You know how that is. Everyone complains if they have to sit next to a fat person on the bus or in the auditorium. Even as skinny as I am and still dropping weight, it takes me less than two seconds to decide those guys might be thinking it’s not so bad to be me.
“Daniel Landon?” The woman in the white lab coat is a total stranger, but not much older than me. She looks like one of the really smart girls Joe might hang with at college. Fingernail polish, short hair, crisp and efficient. “I’m your algebra exam proctor. Don’t bother asking me any questions because I’m not a mathematician. I’m a chemist.”
I shrug. “Chemistry’s junior year, right?”
“Maybe you’ll be in my class next year.”
“Probably not.”
She bristles. “Chemistry is required to graduate. You don’t plan to graduate?”
“That’s a tougher question than you might think. Maybe I ought to just take the Algebra II test.”
Although she thinks I’m being flip—I can tell from the little huff that escapes from her lipsticked lips—she checks her watch and hands me the test. “Fifty minutes. No extensions.”
She doesn’t yell or lose her cool. She’s probably not a bad teacher, but I’ll never know.
When I finish, Mom’s not waiting out front. Mack is.
“Your mom said she’d pick you up at my house. If I’d walk with you.” After a short silence, he adds, “Think your ankle’s up to it?” I start walking. The ankle can fall off for all I care. He catches up and walks for a while before he stops moaning about the new format for morning announcements and the changes in the cafeteria menu.
“Hey.” He punches air by my arm. “Are you mad at me about something?”
“You’re supposed to be my ears and eyes at school, remember? If Yowell’s hanging around Meredith, that would be important for me to know.”
“He’s just a friend.”
“Not anymore. He’s turned into a wolf.”
“Whoa, I didn’t realize this thing with you and Meredith was that serious.”
“It’s none of your goddamned business. Just keep Yowell away from her.”
Neither Mack nor Mrs. Petriano can talk me into coming inside. I’m legitimately waiting on their front porch for my mother, but it feels more like spying. No movement at the Rilkes. Although Mrs. Rilke’s van is in the driveway, no one comes in or out. No music wafts over from the basement. Mack raps on the living room window.
“Your mother called to say she’d be another fifteen minutes. Sure you won’t come in? Mom made brownies.”
“No.” I can’t believe when I’m this close I can’t have ten minutes alone with Meredith. “Thanks.” It’s a lame afterthought, Mack’s gone anyway.
Mack’s mother brings out a plate of brownies and a glass of milk in one of those double-sided glasses that aren’t supposed to sweat. Everyone who lives at the river has some of those perspiration-free glasses. When Mack and I were about ten, we smashed one with a brick to see what was inside. Just air, it was disappointing. We were trying to invent a way to wear our swim trunks to school so we could skip out at recess and swim in the river without being caught afterward with wet jeans. The possibility that those glasses were filled with some kind of fluid that absorbed moisture occurred to us almost simultaneously.
Mack and I do that sometimes. Stephen King–ish, but I like it that my thoughts aren’t totally off base. It’s weirdly comforting to know there’s another guy who thinks kind of like I think, even if it’s only once in a while.
The experiment didn’t work and I had to wash windows to pay Mom back for the glass we broke. It turns out, from a little online snooping by Mack, that the guy with the patent is raking it in. Then Nick had the brilliant idea we should have stripped off the swim trunks and gone back to school in our jeans. Duh. He surprises me sometimes with that kind of practical solution.
Mrs. Petriano waits to be sure I eat part of a brownie. “Your mom didn’t sound good, Daniel. Is there something I can do to help?”
“Invent a cure for cancer.”
She goes back inside. I’m such a jerk. Even though I’m not hungry, I eat four of the brownies to try to make it up to her. When Mom drives up, she’s got Nick in the car. She doesn’t even say hello or ask about the tests.
Once I’m in the backseat, I raise my eyebrows in the visor mirror at Nick, who’s riding shotgun. Silent, he signals back with the same eyebrow lift. A warning that Mom’s on a rampage. My stomach twists so tightly I think I might be sick on the way home.
“Mom, can we stop for a Coke somewhere?” Fizz helps sometimes.
She bursts into tears.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It turns out that the Social Services witch in the black sedan is mad because she doesn’t think my parents are cooperating. The school board issues a whiny one-page decision on the school attendance issue. It says I’m excused from attendance pending further investigation. But, here’s the kicker that upsets my mother so much. They withhold their decision on whether my parents are breaking the law.
Things are calm for a week or two. Dad cooks dinners because Mom’s practically living at the library, using the free Internet to research the junk Miss T. Undertaker’s feeding her about alternative cures. Mom comes home late at night, the Whaler putt-putting from the dock to the boat in skipped beats like a scratched CD. I hear my parents in their cabin shuffling through the printouts. Everything’s in terms of success rates and dollars. The treatment-center names sound like Christian-novel titles: the Haven, Outlook of Peace, Crossroads.
Out of the blue, it seems, the county attorney files papers at the courthouse against my parents for neglect, a very definite accusation of criminal wrongdoing according to the statute number recited in the notice that’s stuck in the cabin door. It’s waiting for us when we come home from the weekly white blood cell testing at Riverside Hospital, Essex County’s “leading medical center.” Read leading as only.
