Fragile

by Lisa Unger

  “He hates her,” he said.

  She felt a flash of something; her cheeks went hot. “No, he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t.”

  “You know he does.”

  “You don’t understand your father,” she said. She released a tired breath. “Sometimes he doesn’t know how to show fear or concern. It just comes off like anger or judgment. He cares about people. He helps them. That’s who he is.”

  Her son turned angry, dark eyes on her. “Maybe you’re the one who doesn’t understand him.”

  He got up from the table before she had a chance to respond.

  “He’s probably glad Charlene’s gone,” he said, his voice cracking.

  “Stop it,” she said. She reached for him as he moved toward the door. He slipped out of her grasp. In the turned-up corners of his eyebrows she saw the depth of his sadness. It wasn’t just about Charlene. She felt her heart clenching.

  “He doesn’t care about people,” Ricky said, his voice coming up an octave. “He doesn’t care about Charlene. He doesn’t even care about me.”

  “Your father loves you.” It sounded lame, and she hated having to say it. She shouldn’t have to convince him; he should know it. Why didn’t he?

  He turned in the doorway. “I know you believe that, Mom. I guess the problem is that I don’t.”

  “Ricky,” she said. But he was already heading fast down the hallway. By the time she reached the front door, he was getting in his car. She walked out after him, bracing herself against the cold air. The sky was a flat, dead gray. The air tingled with the promise of snow, though just yesterday they’d all been wilting, wondering if fall would ever come.

  “Where are you going?” He was sitting in the car Jones had helped him buy for his birthday, a restored Pontiac GTO. Ricky bought the gas, paid the insurance. She couldn’t keep him from leaving. She felt small, weak, unable to control anything in her life, including her own child.

  “I have to work,” he said.

  That was a relief, at least, a sign that he was not going off the rails. He’d been working at the same music store since he was fifteen. Sound Design sold CDs, books, high-quality instruments; it had been there since she was a kid, sitting in a strip mall off the main highway that ran through town. She still thought of it as a record shop, which made Ricky laugh. He was helping them to design a website to keep the store more current, to keep it from going the way of all small businesses being dwarfed by Internet giants. She’d gone to school with the owner, Larry Schwartz, who’d inherited the store from his father.

  For a second she’d thought Ricky was headed out to find Charlene. And there would have been nothing she could do to stop him. That was exactly what they’d feared, that chasing Charlene would lead him off the path, into the woods. She put a hand on his arm.

  “I know how hard this is. I’m afraid for her, too,” she said. “Just try to stay calm. Don’t do anything crazy,” she said.

  “Like what?”

  “Just stay put, Ricky. She’ll come back when she’s ready. She’ll call you.”

  Warm air drifted from the car. She heard a mournful strain of music she didn’t recognize from the radio.

  “And what if she can’t? What if something has happened to her?”

  She shook her head, took a deep breath. “They’re looking for her. If something’s happened, they’ll find out.”

  He nodded uncertainly, then shifted the car into reverse. She stepped back, stuck her hands into the pockets of her jeans. She hadn’t changed her clothes since she got dressed last night. She’d canceled all her patients today, trying to do what she could for Melody and for Jones.

  “I love her, Mom.” In the split second before he completed the sentence, she thought he was going to say I love you, Mom. She felt that familiar rise of happiness, and then the fall of disappointment. It seemed like forever since he’d said that. I love you sooo much, Mommy, he used to say, offering exuberant embraces, unembarrassed kisses.

  “I know you do, sweetie. I know. It’s going to be okay. You’ll see.”

  It was a false assurance, and they both knew it. But he smiled at her just the same. She watched him drive off until his taillights disappeared around the corner. She felt the urge to cry, but she fought it back. No time for that.

  Back in her office, she sorted through voice messages and e-mails, many of them asking about or related to Charlene. News had spread like a cold virus. There was an e-mail notice about a town meeting at eight, at the school, organized by Henry Ivy-to brainstorm about Charlene, where she might have gone, and organize information to help the police. Anyone who knows Charlene is urged to attend. That’s what she loved about Henry, he was always the first responder, getting people together to help when there was a crisis.

  The local women’s club, too, had organized a search party; neighbors were walking the area around Charlene’s house, others were making calls. Any help is welcome, even just the forwarding of this e-mail message. The message contained the most recent school picture of Charlene.

  Maggie remembered this about The Hollows, now that it was happening again. How those who had lived here generation after generation rallied in a crisis. Meetings were called, food was made, people reported for any task that might help. There was an invisible net that could be seen only when tears were shed.

  It had been the same when Sarah was missing, years ago. Initially, she, too, was suspected to have run away, trying to punish her mother. But Maggie also remembered a strange energy, a dark current of knowing that something awful had happened. Even the next day, when the air was buzzing with a kind of excited, gossipy fear, much like today, there was something ugly hovering. Even Maggie and the other kids seem to sense that Sarah wasn’t just going to turn up, sheepish for having caused so much trouble.

  They found Sarah’s body hours after the first snow of the season started to fall. The school was called to assembly, and Travis Crosby Sr., the Hollows police chief at the time, delivered the news in a soft, wobbling voice. Maggie remembered the heavy silence that fell, a collective hush of disbelief, and then the wailing started, first low and singular. Then a cacophony of weeping sounds, a chorus of pain.

