When He Fell (13 page)

Out on the sidewalk a woman with short blonde hair and tired eyes approaches us. “Excuse me…but are you Josh’s parents?”

Lewis and I both stop, shooting each other quick, questioning looks.

“Yes,” Lewis says, and I hear the current of latent aggression underneath the veneer of politeness.
What’s it to you?

“My name is Jane and my daughter Amelia is in Josh’s class,” the woman says. “I just wanted to say…I’m sorry for everything that has happened. With Josh. And…and Ben.” Neither Lewis nor I know how to take this, so we just nod. Stiffly. “My daughter is adopted,” Jane continues. “We adopted her when she was four. And she’s had some…issues. So I just wanted to say that I understand. It can be tough and even though Burgdorf is supposed to be a great school for children like ours…well.” She smiles sympathetically, but neither Lewis nor I smile back. I don’t think either of us wants to have solidarity with this woman and her troubled daughter and these unnamed
issues
. But we already do.

After a few seconds’ awkward silence we murmur some thank yous and goodbyes and move on. Lewis shakes his head slightly when we’re a good distance away.

“How many people are talking about us?” he asks under his breath. “About Josh?”

I’m afraid the answer to that is everyone. “At least someone is on our side,” I venture and Lewis blows out a breath.

“She just wants an ally.”

And maybe we need one
, I think, even as I wonder how school has become a battlefield. Are we always going to be fighting someone, parents, teachers, other kids, each other? At the corner of Fifty-Fourth and Sixth I turn to Lewis.

“How about we go and get a coffee?” Neither of us has time for one but I can’t face my office just yet, not when my nerves are still skittering all over the place, and I crave the comfort of time with Lewis.

Lewis nods and we head for the nearest Starbucks, never more than a block or two away, and join the never-ending line for mochas and lattes.

We sit with our drinks at a tiny table in the corner, the only one left. Our knees nudge each other as we gaze down at our coffees. Lewis’s hands look even bigger wrapped around the paper cup, and I can see all the little nicks and scars where he has cut himself from his woodworking. His hands are a workman’s hands, and the thick veins and ridged scars make me love him more. They are the hands of a man who is not afraid of work, of
doing
. A protector’s hands. A lover’s hands.

“I think,” Lewis says after a moment, “I should go and see Maddie.”

I try not to let the apprehension show in my face, but Lewis isn’t looking anyway. With his head bent I can see the strands of gray in his dark hair.

“Okay,” I venture cautiously.

“She doesn’t have any support,” Lewis continues. He’s still not looking at me. “No family.”

And you know this how?
I want to ask, but I don’t because I really don’t want to talk about Maddie, and I know it is reasonable for Lewis to see her. I know this, but I don’t feel it. “Okay,” I say instead. Again.

“I’ll go tonight,” Lewis says, decisive now, and when he looks up at me his expression is entirely inscrutable.

11
MADDIE

The elevator opens directly to Juliet’s apartment; she and Bruce bought a second apartment on the top floor of their swanky building on Fifth Avenue and Seventy-Ninth a couple of years ago, and knocked them together so they have the entire floor. I remember Juliet telling me they just couldn’t pass up the opportunity, as if most people could consider buying a second three-bedroom apartment so they can have a little extra space..

In the end they didn’t do much besides create an extra corridor between the two living areas. They’ve left one apartment for the children, with three bedrooms, a playroom, a study or ‘homework’ room, as Juliet says, and their own kitchen that Juliet’s aide uses to make the kids meals and snacks. The other side of the apartment is for grownups.

Juliet is waiting by the elevator as the doors open; the doorman had called up to tell her I was on my way. “
Maddie
,” she says, and steps forward to wrap me in a hug. I return it stiffly as the doors swoosh closed behind me. “The kids are over there,” she says as she steps back, waving towards the doorway leading to the apartment on the east side. I can hear the TV blaring some awful teeny bopper show’s theme music; Juliet has always been about limiting what she calls ‘electric stimulation’—which sounds like shock therapy to me—but whenever I’ve come over to her apartment, the huge flat -screen TV is turned on.

She gestures to the grownup side. “Come and have a glass of wine.”

She leads me to the huge designer kitchen with its walk-in freezer and enormous island of granite and oak. A bottle of red is already on the island, open and by the looks of it, half empty.

