Her legs propelled her forward without her willing it. He was moving so fast toward the double front doors of the school, his eyebrows a dark slash, shoulders hunched. He was so young. He seemed younger than she had ever been. He was trying to be furtive; his frustration, or his anger, begged attention, but his anger might intensify if he was given attention. His movements like Pat’s.
“Excuse me,” she said, placing one foot on the step, “are you—”
He glanced over but didn’t see her, moved past her, putting up an apologetic hand, a pained condescending smile.
She hopped up the steps out of the cafeteria pit and was standing almost in front of him, between him and the front doors. A hand on his sleeve. “Hi, I just wanted to—”
He stopped and gaped. “It’s you,” he said.
Jane smiled, puzzled. It was as if he were staring at his own face but not recognizing himself. Staring into the face of the moon.
“I don’t think we’ve met before,” Jane said. “I’m Lauren’s mom.”
“Oh, yes,” he said, taking her outstretched hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Lauren talks about you all the time,” she said.
Jane had never sensed before that a man was afraid of her, and it occurred to her to apologize before it occurred to her why he was afraid.
“Anyway, I’m sorry to keep you—or would you like to stay with us a bit?” she asked.
She could hear it in her voice that she knew. But he was the one who told her.
Mr. Smith looked at the flowers in the crook of her arm. “You haven’t seen the kids yet?” he asked.
“They’re coming out now,” Jane said, gesturing behind him to the first stream of performers skipping and singing as they approached the pit. He didn’t turn around to see them. Her hands felt gray and frozen, dead on the dying flowers. The chatter echoing off the walls seemed both louder and more distant.
“I’m sorry, but I need to go,” he said.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “You look sick.”
“I think I am, a bit, forgive me. I have to run—have a wonderful night.”
“You too,” she said, and he turned and pushed through the front doors of Bethune.
“Bye-bye,” she said, as she followed him outside. She watched him under the moonlight, walking toward the chain-link fence. The start of the same route Lauren took home. He bent down and eased his body through the hole in the fence, and the corners of Jane’s lips recoiled in a rancid smile. It was about to hit her with the entirety of its force, she only had a few seconds left before the impact, and she clenched her fists and closed her eyes and all she knew or felt was an incandescent contempt.
She picked up the flowers from where they’d fallen on the pavement and returned inside. She looked for Lauren. The novelty of searching a crowd for a child who was not Mirela. Lauren was with her friends, standing notably close to Stitch, ducking her head, merry and diffident in her pink satin jacket. You would never know. Jane was propelled forward again, back down the three steps into the cafeteria pit, racing toward Lauren, like she had left her on the stove, like she was chasing a girl who was standing still, as rooted as a tree.
The rest of the performances of Grease were canceled. Assistant Principal Shaughnessy interviewed all the main characters. Stitch, Claire, Abby, and Andy each corroborated Lauren’s account of Mr. Smith grabbing Lauren and menacing her backstage. Each of them, plus Deepa, independently volunteered, without prompting, that they’d observed Mr. Smith behaving in an erratic way at the same rehearsal during which he said something about “a broken typewriter” or a “busted typewriter” or possibly “a busted computer,” which corroborated, if not proved, the contention that Lauren speaking the forbidden line was Mr. Smith’s mischievous idea, not Lauren’s, and therefore that she should not be suspended for it, that it was Mr. Smith who should face some kind of consequence. Each of these witnesses reiterated that Mr. Smith had been seen by several residents of Bethune’s surrounding neighborhood, including Lauren, holding down Lauren’s sister by force, requiring the intervention of the Town of Amherst police department, although that episode, which ended in Mr. Smith’s arrest and brief detention, was beyond Assistant Principal Shaughnessy’s jurisdiction.
