The Moon Pool

by Sophie Littlefield

  She rolled the cigarette back and forth in her lips, inhaling the smell of the tobacco. They ought to make a perfume out of that. Tobacco and whiskey and maybe some vanilla or something to bind it all together. No—throw in some Polo Explorer. The thought of Mack’s aftershave traveled through her tired body, making her miss him so powerfully it was like the memory of him was more real than this moment, this trailer, this image on the screen in front of her. Mack wore aftershave only on days when he had to put on a tie and go up to the office in Sacramento, but those were good days because he could usually see her on the way back; Caroline never expected him home for dinner on those days. Sometimes, he got away on weekends, and then he came to her smelling of woodsmoke and grass clippings and sweat, and Shay loved that even more, drinking him in, inhaling him, trying to make him last.

  He’d email her again tomorrow. He emailed every day. But she wouldn’t be weak, she wouldn’t go looking for comfort rereading his note, not when she had this job to do. They were grown-ups. God, how many times had they reminded each other of that? They weren’t teenagers. Hell, he was going to be fifty in the spring; Caroline was talking about throwing him a huge party when the kids came home from college for the summer. It was good. It was fine. Mack was a piece of her life that Shay goddamn well deserved, that she refused to feel guilty about, but she wasn’t about to go making him into something he wasn’t. And he wasn’t the man who held her when she couldn’t go on—because Shay never, ever let herself get to that place.

  “Fuck,” she whispered. Quickly she typed a note back to MitzyD, saying that she was sorry she couldn’t commit to a custom piece at the moment but that she’d be in touch as soon as she was able, and would throw in a 20 percent discount for her patience if she was still interested.

  “Congratulations to your daughter,” she added, and when her throat went a little thick and her eyes watered, she hit Send more savagely than necessary and took a fake drag on her unlit cigarette.

  The Facebook window was still open. There had been three more comments since she last looked. Two more God-be-with-you wishes.

  And one in all caps that read, “HOW DOES IT FEEL NOW, COLLEEN?”

  SHAY LOOKED OVER at Colleen, who slept with her hand on the pillow next to her cheek, prettily, like somebody posing for a mattress ad.

  Her heart was pounding as she clicked over to Nan Terry’s profile. It wasn’t private; Shay was able to view her photos (twenty-two photos in two albums, profile pictures and everything else lumped together) and her posts (infrequent; she played Bubble Safari and Candy Crush and was fond of reposting inspirational pictures) and her friends (124 of them). She was married to Gerald Terry, whose profile was even more sparse. She was mother of Caryssa Terry, age seventeen and a junior at Sudbury High, and Darren Terry, age twenty, attending Massasoit Community College.

  Shay enlarged Darren’s profile picture as much as she could. He was a nice-looking kid with a shock of reddish hair that would mellow to auburn as he aged, a smattering of freckles, and a wide, confident grin.

  And a scar that traced from one temple down past his cheek, ending an inch short of his jaw. It was faint, almost invisible, but as Shay clicked through his pictures it was more apparent in some of them, when his profile was turned toward the camera.

  Shay looked at the time: almost two a.m. She started searching in earnest.

  The motor home was completely silent other than Colleen’s occasional sighs and the wind against the windows. It had stopped snowing, and outside she could catch a glimpse of stars. The cold crept up through the floor, through Shay’s feet, and now and then she tugged the blankets tighter around herself.

  It took nearly half an hour, and dozens of blind alleys and dead ends, before she found it, and it wasn’t in any news item or community posting, but rather in a Facebook post from a kid who’d gone to a high school that apparently had a rivalry with Sudbury High, where both Paul Mitchell and Darren Terry had played football their freshman year. Darren had been moved up to varsity halfway through the season, and Paul, who never made it past the freshman team, wasn’t tagged in any of the same pictures as Darren and wasn’t his friend on Facebook, but apparently they had once known each other.

  In what would have been their junior year, a kid from Medfield wrote a long post that was commented on by dozens of kids from both high schools, in which he talked about an upcoming game between the Sudbury Panthers and the Medfield Warriors.

