by Lisa Unger
I thought a moment about how I could get there, since my bike was still at Luke’s. I could use Beck’s bike; she wouldn’t care. I went into her room, which I knew had been tossed by the cops and her parents. Her mother had found her weed and confiscated it. Her dad found a pack of condoms in her makeup bag. Jesus Christ, he’d said softly. At least she’s being safe, Lynne said, and then started to cry. The only time we ever learn anything about our daughter is when she disappears. Really, I thought. Is it news to you that Beck sleeps around?
I felt bad for them. But I couldn’t answer any of their questions. Was she seeing anyone? Where would she go if she was angry or upset or trying to get even with them? She’d been talking about California over the summer, they said. She was thinking about looking for an internship at a movie studio. Might she have taken off for L.A.?
Our relationship had been strained this year; the truth was, we hadn’t been talking very much except to argue. And the first conversation we’d had since break was a fight. I had no idea what was in her head. I told them as much. Only Lynne didn’t quite seem to accept this. There was something narrow and untrusting about her gaze. I avoided her eyes.
Most people don’t see me. But there are always those that do, usually mothers. They see what I am trying to hide, even if they’re not quite sure what it is they’re seeing. I can tell by the way they can’t pry their eyes away. With my innocuous, androgynous wardrobe, my slight frame, my plain face, I usually just blend. Neither boys nor girls usually give me a second look. But sometimes, the sensitive, the keenly observant … they see me.
I slid open the narrow drawer in Beck’s desk and found the bike-lock key in the little corner pocket. I was slipping it out when something else in there caught my eye. I tugged on the corner of a piece of paper, a printout of a news story she’d obviously found online. I read the headline and I literally felt a pain in my chest. I thought of that bag of hers, which was now in the hands of the police, along with her laptop, journal, cell phone. What else was in there?
I folded up the piece of paper and shoved it angrily in my pocket. I could still smell her in that room, her perfume and hair gel. Why did she have to search and pry? Why did she want to know me so badly that she had to dig up the past? How was it possible to love someone and hate her at the same time? I was thinking this as I bundled up and headed outside. It was stupid; I knew this. But I had to get out of that room, out of my head. The scavenger hunt was the only thing I actually wanted to think about. Sad, I know. Maybe more than sad. Sick.
The cold air bit at my cheeks and any flesh that was exposed—my ankles, my wrists. I unlocked Beck’s bike, which she always kept right next to mine on the rack outside the dorm entrance. Everything was clattering—the bicycles, my teeth, my bones. It was so cold that the world seemed made of ice, everything brittle and wanting to break into pieces.
I kept looking around as I struggled with the lock. I kept expecting to see Margie the dorm mom come to the door, or Ainsley run out panicked and bleary-eyed. But it was dark and deserted.
As the lock fell away in my hand, I felt a shiver move through me. I lifted her bike off the rack and thought about Beck. Would she become one of those lost girls? A 48 Hours Mystery or a Dateline story of the week? Where no one ever knew what really happened to her? Or would they find her broken body somewhere like Elizabeth? Or her bones a decade from now? I just wanted to hear her voice, for this all to be over.
Look, I can’t keep going like this.
What are you talking about, Beck? Just leave me the fuck alone.
You know what I’m talking about. Don’t you? Come on. Don’t you? I had never seen her cry before.
As I rode toward the “haunted” cemetery, my thoughts turned to my mother and how I don’t believe in ghosts. Because if anyone was able to haunt another human being, my mother would have haunted me. She never would have left me to live this life alone, even with the things I’ve done. I know that about her. She would have done anything, even in the afterlife, to protect me.
We are all very clear on what my mother would have wanted. I’m not even sure how, because she wasn’t a person to ask for much. Sky, my lawyer, knows that she wanted me to help people, to make my own way. My aunt Bridgette knows that my mother would have wanted us to be close; she would have wanted Bridgette to love me as her own child. (And she’s trying, she really is.) And I know my mother wanted me to find a way to be happy, to protect myself and stay safe. She would not have wanted me to be on my bike in the freezing cold, riding to an abandoned graveyard on the outskirts of a weird upstate New York village. I didn’t need a medium to figure that out.