Other evidence entered into the record. Claire described a straight-cut, brown corduroy jumper that came to her ankles, which Mr. Smith referred to as her “sexy Mormon skirt.” Abby stated that Mr. Smith often told her she “needed extra meat in her sandwich,” and once opined that her “saddle needed padding.” Deepa talked about hugs that lasted too long, about Mr. Smith’s self-imposed rule that he “never be the first to break a hug.” Rumors traveled, puddled, metastasized: marijuana and drinking and mild sexual activity in Tedquarters. A whispering suggestion about some incident at teachers’ college—maybe this story didn’t take shape because it wasn’t true, or because it was too scurrilous to be uttered. Somebody started referring to Mr. Smith as Ted Bundy, and that caught on, and then one day everyone seemed to have agreed that Tedquarters was now called Bundytown. Mrs. Bonnano quietly took over his classes for the rest of the year. Mr. Treadwell took over the end-of-year workshops, dumping Mr. Smith’s plans for a tribute to Edward Albee in favor of a Cole Porter revue.
“That boy may never teach again, not with an arrest on his record,” Mamie Figueroa said to Jane one evening on the phone.
“Well, he was arrested, but not formally charged,” said Jane, who could say the same of herself. “And a potential employer wouldn’t necessarily know any of this. He wouldn’t have to disclose it. He could just start over somewhere else.”
Pat and the older kids were eating ravioli in front of the TV in the living room. Jane and Mirela were eating toast and jam at the kitchen table. Jane planned to eat all of hers, to set a good example for Mirela.
“Andy always said there was something strange about Mr. Smith,” Mamie said.
“Even his choice of play last fall—it had two suicides, World War II, negligent homicide,” Jane said. “Is this appropriate for children? I know they do a good impersonation of adults, but they are still children, after all.”
“I didn’t understand why high schoolers would be asked to perform Grease, either,” Mamie said.
“Oh, we watched the movie!” Jane said. “I remember loving it when we were kids. But it’s ridiculous trash. Whatever else Mr. Smith did, he had abysmal judgment.”
“I wonder what will happen to him now,” Mamie said.
“He has no one to blame but himself,” Jane said.
“Although it would be a shame for his whole life to be ruined by all this,” Mamie said.
The egg timer on the kitchen table pinged. “Mamie, I’m sorry, I need to go,” Jane said. “It’s time for Mirela’s bath.”
For a few days it seemed likely that the Arden Attachment Center would sue the Brennans for damages. What had happened was never in doubt: Jane had stood on a chair, fashioned a blowtorch out of Carolyn’s hairspray and Lauren’s lighter, and aimed it directly at a sprinkler head. The visual shock of the fire itself, and the subsequent triggering of the sprinklers, was undoubtedly frightening and disruptive to the Arden staffers fleeing the scene, but there was little damage to speak of, and Arden was insured. Jane appreciated that Pat didn’t take the incident and legal threats all that seriously, at least not in front of her. He called his dad, his dad called his lawyer, letters were written, counterthreats were issued. The guiding idea was that Arden wouldn’t want anyone taking a close look at what went on inside their facilities. Pat listened carefully to Jane’s account of the events, and he blamed her for nothing. He hadn’t seen what happened, and so he took her at her word—she was his only witness. He believed in what he couldn’t see. When he was sweet, he was so sweet.
And Jane was grateful to Arden, because if nothing else, Arden had given them a regimen. How long the regimen would last was open-ended. Every day, Jane and Mirela did the same things at the same time, together. Brea
kfast, lunch, and dinner were always the same, according to the day of the week. Mirela went to bed at the same time every night, behind a locked door. The egg timer went with them everywhere. Mirela could argue anything with Jane, but she rarely argued with the egg timer. Jane did not hold herself to any standard of cheerfulness or even equanimity; she aspired only to an inexorable thereness. All she wished for Mirela was the knowledge that her mother was there and there and still there. A basket hold of rigid, unending routine. Jane was a wall, a building, at times an impediment. They began each day by tuning in to the weather report, on both the radio and the television. Mirela could not control what the weather could be, and she could not, to her immense pique, control how accurate the forecasts proved to be, but she could control how many weather reports she consumed and how she synthesized their often subtly conflicting assessments of the day to come. Jane set the egg timer, and when it went off, there was no more weather.