Juliet pours two glasses as I slide onto one of the high bar stools. She hands me one and takes a large sip from her own before asking, “How is Ben?”

I sip my own wine before I answer, studying her covertly. She looks tired, the lines on her face—Juliet is one of the few wealthy wives of Manhattan who refuses to go under the knife, or even the syringe—seeming deeper than usual. Her blonde corkscrew curls are threaded with gray and as untamable as ever. She wears her usual combination of tunic top and flowing trousers in neutral shades, so you can’t tell where one garment begins and the other ends. On her generous, rounded figure, it usually works, but today she’s looking more bag lady than carelessly chic.

“He’s starting to regain consciousness,” I finally say. It’s been eight days since his injury; five days since they started taking him off the medication. He still hasn’t opened his eyes. Juliet puts her wine glass down on the granite counter with enough force to make wine slosh out.

“Oh Maddie, really? That is
such
good news.” Tears sparkle in her gray eyes. “I’m so, so happy to hear that. You have no idea.”

Actually, I think I do. I take another sip of wine. “I was surprised you haven’t come and seen us in the hospital, Juliet. Although the meals were nice.” I pause and then add, “Thank you.”

“Oh, Maddie.” Juliet bites her lip, avoiding my gaze. “I’m sorry. I know I should have come and seen you. I wanted to, but…”

“But?”

“It was hard,” she whispers.

“You know what’s hard?” I retort. I can hear the anger vibrating in my voice. “What’s hard is your son being in a coma, and having no idea if he’s going to survive.”

Juliet’s eyes fill with tears. I feel guilty, as if I’m hurting her, but I go on. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth, Juliet?”

Her eyes widen and her face pales. “The truth…?”

“Josh’s mother told me that Ben and Josh were on the rocks when Ben fell. He fell from the
rocks
, where you know he shouldn’t have been. Shouldn’t have been allowed to go.”

“I…” She stares at me, licking her lips, her mind clearly racing.

“Is that why you didn’t tell me? Is that why didn’t want to visit me?” My voice is shaking now. “Because you didn’t want to admit that you weren’t watching them properly? The accident report said he fell from the play structure. Who told the police that, I wonder?”

“
Maddie
.” Juliet sounds like a child who has been hurt. “You know how it is on the playground. So many kids rushing around, you have to have eyes in the back of your head…”

I do know that, and if Juliet had been honest from the beginning, if she had come and visited me and apologized, then
maybe
I could have understood and forgiven her. Maybe. “Who else was on playground duty?”

Juliet is silent for a moment. “Helen Lanfer,” she finally says. I don’t know Helen except that she is a high-powered divorced mother who sits on the board with Juliet’s husband Bruce.

“Where was she when Ben and Josh went up on the rocks?”

“We didn’t…” Juliet looks around the kitchen, as if expecting someone to come help her out. I stare at her hard and she continues in a whisper, “She was…she was with me.”

And they must have been talking. I can see it all now. They would have been sitting on the park bench that faces the climbing structure, chatting and laughing and enjoying the autumn sunshine. It had been a beautiful day, warm for mid-October, and now I remember that Juliet is pretty good friends with Helen. The Lanfers visited them in France one summer a few years ago, before their divorce.

So there were Helen and Juliet, catching up on the latest gossip while the children raced around. They would have glanced at the kids scrambling over the climbing structure or lining up for the swing, and they would have been complacent.

And it cost me my son’s health. Almost his life. Part of me knows I can’t blame Juliet entirely, and yet in this moment I want to. It feels easy, almost satisfying. If she had been looking…if she had seen them start up the rock face and been able to call them down…

“You know the rocks are dangerous,” I state. “You know you have to be looking out all the time—”

“I was,” Juliet protests. “Oh, Maddie, don’t you think I was? Don’t you think I feel terrible?”

“So terrible you couldn’t even visit me?”

“I know I should have,” Juliet half-mumbles. I’ve never seen her look like this, so uncertain, so defeated, her rounded shoulders hunched forward, her head bowed. “I would have, but…”

“But what?” Juliet shakes her head, not looking at me. “But
what
, Juliet?” I demand.

“Bruce…” she whispers, and that’s all I need.

