In the Blood (19 page)

“Grandma helped me with my pajamas,” he said. He sounded like a jilted lover.

“You’re a big boy,” I said. He was six going on seven, big enough to do things for himself. The teacher at his new school and his psychiatrist had both indicated, albeit subtly, that I was doing too much for him. “You shouldn’t need help with your pajamas.”

“There was an old woman in my room,” he said. “She told me you didn’t love me anymore.”

“That’s silly, darling,” I said. I fought to keep my voice light. Too often I was sharp and angry with him lately, stretched as I was to my limit with his visions, fantasies, and lies. “Go to bed.
I’ll be there in a minute to read your story, after your cousin is done eating.”

He was quiet. Then, “Is Dad coming home tonight?”

“No,” I said. “He’ll be home on Saturday.”

I realized that my whole body was tense. And the baby started to fuss, as though she sensed the shift in energy.

“All done?” I said.

“All done,” she confirmed. “Bath.”

“That’s right,” I said. I gave her a kiss on the forehead and tousled her hair. She had piles and piles of hair. “Oh, I love those golden curls.”

I brought her to my sister, and left them in the bathroom. I heard the music of their voices as I walked down the dim hall. High and low, singsong, then stern, then laughing. They brought laughter with them; something that we had far too little of in our house.

I lay beside him on his bed, and started reading. He touched my shoulder lightly and I turned to look at him.

“She’s not your baby,” he said to me. “You’ll never have another baby.”

I was so immune to him that his words didn’t even hurt me.

“I know,” I said. “I never wanted anyone but you.”

I had hoped that would appease him. I should have known better.

In the early, dark morning the sound of my sister screaming tore me from sleep. The run I made across the house felt like the longest distance I’ve ever crossed in my life. I was already praying before I even knew what was happening.

I burst into my sister’s room and the scene revealed itself to me in bursts. She was holding the baby, cradling her as the child wailed. The child’s hair was shorn, cut ragged, with patches bald to the skull. On the ground around my sister’s feet were those golden curls I’d so admired, confetti from a party. And glinting in the lamplight a long, silver pair of kitchen shears.

I managed to get myself back to the kitchen and behind my laptop before Luke let himself into the house, bringing the cold air with him. He looked flushed and expectant, dropped his bag by the large standing vase by the door, and walked toward me. I pretended to be engrossed in my schoolwork.

“Were you upstairs?” he asked, standing in the kitchen doorway.

“Hmm?” I said, pretending not to have heard. Then, looking at him with a welcoming smile, “Upstairs? No,” I said.

“I thought I saw a shadow,” he said.

“Trick of the light, maybe,” I said. “Would you like a snack?”

“Yes, please,” he said. He shed his jacket, hung it neatly in the hall closet. He was a tidy little boy when he wanted to be, precise and orderly. He came to sit across from me, and I closed the lid on my laptop.

“How was your day?” I asked.

“Horrible,” he said mildly. “Just like every day there.”

I went over to the refrigerator, took out a bowl of green apples, a block of white cheddar cheese, and some of the hard black bread that I knew he liked.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know it’s not always easy there.”

We’d talked about how unruly the classes were, how challenging were lunch and recess. He and some of the better-behaved, more intelligent children were removed in the afternoons for lessons. But that only made them targets for some of the more aggressive children. Even among misfits, Luke was a misfit.

“So,” he said. “Did you figure out the clue?”

“I did,” I said. I told him how I’d searched and found The Hollows Historical Society site, and actually went to the building. “Very clever,” I said. I tried to be as patronizing as possible.

He tried to hide it by looking down at the table, but I saw him frown, saw his disappointment at my answer. I brought him over his plate, along with a glass of milk and a checkered cloth napkin.

“Did you discover his secret?” he asked. He took a bite of apple. There was a twinkle of mischief in his eye. I thought about what Langdon said.
Was
he trying to tell me something about himself ?

“Yes,” I said. He frowned again.

“You did?” he asked. He was getting agitated. And I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it. “How?”

“How does anyone find out anything these days? Online,” I said. He could smell the lie, and we locked eyes.

“So you know he was a
pervert
?”

I didn’t say anything, just took a bite of the apple I had sliced for myself. Let the patient talk, Therapy 101. They will tell you what is wrong, and they may also already know how to fix it. A good therapist just opens the line of communication, and lets the patient lead the session.

“That he molested children,” said Luke. “That he touched little boys. Exposed himself.” He was looking to shock me, unsettle me. But he didn’t know how hard that actually was. Nearly impossible,
I’d say. I knew how ugly was the world, how we harm one another.

“I know he was accused of that,” I said. “Yes.”

Did he not know about the cross-dressing? Was that not the secret? I wasn’t going to toss it out there.

“Why else would he kill himself?” said Luke. “If he wasn’t guilty.”

It was comforting to realize that he had a child’s way of looking at the world, all black and white, no understanding of the nuances of depression and despair, all the varied layers and textures of unhappiness. How it can bury you until your world is so dark that death actually looks like an escape hatch.

“People who kill themselves generally suffer from severe clinical depression,” I said. “Their reasons for choosing suicide are not always rational. It’s often a chemical imbalance that leads them to the choice.”

Luke put a slice of cheddar on top of an apple slice and chewed thoughtfully. He was like a little machine, ingesting nourishment, processing information. He looked like he wanted to say something but didn’t.

“But what’s the point?” I asked him. “I mean, what were you trying to get across with that poem? Why that man? Why that place?”

He blinked at me, examining my expression, my body language. We were in a very subtle standoff, each of us trying to figure out how much the other knew, what the other wanted, and who was winning.

