by Mary Kubica
I told her it was fine. It’s hair. It grows back.
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I didn’t want her to feel badly for what she’d done. And it is
only hair. It does grow back.
But if we hadn’t moved when we did, I would have been on
the hunt for a new stylist.
I yank the high heels from my feet and stare at the blisters on
my skin. I step from my skirt, tossing it into the laundry basket.
After sinking my feet into a pair of warm socks, my legs into a
pair of comfy pajama pants, I head back downstairs, checking the
thermostat on the way down. This old home is either icy cold or
burning hot, but never anything in between. The furnace can
no longer distribute heat properly. I turn the heat up a notch.
Will is still in the kitchen when I arrive, putting away the rest
of the dinner prep. He slips the flour and cornstarch in a cabi-
net, sets the dirty skillet in the sink.
He calls the boys for dinner. Moments later, we sit at the
kitchen table to eat. Will has served the pork chops with a side
of spinach couscous tonight, his culinary skills easily trump-
ing mine.
“Where’s Imogen?” I ask and Will tells me she’s with a friend,
studying for a Spanish quiz. She’ll be home by seven. I roll my
eyes, mutter, “Don’t hold your breath.” Because Imogen rarely,
if ever, does as she says. Only sometimes does she eat dinner
with us. When she does, she saunters into the kitchen five min-
utes later than the rest of us because she can. Because we’re not
going to nag her about it. She knows that if she wants to eat
the dinner Will’s made, she eats with us, or she doesn’t eat at
all. Though still, when she does eat with us, she comes late and
leaves early to exercise her autonomy.
Tonight, however, she’s a no-show, and I wonder if she’s re-
ally studying with a friend, or if she doing something else, like
hanging out at the abandoned military fortification at the far
end of the island where kids have been rumored to drink, do
drugs, have sex.
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I put it out of my mind for now. Instead I ask Otto about his
day. He shrugs and says, “Okay, I guess.”
Will asks, “How was the science test?” inquiring about things
like static and kinetic friction, and asking him, “Did you re-
member what they mean?”
Otto says he did, he thinks. Will reaches over and ruffles his
hair, and says, “Atta boy. The studying helped.” I watch as a dark
thatch of hair falls into Otto’s eyes. His hair has grown too long
so that it’s shaggy and unkempt. It hides his eyes. Otto’s eyes are hazel like Will’s, and can turn on a dime from a warm brown
to a sky blue, though I can’t see which tonight.
Dinner conversation consists mostly of Tate’s day at school
though half the class was apparently absent because half of the
parents have the good sense not to send their children to school
when there is a murderer on the loose. Though Tate doesn’t
know this.
I watch as Otto, across from me, slices through the pork chop
with a steak knife. There’s a crudeness about the way he holds
the knife, about the way he cuts his meat with it. The pork is
succulent. It’s cooked to perfection; my own knife slices right
through. But still, Otto goes after his full tilt, as if it’s over-
cooked, tough and rubbery, nearly impossible to get through
with the serrated knife edge, which it’s not.
There’s something about the knife in his hand that makes me
lose my appetite.
“Aren’t you hungry?” Will asks, seeing that I’m not eating.
I don’t answer his question. I reach for my fork instead. I set a
bite of pork in my mouth. The memories come rushing back
to me, and I find that I can hardly chew.
But still I do chew because Will is watching me, as is Tate.
Tate who doesn’t like pork chops, though we have a three-bite
rule in our home. Three bites and then you can be through.
He’s only had one.
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But Otto, on the other hand, eats voraciously, sawing through
the meat like a lumberjack with a log.
I’d never thought much about knives before. They were just
part of the flatware. Not until the day Will and I walked into
the principal’s office at Otto’s public high school in Chicago and
there he sat in a chair, back to us, handcuffs on his wrists. It was alarming to see, my son with his hands bound behind him like
a common criminal. Will had received a call from the princi-
pal that there was a problem at school, something we needed to
discuss. I cut short my shift in the ER. As I drove to the school
alone with plans to meet Will there, my mind went to a fail-
ing grade, or the overlooked signs of a learning disability we
didn’t yet know about. Perhaps Otto was dyslexic. The idea of
Otto struggling with something, with anything, saddened me.
I wanted to help.
I walked straight past the police cruiser parked outside. I didn’t
think anything of it.
