by Ann Minnett
Zane’s stinky closet was a microcosm of his room. Crammed with toys from his childhood, a few shirts drooped off wire hangers by a sleeve. Boots and gym shoes littered the floor. Lark pulled aside a long wool duster he had bought at the thrift store to reveal the sword leaning into a dark corner. He hadn't tried to hide it. Did he expect her to do nothing?
She pushed hangers to the left and right. A quick search on tiptoes of the shelf above yielded two Hustler Magazines. "That's normal," she reassured herself and ran her fingers blindly along the dusty shelf. She found a box of Transformers and superhero figures behind scarred plastic trophies from grade school. Zane hadn't hidden any of the guns or electronics Jan Hensen described as missing.
She knelt on the rag rug to peek under Zane's bed. "Disgusting." She brushed her hands. "Crap looks like it's been there a while." She stripped the bed and lifted his mattress off the box springs but found nothing there. “What did he do with the rest of the stuff?”
Ransacking her son's room left her shaking with anger and emotionally drained. She’d never invaded his privacy like that. She felt awful yet self-righteous that his actions had forced her into it.
“Your son's a good kid,” she told herself. Was he, really? “He did one stupid thing. Take care of it and move on." Go. Fight. Win. She bounced on the balls of her feet, urging herself toward victory like in her cheerleading days. She broke into an old routine, tame by today’s bump and grind standards. The peppy self-talk failed. Catching sight of herself in the mirror punched all the wind out of her. “You’re ridiculous.” She skipped an imaginary jump rope in place to psych herself for talking to Zane.
She was worried.
Given too much alone time, she usually worried. She and her good friends rarely voiced the elephant in the room since Zane’s birth. Oh once, when Nora broke her ankle and was heavily sedated, she pontificated about their responsibility to ensure Zane grew to be a good man, "What with his gene pool." Had Kirk not witnessed the remark, the three might have confessed their shared fears, but they never spoke of it again. The dormant worry connected the three with sharp wire strung taut and stapled to each heart.
Lark dared to voice, “What if he’s like his father?” Her cool fingers cupped her shoulder where he had grabbed and shoved her.
Her phone rang three times from the depths of her purse, but it cut off before she could scrounge for it. Dee’s number appeared on caller ID. Lark looked out the front window for Dee’s car parked on the side street of the Blue Heron Salon across from the condo. Dee didn’t usually call from work.
A text came through:
Dee: Carnival parade nxt wknd… Great idea for a float
"Not again," Lark mumbled.
Lark: ???
Dee: U me Nora & Lulu. Kirk’s idea
Lark: Not sure
Dee: U need fun! Call tonite
Great. Kirk’s idea was not a selling point. Lark tossed her phone back into her bag. She momentarily wondered what the winter parade float entailed. None of the group had money to spend on lavish costumes. She hid the stolen sword in her closet, gathered up Zane’s bedding, and walked out the back door toward the laundry hut. Clutching his stinky sheets for warmth, she chastised herself for not throwing on a jacket. She hurried inside where a thrumming dryer warmed the air. She tossed his sheets in a washer.
She knew what she had to do.
* * *
In the hour before Zane came home from school, Lark rehearsed, paced, and chain-smoked on the patio. When she spied him through gaps in her weathered fence, she hurried inside to assume a formidable presence facing the door.
Zane barged in and jumped in surprise to see her. "What are you doing here?" He filled the doorway, the bulk due to his two sweatshirts—he refused to wear a coat or jacket in winter. His shoulders broadened wider than his narrow butt.
The term manly wafted across Lark's thoughts, and it made her uneasy. What did she know about raising a young man? What did she know about anything these days? She righted her shoulders. “I finished early. You're letting the cold in.” Mustn’t let him see her lack of confidence. “Close the door and let's talk."
Zane took his sweet time to shrug off his back pack and strap it over the nearest hook on her hall tree. He then pulled at the back of his neck to remove both sweatshirts over his head at once.
