The Kindness of Strangers (32 page)

Danny’s face turned red, and he muttered, “Hi,” then looked away.

Poor Danny,
Sarah thought, watching Jordan frown. If Danny didn’t telegraph his embarrassment so obviously, maybe Jordan would never know what Danny’d done at school.

It touched her that Nate tried so hard to make small talk. Danny tried, too, but he fidgeted and always looked at Nate or Reece, not Jordan. In spite of their efforts, conversation quickly deteriorated to a series of questions and answers. Jordan submitted to this interview, but with a forced courtesy that hung heavy in the room.

Sarah found it hard to look at Jordan without picturing what had been done to him. It amazed her that he seemed so together, that he looked as he always had—like any eleven-year-old boy. She couldn’t imagine herself able to function if she’d been through what he had.

“We have Popsicles,” Danny said out of the blue. “Do you want one?”

Sarah saw Jordan’s eyes light up, but he said, “No, that’s okay. Thanks.”

Danny headed into the kitchen. Another tortured silence fell in the room.

“I’m gonna have one, too,” Nate said. He unfolded his lanky frame from his chair and followed Danny.

Jordan stared after Danny for a moment.
Oh, God,
Sarah thought.
Please let this work.
When Jordan returned his gaze to hers, he seemed to shrink. He stood and stuck close to the couch, barely meeting anyone’s eyes when he said, “Um . . . I guess maybe I will have one.”

When he was gone, Sarah turned to Reece and whispered, “What have I done?”

He smiled at her. His eyes twinkled. “It’s gonna be okay. Today will be strange. There’s no way around it.” He glanced toward the kitchen and said quietly, “He’s really nervous. Ali told me he didn’t eat any of his breakfast.”

“Maybe I should start lunch now.” She’d welcome something to keep her hands busy.

Reece chuckled and squeezed her shoulder. “Sarah, it’s only ten. Relax. You’re doing fine. Look, this is the perfect time for me to slip away.”

It seemed so abrupt; she felt unequipped. Sarah hated the abandonment she felt when Reece left, but she fiercely shook it from her. She’d gotten through worse than this on her own. She understood why Bryn had had them do a project together when the whole family met with Jordan for a therapy session. Bryn had showed them a dollhouse on the table and a cupboard full of figures and objects. “I want you all to make a world together. Using any of these things you want, work together to create a world inside this house.” Sarah had felt awkward and sheepish, like when she was asked to participate in games at Danny’s school, but now she missed having something active to do.

She wandered into the kitchen, where the boys sat around one of the kitchen islands with their Popsicles. Danny sat between Jordan and Nate, his big brother’s shadow today, like the old days. Sarah got herself a raspberry Popsicle and sat on a stool.

The conversation was strained, mostly led by Nate asking Jordan about soccer, until Jordan winced and pressed a hand to his forehead. “Ow.”

“Brain freeze?” Nate asked.

Jordan nodded, eyes shut tight.

“It’s from your teeth,” Danny said. “Your brain freezes when your teeth get cold. Don’t bite it. You have to
suck
it.”

A horrible silence froze the room. Oh, dear God, this was torture.

Sarah thought of those images from the disks. She risked a glance at Jordan, whose face—the color of his cherry Popsicle—told her he was thinking of those images, too.

Danny looked mortified as well, and Sarah wondered how many other photos he’d seen wherever he found that picture of Jordan.

Jordan ignored Danny’s comment and turned to Sarah. “Can I go to the bathroom?”

“Sure. You don’t have to ask,” Sarah said.

She exhaled when he left the room. She was so tense her neck ached. She sat with her sons, fidgeting in awful silence, as if they were
all
strangers brought together to live in this house today. She fought the urge to to chase after Reece’s car, waving her arms and yelling, “Never mind!” She realized now that their “world-building” exercise was being reenacted here: Danny had plunged in, grabbing handfuls of deer and rabbits, filling the dollhouse with all kinds of animals. Nate had been the rational, patient leader, negotiating space for the others. And Jordan had gone so long without responding that Sarah feared he was refusing to participate.