Bruce, her silver fox of a husband, who is always thinking about money and management and how to handle people.
Bruce
told her not to, because as chair of the board he must be afraid—Mrs. James must be afraid—that I’m going to slap them with a lawsuit for negligence. They must have been gambling that I wouldn’t ask, wouldn’t find out the boys had been on the rocks. The one place they shouldn’t have been.

“Did you actually think I wouldn’t find out?” I say. “Did you actually think I wouldn’t
ask?
”

Juliet stares at me helplessly. “Does it really make a difference where Ben was when he fell?” she asks. She reaches for my sleeve and I pull away, sloshing wine onto my arm.

“Yes it does, Juliet, because if he hadn’t been on top of a huge cliff face then maybe he wouldn’t be brain damaged now!” Juliet stares at me, shocked by the screech of my voice reverberating through us both, and then I see Juliet’s daughter Emma standing in the doorway. She is in Ben’s class, and she has the same blonde corkscrew curls that Juliet has. She is staring at me in a kind of appalled fascination.

“I’ve got to go,” I say, and I slide off the stool and then push past Emma without looking back.

Unfortunately, I have to wait for the elevator. I stand in the foyer, my arms folded, my gaze on the elevator doors, willing them to open. I can hear Juliet hurrying towards me.

“Maddie, please. I am sorry. So, so sorry—”

“Do you know what, Juliet?” I say as I stare straight ahead. “If you had been honest from the beginning, if you had supported me instead of trying to cover your own ass, then I don’t think it
would
have mattered. I would have understood how these things happen, how we can’t be on the ball all the time. God knows I’m not. But because you didn’t, it tells me you know you’re guilty. You know you were negligent, that you were chatting with Helen Lanfer rather than watching the kids.
And
it tells me you care more about protecting yourself than my son’s life.”

“That’s not true,” Juliet protests, but the elevator doors open and I step inside without answering.

I leave the building and storm down Seventy-Ninth Street towards the subway filled with fury; it propels me forward until I collapse into a seat on the train rattling downtown, and all that is left is grief and regret. I’ve just ended the only friendship I’ve ever really had, and after nearly ten years I’m not even sure it was much of a friendship. And for what? Just so I can have someone to blame?

Now there is literally no one in my life to help me through these next weeks and months. I have no idea how hard they will be; all I know is I will be facing them alone.

I lean my head back against the seat and stare blindly up at the advertisements that line the top of the subway car’s walls. Dr Z’s infamous chemical peels, a bit of subway poetry:
Hope is the thing with feathers/ That perches in the soul,/ And sings the tune without the words,/ And never stops at all.

I almost laugh at that. I don’t have a thing with feathers in my soul. My osul feels cavernously empty. Then my gaze moves to the next poster:
Have You Been Hurt?
It’s an ad for a personal injury lawyer, promising free consultations and big settlements. I stare at it for a moment, and then I rest my head against the seat and close my eyes.

The next night, nine days after Ben’s accident, Lewis visits me. Just the sight of him in his beat-up leather jacket, work boots, and jeans, striding across the hospital floor, nearly makes me sway where I stand. I’m so glad he came to visit that I can’t speak for a moment.

“Maddie.” He stands in the doorway of Ben’s room, his gaze on me before flicking to Ben and then back again. I fight the urge to rush into his arms, because I know that’s not the kind of relationship we have. All those play dates, all those shared moments and laughter and fun… I know they didn’t mean anything. They didn’t mean what I wanted them to mean.

I’ve always had a thing for married men. I’m not proud of it, but I recognize it for what it is. I am attracted to the happily married man, to his strength and dependability, to his love for his wife and children. I never knew that growing up, and I want just a little bit of it for myself. Not enough to wreck what he has with his wife or his family, just enough to sustain me. A little hope, a little happiness, that’s all.

Ben’s father was married. He was the only one I had an actual affair with, if you can even call what we had an affair. Sordid, emotionless sex might be more accurate. And I didn’t actually know he was married until after.

Since then I’ve kept my forays to flirtatious banter, the occasional held gaze in the office or elevator or sometimes at school. Once, at a party, Juliet’s husband Bruce put his hand on my ass. I let him, even though I’ve never liked him all that much, because he radiated that strength and responsibility, and I want to feel it directed towards me, if just for a second.