Things We Didn't Say

Chapter 12

Michael



I come into the kitchen to see my ex-wife at the stove popping popcorn with Jewel, both of them laughing, Jewel on a chair with her arm around her mother’s waist. It’s like a peek into a parallel dimension where we never got divorced and she got the help she needed and straightened herself out.

We could still have been married, which I guess would be good for the kids.

But then I wouldn’t have met Casey.

Mallory turns from the stove to see me, and her laughter falters a little over our common concern.

Mallory is having one of her pretty good days, back like she used to after each child was born. Something about pregnancy and newborns seemed to level her out—maybe the intensive work that a young child requires would crowd out whatever else was going on in there. But eventually they get older, they play alone, they don’t want to be rocked and coddled, they’re in school all day. If we’d stayed married, I would have had to get a vasectomy or I might have ended up parenting a litter.

I walk back upstairs into the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. In the sharp glare of the light in here, my scar stands out quite a bit. I remember the young nurse practitioner at the after-hours clinic slipping me a little card with a number for domestic violence victims to call.

I actually laughed. I was dizzy with the dissipated adrenaline from the fight and disbelief that I was actually there at all. Then I apologized. The young man had looked so earnest. He was actually biting his lip, his face creased with concern.

Oh, I’m sure the domestic violence people would have taken me very seriously, probably advised me to leave. But men don’t get to run away and keep their kids.

I suppose I could have made a case for her unpredictable and volatile nature and taken the children with me, but the truth is, she had never hurt the children. Not physically, at least. And she could have plausibly argued that my injury was an accident.

Mallory’s ability to persuade goes far beyond simple charm. I think that’s why Angel has a talent for acting, because she sinks into a part and lives in a character’s skin. Fiction becomes truth while she’s onstage.

Mallory has always had interesting notions of fiction and truth.

In that tiny clinic room, an image came to mind as the nurse adjusted the bandage: Mallory in a doctor’s office, a bruise on her arm, tearfully clutching the card and nodding, yes, yes, she should call.

Not that I ever touched her in anger—if I didn’t trust myself, I would walk out to the porch—but I realized then I’d have to be twice as careful. Even if that meant she clawed my face to ribbons with her nails, I would have to let her without raising a finger in my own physical defense, or risk losing everything.

I scrub my face dry on a crusty towel, and then I hear something in the kitchen. The phone?

Mallory grabs it before I can get there, clutching it with both hands. She shoots me a look that I can read as It’s the police, and she’s nodding.

“Okay. Yes, thank you. Yes, please.”

She hangs up. “Dylan got on a bus to Cleveland.”

“What?”

Casey had come down the stairs behind me at the ring of the phone. She hovers, mute, in the bend of the open staircase. Angel rushes past her and all the way down the steps, her iPod in her hand. “I heard the phone,” she says. “Cleveland?”

“That’s what the cop said,” Mallory continues. “That they showed his picture at the bus station and the staff remembered him. Because of his stammer. But they said he must have ordered the tickets online and had them mailed because he already had them. He was confused about which bus, though, so he asked for help.”

That solves the mystery of him always getting the mail. “Was he alone?”

“Yes.”

“Well, the girl did write that they were meeting up in Cleveland and going together from there.”

“So they’re going to have the Cleveland police check the station there,” Mallory says.

Jewel had been munching on the finished popcorn. “Good! Then they’ll bring him home, right?”

I teeter on the brink between protective lying and gentle truth. “He’s been gone a while, hon. He’s probably not in Cleveland anymore. He’s probably on another bus.”

“They said his ticket was only to Cleveland,” Mallory says.

“Why wouldn’t he go straight through if he’s supposed to be going to New York?”

Mallory and I lock our eyes. If “Tiffany” is really a pervert from Cleveland, there’s no reason to buy a ticket all the way through.

In the silence, Jewel gobbles more popcorn, then yawns.

“Babe, you need some sleep,” I say, as much to dispel the frightening quiet as anything.

Jewel shovels in another handful, then nods.

I start to step forward, but Mallory waves me off. “Let me tuck her in. I don’t get to every night.”

