Chapter SIXTEEN
Marcy found herself in April’s room. She’d been wandering through the house again and ended up here, as she often did when her mind would not slow and her eyes burned and her legs screamed out for movement. She’d been home alone plenty of times when April was at school or sleeping over at a friend’s, but the house had never seemed as empty as it did now.
She stood at the foot of the unmade bed. The first thing she would tell her daughter when they returned home would be, “Now, go up and make your bed.” April would see the light. She would see that her mother wasn’t one of these soccer moms who caved in to their children, who cried at the first tough situation. She would see that right was right.
The closet door was open, where April’s clothes hung haphazardly on hangers or were piled in wobbly stacks on the shelves or lay in multicolored puddles on the floor. Her desk, though, was highly organized: pens in their holders, notebooks stacked neatly in the corner, photographs—April and her at the beach, toddler April and Patrick in front of their home, a dozen or so pictures of April and her friends, cheek to cheek—were taped collage-style on the wall behind the black computer monitor. Her keyboard and mouse sat on the desk surface, waiting. Those were the only things Marcy had touched in April’s room for years, other than the clothes she rearranged when she brought in new ones. Things would be different now if she hadn’t touched those things. But she’d had to do it, she told herself whenever the question popped into her head, which was often. No use thinking about it.
But she did anyway.
She’d had the right to do what she did. She was the mother.
Marcy started out of the room. Maybe she should clean it up a bit, a sort of welcome-home gift for when April came back.
No. That would be rewarding bad behavior.
What she really should do, she thought, was trash the place. Strip the bed, upend the mattress, throw the computer monitor through the window, and rip down all the posters.
Those posters. Those goddamned posters.
She looked above to the one she hated most: the skinny pervert holding the guitar between his legs, the skanky singer with her hand on the neck of the guitar as if she were holding his dick. Why on earth had she allowed it to stay up there, where April could stare at it while lying in bed, all the time in the world to be brainwashed into how much fun these people were having, how rich they were, how popular and how okay drugs and promiscuous sex were. April had of course challenged her, asking how she, Marcy, knew that they were into drugs and sex, insisting that for all she really knew, Don’t Care was a Christian band.
All the more reason to believe they’re into drugs and orgies, Marcy had responded. Ever heard of Jimmy Swaggart, Jimmy Baker, all those other . . . Jimmies?
But that wasn’t the argument that had led to all this. The argument that started all this began, as the huge ones always do, unexpectedly. It was the day after The Slap, as Marcy had come to think of the first and only time she had ever struck her child. April was in the family room watching TV while Marcy was putting some clean clothes in her closet. On the way out of the bedroom, she noticed that April had left her computer on, with her e-mail program open.
Marcy didn’t hesitate, and a few minutes later yelled down for April to come up immediately. When April arrived, Marcy pointed at the computer and told her that she had opened the “Sent” folder and read several of the messages. And she wanted to talk about the one she had sent to a boy named Keith Spinelli, the one that sounded a little too forward, a little too available, a little too goddamned slutty.
Marcy’s shoulders slumped now as she stood in front of the computer. She recalled how April’s eyes went wide, her face red. She seemed unable to breathe for a moment.
How could you? It’s not enough you slap me around—you have to pry into my personal stuff, invade my privacy?
April had chosen the very words that would trigger an avalanche of guilt and doubt. She had only slapped April once.
I’m the mother. I have the right. I don’t have to apologize.
Marcy had turned and walked out of the bedroom. April put her whole body into slamming the door, achieving the ear-splitting thwack that echoed in Marcy’s head even now. A moment later, she heard the click of the lock. She felt this, too, like a gob of spit in her eye.
The thing to do, she figured, talking herself down, was walk away. The thing to do would be to wait, to give April time to work out for herself the realization that, when it came to the happiness and well-being of her daughter, Marcy would do anything.