She marveled at the man's movement, taking off a shirt from the collar. She had never removed a shirt like that and wondered where Zane learned it. He must have seen older boys do it at school. The loneliness of sole responsibility for him ragged her breath. Contrary to expectations, Zane shook out the sweatshirts and hung them up, too. Her roughened hands cartwheeled the Marlboro Lights pack while waiting for him to complete his passive-aggressive foot dragging.
Yes, they'd been in therapy, both together and separately.
Zane pried off his shoes toe to heel and coughed his way to the dinette table. Gagging coughs for her benefit.
"I get it," she said. "You hate my smoking." She pointed to a chair. "First, I want to apologize for last night." Lark tapped the rim of a plate of Ritz Crackers with peanut butter, his favorite snack in elementary school.
Zane didn’t react to her apology. Rather, he disappeared around the corner into the kitchen to pull a can of Dr. Pepper out of the fridge. He sauntered back and, instead of sitting normally in a chair, heaved one leg over the chair back and landed on the seat in a squat. He smirked, pleased with himself. "Thanks." He popped a cracker into his mouth. “Last night?”
What a performance.
“I regret bringing that man here. You won’t see him again.”
He tilted his head back, looked down his nose and said, “You’re an adult.”
She had practiced not explaining that Zane had made her so damn mad that she just lost it. “I am the adult, and I should have known better.”
Her once sweet son sneered.
She resisted the urge to slap him. Instead, she said, "Tell me what happened at the Hensens." She sat down across from him and danced her cigarette pack on the table. "How did you get in? Get past the alarm code?"
He wouldn't look at her.
"Zane! Answer me."
He gulped from the can, looking at her over his knuckles. He finally said, "Your keys," and belched.
She suspected he had stolen her business key ring, each house key labeled with the client's initials for security. She left the keys in the hall tree drawer when not working because they weighed down her purse.
Her voice broke. "When?"
After a moment, he said, "Really? When?"
"When."
"All right." Once he straightened out, he sat a lot taller in his seat. The menace looked down at her from across the small table. "Curling?” he said as if to an idiot. “Last week?"
"I don't follow." She got up, opened the slider onto the deck a couple of inches, and lit up.
"You went curling at The Ice House with your friends, and Mason and I came along to hang out?"
She nodded, remembering, and blew smoke out the narrow opening. She’d been happy he wanted to come along.
He shrugged. "I copped your keys. Their house is practically across the street—"
"From the Ice House? It's a mile away."
"Do you want me to talk?" Zane's arched eyebrows belied his anxiety. But look at his mouth. His mouth shouted arrogance with pooched lips and teeth lightly clenched. His braces glinted from dim light hanging overhead.
Lark recognized her own disgusted expression reflected back at her. "Keep going."
"We drove over there. You said they were out of town." He shrugged twice. "We went in just to goof around. I told him about the old stuff, and Mason wanted to see it."
"Mason wanted to see their stuff?" She threw the butt outside and slammed the slider closed. "So, you broke into their home?"
"We didn't break in. We had the key and your handy alarm codes."
Lark slammed both hands on the dinette table and shouted at his face, "
The house was vandalized and things were stolen."
He kept quiet, but jittery fingers crinkled the drink can until she snatched it away and threw it over the breakfast bar and into the kitchen sink.
"I showed him the swords over the fireplace downstairs. You know?"
Tears welled in the corners of her eyes. Don’t cry! "Of course I know about the damn swords. I dust them every goddam week." She never had to polish them because Jack Hensen allowed no one to lay hands on his prized swords.
"We just kinda goofed around with 'em." He squirmed.
"Goofed."
"You know, pretended we were pirates, fighting?" He blushed, a man-child embarrassed by playing with the swords, but unashamed of breaking in.
"Is that how the cushions got stabbed?" She sank into a chair across from him.
"At first."
She waited him out, tensed like a coiled spring ready to pounce.
