Fragile (6 page)

She moved through the rooms, flipping switches, filling the house with the light and warmth she needed, turning on the small, new flat-screen on the kitchen counter just to hear the sound of the local news. When the house seemed more alive, she felt better.

She peered into the refrigerator and fooled herself for a moment, thinking she might actually get creative and cook something. But since she hadn’t been shopping and Jones had polished off all the leftovers—not just the lasagna but also the black bean soup she’d made earlier in the week—she gave up the idea quickly. The refrigerator offered only some wilting carrots and a bag of prewashed organic lettuce, a package of cheddar cheese, some tubs of Greek yogurt, and half a bottle of pomegranate juice. Of course, there were always the staples—milk, eggs, bread, butter, all varieties of condiments. She’d never allow the refrigerator to be
completely
empty. Her mother had never run out of these things, not once in Maggie’s childhood.
Always be prepared to make an omelet or a grilled cheese sandwich. And always buy a roll of toilet paper when you do your shopping, even if you don’t need it. That way you never run out
. Elizabeth’s household wisdom: there was no shortage.

But it was good advice; Maggie had followed it, even in college. As a cook, a wife, and a mother, she held herself to at least that standard. Even now, she had cupboards full of more toilet paper than they’d ever need.

“Why do we have so much toilet paper everywhere?” Jones always wanted to know.

She picked up the phone and dialed his number, but her call went straight to voice mail.

“Where are you?” she said. “I was thinking of ordering a pizza and salad for dinner. Sound good? Call me.”

Then she dialed Ricky. Voice mail again.

“What do you think about pizza for dinner? Maybe you want to invite Char?”

It was probably a bad idea given Jones’s mood and the whole tattoo thing. But so what? If Ricky and Jones didn’t fight about that, they’d
fight about something else. Maybe they’d be on better behavior with a guest at the table. They could all have a meal in relative peace.

She ordered two pizzas from Paesano’s (Jones and Ricky preferred Pop’s, but she thought it was too greasy), one plain, one pepperoni, and a large Greek salad, got hung up on the phone exchanging niceties with the owner, someone she’d gone to high school with, Chad Donner. She might even have kissed him once—she had a fuzzy memory of some indiscreet moment at an unsupervised Halloween party. At any rate, he always made goofy jokes and exuded a lonely energy when she stopped in to pick up a meal or if he answered the phone at the restaurant, as though he remembered something that was important to him but that she had long forgotten. When she hung up, feeling vaguely bad, her thoughts returned to Marshall.

When Marshall had left her office, it was as if he’d taken all the air with him. She’d sat stunned and breathless, though she couldn’t have said why precisely. It wasn’t as if he’d raged, or lost control, or even moved physically toward her. But she’d felt a malice radiating off him in palpable waves. When he was gone, she’d called the high school and happened to catch Henry Ivy during his break.

“He hasn’t been in school in a week,” Henry said. “I e-mailed you.”

“Did you?” she asked, opening her e-mail for the first time that day. She scrolled through a flock of waiting messages and found Henry’s, sent late yesterday afternoon. She wasn’t much for e-mail, hated the impersonal distance of it. People used it to hide from one another. It stripped communication of expression and tone, essential markers for meaning. She avoided it when possible, preferring to pick up the phone.

“Something’s changed, Henry,” she said. “We’re losing him.”

“What happened?”

She recounted the session in broad strokes, avoiding specific things he’d said to protect Marshall’s privacy and her oath. She focused instead on his mood, the air of malice, and his abrupt departure from her office.

Henry was silent for a moment after she finished. If she’d been talking to Jones, that silence would have annoyed her. She’d have rightly assumed that he was multitasking, not quite listening to her. But with Henry, her friend since high school, she knew he was processing her words, turning the possibilities of the incident over in his mind.

“Maybe I’ll stop over there on my way home,” he said finally. “Check in with Marshall.”

That was the problem with The Hollows—though maybe it wasn’t always a problem. Everyone’s relationship was complicated—your doctor was also your neighbor, maybe she’d gone to the prom with your brother. The cop at your door had been the burnout always in trouble when you were in high school. In this case, when Henry stopped by to check in on Marshall, Travis might not see his kid’s teacher dropping in to check on a student. Travis might see the boy he’d mercilessly bullied for years, the one who’d finally—after a summer growth spurt—beat him down in front of the whole high school at a homecoming game. Beat him so badly that Travis had actually cried. No one was quite as intimidated by Travis Crosby after that—until he’d started wearing a badge and carrying a gun.

