These Things Hidden (8 page)

T
he lights that line Sullivan Street sputter on at nine-thirty even though the sky has been midnight-black since seven. Watching the rain fall in silvery sheets, Joshua stands with his fingers pressed against the front window of Bookends, leaving sticky fingerprints that Claire won’t have the heart to wipe away.
Look,
the smudged impressions seem to say,
look who has been here—a little boy of five who loves sour gummy worms and chocolate-flavored soda.
Both of which Claire, in a rare moment of indulgence, allowed Joshua to have. They weren’t supposed to be at Bookends this late on a Monday evening, but Ashley, Claire’s seventeen-year-old part-timer, called in sick. Then the ceiling began to leak, causing a flurry of rearranging and mopping. Distressed,
Truman slunk into the back room and Claire gave in to Joshua’s pleadings for his favorite sugary snacks.

Now, two hours later, an exhausted Claire climbs the old rickety stepladder that Jonathan is convinced she will break her neck on one day, to finish the inventory that should have been completed hours earlier.

“Mom,” Joshua says fretfully, “I saw lightning. I think it’s going to thunder.”

“Just give me a few more minutes, Josh, then we’ll pack up and go home. I’m almost done. Are you tired?” Joshua shakes his head no. “We’re going to have to start getting you to bed earlier. You start school next week,” she tells him as she scans the upper levels of the bookshelves, noting what titles need to be ordered on her clipboard.

“Can I go upstairs?” Joshua asks. Above the bookstore is an unoccupied but furnished efficiency apartment that Jonathan has been updating in hopes that they can rent it out to a college student one day.

“Nope. Sorry,” Claire tells him. “Dad still has a bunch of his tools up there. There’s nothing fun up there, anyway, except for a leaky ceiling. I promise I’ll be ready to go in.” She lifts her wrist to check her watch and nearly tumbles off the ladder. “Whoops,” Claire says, steadying herself. “We’ll leave in fifteen minutes.”

Joshua sighs heavily as if he doesn’t quite believe his
mother. “Okay. I’m going back there.” He hooks his thumb in the direction of the children’s section and walks wearily away.

Such a little old man, Claire thinks. She hears the jingle of bells as the front door opens and two young men slouch in. “Sorry, we’re closed,” she tells them, truly apologetic. She hates to turn readers away—not just for the money, although there’s that, of course, but she knows that yearning feeling of wanting the weight of a new book in her hands. “We open tomorrow at nine,” she adds over her shoulder, not becoming suspicious until they pull the hoods up, their faces hidden in the recesses of their oversize hooded sweatshirts. It’s the end of August and despite the rain it’s still warm and humid in the evenings. Dread fills her chest and only one thought comes to her mind.
Joshua.

The shorter of the two glances up at Claire, his hood slipping back, his dark eyes flickering toward hers. The second boy, taller and leaner, makes a beeline to the cash register. With a bony, nail-bitten finger he jabs at the register and the drawer opens with a clang, striking him in the stomach so that the sound of the coins clanking against one another echoes through the store. “Hey,” Claire calls in disbelief. “What are you doing?”

The tall boy ignores her and begins stuffing bills and rolls of coins from the register into the pockets of his sweatshirt. Claire starts down the wobbly ladder,
thinking of only placing herself between Joshua and the thieves.

“Stay there,” the taller boy orders. She moves down one more rung, saying a silent prayer that Joshua won’t come out of the children’s section in the back. “I said, stay there!” he shouts, and he moves toward Claire. His hood slips back to reveal brown wisps of hair, framing a face that could be very handsome if his lips weren’t curled in an angry sneer, revealing stained teeth. Meth mouth, Claire thinks. The boy has lifeless, dark eyes.
Where is Truman?
Claire wonders.
Where is that dog when I need him?

Again, Claire thinks of Joshua, hoping he’ll stay tucked away, but as she looks over her shoulder he is standing there, staring up at her with fear in his eyes. He looks so small and fragile. His face creases with worry and his hands are clenched together in front of him. The thieves haven’t seen him yet. Claire imperceptibly shakes her head at him, willing him to go back into the children’s section and hide, but Joshua is frozen in place. Claire takes another tentative step down the ladder and the boy reaches into the pocket of his sweatshirt. A few bills flutter to the ground and she sees the glint of metal. “Don’t fucking move,” he spits as he pulls a knife from his pocket.

