When he let her go, his point made, he fished around in his artist’s jacket for another cigarette.
“You should make time for normal human interaction,” he said. “You’re still young. You should enjoy life.” He walked away, seemingly confident in his assertions, so he didn’t hear Izzy reply, as she opened her car door, “I am enjoying life.” And she meant this, no matter how defeated she sounded.
Izzy had also made her first enemy in the Infinite Family, a disorienting separation in which she realized how fragile the connections in the family could be, how easily it could fall apart. She had been playing with some of the children in the gym and had gone into the closet for more soccer balls, when she returned to see Mary, the only other adult with the kids, grab Maxwell and swat him hard on the bottom, the force of it bringing Maxwell’s feet off the court.
Izzy shouted, “Ungh,” like she’d been punched in the gut, and immediately clamped her hand over her mouth, as if the action could call back the sound she had already made. Mary wheeled around and locked eyes with Izzy. She let go of Maxwell, who slumped to the ground, more aggrieved than hurt, and pointed at his bottom and then jabbed wildly at Mary, making pained sounds of betrayal. Mary’s eyes were wild looking, her teeth gritting in such a way that Izzy felt she could hear it across the court. Izzy, finally in control of her own body, ran toward the scene and scooped up Maxwell in her arms.
“That . . .” Mary paused, biting back whatever expletive she had originally planned on using. “He scratched Lulu because he wanted her damn ball.”
“Mary,” Izzy said. “We can’t hit them. Ever.”
“I know that, damn it,” she said, shaking her head.
“We can’t curse either, not in front of the kids.”
“You are just so perfect, aren’t you?” Mary said. “Little Miss Perfect, in every single way.”
Izzy was so shocked by the venom in Mary’s voice that she could only stare in silence before she finally returned to Maxwell, the boy burrowing into her chest.
“We’re going back to the room,” Mary shouted to the other kids in the gym. Mary kicked a soccer ball so hard that it made a resonant whoomping sound as it hit the far wall. “Let’s go,” she shouted, and the kids nervously followed her out of the gym. Izzy, unsure of what else to do, held Maxwell on her hip and collected the balls to return to the closet before she walked back to the room to rejoin all the children and caregivers who had stayed behind. Mary was talking to Nina, smiling, and when Izzy walked in and placed Maxwell on the mat to play with the other kids, Mary stared her down until Izzy finally signed herself out and went into the women’s restroom, sitting in a stall for fifteen minutes, afraid that Mary might come after her.
Mary was from the mountains of East Tennessee, her body thin and wiry and her eyes always darting around as if looking for predators and, at the same time, for easy prey. She had the mannerisms of a type of girl that Izzy knew well from high school, the girls from the farthest edges of the county, who chewed tobacco and handled firearms with ease and treated any outward display of femininity with great derision. These girls had always terrified Izzy, the casual cruelty they handed out to anyone they deemed weak or useless. Izzy, who thought of herself as trash when compared to the rich kids in her school, preppy and confident, seemed like royalty when next to these feral teenagers. Mary, always quiet, always with a look of slight irritation on her face, stayed clear of Izzy, though she had never assumed it to be personal. Now she thought about what Mary had said to her, Little Miss Perfect, and it caused her such embarrassment that the only way she could combat it was to punish Mary in the only way she knew how.
A day later, Izzy told Dr. Grind about the event while they were alone, drinking coffee, and he thanked her for reporting it to him. “This is incredibly serious, Izzy. It goes against all the work that we’re doing here at the complex. Mary is struggling with being overwhelmed when she has to deal with a lot of children at once. She and I will talk it over, and I’ll stress to her how important it is that we never strike the children, under any circumstances. Now, Izzy, did you tell Kenny and Carmen about what Mary did?”
Izzy shook her head.
“That’s probably for the best, if only to keep further unrest from setting in. I’ll talk to Maxwell to reassure him that no one will ever hit him again, tell him that it was not his fault. We’ll solve this.” And Izzy felt the satisfaction of things being made right, the edges of a puzzle piece fitting neatly into another, the picture becoming whole again.
That evening, however, while Izzy worked on her letters, Mary came into the room and shut the door behind her.