“Let me sleep.”
“No rest for the wicked,” Holly said, throwing off the covers so that his back was exposed to the cooling morning, and then she went to fetch their son.
She wanted to wake Jack gently, slowly. His long dark hair fell across his forehead in tangled strands like a forest of kelp, which accented his pale skin and soft features. Beautiful boy. Bending closer Holly reached to brush back his hair, and as soon as she touched him she realized her mistake.
Quick as a snake, his arm sprang forward by reflex. His fist struck her just below the left eye socket, and a sharp pain radiated from the spot where bone smacked bone. The second blow glanced off the point of her chin and landed flush on her shoulder. She recoiled and saw his eyes wide with fear and anger.
“Don’t touch me,” he screamed. “Get away, get away.” He launched himself at her again, a whirl of punches and sharp elbows, and she slid farther away, too shocked to defend herself. A feral savagery possessed him as he bounced on the mattress, flailing his limbs, as if he did not know his victim. She stood and backed off, looking for a means of protection without actually laying a hand against her son.
“Stop, Jack, just stop it. What are you doing?”
As suddenly as the attack began, he froze on all fours and raised his face toward her, a wave of recognition coming over him. Penitent as a hound, he bowed his head and slumped, collapsing on his chest.
“What’s gotten into you?”
Jack buried his face in the covers and began to cry. Since he was seven years old, he had not suffered easily any human touch. He would shrug off the arm around his shoulders or flinch at a hug or handshake, but he had never before come to blows with anyone. Not even when Tim would wrap him up and carry him to the car when they absolutely had to take him out of the house. Her heart pounded as she fought to calm her breathing, and she felt the contusions on her face and shoulder throb against the hot flush of her skin. Torn between the desire to comfort her son and the urge to flee, Holly could not move one way or another. She braced her feet against the braided rug, anxious for the truce to begin.
“Don’t touch me,” he said again, his voice now calm and muffled by the comforter.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I wouldn’t dream of it.” With her fingertips she pressed against a spot of pain on her face.
She waited. At last the boy sat on his haunches and crossed his arms, muttering to himself, steadying his vibrating body. His eyes were fixed on a spot somewhere behind his mother, and she watched patiently for the switch in his brain to be thrown. A bubble of spit popped at the corner of his lips. The tight muscles on his neck unwound like bands.
She hoped he had given her a black eye, some mark that would prove to her husband and the doctors what she had been saying for months. He was close to becoming out of control at times, too much to handle on her own. The blankness of the boy’s face refused to acknowledge her presence in the room. His porcelain skin reddened, and she stared at his eyes until he returned her gaze.
“What was that all about, young man?”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You better be.”
He frowned and his eyes welled with tears.
“You hurt me, Jack. Why did you hit me?”
The ferocity drained from his body, and all at once be became a little boy again, confused by his own actions. His shoulders drooped, and he tucked his chin into his chest and hid behind the curtain of his bangs.
“You can’t do that, you can’t hit Mommy.”
“Sorry,” he said again. “I thought you were coming to get me.”
“I was coming to get you, to wake you up.”
“No, I thought there was a monster under the bed.”
A quick smile split her face. A boy, a boy, just a little boy lost. She clenched her teeth and scowled at him, too late; he had seen her furtive grin. She cleared her throat. “You can’t go around hitting people, honey.”
“I promise,” he said.
So many broken promises, so many pledges to be good. Her head ached. “Get yourself dressed, then. And when you are ready, come down for breakfast, and we’ll see what you can do to make it up to me.”
“Sorry,” he said for a third time, but she had already turned to leave.
*
Jack Peter dressed quickly and smoothed his quilt just like he had been taught, and then he tiptoed in his socks to the heating register nearest to the window. Lying on the floor, he put his ear close to the vent, a trick he had discovered one day by accident, as though the house itself had secret passageways for the words. If the blowers were not running, he could eavesdrop on conversations in other rooms, depending upon where he sat. In the kitchen downstairs, they were talking. He could imagine them huddled in the breakfast nook, two cups of coffee breathing their steam.
“Just out of the blue?” his father asked. “Completely unprovoked?”