“I’m … I’m not moving,” Claire assures him, her eyes darting from Joshua to the knife.

“Jesus.” His partner moves toward the cash register. “What are you doing? Put that away.” This boy is smaller, more compact, built like a gymnast or a wrestler. Black curly hair springs out from his hood and his eyes are gray, the color of slate.

“Shut up,” the tall thief orders his friend and then says to Claire, “Where’s the safe?”

“There is no safe, just the cash register.” Her legs are beginning to cramp and she resists the urge to shake them out, afraid to move.

“Where’s the safe?” he demands again, his voice rising in frustration.

They all hear the whimper at the same time and Claire’s stomach plummets.
Joshua.

“What the hell?” the shorter of the thieves asks no one in particular.

“Mom?” Joshua says. “Is it time to go home?” He looks fearfully from his mother’s face to the knife the tall thief is holding.

“It’s okay, Josh,” Claire tells him, panic forcing her words to come out in breathy puffs. “Go back. It’s going to be okay. Go back and wait for me.” Josh takes a cautious step backward.

“No! You stay right there!” the tall boy shouts. Joshua blinks rapidly and hesitates just for a second, then dashes to the back of the store. The tall thief makes a move to run after him and Claire instantly begins to rush
down the ladder when she feels it begin to shift beneath her feet.

The hinges on the ladder buckle at her quick movement and she loses her footing. It isn’t a long fall—she’s not really up all that high, five feet or so—and she tries to twist her body midair so she won’t fall flat on her back. When people described time slowing down in situations like these, she had always laughed, shrugged it off as a silly trick of the mind. But it’s true; during her short journey to the hardwood floor below, she notices an amazing number of details.

Midspin, she finds herself looking straight at the taller thief, who has decided Joshua isn’t worth chasing. “Come on,” the other boy calls out nervously. Except it comes out as “Cooommme oooonnnnn.” Slow and stretched out like taffy. He is scared; Claire can see it in his eyes. He can’t be more than fifteen, Claire thinks, and wonders if these boys’ mothers know what they are up to. “Let’s get out of here!” he cries in long, drawn-out syllables, and then they are heading for the door. They are leaving. Thank God. And everything speeds up, back to normal time.

Claire’s right shoulder hits first. An explosion of pain radiates through her arm, then her head hits the floor and a burst of warm yellow light explodes behinds her eyelids. From the doorway she can hear the taller boy shouting, “Hang it up! Hang up the phone!”

Then she hears his voice, small and hesitant. “They made my mom fall,” Joshua says into the phone, his voice shaky, scared. “They took the money,” Joshua adds in a rush.

“Run!” Claire tries to yell, but all her breath has been pressed from her lungs.

“Hang up the fucking phone!” the thief says between clenched teeth.

Claire begins to army-crawl across the bookstore floor toward Joshua, the pain in her shoulder and head secondary to reaching her son. “Run,” she gasps desperately.

Joshua releases the phone and it clatters to the ground and instead of running away he goes to his mother and drops to the floor next to her. She can hear a siren in the distance and, in her ear, Joshua’s frantic breathing. The thieves hear the sirens, too, and quickly rush from the store.

“It’s okay, Joshua!” Claire says to him weakly. “It’s okay, buddy.” He is sitting cross-legged next to her, his small hand wrapped tightly around her wrist as if he’s afraid that if he lets go she will float away. The pain that pulses through Claire’s shoulder and the throbbing in her head churn her stomach and bile creeps into her throat. She turns her face to the side, away from Joshua, and vomits. Claire hears his sobs and can feel the shudder of his body next to hers, but still he grasps her wrist, clutching even tighter. “Don’t cry, Joshua,”

Claire whispers, her own tears sliding down her cheeks. “Please don’t cry.” Finally, Truman lumbers over to them, nudges Claire’s face with his wet nose, sits down, and the three of them wait for help to arrive.

