Things We Didn't Say

Chapter 14

Michael



Mallory sobs on the counter and Casey is on the floor with blood on her face but what draws my attention is that Mallory is sobbing our son’s name. Casey picks herself up so I go to my ex-wife shouting, “What? What happened?”

“She wouldn’t give me the phone,” wails Mallory, and that’s when I notice she’s holding Casey’s cell. “And now he won’t answer.”

I look questioningly at Casey, who’s applying a damp paper towel to her lip. A circle of pink spreads.

“Dylan called,” she says, examining the towel. Her voice is steady. “I couldn’t make out where he was, but he says he’s fine. He was somewhere with a loudspeaker.”

Mallory tenses. I’ve seen that look. I grab her wrist and pry her fingers off the phone.

If Dylan called this number, this phone has become the most important thing in the house.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I demand of Mallory. “Keep your hands off Casey, or you can get your ass home.”

“Oh please, she just fell. It’s not like I punched her. Trust me, if I wanted to do some damage, I’d do better than that.”

“And I suppose her falling had nothing to do with you.”

“I was just trying to get to the phone! That girl was standing between me and my son!”

Casey looks pale, but answers evenly, looking again at the paper towel pink with her blood. “He called me. I was just trying to hear where he was.”

“And then the call dropped!”

Casey stares back at her, throwing the damp towel in the sink. “Dropped my ass, he hung up because you were screaming at him.”

“How dare you, you silly little bitch!” shrieks Mallory, and I seize her upper arms, anticipating her. I’d started to forget how strong she is when she’s mad.

“Let go of her!” hisses Angel, who has come down the stairs. She’s wearing her pajamas, and without her makeup, her hair brushed smooth, she looks so much younger. I open my hands from her mother’s arms, wanting to explain but knowing in the same instant she won’t care.

Mallory rubs her arms as if I’d wounded her, and she calms with the appearance of her daughter, an ally. In fact I might have hurt her a little. It wasn’t until I let go that I realized how tight I’d clenched.

“What the hell?” says Angel. “Stop with all the fighting down here, J. is asleep.”

“Dylan was on the phone,” I tell her. “He said he was fine.”

Angel forgets her umbrage over the fight and relief blooms on her face. “So he’s coming home?”

I turn to Casey, but Mallory answers. “He didn’t say that. We got disconnected, so we don’t know much. But he seems okay.”

Angel’s shoulders sag, and she sighs. “I’m going to try and sleep now, I guess. If I can trust you guys not to tear each other apart like a pack of hyenas.” She cocks an eyebrow. “Wake me if he calls again, though.”

Casey has remained silent, dabbing her lip now with a dry towel. The blood on the towel is down to a few specks. There’s a divot in her lower lip. I approach Casey to get a better look at her face, reach for her cheek. She jerks away from me, strands of her hair falling between us, blocking my view of her eyes.

Casey clears her throat once Angel has gone back up the stairs. “Could I have my phone back, please?”

I’d pocketed it, without realizing it.

Taking it out, I find myself staring at it. Dylan called this number. Not the house, not my phone. He could try again, especially if the call really did drop.

“Michael.” Casey’s voice has a note of pleading.

“Can’t I hang on to it? I’m not going anywhere.”

Her coolness crumbles before my eyes. “My mother might call. I promise to let you talk to him if he calls again, but please, it’s my phone.”

I hand it over to her, and Casey snatches it from me, burying it deep in her jeans pocket. I hear a disgusted snort from Mallory, and when I glance at her, she’s glaring, slit-eyed, at Casey.

I can’t count the number of times Mallory paged through my cell phone records or my personal e-mail, grilling me about this or that conversation with a woman, usually a source, sometimes a coworker. Sometimes Kate, until I told her not to call me at home. I stopped trying to hide my password, that very act being enough to set her off, and accepted my lack of privacy.

So I’m well used to paranoia.

But I do wonder . . . why won’t Casey let me hold her phone? When so much is at stake?

“I’m going to see if he updated his Facebook page,” Casey says.

She heads for her desk in the office at the other end of the house.

“Stop beating up my girlfriend,” I say to Mallory, in a half-joking tone, trying to keep things light, keep her away from her personal red zone.

She sinks into a kitchen chair. “Oh, please. Beating up. She tripped when I grabbed the phone. She bit her own lip. Not my fault she’s clumsy.”

I take the chair opposite her. Most of the lights are off in the house but the one over the kitchen table, and this makes me feel like a TV cop interrogating a suspect.

“She’s not clumsy.”

“Michael, I did not try to hurt her. I wanted the phone, and she kept it from me.”

“Couldn’t you wait for your turn?”

“Jesus, what am I, six years old? That was my least favorite thing about being married to you, when you talked to me like one of the children. And anyway, she had no right. She should have given me that phone the very instant she knew it was him. I gave birth to him.” At this she hits the table hard with her index finger. “I nursed him, I sat by him in the oxygen tent when he was two, I took him to speech therapy.”

“When you could get out of bed.”

“I was going through a rough time then.”

“When are you not?”

She tosses her hair back over her shoulder. “Oh yes, the rich doctor’s son is going to lecture me again about how long I’m allowed to have a rough time.”

“At the expense of the kids.”

“F*ck off. You don’t know what it’s like to be me.”

I have no retort for this, never had. Though the story has changed often enough I’m not sure which parts are real, it’s clear she didn’t have an easy time of it. One doesn’t get to be like Mallory without some damage of some kind.

“I’m still their mother,” she says, her voice strained, as if trying to hold something in, an unusual effort for her.

I see her love for them in her face, and this breaks down my fortress. She loves them and they love her back despite it all, and this is why I can’t hate her.

“I should have spent more time with him.” Her hand traces circles on the table, over and over. She’s stroking it, almost lovingly. “I’ve been trying lately, Michael. I need to be better, I know. I’m going to be more involved, I am. That is”—she slides her eyes over to me, turning her head only slightly in my direction—“if you’ll let me.”

“Of course,” I tell her, grasping her hand, stopping it from its circling. The closeness startles me, and I let go. “That’s all I’ve wanted, I want you to see the kids, I want you to keep to the parenting time.”

“ ‘Parenting time.’ ‘Visitation,’ ” she says, her face puckered. “I don’t want to just pick them up at appointed hours when the court says so. I mean, I want to come over more often, take the kids out even if it’s not ‘my time’ on the schedule.”

It sounds like a reasonable request. But I feel that little ping in my gut, same as I get at the newspaper when a source tells me something that feels wrong. So I’ll have to check it out, dig deeper.

But now is not the time.

“We’ll talk later,” I say, pulling my hand back. “I can’t think about it right now.”

She nods, and her hand resumes the slow circles on the table.