She cleared her throat. “Reece said we should all do what we’d regularly be doing. We need to give him some space to watch us and get used to the house.” The boys looked at her and nodded, but no one moved. “What do we normally do on Sundays?” Sarah felt desperate.

“Can I go work on my science project?” Danny asked.

“Absolutely,” Sarah said. “Good idea.”

Nate snorted. “Danny volunteering to do homework?”

“Shut up.”

“Nate,” Sarah said, “maybe today would be a good day to move Klezmer back outside.”

“You still have Klezmer?” Jordan said from the doorway.

He didn’t have the Popsicle anymore.

“Yep,” Danny and Nate said in unison. For a split second, Jordan’s face registered utter delight, but then it vanished beneath his passive, neutral mask of disinterest. Sarah wondered how long it took for a child his age to perfect that mask.

“You wanna see him?” Danny asked.

“No.” It was too quick, too defensive.

“Come on,” Danny said. “Last time you saw him, he was just a baby.”

“No,” Jordan said again, too insistently for Danny’s friendly offer.

Danny’s mouth dropped open, and he blinked. Another pause fell. Sarah felt sad for Danny. He was trying so hard.

“So,” Sarah said brightly. She turned to Nate. “You think you’ll put the hutch under Danny’s tree again?”

Nate narrowed his eyes and said, “Yes,” slowly, as if Sarah were psychotic.
Come on,
she willed him.
Give me a break. Work with me here.

“Why is it Danny’s tree?” Jordan asked.

“Me and Danny both have trees,” Nate said, pointing toward the backyard. “They were planted when we were born, so our trees are as old as we are.”

“We could plant one for you,” Danny said. “And
you’d
be lucky—you’d get to pick what kind you want.”

Sarah stared at Danny, amazed. It was sweet—a great idea, actually—but Jordan looked alarmed now.

“But . . . but I’m not . . . I’m not really in your family.”

“But you are
now,
” Danny said.

“But . . . but just for a while. Not really.”

Sarah saw Danny’s face change. “Okay,” he said, giving up. “Whatever. I’m gonna work on my science.” He left the kitchen.

Sarah chewed on her Popsicle stick. Any discomfort she experienced was nothing compared to what this child had been through.

“You wanna see your room?” Nate asked. “You could unpack your stuff.”

Sarah felt something akin to terror as they disappeared up the stairs. It was the same feeling she’d had when she first brought newborn Nate home and left any room he was in. It was all she could do not to follow them.

She waited a few minutes to go check on Danny, so it wouldn’t appear she was following the boys.

“Hey,” she said, slipping inside Danny’s room, now crowded with Nate’s belongings as well. He jumped up from his bed, then exhaled and dropped his shoulders when he saw it was her. She noticed he wasn’t working on his science project. “Jordan doesn’t know about what happened at school. You don’t have to be so nervous about that.”

“I’m not nervous.” He pushed his black curls out of his eyes.

“Okay.” Sarah tousled his hair and left him alone.

In the hall Jordan hovered in the door frame of Nate’s old room. “Uh . . . I think I’m done unpacking. Is this okay?” He stepped back, as if inviting her to inspect his room.

“If it’s okay by you, it’s okay by me. It’s your room.”

“For now,” he stressed, his face serious.

“Right. For now.” She gazed into that somber face. He looked so much like his mother—the same wispy blond hair, the same high cheekbones, the same blue eyes. It made Sarah miss Courtney. The old Courtney, that is. The one Sarah thought she’d known. Sarah remembered telling Courtney that her eyes were the color of Lake Superior in July. She’d even shown her a photograph of Ma and Pop standing on their deck, the lake sparkling like a jewel behind them.

“So I can go downstairs?” Jordan asked.

She felt a melting sensation in her chest. “Yes, of course. You don’t have to ask permission. We want you to make yourself at home here.”

