Bitter Falls

by Caine, Rachel

  I’m sorry. I hear myself saying it, over and over, but I don’t know what I’m sorry for either. Shouldn’t I have fought? They tell us to fight. Not to give up. Not to let people get us.

  Nothing makes sense until it does and I really know exactly what I did. It tastes like swallowing ashes and it feels worse, like I’m falling off a dark cliff into icy water.

  I’m screwed. I’m so screwed. If they put up with my weirdness before, that was one thing. But this?

  I freaked out in front of an entire class. I busted up two of my classmates and yeah, they were jerks, they’d pushed me around before, but I didn’t even know who they were when I lashed out. They were just there.

  I can never come back to school.

  Not ever.

  4

  GWEN

  My son is injured, and I don’t know how bad it is. I barely remember the drive; everything’s a gray blur until I see the hospital. Norton General is a boxy three-story brick structure that dates back to the 1950s, at least. It’s the only thing that’s in focus for me. I pull into the parking lot for the emergency room and suddenly I’m inside without remembering the run, or even whether I closed the door and locked the SUV. I probably did. Muscle memory is smarter than I am right now. My heart is pounding like I ran all the way from Stillhouse Lake.

  The nurse on duty at the desk looks up at me. I can tell from her expression that she knows just who I am: the serial killer’s ex, the stain on the good name of the town. Pursed lips, raised eyebrows, cool judgmental stare.

  “Connor Proctor,” I manage to say. “I’m his mother.”

  “Room four,” she says. I don’t ask how he is. I shove through the double doors and look at room numbers. In the first two there are other kids, each with family present. Room three holds a sweet little old lady who’s whimpering in pain as a nurse takes blood.

  My son is in the room across the hall from her. Relief douses me like an ice bath, because he’s okay, conscious, alive. He’s half-reclined in a hospital bed and holding an ice pack to his swollen face. When he pulls it away to look at me, I wince. Both eyes and his nose are going to be vividly black and blue. One cheek is red and puffy. I force myself to slow down, calm down, and I walk over to his bedside and take his free hand. His knuckles are bruised and cut. He smells of Betadine and blood and sweat. He’s still in the clothes he wore to school, but his sweater is now a total wreck.

  “Sorry,” he mumbles. He looks away but he doesn’t move his hand. I place a gentle palm on his forehead. He feels warm, but it’s the warmth of someone whose adrenaline is still running at peak volume. He’ll cool down, probably too fast. When that happens he’ll need a blanket.

  “What happened?” I ask him. I feel better now. Yes, my son has been beaten up. Yes, it makes me want to rip the skin off the two boys down the hall. But he’s conscious, he’s alive, he’s talking. “I’m not angry, Connor.”

  “You’re going to be.”

  That sounds . . . ominous. “Your teacher said there was a fight?”

  He turns and looks right at me this time. I see something awful in his swollen eyes. “Not really a fight,” he says. “It was my fault. It was just—the noise. There were gunshots, Mom. And screaming.”

  I go cold. “There was a shooting at your school?”

  He’s already shaking his head and wincing at the pain that must cause. “No, there wasn’t. It was . . . they played a recording of gunshots and screaming. Over the speakers. To make it more real.”

  “They what?” I’m stunned. At first I’m appalled, physically flinching with revulsion that they would do that to kids. Then I get angry, so angry it eats into my bones and sets my marrow on fire. I was uncomfortable enough with the active shooter events without the mental trauma he’s describing. It’s bad enough they have to be drilled in how to react to danger, but I understand that, given the world around them. But terrifying them deliberately? Some very misguided jackass probably thought it would toughen them up. It won’t. They’re not volunteers in an army. They’re not someone like me who’s chosen to run toward danger. They’re just kids, traumatized kids trying not to live their lives in terror.

  I hug my son. I hug him so fiercely. He’s trembling.

  “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I just—I don’t know what happened. I just couldn’t let them touch me.”

