Darkness My Old Friend

by Lisa Unger

  He’d never understood that, still couldn’t by the sound of it.

  “You know what she called me?” he said. “She said I was an emotional castrato.”

  “Wow,” said Bethany. She was so glad she didn’t have to keep the smile off her face. “That’s a big concept for someone like Brenda. You met her in Vegas, right? Cocktail waitress?”

  “Very funny, Beth. And she was a dancer. Not a stripper. A showgirl.”

  “Oh, my mistake.” She walked over to the picture window and looked down over the tree cover. She could see the road in patches now that the trees were losing their leaves. No bus yet.

  “You have to be very athletic to do that. She’s very talented,” Richard was saying. She’d heard this tone of petulant defense before. It used to enrage her. Now she just found it sad.

  “I’m sure,” she said. “And flexible.”

  She liked Richard much better now that they weren’t married, now that he couldn’t hurt her anymore. Sometimes, like now, she even found him amusing. She wouldn’t say he was an emotional castrato, exactly. That was a bit harsh, if extremely funny. He was more an emotional toddler, clumsy and unaware of himself, seeking to put every shiny, pretty thing in his mouth, ignorant of consequences. No surprise, really, if you met his parents. Joan, his mother, was an overpraising, enabling parent and a doormat of a wife. His father, Richard Sr., acclaimed cardiac surgeon, was a demanding taskmaster, highly critical and distant. He was used to putting his hands inside an open chest cavity and massaging the heart back to life, never missed an opportunity to tell you that. Talk about a God complex. Honestly, Richard could have turned out a lot worse. If he were a sociopath, he might have been a serial killer instead of a plastic surgeon.

  “It’s not funny, Beth.”

  “No, I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Why does everyone leave me?”

  “Oh, Rich.”

  It was true. She had left him, but only because he’d given her no choice. Infidelity was a deal breaker, especially when you have a daughter. She couldn’t stand to have Willow think that was okay. Plus, he was a terrible stepfather-absent, forever failing to keep promises big and small. Why didn’t he know that?

  Bethany wished-if wishing was the right word for a desire that felt like a burning pain in your chest-that Willow had known her real father. How those two would have loved each other. How different things would have been for her and Willow. She felt a decade of grief and disappointment claw its way up her throat. She couldn’t open her mouth, didn’t trust her voice. There was a moment of silence between them where she imagined he remembered every harsh word and recrimination she’d ever hurled at him.

  Then, “Are you okay, Beth?”

  “I’m okay,” she whispered. “I am.”

  “Can I come see Willow this weekend? I miss you guys.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” She’d ask Willow. It might cheer her up a bit. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  She heard the rumble and hiss of the bus, even saw the bright yellow roof through the trees. Richard was going on about how he could come up, bring some stuff they liked from Zabar’s. They’d walk in the woods, have dinner in. He wouldn’t stay the night, of course. Richard couldn’t stand to be alone. They’d see a lot of him until he found another girlfriend. She put up with it because it was important for Willow to see him. He was the only father she’d ever known. Bethany was half listening to him, as she listened to the bus stop in front of the drive. Then it rumbled on its way.

  “The bus just dropped Willow off. I’m going to go meet her on the drive so she doesn’t have to walk alone. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Bethany jogged down the front steps and stepped onto the gravel. It was a long, winding drive. And if she hadn’t been on the phone, she’d have driven the Land Cruiser down a few minutes before the bus arrived to wait for Willow. But the walk would do her good. She figured she’d run into her daughter about halfway. But she didn’t. She kept walking, hearing in the distance the sound of girls laughing. Willow had probably stopped to chat with the twins who lived on the next lot. Their homes were separated by acres, but the driveway entrances and mailboxes stood side by side. A few neighborhood kids had the same stop-Willow, the twins Madison and Skylar, the painter’s son Carlos, and one other girl named Amy or Ava, something like that.

  When she reached the street, Madison (or maybe Skylar-who could tell those girls apart?) and the other girl were chatting and giggling. “He’s such a dork. I can’t believe it,” she heard one of them say. Their backs were to her, so she didn’t know which one.