"We fought up the stairs, like in the Princess Bride?" Zane looked at her then, but quickly lowered his head. He'd had his own copy of the movie for years and even now would sneak up on her and say, "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."
She sucked in a breath, so fearful for the child she loved.
"Anyway," Zane said, chin slumping into his chest, "something fell, and we got carried away, and someone stabbed a pillow, and stuffing flew out or something, and uh, we sorta stabbed some others, and…"
She struggled between shaking sense into his stupid expression and comforting the remorseful child. "These people trust me, Zane. The Hensens were good to you last summer, paying you twenty dollars an hour, for gods sakes, to clear debris and dig out their flower beds." She unfurled a paper napkin on the table and blew her nose. "They trust me, Z—"
"Don't you think I know it?"
"Were you high? Because that has got to stop, and now."
Head shaking, he said, "We got high after."
She bolted out of her chair. "Jesus, Zane. Getting high after makes it okay?" Her fists balled at her sides. Her rigid body swayed like a skyscraper in a stiff wind. She had never been this angry. "What about the guns and the flat screen? Where are they?"
He sucked in air, and then rested his head in the crook of an arm on the table. He wanted to hide his tears? His distress reassured her that he might have a conscience.
"One more time, what about the guns and electronics?"
When he looked up, purple-blotches spread across his sad face. The nose, growing faster than the rest of his features, dripped. He wiped it across his t-shirt sleeve. "I didn't take that stuff. We both took a sword. That's all."
"Then who stole the guns?"
He shook his head.
"I don't believe you."
"No, really." He became animated, gesturing with his long arms, basketball player's arms and big hands. "Really, Mom. I asked Mason about it, and he doesn't know either."
She placed both fists on her hips. "You think I'm that gullible?"
"I swear, Mom. I didn't take anything but the sword." His crackling voice boomed so loud that Lark checked to be sure she had closed the patio door.
"You expect me to believe that someone else happened to break into the Hensen place after you broke in, and these other thieves stole TVs and guns and who knows what else?"
"I didn't do it, Mom."
"Then Mason must have come back on his own." She dug out her phone to call Mason’s parents.
Zane lunged at her. "Wait! You can't do that. You know what his dad will do."
She hesitated. Mason's dad beat on both his sons. Mason had spent many nights on her couch after a family brawl but would never let her report the abuse.
"All Mason did was show the sword to Mick when he got home."
The whole town knew older brother Mick's reputation. He'd drifted in and out of drug programs, worked construction off and on. He probably dealt drugs.
"Doesn’t he work over in the North Dakota oil patch?"
"Laid off and got back last week."
"Strung out?"
Zane nodded while having an epiphany, “I'll bet Mick went back and stole that stuff."
"But you broke in and did damage."
"I know."
"I've got the sword you stole." She thought she’d be afraid to confront him, but she had the upper hand.
He stood quickly, puffed out his chest and transformed into the man who threatened her. His shoulders looked padded. But she stared him down, and he deflated before her eyes. He shoved the heels of his palms into his beautiful eye sockets. She’d love to just once be the good cop, to tug away the pressure from those eyes and comfort him. Be gentle with yourself, she wanted to tell both Zane and herself, too. Instead, her spine stiffened as she knew it must.
“What are you going to do?" He wiped fingers across his runny nose and then on his jeans.
"We're taking the sword back to the Hensens tonight and telling them the whole story." Her neck heated up, turning itchy with hives. Her armpits prickled.
"I can't."
"Yes, you can. I'll go with you. But you have to tell them everything. Is there anything else I should know?"
He shook his head. "But I have to give Mason a heads-up about what's goin' down."
"And as much as I hate it, I've got to talk to his parents."
"Call his mom," Zane pleaded. "Not his dad. His dad will beat the shit out of him if he finds out."
"Zane, he's going to find out. The whole damn town is going to find out."
