He groaned. “You’re not going to find anyone attractive in that shop.”
“No, but he might have some ideas.” She crossed arms over her chest. She had that righteous look. He willed himself silent.
“We have a couple of months until Arun comes back to the U.S. Will you go along with me?” Now her face was pleading. She looked prettier, vulnerable.
“Don’t you see what a loser he is?”
“He’s not your kind of guy. Jenn knows that. She’ll discount whatever you say.”
His gorge rose; everything about that inferior man angered him. But Maggie understood Jenn in some underground, female way. “What do you want me to do?”
“Back off. Let her get situated, make new friends. Her apartment’s sublet, so she’ll stay with us.”
“Should I try to get her a temp job at the hospital?”
“She won’t want to commute. I’ll help her find something local.”
He weighed his alternatives. “Okay. I’ll shut up. For a little while.”
Maggie rose and laid her hand on his arm. “Thank you. Let’s go down. She’ll be home momentarily.”
He followed Maggie down the stairs, recalling the times in past decades when they’d taken on a life project together and gotten results. She’d coached him through his thesis, found the cheapest house in one of the best neighborhoods, helped him set up the lab—she had patience for personnel issues—and had taken care of hospital politics. Together they got Jenn through school when she threatened to drop out. Maybe they could be a team again. This one time.
It wouldn’t hurt to throw her a bone, let her handle Jenn and talk about weddings. He’d be free to focus on work now that everything was about to boil.
It was full dark in the living room. He switched on the lamps while Maggie fussed in the kitchen. As he contemplated a bourbon, Jenn bustled through the front door, shopping bags in hands. The yellow scarf bunched around her neck made her eyes glow like a cat at night. She smiled broadly at her father, as if she had been anticipating meeting him at that very spot. She thrust one of the bags at him and limped to the kitchen. He followed, swallowing the comment he wanted to make. This was now Maggie’s show.
Unpacking a bag made of recycled pop bottles, Jenn waved a paper-wrapped package in front of her mother, saying what a lovely piece of fish she had found and how much they were going to enjoy the curry. Maggie offered to help cook, and the two women began to spread ingredients on the countertop. He bowed out, retreating to the living room. He decided to spare his gut the bourbon and headed downstairs.
He sat at the old table he used as a desk and switched on the lamp and the computer. Glancing down, he noticed the scars in the surface of the wood that Jenn’s soldering had left a decade ago: concave, dark brown spots and fine cracks filled with residual dirt. He had helped her make jewelry from discarded silicon chips and then sell it. She never turned a profit, but she learned how to handle money. It was fun. They’d spent so many hours together in the Lair, she working on projects, he on his science. And Maggie had cheered them on. Maggie, who had been sweet and supple and sexy back then. In those happier days, it was easy to be the father he wanted to be, and Jenn adored him for it. Then Jenn rebelled, and Maggie sulked and wrinkled, and his research grew more demanding. Somehow he’d taken his eye off the ball. He was proud of the fact that Jenn had grown up with everything it takes to lead an exemplary life: smarts, chutzpah, education, opportunity—more than he’d had. Yet here she was, preyed on by a leech of a man. He wanted to excise the leech, like cutting out a malignancy. He wanted every cell gone with no damage to the host. He wanted Maggie to get his girl back for him; she was good at getting things done.
He clicked on Outlook and waited for email to open, consciously switching focus to the problem he’d found that morning at the lab in Alicia’s notes. Breast cancer was Alicia’s specialty; he’d asked her to quantify the prevalence in breast cancer tissue of the variant biochemical he’d identified in brain tumors. Her findings thus far were not significant, and the evidence of the chemical’s activity was ambiguous. If she could show unequivocally that his discovery applied equally to another tumor type, he’d be able to confirm—and announce—the intellectual leap he’d been preparing these past years. If their work under the new grant didn’t produce though, his window of opportunity would slam shut. Waiting for email to populate, he decided to intervene in Alicia’s experiments. He’d use every bit of his experience to restructure them, and he knew he’d get the results needed. Plus, in Hope he had an extra pair of hands.