  “Hi, girls.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Graves,” they said almost in unison. Madison offered a sweet smile. The other girl looked shyly at the ground. No Willow.

  Bethany found herself glancing back up the drive, though of course there was no possibility she could have missed Willow on the way down.

  “Wasn’t Willow on the bus?” she asked. She tried to keep her voice light, but already she could hear the blood start to rush in her ears.

  “No. Uh-huh,” said Madison, all blond curls and pink cheeks, wide brown eyes. “I didn’t see her when we lined up, either.”

  Madison might have said something else, but Bethany didn’t hear. She was already making her way back up the drive. She was on autopilot as she walked back into the house and grabbed her bag, her cell phone. In the driver’s seat, she called her daughter but only got her voice mail. She pulled out of the driveway in the now-familiar trance of anger undercut by worry and headed for the school.

  The first time Bethany headed out like this, looking for her daughter, had been in New York City. It was eight o’clock on a winter night. Bethany had asked Richard to leave by then, and she and Willow had been living alone for almost a month. It had all started with that goddamn Britney Spears concert. The lies, the mess that followed-it all began there.

  Today, as she drove into the nearly empty school parking lot, she tried not to panic. There were still lights on in the school. She pulled her car over in front of the double-door entrance and got out, phone clutched in her hand. Hollows High was every East Coast public school-a low, long, concrete, flat-roofed structure. And when she pushed inside, a thousand sense memories competed for her attention. She’d hated high school as much as Willow did, had been every bit as much the fish out of water.

  Willow lies because she doesn’t feel like who she is inside is enough for her peers. Dr. Cooper had told her this in their last discussion about Willow. Bethany understood; she’d felt the same way as a kid. But she’d channeled that energy into writing.

  But I love her so much. She’s always been enough for me. She knows that.

  It’s always our instinct to feel like we’ve failed when our kids are suffering. But it’s not always our fault. She has had experiences that you haven’t had any control over. And she chose her own way to deal with them.

  Wasn’t that just postmodern psychobabble, though? Parents were responsible for their kids, plain and simple. When they were struggling, chances are it had something to do with you. True, it wasn’t her fault that Willow’s father had died. But she’d chosen badly with Richard. And their marriage hadn’t been a happy one. The truth was that Bethany hadn’t been really happy for one reason or another for most of Willow’s life. That had an impact; it must.

  She was thinking this as she walked past the rows of green lockers over the freckled vinyl floors to the office. The lights were on, but the desks sat empty; computer screens were dark.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Hello?” answered a male voice from down the hall. A moment later Henry Ivy came walking out. Bethany felt herself blush. He looked so… earnest. She hated for him to know how quickly Willow had broken her promises. But it couldn’t be helped.

  “Willow didn’t come home on the late bus.”

  She didn’t want to sound like she was freaking out, but she really was. Her stomach was a mess; she was close to tears.

  She remembered ho
w she felt when she’d called Evelyn Coates-was it more than a year ago now?-looking for Willow, who was supposed to be watching movies at the Coateses’ Tribeca loft and spending the night.

  “Beth,” Evelyn had said. She still could recall the immediate pitch of worry she heard in the other woman’s tone. “Willow’s not here. Zoë’s sitting on the couch in front of me watching television.”

  In that moment she felt a flash of fear and sadness, but also, dare she admit it, hatred for Evelyn and her perfect marriage, her perfect life, her perfect child who was exactly where she was supposed to be.

  She’d hopped a cab, and less than half an hour later she was standing in the foyer of the multimillion-dollar loft listening to Zoë confess that Willow had a boyfriend, someone older that she’d met at the Britney Spears concert. Zoë hadn’t wanted to lie, but she didn’t want her friend to get in trouble, either. So she’d told Willow she’d cover for her.

  “But Willow never went to the concert,” Bethany had stammered, unthinking. “I don’t understand.”

  “Yes she did. Didn’t she?”