  There wide receiver can’t block worth shit. Remember when he was a freshman that retard nearly killed him he couldn’t even take him in a fair fight. Paul Mitchell your my hero bro even if you are messed up. Go tell your boyz watch out because the WARRIORS are coming to fuck them up. Oh but dont hit TERRY again I want to take him down myself.

  Adrenaline surged in Shay’s veins. She narrowed her search to the months the boys would have played football their freshman year, tried a variety of search terms. Nothing. Then she turned her attention to the online white pages.

  It was nearly three when she put her coat on and went outside. First she smoked the cigarette, its filter damp and limp from being chewed on. She tossed the butt on the ground and toed snow over it. A truck drove by, trundling slowly, loaded with steel pipe. Shay barely registered the cold against her face.

  She dialed.

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Terry?”

  “Who is this? It’s barely four o’clock in the morning.”

  “I’m really, really sorry to call you like this. I don’t want to intrude on your privacy. But it’s kind of important. Please don’t hang up.”

  There was a silence. Shay imagined the woman in her fancy New England home, clutching her nightgown around her, heart pounding from the middle-of-the-night ringing of the phone. She took a breath. She was about to lie, to betray. But it was the morning of the thirteenth day since her boy went missing, so Shay made herself not care. It wasn’t the hardest thing she’d done by a long shot.

  “My name is Anne Hutchins. I’m calling because my son Ben works with Paul Mitchell in Lawton, North Dakota.” Betting that Nan Terry wouldn’t know a California area code when she saw one. Betting that she’d be unable to hang up when she heard what Shay said next. When her voice broke, she wasn’t entirely faking. “Ben’s in the hospital. He’s beat up bad, Mrs. Terry. My husband and I... we just want to know what happened.”

  “Oh, my God. He’s done it again. Oh, God, I knew this would happen.”

  “Done what?”

  “I... can’t talk about it. Look. That boy is dangerous, that’s all I’ll say. I’m legally obligated not to talk about it.”

  Icy dread took hold of Shay. “Please. I won’t repeat what you tell me to anyone, I swear it. I’m just trying to understand what happened. I won’t mention your name, I won’t—”

  “If I talk to you, it’s completely off the record, do you understand? If anyone contacts me, if you get a lawyer, I’m going to deny I ever talked to you—”

  The woman’s anguish was clear even two thousand miles away. “I understand. Please, just tell me what you can.”

  “When my son was a freshman in high school, he said something to Paul Mitchell in the locker room after football practice one night. There were three of them getting dressed, and the other boy started it. He was making fun of Paul because of his dyslexia, calling him a retard, but it was only when Darren joined in that Paul snapped. What Darren said, it was a stupid thing to say, but you know how boys are at that age. I mean, God, they were all of fifteen. Darren’s not a mean kid, and the other kid started it, but Paul came at him with both fists and kept pounding Darren even after he was down, and then he switched to kicking him. With his cleats. There was blood everywhere, I saw the pictures. By the time the other guy pulled Paul off of him, Darren was already unconscious. He lost three teeth, his jaw was broken, his eye socket was fractured, his face—oh, God, if it had gone to trial and they’d let the jury see those photos, they would have sent Paul away. If he’d be
en eighteen...”

  Shay couldn’t speak. Paul Mitchell, who her son had befriended, who he had called his best friend, was more than just the sweet-faced, shy boy in the picture his mother carried. He was capable of violence, and he’d lost control before.

  “The lawyers laid it out for us. With Paul being a minor, we didn’t have a chance, especially because the school had just started this huge antibullying campaign and there were a number of kids and teachers willing to testify that Darren and the other kid, who was way worse, had a clear and demonstrable habit of taunting Paul. And the Mitchells had their lawyers, I swear to you, before you could blink. They threw money at this like... and the other boy’s father was out of work and they didn’t have money for a defense, and Darren ended up needing some therapy that our insurance company wouldn’t cover. My husband... the Mitchells’ lawyer was offering to pay for everything, all his therapy, they promised to make Paul go to anger management and quit the football team, and the school worked it out so the boys would never even have class in the same wing.”

