Grace

by T. Greenwood

  “Hey,” she said as she sat down.

  “Hey,” Trevor said.

  As he reached into his backpack and pulled out his folder, he suddenly realized that he’d forgotten his social studies homework at home. Along with the peanut butter sandwich he’d managed to hide from his mother that morning. They were both sitting on the kitchen counter. He felt sick. He was going to have to try to explain this to Mrs. O’Brien, and she was probably going to send him to see Mrs. Cross.

  “Did you hear about Mrs. D.?” Angie whispered as Mrs. O’Brien walked into the room.

  “Huh?” Trevor asked. He was starting to sweat.

  “I heard she had a heart attack this weekend,” she said.

  “What?” Trevor asked, his throat swelling shut.

  “Yeah, my mom heard it from someone in her office.”

  Trevor shook his head. His hands were trembling as he opened the empty folder again.

  “The lady lives in the same apartment building. An ambulance came and everything.”

  “Is she ...” Trevor couldn’t get the word out.

  “I don’t know,” Angie said. Her eyes were wide and filling with tears. This brought tears to Trevor’s eyes too. “They’ll probably make an announcement.”

  Mrs. O’Brien took attendance; she had to call Trevor’s name twice, because he couldn’t even manage to get the word “present” past the burr in his throat. Then Mrs. Cross’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Good morning, boys and girls, this is your principal, Mrs. Cross. Today is Tuesday, June eighth. You’ll probably notice that we have heightened security at the school after yesterday’s incident. Please know that your safety is our number one priority. On that note, remember that you are not allowed to bring weapons of any sort to school. This includes pocketknives. They will be confiscated. Additionally, there is now a schoolwide ban on Silly Bandz. If you are caught wearing them or playing with them, they will also be confiscated.”

  Angie rolled her eyes. Trevor took a deep breath.

  “Today is Taco Tuesday in the cafeteria. And Friday night is the final dance of the school year. Now please join us all in the Pledge of Allegiance.”

  Trevor stood up and felt like he might pass out. He walked up to Mrs. O’Brien’s desk and said, “I think I need to go to the nurse.”

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, irritated.

  Trevor shook his head. He couldn’t begin to explain what he was feeling. It was the worst kind of sickness, like something had just died inside him.

  “Fine, here’s a pass,” she said, handing him a paper slip. He rushed out the door into the hallway. He glanced toward the closed door to the nurse’s office and then down toward the art room. He walked quietly down the deserted hallway and peered through the small window into the art room. Mrs. Lutz, the all-purpose substitute, was sitting at Mrs. D.’s desk. He slowly opened the door and peeked in. Mrs. Lutz looked up at him and scowled at him over the top of her reading glasses. “Can I help you?”

  “Is Mrs. D. here?” he asked. His voice sounded like a creaking door.

  “No, I’m sorry. She’s ill. Can I help you?”

  “When will she be back?” he asked.

  Someone shot a paper airplane made with Mrs. D.’s expensive origami paper at him. The pointed part hit him square in the chest. The whole class erupted in laughter, the voices echoing in that cavernous room.

  “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Lutz said. “She’s in the hospital. I don’t know the details.”

  Trevor shook his head and backed out of the classroom, worried that somebody might throw something else at him if he turned his back.

  Back out in the hall, he looked toward the exit. His whole body felt cold and hollow. The hallway was still deserted. No one was out. Not Mrs. Cross. Not even Mr. Douglas. He looked up at the security camera, its red eye peering at him, and then he ran. He ran and ran until he got to the front doors, and then he was outside. Free, running across the parking lot. He ran all the way home before he realized he’d left his backpack at school. Before he realized that as soon as they figured out he was gone, Mrs. Cross would be on the phone with his mother and father. Before he realized this might be the last straw for Mrs. Cross.