Jane had to present her with something immovable and inarguable to attach to. Jane’s inescapableness would at first seem negotiable, then perhaps dreadful, and then—if they were very lucky—something that Mirela could resign herself to. A structure wall for a future home, but first Mirela would try to climb over the wall, and then she would bash her head against it. Other concrete goals—starting a half-day kindergarten program, joining a soccer club, a playdate here and there—could wait. First they had to construct the wall and test its strength, its safety.
After Respect Life petered out, Summer and Charity Huebler joined Witness for the Innocents. They did sidewalk counseling in front of Dr. Rosen’s clinic every Wednesday morning and at WellWomen every Saturday morning. Jane begged off when they asked her to join them, using Mirela as an excuse, but they kept calling to ask.
“Charity,” Jane said on the phone, “I had an idea. I wondered if, this Wednesday, you and Summer might be willing to swap places with me and my daughter—my older daughter. Lauren. She wants to see what sidewalk counseling is all about.”
“Are you sure?” Charity asked. Jane could hear her flipping pages. “I think it would just be—let me check—yes, it’s only the two of us that morning. LifeForce doesn’t show up until the afternoon at Rosen’s. Why don’t we all go, the four of us? Strength in numbers.”
“That’s such a nice idea, but the thing is, my daughter is quite shy,” Jane said. “It might be better for her first time just to come with her mom, see how it goes. Who knows, maybe we’ll turn her into a regular.”
“Or what if you went on Saturday? Saturday’s our busiest day, of course—many more opportunities to engage.”
“Well, I was thinking a quieter Wednesday would be better for my daughter, actually,” Jane said. “For her first time. The proborts may not even bother with escorts on a weekday morning, right? Saturdays can get hectic.”
A pause as Charity considered. “You know, I think this could be very powerful for the patients,” Charity said. “There’s the whole teen-mom thing that the two of you have—I mean, if you feel comfortable going into that, but also, just that picture of a mother and her daughter out there on their own, trying to make that connection.”
“Mmm,” Jane said. “Thank you.”
“Although I think sometimes people think you’re sisters!”
“Sometimes!” Jane said.
Wednesday morning. A rare, regrettable break in Mirela’s regimen. Pat would be in charge of the egg timer during Lauren’s “doctor’s appointment.” Pat would be responsible for adding the right amount of milk to Mirela’s oatmeal—not too stodgy, not too runny—so as to keep it from splattering on the kitchen walls. Jane felt both anger and relief that he didn’t ask why Lauren needed to go to the doctor, what type of doctor.
“You want me to be ashamed,” Lauren said to her mother. They were sitting in the dragon wagon in front of Judy’s Hair Cutz. Mrs. Rosen, who worked as her husband’s receptionist, had told Jane to park at the post office on one side or at Judy’s Hair Cutz on the other and go through the back entrance, even on a slow day, just in case. But Jane already knew all that.
“Ashamed of what?”
“Of what I did. Of what I’m making you do.”
“No.”
“What you are making me do.”
“Lauren, I’m not making you do anything. It’s up to you. You can get out of the car and go in there, and I’ll come with you, or we can go home. Or you don’t have to go home if you don’t want to—you could go to Paula’s house if she’s around, whatever. It is what you want. It is your decision.”
Lauren’s eyes bored holes in the glove compartment. “Don’t you want to know who it was?”
“It’s none of my business,” Jane said.
“It’s not?”
“Lauren,” Jane said. “I know who it was.”
Lauren’s hands twisted in her lap. “How do you know?”
“I just do.”
“Are you going to tell?”
“I will not tell a soul unless you ask me to.”
“Well, I wanted it. I wanted it to happen. I don’t care what you think.”
“Lauren, I don’t know if this is going to make sense,” Jane said, “but in this case, it doesn’t matter what you wanted.”
Lauren snorted. Like somebody hit her and she was trying to laugh it off. “Does it ever matter to you what I want?”
