“Kicking and screaming?”
Curry nodded. “Margaret’s always been such a quiet child. I’ve thought all this time that she’s a sweet little girl. ‘I’ve got a little poet in my class,’ I told a girlfriend the other day. That’s why this was so disappointing. She kicked. She screamed. She fought. She cursed.”
“She cursed?”
“She called me a ‘stinking bitch,’” Curry said, and the surprise of that phrase—delivered with all its naked bluntness—was jarring enough that Elisabeth literally flinched.
“Margaret said that?”
“She did,” Curry told her. “And, to say the least, I didn’t appreciate it.”
“Miss Curry—” Elisabeth began, but Curry leaned quickly forward again.
“This is a problem,” she said. “This is a big problem, and you’ll have to excuse me for saying so, but I think that problem starts with you.”
Elisabeth felt her face flush. “Me?”
“Yes,” Curry said. “What else do you make of all this?”
“I’m not quite sure what you mean. You’re asking—”
“This is a stressful time for everyone,” Curry said. “Believe me, I understand that. There are lots of things going on right now, and that’s especially true when you’re living in an army installation. And on top of that, I know fully well that Margaret is still adjusting to a new city, but none of that excuses this, not as I see it. I don’t know what kind of child you’ve been raising, but the child I saw today has no place at this school.”
“I don’t disagree. I’m not—”
“And make no mistake,” Curry said. “This is the child that you’ve been raising. It doesn’t take a genius to understand why children act out. They act out because of bad parents. Boys act out because of bad fathers, and girls act out because of bad mothers.”
“Or bad teachers,” Elisabeth said, so instantaneously that she couldn’t give it a second thought before speaking. The heat in her cheeks wasn’t just from embarrassment. A knot of defiance was swelling inside her.
“Excuse me?”
“What did you miss?”
“Mrs. Pfautz—”
“Wait a moment,” Elisabeth said. “You’ve interrupted me quite a bit, so now it’s time for me to talk. And first of all, I’ll say again that I’m sorry for this.”
“I’m not sure if you said it a first time.”
“Well, in any case, I am,” Elisabeth said, “but I’m not going to sit here in silence while you berate me.”
“I don’t know why you’re being so difficult, but it’s definitely not—”
“I’ll tell you why I’m being difficult,” Elisabeth said, folding her arms in her lap. She was a picture of placidity, but her heart was pounding and her eyes could hardly see straight. “You called me here this afternoon because my daughter did something reckless,” Elisabeth said, “something dangerous, even. And obviously, you’re right: There’s no excuse for it, and there’s certainly no excuse for what Margaret said to you and did to you. And, once again, I’m terribly sorry for everything that happened. But beyond that, I’m not exactly sure why you’ve called me here today. That’s why I’m being difficult. I’m not sure how this is being productive. You’re venting, I suppose, and I admit you can’t be blamed for that, but if venting is all this boils down to, then I’d like to be on my way.”
“Venting? Have you listened to a word I’ve said?”
“I’ve listened to them all.”
“Your daughter,” Curry told her, speaking forcefully now, “played hooky on an army airfield in the dead of winter and then did everything short of spitting in her teacher’s face. You say I’m berating you, Mrs. Pfautz, but all I’m trying to do is help you. I’m trying to help you rein in this daughter of yours.”
“I believe I’m in control of that. Thank you.”
“Clearly, you are not.”
“You have your job, and I have mine,” Elisabeth said, though she didn’t mean to quote John, not at first anyhow. “Let me do my job,” she said, “and I’ll let you do yours. How does that sound? Does that sound fair?”
“And what is my job?” Curry said. “Getting called a ‘stinking bitch’?”
“Taking care of your students,” Elisabeth said. “From one teacher to another, I can tell you that the problem isn’t always at home.”
Did she mean this? Did she believe it? To some extent, yes, though admittedly Elisabeth wasn’t sure what exactly she thought, not right now. Her jaw ached. Her neck was burning. She wanted only to put an end to this meeting, to stand up and leave without so much as glancing behind her. This is something you should handle, John had told her, and for better or worse, that was what she was doing. Elisabeth stood, and Catherine Curry looked up at her, pale with fury.
“One more time,” Curry said, and she raised a solitary finger. “If she acts out like this just one more time, she’s not welcome back in this school. I don’t have all the sway in these things, but I have enough.”
“She won’t,” Elisabeth said, turning for the door, so dizzy with blood rushing to her head that her steps almost staggered.
Margaret was now sitting outside of an office at the end of the hallway. She was staring down at her shoes, but as Elisabeth swiftly approached, Margaret raised her head.
“Mama,” she began, but Elisabeth caught her cheek before she could say anything more. She slapped her—not hard, but hard enough. Margaret froze.
“What in the hell is wrong with you?” Elisabeth said, and she grabbed her daughter by the wrist and started walking again.
CHAPTER 30
What followed was easily one of the worst nights of Elisabeth’s recent life. First, there was Margaret. Every trace of the quiet intellectual had vanished, and the person who had replaced her was an infuriated little hellion who Elisabeth could scarcely have imagined. After they left the school, not a minute passed before they were at each other’s throats.