Proud of her response, certain that she was reacting with more insight, more maturity, more plain old common sense than most mothers would in similar circumstances, she went downstairs, yanked out the vacuum cleaner, and started in on the family room carpet that she had vacuumed the day before. As she pushed the machine around, every now and then she thought she heard a noise, and she’d switch off the vacuum and turn, expecting to see April—red-eyed, sniffly, apologetic. But no, the sound must have been something in the vacuum cleaner, something she hadn’t noticed before. Maybe it was dying—another thing she’d have to take care of. When she’d vacuumed the carpet twice, she sorted the laundry. An outside observer would have guessed, given her pace and industriousness, that she was the hired help, eager to finish for the day. Marcy had wondered, as she created piles of T-shirts, underwear, and dark socks, if April would ever truly appreciate the incredibly mundane ways that her mother demonstrated unconditional love. She wasn’t like the other mothers. She didn’t belong to a country club—didn’t want to, even if she could afford it—and sit around gossiping and drinking instead of paying attention to—taking care of, for chrissake—her family. Instead of lounging about, she worked. She always looked for ways to bring in more money for her and April, better ways to earn a living, to create a life. What was she guilty of? Being a good example? Marcy slammed the lid of the washer down and started a load of whites.
Marcy asked herself if she had appreciated all the things her own mother had done for her? Had she even considered the question before? As the washing machine groaned and swished, it occurred to Marcy that her mother’s death had wiped out almost all the memories of her mother doing motherly things. She’d forgotten about the mother before the visits to the hospital, before the long naps during the day, before the hospital bed and the other equipment moved in. And what did she remember from the mother before? Only one recollection cooperated. Her mother had come into their TV room. She’d sat on the couch and bent over to tie Marcy’s shoes while Marcy rattled on and on about a television show. Marcy looked down at the top of her mother’s head and then leaned back a little so she could see her mother’s face, and she noticed it was splotchy, her eyes red.
“Are you crying, Mommy?” she asked.
Her mother finished tying Marcy’s shoes.
“Go out and play, honey,” she said. “Stay in the yard.”
That was it. That was the most vivid interaction Marcy could remember before her mother fell sick. Maybe her mother, wherever she was now, in whatever realm, had something to do with this inability to conjure up other memories. Maybe her mother was telling her still to stay in the yard.
She had planned on veal cutlets, which happened to be April’s favorite. But after this, maybe she should just heat up some frozen lasagna. No, she’d gone out of her way to stop for fresh veal. She breaded the cutlets, threw them onto the frying pan, and started making a salad. How many mothers even bothered with a goddamned salad?
The scent of veal usually brought April into the kitchen to ask when dinner would be ready, but Marcy wasn’t terribly surprised when it didn’t happen this time. So should she go call up to April, tell her to wash up for dinner, as if nothing had happened? Hell, no. The ball was in April’s court. She knew the food was there. If she wanted to eat, she needed to come downstairs.
Marcy set the table for two. She let the veal fry a little longer than she normally did, waiting for April. Finally, she took one of the cutlets for herself, put the other on a plate, and put it in the oven to keep it warm. She put some dressing on her salad and ate that first. The kitchen was quiet. No noise from upstairs filtered down. Finally, Marcy ate the veal, cleaned the kitchen. When she was done with the dishes, she was so angry that she took the cutlet out of the oven and threw it in the trash.
After she finished with the dishes, she turned on the network news and sat in front of the television April always complained was too small. Midway through, not having seen or heard anything, Marcy turned it off. She threw another load in the washer and folded the clothes she’d left in the dryer the previous evening. She then went into the den to sort through the bills, then decided she’d pay them another time and went back into the kitchen. She sat at the table and snapped through a magazine. At around ten, she decided to go up. She stood outside April’s door, listening. Then she knocked.
“April, I’m going to bed.” She didn’t add the usual “I love you.”
Nothing.
“April?”
Another minute. Marcy knocked.
“At least say something, let me know you’re okay.”
Now she pounded on the door.
A moment later, she heard April call out, “What?” Marcy realized that April was probably lying on her bed, ears plugged with her iPod, staring at the ceiling and the poster.
“I’m going to bed. Good night.”
Marcy read in bed for a while, waiting for April to come in to apologize. After an hour, she turned out the light.
