Black Out: A Novel

by Lisa Unger

  The things you want to keep, go

  The things you want to lose, stay

  Sell your history

  Sell your soul

  You’re still bankrupt, tired and old.

  And the memories how they linger,

  Wrap around you when you’re cold.

  The refrain was an angry scream, repeating the title over and over. It wasn’t bad. Certainly no worse than some of the crappy covers they played over and over. She’d tried to get Slash to help her write some music recently. But he wouldn’t.

  Slash thought her lyrics, her poetry, tended toward the too flowery, overly ornate. As if someone who called himself Slash and wore black lipstick had any right to criticize anything. They fought about it, passionately and often. She disagreed. Her language was in line with her inner life. A drama queen, her mother called her. If pressed, she knew most of her friends—even Rick—would agree. She didn’t care what they thought. Better to live loud, cause a scene, feel too much, than die a brain-dead automaton in a suburban wasteland.

  If it weren’t for Rick, she’d have left their stupid garage band ages ago. She was sick of singing covers at parties—other people’s lyrics, other people’s thoughts, badly imitated. Slash didn’t have an original thought in his head. He could read music, mimic guitar players he liked, but he couldn’t write an original chord to save his life. She hadn’t meant to ruin his guitar when she grabbed it from him, but it had slipped from her hands and smacked against the wall, hit hard and in just the right way. She’d thought he might cry the way he looked at it. He just picked it up, its neck broken and dangling, the strings slack, and carried it out like a child in his arms.

  “Nice, Char,” Rick had chastised.

  “I didn’t mean it,” she’d said, looking after him helplessly. She still felt bad about it, wondered how much it would cost to buy him a new guitar. This happened to her a lot. She acted out of passion, sometimes hurting people, and then felt horrible about it later. But she never seemed able to make things right again. She had a gift for creating damage that couldn’t be undone.

  She sat in her ticky-tack room, in her ticky-tack house, painting her nails iridescent green. She hated the tract house with all its perfectly square rooms and thin walls, identical to every third house in their development. It was like living in the box of someone else’s limited imagination. How could someone reach the height of her creativity in a drywall cage? She couldn’t. And she wouldn’t. She would be eighteen in six months. After graduation, she was so out of here. College? Another four years of indentured servitude, living by someone else’s arbitrary rules? No way.

  Where do you think you’ll go? her mother wanted to know. You think you’ll survive on minimum wage in New York City? Because without an education you’ll be working at McDonald’s. But Charlene had an escape plan; it was already under way.

  You can always stay here with me, Charlene, when you’re ready. He’d promised her this the last time she’d seen him. You can stay as long as you want.

  She was smiling to herself when she heard the slow rise of voices downstairs. She stopped what she was doing, poised the tiny, glistening green brush over her big toe and listened. Sometimes she could tell by the early decibels and pitch whether there would be a quick explosion of sound that ended with a slamming door and the angry rev of an engine, or whether it was going to be a slow movement, picking up speed and volume, moving from room to room until it reached a crescendo and someone got hurt. Might be her mother, might be her stepfather, Graham—might even be Charlene if she chose to get involved. Which she wouldn’t today; after the last time, she’d promised herself never again. She’d had to cake makeup and black eyeliner over her eye for a week. She’d let them kill each other first. And it sounded like a bad one.

  She couldn’t make out the words, just that near hysterical pitch to her mother’s voice. Charlene reached for her iPod, tucked the buds in her ears, and turned up the volume. The Killers.

  She tried to sing along, to reach a place of blissful indifference. But her heart was thumping, and she could feel that dry suck at the base of her throat. She finished painting her nails with a hand that had started to tremble a little, then capped the bottle and put it down hard on the bedside table. She hated the mutinous actions of her body. Her mind was tough, not afraid of anything. But her body was a little girl shaking in the dark.

