Five Days Left (13 page)

Scott

Scott was in the middle of assigning homework to his fourth-hour students when the classroom intercom buzzed and a fairly frantic-sounding Mrs. Bevel, the school secretary, asked him to come to the office immediately. She had already arranged for the school’s guidance counselor, Miss Styles, to supervise Scott’s classroom until he returned. Scott glanced from the intercom to the clock to the hopeful-looking eighth-graders in front of him, who were, he could tell, wondering if he’d finish assigning the homework first.

“You got lucky this time,” he said, and turned toward the door. “Maddie,” he called over his shoulder to a girl in the front row, “you’re in charge until Ms. Styles gets here.” He walked into the hall, smiling as he heard a small cheer erupt behind him. He was still smiling when he reached Mrs. Bevel, and even when Janice, the Jackson family’s social worker, rose from a chair in front of Mrs. Bevel’s desk.

“Hello, Scott,” Janice said, and as usual her voice was as stiff as her body. She looked at her shoes as though she were uncertain what to do next. The niceties of human interaction always seemed to elude her. For a social worker, Scott had remarked to Laurie a few times, Janice didn’t seem all that social. He had always given her the benefit of the doubt,
assuming she cared about the children and families on her caseload more than her outward conduct would indicate.

But the rigid way she carried herself, the vacant way she seemed to look at people, the dullness in her voice, made it seem like she was only going through the motions. Had she been different when she first started? he wondered. Was it only that decades of overwork had drained the feeling out of her? Or had she gone into the job this cold and distant? Maybe she had received the same advice as FosterFranny: don’t get too attached.

“Janice! I didn’t expect to see you here.” Scott extended a hand and Janice reached hers out, barely touching him before pulling her hand back.

“I thought Mrs. Bevel called me down to chastise me about leaving my classroom lights on or being late with grading or any number of other things,” he said, turning to Mrs. Bevel and flashing her a grin. “I have a long list of sins, don’t I, Mrs. B?”

Mrs. Bevel looked nervously from Scott to Janice, then stood, mumbled something about needing to check on a file and disappeared into the hallway that led to the inner offices. “Well,” Scott said to Janice, still grinning, “I seem to have scared her away. I hope you—”

It was then that he noticed the look on Janice’s face. Her lips were pressed so firmly together they were more white than pink, and her eyes seemed to be boring a hole into the side of Mrs. Bevel’s desk. He couldn’t discern her emotion. Anger? Anxiety? It was something under the umbrella of “very upset,” that much was certain. No wonder Mrs. Bevel had hightailed it down the hallway. Scott wished he could follow.

“I’m afraid I have some disturbing news,” Janice said. She sat and absently patted the chair beside her. Scott read the gesture as an order and regarded her carefully as he lowered himself beside her. As he waited for her to explain, his mind raced with possibilities about what the news could be. Curtis in trouble at school again? But Miss Keller had his cell
number and she had always texted or called before. Something about Bray? But Bray would call himself.

Unless he couldn’t.

“Is Bray okay?” he asked, suddenly feeling ill.

Janice didn’t answer at first and Scott felt his stomach lurch. “Janice, is Bray—?”

“It’s LaDania. She came by my office this morning. She told me she intends to get Curtis from school this afternoon. And take him home.”

“What?”
He jumped up from his chair as though it were on fire. “But the hearing’s not until Monday!”

“That’s just a formality, as you’re aware. She says she’s ready for him to come home now. Today. And legally, she has every right to take him now. The guardianship order grants rights to you and Mrs. Coffman, but removes none from her. And of course, technically, the order grants you such rights only until her release, which occurred last week. She agreed Curtis would stay with you for this extra week because I convinced her that the extra time between her release and the formal hearing terminating your guardianship would be a benefit to her. She is no longer convinced she benefits from this agreement. She says she’s lonely living on her own. And she wants her child with her.”

Scott clutched both sides of his head with his hands and squeezed, but the words he had heard wouldn’t go away. Curtis was leaving today.

There would be no spaghetti and homemade cookies tonight. There would be no more reading in bed. No final game of HORSE in the driveway. No more tuck-ins. No movie night on Friday.

No Monster Trucks on Sunday.

No goodbye.

He leaned against Mrs. Bevel’s desk and ground his knuckles into his eyes. He put a hand on his gut and willed himself not to throw up.