But my mother was dead, and everything about her—her soul, her essence, her personality, everything that made her who she was—went dark the day she died. She was not floating around in the ether, or living in heaven with God. She was dust in the wind, as are we all. At least I hope she’s gone; I couldn’t bear to think she was up there, watching. What would she think of me?
I whipped down the dark road from the school. Somehow miraculously avoiding any icy spots that would have sent me careening. Up to this point, I had successfully managed not to think about my father reaching out to Dr. Cooper. But thoughts of him came unbidden as I flew through town. I hadn’t talked to him in five years. After his last appeal was denied, Bridgette pressured me to find some closure with him. Not for him, for you.
But it was his hands that kept me away. I couldn’t bear to look at his long, strong fingers, his wide, square palms. I didn’t want to think of them on my mother, on me. I didn’t want to think of what I’d seen those hands do. They were white and roped with thick blue veins that wound up his pale, dark-haired arms. Just the thought of them made me want to retch.
But to appease Bridgette, I took a call from him about a year after his conviction. He sounded so happy, so relieved to hear my voice. I’m your father and I love you. Nothing, not even this, can change that. I just want you to understand that I’m sorry for all the ways I’ve failed you. I want you to know that you don’t have to be alone. And then he told me something else I didn’t want to hear.
I don’t think I said anything. I just muttered: okay and yeah, maybe I know. I just kept thinking about all the things he’d done to my mother. What did they expect from me? Did they want me to forgive? In real life, that doesn’t happen. People don’t forgive things like that. They don’t find peace. It’s pure bullshit. When something unspeakable happens, or when you do something unspeakable, it changes you. It takes you apart and reassembles you. You are a Frankenstein of circumstance, and the parts never fit back quite right and the life you live is a stolen one. You don’t deserve to walk among the living, and you know it.
In the end, I think you’ll be glad you spoke to him, said Bridgette uncertainly as I wept with my face in her lap. But that wasn’t the end. It takes the state a good long time to get ready to press the button. It’s a kind of institutional procrastination. Everyone keeps delaying and waiting. It’s as if even the enforcers of the death penalty know how totally fucked up it is. They keep waiting for a loophole, a pardon, a stay of execution. They keep staring at the phone that never rings. But time was running out for my dad. Knowing this, I felt like someone had put a bag over my head and I was running out of air.
The cemetery loomed ahead and I slowed my speed, watching for the ghosts that I knew didn’t exist. The clouds above had cleared and the night was dark blue, and the stars seemed so, so small and stingy with their light.
I pulled the little headlight off of Beck’s bike and cast it ahead of me. Its beam fell on the overgrown cemetery with its skewed, weatherworn headstones. No, I was not afraid of the dead. It was the living that filled me with fear and anxiety. I leaned Beck’s bike against the fence, and my footfalls were impossibly loud on the rocky path.
At then end of the trail, the beam of the headlight shone dimly on the caretaker’s shack. I had seen its roof from the road. But coming up on it like this, in the dark, it
looked even sadder, more ramshackle than I had expected. It seemed like a pretty grim place to come to work every night, and a perfect place to off yourself.
The windows were smeared with some chalky-white substance, one of them broken in the corner. Did they leave it like this? So that it looked more haunted? According to the article I’d read, there hadn’t been a caretaker on the premises since the suicide. Not surprising. I tried the knob and the door was locked. It was a newer lock, though. The old key I had didn’t fit. I felt the wood groaning and bending beneath my feet. If I were heavier, I imagined I could step right through the wet and splintering slats.
I walked around the side to see if there was another door, and in the rear of the building there was. As the wind pushed the leaves and litter around on the ground, I slid the key in the lock and it turned with a satisfying click. The door pushed open with a haunted-house squeal.
