Prodigal

by Melanie Tem

  He laid her on the big pillows on the living-room floor. He brought a blanket to cover her, but she was sweating now and she kicked it off. He lay down beside her and held her against him. Even though that was hot, too, she stayed there, and all she could see was the twisted red yarn of his sweater moving up and down as he breathed and talked.

  “Mike wouldn’t let me take him home,” Jerry was telling her. “It wasn’t very late, and he always took the bus back after group. That’s part of what we teach in this group, how to take care of yourself in a dangerous world. Kids learn—” He stopped, laughed a little. “I guess you don’t care about theories of adolescent development, do you? Anyway, he’d been gone a couple of hours, maybe three, and I was just—uh, reading, pottering around the house, making progress notes, when his foster mother called and said he’d never made it back. We figured probably he’d run away, and she said she’d call the cops if he didn’t show up by midnight. He’d run lots of times before.”

  Dreamily Lucy wondered why he was talking so much. Right now she didn’t feel anything bad or mixed up. What she felt was feverish, a little dizzy, a little sick to her stomach, and she itched. She loved the sound of his voice deep deep inside his body, the way his chest rumbled and his throat purred under her ear.

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  “But I was worried, so I went out looking for him. And I found him, under the hedge just outside my yard. That’s as far as he’d made it. I called an ambu-lance and the foster family, of course, but I knew it was too late.”

  “What did he die of?”

  “We won’t know for sure till they get the autopsy results back, but they think it was a heart attack brought on by drug use.”

  “What’s an autopsy?”

  His hand rubbing her back stopped for a minute; until then she hadn’t even really realized he’d been massaging her, under her shirt, and now she wanted nothing more than for him to start doing it again, even though she was embarrassed to think of all the zits he’d feel. “That’s where they look inside a body,” he said, “to see why a person died.”

  Lucy stiffened in amazement. He started rubbing again, but she still had to ask, “They look inside?”

  “Yes.”

  “They cut you open?”

  “Yes.”

  Waves of nausea spread through her body, hot and then cold. Sure she was going to throw up, she rolled away from Jerry and tried to sit up, but she was too dizzy. “Everybody dies!” she wailed. “I hate it that everybody dies!”

  He encircled her in his arms again and eased her back down on the pillow, then wrapped his heavy legs around her too. “Not everybody, darling,”

  he murmured. “Not everybody.”

  He was scaring her. She didn’t want to be scared, but she was. Her head was spinning and her ears were ringing and she felt dizzy.

  It was embarrassing. Here she was, alone with Jerry Johnston and getting his attention in a way she’d dreamed about. Here she was, as close to him as she could ever get without actually getting inside him or him getting inside her: his lips sucking at her neck, his teeth nibbling. Here she was: something was about to happen to her that would change her life forever and she was such a baby she was making herself sick.

  When Jerry murmured, “It’s okay, honey,” his mouth moved across her flesh like some little live creature.

  She heard herself say, “You lied to the principal. My parents never said it was okay for me to be here.”

  He chuckled and stroked her hair. “Sure,” he admitted. “I’m on your side, remember? If it takes lying to the grown-ups to do what’s best for you, then I’ll lie.”

  Amazed by his daring and by her own complicity in it, she whispered,

  “They’ll find out. They always find out.”

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  He shrugged. His whole huge body seemed to move in sections, as if the pieces weren’t totally connected. “It doesn’t matter,” he told her softly. “They can’t stop us now. It’s too late. We’ve come too far.”

  He tightened his arms and legs around her. She wanted him to do that, ached for him to do it, but then she couldn’t breathe and she was going to be sick for sure. The terrible itching was everywhere now—inside her throat, under her arms, inside her vagina. She struggled to turn her face out of the hollow of Jerry’s body.

  He held her a little away from him to look into her face. Cold and abandoned, she whimpered. After a few seconds he shook his head sadly and let her go. “Oh, dear,” he said kindly. “You’re not quite ready for this, are you, sweetheart?”

  Lucy saw how much she’d disappointed him, and she could hardly stand it. But she was desperate not to faint or throw up, and desperate to scratch in very private places.

  Jerry sighed, lay back, and said carefully, “I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to wait for you, Lucy.”

  She didn’t want to lose him. She didn’t even know what it would mean to lose him. “I’m sorry,” she managed to say, but he didn’t say anything back.

  She didn’t know where the bathroom was. She struggled to her hands and knees, then to her feet, and barely made it to the porch before she was throw-ing up. She leaned over the railing and tried to keep her eyes closed so she wouldn’t see the ugliness she was making all over Jerry’s clean white snow.

  He followed her out onto the porch. At first he just stood behind her while she threw up, and she was embarrassed but she couldn’t stop. “Damn,”

  he said, almost under his breath. “So much for our plans for today.”

  “No,” Lucy gasped. “You said—something special. You promised—”

  “You’re in no shape for anything like that today.” From the tone of his voice, she knew she’d let him down.

  “I’m—sorry.”

  “We’ve still got time,” he assured her, and put his big hands on her shoulders.

