Kat's Fall

by Shelley Hrdlitschka

  “Yeah,” I mumble. “I read that in the morning paper too.”

  “You read it in the paper?” The Rose asks. “That’s how you found out?”

  “It’s as good a way as any,” I say.

  I see her jaw clench as she folds her arms across her chest. That’s the thing about Marie LaRose. No matter how many times I brush her off, she never quits on me. It’s eerie.

  “Have you considered how the community is going to react to that news?” Ms. Wetzell asks. Her starched white blouse and pleated navy skirt reflect the no-nonsense approach she brings to her work.

  “No,” I answer honestly. “It never crossed my mind.”

  “Well the thing is this,” she says, leaning forward and placing both hands on the table. “There’s bound to be an uproar. People are going to think she should serve the entire sentence for her crime. As you know, even in prison she’s been kept away from the general population, for her own safety.”

  I hate it when people start sentences with “as you know.” If that’s so, why say it? “No, I didn’t know,” I say.

  “Oh,” she says, looking surprised. But it doesn’t take her long to compose herself. It never does. She’s the queen of composure. “Well, she has. But once she’s released she’s going to have to face the music.”

  “The music?” I ask. A drumroll plays in my head.

  “You know what I mean,” she answers. “The community is going to let her know how it feels about what she did.”

  I nod.

  “Our concern today,” Mr. Bryson, principal of Hope Springs Alternate, says, “is for your well-being.” He’s been uncharacteristically quiet, but suddenly he pulls his hands out of the pockets of his faded jeans, places them on the table and leans forward.

  I can’t help but wonder what the hands-on-the-table thing is all about.

  “Things could get…difficult,” he continues, “and we want you to know that we’re here to support you in any way we can.”

  “Thanks,” I say. Like I’d ask them for help.

  “We don’t want the inevitable uproar to be detrimental to the progress you’ve been making.”

  Detrimental to the progress? What’s that got to do with my well-being? If he could see my arm he might not think my being was so well. Mr. Bryson, with his laid-back, relaxed attitude, usually scores pretty high on the coolness scale around here, but he’s not scoring any points with me today.

  “I don’t see why it should,” I answer, hoping to bring this useless meeting to a quick end.

  “Maybe because you’re her son?” suggests Ms. Wetzel. I’m surprised by the hint of sarcasm in her voice.

  “That may be so,” I say. “But I have no plans to associate with her. And my sister won’t either, for obvious reasons. So I appreciate you organizing this little get-together, but I really don’t think you need to worry.”

  The three of them stare at me and then glance at one another.

  “You don’t seem too concerned,” Ms. Wetzell says, flipping through the pages in my file. I wonder if she’s looking for the document that explains why I was sent to this school in the first place. It’s not the cutting, because no one, except Kat, knows about that. My antisocial behavior all through elementary school always concerned my teachers, but I still think it was that paranoid grade seven teacher who clinched my deportation from the regular system.

  “I guess I just don’t believe in putting out fires where there are none,” I tell Ms. Wetzell.

  “Oh, I expect we’ll see some fireworks where this case is involved,” Ms. Wetzell says, slapping my file closed. “And I expect it will be quite a show.”

  JUMPING MY SKATEBOARD over the curb, I wheel into the Kippensteins’ driveway. I didn’t mention to The Rose that my job is baby-sitting. That would have seemed way too wussy by the standards of most of the Alternate kids, but it works for me. The thing is, the Kippensteins have a little deaf kid, Samantha, and they need a hearing sitter who can sign. I’m perfect for the job. Not only that, but Kat is welcome to join me. The Kippensteins don’t seem to mind that our mom’s in jail. I guess they figure being murderous is not a trait you inherit.

  Mrs. K leaves for work at four o’clock in the afternoon Tuesday through Friday, and Mr. K doesn’t get home until seven o’clock, so that leaves a few hours that Sammy needs to be taken care of. They both work all day Saturday, and I wish they’d hired me for that day too, but Sam has an aunt and uncle who are willing to take her then. The best part of this whole deal is that Kat and I have somewhere to hang out four afternoons a week—keeping us out of Dad’s way. Mrs. K leaves dinner ready, and there is always enough for us. I get paid for this. What could be a better arrangement, aside from doing the Saturdays as well?

