The Kindness of Strangers (23 page)

“That’s a great story,” Kramble said.

Sarah blushed. “What about you? Are you married?” He wore no ring.

He shook his head but, after another exhalation of smoke, said, “Divorced.”

“Because of this job?”

He seemed to consider that. “No. Not really. But that’s a convenient excuse.”

“Do you have any kids?”

His long-lashed eyes darkened, and he suddenly looked tired. “No.”

Sarah yearned to ask him. To find out if he’d been abused, if that’s what drew him to this work. But she felt awkward, sitting here so close to this cilantro-scented stranger in the deepening dusk. Or maybe she felt awkward because she realized she
liked
sitting with him. “I . . . I should get home. Thank you, so much, for this.” She gathered the Sprite, the wadded lump of paper towel, and the handkerchief and stood.

Kramble stood, too, took the Sprite can from her, and dropped his cigarette into it. “Feeling better?”

“Yeah.” But she weaved a little on the first steps. He caught her elbow, and as she glanced down at his arm, she saw it: a Y-shaped scar, snaking vertically up the inside of his wrist. Her face burned, and she looked away, as if she’d seen him naked.

Here was her chance, to ask as casually as he had of her hand, “What happened to your wrist?” But the answer was too obvious, too painful.

“Why?” she asked, looking away from him, down the street, now full of empty parking spaces. “Why do people do this? Is it . . . is it an illness? Like a mental disorder?”

“Maybe.” He released her arm. “Maybe not. But illness or no illness, it
is
a crime.”

Sarah looked him in the face again. “Yes, it is.” People she’d known, people she’d
liked,
were criminals.

She squeezed Kramble’s hand. “Thank you.” And as she walked to her car on unsteady legs, she wasn’t sure what she had thanked him for: his kindness? his work for Jordan? his own survival? Or for being the first man to touch her in two years.

Chapter Eleven
Nate

N
ate searched for the paper when he got home from school. He found it on the kitchen island, his mother’s breakfast left uneaten beside it. The day’s headline made his stomach smolder. Mrs. Kendrick was going to have a bail hearing. It might turn out she’d be released until her trial. Christ. She could be out as soon as tomorrow, but the article predicted she’d be considered a flight risk, since Mr. Kendrick had bolted like the big chickenshit asshole that he was, and the bail would be set sky high.

Nate hated how everyone acted like they knew all along, remembering this weird thing or that: The way the Kendricks had loved having kids over at their house. The way Mrs. Kendrick always volunteered to carpool but hardly ever let anyone reciprocate. No one could remember ever being alone with Jordan. The way Mr. Kendrick always told the other parent soccer coaches, “It’s okay, you can go home,” when they were waiting for kids to get picked up after practice. The way Mrs. Kendrick always had that damn video camera everywhere she went. Apparently two fifth-grade girls now claimed that Mr. Kendrick had kissed them a year ago. They’d even told their parents, but they’d said
Mark
—because both the Kendricks always insisted that kids call them by their first names, which all the parents now claimed they’d always felt was “inappropriate.” So these girls said
Mark
had kissed them, but their parents assumed they meant a little boy named Mark, and those parents had talked to the boy Mark’s parents, who had appropriately scolded him.

Nate hated hearing those stories, told in that jaded, cynical, I’m-not-surprised tone. Bullshit. If they
knew,
Nate wanted to yell, why didn’t they
do
anything?

But that made him feel cold all over.

The back door rattled, and his mom came in, wearing her white double-breasted chef’s jacket, balancing two metal pans and several Tupperware containers in her arms. “Hey,” she said. She saw the newspaper and set her load down on top of Mrs. Kendrick’s picture.

Nate felt bad for Mom; Mrs. Kendrick was her best friend. Shit. It would be like finding out Mowaza was having sex with his own little sister or something.

“There’s some leftover Cajun salmon spread. Want some?”

Nate stood. “Maybe later. When I get back. You said I could take the van, remember?” He reached to take the keys from her hand, but she held on to them.