  She’d just felt gutted, numb. She hadn’t really known Sarah well, wasn’t sure how to feel other than afraid. She saw her mother up onstage and, unthinking, went to join her. Her mother took her in her arms, and they stood like that while Elizabeth told students to return to their homerooms, said that parents would be called and the counselors would organize in the cafeteria for anyone who needed to talk and to run a study hall for children whose parents couldn’t get away from work.

  • • •

  Maggie listened to her voice mail: her neurotic was calling to cancel his appointment for tomorrow because he was afraid it might rain (he didn’t think he was going to get away with that, did he?); a lawyer she knew needed a consult; her mother, who often confused her office number with her cell phone, was calling to find out what was happening with Charlene. Three more messages were hang-ups, something that always made her uneasy. During her residency at Columbia, a young woman she’d been seeing ended her life with a bottle of painkillers. When Maggie got to her office that morning, her machine was filled with messages, each just the sound of soft, measured breathing and then a sudden hang-up. Later that day, she learned about her patient’s suicide from the detective who was called to the scene. That breathing stayed with her; she thought of it as the sound of despair, of reaching out to find no one there. She heard it sometimes in her dreams.

  Of course, that was in the days before everyone had a cell phone and caller ID. Her patients could reach her now if they needed her in the night. She could see who was calling and hanging up on her, make a proactive phone call in return. She scrolled through the numbers on the phone’s digital display. Unknown caller. A low agitation was setting in, that feeling she had when something, someone, she cared about was in crisis and she was powerless to help. Then, the phone in her hand started to r
ing. Unknown caller. She picked up quickly.

  “Dr. Cooper,” she answered.

  There was just silence on the line, a distant crackle. She took a wild guess. “Marshall? Is that you?”

  “How did you know?” he asked, sounding young, frightened.

  “I was hoping, Marshall. I’ve been concerned about you. How are you? Let’s talk.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “For the way I acted yesterday.” She felt a wash of relief. He had come back; he still wanted help. She knew what to do here.

  “I understand,” she said. “You’re under stress. There are better ways to cope, and we can work on that.”

  “I just want to know something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How do you know if you’re a good person? I mean, how do you know if you’re not?”

  She’d had this kind of existential conversation with him before. She answered him the way she always did.

  “I don’t think anyone is only good or only bad, Marshall. People are multilayered with qualities and flaws.”

  “Right,” he said quickly, almost sounding annoyed. “But some people are bad. They do bad things to other people. They hurt people.”

  There was a lump of dread in her center. Who was he talking about?

  “True,” she said carefully. “But even those people often have something that redeems them.” A silence followed, went on too long. She thought maybe he’d hung up. Then, “I’m not sure I believe in redemption.”

  “Then what? We’re defined by our mistakes, our bad qualities? One false move and there’s no forgiveness?”

  “It depends on what we’ve done, doesn’t it?”

  “What are we talking about here, Marshall? Have you done something?”

  His breathing came ragged, as though he was crying.

  “Whatever it is, we can talk about it, work through it.”

  “I have to go,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  And the line went dead.

  “Marshall,” she said pointlessly. She quickly moved to her desk, looked up his number and called back, but the line was busy. She hung up and tried again. This time the line just rang and rang until she gave up.

  She felt that familiar wash of anxiety again and thought of her mother. When she’d told Elizabeth that she wanted to be a psychologist, that she wanted to go on to graduate school for her doctorate in psychology and go into private practice, she hadn’t gotten the reaction she’d expected. Elizabeth had looked more worried than excited or proud. Maggie never forgot what she’d said, so surprised and disappointed had she been at the words.

  “You can’t save the world, Magpie. You’ve been trying all your life, bringing home every stray and broken thing. Some things can’t be fixed.”

  Maggie couldn’t remember now where they’d been. Maybe Telephone Bar on Second Avenue, her parents in for one of their frequent visits. Someplace in the city, she knew that. She remembered the smell of vinegar, the lightness she felt drinking red wine with her parents.

  “But some can,” she’d said quietly. “And how do you know the difference unless you try?”

  “But why do you have to be the one to try?”

  “Elizabeth,” her father had admonished. “It’s wonderful, Maggie. It’s a wonderful choice.” He’d put a comforting hand on her arm.

  She hadn’t argued further with her mother. She knew it was pointless to try to bring Elizabeth around to her way of thinking. Dinner had continued with discussions about money, what there was for graduate school, what Maggie would have to earn, what loans and grants they should try to acquire. On the surface, it was all very calm, practical, optimistic. But Maggie hadn’t eaten another bite, her insides a brew of sadness and disappointment, anger at her mother for her-what was the word?-her distance, her know-it-all attitude about everything, even what Maggie chose to do with her life.

