasn’t until after she took the first drag that she saw him sitting there. She didn’t know he had a car.
She heard him lower the window as she approached. She leaned down to look inside instead of walking by without acknowledging him, which she’d usually do if she saw him in the cafeteria or the hallway. Curiosity got the better of her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
She’d told her mom that she was going for a walk, the smokes shoved into her jeans, a lighter in her pocket. Wear a jacket. And don’t go far. Dinner’s almost ready. She wondered if her mother suspected that she went out for a cigarette. Anyway, what could she say? Every once in a while, Amber would find a cigarette butt pressed into the soft ground behind the pool house with her mother’s lipstick on it. A little secret habit they both had. It would be just like her mother to pretend she didn’t know her daughter was smoking, letting herself off the hook of forbidding and then punishing. Her mother preferred the surface of their life to be calm and harmonious, even when the depths were roiling.
He’d been parked down a hou
se or two, just sitting there, smoking, as well. As she got closer, she saw a pack of Lucky Strikes on the dash. No filters. The sight of that red and white soft pack, one cigarette poking out a neatly ripped opening, and he suddenly seemed different to her, less dorky. It was a cool car, too. Old but tough, one of those muscle cars.
“Just chillin’. Waitin’ on my boy.” She hated it when white, suburban guys tried to talk and act like gangbangers, taking on the too-cool lope and apathetic, half-lidded gaze. He immediately sank back to dork in her estimation.
“Who? Justin?”
He gave a slow nod. She didn’t know they hung out. In fact, she doubted it. She just couldn’t see Justin Hawk, football quarterback, pot dealer, senior class heartthrob, throwing this guy a backward glance. Unless.
“You got some? Or are you waiting on it?” Amber asked. It would be nice to get high, even with a dork. Marijuana was the only thing that had ever taken the edge off the constant buzz of anxiety she had lately. It made her calm, relaxed her, made her laugh.
He gave a slow shrug. “Back at my crib, yeah, if you want some.” Crib. Come on.
“I can’t,” she said, nodding toward her house. “My mom’s cooking.”
“You’ll be back in twenty. I’m just a mile up the road.”
Was that true? She didn’t know where he lived. She didn’t think he lived that close. Doctors, lawyers, hedge fund managers like her dad-those were her neighbors. She didn’t even know what his parents did. Hadn’t she heard his dad was in jail?
“Thanks,” she said, trying to be sweet about it. “But I have to get back.”
“Suit yourself.”
Just like that he turned her off, tuned her out, and stared blankly ahead, as if she wasn’t even there. She felt like she should say something, apologize. She’d have gone inside with Justin, or taken a ride with Brad if she’d seen him waiting in that sweet new BMW his parents gave him. She’d even have taken off for a few minutes with Ricky Cooper, gothic freak that he was. At least he had a band.