It isn’t until the ambulance arrives and the EMTs convince Joshua that they are there to help that Joshua releases Claire from his grip, leaving five perfectly circular imprints of his fingers like a red wreath around her wrist. “It’s okay, Josh,” Claire tells him over and over.

“One of the police officers will stay with your son until your husband arrives,” the EMT promises Claire. “You took quite the tumble. We need to get some X-rays and have you checked over by a doctor. Are you in much pain?”

Claire nods. “Can’t he stay with me? I don’t want to leave him alone,” Claire says as she tries to lift her head to see Joshua, wincing at the movement. He is sitting on the reading sofa with Truman’s head on his lap. A young police officer approaches him, kneels down and says something to Joshua that makes the corners of his mouth rise in a reluctant smile.

“We really need to get you to the hospital, ma’am. The officer will stay and take care of him.”

“I feel like I’m going to throw up again,” Claire admits with embarrassment.

“It’s okay.” He nods at Claire. “I’m sure you got a doozy of a concussion. Vomit away.”

When Claire arrives at the hospital and is wheeled into the emergency room, Jonathan is already there, standing at the door, waiting anxiously.

“Claire?” he asks as the gurney comes to a stop. “Claire, are you okay?”

“Joshua,” she says. “Where’s Joshua?” She sits up quickly and pain shoots through her skull as she lifts her head to search for her son.

“He’s fine,” Jonathan assures her, tears welling in his eyes as he looks down at his wife. “An officer is bringing him here right now.” He runs a hand gently across her head. “How are you? What happened?”

Claire tries to describe the robbery as the EMT rolls her down the corridor, Jonathan holding her hand as they move, but her eyes are heavy and keep closing. All she wants to do is sleep but she fights the urge. “You should have seen Joshua,” she says, her voice filled with awe and pride. Claire glances down at her wrist, the one that Joshua had held so tightly while they waited for help. She feels a surge of panic when she sees that his fingerprints have faded from her wrist. For a moment she has the sense that Joshua is gone, torn from her forever. But then she hears the familiar cadence of Joshua’s steps coming near and then he is at her side.

“My brave boy,” Claire whispers, and reaches for him before finally surrendering to sleep.

A
t group meetings I’m trying to decide whether to speak up or not. We each have the opportunity to talk about relationships that may have played a role in our poor decision-making. I mull this over. I don’t think anyone in the history of Linden Falls has fallen as far and as fast as I have. I was the perfect daughter to perfect parents, but looking back, I don’t know. My parents fed and clothed us and made sure we had everything we needed academically, athletically, socially. We even went to church every Sunday, but something was missing. Between swim meets, volleyball tournaments, the SAT prep courses and church youth activities, there wasn’t much there. We didn’t really speak to one another or laugh together, and I can’t retrieve one memory that wasn’t scheduled into a one-hour time block
and marked on the calendar that hung on the wall on our kitchen. So I could talk to the group about my parents and our lack of communication and how I didn’t feel like I could tell them that I was pregnant, certainly.

But really, the source of my very steep downfall was Christopher.

I met Christopher by chance, at St. Anne’s College. I was taking the SATs again, trying for an even better score. My goal was a perfect 2400. Only about three hundred students per year scored a 2400 and I was going to be one of them.

It was a Saturday afternoon and I walked out of the classroom into the bright sunshine after taking the test in a daze, my mind whirling with exam questions and answers. I was tired and hungry and sick with worry over how I had done. Now came the hardest part, the waiting. I had to wait a month to find out the results. My stomach flipped at the thought and I froze in place, just stood there. I must have looked lost or sick because the next thing I knew a boy was at my side, peering worriedly into my face. He was taller than I was—that was what I noticed first. Not very many boys are taller than I am. The second thing I noticed was that he was older. He had to be twenty-two or twenty-three. He had copper-brown hair that curled around his ears and sharply angled features that were only softened by his eyes, which were such a deep brown and so beautiful it
hurt to look at them. He wore a Cubs jersey and I later learned he was a huge fan.