  Charlene reached over and paused the music, listened to the air around her. She exhaled. Silence. For a moment, she was almost relieved. But the silence didn’t sound quite right. It wasn’t empty, void of energy. It was alive, hiding something. She got up from her bed, walked with her toes flexed and separated, mindful of the slime green polish. She listened at the cheap, thin door with its flaking gold knob. Nothing. Not even the television, which her mother had on perpetually—morning shows, game shows, on to soap operas, then the afternoon talk shows—Oprah, Dr. Phil. How could the woman even hear herself think?

  Charlene found herself feeling the door, like they teach you to do if there’s fire. If the door is hot, don’t open it—they drill this stuff into you. Stop, drop, and roll. Endlessly, your entire school career, they sent you out single file with bells ringing. But the petty suburban abuses, a terrible marriage polluting the air you breathe, a stepfather’s inappropriate glances and crude offhand remarks making you feel small and dirty, a selfish, silly mother who couldn’t seem to decide between the roles of harsh disciplinarian and best girlfriend, leaving you wary and confused. Nobody tells you what to do about those things. Nobody rescues you with a big red truck, sirens blaring. You’re supposed to live with it. But it hurts, damages, like a toxin in the water you can’t smell or taste. It’s only later that its pathology takes hold. You wind up on some shrink’s couch for the rest of your life.

  She was thinking this as she pushed the door open and walked down the hall toward the unfamiliar silence, wet nails forgotten now, leaving a smudge of green on the carpet with each step. At the top of the stairs, she stopped.

  “Mom?” she called. There was no answer, but she heard something now. Something soft and shuddering, irregular in pitch and rhythm. Weeping. Someone was weeping. She moved slowly down the stairs.

  “Mom?”

  3

  Marshall Crosby was sinking into depression again. Maggie could clearly see that. All the physical cues were there. His hair hung limp and unwashed over his thick glasses. It was one of the first things she’d noticed about him when he began his sessions with her, that he rarely bothered to brush the hair from his eyes. Instead he peered out from beneath it with a variety of expressions—disdain, defiance, shyness, or, like today, a kind of morose sadness. Something invested in itself. His bony shoulders slouched inside a threadbare navy hooded jacket; his knees were spread wide, hands dug deep into the pockets of his jeans. He had the purple shiners of fatigue under each eye.

  “So how’s it going today, Marshall?” Maggie said. She sat in the leather chair across from the couch where he sat. She smoothed out her skirt and laid her notebook on her lap.

  “Good, I guess.”

  “You seem tired.”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “Up late with something? Or having trouble sleeping?”

  A shrug. He turned to glance out the window as if he were expecting someone, then leaned back again.

  “It matters,” she said, trying to catch his eyes. But he stared now at the low coffee table between them. “We might need to alter your meds if you’re having trouble falling or staying asleep.”

  “I was up late.” Was there the slightest edge of impatience to his voice?

  “Studying?” she said.

  Marshall gave Maggie a sneer. “Studying is for pussies.”

  “Who told you that?” As if she had to ask. She knew Marshall’s father well enough.

  Marshall offered another shrug. She examined him for a moment, then let her eyes drop to the notebook on her lap. On the pad, she saw that she’d scribbled “Slipping a
way.” She didn’t remember writing it, but that was exactly how she felt about him.

  Years ago, a frustrated teacher had pegged Marshall as learning disabled, and the label had followed him through grammar school, on into middle school and high school. For years, bored, miserable, abused at home, bullied at school, he’d floundered. Until Henry Ivy, Marshall’s history teacher and the school counselor, recognized what everyone else had missed. Marshall was an abused boy presenting as slow. Henry offered Marshall a hand—some tutoring, some amateur counseling. Recent aptitude tests had revealed, to everyone’s amazement, that Marshall possessed a near genius-level IQ.

  Marshall’s father, coincidentally, was arrested around the same time for a DUI offense. So Marshall had been living with his aunt Leila, uncle Mark, and two older male cousins, Tim and Ryan. Leila took Mr. Ivy’s advice and brought Marshall to Maggie for evaluation and counseling. They’d all worked together to get him on track. The improvement had been nothing short of miraculous. Until six weeks ago, when Marshall’s father was released.

  “So how is it living with your father again?”