After a few minutes, he spoke quietly. “But I still have a few days.
We
,” he corrected himself. “
We
still have a few days. We’ve got a whole
big thing planned. Extra reading every night, special dinners, a final hoops game. We’ve got movie night on Friday. And Monster Trucks on Sunday. We were counting on—”

“I know,” Janice said, and Scott was surprised by the softness in her voice. “I know you were counting on having this final week together.” She smiled, but it was a sad smile. “I assumed you’d have something special lined up, and I told her so.”

The tone of Janice’s voice changed then and Scott could feel her anger as much as hear it. He took his fists out of his eyes and looked at her. She was leaning forward now, and the eyes that met his were bright with emotion. He could see the long, thready muscles in her thin forearms working as she twisted her fingers together in her lap. “I also told her the boy needs to end his time at your house the right way. He needs to be allowed to have a proper goodbye, and so do you and Laurie. And after everything you’ve done, you more than deserve it. I told her all of this,” she said, “very clearly and in ten different ways. It didn’t make one bit of difference.”

Her emotion startled him. She had been to the house several times over the past year, but she had remained as distant and reserved after the tenth visit as she was after the first. Seemingly against her will, she accepted coffee or lemonade each time, but left it untouched as she sat ramrod straight at the kitchen table and made cramped notes about Curtis’s eating and sleeping habits, his behavior, his schoolwork. She took down pages of data about the boy but it always seemed to Scott and Laurie that it was more about putting words in her notebook than about getting to know the child, or his guardians.

She asked Curtis questions, too, sometimes, and when he gave silly answers, she didn’t crack a smile or show any hint of amusement, but simply repeated her question until she received an answer worthy of recording. Other times, she sat alone in a corner of the room to “observe,” asking them to go about their business and pretend she wasn’t there.

Scott and Curtis were able to do just that, and continue whatever wrestling match or checkers game or other activity, but Laurie remained on edge each time, hovering too close to Janice, offering to refill the glass or mug Janice hadn’t yet taken a sip from. “It’s like the Grim Reaper telling you to go about sleeping while he’s sitting at the foot of your bed,” Laurie told Scott after the first “observation” session.

“I told her there’s no justification for separating the two of you one day earlier than you were planning, let alone several,” Janice continued. “It will be hard enough, I told her, for him to leave you. And for you to let him go. I told her I have never seen . . .” She leaned back in her chair, almost collapsing, as though the effort to sustain such feeling had tired her. “Well, I told her it was the wrong thing to do. She is very aware of my position on this. But I’m afraid she is very firm on hers.”

“So,” Scott said. “That’s it. She just . . . gets to take him. She gets to ignore what we’ve all been counting on. Because she’s lonely. And she changed her mind. That’s . . . incredible. That is just . . .” He paused, trying to find the right word. “It’s just fucking. Incredible.” Janice did a double take at the curse word and he considered apologizing, but the most he could bring himself to do was shrug.

“Could I fight it?” he asked.

“You mean in court?”

He nodded.

Janice twisted her lips. “You don’t really have a legal basis. I’m not sure the court would even entertain it. I suppose you could speak with a lawyer.”

Scott thought about whom he could call. Pete’s neighbor was a lawyer; maybe he could help. Sure, he didn’t have legal rights to the boy but he had to try something. It was ridiculous, what LaDania was doing, and unbelievably selfish. Did she have no regard for him and Laurie, and what they had done for her son for the past year—for both of her sons? What they had done for her? Did it not occur to her that they might want these last days with Curtis to say a proper goodbye? Did she think about them at all?

But then he thought about what FosterFranny had said:
focus on what’s best for the child
. He lifted his palms waist high in a gesture of helplessness. He didn’t have a choice here. If he fought this, it would be for himself, not Curtis. “Never mind,” he told Janice. “She’s his mother. I won’t stand between him and his mom, no matter how much I disagree with this. I wouldn’t want to end our year together by arguing over him. That wouldn’t be any better for him than what she’s doing.”

Janice nodded. “I must say it’s refreshing to deal with one adult today who’s willing to put the child’s interests ahead of his own.”

“So, now what?” Scott asked. “She just shows up at Logan at three o’clock, says, ‘Surprise!’ and takes him?”

“She does,” Janice said, “though I’ve convinced her to let me go with her, so I can ensure Curtis hears some explanation about what’s happening. I’m hoping my presence there will help ease him into the sudden transition more effectively than if I weren’t there.”

“What about his things?” Scott asked. “He’s got clothes at our place. Toys. Books.” He thought about
Stuart Little
and felt his throat close.

“She asked me to take those to him later tonight. I considered telling her you’d deliver it all yourself, to give you a chance to see him. But I think that might make things harder on Curtis—to see you so soon, before he’s had a chance to adjust to the new . . . situation.”