  He found the spare key under the garden gnome and let himself inside, feeling like a thief. It was so quiet here with Gracy and his parents gone. Like an empty set on a stage. He sat down at the kitchen table and put his head in his hands. He could feel his heart beating in his temples. He found the phone book and looked up the hospital in the yellow pages. He called the information number, but when the receptionist answered, he hung up. He didn’t even know her first name. He flipped to the white pages and traced his finger down the Ds. Finally he located her, Carmen Dubois. He punched the number into the phone and waited. No answering machine, just the hollow sound of the phone ringing, endlessly.

  He looked at the kitchen clock. Nine thirty. He wondered how long he had before his parents figured out he was gone. Probably a good hour or more. Mrs. O’Brien might not have even figured out he wasn’t at the nurse’s office yet. He decided it would probably be best not to stick around the house, just in case they came looking for him here, and so he grabbed his camera, a handful of Cheez-Its, and a Coke, and locked the house back up. Once he was outside again, he decided to head for the woods.

  He found Gracy’s striped tights still sitting on a rock by the river where she’d left them yesterday when he found the caboose. She must have missed them when she retrieved the rest of her costume. He picked them up and slung them over his shoulder. He thought about the photos he’d taken. He thought about the one of her standing in the river with the flowers in her hair.

  But by the time he got to the trestle, he was beginning to wonder if he had only dreamed the caboose. The foliage seemed to have grown in thicker in only a day, almost completely obscuring the train car, enclosing it. He shoved the handful of crackers into his mouth and followed it with a swig of soda. Then he set the can down, slung his camera over his shoulder, and started to climb up the trestle. When he got to the caboose, he felt his shoulders start to relax. Inside, his eyes took a long time to adjust to the darkness. It smelled of something musty and damp. The light filtered through the leaves surrounding the caboose, casting shadows across the floor. He hung Gracy’s tights up on a nail sticking out of the wall and then lay down on the scratchy mattress, looking through the viewfinder into the light. He put his hand on his chest and felt his heart as it slowly stilled. He thought about Mrs. D. About her heart. He wondered if it was like this, just slowing until it stopped. He tried to put the thoughts of Mrs. D. in some other part of his mind, but the metal teeth clanged down shut tight, ripping into them, tearing them into ribbons.

  “We’ve got a problem, El,” Kurt said.

  Elsbeth was getting her station ready for the morning when Kurt called. She wasn’t scheduled to see any clients for another hour, so she was taking her time, cleaning her brushes, organizing her tools.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked. He was silent on the other end of the line, and she felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. Was there some way Kurt could have found out about her going out for coffee with Wilder? Could someone have seen them together, could someone have ratted her out? For one awful minute she thought of Twig. Would she do something like that to her? She tried to gather the words that would explain. The denial that she’d done anything wrong. That he was just a writer conducting research, that it had simply been an interview. And it had been, hadn’t it? He’d asked questions about Two Rivers, she’d answered them. They’d had coffee. He’d smiled, said he’d call her if he had any more questions, squeezed her hand, and picked up the check. She’d gone back to work. She tried not to think about how she’d blushed at the mere thought of him, how she couldn’t concentrate for the rest of the day. She’d tried not to think of Twig’s Post-it admonishment: Be Smart staring at her from the mirror as she cut and colored and curled.

  “Baby?” she said, her bod
y trembling.

  “Trevor’s disappeared. He was in homeroom this morning, said he had to go to the nurse, but he never went and he never went back to homeroom. A substitute said he came into the art room, but then he got upset and left. I’ve been calling the house, but if he’s there, he’s not answering.”

  “Jesus, Kurt. Where do you think he went?”

  “I have no idea. But I haven’t got my truck. Beal got a ride into work this morning, but then Sally started having contractions, so I lent him my truck to take her to the hospital. Would you mind running to the house real quick to see if he’s there?”

  “I’ve got a client coming in a half hour,” she said.

  “Shit,” he said.

