Lives, Trudy reminded herself. There was the other girl, Maude, possibly more. When she was at her lowest, Terry tried to cheer her up by saying that there were women who didn’t know what had happened to their daughters, who had endured even more than she had. Was it wrong that Trudy didn’t really give a shit?
She usually allowed herself to walk past the house four times, on a loop of her design. She felt that was credible, that someone might walk that way for exercise. She walked more quickly here than she did in Alexandria, feeling much more purposeful. But she never managed to see anyone coming and going from the house. Perhaps her note had scared them away, sent them into hiding? But, no, the house looked lived in. Over lived in.
Today, on her third pass, she decided to do something she had not yet dared. She walked right up to the door and knocked. There was a television on somewhere in the house, clearly someone was home, but it seemed an eternity before footsteps creaked toward the door. She was being inspected through the fish-eye.
“I hear you in there,” she said. “I know you’re there. Now open up and talk to me, Elizabeth Lerner.”
The door opened, but just a crack, and the eyes that met Trudy’s were considerably lower than she had expected, far beneath hers. Hazel eyes, in a tanned face. A girl’s face.
“I’m not sure you have the right house. My mom’s maiden name is Lerner, but she always goes by Eliza.”
Oh no, not always.
“Of course,” Trudy said. “But someone’s old teacher tends to be formal.”
“You were my mom’s teacher?”
“Yes, at”—amazing, the things that the mind could grab under pressure, the details about Elizabeth Lerner that were always there—“at Catonsville Middle School. She was one of my best students.”
The girl frowned, seemingly sullen at being told of her mother’s achievements.
“That is, she scored quite well on tests. She wasn’t always the most meticulous on her written work, or in keeping deadlines.”
“Are you sure you don’t mean my Aunt Vonnie? She’s the smart one. My mom says she just got by.”
Oh, didn’t she. “Your mother was always modest. Is she home? May I come in?”
“She’s—” The girl was struggling. Her mother wasn’t home, but she wasn’t supposed to reveal that information. She probably wasn’t supposed to answer the door to strangers. “She had to go to my school, but she’ll be right back. Right back,” she added.
A dog poked its nose through the door opening and gave a tentative growl. Trudy offered her closed fist, allowed the dog to sniff it.
“Shush, Reba.”
“Is that your dog?”
“Not really. I would have chosen a better one.”
“May I come in and wait for your mother? I don’t get up here very often and I’d hate to miss her.”
“I don’t know…”
“You can call her if you like, tell her my name. Tell her Mrs. Tackett has stopped by.”
“Oh, Mrs. Tackett. The one who left the note. I thought Mom said she went to school with your daughter.”
That hurt, but Trudy didn’t care, for the door was now open wide to her.
38
STRANGELY, OUT OF ALL the things that should have bothered her, it was the logistics of the call from school that had floored Eliza, at least in the initial moments of trying to take in the information. Iso had been caught stealing and was suspended from school, effective immediately. This meant Eliza had to come to school to pick her up, then return for a meeting at two, but that would make her late to pick up Albie for their walk home, so she had to arrange a playdate for Albie, a situation made more difficult by the fact that she didn’t really know the mothers of Albie’s friends. Desperate, she had done something she had never dreamed she would do—withdrew Albie early and taken him to the Barnes & Noble on Rockville Pike, then parked him in the children’s section with strict instructions to sit there, read a book, and speak to no one. If asked where his mother was, he was to insist she was in the store. She gave him Iso’s cell phone just in case. Lord knows, it would be a long time before Iso was allowed to use her phone, if ever.
Then it was back to North Bethesda Middle, where she had to sit through the humiliating recital of Iso’s transgressions. Stealing, lying—
“About the lying,” she put in, wishing Peter could have gotten away for this meeting, but it had been impossible. (“Even if I could get away from work today, I’d never get there in time,” he had told Eliza.) “It’s my understanding that she lied when asked if she had stolen something.”
“Yes, but that hardly mitigates her behavior,” said Roxanne Stoddard, magnificent today in a bouclé purple suit.
“No, but—she lied to cover her ass.” She flushed for speaking so crudely in front of the exemplary principal. “Sorry. It’s just that I understand why she lied, although I don’t condone it. We’ve always told our children that lying is the least acceptable offense.” In her disordered, rattled state, she went so far as to think—And she didn’t lie to me, her mother. She lied to you! As if that mattered. “Still, it’s harder for me to understand why she’s stealing something she already owns—an iPhone. She has one. Well, not an iPhone, but a perfectly good cell phone.”
“Mrs. Benedict—based on what teachers have told me, Iso is a very angry, unhappy girl.”
“Well, she’s moody. She’s an adolescent.”
“Yes,” the principal said dryly. “I have some experience with adolescents.”
Eliza blushed, although she didn’t believe that the principal’s life among hundreds of young teens gave her any moral authority in this discussion. She may have more quantitative experience, but no one could know more about her children than Eliza did.
“I want to show you an assignment that Iso wrote for English class recently. The teacher asked students to recast a real-life experience as the plot of a well-known television show.”
Eliza decided this was probably not the best time to roll her eyes, but really? A television show? Peter would be apoplectic when she told him, probably start talking about private school again.