“So I don’t even get to say goodbye?” Scott whispered. He swallowed hard and struggled to fit air around the lump in his throat.

“Like I said, I guessed you’d have some plan in mind for your last weekend,” Janice said. “And I asked her to consider allowing you to go ahead with at least some of that plan. She said she would.” Janice made a bitter sound then, and she scowled.

“We were going to go see Monster Trucks on Sunday,” Scott said. “It’ll kill him to miss it. He’s been talking about it for months. He’s been marking the days off on his calendar. He—”

He couldn’t go on. He walked slowly to Mrs. Bevel’s chair and sat. Leaning forward, he put his arms on the desk and let his head, which
suddenly felt very heavy, fall on top of them. The tears he’d been holding in found their way out and he didn’t bother trying to stop them.

An unrecognizable sound came from Janice, and seconds later he felt her beside him, her arms around him so tightly he had to gasp for his next breath. He started to pull away but he didn’t have the strength to move. Or so he told himself as he relaxed into her arms and let her press herself against him, her voice soft and comforting in his ear, murmuring, “There now.”

After a time, she relaxed her grip slightly and he felt her hand making slow circles on his back, soothing. “When I see her at Logan later today, I’ll ask about Monster Trucks.” She patted him gently. “I’ll
insist
about Monster Trucks.”

Mara

Harry offered to put the pharmacy bags in the trunk, but Mara declined. As he drove, she reached a hand into one and carefully eased a “discreet female undergarment” out of its package and into her purse. Every crinkle of the plastic was a trumpet sounding in her head and she prepared herself for his curious gaze in the mirror, or over his shoulder. But he was focused on the road in front. Or pretending to be.

The clothing store was one of the trendy, casual-chic places Steph had been urging her to shop at for ages. “You can’t dress like a high-powered attorney when you’re helping in art class,” Steph said. “And you can’t dress like that.” She indicated Mara’s yoga pants, her baggy T-shirt. “You’ve got to look . . .” She paused. “You know, hipper.”

Steph would be so proud to learn she’d finally stepped inside the store, Mara thought. Though Steph wouldn’t be impressed to find out her friend had shopped online and put in a “store pickup” order rather than browsing the racks, comparing colors and cuts, trying things on for hours on end as Steph loved to do. They were holding three black cotton skirts for her at the cash register, along with three tops—all in different colors but the same brand and style.

“If they fit,” Mara asked the salesclerk, “would you mind if I wore one outfit out today? I’m about to volunteer in my daughter’s class and
my friend tells me I need to show up in something a little nicer than workout clothes.” She gave a self-deprecating smile as she gestured to the black Neiman Marcus yoga pants she was wearing, two times as expensive as the three skirts and blouses put together.

“No problem. We get a lot of moms in here looking for these.” The clerk, no more than twenty, handed over one of each item. “You ordered three of the same thing, so you only need to try on one set.”

Mara could hear the mild disapproval in the girl’s voice. Who spent two minutes looking online, then called the store and asked them to hold three of the exact same thing?

“I know,” Mara said. “I should have my ‘woman’ badge taken away. My friend tells me that all the time. But I confess I hate to shop. At least the tops are different colors, though, right?”

The girl eyed Mara as though she were a rare animal and shook her head in an exaggerated fashion. “We get your kind in here from time to time,” she joked. “I don’t understand it myself. I live to shop.” Leaning closer, she dropped her voice. “The trying-on part, I do not live for. So, your strategy of getting the same brand and size for everything makes a little sense to me. Anything to spend less time in the dressing room. All those floor-length mirrors, right? And those lights! They’re the enemy.”

“Exactly,” Mara agreed, pretending that had been the reason she ordered everything the same. As she headed for the dressing room, the skirt and top over her arm, she turned to smile at the clerk and found the girl watching her, a puzzled look on her face. Caught, the girl gave an embarrassed smile and turned quickly to the front of the store as if she’d just heard someone walk in. Mara frowned, but told herself to cut the girl some slack. It was odd of Mara to have ordered all the same things, and the salesgirl had been far less judgmental about it than others her age would likely have been. There was nothing to be upset about.

In the cramped cubicle, she wrestled out of her yoga pants and removed her expensive silk bikini-fit underwear. Holding the “adult
undergarment” up for inspection, she saw with relief that it was a lot slimmer than the ungainly product she had been expecting. But when she slid it on and felt its cold, rough bulk against her skin, the bridge of her nose stung and her throat thickened. Slimmer material and curlicue stitching or not, she was wearing a diaper.