  Elsbeth tried to think about where Trevor would go. He’d never run away before. For all the problems they’d had with him, he’d never left. He’d throw tantrums, throw his body down, but he’d never vanished. She thought about the boy who had gotten snatched on his way to school in Putney a couple of years ago. The thought of it, of somebody just stealing him, made her stomach turn.

  “I’ll cancel,” she said. “I’m sure he’s at the house.”

  She grabbed her purse from behind the reception desk, rustling around inside trying to locate her keys. “Can you tell Mrs. Brown I had a family emergency?” she said to Carly. “I’ll call my other clients.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It’ll be okay.”

  It took four tries before her car started. Fucking starter. She was shaking when the engine finally roared to life and she backed out of the lot behind the salon and onto Depot Street. She wondered if she should get Gracy early from school. Kindergarten pickup was only a couple of hours away. But then again, she didn’t want to scare her. Trevor was probably just at home, probably sitting on the couch watching TV, eating up half the contents of the cupboards. She’d yell at him, tell him how she lost a client because of him. Kurt would come home and deal with punishment. It would be okay.

  But when she got to the house, Trevor wasn’t there. And there was no evidence to suggest he had been there at all. She felt her muscles go liquid as she ran through the empty house. “Trevor!” she hollered down the hallway.

  Silence. Only the ticking of the kitchen clock.

  She tried to think about the places he might have gone. As far as she knew, he didn’t have a single friend in the world, no one to ditch with. He never asked to have friends over. He was never invited to anyone else’s house. Elsbeth’s eyes stung. If he had a friend, he’d have a place to go. She felt sick at the enormity of his loneliness.

  She went into their bedroom, hoping there might be some sort of clue there. Gracy’s bed was unmade still, a mess of pink flowers and ratty stuffed animals. Trevor’s side of the room was tidy. His camouflage comforter was tidily pulled up to meet his pillow. His drawers were closed, his clothes neatly folded inside. There was nothing on his dresser, and the clothes in his side of the closet hung empty on their hangers. She rifled through the top drawer of his desk, finding nothing but pencils, loose coins, and film.

  The camera? Where was his camera?

  He’d left it here this morning; she was sure of it. She’d seen it on his dresser when she turned out their light after he and Gracy got on the bus. But now it was gone, which meant that he had been here. He’d come home, grabbed his camera, and taken off again. Maybe he had run away. Shit.

  She went to the kitchen and got her phone from her purse, dialing Kurt.

  “I think he’s run off,” she said. “There’s a sandwich on the counter I think he must have made and forgot. And his camera is gone too. That means he’s been home. Nobody took him.”

  “Jesus,” Kurt said. “Listen, I’ll call the police station. Maybe you can check in with the school again. Someone there might know something. He’s close to his art teacher. Maybe he talked to her.”

  Elsbeth called the school next, sitting down at the kitchen table.

  “Hello, this is Trevor Kennedy’s mother. You spoke to my husband earlier. I was hoping I could speak to Trevor’s art teacher?”

  “Mrs. Kennedy, Mrs. Dubois was hospitalized this weekend after a heart attack.”

  “Oh my God,” Elsbeth said, her hand flying to her chest. “Does Trevor know?”

  “He might, though we haven’t told the children the details yet.”

  Elsbeth said, “Okay, thank you.”

  “Please let us know if we can help,” the woman said. “You know, most of the time they come back. Probably just got upset and needed to clear his head.”

  Elsbeth clicked her phone shut and shook her head. What was she supposed to do now? She picked up her phone and looked dumbly at the keypad. She dialed Kurt’s number again, and he picked up after the first ring.

  Then the front door opened slowly. Trevor stood, hulking in the doorway, the camera slung around his shoulders. He looked like he was waiting for punishment, his head hanging to his chest.

  Elsbeth felt a rush of something flood her body. Something powerful.

  “Oh, honey, he’s home,” she said to Kurt. “He’s here. I’ll call you back.”

  “Where did you go?” she asked, trying not to let her relief turn into anger. “We thought somebody took you.”

