Catcher, Caught

by Sarah Collins Honenberger

  “It’s so good of you to do this, Paul,” she says.

  Do what? I’m completely and totally confused. Has the neglect conviction made us such social pariahs that it’s dangerous to be seen at our house? So good of you to do this? What has he done except interrupt a perfectly good Saturday morning with a reference to the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to the Landon family, brought on by the failure of my body to make the right kind of blood cells?

  “Would you be more comfortable at the kitchen table?” Mom asks. “Paper and pen?”

  “Good idea.” He follows her out. Dad follows him out of the room and I’m left sitting on the radiator wondering what’s the matter with me that I can’t figure out what the heck they’re talking about and when they got to be such buddies.

  “Daniel,” Dad calls. “We’re waiting on you.”

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  While the Senator talks about the law, the way it’s written now, the reasons why the County social workers pushed the case against Mom and Dad, we listen without interrupting. Walker has already explained this to Mom and Dad, probably more than once, but I’ve only heard bits and pieces. The Senator’s recitation is wordy. I’m impressed by his command of the details, though. I wouldn’t have thought one little case in his district would merit this much attention.

  He smiles back and forth at Mom, then Dad, as if the eye contact alone will keep them nodding. “Of course you know this year’s legislative session’s already started. Time’s running out. I’ve brought you the draft language of the new law, not that it will mean so much to you with the legalese. The gist of it is that it gives the courts an escape hatch on the neglect and abuse issue, if the child is 14 and fully informed about medical issues and treatment options. And…of course, if he or she consents.”

  The senator slurps his coffee as if the time might run out right there in our kitchen if he doesn’t get the words out fast enough. My parents are rapt. I’m burning at the idea that I’m the child they’re talking about, so I miss a lot of what he says about which senators are cosponsoring and how he anticipates each delegate will vote.

  “As you might expect they’ve added a few conditions.” He laughs but forges ahead. “The child has to be ‘mature’ and the illness has to be life-threatening. Of course we can’t be sure that’ll be the final language.” He continues with the committee assignments, who’s already committed to the bill, who’s on the fence. Some of the names are familiar from the six o’clock news, but people’s voting records are not high on my list of interesting facts. Senator Yowell seems to characterize every other politician by their votes on certain issues, half of which I’ve never heard of before. Mom and Dad are still nodding.

  I lose track of the discussion when Mom begins her litany of questions about how it relates to the abuse and neglect statute that gave rise to their conviction. What makes her think the Senator cares about the neglect conviction? Why is he buddy-buddy all of a sudden with my parents who will never be campaign contributors of any substantial sum? The Landon family finances must rank right up there on the gossip scale with The Disease. Their voices drone on as I search my brain for movies or TV shows about political intrigues that might explain Senator Yowell’s sudden interest in such insignificant matters when he has much bigger responsibilities, like the legislative agenda of a state.

  Holden would take definite issue with the Senator’s sincerity. Shades of Pencey and the old guy who donated sacks of money to the school so they would name a dorm after him. Old Ossenburger and his hotshot view of himself. I wished I had Holden’s friend Marsalla to lay one out right here—poot or burp, whatever—just to put things in perspective. In spite of all his big words and fancy phrases, I’d lay money the Senator has no idea what the whole extent of my options are exactly. I’m not sure myself. He has to have some reason for wanting this law changed. For a slick minute I wonder if Leonard is sick too. Maybe the stupid river water is poisoning us all. But even I can see that’s crazy, Invasion of the Body Snatchers–type garbage.

  Without noticing he’s lost me, the Senator presses on, eager to persuade, what he does best after all. “If the Health and Human Services committee passes it, it’ll go to the floor next week, maybe Tuesday. The same language would need to be approved by the Senate committee and then the Senate itself before the end of the week. I’ve been talking it up.”

  Mom’s eyes are glistening, but Senator Yowell is orating.