  “It’s okay, I guess. He’s not much of a cook.”

  Marshall was given the choice to stay with Leila and Mark Lane; but he chose to return to his father. He’d been back at home just about three weeks, and now his grades were dropping, hygiene failing, blank expression returning. Maggie suspected that it was only a matter of time before Marshall went off his meds and started missing appointments. It made her angry, yes, but mostly it made her feel sad and powerless. After seeing Marshall last week, she’d been so overcome by those feelings that she’d called her own therapist.

  “Therapy only works when the patient is a willing participant,” said Dr. Willough. “That’s true with adults and adolescents alike. The patient has to want help. And we have to recognize our limitations. Our boundaries.”

  Abused kids almost always wanted to go home. Sometimes you could stop it, sometimes you couldn’t. Marshall’s father was a cop. He was without a job after his arrest, of course, but not without friends. The judge who’d allowed Marshall to go home was Travis’s longtime drinking buddy. Sitting in the courtroom, Leila, Travis’s sister, had cried in Maggie’s arms. We’ve lost him, she’d whispered. Maggie had hoped she was wrong. She still remembered the nasty sneer Travis had tossed back at them as he left with Marshall.

  “Okay,” she said. “So, if not studying, then what were you doing last night that kept you up late?” She measured her tone; light and easy.

  “I was helping my dad.” Marshall sat up a little straighter. There was a hint of a smile on his face. It’s what every boy wants; to be close to his dad. She felt a little twinge about Jones and Ricky.

  “Helping him with what?”

  “He’s a private investigator now, you know?”

  “I heard.”

  Henry Ivy had told her during one of their frequent lunches that Travis Crosby had hung out his own shingle, though neither of them could imagine who would consider hiring him.

  “I was helping him paint the office,” said Marshall. “When I graduate, I’m going to be his partner.”

  There was so much pride in his voice; she wanted to feel happy for him. But she just nodded, staying neutral. He was a sensitive kid, picked up on her lack of enthusiasm. She saw his right leg start to pump. Anxiety. A second later his thumbnail was in his mouth.

  “What about college?” she asked. “Mr. Ivy told me that, with your SAT scores, you have a shot at some good schools—Rutgers, Fordham.”

  He lifted a dismissive hand. “My dad says there’s no money for that.”

  She tried to quash her own anxiety, stay level. She wanted to yell, Get out of this town, Marshall. Get away from your father. Get an education. It’s the only chance you have.

  “There are scholarships, grants, financial aid,” she said instead. “We can help you with that.”

  His eyes dropped to the floor. She decided to change the subject. “How are things going with your mother?”

  “My mother’s a whore,” Marshall said. His tone was mild, but the rise of color in his cheeks was telling.

  “Why do you say that?” A low-level anxiety caused her to inch forward in her chair a little.

  He pulled his mouth into a derisive sneer. “She has a new boyfriend.”

  Maggie forced herself to breathe in and out before answering, hoping the silence would let the exchange echo back at him. The sneer dropped, and he just looked inconsolably sad.

  “That doesn’t make her a whore, Marshall. When’s the last time you talked to her?”

  Maggie heard her son’s car rumble to life in the driveway, then speed off. Too fast. The kid drives too fast, and that muscle car doesn’t help matters. She got lost in her own thoughts for a second and almost didn’t hear Marshall’s response, something about his mother leaving him a message on Facebook.

  “Said she missed me.” He gave a bitter little laugh. It sounded bad on him, too old, too jaded.

  “But no visits, no phone calls?”

  “She said she doesn’t have time. Too busy.”

  Maggie didn’t know if that was true or not; it could have been that Marshall was avoiding her. Five years earlier, Angie Crosby had left Travis after a brutal beating (for which Travis was never charged, because he, too, had taken some blows from Angie). They then engaged in a vitriolic divorce and custody battle. In The Hollows, where they all lived—where they’d all grown up together—it was legendary. The rumors and gossip were endless; there was no function—not the precinct Christmas party or the annual pancake breakfast at the firehouse—where someone wasn’t whispering about it.