“And where in the world did you think you were going?” Elisabeth said. “What were you doing at the airfield?”
“I was trying to leave.”
“To leave?” Elisabeth shifted her eyes between her daughter and the road. They were driving home in their battered blue Plymouth, a secondhand sedan from Elmer’s Oil. “To leave where? To go where?”
“To go anywhere,” Margaret shouted. “I hate Alaska, I hate this city, I hate this place, and I especially hate you.”
Elisabeth slammed on the brakes then, skidding to the side of the road. They were on the edge of their neighborhood, and the snow-lined street glowed in the dusk. “I don’t care what you hate or who you hate,” Elisabeth said. “You don’t leave school, and you don’t do what you did today.” She leaned closer to Margaret. “And what exactly were you going to do, board an aircraft bomber on its way to Tokyo? Did you think about this, Margaret? Did you think for one second?”
Margaret glowered at her. “I didn’t know what I was doing, and I didn’t care. Anything would be better than staying here. Anything would be better than staying with you.”
“You’d better watch it,” Elisabeth said, and she did her best to sound intimidating, though the part of the intimidating mother was starkly unfamiliar to her.
“Or what?” Margaret said. “You’ll slap me again?”
And that meant she had to do it—Elisabeth slapped her, hard this time, and she didn’t even regret it. “You’re acting like a brat,” she said.
“You’re acting like a bitch!” Margaret shouted, and in a flash she was out the door and running down the street as if her life depended on it. Elisabeth caught up with her a moment later, and then they were tussling with each other like two children fighting in a schoolyard.
It went on and on. They were squaring off in the living room. They were squaring off in Margaret’s bedroom. But wherever they were and w
hatever was said, it all came down to the same few things: Margaret hated Alaska. She hated Fairbanks. She hated the winter. She wanted to leave. To leave for where was never said in any concrete terms. She simply wanted to leave, as though that word was a destination in itself.
“You don’t get it,” she shouted. “My plan wasn’t any plan at all. That was the point. That was the plan.”
Elisabeth’s blood went cold when she heard those words put together. The plan. She couldn’t deny it: She felt like she was trapped in a shouting match with Jacqueline. She felt like she was a child again, like she was back in her father’s workshop, weathering her sister’s scowl. How had this happened? When had this happened? As she stared her daughter down, stunned into temporary silence, Elisabeth felt as if she was looking at someone new, not her daughter but her niece—her sister’s haunted legacy.
Then John came home, and the night was a new kind of terrible.
Since their phone call earlier that day, he had heard about Margaret’s escapade—of course he had; the entire school was probably talking about it—and Elisabeth could tell right away from his early arrival home that this would be a night they’d all remember for the rest of their lives. Margaret surely knew it, too. However quick she had been to fight back in the car, she was even quicker to surrender to John. For ten minutes Elisabeth sat out back in the work shed, though she could hear it all clear enough: Margaret crying, Margaret shrieking, the steady thwack of the belt—steady but not entirely rhythmic, because who could beat a child for ten minutes straight with any kind of even tempo?
“Fretsaw,” Elisabeth whispered, closing her eyes, “backsaw, bucksaw,” but the longer she tried to distract herself, the more clearly she heard her daughter’s cries.
She spent the night on the couch, braced for an escape attempt that never came. She didn’t sleep, and by the morning her nerves were like glass. She felt as if she might literally fall to pieces, as if she might crumble into a cloud of twinkling dust at any moment. John and Margaret awoke, dressed, and left for school without eating breakfast. No one spoke. They slipped on their boots and coats and scarves, and then they were gone without saying good-bye, and the house was quiet, and Elisabeth traded the couch for the kitchen table. She made herself a cup of coffee but didn’t drink a single sip.
Of course, this was all her fault. It doesn’t take a genius, Curry had said, and even though it had incensed her at the time, Elisabeth agreed with her now. Since moving to Fairbanks, she hadn’t altogether neglected Margaret, but perhaps the diversion of her attention—and, admittedly, her heart—had been enough to set Margaret off. Surely, that was it. Curry was right. Whose fault could it otherwise be?
Flagging attention. Flagging support. Flagging love. That was what had done it. That, and Margaret getting older. Each year of raising her had been more difficult than the last, and this year wasn’t shaping up to be any exception. Raising children was strange like that: One year, you felt stretched to your limit, but a year after that you felt stretched even more, realizing only then what an easy life your past self had owned. There had been a time when Margaret seemed like an extension of Elisabeth’s own body. She fed her when she was hungry. She changed her when she needed changing. She taught her when her mind was willing. And in all of these efforts, there was no discussion or debate. When it came to the day-to-day of living life, Elisabeth had reared Margaret unconsciously and without self-doubt. She simply did. She simply functioned.
But now she was lost. Never mind that Margaret was already pulling away from her intellectually. Never mind that she could no longer help with Margaret’s mathematics, and never mind that Margaret could read a book three times as fast as she could and with far greater retention. She was lost in ways that went beyond the intellect. She didn’t know how to help Margaret anymore, not as she once had.