  Trevor shrugged. His hair was filled with twigs. He looked like an animal, like something wild. He shrugged again, shoving his hands in his pockets, staring at the ground.

  Elsbeth felt something snag in her throat. “Is this about your teacher?”

  Trevor looked up at her, cocking his head distrustfully.

  “Come here,” she said, motioning for him to come to her. He continued to look at her suspiciously. It killed her that he seemed so reluctant to trust her. Feeling almost desperate, she stood up and went to him, hugging him hard, realizing she couldn’t remember the last time she’d held him. He was so big now, a child in a man’s body. She didn’t recognize the smell of him. The feel of him in her arms.

  “Listen,” she said, pulling away, peering into his icy blue eyes, wanting only to make everything all right. He looked at her, confused, his bottom lip already quivering the way it had when he was still just a little boy. “She’s in the hospital. And they’ll take good care of her there,” Elsbeth started, not knowing how to say this without breaking his heart.

  Trevor’s whole body stiffened and his eyes went dark. His fists clenched, and he started to shake his head hard. He pulled away from her. God, why didn’t she wait for Kurt to come home to tell him?

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” she tried, but his whole body was tight and angry now.

  “No, it’s not!” Trevor growled, and as his voice grew, his body seemed to grow as well. She realized then that he could harm her if he wanted to. If he lashed out the way he used to as a little boy, she could actually get hurt. She was, for the first time, afraid of him. She cowered despite every attempt not to. How could she be afraid of her own son?

  “Listen, Daddy will be home soon ... maybe he can take you to the hospital to see her?”

  “No!” he screamed again, this time just inches from her face. His breath was hot and wet. And then he ripped the camera from around his neck and threw it across the room. It landed on the floor, the back opening and exposing the film inside like guts. They both looked at it in disbelief, as if it had flung itself across the room. Then he rushed to it, picked it up like a baby bird fallen from a tree, and cradled it in his hands, tears streaming down his cheeks. The anger was gone, exorcised, and now he was six years old again. Just a terribly sad little boy she didn’t know how to reach.

  “Can I help you fix it?” she asked, afraid he might lash out again, but he only shook his head.

  When he was able to close the back again and seemed satisfied that it wasn’t broken, he quietly went down the hall to his room and closed the door. And then Elsbeth started to cry.

  Later, after dinner, instead of taking Trevor to the shed and punishing him for running off and scaring them half to
death, Kurt had only nodded across the table at Trevor, patting his shoulder gently as he brought his dish to the sink. Elsbeth had told Kurt about his teacher but not about his temper tantrum, about how scared she’d been. She knew it wouldn’t help anything.

  “I’m sorry about your teacher,” Kurt said. “I know she’s been real good to you.”

  Trevor’s face was blank. Empty. It was as though he had left, as if he’d slipped right out of his body and abandoned it at the kitchen table. Like a wax figure at one of those museums. All that rage from earlier was gone. There was nothing in his eyes anymore. Not anger. Not even sadness.

  “What happened to your teacher, Trevor?” Gracy asked. She had spaghetti sauce at each corner of her mouth. A splatter of it on her T-shirt.

  Trevor turned to her, startled. A sleepwalker awoken from sleep.

  She was putting peas in tidy rows on the tines of her fork. “I love my teacher. Do you love your teacher too?” she asked.

  “She might die,” he said. His voice sounded strange. Far away.

  “Trevor, don’t say things like that. You’ll scare her. Gracy, honey, she’s just in the hospital. She’ll be okay.”

  Gracy’s eyes widened. She got up from her chair and went to Trevor, climbing up on his lap. She looped her skinny arms around his neck and buried her face in his neck. Trevor’s lip trembled, but he didn’t cry. He just stared straight ahead at the door as though he might make a run for it again.

  “At least there are only a couple of weeks of school left,” Elsbeth said. “It’s almost summer. We can start planning our vacation,” she said, smiling hopefully at Kurt.

  Kurt turned the hot water on in the sink, his back to her.