Читать книгу Mother, Mother: Psychological suspense for fans of ROOM - Koren Zailckas - Страница 13

“CAN WE ASK what this is in reference to?”

Will stood up straight and crossed his arms, mimicking his mother’s offense.

“I need to ask you a few questions about your daughter Viola. Your family was entered into our system when your older daughter”—Trina Williams’s gaze fell to her notes—“Rosette ran away. It’s a formality. Going forward, anytime you have a domestic disturbance, Child Protective Services is required to investigate. It won’t take very long.”

“Fine,” Josephine said. “Just let me get Will into bed and I’ll be happy to discuss the matter with you.”

“I’m afraid I need to speak to your son as well.”

“In that case, you’ll have to come back another time,” Josephine said. “I don’t know if this is in your files, but in the year since Rose ran away, my son was diagnosed with epilepsy. He’s had a difficult week. I need to let him rest, have his fluids, and give him more Keppra.” Again, she lifted Will’s arm, pulled back his sleeve, and rattled the sterling bracelet. It was Will’s good hand. He instinctively turtled his other hand—the one with the brace—up into the sleeve of his orange down coat.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Trina’s tone didn’t exactly ooze sympathy. “I’ll make a note in your file. Here’s my card. Do you think I could come by tomorrow?”

Josephine leaned Will’s head against her hip and stroked his forehead as if checking for a fever.

“Possibly. It really depends on William.”

“I understand.” Trina nodded. “Well, we’ll be in touch.”

Will watched from the front steps as her neon car reversed out past the gaping mailbox.

When they returned to the kitchen, Josephine gave him a bowl of Stewart’s ice cream—the flavor, Death by Chocolate, seemed grave and momentous—and sat opposite him in the breakfast nook, while he ate it in slow, measured spoonfuls.

“We need to talk about the night Violet went away,” she said. “I need to make sure you can synthesize your thoughts about what happened. That woman who came by is going to make you explain it to her. If she can’t keep up with you, or if you don’t explain yourself well, there could be big consequences. You don’t want to confuse her, or give her the impression you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Okay.” They did this sometimes. She helped him role-play scenarios when she worried his Asperger’s was going to get in the way.

“So go on … Tell me what you remember.”

“You and Dad and Violet were fighting.”

She nodded. “That’s right. Only we were arguing, not fighting. ‘Fighting’ can sometimes mean hitting. And we weren’t hitting. We were just having an argument.”

“You were arguing,” Will corrected himself. “Because Violet had made a mess in the dishwasher.”

There was her approving nod again. She was proud that he’d remembered that detail.

“I’d made a special vegetarian dinner for her, hadn’t I?”

Will hesitated. “Yes.”

“And Violet wouldn’t eat it.”

“No.”

“So then what happened? What happened in the kitchen?”

“Violet started pointing the knife at you.”

“And what was that like?”

“Scary.”

“You were really frightened, weren’t you?”

“Yes.” Will had been frightened. The thought of someone, anyone, hurting his mother was more than he could bear.

“Remember to tell the woman that. That’s the kind of thing she’ll want to hear.”

“I was scared. I’ll tell her.”

“What happened next?”

Will stared into the skid marks his spoon made in the ice cream bowl. “Violet said she saw Rose in the foyer.”

When he looked up, a shadow had fallen across his mother’s cheek, and the whites showed in the bottom-most part of her eyes.

“No,” she said. “You’re confusing things. Do you have any idea what would happen if you said that to this Trina person?”

He knew. Of course, he knew. Will’s chin did a Jell-O-mold quiver.

“Stop it. Will you? You’re overreacting.”

Will wiped his teary face on his sleeve.

“Use a tissue!”

She asked him to start the story from the beginning.

“You and Dad and Violet were arguing in the kitchen. And I was really frightened.”

His mother nodded. “Yes, but probably not as frightened as you were when Violet turned the knife on you.”

“When she turned the knife on me …” Will’s voice went soft the way it always did when he was anxious. It was one of those Aspie language quirks that made him hate himself.

“You could have cowered when Violet came at you with that knife, but you didn’t, did you? You aimed your hand right for that blade and tried to snatch it away.”

Will paused and tried to absorb the heroism she was ascribing to him. Then he asked the only question that really mattered to him: “Were you proud of me?”

“Are you kidding? I was so proud of you. You saved me. You saved us all.”

Will touched the splint on his hand. He remembered the bloody dishrag that she’d wound around his hand before they drove to the hospital.

“How did it feel?” his mom asked now.

“When I took the knife away from Violet?”

She nodded.

He knew this was another detail she wanted him to tell Trina. But emotions were not his forte. He could only guess.

“I felt brave,” he said.

“Yes, it was a very heroic and brave thing to do. But you know, even heroes feel scared in the heat of the moment. Don’t you think you were a little bit frightened?”

“Yes,” Will said. “I was frightened.”

“And how did it feel when the knife pierced your skin?”

Will winced. When the knife pierced his skin. It was too horrible to remember. “It hurt,” he said.

She had a finger in her mouth. There was a dreamy, unfocused look in her eyes. “Yes,” she said, her cuticle in her teeth. “Your sister really hurt you.”

Even after his father came home from work, Will’s stomach remained knotted.

Douglas, for his part, went straight for the kitchen cupboard and removed what Will knew was his favorite cup. It was a cheap, blue plastic tumbler—tall and opaque, so a person could only guess what he was sipping.

On this particular night, Will watched his father fill it with hissing cherry-flavored seltzer. Douglas drank about a case of twelve liter-sized bottles of sparkling water per week. Lately, every time he opened one, it exploded as though someone had been shaking them.