“This is Iso’s story.”
The principal passed three sheafs of paper across her desk to Eliza. On the first page, in Iso’s almost too-neat handwriting, was the title: Everyone Loves Albie.
Iso: Let’s get a dog.
Iso’s mother: No, they are dirty and have fleas and Albie might be allergic.
Iso’s father: I don’t have time to walk a dog.
Iso: I’ll walk the dog.
Iso’s parents: NO!
Albie: I would like to get a dog.
Iso’s parents: OKAY!
She skimmed down the page, to the next and the next. “It wasn’t anything like this,” she said. “It’s true, we didn’t choose the dog that Iso wanted, but Reba was so forlorn, so needy. But it was Peter’s idea—”
“No one assumes it’s a factually accurate portrayal of your home life, Mrs. Benedict. I don’t think even Iso would maintain that. She was clearly going for humor—in fact, you’ll see she got an A, because she fulfilled the main objective, which was working within an existing form.”
Great. North Bethesda Middle is training my daughter, thief and liar, to be a sitcom writer. I feel so much better now.
“By the end of the semester, they’ll be writing sestinas,” the principal said, as if privy to Eliza’s thoughts. “Mr. Klemm knows what he’s doing. Which is why, given all the other things going on with Iso, he knew to share her written work with me. This is an angry child.”
“I honestly don’t know what Iso has to be angry about. If she thinks we favor her brother—that’s all in her head.” The principal kept her gaze steadily on Eliza’s face, and she found she couldn’t stop talking. “But it is a vicious circle, in some ways. Albie is a sweetheart, very kind and compassionate, he’s like a little love sponge, soaking it up, giving it back. Iso has always been cooler, much more self-contained.”
�
��Has she ever told you how distraught she was to leave England?”
“Distraught? Far from it. She treated it as an opportunity, a chance to fashion a new identity for herself.”
“Just because she treated it as an opportunity doesn’t mean she really feels it is one. She lived in London for six years, Mrs. Benedict, almost her entire school life. She’s homesick.”
“This is home.”
“To you.”
Not really, I have fewer friends than Iso.
“Well, she’s never said a word to us.”
“No, I imagine not. And if it weren’t for this, I’m not sure I would understand how desperately she misses it.”
The principal passed the contraband iPhone toward Eliza, its screen showing the latest log of dialed calls. The numbers all began with the 011-44 prefix for England.
“But…we would have let her call from home. Peter even has Skype on his computer. She could have used that. We encouraged her to stay in touch with her friends.”
“Yes, but then she would have had to tell you who she was calling.”
“And that would have been so difficult?”
“The texts are rather explicit. Not what people call sexting—I think that’s overblown—but a little provocative. And the boy is seventeen,” the principal said. “Iso thinks you wouldn’t approve.”
“Seventeen? I don’t approve.” She realized her voice was too loud, but she couldn’t help herself. Her mind was racing, trying to figure out who the boy was, when the connection had been made. Iso must have been sly about it, because Albie would have spilled whatever he knew, no matter how keenly he yearned for Iso’s approval. What had Eliza told Peter, not so long ago? Iso was good at keeping her secrets, no one else’s.
“They’ve been communicating via Facebook, on the school’s computer,” the principal said. “Iso was sophisticated enough to know how to get around the school’s block—you just add an s to the http address—but didn’t realize that she was still leaving a trail despite cleaning out the cache. She was lectured on this earlier in the semester and she begged the media center director not to turn her in. At the time, the messages and postings were pretty innocuous, so we let it go.”
“I actually asked Iso if she wanted to set up a Facebook account when we moved. She said Facebook was queer.”
“Clever of her, you have to admit. Because then it never occurred to you to look for her there.”
“It never occurred to me to look for anyone there. I’m not much for social networking.”
The principal’s smile was sympathetic. “Look, we had to suspend Iso. We have a zero-tolerance policy on theft. But I think the things happening at school are just a sideshow to the anger she’s bottled up. Iso’s having a very good time playing Romeo and Juliet, in her mind. My hunch is that this boy didn’t become a big thing to her until there was an ocean between them. Iso’s not interested in sex. Like most of my girl students, she’s fascinated by love. If a flesh-and-blood boy—if this boy—showed up on her doorstep, she wouldn’t have a clue what to do. Who were the teen idols of your youth?”
“I listened to Madonna.”
“No, I mean who were the safe boys, the ones you felt free to fantasize about when you were Iso’s age?”
“Seriously?” Eliza was laughing even before she could get the answer out. “George Michael, in his Wham! incarnation. Can’t get much safer than that.”
“Yes, and I liked Tito Jackson. All very safe, like these Twilight books. In my experience, most girls, smart girls like Iso, are pretty savvy about their limits. They find a way to explore sex and love without putting themselves in harm’s way. I’m just sorry that Iso has taken it to this level.”
“Me, too,” Eliza said.
“Not to pry—but do you talk to your daughter about such things?”
“Sex, you mean?”
“No, sex, the birds-and-bees part, is easy. I was thinking about love.”