  “I think, with a little arm twisting, I can get the votes. The Christian right loves it. The Republicans love it because it takes power away from the state and gives it back to the individual, to families. If we can just get enough votes to get it passed.”

  What Senator Yowell is saying basically is that he’s trying in seven days to change a law that’s been in effect for years, centuries probably. I’m barely sixteen, but even I can see that’s pretty optimistic. Everyone’s always talking about how old-fashioned Virginia is.

  I can tell from Mom’s face that she wants to believe him. But the past six months have made it hard for her to believe in anything. Still she doesn’t argue back.

  Dad looks lost. “It sounds…complicated, Paul. And…isn’t it too late for us? I mean, not Daniel, but with the judge and our conviction.”

  “Oh, no.” Senator Yowell shakes his head, like a Hollywood gambler at a poker table. I’m right behind you kind of sincere. “The courts haven’t heard the appeal yet. The delay should help you. Get you out of the limelight. A judge might look at it differently if Richmond speaks loudly enough.” His voice changes from man-in-charge to bedside manner. Very smarmy. “Sylvie, I’m not asking you to lobby or make public appearances. I just need your approval to move forward. What happened to you and Stieg paints a clear picture for the delegates. I’m selfish enough to tell you your situation is what we’ve been waiting for to break the lock on state interference in family matters.”

  Mom’s voice cracks. “Will we have to appear before the committee?”

  “Probably not necessary. You’ve done so much already. Let us handle this now.”

  Dad starts, “You’re sure the press won’t descend on Daniel—”

  “The social services people will scream,” Mom interrupts. “That woman’s not going to let this thing die. She’ll fight this. You know she will. It’s probably her job on the line if she doesn’t chalk up enough wins: so many convictions, so many kids in foster care. She’s still furious that we qualified for Medicaid after our savings went into the houseboat.”

  This is news to me. And it really rips me. Here I’ve been thinking all along that Mom and Dad basically hocked themselves silly in order to keep me safe from germs on the effing houseboat. When what they were really doing was manipulating the system. Cheating maybe.

  “Daniel,” Dad must see the flames shooting out of my ears. “We can talk about the Medicaid later.”

  “No. Not later, not now.” I’m standing. “You guys are all the same. Making deals, trading school for blood transfusions, dealing away my life.” I dare Senator Yowell to smile at me. I glare at Dad. “No more aye-aye, sir, whatever you say, sir. You all just work this thing out however you see fit, make your backroom deals, but leave me out of it.”

  I’m halfway to Meredith’s house, racing past the post office, before the storm door hits the frame. I hear the slap of it and out of the corner of my eye I can see Dad on the front step in his shirtsleeves. He beats his arms against the cold and says nothing, just watches me as I disappear. Good practice, Dad, good practice.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Sometimes in January or February the river whips up a wind that comes from the east. Freaky kind of thing, same as tornadoes in Virginia, not a regular weather event. That east wind is all stealth and secrets like little kids waiting for Santa Claus, happy giddy, but a little bit afraid, too. Not the wrestling referees’ hammer strokes from a northeaster. Not that creepy ticklish July breeze from the south that bugs you like some strange old lady
’s hand on your arm until you have to go inside to get away from the gagging sweetness.

  The east wind only comes when it’s the dead of winter, polar bear time, which is also rare in this part of Virginia. Some winters it never gets that cold. But when it comes, it skates across the open river, loud and boastful. It sticks on the edges of the marsh grass, playing, teasing. Icicles under cars, and gutters kind of stuck. None of those television weather folks in their circus-colored jackets and matching handkerchiefs and oh-God-not-that voices ever predict it. Still when it hits, it feels like a storybook you vaguely remember from when you were little and forgot until just when the wind repeated it again.

