Julia's Daughters

by Colleen Faulkner

  “I need you to come get her, Mrs. Maxton. We can talk when you arrive. When should I expect you?”

  I do the math. I probably need to ditch Ben’s sweatshirt and put on a bra and a shirt of my own. Brush my teeth. Shoes. Fifteen-minute drive. “I can be there in half an hour, Dr. Carlisle.”

  Chapter 2

  Haley

  46 days, 13 hours

  “Right there.”

  The school secretary points to one of the three chairs in the hallway that runs between the front office and principal’s office. She doesn’t look annoyed or even all that interested in my latest insubordination. She doesn’t look at me like I’m a murderer, either, which is kind of nice. Of course she’s not really looking at me at all. She’s more interested in one of the charms that dangles from a gold bracelet on her left wrist. It looks like a potato. I wonder why anyone would wear a miniature potato on a bracelet, even if it was real gold.

  “You know the drill, Haley. Don’t get up unless the school’s on fire or we’ve got a shooter, and then it better be a five alarm or automatic weapons,” she deadpans.

  I’ve decided I like that word. Deadpan. I added it to our list (mine and Caitlin’s) yesterday. I like the action . . . or lack of action. I’m getting good these days at deadpanning. I keep thinking that if I don’t show any emotion, maybe I won’t feel it.

  “You shouldn’t kid about that kind of stuff,” I say, looking at her. She’s kind of cute in a weird Zooey Deschanel way, but she’s wearing black patent-leather clogs and her roots need a touch-up. “You can screw up impressionable young women like me saying things about Columbine shit.”

  “Language.” Her voice is still monotone. Nothing ever upsets her. She’d make a better principal than Dr. Hairball. My friends and I call him that because he’s got this creepy goatee that looks like he coughed up a hairball onto his chin.

  She starts for her desk out front; hers is the biggest because she’s in charge of the other two ladies who work in the office. She has a glass jar of candy on it filled with mini chocolate candy bars, but in the almost four years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen her eat one or give one to someone. I can’t figure out why they’re on her desk. Maybe to try to make people think she’s someone she’s not? Like she’s this person who gives students treats?

  “Be sure your mom signs you out before you go,” she tells me.

  I drop my backpack on the floor beside the chair where I’m supposed to sit. I know from past experience that if you sit in that chair and lean to your right, you can watch kids go by on the other side of the glass. Wave, if you see a friend. “Even if my mom’s coming in to talk to Dr. Carlisle and he’s the one expelling me?” I ask.

  “Even if the risen Christ expels you,” Miss Charter says over her shoulder, “she still has to sign you out.”

  I can’t tell if she’s one of those crazy Christians or if she’s being sarcastic and she’s an atheist. I can’t decide which would be worse.

  “I’m going to be eighteen in a couple of weeks,” I tell her. “Then I can sign myself out.”

  “You sure could.” She stops and turns around; she has this stupid smirk on her face. “If you were still going to be here, which you’re not.”

  I’m so surprised that she’d say that to me that I don’t even have a snappy comeback. I’m surprised because it was kind of mean. Adults have been really careful about what they say to me since I killed Caitlin. Like they’re afraid of me or something. I’ve been getting away with mad shit since I came back to school. So much shit that I was genuinely surprised when Dr. Carlisle said he was expelling me.

  Miss Charter disappears around the corner and maybe out of my life. I sit down in the chair closest to the front office. It’s blue plastic, stolen from the cafeteria. Not stolen, I guess, if the principal told someone to bring it here. But it’s definitely not an office chair; it’s a cafeteria chair. The legs are uneven so it rocks unless you push back with your foot. It’s probably missing the little disky-foot thing like my chair in my chemistry class.

  I lean to my right; the hall outside the office is empty. Classes have already changed. I lean back in the chair and get my ball out of the front pocket of my backpack. The stupid uniform skirts we have to wear don’t have pockets. We can wear long khaki pants like the guys, if we want, but they’re even uglier than the skirts. I throw the pink ball against the wall in front of me, just an easy throw, to judge the distance and surface of the wall. The little glow-in-the-dark bouncy ball comes straight back. I’ve gotten good at bouncing it over the last few weeks.

