Sins of Innocence (41 page)

“Nah. Are all my school clothes clean?”

“I did them yesterday. They’re in your room.” Good for you, Susan thought. Usually she’d have answered, “If you’d move a few things around in that mess you call a room, you’d have seen they’re all ready.”

“Thanks.”

Thanks? When was the last time her son had thanked her for anything? Guilt settled over her.

“Mark, about this morning …”

He waved her off. “Forget it. We all do what we gotta do.”

“I haven’t made a decision yet.”

He didn’t answer. He got up from the table. “Have you seen my Harvard football shirt?”

“It’s in your dresser.”

He took his plate and plopped it in the sink.

“Are you going out?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

Susan got up. She thought it best not to ask where he was going. She thought it best to give Mark a little space.

“I may go to the library. I’ve got to do some research for Lit Two.”

“Yeah,” he answered, and went off to his room.

Susan ran the dishes under soapy water and placed
them in the dish drainer. At least he’s talking to me, she thought. Sort of.

An hour later Susan sat in the periodical room at the college library. She enjoyed the quiet of the building before classes began, when there were no frantic underclassmen cramming for term papers, no work-study students spending hours digging out materials that should be retrieved in a matter of minutes. She nearly had the place to herself. The high-ceilinged room was walled in polished oak, permeated with a sense of wisdom and comfort. It had been the library that had attracted Susan when she’d first come to Clarksbury: a place of solitude, a place conducive to finding inner peace. Today, however, that peace was elusive.

She sat at the table and thumbed through the big green volumes, looking for critiques on James Joyce, trying to drum up an interest in what she needed to do. But without realizing it, she had turned the pages to “Peace marches.” She scanned the listings. Then she got the microfilm.

She started with April 1968. The demonstration at Columbia. She studied the clippings. In hopes of what? Of seeing David’s name? Of reminding herself that he really did exist? Once. A long time ago. She moved past the photos of hand-painted placards and flower-painted children. She quickly went forward in time. She did not want to read the details. Amazing, she thought, that the touch of a button can quickly push you through an entire year that shaped a generation.

The articles on Vietnam were plentiful. “The Vietnam conflict.” God, she laughed to herself, that’s really what it was called. She had forgotten. Nearly sixty thousand American lives lost, and the press had called it a “conflict.” The press and the politicians. She shuddered at the grainy reproductions of photographs—American marines sloshing through rice paddies, carrying the dead and the wounded on their shoulders; Vietnamese children wearing nothing but diaperlike pieces of cloth, their mouths opened in horror.
Susan turned off the machine. She could not read the articles. The pictures were reminder enough.

Why had she never tried to find David? Why—with all the publicity of the MIA issue in recent years—had she never tried to find out what had happened to him?

Bert had said she was afraid to find her son. Maybe she was. And maybe she’d been afraid to find David alive. Afraid he would find out about their son, and that their love would be irreversibly scarred.

That’s it, Susan thought, as she looked into the vacant gaze of a long ago soldier. She had needed to keep David’s love locked inside her, a memory that would forever be secure, unchallenged, unharmed. The only way she’d known how to do that was to become self-involved, to surround herself with an impenetrable shield, where she would be safe in the fantasy that David, dead or alive, still loved her.

She sat for a long time, staring into the black computer screen. Wasn’t it better to leave the past where it was? Nothing Susan could do could change what had happened, could make up for her mistakes.

Could it?

It was after dusk when Susan shuffled across campus toward home. From the quadrangle she could see the cottage was dark. She strained to see her watch in the dim light. Five minutes to eight. Was Mark still out?

She went up on the porch and let herself in through the front door. The house was quiet. That meant he wasn’t home. No music blaring, no Mark. These days it was one of the few things in life Susan could be certain of.

She tossed her notebooks on the couch and snapped on the old maple floor lamp. The red light on the answering machine was steady: no messages. She flicked off the machine and flopped on the couch, wishing Mark had left her a note. Teenage rebellion, she thought. No worse than anything I’d done. She sat for a few moments, letting her depression envelop her.