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” she asked.

“I think it’s my job.” She detected a note of defensiveness, which reminded her of a question she’d held at bay for a while. How much of Henry Ivy’s interest in Marshall had to do with Travis?

“You’re a teacher, not a truant officer.”

He blew out a breath. “Do you have a better idea?”

“Let’s call Leila. She can send the boys over to connect with Marshall. It’s less confrontational.”

Another silence; in the background she heard the bell that announced the end of class, a sudden wave of voices and footfalls.

“Okay,” he said. “You’ll call her?”

“I will.”

But she hadn’t called right away. Her next patient had arrived early. There was a court-ordered evaluation she had to complete after that. And the next thing she knew, she was sitting in the dark of her office,
the space lit only by the glow of her computer screen. She picked up the phone without bothering to turn on the light. Leila answered after just two rings.

“It’s Maggie.”

Leila expelled a tired breath. “I’ve been expecting your call.”

Maggie told her about her last session with Marshall, suggested that she send Tim and Ryan over to reach out. But she didn’t get the reaction she expected.

“I don’t think so, Maggie. I’m sorry. We’re overextended in this area to begin with. The boys—they haven’t said much, but they’ve been keeping their distance from Marshall.”

“But, Leila …,” Maggie began. When Leila didn’t let her finish, Maggie felt a rush of something desperate.
When you feel that
, Dr. Willough warned,
you know you’re over the line internally
. Maggie could almost see Leila lifting a hand and closing her eyes. Over the years, they’d been friends, rivals, and then friends again.

“You know Travis, Maggie,” Leila said. “He’s toxic. Like, you can’t
touch
him—it burns. And Marshall. He’s just different when his father’s around. I hate to say it. I’m afraid of him. Of both of them. My own brother and nephew.” She paused here, seemed to collect herself with a deep inhale. “I need to protect my boys from their … poison.”

Maggie was quiet now. The thing was, she
did
know Travis and other men like him. Leila was right to protect herself and her sons. Maggie stopped short of saying so.

“I think my family has done everything we can for Marshall,” said Leila when Maggie stayed silent. “He’s almost an adult. We have to save ourselves sometimes, Maggie. You should know that.”

“A boy like Marshall might not have the tools to save himself.”

“I’m sorry,” Leila said. Maggie felt as much as she heard Leila hang up the phone.

After that, Maggie called Marshall’s mother and got her voice mail. She left a message, thinking that she heard doors closing, windows latching all around Marshall. This was what happened. Abused boys became dangerous men. Those around them with a self-preservation instinct—even the people who loved them—started to move away.

•    •    •

Maggie was thinking about all of this, staring at but not seeing or hearing the television, when the front door opened and then shut hard. She heard heavy footfalls on the staircase. By the time she got to the foyer, she saw only her son’s feet at the top, turning the corner to his room.

“I ordered pizza,” she called.

“Not hungry,” he yelled back and slammed his door.

A moment later angry waves of thrash metal washed down the stairs—high-speed riffing and aggressive bass beats. Sometimes Maggie felt separated from her son by a wave of noise, harsh, ugly music she didn’t like and couldn’t understand. Even when he was down in the basement, pounding on his drum set, the sound kept her at bay. She remembered the music she used to listen to when she was his age, finding herself—The Smiths, The Cure, Joy Division—characterized by the typical angst and yearning, maybe even a bit of anger. Ricky’s music seemed so full of rage; she wondered what that said about him, if there was a whole universe inside him that she just couldn’t visit.

Jones had been an angry young man—furious at a father who’d neglected and eventually abandoned him, resentful of a mother who smothered and clung to him in the absence of her husband. Maggie remembered bar fights and road rage, a few on-the-job complaints, one even making it as far as civilian review. But he’d mellowed over time, even though she could still see that younger man when Jones and Ricky went at it. Maybe it was hereditary, anger. Maybe it lay dormant in boyhood, the disease taking hold in late adolescence. Then it either burned out before any damage was done, or took control.

She walked up the stairs, stood at the door, and put her hand on the wall, feeling the textured sunshine yellow paint with her fingertips. The wall vibrated with the sound coming from inside her son’s room. She offered a tentative knock on his door. No response. She knocked louder.

“What?” he called from inside.