  “No,” Bethany said, still not realizing what she was doing. “Her father got hung up at work and couldn’t take her.”

  More than anything she remembered that look on Evelyn’s face-that drawn look of sympathy and concern, really just a mask covering malicious glee, superiority, and gratitude that she wasn’t Bethany Graves right now.

  “Where was she supposed to be tonight, Zoë? Is she with him right now?”

  Zoë shrugged. “I don’t know. If she lied about the concert, then she lied about the boy, too. So I don’t know where she is.”

  Bethany realized then that she’d been the one to blow Willow’s cover, to unearth whatever lies she’d been telling her friends. As soon as she left, Zoë would be texting, Facebooking, and e-mailing all their shared friends to expose Willow’s deceit.

  “Where did she say she was going?”

  “Just out with him. She didn’t say where.”

  “And then she was going to come here?”

  Zoë looked down at the floor and shook her head.

  “What? She was going to spend the night with some boy and come home in the morning?” Bethany didn’t like the shrill tone in her own voice, but panic was getting the better of her. Where did her thirteen-year-old daughter plan to spend the night if not at home and not at her friend’s loft? And how could Bethany be so ignorant of the fact that Willow was a stone-cold liar?

  Another shrug from Zoë. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Graves.”

  Bethany felt the ground beneath her feet fall away.

  Kind of how she felt now standing before Henry Ivy, who had so sweetly tried to help Willow, to cut her a break. “She told me she wanted to stay late to study,” Bethany said. “I called the librarian, who confirmed she was there.”

  “Well, let’s go check with Mrs. Teaford,” said Mr. Ivy. Just the sound of his voice was soothing. “The library is open until five. Maybe Willow’s there, lost track of time.”

  “Maybe,” said Bethany. She felt a surge of hope, which quickly passed as they entered the library. The study tables at the front of the room were empty. The lights over the stacks were dark. Mrs. Teaford looked up from her computer screen; her coat was on, and her bags were sitting beside her. She was ready to go home for the night.

  “Oh, Willow was here. I’m not sure when she left. Jolie Marsh was with her. Usually they’re trouble together, have to be separated. But they were being quiet, had their textbooks open. I didn’t notice them get up.”

  “Don’t they need a pass to leave the library?” asked Bethany.

  “Not after hours.” Mrs. Teaford gave Bethany a politely pitying smile. It was a look Bethany had seen before from school officials, reserved for parents who clearly didn’t have control over their children, a mask of empathy that barely concealed disdain.

  Out in the hallway, Bethany tried Willow again from her cell phone. Again just voice mail. This bothered her more than anything, because Willow knew she was skating on thin ice with that phone. Bethany had given it back after the incident in the woods, even after threatening to take it away, mainly because she didn’t want not to be able to reach Willow. But the rule was if Bethany ever couldn’t reach her on that phone, the phone would be confiscated indefinitely. Why wasn’t she answering? Why hadn’t she called? Bethany knew there were dead zones in The Hollows, that cell service was often spotty. But it was almost five. Willow must know that Bethany was sick with worry; by now she would have called with some lame excuse.

  “Okay,” said Henry. “Let’s try to think a second. Where might Willow go? I know that some of the kids like to hang out at the old graveyard up the road.”

  Bethany remembered Willow mentioning it, that it had scared her a little. She didn’t think Willow would go there again. She said as much.

  “Well, let’s just take a quick ride up there and see.”

  She hit “send” on the phone again. As she did, she watched a man approach them. He cut a big, dark figure in the hallway, seemed to dominate the space with a slow and easy approach. When he reached them, Bethany thought he looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him.

  “Hey, Henry,” he said, extending a hand.

  “Good to see you, Jones,” Henry said. He took the other man’s hand and patted him on the back in one familiar gesture. “We’ve got an issue here. I know you need to talk, but can it wait a minute?”

  “Sure. Anything I can do?”

  Jones Cooper, Bethany realized then, Dr. Cooper’s husband. Bethany had seen him working around the yard when she brought Willow for her appointments.