He logged out of email and closed the laptop. Nothing to do until Monday. Rising and stretching, careful not to hit the overhead light fixture, he felt a twinge of hunger in his empty gut. Time to replenish. A bourbon now would taste good. Just one, since he might get lucky later. Maggie had looked so grateful a little while ago. Switching off the lamp, he took the stairs two at a time.
FOURTEEN
The event that rocked the Adlers’ marriage happened the spring when Jenn turned seventeen. Maggie had sensed something wrong with her daughter a few weeks before her birthday. She began to withdraw to her room after school and stopped seeing friends. When Maggie had asked her to explain, she’d clammed up and stayed clammed up. Then, Jenn’s favorite English teacher called to say that she had failed to turn in a major assignment. Maggie grew impatient and pressed; Jenn burst into tears and confessed that she’d been raped while on a date, but she refused to say by whom or how it came about. At first Maggie panicked and grounded Jenn. When Paul came home after work and Maggie told him, he turned ashen. He stormed out of the house in search of the morning-after pill. When later they determined she wasn’t pregnant and didn’t have a sexually transmitted disease, he hugged Jenn and said life could return to normal.
But it didn’t.
For a week after the confession, Jenn didn’t come to the table, descending to the kitchen for peanut butter and crackers only when she thought her mother would be absent. But Maggie waited, offering to make her beloved grilled cheese sandwiches, begging her to talk. When Maggie told Paul how worried she was, he told her to leave Jenn alone; she’d eat when her biology told her to. So they began to fight, Maggie insisting they do something, Paul saying let nature take its course.
Maggie couldn’t wait. She called the school counselor and, without mentioning specifics, asked for a referral to a shrink. The woman advised her to take Jenn to a Park Avenue specialist for a psychiatric evaluation. Paul rejected the idea, saying, “Why attach a stigma to the natural healing process?” Maggie replied that she didn’t want to find herself six months later wondering if she could have done something to head off disaster. Paul said, “Why imagine the worst?” Maggie replied that many teenagers committed suicide for less. Paul said that maybe she wouldn’t talk because she had egged the kid on; Maggie was appalled at the suggestion. They took the fight to bed with them every night for a week, arguing for hours until one or the other wanted sleep and called a truce. Then she unilaterally made an appointment with the specialist. She drove Jenn into the city to see her after school.
Driving home on the Cross Bronx Expressway, a deep scar across a poor part of the borough made more desolate by the highway itself, Maggie watched Jenn from the corner of her eye. Jenn sat slouched and sulky, toying with Chinese worry beads in her lap. She’d been silent for the past half hour.
“So what did she say?” Jenn asked without looking up.
“She said it would be good for you to find someone to talk to closer to home, and she gave me a few names.”
“Useless.”
“She said you’ve suffered a trauma and you need to get it out.”
“Jargon.”
“She also said you’ll be fine because you’re smart and sensible, but it takes time and it would happen more quickly with support from someone other than just Dad and me.”
“Right on that score.” Jenn turned her face away, as if interested in the dirty brick wall that bound
ed the highway.
Maggie took the exit for the Hutchinson River Parkway, and they wound their way beneath overhanging branches tipped in chartreuse, alongside purple-flowering hedges, in silence. Jenn’s seventeenth birthday would come in a week, but there would be no party because Jenn said she didn’t want to talk to anyone. Maggie would leave the lilacs on their bushes this year.
She parked the car in the driveway and unlocked the mudroom door. Jenn went straight upstairs. In the kitchen, Maggie opened the fridge to look for something to cook that might tempt her daughter. Nothing called out to her. She shut the fridge door. The shrink had diagnosed post-traumatic stress and recommended six months of therapy. Maggie felt vindicated but unhappy.