  Of course he couldn’t. My son is tough, but he’s also cracked by his father’s crimes and the terror constantly stalking us. Multiple times he’s been in danger of being killed. All that trauma hasn’t made him immune; it can’t, not at his age. But it has made him violently self-protective, and that means that anyone who comes at him in those circumstances will be seen and treated as a serious threat.

  Even classmates.

  I can’t fix this. It’s going to take even more time and even more therapy and most definitely more patience, making him aware of exactly what’s going on inside his very complicated head. My son is hardwired by his parentage and trauma to survive. Finding ways to moderate those instincts is going to be a long, difficult process.

  I just hold his hand and watch him fight tears and hate myself in an ever-increasing spiral. I should have seen this coming. He’s been acting more and more off around days when these active shooter drills—six a year, now—are scheduled. It was my job to understand, but I completely misread the signs.

  I remember telling him, with so much confidence, that I knew how he felt. I didn’t. I don’t. At his age, I was a sheltered, protected little girl for whom danger was an abstract concept, and the idea of being killed nothing but fiction. I can’t really understand what this is like for him; handling it as an adult is far different from handling it at thirteen. I should have known that.

  My self-loathing is interrupted by a woman’s harsh voice. “There’s that little bastard.”

  I turn to look, and in the doorway there’s a rail-thin woman with frizzy, dark hair and big blue eyes that look baleful with anger. She’s pointing at my son. I stand up, instinctively shielding him.

  There’s a big man beside her. He’s older, grayer, with a boxer’s flattened nose. Heavy but powerful. He lowers his head and glares at me. I glare right back, switching it between the two of them. “What do you want?” I say, though I already know.

  “That little shit broke my son’s jaw!” the mom says. “They have to wire his mouth shut! Your damn kid went crazy, and my son was just trying to help. You’re going to pay for my kid’s medical, bitch!”

  I want to get in her face but that isn’t going to help. And she’s right. “Okay,” I say, and wince at what paying for medical care is going to cost. “I’ll do that. But this wasn’t Connor’s fault—”

  “No, it’s your fault he’s so crazy. You and his murderer father! That bad apple ain’t gone far from the tree.”

  My first impulse is to attack. I’m not very much different from my son in the way I’ve fractured inside under the stress. But I’ve got more experience. I can stop myself. I keep my voice calm as I say, “It might be my fault, but it isn’t my son’s. Don’t blame him.”

  “Bitch, I’ll blame whoever I want, and I’ll sue you for everything you got! Henry was just trying to get your kid to do what the teacher said!”

  She probably will sue, I think. There’s real rage in her heart. But the name of her son strikes a note with me. “Henry,” I repeat. I know that name. “Henry Charterhouse? The school’s worst bully. How many kids has he punched out at school?”

  The accusation hits home, I can tell; the mom looks at the dad, then rallies up her bravado again for another charge. “Hank gets into scraps. Boys being boys. But your son hit him with a goddamn metal stapler!”

  “My son’s got bruises and black eyes,” I snap. “And I’m pretty sure I can call a long string of school administrators to tell us exactly who the problem kids in Norton Junior High are in a court of law. That what you want?”

  She doesn’t. She hasn’t thought it through. She knows her boy’s a bully;
she knows damn well she’s skating on thin ice. I see it written all over her thin, angry face. So of course she attacks again. “You bitch!” she yells. “Calling my son a bully when your damn kid’s the son of a goddamn murdering rapist who killed half a dozen girls and ripped their goddamn skins off. The nerve of you. You come on out in this hall and I’ll kick your city-girl ass!” Her accent’s thickened so much it’s hard to make out that last part.

  No way am I going to get into a fight with this woman. People think badly enough of me in Norton; infamy’s a curse, particularly in rural backwaters like this one. I make most of the locals uncomfortable. I don’t fit. I refuse to accept blame for what my husband did. Women are always, somehow, to blame for the acts of men; that’s more true now than it ever has been.

  And all that free-floating anger I won’t accept rebounds on my kids. And while I want to punch her several times for that, I don’t. I just turn my back on her and take my seat again beside Connor, who’s staring at me in outright confusion. He’s never seen me walk away from a fight.

  Maybe he needs to.

  “It’s okay,” I tell him and take his hand again. “Ignore the noise.”