“Want to talk about it?”

“No. I don’t.”

The volume of the music increased. She could push inside or walk
away. She could force a conversation, which might turn into a fight. Or just let him come to her when he was ready. She hesitated a moment, conflicted. Then she opted for the latter, moving quietly down the stairs, feeling that strange loneliness again. Uselessness, she thought, was the permanent condition of parenthood. In her office, with her patients, she always knew what do to, what to say. Why, then, with her own family did she so often feel at a complete loss?

For a while, she’d held on to some illusion of control. And then, right about the time Ricky gave up his afternoon nap, she finally understood that for all the schedules and consistency, the rewards and reprimands, ultimately it’s the child who chooses how to behave. It’s the parent’s responsibility to provide the safe environment, the predictable rules, the loving discipline, and the healthy meals, but ultimately the child has to be the one to put the broccoli in his mouth, chew, and swallow. Jones still labored under the delusion that he could bend Ricky to his way of thinking, that with anger, hard words, and harsh punishment he could force their son to do and be what he wanted—in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

When Maggie reached the foyer, the twin beam of headlights swept across the far wall. She walked to the window and saw the pizza delivery car in her drive. She glanced at her watch, then went to the kitchen for her wallet. When she returned, the delivery boy was peering in one of the windows. She opened the door, was surprised by how cool the air had turned once the sun had set.

“Hey, Dr. Cooper.” The delivery boy went on to say something else, something about a cold front moving in, but she barely heard him. Her eyes fell on a figure standing across the street. He leaned against a tall, old oak, washed in the glow of lamplight. It was too dim and he was too far, so she couldn’t quite read his expression, though she recognized his bearing, those permanently slouched shoulders.

She stepped through the doorway and came to stand beside the delivery boy. She could smell warm pizza, cheap aftershave, wood burning on the air. She crossed her arms against the chill.

“Marshall?” she called.

She waited for a hand raised in greeting, or for him to start walking
across the street. Maybe he felt bad about their session, wanted to talk about it. That would be a good sign. But he stood rooted.

“Marshall, is everything all right?”

She felt the quickening of her pulse when he still stayed silent. She was about to move toward him, to cross the street and bring him inside. She’d confront him head-on. She needed to show him that he didn’t intimidate her, if that was what he was after. But then he took off at a run. She looked after him until he was just a pair of white sneakers, then was swallowed by the night. A moment later she heard a car door slam, an engine rumbling to life.

“Twenty-four fifty,” the pizza boy said. “Dr. Cooper?”

“Yes. Sorry.” She handed him thirty, told him to keep the rest, and he, too, took off at a brisk jog, toward his parked car. Just a kid, he looked barely old enough to be driving. He didn’t seem to think much of the strange encounter, was only concerned with his next delivery. She held the hot pizza boxes and salad, still looking after Marshall. She had no reason to be afraid. But she found that she was.

An hour later, Maggie was still waiting on Jones. The pizza boxes sat one on top of the other on the cold burners of the stovetop. The salad was in the fridge. Ricky wouldn’t come down. Jones hadn’t answered at the station; his assistant, Claire, was obviously gone for the evening. There was still no answer on his cell phone. She tried not to worry. As a cop’s wife, she’d learned not to. Jones had taught her early in their marriage that if there were something to worry about, she’d know right away. That was when he worked patrol. Now that he headed the detective division in a relatively small department, there was less reason to worry than ever.

The Hollows was a small, relatively affluent town, about a hundred miles outside of New York City. There were some challenged areas in the district, daily problems with drug dealers, domestic violence; there had been an armed robbery at a liquor store a few months earlier. Recently, a man had killed his wife and then himself, suffering a breakdown after learning she’d had an affair. There were the usual break-ins
and petty crimes. It wasn’t the kind of small town where everyone knew one another and nothing ever happened. But it was a relatively safe and quiet community. People who had grown up in The Hollows often returned after college to raise families. Doctors, lawyers, businesspeople who worked in the city commuted home by train on weekday nights. It had that quaintness to it, the kind that rich urbanites started to crave in their forties, when the glitz of the city ceased to glamour them. It was a nice place to live, with good schools, a lively center with trendy boutiques, an independent bookstore, a couple of nice restaurants, and The Hollows Brew, an upscale coffee shop that hosted a weekly poetry reading, showed the work of local artists on its walls, and had become a kind of general meeting place.