  It hits the wall and comes right back to my hand like magic. The magic of physics, Caitlin used to say when she bounced it. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newton’s Third Law of Motion.

  I wonder if my mom will be mad at me for getting expelled. She used to get mad at me all the time. All she did was criticize me: Haley, why don’t you get better grades?

  Bounce. Catch.

  Why don’t you have nicer friends?

  Bounce. Catch.

  Why do you wear that black eyeliner?

  Bounce. Catch.

  What she always meant was why don’t you get good grades like Caitlin? Why don’t you have nice friends like Caitlin does? Why don’t you just wear pink lip gloss like Caitlin?

  I throw my ball too hard and I have to jump out of my seat to catch it.

  My mom is such a bitch. The worst thing is, she pretends she isn’t. Or at least she did before Caitlin died. Since then, Mom hasn’t really acted like anything. She barely speaks to me and when she does it’s in this quiet breathy voice that’s worse than if she just yelled at me.

  She thinks it’s my fault Caitlin is dead. She just won’t come out and say it.

  Bounce. Catch.

  The thing is, it is my fault. Completely my fault.

  Bounce. Catch.

  I hear the front office door open and lean to see my mom walk in. She’s wearing jeans and flip-flops and an orange T-shirt she usually puts on to clean house. When she used to clean house. Now if anyone cleans anything, it’s Izzy. Dad says we’re going to have to get a maid if Mom doesn’t stop lying in bed all day.

  Mom walks up to the counter. She’s not wearing any makeup and her hair, pulled back in a messy ponytail, looks like it hasn’t been washed in days. I always wished I had blond hair like hers and Caitlin’s. I’ve got ugly brown like my dad’s. Or it was ugly brown before I started dyeing it black. Izzy’s got red hair. I don’t know where she came from. Caitlin and I used to tease her and tell her that she was adopted and that’s why she doesn’t look like us.

  “Julia Maxton,” my mom says. “I’m here to see Dr. Carlisle.”

  “You can go in,” I hear Miss Charter say. I can’t see her because she’s around the corner. “You know the way.”

  Mom doesn’t seem to get her little dig, but I do. What she’s saying is that Mom knows the way to Dr. Hairball’s office because she’s been called in before about me: academic probation meetings, behavioral evaluations, suspensions. This is the first time I’ve been expelled from a school. Well, except for preschool, but I don’t really think that counts. My biting was just my way of expressing my individuality and exercising my newfound freedom.

  Mom turns toward the hall and sees me, but she doesn’t really see me. It’s like her eyes glaze over. She can’t bear to look at me, which is okay because I can’t stand looking at her, either.

  I stare straight ahead. The wall is cinderblock, painted a pale green. As much as tuition is here, you’d think the building would be something other than cinderblock, but apparently they bought the building cheap. It used to be something else. I bounce the ball against the wall in front of me. Catch it.

  She comes up to me and just stands there; she’s not even carrying her purse, just her keys. “What have you done now?” she asks. She doesn’t look like she really cares.

  “Smoking,” I say.

  “Pot?” She says it like she’s a
sking me if I had an apple for lunch.

  I make a face. I bounce. I catch. “Marlboros. In the solarium.”

  “In the school,” she says. Not quite deadpanning, but almost.

  I shrug. “I didn’t want to be late for physics class.”

  I wait for her reaction. If my friend Danielle said something like that to her mother, she’d get her face slapped. My mom doesn’t slap me. She just presses her lips together really hard and looks like she’s going to cry.

  I never saw my mom cry until Caitlin. Now, most of the time she’s either crying, getting ready to cry, or just wrapping up a good cry.

  She walks in front of me as I catch the ball again. “Could you please put that away?” she asks me.

  I draw my wrist back, adjust the sleeve of the T-shirt I wear under my uniform polo, and I toss the ball against the wall. It bounces right back into my hand. Physics. Magic. Depending on how you look at it.

  My mom walks down the hall to Dr. Hairball’s office. Third door on the left. It’s open. She knocks on the doorframe.

  “Mrs. Maxton, come in.”