  The deaf kids’ mini-bus has dropped Kat off and I find the two girls squatting on the driveway, sharing a big bucket of sidewalk chalk. Their backs are turned to me so I step off my board and watch them for a moment. Kat’s long hair sparkles in the winter sunlight, and she’s engrossed in the picture she is drawing. Four-year-old Sammy is imitating Kat’s every move. I feel a stab of worry for Kat. How are these fireworks that Miss Manners was talking about going to affect her? Knowing the mentality of some of the people in this town, I expect Kat will get drawn in somehow.

  Sammy spots me first, drops her chalk and scrambles over to greet me. I grab her under the arms and twirl her around. When I put her back down she squeezes my legs in a tight hug. She reminds me of Kat at that age, but unlike my sister, who was born deaf, Sammy lost her hearing about a year ago during a life-threatening battle with meningitis.

  Sammy grabs my hand and tugs me over to see her artwork. “Wow!” I sign and say simultaneously. Her responding grin is the best thing that has happened to me all day.

  “Hi, Kat,” I sign to my sister.

  “Hi,” Kat says, giving me a quick glance before returning to her chalk drawing.

  I nudge her with the toe of my shoe. She looks up. “How was your day?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “Same as always,” she replies. With a sinking heart I realize she’s still mad at me. She usually has a million little stories to tell about school. Kat notices Sammy’s puzzled expression and repeats herself with her hands. We “talk” slowly in front of Sam, trying to help her learn the language.

  Watching the girls draw, I wonder, for about the millionth time, what it must be like to live in a silent world.

  After a while, Sammy drops her chalk on the driveway. She climbs to her feet and wraps her arms around herself.

  “Are you cold?” I ask her, using my hands.

  She nods.

  “Then let’s go in,” I suggest and point at the door.

  Kat has already finished collecting the pieces of chalk, and she snaps the lid on the bucket.

  Mrs. K meets us in the doorway. She puts her coat on as we take ours off.

  “Samantha’s had a busy day,” she tells me as she gets ready to leave. “Make sure, won’t you, Darcy, that she’s had her dinner and her bath before her dad gets home. That way he can put her right to bed.”

  I promise to do that and then ask, using my hands and my voice, “What should I give her for dinner?” Samantha’s not the only one who needs practice with sign language.

  Mrs. K smiles at me, fully aware of what I’m doing. “The lasagna is in the fridge,” she signs slowly, spelling out the word lasagna. “I left the directions on the counter.”

  I agree to follow them and hold the door open for her. She tends to hesitate right before she leaves, as if she thinks she might have forgotten to tell me something. I notice Sammy gets tense at this point too, picking up on her mom’s anxiety, and she’s getting a little worse each day, so the sooner I can get Mrs. K out the door the better. Today Mrs. K seems more fretful than usual, but as it turns out, it isn’t the evening routine she’s worried about.

  “Darcy,” she says, even though she has one foot out the door already. She’s making no effort to sign. In fact, she’s turned he
r back to Kat so that there’s no risk my sister will read her lips. “I saw the morning newspaper. I read about your mom.”

  My heart sinks. It starts already.

  “Are you ready to deal with it?” she asks.

  “I’m not dealing with anything,” I answer. “Nothing is going to change.”

  “Really?” she asks, sounding downright skeptical.

  “Really,” I answer, trying to sound confident.

  “Because, you know, I’ve got Samantha to consider and all…”

  So that was it. She might not think there is a murder gene you can inherit, but she does think the murderous mother might suddenly endanger every small deaf girl in town, especially the one the son is babysitting.

  “If you’re uncomfortable with me watching Sammy because my mother has been released from prison,” I say, looking her directly in the eyes and forcing her to look back, “I’ll understand. No, actually, I won’t understand,” I correct myself. “But I’ll quit, if that’s what you want me to do.”