  Later, after becoming a parent herself, Maggie understood her mother’s worry better. She saw it in Ricky, this desire to shelter the fragile things he found, like Charlene, and his willingness to sacrifice himself for others. He didn’t know how vulnerable he made himself. She remembered the baby squirrel he’d found in their backyard. He’d built a bed out of washcloths and tried to feed it milk from a dropper; it had died the next day. He was six at the time, and sometimes she still remembered how he’d cried, with the tragic hopelessness of the young. It had caused her a physical pain to see him so sad, because she knew how much it hurt to try to save something that could not be saved.

  Now she walked over to her desk, called Henry Ivy on his cell phone, and got his voice mail.

  “I had a strange call from Marshall,” she said. “Call right away. I’m really worried.”

  Then she dialed Leila, Marshall’s aunt, and also got voice mail. She left a similar message. She didn’t expect to hear back, but maybe Leila would relent and send one of the boys over there. As a last resort, she looked up Angie’s number and called her, was surprised when she answered.

  “This is Dr. Cooper,” Maggie said.

  “I’ve been expecting your call.” Why did everyone keep saying that?

  “You have?”

  “I should have called you when Marshall went back to Travis. But I…,” she said, letting the sentence trail.

  “I’m worried about him,” Maggie said when the other woman didn’t go on. “He seems in a very dark place.”

  “He’s vile, Dr. Cooper,” she said sharply. “He’s cruel, he’s abusive. He’s Travis times one hundred. Just like Travis is worse than his father is, none of the old man’s code. Every generation, the gene gets stronger.”

  Maggie was surprised into silence by the venom in her voice.

  “At least the old man never hit a woman,” Angie went on. “He’d beat the crap out of Travis, but he never hit Travis’s mother or sister.”

  Police Chief Crosby still lived in The Hollows, getting more cantankerous and meaner as he got older. Maggie would expect to see him at the town meeting tonight. He was always right on the spot when there was trouble, his role as town cop dying hard.

  “Angie-”

  “It’s our fault. I know that. Marshall saw violence-terrible, awful violence-before he was old enough to even talk. There was never a warm minute in our house. Never. And I’m sorry for that.”

  It occurred to Maggie then that maybe Angie had been drinking, her words tumbling, her tone wavering between angry and maudlin.

  “Has something happened between you and Marshall?”

  She heard Angie start to cry.

  “Has he been violent with you, Angie? We need to address it if he has, because up until now, he hasn’t been violent. And a sudden change in his behavior could suggest a crisis point.”

  “I don’t want to get him in trouble, Dr. Cooper. I just want him to stay away from me. Tell him that, will you? Just tell him to stay away?”

  The line went dead, and Maggie really wished people would stop hanging up on her. The whole family had a serious problem with abruptly ending unpleasant conversations. Looking at the phone still in her hand, Maggie felt her frustration reach its peak, and she started to internally back away. She was worried about Marshall, but she was equally worried about Charlene, and her own son. She thought about calling Jones, alerting him to the problems with Marshall, but everyone was so focused on Charlene at the moment that she doubted her call would amount to much. She could almost hear Jones. What do you want me to do, Mags? Bring the kid in because you had a worrying phone call? I’ve got a missing girl here.

  Maggie decided to turn her focus back to the immediate crisis. She walked over to her computer and opened up Facebook, entered the log-in and password Ricky had left for her on a yellow sticky note on her computer screen. He’d wanted her to look at Charlene’s page, see the status bar update that had him so worked up.

  The page loaded slowly, Maggie’s computer being old and cluttered with too many files and applications that she had neither the know-how nor the inclinati
on to manage. Eventually, her screen filled with Charlene’s image and a list of comments from friends, all of them on-screen from that day. Where are you, girl? We’re all so worried! Hope you’re livin’ it up in NYC! You rock! I always knew you’d get out of here! Each message was accompanied by a thumbnail image of the sender, most of whom Maggie recognized, all of them vamping or clowning around for the camera. She scrolled through until she found Ricky’s image, where he was doing his best to look arty and haunted. But to Maggie, he just looked like her baby dressed up for Halloween, a little silly and self-conscious. She supposed that was why teenagers never wanted their parents around; parents only saw the children they knew, not the adults they were trying to become. Come home, Char. This is uncool, read Ricky’s message. Please.

  Something caught her eye in the left-hand corner of the screen, an area labeled “Mutual Friends.” Charlene and Ricky had nineteen friends in common; Maggie clicked on the “see all” link, feeling very proud of her technical prowess. She expected to see familiar faces, and she did-Britney, Tiffany, Amber. Cursory glances at their pages showed the usual-messages from friends, favorite books and music, pictures from parties and school events. No indications of the drugs, or alcohol abuse, or teenage sexual depravity that the media would have everyone believe was going on, no seedy underbelly to Hollows High.

  But many of the people listed she didn’t recognize. They looked older, though they shared Charlene and Ricky’s gothic chic. She started clicking on pictures and found musicians, nightclubbers, an East Village bar owner, the owner of a seedy-looking recording studio. She knew Ricky and Charlene had been sneaking into the city for a while now, going to shows and clubs-his guilty admission to Chuck was not exactly news to her. She’d done it herself as a kid. Were these the people they were hanging out with? They looked hard-edged and strange, too old for the scene but still hanging on. One young woman had a tattoo on her face, a trail of tears. One pale, too-thin man brooded with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, dark circles under his eyes.