  My mom says something in a teary voice, but I don’t quite catch what it is. It doesn’t matter. I don’t listen to them. I just sit there and bounce my bouncy ball and wonder—if I died, would my mom cry more or less?

  Chapter 3

  Julia

  Still 47 days

  I walk out of the principal’s office. My daughter is still sitting in the same chair, bouncing a kid’s gumball-machine ball against the wall. She’s dressed like the other girls I passed in the hallway, but the similarity doesn’t go beyond the uniform embroidered with the school crest. (The black polo she’s wearing is supposed to go with the red skirt, not the black one. And she’s the only one wearing a long-sleeved black T-shirt under her polo. She always wears a long-sleeved black T these days.) Haley looks like she belongs more on a punk rock stage than at an exclusive high school. Her hair, an unnatural shade of shoe polish black, is cut ragged around her face like she hacked at it herself. Which she did. She’s got multiple rings in her ears and her fingernails are painted black. Her face is pale, but her green eyes, my eyes, are rimmed in heavy, black liquid liner. She looks tired. Sad. And older than her seventeen years.

  I walk up to her, my feet so heavy I can barely lift them. I stop. She continues to bounce the ball. She’s been bouncing the same ball for weeks. I wonder if she knows how much the bouncing annoys me. Probably.

  “You said you were expelled for smoking a cigarette, Haley,” I say. “Dr. Carlisle says he expelled you for possession of marijuana and what appears to be prescription painkillers he found in your backpack.” I hold up one of the two Baggies the principal handed to me. “Where did you get Percocet?”

  “Linda. Don’t worry.” She bounces the ball again. “She’s still got plenty.”

  I want to snatch the bouncy ball in midair and throw it. Hard. Possibly bounce it off my daughter’s head. Or maybe the snooty secretary’s . . . or the arrogant principal’s. I take a breath. I have to stay calm. Haley’s been through so much. I can’t “lose my shit” as she would say. I take another breath. “Dr. Carlisle could have called the police, Haley. You could have been arrested for this.” I shake the Baggies of pills and marijuana at her.

  “Nah.” She doesn’t look at me. “They’re trolling for new students for next year. He’d never want that kind of thing in the newspaper.” She tosses the ball against the wall again, a slow, taunting motion. It bounces. She catches it.

  The repetitive sound grates on my already strung-out nerves. I feel light-headed. I can’t remember when I last ate something. Yesterday at lunch time, maybe? “We’ll talk about this at home,” I say. “With your dad.”

  She doesn’t respond. She just bounces the ball again.

  Tears well in my eyes and I glance away. I’m tired of crying. I wish I could stop. “Come on,” I say. “Let’s go home.”

  Haley takes her time getting out of the chair, picking her backpack up off the floor and slinging it over her shoulder. She’s the living-color epitome of the clichéd sullen teen, or in black-and-white, in her case.

  Haley walks into the main office and out the door.

  “Please sign her out, Mrs. Maxton,” the secretary tells me.

  “She’s not coming back. She’s been expelled.”

  The woman offers a perfunctory smile from her desk. “Rules are rules.”

  I sigh as I walk over to the counter and sign Haley out. It takes less energy than arguing with the secretary.

  I find Haley waiting at my car. It’s new. Ben bought it for me in January for my forty-second birthday. I had wanted a sportier car, one less mom-like than my old minivan. I’d been so happy when he drove the little Toyota RAV4 into the driveway. It had everything I wanted: leather seats, GPS, sunroof.

  I hit the unlock button on my keys. When I get in, I can still smell the scent of new leather. It’s funny how something that had been such a big deal could so quickly become something furthest from your mind. I haven’t thought about the car in weeks. Forty-seven days.

  I throw the Baggies onto the console as Haley gets into the front passenger seat, taking her time. I wonder if I get stopped for speeding and a cop sees my weed and pills if he’ll arrest me. I wonder if I’d put up an argument. A jail cell seems appealing right now. If I go to jail, Ben will have to deal with Haley. I’ll have to deal with an orange jumpsuit. I almost smile. Caitlin had been a TV addict. One of her favorite shows had been a Netflix series about a woman in jail for a crime she’d committed years before. Caitlin had dressed last Halloween as the main character, Piper Chapman. The orange jumpsuit is still in the front hall closet.