  “Sweet holy Mary,” Shay said weakly. “Did he ever do it again? To anyone else?”

  “Not that I know of, but who can say? His mom watched him like a hawk after that. Look. I’m not saying, you know... I mean, it’s her son, what’s she going to do? But she never contacted us, never an apology. My husband says we have to let it go, because of all the legal stuff, but I’ve seen her at Safeway, she turns her cart around and walks away, she won’t even look at me. First her son almost kills Darren and then it’s my fault?”

  “I... appreciate you telling me this. I won’t mention your name.”

  “Thank you. Can I ask, what set him off this time?”

  Shay thought fast. She couldn’t afford to raise any more suspicions. “My son was friends with a boy named Taylor. They were popular on the rig, kind of the ringleaders. I guess they pulled some sort of harmless prank on Paul, and he reacted badly.”

  “Yeah, that sounds about right,” Nan said bitterly. “Look, I’m as sorry as the next person for the kids who don’t fit in. But it doesn’t make it the fault of the ones who do, does it?”

  AT SEVEN THIRTY, Colleen was wondering if it was too early to wake Shay. She’d already made up the bed and packed her bag for the showers and tried to read the book she’d brought, but she’d been up for an hour and a half and hadn’t been able to get through more than a few paragraphs.

  Someone tapped softly at the door. Colleen jumped off the vinyl bench, her heart pounding. She opened the door and found Roland’s girlfriend standing outside, her breath making clouds in the sunless morning air.

  “Nora, right?” she said. “For heaven’s sake, come in, it’s freezing out there.”

  “I’m so sorry to just show up like this. Oh—I didn’t realize—”

  Colleen followed her gaze. Shay was propping herself on her elbow, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

  “No, please, it’s okay. Shay, Nora’s here. Roland’s girlfriend.”

  “Uh-huh.” Shay’s voice was throaty from sleep.

  Colleen shut the door behind Nora and they sat at the dinette table. Colleen was glad she’d tidied up, but the close quarters smelled of sleep and morning breath, and Shay’s clothes lay on the floor where she’d shucked them off.

  “I’ll only stay a minute. It’s just that there’s something I think you should know. I didn’t hardly sleep last night, trying to figure out if I should tell you.”

  “If you can help us, I don’t care if you move in.” Shay pulled the covers up over her shoulders, her hair clinging to them, charged with static electricity.

  “Look, Roland doesn’t know I’m here.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Actually... there are a few things Roland doesn’t know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Okay, look. Before I explain, because you’re going to think I’m a horrible person, there’s a few things I have to tell you. My ex is out of work, and Roland sends just about every penny home to his ex after he pays his bills. You know I don’t make much money teaching. And I can’t switch jobs, not if I want to be there for Ellie. So a while back, when my rent went up almost double what it was, one of the other teachers, someone I’ve got close to, told me about a way to make some money.”

  She dropped her gaze to her lap, her hands twisted together tightly. “Her husband works on the rigs too. What happened was, he got pulled into this mess where a guy was threatening to sue the company for an injury he said was caused by failure to install the right equipment. My friend’s husband went on record saying that wasn’t the case. He was just telling the truth. But then... well, a guy came out to their house and handed him an envelope. Said the company really valued his integrity and wanted to thank him, and to let them know if there were any other... areas of dissatisfaction where the company could do a better job of meeting its workers’ needs. Right? Like, using really vague language. And in that envelope, there was five thousand dollars in cash. Well, he wasn’t stupid. He knew exactly what they were looking for. He gave over a couple of names, a few details.”

  “You’re saying that he turned in his coworkers who were... what, threatening to sue?”