  The words underneath that wind are like Meredith’s fingers on my back, digging into me, making me hard and telling me to hurry. It’s nothing so definite that you can describe it. You don’t want to miss it though. It’s a connection to some other place you haven’t even been to yet. It says, sure, circumstances separate people, circumstances out of your control, but there’s still something there, something between you and that place you can’t describe. Or even see. No frigging certainty in that wind, only possibilities.

  Even when we lived on Jeanette Drive in the other rented houses before the houseboat, I always liked winter on the river better than summer. Winter’s sharper. The river opens up. You can see the way it threads through the land. You know without seeing them that there are otters and cranes and herons moving through the reeds. The east wind talks loudly, more about the future than the present.

  Mom hates the moan of it. Dad only tilts his head without comment. He never acknowledges it. Nick pretends it’s a giant who hibernated in the muddy bottom of the river, turning over and passing gas in his sleep.

  But the scudding winter clouds that barge in on that east wind catch me up and carry me away. Away from Nick and Joe, away from Mom and Dad, from everything I know. As a kid flying on that wind I was grown-up. Just like that. I could do anything. Riding on that wind I would pass myself in the future like a holograph at Disney World. Once years back before The Disease I saw myself as the father of a long-haired daughter, her hair red like Dad’s. I carried my wife’s photo in my wallet and showed it to everyone. Another time I sang songs, not like a rock star but like a farmer throwing the songs out like seeds or parade candy. People scooped them up as fast as they could as if they were valuable. And I had to back up to keep from being mobbed I was so popular. The east wind carried me to rooms within rooms, like an M.C. Escher drawing. Black and white, but tons of the most minuscule details, and always another room and another beyond that. So clear in my mind I could have sketched them out on paper in seconds. Only when I tried, the drawings were lame and I tossed them.

  With the leukemia battling under my skin, playing hide-and-seek between bones and muscle, this winter I stay awake on the nights when the temperature drops below freezing. I listen and wait and hope for that east wind to come again and carry me off. I need to see that future. I want to know if I’m remembering it right, if it’s still there because I’m having trouble remembering the details now.

  After Christmas, after Mom insists we leave the houseboat until spring, several times I slide out the window of the sublet apartment and walk to the defunct marina or to the bridge because I’m afraid the road noise on Route 17 is blocking the wind. A blanket wrapped over my jacket, I stand under the winter sky on the edge of the riverbank like some lonely Afghan mountain man and listen for that east wind, for a hint of my future. When it doesn’t come, I begin to think it was all my imagination.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  One night, long after all the lights are out, I’m huddled in the bunk, not quite asleep, groggy with the memory of an afternoon making out with Meredith in her basement. The muffled gurgle of an idling car engine outside the apartment comes to me in my cocoon. It separates from the night like an oboe solo rising out of the long muted strokes of distant French horns. My bedroom door opens—Nick’s at a sleepover and Dad’s gone to a publisher’s conference to drum up more textbook business to pay Walker’s legal bills—and it’s Mom’s voice that whistles in the shadows.

  “Daniel, wake up. I have the tickets. Let’s go.”

  My knees draw up and I pull my head under the covers as if the world of my dream with all its mystery is safer. Her hand claws at the blanket to find my shoulder.

  “I’ve packed clothes for you from the clean laundry. Just put your books and CD player in your backpack and get dressed.”

  In the stiff shuffle of a hypnotized volunteer from a magic show audience, I climb out of bed, pull jeans from the pile on the chair and a sweatshirt from the bottom drawer. She hands me clean socks.

  “Is this a Santa Claus thing?” I’m not fully awake.

  She sniffles and croaks out a halfhearted laugh, “It’s March, sweetie. Keep moving. I can’t remember what they said about airport security and baggage check.”

  As I lace the boots, I repeat her words in mumbles and wonder what Dad thinks of whatever this is. Or if he knows. Bent over in the dark, with the doorway blotted by her dark intractable shape, I realize that she has done this—whatever this is—without telling him. How else could it happen?

  “Hurry,” she says in that voice that brooks no dissension.