Standing in the doorway, I heard rustling, tiny critter feet shuttling away from the noise and the small amount of light that washed in from outside. I shone the light, and looked into the single long room.
There was a desk with a tilted lamp. A corkboard dominated the far wall and was littered with frayed and wrinkled pieces of paper that had faded and grown old. Whatever announcements, and to-do lists, and schedules that had been tacked up there had long passed into oblivion. The white computer sat abandoned and way too big, like dinosaur bones. The eternal office chair had an air of expectancy, waiting patiently to bear someone’s weight again.
I moved inside, feeling my heart start to pump a little bit. I’d have to be a robot not to be a little scared. I saw a frayed line of police tape, but no telltale stains, no shotgun blast in the wall. Just a room that was empty and had been empty and would, it seemed, be empty for the foreseeable future.
I looked around, shining my light in the dark corners and under the desk and into the storage closet. There was nothing here. Luke was probably at home having a good laugh. This, no doubt, was some joke. Or was I missing something?
I still hadn’t figured out the biggest part of the puzzle: why Harvey Greenwald had ended his life, and what it had to do with me. It had to have something to do with me, didn’t it? Luke was running some kind of weird agenda, right? Because otherwise, as a game, this pretty much sucked. Was it just going to be some lame haunted-house hop? He said it was going to be a history lesson. Is that all it was?
I was about to leave when my flashlight caught something. A bright white envelope tacked on the board among the yellowed and faded detritus. It had my name on it in the child’s printed hand, which was now familiar to me. I walked over quickly and grabbed it down. Instead of ripping it open, I stuck it inside my jacket. I suddenly had a strong urge to get the hell out of there. But as I moved toward the door, I saw a large dark form pass in front of the side window. There was someone outside.
12
Dear Diary,
He’s too small. That’s the big problem of the moment. In his preschool class, he’s by far the smallest child, though he’s the oldest in his class. He weighs about twenty-five pounds and is about thirty-four inches tall, well under the normal range. And that in and of itself is not a big problem, though neither my husband nor I come from small people. It’s just that, up until his last visit, he was progressing normally and suddenly, now, he isn’t.
It might be hormonal. A hormone deficiency, says the doctor. They toss words and phrases around that land like blows to the kidneys. She started talking about human growth hormone and the pituitary gland, but how it was too early to be alarmed, and she prescribed a battery of tests. But I wasn’t really listening. I was just thinking: Will nothing ever be easy for him? Will things always be hard?
His size is not the only problem. His teacher requested a conference last week. That, too, is a bit of a blur. He’s not very social, she said. Meaning that he avoids the other children, and they avoid him. He has a hard time finding a “work buddy.” He doesn’t smile. And then, of course, the tantrums. How disruptive they are, how violent they have become. Have we thought about having him tested? There might be some (she paused to choose her words carefully) challenges. Twice she referred to him as having special needs.
He was a high-demand infant, my husband said as if this explained something. But the teacher just nodded uncertainly.
The truth is, if there is not some improvement, we can’t handle him here, she continued. We care about him; you know that. But this is a small, private school and we’re not equipped to deal with— Again, she stopped short and searched for a gentle word. But she never did come up with one.
I found myself thinking that she was so pretty and young, and I felt bad for her, even as I envied and resented her. How nice, just to be able to send someone else’s problem home with them. It was a Montessori environment, small and intimate. The children worked together. There were three strong teachers and lots of order even within the free structure of the classroom. And while this is such a benefit to the children, when one child is causing continual disruptions, it hurts everyone. It drains our resources and leaves less of our attention for the other children. Surely, she said, you can understand that.
And I do. I wouldn’t want my child’s needs neglected because there was a problem child in his lovely, happy little classroom. There, I said it. A problem child. That’s what he is, isn’t he?