I was used to guys looking at me, boys from school with their idiotic sexual comments that were for the benefit of their friends. I didn’t waste my time even thinking about them. Grown men even stopped to look at me—my father’s friends, the manager at the grocery store—though they were much more subtle about it. I was flattered. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to know that someone thinks you look good. I just didn’t have time for it.

Every waking minute of my day was spent studying, cramming as much knowledge into my head as possible. I was sort of like one of those binge eaters who sit in a closet, with their packages of doughnuts and bags of potato chips, and stuff food in their mouths, not understanding why, just needing to do it. That’s how I felt. I needed more and more information and I didn’t know why. Well, of course, there were obvious reasons—to get good grades so I could get into a good college so I could get a good job and make good money. But there was more to it. I studied once for a history test on the Revolutionary War for ten hours straight. I knew the material, but I had to keep reviewing it, memorizing meaningless names and dates and battles. Finally, my father, who always tiptoed about as if he were afraid to startle the air around me, came into my room and took
the book from my hands and insisted that I come down and eat something. I tried to balance things out—I joined all the sports teams I could—but it was the same kind of endless circle. I had to run farther, run faster—not to beat some competitor. No, it was something else. I’m not sure what, but I know I was miserable.

“Are you okay?” the boy with brown eyes asked me. “You don’t look so good.”

I blushed and stared up at him, not knowing what to say.

“You just look like you’re in shock or something,” he explained. “You’re not going to pass out, are you?”

“No, no,” I assured him. “I’m fine.”

“Well, that’s good. I wouldn’t want you to die on me or something terrible like that.”

Well, I didn’t die, though a little more than nine months later I wished I would have. We walked to a nearby café, had coffee and talked and laughed. He was the one person who could distract me from myself and for the first time ever I was actually having fun. He told me he was a junior at St. Anne’s College, working on a business degree. We spent the next three weeks together, every spare moment. I really loved Christopher, but it was too much, too fast. I considered lying to him about my age, but although I may have been many things, a liar wasn’t one of them. At least, not at that time. Christopher raised his eyebrows at my age, but it didn’t
stop him from taking my hand at the restaurant. I didn’t mean to keep him a secret, but I did. I didn’t introduce him to my parents or Brynn, didn’t even tell them about Christopher. I’m not sure why. He was twenty-two, way too old for a just-turned sixteen-year-old, and I knew my parents would have forbidden me from seeing him. Maybe deep down I knew it wasn’t going to last—that while there wasn’t anything wrong with a sixteen-year-old falling in love with a twenty-two-year-old, there was something definitely wrong with a grown man falling in love with a teenager. So I kept us a secret.

In the three weeks that I was with him, I didn’t crack open one book outside of school. I rushed through my homework before school and during study hall. My grades dipped. I went to volleyball practice, but my mind wasn’t on what the coach was saying. My mother asked me if I was feeling okay. Brynn looked at me suspiciously, but didn’t say anything. Neither did my teachers. I’m sure they were thinking,
No one’s perfect, even Allison Glenn.
I think they were secretly pleased to see me this way. As for me, I was gloriously happy.

That first week we met in ordinary places—the movies, restaurants, the park—but the next Saturday he took me to his house. We had met at the city park and then I climbed into his car and he drove us out of Linden Falls across the Druid River into the country. “You don’t live in town?” I asked him, surprised.

“No, just outside of Linden Falls,” he explained.

It was a sweet house, plain and small but clean.

He opened the refrigerator and pulled out a soda.

“Come on, I’ll show you my room.” I raised my eyebrows slyly at him. “Don’t you want to?” he asked, sliding his arms around my waist and pulling me to him.

“I want to,” I said as I kissed him.

He led me to his bedroom. It was a small, dark room with a plaid comforter and blank walls. “Not much for interior decorating, are you?” I teased.

“A man’s gotta travel light,” he responded, slipping his hands into the waistband of my jeans.

“Are you planning on going somewhere?” I asked, pulling his shirt over his head.

“Yeah, I am,” he said, grinning at me. “If you’ll let me.”

“Oh, I’m going to let you,” I whispered. And I did. I let him. And as he slid into me, I wasn’t scared or worried. It wasn’t painful. It was like coming home and all I could do was say his name over and over. “Christopher, Christopher, Christopher …”