She was on phone duty the next morning at the realty office. She didn’t see April before she left for work. When she got home at about noon, she saw the note on the kitchen table.
I’m not the slut, it read.
Marcy knew—even before she ran upstairs clutching the note, calling her name—that April was gone. She hadn’t taken much. The piles of clothes on the shelves and on the floors were pretty much the same. The yellow duffel bag was gone from beneath the bed.
By the time April called from the old man’s house, Marcy had reread her daughter’s note so many times that she’d already run the gauntlet, several times, from indignation to guilt to disgust at April’s cruelty.
She and Hank had been so careful—too careful, Hank sometimes said. Before the day of The Slap, they were never even in Marcy’s house together unless April was there—and there before Hank walked in. Instead, they did it at Hank’s condo, during the day, after a joint call. Or they’d do it at night, but early, so that Marcy would be there when April got home after visiting a friend. They’d even, with much laughing and embarrassing grunts and groans as they struggled to position themselves accordingly, tried to do it in Hank’s car on a deserted stretch of road near the Woodlake Reservoir. They did it, yes, but given all the prerequisites Marcy’d insisted on, they didn’t do it all that often.
So where did April get off making such horrible, nasty insinuations? What right did she have to pass judgment? Even if she and Hank had been less discreet—hell, even if they had been doing it on the couch in front of the picture window with the lights on—what right did this teenage kid have to call her mother a slut?
“Put your grandfather on,” she’d said when April finally called that evening to tell her where she was. It was the smugness in his voice, the incredible nerve of him telling her that everyone just needed to cool down, that sent her over the edge. After everything she’d had to put up with from him and from her daughter, how dare they mock her now. “Keep her,” she’d said, and with that she’d hung up.
Marcy was certain that April would soon get so grossed out by her grandfather’s living conditions that she’d crawl home, promise to do anything, even clean the toilets from now on, if only her mother would forgive her and let her back in. Let them play their little game.
But the ridiculous letter that had arrived two days later had sent her running to Nick, who said that, yes, he’d gotten the same letter, except there was an additional message about some gate somewhere, the number 10, and the date June 17. Nick said he’d already left a message with Mike’s wife, and they’d just have to wait until their older brother got around to returning the call. “At least we know she’s safe, Marcy.”
“We do?” Marcy had said, voice rising. “Are you sure about that? Would you be so goddamned eager to wait for the next note if it was your daughter? And why the f*ck did you call Mike instead of me? This is my goddamned daughter!”
Nick kept assuring her that everything was going to be all right, not to worry. But someone had to take the brunt of all this. Marcy felt she would break in two if she had to bear this entirely by herself—including the guilt she felt in any role she’d had in the old man’s decision to play this idiotic game.
Now, sitting on April’s unmade bed, staring up at the hideous poster on the ceiling, she pulled out her phone and called the only person she knew would be most likely to help lighten her load.
“This wouldn’t have happened if you’d listened to me,” Marcy said when Nick answered.
The pause. “Pardon me?”
“I told you we had to do something about him. I told you the old man was losing it, remember? But you didn’t want to do anything, remember?”
“Are you, in some way, blaming this on me, Marcy?”
Yes, she thought. I am blaming it on you. And I am blaming it on Mike. And the old man. And goddamned Patrick Shea.
“Marcy?”
She hung up on him.
But Nick, being Nick, called her back. He had news, he said. Mike had, in fact, heard from their father about their first chance to get April back. He said he had no idea what their father meant by his clue. But—surprise, surprise—he wanted to help.
“Mike’s on board, Marcy,” Nick said, and Marcy started crying.
Still keeping the phone to her ear, she slipped her shoes off and stood on the bed now. She reached up for the poster with her free hand and felt along the edges for some give, a spot where she could rip the goddamned thing down, burn it. She found it. She tugged but let go and smoothed the edge, and sat down on the bed. The sheets were warm from the sun streaming in the window, and it almost felt like they were warm from April’s body. She lifted the pillow to her face and smelled it, deeply.
“We’ll find her, Marcy,” Nick said. “We’ll find them both.”