  She threw up again over his porch railing, and he held her head till she was through. Then, gently, he turned her around and tilted her chin up and peered at her face in the bright afternoon sunlight that hurt her eyes and must be making the zits on her face look hideous. She was ashamed and excited, and she was going to throw up again.

  “Lucy, my dear,” he said, “I think you’ve got chicken pox.”

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  25

  Lucy spent the next six days under a quilt on the family-room couch.

  People brought her things: orange juice, vegetable beef soup, tea. She watched TV for hours and hours, till Married with Children and The Equal izer and All My Children and the six o’clock news kind of blended together and made a weird kind of sense. She listened to music till the earphones and then the music itself started to hurt her ears. She itched, and for a while she bled.

  The doctor said she had chicken pox all over her body, including inside.

  Inside her ears. Inside her nose, up higher than she could reach. Inside her vagina. Priscilla said at least it wouldn’t matter if she got scars. Lucy tried to stick her tongue out at her, but it was swollen and her lips were cracked. So she settled for a dirty look; with her eyelids all red and puffy, Pris probably couldn’t even tell where she was looking.

  Sometimes Mom would come and sit with her, stroke her hair and wash her with a warm washcloth when Lucy could stand to be touched, read to her when she could stand noise, just sit in the room with her when she couldn’t.

  It had been a long time since Lucy’d been home with just Mom and Cory. It didn’t even feel like the same house. “Poor baby,” Mom kept saying. Her 163

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  voice was gentle and singsong, like a lullaby, but she was also laughing a little. “Talk about ‘the curse’! I promise you, it won’t be like this every month.”

  How does she kno
w? Lucy thought groggily. She thinks she knows everything.

  Maybe it will be like this every month for me.

  A lot of things happened during those six days. Despite herself, Lucy saw that life didn’t stop, life had lots of stuff in it, even when you were sick, even when people you loved died, even when you were in love.

  The guy on the news, the cute one with the dimple even if he was almost as old as Dad, said there’d been an earthquake in Austria. Or Australia. Or Armenia. He had pictures of people digging and yelling. Lucy didn’t completely understand why they were so upset. That was the day the itching was the worst, bad enough to make her cry.

  Dad had to take Rae’s dentist records to the police station again, because they’d found another body of a girl about her age. If they had to identify her by her teeth, that meant her body was decayed. Lucy tried to think about that. She ran her tongue over her teeth, and it wasn’t quite so swollen now.

  She hadn’t brushed her teeth in days. Guiltily she wondered if they’d be able to tell that she hadn’t brushed her teeth if she died of the chicken pox and her body decayed and they only had her teeth and bones to tell that she’d been Lucy Ann Brill. It was weird that they could tell it was a girl and how old she was, without hair or makeup or breasts or a vagina. It must not have been Rae again, because when Dad brought the records home there was just a little bit of crying, Mom and Dad holding on to each other in the kitchen.

  She didn’t like that. They were still crying about Ethan and Rae, when she was the one who had chicken pox inside her.

  Dominic got spanked for lying. Cory broke a glass but he didn’t get hurt.

  There was a mouse in the family room. Patches ran around with it wriggling and squeaking in his mouth, and Dad couldn’t get him to take it outside, and then she woke up and there was the back half of a little gray mouse on the floor in front of the couch, and she screamed even though her throat hurt and Dad came with the dustpan and scooped it up and threw it under the lilac bushes in the backyard. The tail had been moving, she was sure of it. Mice were so tiny. They were cute, but she hated them when they were in her house, but she hated having them die, too, and hated Patches for killing them, even though Dad said it was a cat’s nature.

  Jerry came. More than once she heard his voice. She sat up against the arm of the couch and tried to comb her hair with her fingers. Nobody came to tell her he was there. The first time she asked about it, Mom said without looking at her, “You’re too sick for visitors.” Later Mom told her, “We’ll dis-cuss Jerry Johnston when you’re feeling better.”

  Something’s wrong. “I am feeling better! I want to see him!”

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  “No,” Mom said, and Lucy was too weak and confused to argue.

  The third time he came—maybe it was more than that; maybe he’d come to see her lots of times and she’d been too sick to know it and they wouldn’t tell her—Lucy wrapped herself in the quilt and stumbled as fast as she could to the front door, which was just shutting behind him. Both Mom and Dad were standing there. Mom’s arms were folded. Dad’s fists were clenched, as if he’d been fighting somebody off. “How come you guys didn’t tell me Jerry was here?” Lucy cried. “He’s my friend!”

  They both turned to look at her, and Dad said, “What are you doing up?”

  “I feel fine.”

  Before Lucy could get her feet untangled from the quilt enough to step back, Mom had reached out and put her hand on her forehead. Smiling at her, Mom said, “Well, it looks to me like you can go back to school on Mon-day. That gives you the weekend to catch up on your homework. Pris has been bringing home your assignments for you. I know you have a book report due in English, and there are three or four pages of fractions—”

  “I want to see Jerry!”

  They looked at each other over her head. She hated that. It made her look back and forth between them like Patches watching people play ball. Then Dad said to Mom, “I guess now’s as good a time as any to tell her.”