The phone rang: her mother, wanting to know what to send Jenny for her birthday. Claudia insisted on saying “Jenny,” although she’d been asked innumerable times to use the grown-up nickname her granddaughter preferred. Claudia always responded with “Yes, fine” and kept saying “Jenny,” as if she didn’t hear or, more likely, didn’t care to hear. Maggie told her mother to send a gift card for books and hung up as soon as she decently could. Maggie had not told her mother about Jenn’s rape. Such things didn’t happen on Claudia’s watch. Claudia had held a tight rein as a parent and objected to the supposed indulgence with which Jenn had been raised. She would have held Maggie responsible for the sordid mess, a thought Maggie couldn’t bear.
Posttraumatic stress—same as the soldiers in the Middle East? Maggie descended to the Lair to Google, hoping to find a clue to restoring Jenn’s appetite and curing her melancholy. The search confused her: PTSD, posttraumatic stress, acute stress syndrome. Wikipedia said people in acute stress don’t always proceed to trauma, which is diagnosed after thirty days of decreased functioning. Had it been thirty days since the rape? Could she trust Wikipedia? Could the shrink be overreaching? Wikipedia recommended therapy for both posttraumatic stress and acute stress syndrome. She decided to phone the therapists whose names she’d been given, to take the next helping step first thing in the morning.
She kept searching, following the embedded links: date rape, trauma, genetic factors in predisposition to violence, cognitive behavioral therapy. She thought about all the pasty kids Jenn had brought home over the years. Had she been wrong to assume high school held little danger for a girl as feisty and capable as her daughter? Should she have gone back to working only mornings, like when Jenn was little, and monitored Jenn’s social life? Jenn would have hated being scrutinized, and they would have fought. Would it have been better to piss her off? Maggie had given Jenn breathing room to encourage communication between them. Fat lot of good it had done. Jenn still refused to discuss the details.
She heard commotion overhead and climbed the stairs. Paul stood in the fading light from the mudroom windows, briefcase in hand.
Maggie blurted, “We went into the city to see that shrink the school recommended. She said Jenn has posttraumatic stress and she needs counseling because you and I are too close to her and we’d muck it up.”
“When you ask a surgeon, he’s gonna say cut.”
She grew testy. “Just listen. I want to find a therapist, in Pelham if possible. Don’t pooh-pooh it, and if you can’t be encouraging because it’s against your laissez-faire principles, don’t get in the way.”
She rose and entered the kitchen.
He followed.
“Not fair, Maggie. I said I don’t want Jenn to feel like a freak. I don’t want her to feel guilty for whatever happened with that boy.” He thought for a moment. “What did Jenn say about that shrink?”
“Have you talked to her lately? Does she acknowledge you? If so, you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.” She turned away to hide unbidden tears of frustration. “How is she supposed to know what’s right in her state?”
He growled, “How do you know what’s right in yours? Will you get off the therapy kick? Waste of time and money.”
“Since when are you an expert at emotions? You haven’t been good at understanding mine.”
The dog bounded into the room; Jenn stood on the kitchen threshold, leash in hand. “Stop it. Stop talking about me.”
“How much have you overheard?” Maggie said.
“You don’t know anything.”
Paul said, “That’s the problem.”
“It’s my life. I’d rather talk to a shrink than either of you.” She grabbed a banana from the basket on the counter and fled.
Maggie glared at Paul.
He called the dog to follow him down into the Lair.
Maggie searched her purse for the paper on which the specialist had written therapists’ names and addresses. She found the map of Westchester County and sat at the table to pinpoint their locations. Lips pursed in concentration, she determined to find the best therapist within an hour’s drive for her sad little girl.
Three weeks into therapy—twice a week for forty-five minutes, with Maggie sitting in the tiny waiting room trying to read—Jenn announced that she wanted to go away for the summer. She wanted to go where she didn’t have to answer questions. She wanted to go to California and relax on the beach. She said her therapist thought it was a good idea and offered to hold sessions by phone, and Aunt Sarah said she could come. Maggie was incensed.
“Why didn’t you tell me you called Sarah?”