Upstairs, she thought. I’ll go upstairs and get into my nightgown and robe. That will make me feel better.

She climbed the narrow stairs. To the right was her tiny bedroom; to the left was Mark’s. As Susan turned into her room, she was overcome by a sense that something was wrong. She turned back and looked across the hallway. The door to Mark’s room was ajar. She stepped inside and turned on the pinup lamp. There was something wrong, all right. Mark’s room was neat. Susan’s heart raced with hope. There were no sweatshirts, socks, or jeans tossed in all directions, no scrambled piles of CDs or Nintendo cartridges. It was, she knew, a sign that he was trying to please her.

Suddenly Bert’s words echoed in her mind:
That kid’s really got you wrapped around his little finger
. Was the fact that Mark cleaned his room simply a manipulation on his part so she wouldn’t go through with the reunion? Was he trying to show Susan he was a good son? What’s more, was he trying to lay on the guilt?

She folded her arms across her waist. If this was his way of giving his opinion, it wasn’t going to work. Honesty was one thing, manipulation, another. And Susan was not going to be manipulated by her son. Bert was right. This had to be her decision, based on her needs.

She turned back toward the hallway when she spotted the door of his closet slightly open. He probably stuffed everything inside, and now the door won’t close, Susan thought. She walked toward the closet and turned the knob. The door closed easily. Too easily. She turned the knob again, then opened the door. Inside, the closet was empty.

Susan froze. Empty? How could it be empty? She stepped inside. Wire hangers jangled together. On the floor was a rumpled sweater Susan knew Mark had never liked, a Greenpeace sweatshirt she’d bought him on Martha’s Vineyard, and an old pair of shoes he had outgrown. Nothing else. The room started to spin. Susan leaned against the doorjamb. Mark had run away.

She clenched her jaw together. Lawrence. The bastard was responsible for this. Mark must have phoned him and told him about Susan’s reunion. She straightened her back
and tore out of the closet, into the hallway, and down the stairs.

He can’t do this to me. The bastard can’t do this to me
.

She grabbed the phone in the living room and punched at the numbers with a shaking finger.
The bastard can’t do this to me
.

The other end of the line was ringing.

“Hello?” It was a sweet, sickish voice. Deborah. A vision of a woman round and short, just like Lawrence, sprang to Susan’s mind.

“Deborah, it’s Susan Levin. I need to speak with Lawrence.”

The woman placed the receiver down without comment to Susan. Bitch, she thought. Despicable bitch.

“Susan?”

“Where is he, Lawrence?”

Her ex-husband was silent. “Where’s who?”

“Don’t play dumb with me. Where’s Mark? Is he there?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Mark. Your son.”
The one who thinks you’re so perfect
, she wanted to shout.

“Why would he be here?”

“Because where else would he go, dammit?”

“Susan. Calm down.” God, how she hated it when he patronized her. “What are you saying?”

She felt the tears close off her throat. She wouldn’t cry. Lawrence wasn’t going to get her to cry.

“He took his clothes,” she managed to say.

“Mark has run away?”

“Yes.”

She looked around the cramped living room. This place is such a dump, she thought. She pictured Lawrence standing in the foyer of his East Eighty-third Street town house. What kid wouldn’t rather live there?

“Jesus Christ, Susan, now what did you do?”

“What did I do? What makes you think I did anything?”

“Because I know you.”

His words stabbed her gut.
I didn’t do anything
, she wanted to scream.
I was just going along, trying to live a peaceful existence, when along came this woman named Jess.…

“We had an argument.” She tried to sound composed. “Nothing extraordinary,” she lied. “We’ve argued before.” Her thoughts raced. If Mark wasn’t at Lawrence’s, where on earth had he gone? All she wanted to do now was hang up.

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Around one o’clock. I left for the library about two.”

“You haven’t seen him since one o’clock this afternoon?” His words hung with accusation: Susan was a bad mother.

“He’s sixteen, Lawrence. I can hardly follow him around and wipe his nose.”

“If he was coming to New York, he’d have been here by now. Unless, of course, something happened to him on the way.”