“Love? Romantic love? I don’t know. I suppose it came up sometimes when we read fairy tales together. I actually did my undergrad and some grad work in children’s literature. I didn’t want Iso to be overly invested in prince charmings. In fact, we read a lot of the Oz books together because the heroines are strong and completely indifferent to romance. But then Albie came along, and I couldn’t help noticing how hapless the boys were. The one good boy character turned out to be a fairy princess in disguise. The other one is Button-Bright, and all he does is get lost….”
Her voice trailed off as her words reached her own consciousness. The principal was nodding, not unkindly. Eliza added on a feeble note: “Iso had moved beyond bedtime stories by then, anyway.”
“I don’t doubt it. And I don’t think there’s anything the least bit unusual about Iso. It’s natural for girls her age to be secretive and sly. Healthy, even. But she crossed a boundary when she stole this phone, and it was important to intervene now. After all, it’s not only the phone, but the cost of these calls, which were outside the family’s plan. Unfortunately, the girl who owned the phone thought she had lost it and was scared to tell her parents, so this has been going on for two weeks.”
“Well, Iso will make restitution. That’s easy.”
“Yes, but it’s not enough. My suggestion and it’s just a suggestion? Take her out of the soccer league for the rest of the fall.”
“She’ll die. She’ll hate me.”
“She won’t die. But, yes, she will hate you for a while. Still, she needs to understand how serious this was.”
ELIZA TRIED TO CALL PETER on the way home, but his assistant said he was in the kind of meeting that could be interrupted only in a life-or-death emergency. Eliza was tempted to say, “Well, this is it,” but thought better of it. She would have liked to speak to Peter before she confronted Iso back home, but Albie was in the car, and that little pitcher really did have enormous ears. It would be unfair to Iso to discuss her situation in front of her brother. Eliza would go home, invoke the sitcom line, “Wait until your father gets home.” (It was quite the day for sitcoms. Eliza felt a laugh track should have been bubbling beneath the scene in the principal’s office.) She wouldn’t use the phrase ominously, simply make it clear to Iso that this was such a serious matter that it required two parents, united.
“Iso?” she said, coming in through the garage.
“I’m in here, Mom.” Her voice showed not a hint of apprehension, which was maddening. She should be a little afraid to face Eliza after a meeting at school.
“Here?” she echoed.
“In the dining room, with your old teacher. We made tea.”
Oh, so that’s why you’re calm. You have a witness. You know I can’t bitch you out. Then: Old teacher?
She and Albie entered the formal dining room, which the family seldom used. The table had been set for a small but proper tea, the fish-shaped teakettle sitting on a trivet, cookies spread fanlike on a plate. They were Eliza’s secret cookies. More stealing? Was Iso trying to impress her mother, or the visitor, an incongruously well-dressed woman who was instantly, tantalizingly familiar to Eliza, her name just on the tip of her tongue, but the context made no sense. Teacher? She didn’t remember ever having such an elegant teacher.
“Trudy Tackett,” the woman said, standing up and holding out her hand. “I’ve been enjoying getting to know your daughter. She reminds me so much of my daughter at the same age.”
39
WALTER WAS OUTSIDE FOR HIS hour of recreation for the first time in almost a week. Legally, the men on Sussex I were supposed to get an hour a day outside, but something was always coming up. They claimed they found a weapon, put the whole place in lockdown, then they said there was a piece of fence that needed repair, although they could have just not used that particular dog run, as Walter thought of the individual recreation yards the men used. Today, for example, there was no one on either side of him, no way to talk, or play a hand of cards. That was okay. He wasn’t feeling very sociable today. He was happy to
be with his own thoughts, feel a little light on his face. He always had looked better with a tan, bad as it might have been for his skin, according to Barbara.
Back in the day, when Walter realized what his future was—what his lack of future was—and found that he could accept it, his first thought was: I’ll probably learn to play chess. He wasn’t sure where this idea came from. Like most people, he knew what he knew about prison from the movies, but this was before The Shawshank Redemption, before The Silence of the Lambs, although he now knew about both films from talking to men who had arrived here later. The one prison movie that Walter could have described in detail was actually about a juvenile facility, and no one there was playing chess, that was for sure. Bad Boys, with Sean Penn. He had never met another person who had seen the film, not since he was inside. Say Bad Boys and people immediately assumed you were talking about those other movies, which came way later.
Elizabeth had seen Bad Boys, though. She shouldn’t have—it was R-rated and she was only thirteen when it was released. He told her as much, but let the lecture drop because he was keen to know what she thought of it.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I like Sean Penn, but I wish he would do more movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High. This one was so depressing.”
“That movie where the girl took her top off?”
“Yeah. He was funny in that.”
“He was stoned.”
“His character was.” Oh so prim and proper, as if he didn’t understand the difference.
“I just don’t think that’s funny, being high,” he said, and they had dropped the subject. They never agreed on movies or music. Still, he wished they could have talked more. He wanted to ask her if she thought the movie was right, about how much rape there was in prison, or if that was only in the juvenile places. Even then, in the back of his mind, he knew it was going to be prison or death for him, and he was actually more scared of the first. He could imagine death. He had seen death. He couldn’t imagine life in a cell.
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