Jenn sat on the banquette in the kitchen, passing bits of cheese to the Labrador at her feet. She was eating now, selectively. “Because it was my idea, and you would have said no.”
“I can still say no.”
“Please, Mom, let me go. Aunt Sarah said I could work at the bank, and we’ll go snorkeling on Catalina when she has time off.”
“She’s a workaholic. I don’t think she knows how to watch over you.”
“I don’t need watching over! That’s why I want to go!” Jenn appeared on the verge of tears.
Maggie softened. Then anger suffused her. “What about summer school?”
“I can do extra-credit assignments. I promise I’ll pass.”
“I’m going to call Sarah.” She picked up her purse and hurried into the living room, feeling petulant, and foolish for being petulant, angry at Jenn and Sarah for conspiring against her. She sat on the couch and poked her cell phone. Sarah came on the line with her banker-lady voice, asked Maggie to wait a minute while she cleared out her office and shut the door. She came back on, saying that Maggie had her full attention.
The words burst out. “Why are you making plans with my daughter without talking to me first? This is a delicate time for this family, and you don’t know what’s going on.”
“You mean about the date rape and the therapy? Jenn gave me a pretty thorough account.”
So Jenn had confided in Sarah when she wouldn’t talk to her own mother. She could feel her cheeks start to burn. “You should have called. I’m her mother. I need to make the decisions.”
“Jenn said her therapist approved of the visit. I assumed you did too.”
So Sarah hadn’t betrayed her; shame welled up and flushed some of the anger. “What makes you think you can care for her? You’re so wrapped up in your bank. She can’t tool around LA all day waiting for you to come home with a take-out meal.” Sarah had never nursed anyone—no child, no parent, no lover, no one. How could she succor Jenn?
“I’ll overlook that statement. I wouldn’t have invited her if I didn’t think I could do right by her. You need to take a deep breath.”
Right. Sarah’s not the enemy. Who was? The kid who stuck his adolescent dick into Jenn? “Oh Sarah, I’m so worried I could scream . . .”
“Go ahead. I can take it.”
Maggie felt the tears coming. “I could quit work and come to LA. She’s the most important thing in my life. I can’t turn my back on her,” she sobbed, “even if she’s angry at me.” Claudia had always been angry. Claudia had spurned her little girl. When Maggie came home with a high fever to an empty house, Claudia stayed at her bridge game until the se
ssion ended.
Sarah spoke softly. “You’re not turning your back. Jenn wants to take a positive step for herself. You raised her to be independent. Let her follow your lead.”
She felt herself clinging to Sarah’s confidence, a buoy in a sea of doubt. She stopped sobbing.
“Maggie, are you there?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t think straight. Let me talk to Paul tonight. I’ll call you tomorrow.” She ended the call, suddenly aware that Jenn waited in the kitchen. She wiped her cheeks with her hands. She would promise Jenn an answer about California tomorrow, for sure.
She sat in semidarkness at the dining room table waiting for Paul. He’d missed dinner, said something got screwed up at the lab. She stared at the plate with the now cold chicken leg sitting atop a mound of pilaf. Jenn had eaten most of the meal at the table with her, and everything would have been normal, almost, if Paul had come home. She rehearsed what she wanted to say yet another time.
A car crunched gravel in the driveway, door slammed, footsteps in the mudroom and through the kitchen. She rose and turned on the dining room light. Paul approached, looking disheveled.
“Sorry. Couldn’t be helped. Looks good.” He sat at the place she had set for him and picked up knife and fork. He never washed the lab off his hands before a meal, although he knew it made her feel squeamish.
“You should have come home. Jenn ate a real meal.” This was not how she had planned to start the conversation, but his indifference annoyed her. She took a deep breath.
“Jenn has been talking to Sarah. She wants to spend the summer in California, and Sarah said yes.”
“Good for Jenn. Change of scenery will do her more good than sitting on a couch complaining.” He loaded the fork; it went zing as his teeth scraped off the food. He chewed hard and prepared another mouthful.
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