“Do I remember?” she teased him. Nate grinned. “Now,
you
remember: If you go anywhere besides Books & Company and CD Connection, you won’t be allowed to drive at all.”

“Jesus, Mom, all right. You told me this a million times.”

She made a face and tossed the keys to him. “Don’t say ‘Jesus.’ It’s crass.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Watch your speed,” she said as he opened the back door.

“Okay.”

“And make sure you lock it. I left my warmer pans in there, and my copper roaster.”

“Okay.”

As he walked out to the garage, she called, “Be careful.”

He slapped his forehead. “Thank God you said that! If you hadn’t reminded me, I was probably going to drive like a maniac.”

“Smart-ass.”

“Mom,” he teased her. “Don’t say ‘smart-ass.’ It’s crass.”

“Get out of here,” she said, laughing.

When he backed out of the garage, she stood on the porch, waving to him, looking about-to-cry pathetic. “Don’t go anywhere else!” she yelled after him.

But that’s the first thing he did. He hadn’t been behind the wheel for five minutes before he was jeopardizing his driving future again. He hadn’t been to Children’s Medical Center since he had to have his jaw x-rayed a year ago, and then he’d been too damn miserable to pay attention to how to get there. He’d looked up directions on the CMC Web site in the computer lab at school. But driving downtown made him sweat. Traffic was crazy, and a huge bus changed lanes right in front of him, and he had to slam on the brakes. He didn’t relax until he’d found the hospital, but then he was sorry he was already there.

His tight throat and parched mouth made him feel like a baby. Part of him wanted to flee right then, but hell, he’d already lied to Mom; he might as well stay and accomplish his mission. He wanted to be able to tell Mackenzie he’d done this.

When he’d shown up at her house that day after he’d found the disks, she’d answered the door, arms crossed and scowling but had softened when she saw his face. She’d pulled him inside, whispering, “Oh, my God—what’s wrong? What happened?” She wrapped her arms around him and stood on tiptoe to kiss his eyelids. He adored her for acting like that Tony fiasco had never happened, but later Nate had brought up Tony’s comments himself.

Mackenzie’d listened to his apology, her porcelain, unmade-up face impassive. “You never told him I gave good head?” she asked, eyes narrowed.

“No, I swear.”

“Well . . . don’t I?” she asked, her lips pursed in a mock scold.

“Well, yeah, I . . . I mean, you
do
. . . but I never, you know, said—” until Mackenzie’d burst out laughing and kissed him. He pictured the one time she’d done that to him, that Best Day of His Life, a snow day with no school. He and Mackenzie had snowboarded on the hills of the local golf course until their clothes grew stiff-crusty in ice. They peeled them off, back at her empty house, their skin pink beneath the frosted layers. While they waited for the dryer, they burrowed into her bed, naked. They’d done that before, although they hadn’t actually done “it” yet. They’d also never done what she did that day, slipping her head under the covers, her warm mouth kissing a path down his thawing chest and stomach, until the path ended but her kisses didn’t, and he’d believed he might levitate. She’d hummed and giggled through the whole thing . . . which hadn’t lasted very long.

But he couldn’t picture that now without the images altering, blending with images from the disks. He’d see Jordan doing what Mackenzie had done, or he’d see Mackenzie, but he’d see himself yanking her by the hair. Both images freaked him out—he didn’t even know which one repulsed him more, but both trashed his favorite memory.

He’d admitted this to Mackenzie. They’d lain on the floor in her living room, and she cried as Nate described the photos to her. He told her everything—except about his run-ins with Mrs. Kendrick. He was afraid to admit that to her, but even without knowing, Mackenzie said, “You have to go see him.” Nate knew she was right. And he couldn’t sit here in the parking lot forever. If he was going to do this, he needed to do it. He took a deep breath of the warm, spring air and headed for the doors.

The hospital smell hit him at once. This was a clean, cheerful place, but it had the same faint scrubbed-sterile scent that made him think of his dad. He felt raw and exposed.