There’s an article in the newspaper about us. The county attorney is quoted as saying if my parents had gone ahead in June with the treatment recommended by the doctors, I would have been back in school already. He accuses my parents of contributing to my delinquency, a.k.a. my truancy. They don’t actually issue a truancy charge, though the threat is obvious from the article. The veiled accusation that my parents are killing me is the part that drives Mom wild. Ridiculous, if they only knew my mother.
The lawyer my parents hire, Henry Walker, is practically dead. He mumbles and you can’t understand a word he says. Every time they come away from his office they’re like zombies themselves. Walker goes to court with them twice, but nothing happens. With the obvious intent to keep me out of the controversy, my parents don’t talk about what it really means, and I resort to scouring the newspapers. The Rappahannock Record has a tiny column on legal news in Tappahannock, but personal information is protected in cases involving juveniles, according to Mrs. Petriano, who catches me with their copy one afternoon while I’m waiting for Mack to come home from school.
The newspaper reports that the case is adjourned. I call the court from Mack’s house once his mother goes upstairs. The clerk hedges.
“I can’t really say since I’m only allowed to release public information,” she says.
“It’s my file. It’s about me. Don’t I have the right to read about myself?”
“Actually, because you’re a minor, it’s a closed file.”
I guess she feels sorry for me, though, because she goes on and on.
“There will be court dates coming up. The court will notify your parents for each of those. And they can follow the procedures about witnesses at that point. If they have a lawyer, he can make copies from the file as part of his preparation. He’ll know the way to do that. Even though you’re a minor, you can attend the hearings if you want to. You should talk to your parents about all this. And the lawyer.”
It becomes very clear even though she doesn’t say it right out that adjourned doesn
’t mean ended. She does mention that the court records list it as “pending a trial date.” That can’t be good.
When my parents notice the newspaper article, I volunteer to go back to school. But the truth is I can’t stay awake for more than four, four and a half hours in a row, so it wouldn’t help. Falling asleep in class lands you in detention. I’d be a permanent resident. And the other kids in detention are not people my mother would trust in the hygiene category.
The official court summons arrives with Officer Brewer in a county cruiser one evening in mid-October. Dad, being the nice guy, rows in and takes the documents from Brewer. I can hear Brewer explaining from the front seat in that bullhorn voice of his. He announces that he only does this, serving papers for the court, in his off-hours. They let him use the county car. Along with several apologies, he explains that he’s not a county employee and he’s sorry it’s come to this. After he leaves, Mom and Dad have a huddle on the deck back by their cabin. It ends in Dad telling her to calm down, which, of course, only makes her angrier. She slams the cabin door. When Dad comes into the galley to make coffee, I get my chance.
“Why won’t they let me talk to the judge? It’s my life.”
Mom appears in her bathrobe. When Dad motions for me to sit next to him at the table, I understand we’re getting into serious issues.
Dad pours two mugs. “The law isn’t set up that way. You’re a minor.”
“I have no rights?” I put out a third mug.
He ignores it. Coffee is a stimulant, not good for growing bones. “That’s not it exactly. We’re your legal guardians. The way Mr. Walker explains it, the state expects us to take responsibility. And if we don’t make the right decisions, the state can make decisions for us.”
“Not the right decisions,” Mom interrupts. “Decisions they think are right. They don’t care what we think, even though we’re the ones who’ve talked to all the experts.” She has said this over and over since Social Services stuck their nose into things. What’s so offensive to her is their assumption that she’s ignorant for not choosing the traditional chemotherapy route. Slumping down in the chair next to Dad’s, she leans in like a cat seeking comfort from the biggest cat hater in the room. Without touching her, he folds the papers and turns them around and around in his hands, one of his favorite I’m thinking poses. Almost more than being sick, I hate to see what’s happening to my parents. It’s my fault.
Mack says not to worry, his parents argue all the time. But before this when mine argued, it was over before it started. Afterward, sometimes the same day, sometimes the next morning, they would tease each other, a kind of remember when they laughed about as if it was an achievement, not a failure, to disagree and to work it out without falling apart. The court case and the damn leukemia have pushed them into a hole. Even I can see they’re drowning in it.
Mom’s voice frays around the edges. “The collective IQ of everyone at the Social Services Department is lower than my age.”
“Maybe we should ask Misty to testify.” Dad speaks directly to her. They’ve forgotten me again.
“She’s done so much already.” Mom’s voice has lost that killer edge. “I hate to drag her into this.”
“She wants to help.”
“I know, but—”
“Sylvie, ask her at least. She can always say no.”
“She doesn’t even have a college degree. They’ll crucify her.”
In this relatively peaceful interlude Nick gathers up his school papers and retreats. No secret handshake for me, abandoned in the Colosseum with the lions.
“I want to talk to the judge,” I announce.
My parents hardly take a breath. They speak in unison. “No.”
“I’ll tell him if you won’t.”
“They won’t let you. You’re too young.”
“Too young for what? Too young to talk about what I want for the rest of my minuscule life?”