“It matters deeply to me what you want. But in this case, no, it doesn’t.”
Lauren opened the car door. Even in June, the mornings took a while to warm up. The light was still low. They approached a line of scrubby trees that marked the border of the small back lot, enough for a half-dozen cars. Jane was mildly surprised to see two escorts chatting at the back entrance—a skittish aftereffect of the Spring of Life, perhaps.
Jane held Lauren’s arm to halt her walking. It was Bridie and Jill. They hadn’t seen Jane and Lauren approaching yet. It wasn’t too late. They could turn back now. Jane squeezed Lauren’s hand.
“Mom, I’m fine,” Lauren said, tugging her forward.
“What’s your first and last name, honey?” Bridie was already asking.
“Lauren Brennan,” she said.
Bridie smiled. “That’s the name we were after. Welcome, Lauren.” Bridie pushed a ringer on the back door and looked up at a camera mounted overhead, waving and giving the okay sign.
“I know you,” Jill said. “Jane. We’ve met before. Remember Jane, Bridie?”
“Sure do,” Bridie said, smiling. “Big part of my job, Jane, is to never forget a face.”
“Yes?” a scratchy voice on the intercom bleated.
“We have our eight thirty patient here. You can let her in.” The door buzzed, and Bridie opened it, still smiling.
From the scrubby trees, a robin peeped. “Everything is going to be okay,” Bridie said to Lauren, pushing the door open wide for her and Jane to climb the stairs. “It’s a nice, quiet day today.”
In the waiting room, magazines were neatly stacked on racks and on low circular tables. Bouquets of wildflowers and sepia-colored brochures, arranged in fans. Floral-print sofa, throw pillows. Picasso and Degas posters from the Albright-Knox were taped onto the brick covering the windows. A television set with the volume down low, murmuring morning pleasantries. Janice Cortusa appeared with the weather report, and Jane imagined Mirela watching closely, Pat reminding her to keep an arm’s length from the television set, taking hieroglyphic notes on her sketch pad on cloud coverage and expected highs, the egg timer ticking beside her. As Jane and Lauren took their seats, Jane mapped and measured in her head where she would have been standing during the Spring of Life, if her own voice might have penetrated the brick and reached the patients in this waiting room, and when, and what words she would have been saying.
A woman in blue scrubs pushed through the pair of swinging doors adjoining the receptionist’s area. She looked down at her clipboard and called out Lauren’s patient number. Lauren looked over at Jane, who smiled and patted her arm. Laur
en got up, brushed past the nurse, and walked straight through the swinging doors.
At one time Jane had memorized Dr. Rosen’s schedule, his comings and goings—everyone in Respect Life had, all the Oh-Rs had, too.
Jane imagined that the nurse in white linens waited on the other side of the swinging doors.
Lauren was stalking back into the waiting room. She stopped short in front of her mother, tipping forward slightly with fuming momentum. Her voice was barely audible.
“I just wanted to check that you don’t want to be with me,” Lauren said.
“Do you want me there, Lauren?” Jane asked.
Lauren stared at her mother. She looked dumbfounded. Her anger was beating back her sorrow.
“Why,” Lauren said, “why do I always have to ask.” It wasn’t a question.
“Lauren? Honey, please, I don’t understand.”
“Why do I have to say it,” Lauren whispered. “Why do you make me say it.”
Lauren turned and left the waiting room again before Jane could respond. Jane stared at the doors swinging behind her, exchanging places back, forth, brushing past, again, past, again, and when the doors stood absolutely still, that was when she put her face in her hands and wept, although it was a sin—to pity oneself was despair in disguise; what it signaled was a loss of faith—and yet she wept, she abandoned herself to her weeping, and when Lauren was done, she came back softer, consoling, conciliatory, her hand rubbing her back, it’s over now, Mommy, it’s all over, and even then she could not stop herself weeping, and there was no comfort in her return.
Lauren
The Fourth Child Page 32