Thank you, you short, fat, balding bastard, she thought. I really needed to hear that.

“Look, Lawrence,” she hissed, “Mark’s probably at one of his friends’. Or at the mall. On second thought I doubt he would have gone to your house.”

Lawrence didn’t reply.

“Sorry I bothered you,” she said, and slammed down the receiver.

Susan remained on the couch, not moving, not caring, weighted by a crushing loneliness she had never before known. She thought of calling Mark’s friends, then she realized she didn’t even know their last names. Mark had been half-right. She didn’t hate his friends; she just wasn’t interested enough to know who they were.

The light from the floor lamp grew dimmer as the night grew darker. At one point she thought of phoning Bert but decided she couldn’t handle his philosophizing tonight.

Mark will come home, she told herself over and over. Mark will come home soon. And as the hours dragged on, Susan also knew what she would tell him when he came
home. She would tell him that he was the only son she cared about, that she had decided not to go to the reunion.

A cramp in her back awakened her. Susan opened her eyes and blinked them quickly. She was disoriented, confused. Then she realized that sometime during the night she had fallen asleep on the couch. The light still burned behind her, muted by the morning sunlight that strained through the lace curtains. She straightened up, as a flash of memory jolted through her. Mark.

She got up from the couch and ran, light-headed and wobbly, up the stairs.

“Mark!” Susan called. “Mark! Are you home?”

She turned into his room. It was still empty.

Susan looked at her watch. Seven-thirty. She labored through a shower, put on a denim skirt and old cotton blouse, then wandered back downstairs. Her head had the dull ache of too much worry and not enough sleep. She tossed down two aspirin and made a cup of tea. What she really wanted to do was sit down and cry. She was damned if she was going to call Lawrence again.

The phone rang. Susan jumped. She raced into the living room and grabbed the receiver.

“Hello?”

“You’re out of breath. Did I wake you?”

Bert. Bert, not Mark. Her heart deflated.

“No.”

“It’s going to be a great day. How about driving to the Berkshires?”

She started to tell him what had happened, then stopped herself. “No, thanks, Bert. I’ve got to get ready for tomorrow. First day of classes.”

He paused, as though he knew she was lying. “Sure. Well, I may go without you.”

“Enjoy.”

“Sure,” he answered. “Have a good one.”

She hung up the phone. Hurting Bert Hayden’s feelings was the last thing she cared about right now.

She stared at the black receiver and knew what she
had to do. But first, the hell with it, she’d call Lawrence. Maybe, just maybe, the bastard would show a little concern.

Thank God, Lawrence answered the phone.

“He’s been gone almost twenty-four hours,” Susan said sharply. “I wanted you to know I’m calling the police.”

There was a slight pause, then Lawrence spoke slowly. “You needn’t bother,” he said. “Mark is here.”

It took a couple of seconds to sink in. Then Susan screamed, “
What?
”

“I said he’s here.”

“He’s there and you never called me?”

Silence.

“Let me talk to him.”

“No. He doesn’t want to.”

“Is he all right?”

“He’s fine. Under the circumstances.”

Susan’s mind was spinning. “What circumstances?” She felt a pressure surge through her entire body.

“He told me, Susan.”

She felt as though she were going to explode. “Told you what?”

“You know damn well. About your little plan.”

Susan slumped onto the couch. She couldn’t speak.

“I cannot believe you’re doing this to him.”

“I’m not doing anything to Mark.”

“Are you really that stupid to believe that?”

She stared at the coffee table. Sticking out from under her papers was Mark’s copy of
Billboard
magazine. Mark belonged here, not there.

“You’ve already screwed things up with one son. Why you want to go off and find another one is beyond me.”

Her words were slow but deliberate. “I want you to send him home.”

Lawrence laughed.

“I will call the police. I will have him picked up. I have custody of Mark, not you.”

“You’d do that to him? On top of what you’re already trying to pull?”

“Your wife certainly doesn’t want him.”

“My wife is my business,” Lawrence sneered.

“And my son is mine.”

Lawrence paused. “Which son? The one you’ve pretended to raise, or the one you’ve fantasized about?”