  “I don’t want you to do anything like that,” she says, unable to meet my gaze any longer. She studies the artwork on the driveway. “I’ve told you that I think you and Katrina are wonderful with Samantha. I just wanted to know what you thought, that’s all.”

  “I think everyone is making a big deal out of nothing,” I say, trying not to sound as angry as I feel. “And I think you should go quick,” I say, looking around, “while Samantha’s preoccupied.”

  With one last apologetic glance in my direction, Mrs. Kippenstein hurries to the carport and climbs into her Honda Civic. I watch as she backs it out of the driveway and onto the road. With a beep of her horn, she’s gone.

  I wish I could make my anger disappear as quickly. With a heavy heart I shut the door and go look for the girls.

  EVERYTHING'S SET Kat and Dad are asleep. My Swiss army knife lies ready on my desk in front of me. The towel, stained a deep burgundy from past sessions, is right beside it. I wait, savoring the moment. Then I slowly pick up the knife, press the tip of it into the soft skin on the underside of my arm and watch for that first bubble of blood. I drag the knife across my skin, watching the red line trail behind it. The knot in my stomach that’s been gradually growing tighter all day begins to loosen already. I watch the blood pool up, not wiping it off until it runs together, forming a stream that threatens to drip onto my desk. Once the bleeding begins to subside, I poke the tip of the knife into a fresh patch of skin and begin again.

  Three

  It’s Saturday morning. I find a note from Dad propped up among the dirty dishes on the kitchen counter. Gone shopping, it says in his barely legible scrawl. Dad’s not a man to waste words, so I’m surprised he’s left a note at all. I should feel flattered.

  When the fridge and cupboards are practically bare, Dad takes Kat to the grocery store. They don’t need to talk much to shop. He doesn’t like to take me along because a hungry fifteen-year-old boy tends to fill the cart too full. Kat selects food the two of us like to eat. I don’t know what Dad eats because we rarely have meals together, and even on weekends he often goes out with his truck-driver friends. I suspect he lives mainly on fast food, judging by the size he’s become.

  I quickly see why they decided to go shopping this morning. There’s only a couple of crusts left in the bread bag, but I pop them in the toaster anyway. Finding no glasses in the cupboard, I look for an almostclean one on the counter. I rinse it out, pour in drink crystals from a can and fill it with water. I have to really scrape the sides of the jar to get enough peanut butter to thinly cover my two lousy pieces of toast.

  Dad’s left today’s newspaper on the table. My first impulse is to ignore it, a good strategy for avoiding any more nasty surprises, but curiosity gets the best of me. It’s like driving by roadkill and not wanting to see but having to look anyway.

  The front page is typical. The lead story covers the latest scam in municipal politics. Big hairy deal.

  I slowly flip through the pages and when I see no mention of Mom, a flicker of hope begins to brighten my mood. Maybe the story of her release is old news already. But then I hit the week-in-review section. Hope springs daily? Yeah right. My heart sinks, totally. They’ve given over the whole section to the community’s response to Mom’s parole. The number of letters to the editor is staggering, and the sentiment is unanimous: Mom should not be set free. Ever. And especially not in this town.

  People have written in to say she does not deserve to be forgiven. Some crimes (this being one of them) should never be given early release, or release period, says one law-abiding Hope Springs citizen. There is even the suggestion that the citizens should unite and drive her out. Where, they don’t say. One writer went as far as to suggest that a formal protest be planned for outside the prison, and he invited others to contact him to set it up.

  It goes on.

  A woman calling herself “A Worried Mother” implies that none of the town’s children will ever be safe again. Another suggests that her release might be a good thing. Then the community will be able to see true justice done—through some kind of vigilante retaliation. That sends a shiver down my spine.

  I’m still reading when I hear Dad and Kat bang through the door. Dad’s puffing. He’s got four overflowing bags hanging from each hand. I guess he doesn’t want to make two trips to the car. Kat follows him in with a couple of packages.

