I walked over to Lana’s bed, sat down on it, and lifted her face to see the mark more clearly.
Then I stared hotly at Maddox. “We do not strike each other in this family,” I snapped. “Do you understand me?”
Maddox nodded silently.
“We do not!” I cried.
Maddox whispered something I couldn’t understand. Her head was down. She wouldn’t look at me.
“No matter what the reason,” I added angrily.
She lifted her head. Her eyes were glistening. “I mess everything up,” she said softly.
Suddenly, I found that I couldn’t buy one bit of it, neither her tears nor her weepy self-accusation, which, however vaguely, had the ring of an apology. No, I decided, you have fooled me all along, and with that grim realization, I abruptly believed that all the accusations against her were true, all her explanations false. She had played me as a con artist plays a mark. I was her pet fool.
And yet, despite all that, I knew I would not send her back.
No, there had to be a way to help Maddox.
Besides, there was plenty of time.
And so, in an effort to reset everything, I decided that we should all take a deep breath, give it another go, do something together, something that spoke of sweetness and kindness and the power of a human being to look beyond outward appearances.
That was when I thought of Beauty and the Beast.
Lana was already seated at a small corner table when I arrived at the restaurant. She was dressed to the nines, as usual, with every hair in place. Her life had gone very well. She had a good job and a good marriage, with two nice little boys who appeared to adore their parents. From childhood down to this very moment, I told myself as I sat down, she’d gotten everything she’d ever wanted.
Except a sister.
It was a thought that immediately brought me back to Maddox, to how right I’d been in removing her from the circle of our family.
I brought up none of this latest news, of course, and we chatted about the usual topics during our dinner: how her work was going, how the boys were doing, upcoming plans of one sort or another. We’d already ordered our end-of-meal coffees when she said, “Mom told me you’ve been thinking about Maddox.”
I nodded. “I suppose I have.”
“Me, too,” Lana said. “Especially that day.”
“The day we went to Beauty and the Beast?” I asked.
Lana looked puzzled. “Why would that day be special?”
I shrugged. “Okay, what day do you mean, then?”
“The day Maddox hit me.”
“Oh,” I said. “That day.”
“The thing is, I provoked her,” Lana said. “I was just a kid, and kids can be cruel. I see it in the boys. The things they say to each other.” Tentatively, I asked, “What did you say to her?”
“I told her that she was here because nobody wanted her,” Lana said. “Her mother didn’t want her. Her brother didn’t want her. I told her that even you didn’t want her.” She paused and then added, “That’s when she slapped me.” She lifted a slow, ghostly hand to that long vanished wound. “And I deserved it.”
I wondered if Lana had come to blame herself for my decision to send back Maddox. If so, she couldn’t have been more wrong. It wasn’t anything Lana had done that decided the issue. The blame had always lain with Maddox.
“Maddox had to go,” I said starkly, still too appalled by the evil I’d seen in the subway station to reveal what had truly convinced me to send Maddox back.
The thing that struck me as most odd now, while Lana sipped nonchalantly at her coffee, was the sweetness that had preceded that terrible moment. Beauty and the Beast had come to its heartbreaking conclusion, and, along with the rest of the audience, we were on our way out of the theater, Lana on my right, Maddox on my left. As we approached the front doors, Lana suddenly bolted ahead to where items associated with the show were on sale. Maddox, however, remained at my side.
“I liked it,” she said softly, and with those words, she took my hand in hers and held it tenderly. “Thank you.”
I smiled. “You’re welcome,” I said as my heart softened toward her, and I once again harbored the hope that all would be well. Lifted by that desire, I stepped over to the counter and bought two refrigerator magnets. I gave one to Lana, who seemed much more interested in the T-shirts, and the other one to Maddox.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “I will always keep it.”
She turned toward a couple who were exiting the theater. They had a little girl in tow, each holding on to one of the child’s hands.
“That’s what I want,” she said in that odd way she sometimes said things, looking off into the middle distance, speaking, as it seemed, only to herself. “I want to be an only child.”
By then, Lana had made her way to the theater’s front door. “Can we go to Jake’s, Dad?” she asked when we reached her.
Jake’s was a pizza place in the Village where we tended to have dinner on those days that we found ourselves downtown and didn’t want to rush home to cook.