  It’s funny the things that go through your mind.... She’d looked so cute, my daughter dressed as a convicted felon.

  I start the car because it’s warm inside, but I just sit there for a moment, my hands on the steering wheel. My thoughts drift from the Halloween costume on the floor of the closet to my daughter sitting beside me. Drugs? Now she’s taking drugs? Or selling them? She didn’t even attempt to offer a flimsy they’re not mine, they’re a friend’s. I know I should say something, I just don’t know what to say. Tears fill my eyes.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Haley mutters.

  I lean forward, pressing my forehead to the steering wheel, covering my head with my hands. Haley makes no attempt to comfort me . . . or argue. I hear her digging around in her backpack. When I lift up my head and glance at her, she’s got her earbuds in her ears and she’s staring straight ahead. She rubs her left arm, another habit she’s developed since the accident.

  After a couple of minutes, I wipe my nose with the back of my hand and shift my little silver SUV into reverse. And drive home with my Percocet, my marijuana, and my daughter.

  “What are we going to do, Jules?” Ben sits down on the edge of the bed. Our bedroom is dark, except for the light that comes from the bathroom.

  It’s after dinner, eight or so, I imagine. Ben brought pizza when he came home from work. I heard him and Izzy talking in the kitchen. Not what they were saying, just their voices. Then the sound of the TV. I’m sure they ate their pizza in front of the TV watching something on the Discovery Channel. The one interest he and our ten-year-old share. Haley went to her room when we got home from school, where she’ll stay until everyone goes to bed. Only then will she get up and forage for food. Or maybe drugs from our medicine cabinets . . .

  When I don’t respond to Ben, he makes this sound in his throat that signals that he’s frustrated with me. He’s been doing it for weeks. He doesn’t understand the devastation of my heart, my soul. I know Caitlin was his daughter, too, but he doesn’t seem to feel the way I do. About anything. He missed two days of work after she died. He didn’t miss bowling league with his brothers or a single weekly Kiwanis club meeting. He said it was easier for him to carry on. What does that even mean?

  “We need to talk,” he says.

  “I know,” I murmur. And I do
know that we need to talk. About Haley, about Caitlin, about the state of our marriage, but I’m not ready. I’m just not.

  “There’s salad from Tony O’s in the fridge,” he tells me.

  I’m lying on my back, my head on my pillow, my arm across my forehead. “Thanks. Maybe I’ll get some later.” Of course I have no intention of eating it. I was always a little on the chubby side, particularly after having my girls. A size twelve, sometimes a fourteen squeezing into size twelve jeans. For the first time in my life I’m not counting calories or trying to make good choices. I’m on the dead child diet; just the thought of food makes me queasy.

  Ben sighs again, but he doesn’t get up from the bed to go back to the TV. I get the idea he means business tonight. In the first weeks after the accident, he came into the bedroom two or three times each night to ask me a question or try to say something that might draw me back into the normalcy of the life we used to have. As the days passed and I didn’t snap out of it (Linda’s words, not his), he began to come in less frequently. This is the first time he’s been in here when I was awake in days. Most nights, he stays out in the living room and sleeps in front of the TV in his recliner.

  In made-for-TV movies, the kind Caitlin loved to watch, you always see couples clinging to each other after a tragedy. Sobbing together, the husband holding the wife against his chest, comforting her, but that’s not real life. At least not in the Maxton household, though maybe it was a few years ago. I don’t know.

  I think we held onto each other after the ER doctor came into the little waiting room and told us they’d been unable to revive Caitlin, but that was instinctive. Like clinging to a life raft as the ship goes down. We held hands at the funeral, but that’s been the limit of our physical contact. It’s not that I don’t think Ben is hurting. That’s not it at all. Maybe it’s the opposite. I know he’s hurting so badly that I’m afraid to touch him, afraid his pain will rub off on me and it will be too much. I’ll collapse under the weight of our combined pain. Or maybe I’ll just disintegrate. I’ll disappear in a wisp of smoke or a puddle of green plasma goo.