But then, at the sight of Otto there in the chair in handcuffs,
the mama bear in me reared up at once. I don’t think I’ve ever
been so angry in my entire life. Take those off of him this minute, I demanded. You have no right, I said, but whether the police officer did or didn’t, I didn’t know. He stood just feet shy of Otto,
looking down on the boy whose eyes sat glued to the floor,
head slumped forward, arms awkwardly tethered together be-
hind him so that he couldn’t sit all the way back. Otto looked
so small in the chair. Helpless and frail. At fourteen, he had yet
to experience the same growth spurt that other boys his age al-
ready had. He stood a head shorter than most of them, and twice
as thin. Though Will and I were right there with him, he was
alone. Completely alone. Anyone could see that. It made my
heart break for him.
The school principal sat on the other side of a large desk,
looking grim.
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Mr. and Mrs. Foust, he said, rising to his feet and extending a hand in greeting, a hand which Will and I both ignored.
Doctor, I amended. The police officer smirked.
The evidence bag on the corner of the principal’s desk, I soon
learned, contained a knife. And not just any knife, but an eight-
inch chef’s knife from Will’s prized set, stolen that morning from
the block of them that sat on the corner of the kitchen counter.
The principal explained to Will and me that Otto brought the
knife to school, hidden in his backpack. Fortunately, the principal said, one of the students saw and had the good sense to inform
a teacher and the local police were
called in to apprehend Otto
before any damage could be done.
As the principal spoke, I could think only one thing. How
humiliating it would have been for Otto to be handcuffed in
front of his peers. To be removed from his classroom by the local
police. Because never once did I think it was possible that Otto
brought a knife to school or that he threatened children with it.
This was a mistake only. A horrible mistake for which Will and
I would seek retribution for our son and his marred reputation.
Otto was quiet, kind. Not ostentatiously happy, but happy.
He had friends, a handful only, but friends nonetheless. He was
always very rule-abiding, never once getting into trouble at
school. There had never been a detention, a note sent home, a
phone call with a teacher. There was no need for any of these
things. And so, I easily reasoned, there was no way Otto had
done something as delinquent as bring a knife to school.
Upon closer examination of the knife itself, Will recognized
it as his own. He tried to downplay the situation— It’s a popular knife set. I bet many people have it— and yet no one could dispute the look of recognition that crossed his face, the look of shock
and horror.
There in the principal’s office, Otto began to cry.
What did you think you were doing? Will asked him gently, a 9780778369110_RHC_txt(ENT_ID=269160).indd 88
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hand on Otto’s shoulder, massaging it. You’re better than that, buddy, he said. You’re smarter than that.
By then, they were both crying. I was the only one whose
eyes remained dry.
Otto confessed to us then in not quite so many words, his
voice hard to hear at times through the gasping sobs, that, the
previous spring, he’d become the target of teenage bullying.
He thought it would go away on its own, but the situation had
only become more exacerbated when he returned to school that
August.
What Otto told us was that some of the more popular boys in
school claimed he was making eyes at another kid in his class.
A boy. Rumors circulated quickly and before long, not a day
went by that Otto wasn’t called a homo, a queer, a fairy, a fag.
Stupid faggot, they’d say. Die faggot, die.
Otto went on and on, rambling off the epithets his classmates
used. Only when Otto paused for breath did the principal ask
who, specifically, said these things, and whether there were wit-
nesses to Otto’s claims or if this was simply a matter of he said, she said, so to speak.
There was the clear sense that the principal didn’t believe him.
Otto went on. He told us how the smack talk was only part of
it. Because there was also the physical abuse, the threats. Being
cornered in the boy’s bathroom or shoved into lockers. The cy-
berbullying. The photos they’d taken of him, heinously photo-
shopped to their liking, and shared far and wide.
This broke my heart and made me angry with good reason. I
wanted to find the boys who had done this to Otto and wring
their little necks. My blood pressure spiked. There was a pound-
ing in my head, my chest, as my hand fell to the back of Otto’s
chair to steady myself. What will happen to those boys? I’d asked, demanding, Certainly they’ll be punished for what they’ve done. They can’t get away with this.
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talk to them, he said. A look crossed Otto’s face. He would never tell on these kids because if he did, life would suddenly be even
more insufferable that it already was.
Why didn’t you tell us? Will asked, dropping down beside Otto so that he could look him straight in the eye.
Otto looked at him, head shaking, and asserted, I’m not gay,
Dad, as if it would matter if he were. I’m not gay, he maintained, losing any lingering traces of composure.
But that wasn’t the question Will had asked because things
like that—sexual orientation—didn’t matter to Will or me.