  “It’s not just noise,” he says. “Mom, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have hit him like that, but I couldn’t . . . It felt like I was drowning. Like I had to get out of there but at the same time I just . . . couldn’t move.” He takes a deep breath, and I can hear the sob buried somewhere deep underneath. It cuts me deep. “I’m not you. I’m not Lanny. I can’t be that brave.”

  The woman at the door is still yelling abuse, but I hear the no-nonsense raised voice of a nurse telling her to settle down if she doesn’t want to be ejected from the hospital. When I look, the couple is gone from view, but not from hearing. The argument drifts down the hallway, full of angry swears and quelling icy warnings on the nurse’s part.

  The nurse checks in a few moments later. She’s a plump African American woman with triangular features and a sharp cut to her natural hair. She gives me a look, as if she’s waiting to see if I’m going to be trouble too; I just thank her for looking after my son. She relaxes. No smile, though.

  “The doctor’s reviewed the X-rays,” she says. “That nose isn’t broken, just pretty badly bruised. It might not hurt yet, but it will, and those bruises will be spectacular. Over-the-counter pain relief will help. Connor, keep an ice pack on your face for the rest of the day, as much as you can stand. It’ll help.”

  I nod. Connor’s already swinging his legs off the bed. “Can I go now?” he asks. She shakes her head.

  “It’ll take about an hour to get paperwork finished,” she says. “I’ll let you know.”

  She’s right on target. It’s nearly four thirty by the time we get the discharge paperwork. I sign for it on Connor’s behalf. When I’m done, she says, “Last thing is you’ll need to check out at the front counter.”

  She means pay the bill. I nod and thank God that I have a real job now, with real health benefits for me and the kids. J. B.’s been generous on the per-hour rate on these investigations I’m doing, too, so we’re a lot less pressed for cash now than we were. When we landed at Stillhouse Lake, I blew most of my remaining cash buying and fixing up the house, and my internet office work hadn’t exactly been completely plugging the money drain, not with two kids. Sam helps with bills, but I don’t let him give more than is strictly necessary. I remember, grimly, that I’m going to have to pick up the check for at least one other kid’s treatment bill. So maybe we’re not less cash-strapped, after all.

  Connor looks mournfully down at the blood on his sweater. “I look like hell.”

  “You look like you’ve been hurt,” I tell him. “And we’re going straight home. You can take a shower and get clean clothes.”

  He doesn’t look up. “And tomorrow? Do I have to go back to school?”

  I sigh. “We’ll discuss it.”

  I walk between him and the room with the angry parents; they glare at us from the doorway, but don’t come charging out. We walk briskly to the front desk, collect the discharge instructions, pay the bill, arrange for the Charterhouse kid’s bills to be sent to me, and are out and at the SUV in record time.

  We both slow down as we come closer.

  My tires are flat. All four of them. And when I crouch down to inspect them, there are jagged slashes in the rubber.

  I swallow a burst of rage so thick it tastes like metal in my mouth, and call a cop for the second time in a day.

  It’s a relief when we finally get home. Sam’s already there waiting, worrying because it’s getting dark. He’s been texting me. I had Connor type a reply, but I have no idea what he’s said. Probably not much, knowing my son.

  Sam meets us at the door, with Lanny close behind. Both of them look anxious. Neither of them looks surprised at the state of Connor’s face. Just grim, in Sam’s case, and horrified, in Lanny’s. She gets over that disturbingly fast and says, “Does it hurt?” She’s studying him closely. He nods. “Wow. You look like you survived a Saw movie. I didn’t know a nose could bleed that much.”

  “Well, it did,” he says, and shoves past her and off down the hall. “Thanks for the sympathy.”

  “Squirtle—”

  He whirls back. He’s as tall as she is now, and probably a year from topping her by several inches. “Stop calling me that!” There’s real anger in it. He doesn’t wait for an answer. He heads toward his room.

  “Dinner’s almost ready!” she calls after him. “I made pizza!” No answer. Lanny looks disappointed.