She stood under the unflattering glare of the dressing room light and gawked in the mirror at the rectangle of disposable fabric and the two pale, toneless legs that reached gracelessly from the white cloth to her flip-flops. She ran her eyes up and down the mirror and praised herself for never having a full-length one installed at home. She had always been so proud of her body. Years of dedicated exercise and healthy eating had given her the perfect blend of lean muscle and feminine curve. Tom had murmured his appreciation a million times while Mara’s friends had confessed their envy.

But over the past four years, the caloric demands of a disease that came with ever-moving limbs had robbed her of every spare ounce of muscle, every last hint of feminine curve. She had pretended not to notice when her hands grazed over protruding hip bones in the shower, or when an inadvertent glance at herself in a windowpane or mirror showed bony shoulders jutting under her T-shirt, a too-prominent clavicle stealing attention from her necklace. Slowly, her body had gone from bronze and muscular to . . . this.

The dressing room mirror delivered a harsh message: the fact that Mara had refused to watch her body morph from healthy-looking into anorexic-looking hadn’t stopped it from happening. She never changed in front of Tom anymore but, God, even in the dark, even under the sheets . . .

She lifted her head and found her dark eyes staring back at her from the glass, tiny pools of liquid forming in the corners, betraying her. Pressing the tips of her fingers into her eyelids, Mara counted to five slowly while she told herself to get it together. She didn’t want the salesgirl to see her crying when she walked out—or Harry, for that matter.

It took her until a count of thirty, but she managed to calm herself down. She pulled on the skirt, smoothed it flat and turned slowly from side to side, inspecting herself from every angle to ensure no one would be able to detect the secret underneath. Satisfied, she put on the top. It wasn’t a bad look, and she could see why the young moms at the school favored this over yoga pants and T-shirts.

“Nice!” the girl said when Mara walked out of the dressing room, and Mara was glad she’d stopped herself from being upset about the staring episode earlier. “Do a spin for me!”

Mara held her breath as she spun in a slow, nervous circle, waiting for the quick intake of breath when the salesclerk saw the outline of the diaper. Or, given her similar age to the pharmacy cashier, squealed, “Ewww, you’re wearing paper panties, like my granny!”

But the mirror hadn’t lied. “Fantastic!” the girl said, clapping her hands. Quieter, she added, “If you don’t mind my saying, this makes you look a little younger.”

Of all the responses Mara feared she might hear, that one was more than fine.

“I don’t mind one bit,” she said.

Harry raised a brow in the rearview mirror. “Can’t help but notice the outfit change. Looks real nice. We goin’ somewhere special next?”

“Actually, these were my only errands for today. But would you mind taking a quick detour on the way home? My daughter’s class should be out for afternoon recess about now, and I thought maybe we’d catch a glimpse of them.”

“She forget somethin’?”

“No. I just . . .” Mara paused for a second. “I just wanted to see her. It’s close by—only a few blocks out of the way. But if you’re in a hurry—”

“All the time in the world.”

She gave him directions to the school and as they drove, she noticed, not for the first time, how much newer and more colorful Plano was compared to the northern world of gray in which she and Tom had grown up.
The manicured lawns flying past her window seemed artificial, they were so green and flawless. The houses were cartoonishly large, each one looking newer and grander than the last. Even the public spaces were beautiful here, the medians along the road a cheerful spray of colorful gardens.

It was a Disney movie set, Tom had said the first time they drove through. They were house-hunting in the northern Dallas suburbs, his offer letter from the dermatology practice folded neatly on the console between them. Mara was a third-year lawyer then, and in twenty-four hours her husband had gone from underpaid chief resident to princely paid dermatologist, outearning her a few times over.

“I feel as though any second now all the store owners are going to burst onto the sidewalk and break into song,” he laughed. “And is it me, or is the sun a little brighter here, the sky a little bluer? I think the city of Plano has big fans that blow all the clouds south to Dallas.”

Harry and Mara arrived at the school as a crowd of children poured out the doors in a shrieking wave, spilling onto the playground.

“See her?” Harry slowed the cab to a crawl and they both turned to scan the schoolyard.

“Not yet . . . Oh! There! The one with the dark black hair? With the pink shorts and the pink-and-white shirt? Climbing up the slide? Third rung from the top.”

“Ah. Looks exactly like ya.”

She smiled. He wasn’t the first to say it. All Indians look the same, after all. No matter that she and Laks shared no DNA whatsoever, the same way it hadn’t mattered that she and her parents shared none. Everyone thought she was the spitting image of them, too. Tom was the only genetically unrelated one of the group, in the minds (and comments) of strangers who saw them all together—the handsome American tour guide leading around the elderly Indian couple, their daughter and granddaughter.