  “You were getting along really well, weren’t you?”

  “I guess.”

  When shared custody had been awarded, Angie disappeared. She was eager to leave Travis behind, and it seemed she felt that meant leaving Marshall, too. If she couldn’t keep him away from Travis, she’d admitted to Maggie recently, she hadn’t wanted him. She’d refused to attend a session with Marshall but had sent Maggie an e-mail explaining “her side of things.” At age nine, Marshall had already been prone to violent rages, had hit Angie twice and regularly invoked the vicious names Travis had for her, she claimed. I have always been afraid of Travis, even when I loved him. I am sorry to say that I feel the same way about Marshall. I want a life where no one hits me, where my son doesn’t call me a bitch and a whore. Does that make me a monster who abandoned her child? Maybe.

  Maggie had been pleased to see them approach a tentative reunion while Travis was away and Marshall was doing so much better. But maybe when Travis came home and Marshall chose to return to him, Angie withdrew again. Maggie made a note to call Angie and find out what was really going on.

  “Have you been taking your medication?”

  Marshall nodded. She wasn’t sure she believed him.

  Maggie didn’t always agree with the medication of children. It was, as far as she was concerned, a last resort. She lost a lot of young patients in her practice as a family and adolescent psychologist because she wouldn’t quickly call Dr. Willough for a referral prescription. But at nearly seventeen, Marshall wasn’t exactly a child anymore. And on his first visit to her, he’d been severely depressed. Not bipolar, not ADHD, not borderline—he’d had as many diagnoses over the years as he’d had therapists. But she’d seen him as so clearly in the throes of a clinical depression that she’d prescribed a mild antidepressant, wary of the risks.

  He seemed to have the right kind of supervision—an aunt who loved him, an uncle who appeared equally fond of him and concerned for his well-being, and, maybe most important, his cousins Ryan and Tim, who were healthy and well-adjusted, and who were inclined to take an interest in Marshall—bringing him to ball games, letting him work on the old car they were trying to restore, coaching him on how to approach a girl he liked. She’d educated them on the risks of a depressed teen on medication, what signs to monitor. But he’d responded well. />
  “Been in touch with Ryan and Tim?”

  “Yeah, we hang.” He looked above her now, not at her, still avoiding her eyes. He seemed to notice his bouncing knee and got it under control.

  “Come on, Marshall. Let’s cut through it, shall we? What’s going on?”

  He seemed to study the ceiling. When he looked back, he was smiling. She’d always liked his smile, sweet and boyish, as unexpectedly bright as a ray of sunlight through thunderheads. But this smile was ugly, sent a slight shiver through her.

  He leaned forward suddenly, staring straight at her. “You know what, Doc?”

  She gave him a tolerant, slow blink to show him that she was neither intimidated by him nor impressed by his shift in tone. It was striking, though, how his voice had gone from the dead, flat teenage monotone to something deeper, like a growl.

  “What is it, Marshall?”

  He issued a strange little chuckle. She fought the urge to shrink away from him, squared her shoulders and sat up. “I’m not sure I want you in my head anymore.”

  She put on her best cool smile, held his eyes, mineral green like a quarry lake.

  “Whether you come here or not is, of course, your choice,” she said.

  Some kind of battle took place on his face, the acne on his chin and forehead blazing an angry red. The corners of his mouth fell in a pantomime of sadness. His eyes went wide, as if he was about to cry, then narrowed down, ugly with distrust and anger.

  “Talk to me, Marshall.”

  She tried not to sound desperate, pleading. The mother in her wanted to sit close beside him, wrap him up and hold him tight. But she couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t be able to accept that kind of love, even if she could offer it to him.

  He stood quickly then, raising himself to his full height, unslouching those perpetually hunched shoulders. She’d never realized how tall he was, always thought of him as a lean, lanky kid—never big or powerful, as he looked now. He must be nearly six feet, close to two hundred pounds, she thought with surprise. Involuntarily, she pushed herself back in her chair to rise. Her surprise must have registered on her face, triggering another battle on his. A nasty grimace won the war.