He’d seen his mom’s note by the phone:
“Jordan. CMC. 3 West.”
He pondered the directory a moment and found an elevator.

Two doctors, both in green scrubs, got on the elevator after Nate. He watched one fiddle with his stethoscope, tapping it in his hand as he talked about an FUO, which Nate knew was a “fever of unknown origin.” The gesture was so familiar, so like his dad’s, that he felt his throat close. He practically fled the elevator on the third floor.

He approached a nurses’ station and selected a sweet-looking, chubby nurse, whose name tag said “Wendy.” “Excuse me.” Nate had to clear his throat to get sound out. Damn, his mouth was so dry. “I’m looking for Jordan Kendrick’s room?”

Wendy looked up and examined Nate with a for-the-police-artist’s-description squint. Her expression softened, and she said, “I’m sorry, sweetie. He won’t see any visitors today.”

“Oh.” Nate was thrown. He’d never considered that. “Okay.” He turned around, embarrassed by the relief flooding through him. What would he have said to the kid anyway?

“If you tell me your name, I’ll be sure to tell him you came by,” Wendy said.

“Oh. Um . . .” Suddenly Nate didn’t want to give his name. Would Jordan even remember him? “That’s okay. I’ll come back later.”

But this made Wendy frown. Shit. Why had Nate come? He walked back toward the elevator, but as he approached it, the doors opened and Dr. Ali Darlen stepped off, looking down at some papers she held in her hand. Nate froze. She’d cut her hair; it was short and spiky now, but he remembered the long red wave of it falling forward the night his father died. It’d brushed his cheek as she bent to shake him awake in the waiting room. She’d led him by the hand to where his mother sat with his father’s body. This memory blindsided him, as if he’d skated onto the ice midgame, with no helmet, no face guard, no pads. She was turning his way. Would she recognize him? He lunged for a water fountain. He drank and drank until he saw her pass him in his peripheral vision. He wanted to keep drinking, but he needed to get out of here. The elevator doors had closed already, so Nate walked past them, down the hall in the opposite direction.

He shouldn’t have come. He could’ve just gone and bought some new CDs with his birthday money. But no, he’d lied to his mom, and he’d probably get caught, as usual, and he hadn’t even seen the kid, the whole damn reason he’d come here.

There had to be another elevator or stairs down here. He passed a lounge with a TV blaring and saw a vending machine tucked back in an alcove. He could use something to drink on the way home. He stepped into the lounge. Nate walked past a table like a restaurant booth. Some kid sat on one of the seats with his back to Nate. As Nate stepped around the kid’s IV stand, he glanced down and saw the kid was working on something, head bent over his hands, engrossed.

At the machine Nate put in a dollar and pressed the buttons for an orange Gatorade. While he waited for the bottle to drop, he looked at the loud TV. No one was watching it. Damn. That would drive him crazy. The poor fish in the aquarium next to it must hate it, too. Nate retrieved his Gatorade, opened it, and drank half the bottle in one chug before turning to leave.

The kid at the booth looked up.

It was Jordan Kendrick.

They stared at each other, mouths open.

“Hey,” Nate said.

Jordan looked panicked. He had a napkin in one hand that he wrapped around the other. He glanced over his shoulder, then back at Nate.

Nate capped his Gatorade, then uncapped it again. “How are you doing?” he asked.

Jordan slouched down until only his head showed above the table. “What are you doing here?” he whispered.

Nate’s face warmed. “I came to see how you were.”

Jordan narrowed his eyes.

“Only the nurse said you didn’t see visitors. Not that it mattered, since you obviously weren’t in your room anyway. But listen, it’s okay. I didn’t know it was you sitting here. I . . . I don’t want to bug you.”

Nate walked past the booth, but Jordan twisted around, peering over the back of his seat. He looked past Nate, down the hall, then up at the ceiling.

“Did you come by yourself?” Jordan asked.

Nate nodded.

“Are you leaving now?”

Nate could take a hint. “Yeah, I can leave. I just wanted to say hi and tell you I’m sorry, you know. . . .”