  We drive forever. I sleep and wake only partway at the whiz-whir of signs that shoot past us, lightning letters on green felt, unreadable languages, like subliminal messages in a dream. Before I can mouth the words to help my fuzzy brain interpret, black tunnels of trees replace those rapid-fire reminders of civilization. I feel woozy big-time. Mom is driving with such intensity her shoulders hunch forward and her head juts out over the steering wheel like a turtle’s. In a weird kind of symbiosis I peer over the dashboard and concentrate on the neon taillights of the car in front of us. It’s the only thing in this upside-down world steady enough to keep my stomach from spinning. The next thing I know Mom’s slowing for the ticket booth at the airport parking lot and I’m awake.

  DULLES, GOLD LOT, I read, LONG-TERM PARKING. PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF YOUR ROW AND SECTION NUMBER.

  Although line after line of cars spins past in a mind-boggling parade despite it not being daytime yet, the terminal is deserted. Mom streams ahead of me onto the escalator, assured somehow I will follow. Ten steps below her, I’m awed at how confidently she moves in this unfamiliar, futuristic place. On the upper level she stops before a computer screen and presses her fingers against it like a piano player who’s memorized the keys. My mom, an accomplished traveler; how have I missed that? When a paper emerges from the machine, she takes it, pokes the two-dimensional button in front of her, and grabs the second paper when it spools toward her. With sideways glances at airline people at the counter, she waves the two pieces of paper at me and strides off toward a glass wall and a line of passengers who look as directed and intent as she is.

  Security: the signs dictate having your passport at the ready. I’ve seen this in the movies, otherwise I’d be nervous about lining up to be screened and admitted, the way the Holocaust victims did what they were told with such trust. Mom hands me my passport—I didn’t even know I had one—and we pass through the metal doorways one after the other as if we did this all the time.

  “Shouldn’t we call Dad and tell him we arrived safely?”

  “No.” Her answer is sharp and efficient.

  “He won’t be worried?”

  “No.” Ten to one, she hasn’t told him.

  My poor father has spent his adult lifetime keeping himself on the straight and narrow. Here’s his wife stealing away in the dark, breaking every law in the county and state according to Henry “Do Nothing” Walker. No wonder she didn’t tell Dad. He can’t be considered an accomplice to something he knew nothing about.

  It will drive him crazy that she did the opposite of what they spent hours and weeks deciding together. That she’s willing to risk his anger and the jail time Walker says is guaranteed if she can’t produce me for the next hearing tells you how muc
h she loves me. And how confident she is that the Mexican treatment will work.

  I should have listened to Meredith and explored the website when I had the chance. It would be nice to know what’s coming. Already I’m exhausted and I haven’t even gotten on the plane yet. Still, Mom would not have gone to all this trouble if she wasn’t convinced. Waiting in the line of sight of uniformed officials with guns and X-ray machines, who stand between me and living past my next birthday, I’m willing to buy her version of the argument.

  When they announce last call, we’re already on board, our bags stowed. My first flight. I’m amazed at how like the comedy club skits the whole flight attendant routine is. By the time the plane rolls away from the gate, the blue ink of the horizon to the east has already leaked pink to signal a new day. The captain announces a slight delay on the runway, but we’re buckled in and rolling.

  “Are you sure there’s enough money for this, Mom?”

  “Not everything is about money.”

  “But I heard Dad tell you he didn’t want you to spend the money.”

  “He’s not a risk taker. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you. Sometimes you just have to jump.”

  I’m glad I stuck Catcher in the backpack at the last second. I need to reread some of those scenes again. After I figure out how to buckle the seatbelt and start the movie. I’m starving.

  When we land in Mexico City, a chunky man in a Los Angeles Dodgers hat holds a cardboard sign with LANDON FAMILY printed in red ink. Underneath that is MCINTYRE FAMILY. Mom smiles and tries out her ancient high-school Spanish. With the sign held above his head, the man listens politely.