* * *
T Lark and Zane arrived at Mason's house a couple miles east of Whitefish at seven that night. One lone flood light illuminated the exterior of a ramshackle shed on their left, and a lamp shone in a large window on a part of the house sheathed in Tyvek for the addition in progress. She timed their visit when the volatile family might be calm, after dinner yet before anyone got drunk. They came to pick up the second sword and possibly Mason, if his mother hadn't changed her mind.
Mason's dad answered the door.
"Hey, Zane," he said and nodded stoically at Lark.
"Mr. Eidsvoldt. Dan." She paused, her pounding heart beating breath right out of her lungs. Dan Eidsvoldt scared the hell out of her. "Mason has a sword that belongs to one of my clients."
"I don't know nothing about no sword." He stepped down to the porch, and Lark retreated a foot. Zane remained on the steps behind her. Eidsvoldt's leathered face and scowl intimidated them both.
She said, "Zane and Mason each took a sword, and we," she gestured toward Zane whose eyes had never been so round, "are going to give them back."
Eidsvoldt grunted. His thick arms crossed his chest. His menace grew as they spoke. His belligerent gawk scanned her from bare head to over-sized scarf to flat chest to groin and back up to her hair. He grimaced a smile.
A speaker at the Sister House had encouraged the battered residents there to "stand in your power." How? Plant your feet, take a breath, and slide your shoulders down your back. Her dubious audience had practiced the pose without conviction, but Lark had internalized the message. Her throat tightened, but she stood in her power and assumed her best bitch face.
"I hoped Mason would go with us, and of course you and your wife are welcome to join us."
"Welcome to join you?"
"Because we're going to tell the Hensens the truth."
"You do that… Lark." He used her name like a dagger.
Hot prickles ran up her neck and into her scalp. Run! Grab Zane's hand and escape this awful man.
Mason's dreadful father opened the glass storm door and reached around inside. He pulled out the sword and let it clatter onto the curling wood slats of his porch. His insolence contrasted with Jack Hensen's caressing this sword with white cotton gloves.
"Zane gave my kid that sword," Dan Eidsvoldt said, "and we don't want it."
She retrieved the sword by the cold blade and hurried away. Zane beat her to the car. After they settled and locked the doors, she placed the sword
across her back seat on top of the one she had wrapped in a dish towel at home. Her chest burned from holding her breath. Zane's complexion had paled to gray, his features hinting of middle age in dim porch light.
She started the engine, but Zane's hand stopped hers from shifting into reverse. "Scary dude," he said. They gripped hands, having survived Mason's dad, but just part way through their ordeal.
"We're doing the right thing, Zane. You'll see."
If he believed her, he didn't show it. Both were trembling when she started the engine.
Lark had called ahead, so the Hensens expected her, but not Zane. It felt odd parking at the front steps, ascending to the deep wrap-around porch, and ringing the doorbell.
Jan opened the beveled glass door. "Lark, is everything all right?" When she saw Zane, she added, "Why hello there. The whole family is here."
Without thinking, Lark removed her boots inside the threshold, so Zane pried his off, too.
"Oh, don't bother with that," Jan said too late. She motioned toward the foyer tiles. "My cleaning lady comes tomorrow afternoon, right?" Her smile faded, realizing that her joke had fallen flat. "Have a seat in here." They rarely used this cozy sitting area off the foyer for more than greeting guests before moving to more spacious areas of the home. Lark subdued her bitterness that her son had done these people wrong. The Hensens were good to her, and she genuinely liked Jan.
"Jan, we'd like to speak with Jack as well."
"Jack! Lark's here with her son," Jan shouted and more quietly stated, "I've forgotten your name."
He cleared his throat. "Zane."
"Zane," she shouted toward the kitchen.
Jack entered, swirling dark liquid in a rock crystal tumbler. He remained standing. Jan kept those glasses in the left side open shelving above the bar in the den. It gleamed because Lark polished it after washing each by hand. The dishwasher left spots and cracked the rims.
"What's that?" Jack pointed his drink in Zane's direction.