  “Not even that, necessarily, just the ones who were potential problems, either because they complained a lot at work, or talked about filing complaints or contacting lawyers or the news. Anything, really. They wanted to know who the ‘troublemakers’ were”—she made air quotes—“and then they handled it. My friend said the guys her husband turned in ended up being let go before too long. They just got jobs on other companies’ rigs, but management didn’t care because they weren’t their problem anymore.”

  “So you’re saying that Roland—”

  “Not Roland,” Nora said fiercely. “Me. I made the call. I met the guy in a Starbucks over in Minot and all I had to do was pass along a few names that Roland mentioned to me. He promised that nothing would go on their permanent record, that there were a dozen different ways they could be let go and they’d be working again in a week, somewhere else. I made seven thousand dollars in one afternoon. That’s how I paid for Christmas and caught up on my rent. I even flew my mom up here.”

  Her voice had taken on a defiant edge. Colleen waited for Shay to blast her for what she’d done, but Shay merely watched her, twisting her hair around her finger.

  “Look, I’d never have done it if I thought anyone would get hurt. And honestly, I don’t think the company’s doing anything, you know, real bad. I don’t believe they would ever hurt any of their employees, for what it’s worth. But I thought you should know, okay?”

  She was already standing up, tugging her purse strap over her shoulder.

  “I... thank you for coming to us,” Colleen said.

  “You’re not going to say anything to Roland, are you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Good. Thank you. And I... I’ll be praying for you.”

  As the door closed, Shay lay back down and pulled the covers up over her head, her voice muffled as she said, “Amazing how easy it is to buy people these days.”

  SHAY SAID LITTLE during their drive to the truck stop, breakfast, the wait for the showers. Colleen figured they both were entitled to silence when talking didn’t suit them, but when they finally were on the road again, headed for the rig, she couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “Is there anything I can do? Do you want to talk about it?”

  Shay said nothing, staring straight ahead at the road. The sky was a vivid, clear blue and the sun blazed down on the wintry landscape, softening the top layer of snow despite the temperature hovering around ten degrees. Her mouth seemed tight, her profile especially tense. Colleen was about to ask a second time when Shay let the car drift over on the shoulder, braking slowly until they came to a stop. The landscape was eerily uniform on all sides: endless rolling fields of white, weed stubble poking through here and there, snow crusted with grit piled at the edge of the row.

  Colleen was d
igging in her purse for tissues, getting ready to offer comfort, when Shay said coldly, “I know about Darren Terry.”

  Darren Terry. The name was daggers, ice picks, chain saws. Colleen had worked so hard to bury the memory that its invocation was like a rock shattering glass, leaving shards everywhere. Neither she nor Andy had spoken that name aloud since they met in their attorney’s office to countersign the settlement four years ago.

  They had talked about moving away from Sudbury, and sometimes, when Colleen glimpsed Nan Terry driving around town in her little BMW or running along the Blue Hills trail, she still wondered if it would have been better if they had. But that would have meant forcing Paul to start over at another school for his sophomore year and finding all new therapists and a new psychiatrist, just as he’d finally gotten comfortable with the current ones. And besides, no one knew, besides the Mitchells and the Terrys and the lawyers and the school administration, which was the whole point.

  No one knew. But Shay, who had known her less than forty-eight hours, was staring at her with revulsion and fear, just like Nan Terry had looked at her at the Safeway last fall the one time Colleen broke her own rule and didn’t make the trip over to the Norfolk grocery, just in case.

  “How—”

  “Fuck how,” Shay snapped, cutting her off. “Tell me exactly what Paul did and why.”

  “He...” Colleen’s mouth moved, but nothing came out. How many times had she had this conversation with herself? How many times had she told herself this story in an attempt to find some new angle, some softening, some abatement—to soothe herself?

  “Paul is severely dyslexic, and he has ADHD. And he also used to suffer from oppositional defiant disorder.”

  “Oppositional what?”

  In that word was reflected all the skepticism Colleen herself had ever felt, every bit of Andy’s resistance, every conversation with Paul’s teachers through the years when she pleaded for a little extra understanding, a second chance, a do-over.