He nodded and followed her to the kitchen. He stood at the back door and watched Nate play with the rabbit in the yard while Sarah puttered around making lunch. Nate moved the rabbit hutch out of the basement and situated it under Danny’s apple tree. He put in fresh straw and hooked up the water bottle.

Jordan just watched. Sarah didn’t try to make conversation, and neither did he, and after a while the silence was comfortable.

“Here, taste this.” Sarah gave him a chicken salad sandwich. “Does it need more mayo?”

He shook his head. He ate it all. She gave him another. She opened up a bag of chips, and he ate half of them while she made sandwiches and sliced up a watermelon. Sarah never bought chips—or Popsicles, for that matter—but she and Danny had tried to select things they remembered from Jordan’s house for him.

When she called the boys for lunch, Jordan said he wasn’t hungry anymore. He wandered around the backyard and garden while they gathered at the table.

Nate started to pick up his sandwich and head for the living room, but Sarah said, “I’d really like us all to sit down at the table.”

Danny and Nate paused, and she braced herself for resistance, but none came. They sat down. They ate together, but in silence. After lunch they all went their separate ways.

Sarah joined Jordan in the backyard. “Wanna see something cool? There’s a nest of robin eggs in that tree.” She stood on the bench and gestured for him to join her. He hesitated but then climbed up beside her. Sarah peered down into the nest. “Oh, my gosh! They hatched.” Tiny pink heads—all mouth, it seemed—wobbled on pipe-cleaner necks from the depths of the nest.

Jordan stood on tiptoe to see the baby birds, and Sarah’s heart lifted at his smile. The mother robin shrieked her staccato warnings, and Sarah said, “Watch out for her. You go after her kids and she’ll get you. See?” She held out her hand to show Jordan her scar, but his face changed. Something dark moved behind his pale blue eyes, and he jumped down.

Sarah felt bad that in their effort to give him space, Jordan ended up spending the rest of the day alone. He went inside the house to his room and closed the door. When she knocked later, to remind him to take his medicine, she heard the unmistakable sound of furniture dragging across carpet before he opened the door. From the marks on the carpet, she guessed he’d had the desk chair against the door. She said nothing about it, but her throat tightened.

He said he was tired at dinnertime and didn’t join them then either. Around seven o’clock he came downstairs, and she showed him where the leftovers were and told him to help himself. He cleaned up after himself impeccably.

When everyone headed to bed, he came downstairs to watch TV. Sarah never went to bed unless her kids were in their rooms. But for this one time, she let it go. She didn’t sleep, though. She crept downstairs once at twelve-thirty, and sure enough, he was awake on the couch, the only light from the TV itself, watching some old Hitchcock film. She thought she was quiet, but he jumped to his feet and asked, “Is it too loud? Do you want me to turn it off?”

“No, no, it’s not too loud at all. I’m amazed you can even hear it. I didn’t mean to startle you; I was just . . . checking on you. You need anything?”

He shook his head, and Sarah looked at the TV. A man was being strangled. He grabbed at the rope around his neck, but the attacker kept hold, his face ablaze with power.

“Won’t this give you bad dreams?” she asked.

He looked at her as if he weren’t sure she was serious. “I don’t dream about things on TV.”

Sarah’s eyes stung.
Of course he didn’t
. She wanted to scoop him to her and hug him, but she knew that would be little comfort to this child. They stuttered through some more small talk, and she went away.

She crept back down again at three. The TV was still on, but muted, and Jordan sat with his back in the corner of the room, his head leaning against the front door, asleep sitting up, knees drawn into his chest, arms wrapped around them.

For either of her own children, she would have turned off the TV, kissed his tousled hair, and escorted him up to bed, but she didn’t. She tiptoed away.

She thought again of that dollhouse therapy exercise. When Jordan finally did participate, he’d plunked down a fire-breathing dragon in front of the only door, blocking any exit from the dollhouse.

“Jordan!” Danny had said. “Come on. Take it out. The dragon will eat the rabbits.”