  Henry introduced them. She liked his handshake, his barn jacket, and his barrel chest. He had a nice face. Rugged was the word that came to mind. Reliable.

  “We’re looking for a couple of kids,” said Henry. “Willow Graves didn’t come home on the late bus.”

  She saw a shadow of something cross Jones Cooper’s face. It made her own heart start to pound.

  “We were thinking of checking out the old graveyard,” Henry said. “Just going to head up that way now.”

  Jones pointed toward the door. “My truck’s right outside. I can take a quick run up there with you.”

  The graveyard was a tired, dilapidated little place, and Bethany could see immediately why Willow hadn’t liked it, not that anyone sane had much of an affinity for graveyards. It looked lonely and abandoned, a resting place for the forgotten dead. As they exited their vehicles-Bethany and Henry followed in her car behind Jones Cooper-she could see that the ground was littered with beer bottles and cigarette butts.

  “They haven’t been able to get anyone to do the job of caretaker here,” Henry said. He stopped and peered at a plaque pushed into the stone wall. It was so weathered and calcified as to be unreadable. “It’s a historic site. Shame that it’s fallen to disrepair.”

  Fallen to disrepair. As though everything tends that way if we don’t hold it back. If we just release our grasp on anything, it falls apart. Jones pushed open the gate; it protested with a squeal. And just then, with the sun nearly gone from the sky, standing in that terrible place, Bethany thought she’d implode with anger and worry and regret. Why had she moved them to this place? She must have been crazy to think Willow would ever adjust to The Hollows. She’d been scared; that was the truth. After that night when she realized how much trouble a girl like Willow could get into in New York City, she wanted her as far away from that place as they could reasonably get. But now here they were, in a graveyard looking for her daughter. She should have known. If you’re looking, you can find trouble anywhere. It’s waiting-not just on city street corners, in subways, in nightclubs, but on quiet country roads, in a peaceful stand of trees.

  Just as she was about to dial Willow again, she saw her daughter emerge from the woods. For a moment she didn’t believe her eyes, somehow thought she was willing the vision of Willow and Jolie and some strangely beautiful boy she’d never see
n before. They looked ethereal, all of them pale-skinned, dressed in black.

  “Mom?” Willow managed to squeeze embarrassment and trepidation into a single syllable. The three teenagers exchanged a look-that too-cool glance, that half smile of rebellion, as if all your parental emotions are ridiculous and contemptible. No, that was just Jolie. Willow looked scared, sheepish. And the boy, Bethany couldn’t read his face.

  “Willow, get in the car.” It was all she could manage-her anger and relief were so powerful she thought she might vomit.

  “Mom.”

  “Get. In. The. Car.”

  “Where were you?” Henry asked Jolie as Willow made her way to Bethany’s vehicle.

  “We were just taking a walk,” said Jolie. “That’s not a crime. Is it?”

  Jones Cooper hadn’t said a word all this time. He’d just stood watching. Now he stepped forward. He had his hands in his pockets, looked unassumingly up at the sky.

  “It’s not safe back there,” he said. He narrowed his eyes at them. “You kids should know that. There are abandoned mines. Some of that is private property, and folks around here aren’t too friendly with trespassers.” He kicked at the ground, and Bethany heard the tinkle of metal. Shell casings. Once she noticed them, she realized that casings littered the area around them.

  “We were just walking around,” said the boy. He didn’t say it with an attitude. He was confident, but not a punk. Bethany noticed Jones give the kid a hard once-over, taking in the details-denim jacket, some graphic T-shirt, dirty, ripped-at-the-knee jeans that probably cost a hundred dollars, thick leather boots. His blue-black hair was carefully styled and gelled to look like a mess. His eyelashes were so long and dark he looked like he was wearing mascara. But he wasn’t. In other words, he was teenage-girl catnip.

  “What’s your name, son?” Jones Cooper said.

  “Cole Carr,” he said. The boy offered his hand, and Jones shook it.

  “Cole just started here in September,” Henry said. “And this is Jolie Marsh.”