“Make sure she flosses,” I say. “The popcorn.”

I walk over to where Casey still stands as if she’s afraid to come into the room. I speak quietly, so Angel won’t hear.

“I can try to get her to go home . . .”

Casey shakes her head. “She’d just blow up. We don’t need that. Anyway, I can see why she’d want to stay.”

“Thank you.”

Casey flinches away as if I’ve said something wrong.

“You’ve really been a champ about this.”

She gulps hard and still won’t meet my eyes. I venture, “I said I was sorry about before. Why don’t you get some rest, it’s been a long day.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m one of the kids.”

I open my mouth to argue then realize she’s right, of course, that’s exactly what I’d been doing. Right down to my soothing voice.

Casey then says, “Maybe I should go. Give you guys some space.”

“No!”

I glance back over my shoulder, and Angel is staring at us. I nudge Casey back up the stairs to our room.

“I don’t want Mallory to feel like she’s replacing you.”

She closes her eyes and sags in the shoulders. “I’m tired of everything we do viewed as how it affects Mallory. That’s why you don’t want me to leave? Some strategic gambit?”

I pull her in for a hug. “I need you.”

I hugged Mallory so recently that my animal mind compares before I can tell it to shut up. Casey is shorter, more slight. Her head rests on my chest, not my shoulder.

But she doesn’t cling as tight.

“Please stay here.”

“I don’t think the kids want me here,” she says, her voice muffled by my chest.

“It’s just a bad day.”

“I’m not talking about just today.”

I take her shoulders and gently push back to look at her face. “The kids love you.”

“Jewel puts up with me. Dylan . . . He’s been acting like I’m invisible now for weeks. And you’re not blind. You know how Angel feels.”

“She’s a teenage girl. If she behaved perfectly, there’d be something wrong with her. And she’s been through hell with her mom, she’s really sensitive. Every time I say anything even lightly critical, Angel flips out.”

Casey rubs her face under her eyes, then asks me, her stare hard, “What if Mallory tries to get the kids back?”

“She won’t.”

“Why are you so sure? What if she goes after me as unfit to be in the house?”

“That’s ludicrous, plus the biggest case of pot calling the kettle black, my God. She’s steady tonight but believe me, she’s all kinds of crazy. And manipulative. You’ve been . . . I can’t think of a wrong step you’ve made. And believe me, after what I went through with Mallory . . .” I try a smile.

“Not a wrong step, huh?” she says, but she’s not looking at me, and has the strangest expression on her face. “I need to step outside.”

Oh, she’s feeling guilty about the smoking. “Case, smoking doesn’t make you an unfit stepmom. It just makes you stink.”

“Ha,” she says weakly, and heads out the door.

I bump into Mallory coming out of Jewel’s bedroom. “Put on your pajamas, sweetie, I’ll be right back up,” she calls over her shoulder. “I think we should call the police back,” she whispers to me as we descend the stairs.

“They said a detective would call in the morning. I tried, but they think he’s just another runaway.”

We’re in the kitchen now, and Mallory puts her hands on her hips. Angel is back in the front room, watching TV. I can hear canned laughter and see the flickering light. Out of reflex I wonder what Dylan is doing in his room, and this is like a punch.

“I will call him back,” Mallory continues. “And I will convince them that my son is not some hoodlum runaway, and that we think he’s meeting a sexual predator.”

“We don’t know that for sure—”

“Goddamn you and your calm! You think you’re so great because you keep it together for everyone, but guess what, sometimes you need to panic, and this is one of those times. Our son is out there, at night, meeting someone with a fake picture, a disconnected phone, and an e-mail address that could be anywhere. Where do you suppose he’s staying the night if his ticket was only to Cleveland?”

I have no answer. Possibilities flash through my mind from a bus station bench to highway overpass to . . .

I did a story about a missing girl once, on a weekend cop shift. They found her weeks later, strangled and naked in the woods.

But Dylan is a boy, a young man in fact. He’s smart, too.

Apparently, he’s also easily led.

Mallory is not waiting for my answer, because she never waited for my blessing to do anything, even when we were married.