“You have no experience with this kind of thing.”
“And you do? How many kids have you nursed through cancer? How many have you buried?”
Mr. Walker agrees to meet with me only if my parents sign a waiver of the conflict of interest. Dad argues with him about that on the cell phone. “How can there be a conflict? He’s our son. We want the same things.” Dad repeats Mr. Walker’s explanation to Mom in whispered asides as Walker offers it to Dad on the phone. Supposedly, according to Walker the Great Legal Mind, different people have different interests and there might come a time when I want something different than what my parents want for me. Mr. Walker insists on the signed waiver. When Mom signals Dad to cave, it crosses my mind that for her it’s just about the expense of cell phone minutes during the daytime. Concession is so unlike her. Two days later, they sign Walker’s three-page waiver when it arrives in the mail. Mom pushes the form across the table at me.
“I’m allowed to read it?”
“Just sign,” Dad ignores my sarcasm, his eyes on Mom in that I’ll handle this signal.
So I don’t ask any of the questions that are keeping me up at night. He folds the forms and creases the edge.
“Your appointment’s tomorrow at one.”
Mom drops me off with a zillion cautionary instructions and reminders. My head is so full I can hardly focus on the mental list of questions I made. Then Walker is late getting back from court and I have to sit for an hour in an office that reeks of cigarettes and leather polish and those weird dried curlicue plant stalks that smell like the medicine Mom spread on my chest when I was little and had a cough. When Walker breezes in, he’s already not on my A-list and I’m about to puke.
He stops with a jolt just inside the door and bows his head at his receptionist while he stares at me, this stranger in his space. There is a huge spot of ancient ketchup or barbecue sauce on his tie.
“Mr. and Mrs. Landon’s son,” she says. “Daniel.” Like my name is an afterthought, hardly significant once he has the relationship right.
“So, Daniel Landon.” As if he’s been waiting all his life to meet me. What a crock. He’s supposedly come from court—quick to mention it so I can be impressed with how important he is—and he nods to the receptionist as if he knew all along who I was. This is not starting well.
In his office—which is a total pigpen, coffee cups wedged between files and loose papers on chairs—he picks up one pile, sets it on another chair, and motions for me to sit. Once he places his briefcase on his desk blotter, he gives a huge sigh of relief. I guess I’m supposed to believe it’s so heavy because he’s such a flipping fantastic lawyer. He pops up the briefcase top as if it’s one of those plastic windows in a prison to keep the prisoner from slitting the visitor’s throat, a clear demarcation of his space versus mine. When he starts to unload the files, I can see the bald space on the top of his head and tiny little gray sprigs. Hair implants?
“What can I do for you?” He uses that fake welcoming tone of voice again. Holden would split.
I start slowly, trying to show him how reasonable and calm I am. “Can I be straight with you?”
“Of course. Whatever you say in a lawyer’s office is confidential.”
I’ve been doing some reading—in all my spare time—and I know that what he says is not exactly right. Confidentiality is for a client and I’m not his client; my parents are. But there’s no point in calling him on this when there are bigger issues at hand. It’s not what I meant anyway.
“Go ahead,” he says from behind the open briefcase in that dull voice that tells me he’s reading something.
“Aren’t my parents paying you by the hour?”
He looks across the piles at me. “Ah…yes, but—”
“Then I’ll wait until you’re done reading.”
Although he shuts the case and glares at me, at least I have his attention now. Tit for tat, my grandma used to say. He tried to make me feel small and I caught him at it. We’re even. And he knows it.
“My parents are running out of money and
nothing’s been decided.”
“That’s not exactly true. They just don’t like the lower court’s decision.”
I can’t tell him that all my parents talk about at home is moving to Mexico, where they can get me a new cure, some combination of herbs and diet that Miss T. Undertaker recommends.
“What is the court’s decision? Can you put it in plain English?”
After a brief hesitation in which I wonder if he’s swallowed his gum, Walker starts. “The short list? You need to receive the prescribed chemotherapy, the follow-up radiation, and return to school. Return to your normal life. The normal life of”—he opens a pretty hefty file and scans the inside cover—“a sixteen-year-old.”
“That’s the court’s brilliant conclusion?” It’s hard to stay seated. “It doesn’t sound very legal.” I can feel my leg jiggling madly with repressed anger. “My normal life doesn’t exist. And the normal life of a sixteen-year-old isn’t my life. If you had your facts right, you’d know I’m not sixteen until November. And normal sixteen-year-olds don’t have chemotherapy or radiation or fatal—”
When the intercom buzzes, instead of telling the voice in the box he’s busy, which would be the polite thing to do, he punches another button and talks. Mumbles, really, but after I’ve calmed down, it’s pretty interesting. Some guy’s DNA has to be tested and to avoid witness tampering, they’re hiding a girl who’s been raped and two witnesses in another town under false names.
That imagination of mine takes off. Witness tampering could lead to murder, I’m thinking. I can imagine this bumbling Walker guy looking both ways before he crosses the street and his car blowing up just as he reaches the stunning expanse of the marble courthouse steps. Never mind that the Essex County courthouse has two very short, plain old poured concrete steps.
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