Why didn’t you tell us you were being bul ied? Will clarified then, and that’s when Otto said he did. He did tell. He told me.
In that moment, my heart sank so low it slipped right out of me.
Violence throughout the city was on a rise. That meant more
and more patients showing up in my emergency room with
bloodied bodies and gunshot wounds. My everyday routine
started to resemble the sensationalist portrayal of ERs you see
on TV, and not merely all fevers and broken bones. Add to that
the fact that we’d been understaffed. Back in those days, my
twelve-hour shifts looked more like fifteen, and it was a con-
stant marathon during which there was little time to empty my
bladder or eat. I was in a fog when I was home, tired and sleep-
deprived. I forgot things. A dental cleaning, to pick up a gallon
of milk on the way home from work.
Had Otto told me he was being bullied and I’d dismissed it?
Or had I been so lost in thought that I didn’t hear him at all?
Will’s eyes had turned to mine then, inquiring in that single
incredulous stare whether I had known. I shrugged my shoul-
ders and shook my head, made him believe that Otto hadn’t told
me. Because maybe he had and maybe he hadn’t. I didn’t know.
What made you think it was okay to take a knife to school? Will had asked Otto then, and I tried to imagine the logic that went
through his mind that morning when deciding to take the knife.
Would there be legal recourse for what he had done, or would
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a slap on the wrist suffice? How could I possibly stand to send
him back to the classroom when this was through?
What did you think you were going to do with it, buddy? Will asked, meaning the knife, and I braced myself, not sure I was
ready to hear his reply.
Otto gazed over a shoulder at me then and whispered, his voice
breathy from crying, It was Mom’s idea. I blanched at his words, turning all shades of white because of the preposterousness of
the statement. A bold-faced lie. It was Mom’s idea to take the knife to school. To scare them with, Otto lied, his eyes dropping to the floor while Will, the police officer and I watched on. She’s the one who put it in my backpack, he said under his breath and I gasped, knowing immediately why he said it. I was the one who always
had his back. We’re cut from the same cloth, Otto and me. He a
mama’s boy; he’s always been. He thought I would protect him
from this, that if I could take the blame for what he’d done, he’d
get off scot-free. But he didn’t pause to think of the ramifications it might have on my reputation, on my career, on me.
I was heartbroken for Otto. But now I was also angry.
Until that moment, I didn’t know he was being picked on
at school. And far be it from me to suggest he bring a knife, a knife! , to school to threaten teenage boys with, much less slip it inside his backpack.
How did he possibly think anyone would fall for that lie?
That’s r
idiculous, Otto, I breathed out as all eyes in the room moved in unison to mine. How could you say that? I asked, my own eyes starting to well with tears. I pressed a finger to his
chest. I whispered, You did this, Otto. You, and he winced in the chair as if he’d been slapped. He turned his back to me and once
again began to cry.
Soon after, we took Otto home, having been informed that
there would be an expulsion hearing before the board to see
if Otto could return to school. We didn’t wait for an answer. I
could never send Otto back there again.
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Later that night, Will asked me in private, Don’t you think you were too harsh on him?
And there it was. The first rift in our marriage.
Until that moment, there’d been no breaches in our relation-
ship, no gaps, none that I knew about at least. Will and I were
like diamonds, I thought, able to withstand the crushing pres-
sures of marriage and family life.
I felt sorry for the way things had unfolded in the principal’s
office. There was an awful pain in the pit of my stomach know-
ing that Otto had been enduring the bullying and abuse for so
long and we didn’t know. I felt sad it had come to this, that my
son thought taking a knife to school was his only option. But I
was angry that he tried to lay the blame for it on me.
I told Will no, I didn’t think I was too harsh on Otto, and he
said, He’s just a boy, Sadie. He made a mistake.
But some mistakes, I soon came to learn, couldn’t so easily
be forgiven. Because it wasn’t two weeks later that I discovered
Will was having an affair, that he’d been having an affair for
quite some time.
Next came the news of Alice’s death. I wasn’t sure, but Will
was. It was time to leave.
Happenstance, he called it.
Everything happens for a reason, he said.
Will promised me we could be happy in Maine, that we just
needed to leave behind everything that happened in Chicago
and start fresh, though of course it struck me as ironic that our
happiness came at Alice’s expense.
As we sit now at the table, eating the last of our dinner, I
find myself staring out the dark window above the kitchen sink.
Thinking about Imogen and the Baines family, about Officer