After they’d rehearsed their version of events, Will’s mother had called Trina and arranged a meeting. Now, watching his father, Will couldn’t stop thinking about the reminder his mother had scrawled on the family calendar. Trina visit, 2 p.m., it read. Would his mother mention it over dinner? Would Douglas, in his postcoital daze, even pretend to care?

As they silently chewed their dinner, Will followed his father’s gaze to the roman numerals on the dining room clock. The little hand was on the VII. Another few minutes, and his father would vanish to his home office, sports highlights blaring behind the locked door.

Will remembered his father’s pocket call. You’re a remarkable woman. He remembered the daring he’d heard in Douglas’s voice; it was so unlike the feeble, measured tones his dad used at home.

“Does anyone mind if I excuse myself?” Douglas said, pushing back his chair right on cue.

Josephine looked at Will with a pinched mouth and hurt eyes.

“We don’t mind,” Will answered. “Where are you going?”

“Where?” Douglas echoed. In his hand, his plate of food was only half-finished.

Josephine raised her eyebrows.

“I’m just going down the hall, to answer some e-mails.” Before Douglas retreated to his office, he sponged down the granite countertops with aggressive, excessive force. He scrubbed the sauté pans with a martyred expression that rivaled Christ on the cross.

Will was serious about investigating his dad’s double life. His father couldn’t just betray his mother like that. He just couldn’t take Will and the rest of the Hursts for fools. Had Douglas really thought the rest of them wouldn’t notice the way the past few months had changed him, looks- and attitude-wise? Had he really thought no one would notice the twinkle in his eye? Or the way he had been hitting the gym like he was competing for gold in the next summer Olympics? Will was determined to get to the bottom of things. He felt certain he had most of the qualities that made for a good PI. No, he couldn’t drink straight scotch or fire a gun, but he was mature for his age and alert to details. He believed in the importance of law and order and protecting the innocent. It was just going to be a matter of opportunity. His challenge, as he saw it, was twofold: it was going to be hard enough to slip away from his eagle-eyed mother, but latching onto his antisocial father would require real skill.

Watching TV with Josephine later, Will sensed an opportunity. The show was a workplace comedy, and the episode revolved around Take Your Kid to Work Day.

“Mom?” Will asked. “When is Take Your Child to Work Day?”

“I don’t remember. Maybe sometime in spring.”

Dang, thought Will. It was October.

He knew he shouldn’t push his luck, but this might be his only chance, and time was of the essence. “It just feels like another thing I’m missing out on since I’m not in a regular school anymore.”

His mother’s blue eyes narrowed. Will tried a different approach. “It’s just—I remember Tyler McCastle saying how cool it was going to his dad’s office in the city. His dad has two secretaries and an office with a sofa in it. His office looked right out over Radio City.” Tyler McCastle was an old friend from Stone Ridge Elementary. Will hadn’t seen or talked to him since June.

“Tyler McCastle’s father sells print ads,” Josephine sneered. “And magazines are dying. I wonder if he’ll be able to see Radio City from the unemployment line.”

“Tyler says his dad is a genius.”

Josephine’s eyes rolled. “Your dad is a genius. Your dad holds five patents. Your dad knows everything there is to know about computer science, engineering, programming. Tyler McCastle’s dad is a salesman. He doesn’t make anything. He doesn’t contribute to society in any way. He just profits off other people’s contributions.”

“So I can’t go to work with Dad?”

“You really want to spend a whole day at your father’s office? Can you say, boring? Do you have any idea what your father’s work colleagues are like? Do you really want to spend a whole day around smug little men in smudged glasses, talking about platforms and interfaces when you could be here with moi?”

Will held his breath. He didn’t want to say yes.

Josephine’s face changed. She looked thoughtful for a moment. “All right,” she said. “I’ll have a talk with your father.”

Later at bedtime, she changed Will’s sheets. She gave him his nightly bath, the water near scalding, and the bath puff foaming with the peppermint soap that didn’t so much clean the skin he had but stripped it away to reveal a redder, subaqueous layer. Next came the part where Will lay faceup, across her lap, in his hooded bath towel. From that angle, she brushed and meticulously flossed his teeth.

After that, they were nearly there. Will’s night-light was in sight, and he got to sink the lower half of his body under those bulldozer sheets. His head swam with exhaustion, but he knew he still needed to take his final round of pills—vitamins and bedtime medication—which Josephine lined up in an ant trail across his nightstand. She sang little songs of encouragement as he struggled to gulp them down in order of size and color. “Take the big ones first,” she always said. “Everything after will feel like Easy Street.”

But tonight nothing felt like Easy Street. Will couldn’t shut his brain off. He could not stop thinking about his appointment with Trina the social worker. Wednesday, 2 p.m. He was destined to come off too emotionally flat. The very cold, logical way Will presented himself caused enough megadisasters with normal people, let alone a people person like Trina, someone who presumably went into social work because she considered herself a warm, caring, demonstrative lady. She was bound to think Will was detached to an unhealthy degree.

And there was so much he and his mother hadn’t rehearsed. Was he or was he not supposed to tell Trina about the way Violet had been talking in circles when she left—saying the same things over and over and making the same strange, jerking series of gestures? Whooping. Flapping her hands. Saying, “Boom! Agh. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.”

At the very least, he knew he wasn’t supposed to talk about Rose. He wouldn’t say a word about the moment Violet had widened her eyes and announced: “Look! Rose is here! Did you see her? I saw her!”