“Yes. Yes, this is Mallory Turner, I talked to you a few minutes ago about Dylan. We have significant reason to believe this is not just a simple runaway . . . Well, first of all, he’s never done this before. He’s a good kid, plays in the band, very respectful. This is very odd behavior. The picture that this supposed girl sent, it’s obviously some model head shot. And it’s a Gmail address—anyone can sign up for those with any kind of name. But here’s the thing, in the actual message? Whoever this is had to talk him into this. Lure him, you might say . . . He’s a good kid, but he’s naive. Trusting. I’m really afraid, and now we know he’s left the state . . . Please, you’ve got to help me!”

She’s crying now, clutching her fist as if he can see her through the phone, pausing for a moment to listen.

“Then call one in from home! I mean, heaven forbid we inconvenience the police with a possible crime being committed against our child! If he turns up dead, this is on your conscience, do you realize that? How will you sleep at night?”

Her shrieking has drawn Angel in from the other room. Now I’m worried Jewel will hear, so I approach Mallory and tap her arm, shushing her. She bats my hand away with surprising force.

I’m not sure if she’s acting or she has convinced herself. In any case, she pauses for a few moments, and then, more calmly, says, “Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. We’re desperate here. Okay, someone will call. Okay.”

She hangs up. Her voice trembles, but her smile is wide. I recognize that face. It’s Mallory Triumphant.

“They’re calling in a detective from home. Can you believe they don’t have detectives scheduled all night? He got all snotty and said, ‘Ma’am, this isn’t New York City.’ Whatever. They’re going to do something kind of like a subpoena but not technically, but anyway they’re going to do that to the e-mail and cell phone companies to see who owns the phone and address.”

We all whirl around at the sound of sniffling on the stairs. Jewel is standing behind us, has been for how long I don’t know.

“Honey, don’t cry.”

“I thought he was just meeting some girl! Something happened to him?”

“No, honey, look, we were just trying to get the police to help us find him, he’s probably fine.”

“But not definitely?”

“We . . . we don’t know what’s going on.”

“And we still wouldn’t know if you had your way, Dad.” Angel sounds so much like her mother. They stand together, both of them with their arms folded.

“Hey, I said I tried, too.”

Mallory tosses her hair. “Well, I convinced them that we’re worried. And I am! And why weren’t you monitoring his online stuff! You’ve got the computer geek right here in the house and you didn’t keep tabs on him! You should have known he was talking to some . . . person in Ohio or something, you could have dug deeper and found out if this Tiffany even existed, and now he’s gone! Our boy is gone! And to think I’m supposed to be the unfit parent here!”

“Enough in front of the kids!”

“Oh yes, we can’t have a fight in front of the children, oh no. Heaven forbid.”

The front door opens. Casey, back in from the porch. She blanches at the sight of Mallory with her fists balled up, stance wide, like a boxer.

“And you! You’re the one home all day, sitting in on his band practices. You should have known! A mother would have known!”

“You didn’t know!”

“Only because I didn’t have the chance. Remember last weekend when my visitation was interrupted by his band festival trip?”

“And the weekend before that you were ill,” Casey shoots back, advancing into the kitchen. She sheds her parka and throws it on a chair.

“Yes, I was! And that makes four weeks since I’ve even seen my baby! And maybe I won’t ever again!”

Jewel gasps, and I turn around to carry her back upstairs. The shouting continues, but I can’t deal with it, I’ll have to let the women in my life tear each other apart for now.

Once she’s tucked under the covers, Jewel creases her forehead, and tears shine in the corners of her eyes. I tell her to pray hard for Dylan and try to sleep and that maybe we’ll have good news by morning, and that he might even call us, and remind her that her mother gets really worked up sometimes and sometimes there’s no reason to be. At this I can see Jewel thinking hard; she looks up at the ceiling, and I can see her running through her memory for times Mallory flew off the handle over nothing.

Her nod to me is false, though. She’s not a good liar like her mother, and I hug her in gratitude for that.

“Do you want me to stay with you until you sleep?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, baby.”

I finally take off my necktie and rest on top of the covers next to her, where she’s curled around her teddy bear like a little kidney bean.