  His glance takes in what I’m reading and he says, sounding oddly pleased, “It’s causing quite a stir, isn’t it?” He pushes the bags onto the counter, sending the assortment of dirty dishes crashing. Spilt juice and cold coffee stain the papers lying there. I jump up and snatch Kat’s report card out of the pile.

  “It’ll blow over.” I try blotting the paper with a dish towel, but it’s pointless. I don’t know why I care. No one but me reads it anyway.

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  Kat comes over, oblivious to who and what we are talking about, and pulls some clothes out of the bags she’s carrying. I can see that they are not new, probably bought at the second hand store in the same strip mall as the grocery store, but Kat seems pleased with them. She holds a blue sweater up in front of her. Her eyes ask the question, “Well?”

  Tucking the report card under my arm, I nod my approval and tell her, with my hands, that the blue matches her eyes. I can see she is pleased. “What else did you get?” I ask.

  She pulls an assortment of jeans and shirts from the bags and I have to agree, she did do well. They must have had a new shipment of donations recently.

  Dad goes into the living room, flops down on the couch and flicks on the TV. “Darcy,” he calls back to me. “Could you ask your sister to make us some brunch?”

  I guess he’s not planning to put the food away, but I should be grateful. At least he brought it in from the car.

  I'M UNPACKING THE last bag when the phone rings.

  “May I speak with Darcy Murphy?” the voice on the other end asks.

  Alarm bells go off in my head. I go by Fraser, my dad’s surname. Murphy is my middle name, after my mom. Whoever is calling obviously wants to talk to my mom’s son. I don’t want to talk to anyone who connects me with her. Not knowing what to say, I hang up the phone.

  It rings again a moment later. I see Dad glance up from the couch in the living room.

  “I’m sorry,” the same voice says when I pick it up again, “somehow we got disconnected.”

  “There’s no one here by that name,” I answer.

  “How about Katrina Murphy?” he asks.

  “Nope. She doesn’t live here either.” I hang the phone up again.

  “Who was it?” my dad calls from the living room.

  “Wrong number,” I call back to him.

  When it rings again I stare at it. I can feel Dad staring at me. It keeps ringing, three, four, five times.

  “Pick it up!” Dad orders.

  I don’t do anything.

  “What are you, daft?” he hollers whil
e heaving himself off the couch. He storms into the kitchen. Before he reaches the phone I pick it up and just as quickly slam it down. He stares down at me incredulously.

  I see Kat watching us from the stove, where she has just cracked eggs into a sizzling frying pan.

  “It was someone who wanted to talk to Darcy Murphy,” I explain.

  “Yeah, so? That’s your name. Why didn’t you talk to them?”

  “You know damn well why I didn’t talk to them,” I answer.

  “No, I don’t,” he replies. “You have no idea what they wanted.”

  “I know it has something to do with Mom, and that is reason enough not to talk to them.”

  It’s a standoff. He glares down at me. I stare right back at him. Kat flips the eggs.

  The phone rings again. This time my dad snatches it before I even have a chance to move. “Hello?” he says, still staring at me.

  I watch his face as he listens. His expression has changed from its bully-the-kid look to an I-like-whatyou’re-saying-and-tell-me-more one.

  “Uh-huh,” he says. “Yes, I’m the father.” He glances at me and then returns to the living room with the phone at his ear.

  I follow him.

  “Of course we can talk to you. Yes, it has been hard, but I’ve done my best. She’s fine. No, there was no permanent damage. A photographer, too? Sure, bring one along.”

  I stand in front of him and wave my arms. “No, Dad,” I say. “We’re not talking to anyone!”

  He turns his back to me. I move around in front of him again.

  “This afternoon would be fine,” he says.

  “No, it isn’t,” I say as forcibly as I dare.

  “Around three o’clock?” he suggests.

  “I won’t be here,” I say to him.

  “We’ll see you then,” he tells the speaker and shuts off the phone.

  We’re back to our standoff, but this time it’s me doing the glaring. He’s looking slightly amused. I’m just about to say something I would definitely have regretted later, but there is a crash in the kitchen.