“The
point
is to find the next clue,” he said with mock innocence. “Did you find it?”

“I did.”

“And?”
Chew, chew, chew.
He washed down what was clearly too much food with a big swallow of milk, then made a show of letting out a belch. I ignored his little display.

“I haven’t started thinking about it yet,” I said. “I have class.”

“And a missing friend.”

“Right.”

The refrigerator dumped some ice cubes into the bucket, and again, the sound made both of us jump, then laugh a little. It was becoming a joke between us.

“I’m curious,” I said. “How did you get to that house to plant the next clue? And
where
did you get that key?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he said. It was somewhat less obnoxious than it sounds. Luke had a great deal of superficial charm; his beauty and the wattage of his smile were disarming. I had to remember not to put down my guard.

“You’re not going to tell me?” I said.

“When we get to the end, I’ll tell you everything.” He gave me a sweet, warm glance, and patted my hand as though he were the caregiver and I his terribly slow charge.

“What if I don’t want to play anymore?” I said, somewhat more petulantly than I had intended.

“But you do,” he said. He released another belch. “You really do.”

I think it was clear then who had the upper hand. He had hooked me into his game, and I had no choice but to play. I found myself thinking about that dirt on his tires, his knowledge of Beck, the clues that grazed the edge of my secrets. What did he know about me? Or was it all in my imagination? Was he, after all, just a lonely kid playing a game with the closest thing he had to a friend? Carl Jung believed in a dark side, a self we pressed down and tried to hide. He held that whatever we dislike, whatever unsettles or disturbs in others only does so because we are repressing similar qualities. That theory made a kind of sense here.

He brought his plate and glass over to the sink and washed them, placing them neatly in the rack as was his habit.

When he turned back to me, he cocked his head to one side. “How did you get here? We still have your bike.”

I thought about lying, telling him that I’d taken a cab. But I decided that it was a silly thing to do, giving him more power than he deserved. “I got a ride,” I said.

“From?” he asked a bit peevishly. There was a sudden change to him, an odd stiffness to his frame that I hadn’t seen before, a stillness to his face.

“From a professor,” I said.

“What’s his name?”

“What do you care?” I asked. I didn’t like his tone or the way he was looking at me. I found myself thinking about last night, the small form I thought I’d seen disappearing into the trees. It couldn’t have been him. Rachel would never have allowed him out that late. Could he have snuck out? Was he following me? The thought was more worrisome than I can say.

“You won’t tell me?” he said.

“Why is it an issue, Luke? I got a ride from my professor, who also happens to be my adviser and friend. It’s none of your business who he is.”

I didn’t want to say Langdon’s name in front of him. I didn’t even know why.

“Is he your boyfriend, too?” he asked nastily. “Do you
fuck
him?”

“Luke!” I said. I felt like he’d slapped me.

“My mother would have come to get you,” he said. His body had literally gone rigid, his arms sticking out. I rose to my feet. I did not want to remain seated. The air was electric with his coming rage, a steep drop in the psychic barometric pressure.

“Who is it?” he said, his voice rising. “What’s his name?”

The ridiculousness of this situation struck me, and I realized that Langdon was right. I had empowered him by playing this game with him. He thought we were friends, that we were equals. He’d developed some attachment or fantasy about me, and he was acting out of that place.

“Take a deep breath,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Calm down.”

He came at me quickly, until he was right in my face. I held my ground, but kept my eyes down. I knew where he was, shot through with impotent rage. I’d been there myself as a child. I remember how it’s a hurricane inside, a terrible roar that drowns out all reasonable thought, everything around you. All you are is anger and sadness, and it’s a loop that feeds on itself. You go deeper and deeper, with nothing to draw you back to reality. Remember, I have problems, too.

“Who is he?” His face was right in mine. I could smell the cheddar on his breath.

“We can’t talk about this until you calm down,” I said.

“Did you tell him about our game?” he asked. But this time it was a shriek; he backed me against the wall with it.
“Did you?”

“We can’t talk about this until you calm down,” I said again.

He released a kind of anguished cry that was more despair than anything else, and I heard all the notes of my own childhood in it. I wasn’t afraid of him. He couldn’t hurt me, not in a fair fight. Instead of coming at me, he stormed up the stairs screaming, pounding on the walls as he went, slamming doors down the hall—his mother’s room, the bathroom, the empty guest room. Then from the sound of it, he was trashing his room upstairs. I followed slowly, creeping up one step at a time.

“You weren’t supposed to tell anyone,”
he was wailing. “It’s our game.”

There was a succession of heavy thuds, then a loud crack. The television hitting the floor maybe? I stood outside the door. I could see that the locks were loose in their settings, and that the doorknob was a bit wobbly. What happened here at night after I went home?

Then, from inside, more shouting,
“Who is he? Who is he? Who is he?”

I sat at the top of the landing and waited for him to burn himself out. But he didn’t, not for more than an hour. And that’s how Rachel found us when she came home, Luke screaming in his room, me sitting on the top step, my head resting against the wall.

She made me a cup of tea while Luke, obviously aware that we were downstairs talking, had taken to pounding on the floor of his room. The glasses in the cabinets were rattling. What a fucking brat he was. I mean, seriously.

“I’m surprised this didn’t happen sooner,” she said. “It’s funny. I was just looking at my calendar and thinking that you’d been with us a month. That’s the longest anyone has ever lasted with him, by like three weeks.”

“It’s partially my fault,” I said.

“No,” she answered firmly. She raised a palm at me. “Don’t say that. Luke is responsible for his own behavior. It took me years to accept that.”