“Ya wanna park here and watch for a while,” Harry asked, “or do ya need ta be home?”

“I don’t really need to be anywhere anymore,” Mara said.

Harry nodded, put the cab into park and turned off the engine. Shifting in his seat, he turned toward the playground and watched, a look of contentment on his face as though he, too, had nowhere else to be. Must be nice to be so relaxed, Mara thought, as reflexively she reached into her purse and pulled out her phone to check her work e-mails.

There were none. Of course there were none. In fact, the small “KL” icon she used to click to show her work in-box was gone from the phone’s screen, as it had been for weeks now. The firm had let her keep the phone but it removed her from the Katon Locke network immediately, as a matter of policy. She cursed under her breath for having forgotten. Her personal account was still there, but she wasn’t in the mood to check it now.

Mara leaned her head against the tinted black car window and closed her eyes against the realization, still new to her, that she was no longer a high-powered lawyer with an ever-filling e-mail in-box. She was no more pressed for time than Harry—and likely less so than he was, since he still had a job.

Her head still against the window, she opened her eyes and clicked open her text messaging program. It was separate from the e-mail system, so her long string of texts hadn’t been wiped clean when the firm removed her from the network. She scrolled through several inconsequential exchanges with Gina about the logistics of packing up her files and cleaning out her office, while she searched for something substantial. A message that would restore her fractured ego, even for a minute, by reminding her that she was, not so long ago, someone who had important places to be, urgent things to do.

And there it was, finally. A text from Steph: “Need to talk to u re: Baker appeal—research on evidentiary argument.” Mara closed her eyes again and smiled, allowing herself to ignore, for a second, how long ago it was that she had worked on the Baker appeal, and how it had all ended.

It had started out as the Baker case. Mara’s client, Mara’s case. Four
and a half weeks in the courtroom. Twenty-two witnesses, 209 exhibits. An associate and paralegal had lugged the trial notebooks to the defense table every morning and kept all the documents straight. But it was Mara who examined all the witnesses, offered all the exhibits into evidence, argued all the evidentiary motions. Won the case.

That was almost five years ago, when all was right with the world.
When Tom thought his wife was working too hard but didn’t suspect anything more. When the only reason they ever said the word “Huntington” was because it was the name of an avenue five blocks away and they sometimes turned there if traffic was backed up on the main street.

The plaintiff had appealed, and the case worked its way through the appellate system over the following few years—first briefing, then oral argument, then a retrial of the damages issue, then more briefing—at almost the same rate the disease worked its way through Mara, first obliterating her short-term memory, then wreaking havoc on her concentration and judgment.

It crushed her to have to do it, but she brought Steph in on the case before the retrial. “Just as a backup,” Steph assured her friend. But by the end of the retrial, the backup had become lead counsel as Mara found herself increasingly unable to keep straight which exhibits went with which witness, which legal argument applied to which motion.

Typical Gina, she had come in on a weekend to spare Mara from watching as an entire file drawer in her office was emptied of its contents. Over time, as knowledge of Mara’s condition became public at the firm, the rest of her file drawers would eventually be relieved of their bulging case folders, too, as they were distributed to the other litigation partners—all under Gina’s watchful eye at times she knew Mara wouldn’t be there to witness it. Seventeen years of her life hauled away in a mail cart. Not having to watch it happen hadn’t made it any easier.

Gina. If not for her, Mara’s retirement would have come far earlier. Gina had run interference for Mara since the beginning, working overtime to lessen the effects of each symptom as it appeared, delaying the
inevitable day when Mara finally had to concede she could no longer effectively represent her clients. Gina became Mara’s external memory when her internal one was at its worst—a walking sticky note, reminding her not only about briefing deadlines and hearings, but also Neerja and Pori’s anniversary, Steph’s children’s birthdays.

Later, after the disease shifted its assault from Mara’s memory to her emotions, turning her from unflappable to erratic almost overnight, Gina vigilantly kept watch over Mara’s office door. Drawing from a litany of excuses, she managed to keep everyone away but Steph, so that no one else would witness what was happening to the once-brilliant lawyer who could no longer control her cases, or her temper.

Mara thought about the hundreds of sticky notes and to-do lists Gina painstakingly maintained for her, frequently skipping lunch to keep the files in up-to-the-minute order, now that her boss was incapable of remembering the status or next steps for any case unless it had been written down. The extra workload must have almost killed the woman, Mara told Tom and Steph much later.