But what really stung Elisabeth went even deeper than this. What stung her was bearing witness to Margaret not only growing up, but growing embittered. Inherent in childhood is a degree of enlightenment—everything is fascinating and new, and life is beautiful. Elisabeth could once make Margaret double over in laughter with the slightest effort. Hiding her face in her hands. Peeking out from a corner. Singing like Louis Armstrong.
But now Margaret was getting older, and each year of her life brought her closer to adulthood and all its diminished joy. Now, Margaret scoffed at her. Margaret scoffed at a lot of things, and she would for the rest of her life. Never again would she have such easy fascination with the world. Never again would she be as elementally happy as she was when she was a child. What stung Elisabeth was the realization that Margaret would never know herself as she once had, because what is adulthood if not year upon year of putting up walls, of distancing yourself from your very own being? And that was awful to witness in the life of your child. Awful, but inevitable.
Really, what could she do? Plaster up the windows in Margaret’s room? Fasten all the doors with dead bolts? Escort Margaret to and from school, the dining room, the bathroom? If she fought back, that would make matters worse. And if she did nothing? That would let it happen. Margaret was stronger and smarter—yes, smarter, admit it—than she was. If Margaret wanted to run away, she wouldn’t fail a second time. She would succeed, at least to some extent, and Elisabeth had no wish to discover what extent that would be.
How, then, could she fix this? How could she stop it from happening? Simple: She had to do better. She had to be a better mother, a better woman, a better person. Do your job. Be the parent you’re supposed to be. She had to be friends with her daughter again, but did Margaret want to be her friend? She didn’t know anymore.
* * *
—
The phone was ringing. The noise of it came to Elisabeth like life intruding on a dream, and at first she heard the ringing but somehow wasn’t fully aware of it. Then she was—Oh, the phone; that’s what that is—and in a moment more she was holding the receiver against her ear, blinking sleepily.
“Yes. Hello?”
A voice came stiff and secretarial. “Hold, please.”
And then something she hadn’t expected in the least: a familiar voice, gentle and fluid. Sharp consonants. Breathy vowels.
“Do you still want to know what I want?”
She was silent. What felt like entire minutes passed.
“The third gift,” Alfred said. “Our final exchange. Do you still want to know what I want?”
She tried to speak, but her throat was dry. She swallowed. She steadied herself. “That all depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether or not I can trust you.”
“We’ve already been through this, haven’t we?”
“We have,” Elisabeth said, “but then you tried to kill me.”
A long sigh. Weariness. Somehow, she could tell that he was hanging his head. In shame? In frustration? In irritation?
“I’m sorry,” Alfred said. “I can’t excuse what I did that afternoon, but you should know that I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t mean that I can trust you. Sorry doesn’t mean that you won’t do it again, or that you won’t succeed the next time.”
“I won’t do it again.”
“Why did you do it the first time?”
“I lost control. I was angry. I felt betrayed. I felt very hurt by you.”
“And what if I hurt you again?”
“I still won’t do what I did. I swear on my—”
“Don’t swear on anything,” Elisabeth said. “It means nothing to me.”
She closed her eyes, rubbed one thumb against her forehead. Then she reached for a pack of cigarettes in the drawer of the telephone table. Viceroys. Filter tips. John’s cigarettes. They were better for your teeth, John claimed, and teeth were something that John had always felt self-conscious about, so Elisabeth felt inclined to believe him. She lit one, but mostly she just held it in he
r hand, twists of smoke curling through the air. She hoped it might relax her, and it did. There was something contemplative about watching smoke. Something in the way it moved. So easily. So sure of itself.
“Why are you calling me now?” she said. “I’ve been trying to reach you for months, and you’ve stonewalled me. Why the sudden change?”
“Because this is not a rash decision. That’s why you can trust me, and that’s why you can feel safe: because this is something I’ve thought a lot about, and calling you now is not something I’ve taken lightly. I considered reaching out right away. I considered apologizing that very day. But I needed to think things through, and now I have. I’m more certain than I’ve ever been before: I need you, Elisabeth, and you need me. I’m not the only one.”
“What does that mean?”
“Your sister. Jacqueline needs you, too. She needs us. Let’s finish this.”
Now she smoked. She took a long drag and held it in, letting it pinch at her lungs. She leaned her head against the wall.
“What is it you want?”
“Come to the prison and talk with me.”
“That’s what you want? That’s the third gift?”
“No,” Alfred said, “but I’ll tell you what I want if you come to the prison.”
“Tell me over the phone.”
“I’ll tell you in person.”
“But why in the world should I see you in person?” Elisabeth said. She pulled on the cigarette again. “You tried to murder me. You tried—”
“If it’s your safety you’re worried about, we can take certain measures to help you feel at ease.”
“Certain measures.”
“A guard can watch us. How would you feel about that?”
“You’re missing the point.”
“And you,” Alfred said, “are being coy. You want to visit me, Elisabeth. You want to know the third thing. You’re playing hard to get.”
How Quickly She Disappears Page 22