  “Frozen pizza?” I ask as I put my arm around her. She shrugs. “I think the word is ‘heated.’”

  “Hey, I added stuff. I’m good like that.” She gets serious quickly. “Is he okay?”

  “I think so, but . . .” I take a breath and let it out before I say it. “Lanny, you never really talk about how it feels to do the active shooter drills. Neither does he. But he’s not dealing well with it. How about you? Are you okay?”

  Lanny doesn’t answer, which is not usually her thing. I see it in that moment: she’s not okay, either, but she hides it better than my son. I made him go to school today. I did that out of a blind desire to have my kids lead a normal life when they patently and manifestly do not, and maybe never will.

  I squeeze her shoulder a little. “Honey? Was it okay today for you?”

  She’s quiet for a long few seconds, and she doesn’t meet my eyes. “It’s scary,” she says, and from her that’s quite an admission. “I was in the library. We got locked up in the book storage until it was over. The lights were out, and people were crying, and . . .” She audibly swallows. “It’s just hard, Mom. For some of them it’s just a game. But I know it’s not. I know what can happen. And it’s hard not to feel . . . trapped.”

  I turn and hug her. I do it slowly and gently, because I’m trying not to show her how appalled I feel. She’s a tough kid, but I hear the vulnerability underneath. She’s not okay. My son’s not okay. I should have known.

  Her strength wavers and cracks. “Mom.” It comes in a more subdued tone than I’m used to hearing from her. “You can’t send Connor back to that school. It was already bad before. They’re going to come after him twice as hard now.”

  “Okay,” I say. “I’m going to keep him out. Maybe for a while. I can homeschool him. And you, unless you want to keep going—”

  “I don’t,” she says, and it’s decisive beyond question. She gives me a half-ashamed look. “I tried, Mom. I really did. But it sucks. Dahlia won’t even talk to me. She avoids me like I’ve got the plague, and her clique are all totally shitty to me.” Dahlia’s her ex-girlfriend; I’d been really hoping it would last, but it hadn’t. Dahlia had moved on hard, and Lanny’s been trying. Not entirely successfully. “It’s hard enough to make friends here. And the ones I made all turned on me when—” She shuts up, but I know. When you went on TV. My fault. I made a bad decision to go on national television to try to vindicate myself, and instead I just f
anned the fires of rage that were already burning. I’ve still got a few friends and allies here, but that doesn’t help my kids trying to navigate the already treacherous waters of small-town school social life.

  I’ve made this worse for them. And the trauma being inflicted on all the kids—not just mine—by the active shooter drills has special meaning for Lanny and Connor, since they’ve been through threats most others haven’t. Lanny and Connor keep paying the price, and I hate it.

  And now the thing I didn’t want to do—insulate them—is the only choice I have. That, or move again and try to start over. I’m stubborn, but when it comes to my children, I need to use that in their defense. Not to their detriment. My instincts tell me to hold fast. But I’m no longer sure that’s right.

  “Okay,” I tell her, and kiss her forehead. She makes a face and twists away. “I’ll call the schools tomorrow and formally withdraw you both. But that doesn’t mean you get to run wild either. You’ll have school hours, tests, standard textbooks. And I will be the toughest teacher you’ve ever had.”

  Lanny rolls her eyes. “Oh yeah, I know,” she says. “Believe me.” But she’s relieved; I can see it in the way she walks away. There’s a confidence in her step that has been flagging recently.

  It’s the right move. It has to be. I’ll make it work, and we’ll figure things out as we go.

  As long as we’re together, things will be okay.

  Sam’s been watching this silently, but now he puts an arm around me, and I turn into his embrace and take in a deep, shuddering breath. “Connor’s okay?” he asks. I hear the worry in his voice. I manage a nod.

  “He’s going to need some more sessions with our therapist,” I say. “It was a classic PTSD episode, from what I could gather. He froze up, and then when somebody pushed him, he lashed out. He broke one kid’s jaw.” I laugh bitterly. It sounds shaky. “What’s really broken is the fact all these kids have to endure imaginary trauma six times a year. It changes people. Sam, he didn’t even know what he was doing.”