  Mom nodded. “Lucy, come and sit down. We need to talk.”

  Something terrible is going to happen something terrible is going to happen something terrible Tripping over the ends of the quilt, Lucy followed them unwillingly into the living room and sat on the arm of the brown chair. It was true that she didn’t feel queasy or feverish anymore, and her period was done, and there were only a few scabby places in her hair that still itched. But something terrible was going to happen. Right now.

  Dad kept standing. He was really tall. He said, “Your mother and I have decided that until things settle down a little you won’t be seeing Jerry Johnston anymore. We’ve pulled you out of the group, and we’ve told him not to come by the house or the school for you.”

  Lucy had caught her breath and pulled the quilt tight around her. “Why?”

  she wailed.

  “Because we think he’s a bad influence right now. He upsets you more than he helps.”

  “How do you know that? You think you know everything!”

  “Oh, honey.” Mom shook her head sadly. “It’s obvious from the way you act.”

  It’s my fault. “He doesn’t upset me. You guys upset me. You’re the ones somebody should protect me from!”

  “He lied, Lucy.” Mom was leaning forward in her chair and looking hard at Lucy. Lucy didn’t want to see her ever again, and so she pulled the quilt 165

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  across her face. But that didn’t stop her mother. “He told Mr. Li that he had permission to take you out of school last Thursday, and that was an out-and-out lie. He had never talked to either of us.”

  “Well, he had to say that. You’d have said no.”

  “You’re damn right we’d have said no.” Dad was mad. His voice was tight and his eyes were all squinched at the corners. She told herself that she didn’t much care whether he was mad at her or not. But, trembling, she lowered the quilt just enough that she could watch him.

  “The point is,” Mom said, “he lied.”

  What’s the big deal about lying? Lucy thought furiously. Things aren’t what they seem anyway. Everything’s a lie.

  “That kind of behavior,” Dad said, “is absolutely unprofessional, and I won’t stand for it.”

  “We won’t stand for it,” Mom said quietly, looking at him.

  Dad said, “We. And your principal won’t stand for it, either. He’s canceled Johnston’s relationship with the school and reported him to the social work licensure board. No more groups. No more contact with kids. He’s called all the parents.”

  They’re trying to kill him, Lucy said to herself. It didn’t come as a surprise.

  “And,” Mom said, “some of the stuff you’ve been writing in your diary about him and about what you do in the group is pretty scary.”

  Lucy gasped. “You’ve been reading my diary?”

  “You know I have been. Don’t pretend to be morally offended or something. You and I have been writing things to each other in your diary ever since Rae disappeared. That’s how I know you wanted me to know something was wrong about Jerry. That’s how I know—”

  All of a sudden Dad swiveled and slammed his fist into the wall. Lucy’s heart beat so fast it hurt. Mom said in a shocked voice, “Tony?”

  Dad was roaring. “That son of a bitch knows something about Rae! I know he does!” He stomped out of the room, out of the house, and a moment later they heard the harsh noise of the station-wagon engine revving up.

  Mom pressed her fingers to her cheekbones, like she did when she was getting a headache. From behind her hands she said, “We just can’t trust him with you, Lucy. You’re too important for us to take chances.”

  “He knows what’s best for me—”

  “No. We’re your parents.”

  “You’re awful parents!” Lucy was whispering now. “You don’t know how to be parents. You shouldn’t be allow
ed to have kids. You let my brother die and you let something bad happen to my sister, we don’t even know what, and now Jerry says I’m next, and he’s right, I know he’s right!”

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  She shouldn’t have said that. It would just make them not trust him even more. But it didn’t make any difference anyway. Once they’d made up their minds, they never gave in.

  Mom sighed and stood up. Thinking she was going after Dad, Lucy was already plotting her escape. She’d run out the front door when Mom went out the back door, and she’d hide someplace until they got tired of looking for her, and then she’d run to Jerry’s, where it was safe.

  Maybe, it dawned on her, that’s what Rae had done. Maybe she really had seen Rae at Jerry’s. Maybe Ethan was there, too, and Mike Garver. Maybe nobody had died after all.

  But Mom stayed where she was and said softly, “I’m sorry, Lucy. I know this is hard for you. But we need to pull together as a family, now more than ever, and Jerry Johnston works against that. I’m sure he believes he has your best interests at heart, but—”

  “I hate this family!”

  “Lucy, don’t.”

  “I hate this fucking family!” Lucy yelled into the bunched-up quilt that smelled of calamine lotion and her own sweat. “I’ll leave! I’ll run away!

  Just like Rae! You’ll never see me again! As soon as I get the chance, I’m running away!”

  Mom stood very still for a few minutes. Then she said, “Well, then, I guess you’ll have to go with me to take Priscilla to her dance class.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. I can’t leave you here and take a chance on your running away, and it’s not fair for Pris to miss her class just because you’re behaving like this. You will come with me.”

  Lucy said, as nastily as she could, “It’s against the law to leave little kids alone. You have to leave me here to watch the little kids. You really are a terrible mother, you know that?”

  “It’ll only be for a few minutes. They can watch cartoons. You don’t leave me any other choice.”