Silence is the fourth member of our family. He comes with us everywhere, enfolds us, shushes in our ears. And he is with us in the car on the way home. Neither of us knows what to say. Our marriage is strained to the breaking point. Every conversation devolves into arguments, and no topic is safe. There is so much pent-up anger, resentment, and sadness that any kind of heat brings it to a quick and roiling boil. Last night it was dinner. Whose turn was it to cook? Our rage at each other overflows the pot in a heartbeat. I am ashamed to say that there has been violence—a vase tossed (me), a hard push against the wall (him). And it’s strange to say that there’s a certain relief that comes in the fighting; it’s the only way we connect now. Rage is the new sex. Bitterness stands in for passion.
Is it wrong to say that our child has destroyed our relationship? It probably is. But I’ve earned so many of the bad mommy badges, that one more can’t make much difference. And it is all my fault; I know this. I have seen it over and over again, that look on the faces of health professionals, other parents, even my own sister. Sure, it masquerades as understanding, compassion, a desire to help. But really? It’s judgment, plain as day.
Because everyone knows that a real woman, a good mother, has a healthy and happy baby. And a bad mommy has a troubled child who cries and can’t sleep through the night, who simultaneously rejects her and won’t let her out of his sight. The child of a bad mommy doesn’t get invited to playdates and Kindermusik and Mommy and Me yoga classes. She has a scent—it’s fatigue and unhappiness—and all the other mommies can smell it and stay away. What if it’s contagious? What if my child starts to rage instead of playing the tambourine? What if he throws a book that hits another child in the face and shows no reaction at all? What if he arches his back and screeches when I try to help him to do baby downward dog?
And they look at you, with that look, trying to figure out what exactly you are doing wrong and hoping that they’re not doing it, too. And I want to tell them that I am just like them, doing all the same things and making the same mistakes. But silence holds his hand over my mouth. And I just walk away, don’t go back to yoga, look for yet another pediatrician, try another activity. We don’t need anyone, I think. We’re better off alone. But of course that’s not true.
“What’s wrong with him?” my husband asks softly. Outside the day is bright and beautiful. We have the windows down and I can smell blossoming lilac. It was not the question I expected. Usually he rails against the teachers and the doctors, or launches accusations against me. You coddle him. You always give in when he cries. You let him into our bed. You don’t discipline him.
“I don’
t know,” I said. “I really don’t.”
And I don’t. For all my self-blame, there’s something inside me that knows he came to us this way. We didn’t do this. I say as much, and I see a single tear travel down my husband’s face. I have never seen him cry, not even at his father’s funeral. My heart breaks for about the millionth time.
When we get home, the phone is ringing and I pick it up. It’s Mrs. Peaches, the head of the school.
“I have a list,” she says. “Of more appropriate places for your son. Should I e-mail it to you? Can I make some calls for you?”
“Oh,” I said. “The teacher, she didn’t say he couldn’t come back. Just that if he didn’t improve—”
“Don’t misunderstand,” she said quickly. “We’re not punishing him. It’s just that he needs an amount of attention that we can’t give him.”
“So,” I said. “He can’t come back?”
I could feel my husband looking at me, feel my stomach getting queasy with upset. I loved that school, everything about it, from the beautifully landscaped grounds to the bright, colorful classrooms to the stables.
“It might be best if he didn’t,” she said. Then, “I’m sorry. His teacher, I’m afraid, didn’t make it clear how urgent we consider the situation. For the other children, especially.”
I hung up in a fog, stumbled over to the couch. I think my husband murmured some words of comfort. We’ll figure it out, he said. We’ll be all right. But tomorrow I knew he’d go to work. And I’d be home alone with our son, figuring it out alone. Usually, I would make some kind of slicing comment. But today I didn’t have it in me. Maybe because I didn’t, he sat down beside me. We were alone, my son and my mother at her place for the day while we dealt with the school. There, on the couch, for the first time in months, we made love. It was sad and slow, desperate. I was grateful to realize I still loved him, and I could see he still loved me.