Mrs. Saint and the Defectives: A Novel Page 13

  She sat up. He usually slept through anything, but what if this had woken him, too? What if he was getting up right now, making his way to the door? She jumped to her feet and flew downstairs. Sneaking past the front door, she checked the basement, letting out a long, relieved breath when she found it was dark and silent. Jesse must be sleeping through the racket, thank goodness.

  Eyeing the front door again, she took a timid step toward it, then another. A narrow strip of glass ran the full length of the wood frame on either side. The glass was thick, like the bottoms of soda bottles, its purpose more about aesthetics and letting in a bit of light, less about providing a clear view outside. But if she got close enough to the glass, she would be able to make something out, at least, and with the outdoor light on and the interior ones off, she would be able to see who was there without being seen herself.

  Holding her breath, she stepped to the narrow window and peered out. There was a police car parked at her curb—its lights weren’t flashing, but she could easily identify their silhouettes on its hood. A police officer, his dark uniform distinguishable even through the thick glass, stood on the doorstep, his arm raised, ready to bang again. Markie was flooded with relief.

  Until she opened the door and got a clearer look at the squad car: there were two boys in the backseat, and one was her son.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Five of them, including Jesse, had been caught spray-painting Levin Pharmacy, a few doors down from the sandwich shop. Markie couldn’t believe it. Not only the illegality of the act, but the incongruity of it. Their first week in the bungalow, they had met the Levins, a lovely older couple whom Jesse, true to form, opened up to immediately. He had even offered to make trips to the pharmacy himself when they ran out of paper towels or soap or milk.

  “I don’t mind,” he insisted. “Mr. Levin’s funny, and Mrs. Levin’s like a grandma—you know, a typical one, always friendly and happy to see you and handing out cookies and stuff.” Not like Lydia, in other words.

  The pharmacy was a stand-alone building, and they had managed to tag three of its four sides before the squad car pulled up. Jesse’s handiwork was confined to the pharmacy’s alley-facing back wall, behind a dumpster. His tag—one straight line about six inches long—might have gone unnoticed, the officer told Markie, as Jesse might have himself, had he not walked to the front of the store, hands up, when he heard the police arresting his friends.

  The officer asked Markie to follow the squad car down to the station. Jesse was released into her custody that night, with orders to return on Monday morning to speak to the judge. Because of his age and the fact he’d never been in trouble before, he was likely to be treated under the juvenile code, the officer explained. With luck, he’d get a warning, and his file would be destroyed. The same was true for Trevor, who also had a clean record.

  “Judge Hegarty usually gives kids one free pass,” the officer told Jesse. “But don’t ever show up in front of him again.” He pulled Markie aside and said, “Keep him away from the other three guys. They’re always on our radar, and that’s not a place your kid wants to be.” Those three would be almost certain to get probation, since this wasn’t their first time at the station. They’d be ordered to make restitution to the Levins for the damage, too. The oldest two, both juniors and clearly the ringleaders of the operation, might even face charges as adults.

  Driving home, Markie tried to loosen her death grip on the steering wheel, to relax the taut muscles that strained so tightly her forearms were shaking. She took deep breaths, held them for a count of four, and let them out slowly while she told herself to wait, calm down, take the time to get home and into the driveway before she let him have it. If she started in on him now, when her rage was at its peak, she might not be able to stop herself.

  She watched him as he sat slumped against the passenger-side door, his mouth trembling, his left hand covering his eyes. Was it true remorse or an act? The thought that he might be faking made her want to let go of the steering wheel with her right hand and smash him, a solid backhand to the chest. It’s what her father would do. Not sure how to express your disappointment? Show it.

  She had never struck her son before, but God, it was tempting right now, and it would spare her the task of having to sort through the hadron collider of thoughts racing around in her mind, smashing into each other and against the inside of her skull. What was he thinking, sneaking out in the middle of the night with a bunch of teenage thugs? Vandalizing that lovely couple’s property? When had he turned into that kind of person?

  He wasn’t the only subject of her rage, though. She was furious with the other boys, too, for coming up with such an asinine plan and dragging her son into it. He was an idiot to go along with it, but that’s all he had done—gone along, and probably because they let him know if he didn’t, he could find another group to hang out with. They had preyed on his new-kid status, and she hated them for that. Pick on someone with your own criminal background.

  And then there was Kyle. Unreliable, selfish, non-child-support-paying, good-for-nothing Kyle. The image of her ex-husband made her chest and neck burn with ire—now there was a guy who deserved a good clobbering. Their son needed a strong, responsible father figure, especially now, and what he’d gotten was a useless, spineless man-child who couldn’t keep a single promise. And it wasn’t only how Kyle had acted since the divorce. It was everything he’d done leading up to it—everything he’d done to cause it. How could he expect their son to operate within the boundaries of his mother’s house rules—let alone the law—when Kyle himself had cheated, lied, and stolen his way out of his own marriage?

  And what about Markie herself? Didn’t she belong at the top of her own hit list? How stupid could she be, putting an angry teenager into a room with an escape window and assuming he’d only use it in an emergency? Letting him trot off with kids she knew nothing about, accepting his “nothing” and “nowhere” answers? If her son deserved a dressing-down for choosing the wrong friends, for going along with their illegal schemes, didn’t she deserve one, too, for her negligence in allowing him such freedom?

  She had spent weeks telling herself she was doing the right thing in giving him a wide berth, telling Mrs. Saint that he was a smart kid, a responsible one, a boy who would never pick bad kids for friends, would never sneak out at night, would never do the things the Frenchwoman had accused him of. She had yelled at the woman today, for God’s sake, screeching at her about falsely accusing her faultless son. Had she really believed he was as innocent as she had claimed, or had she only wanted to believe it to make things easier for herself?

  He was so quick to turn silent, so willing to stay that way for days. She had been desperate not to give him a reason to do it. Things were much nicer in the bungalow when she said, “Yes, go ahead. Of course, you can spend time with kids I don’t know / ride in strangers’ cars / have dinner with a family I’ve never met.” The air in the house was easier to breathe when she stifled her concerns, pretended all was well. He’s a good boy. He’s a teenager now. He’s in high school. He’s old enough to make his own decisions.

  Sure, he had always been good before, but he’d had different friends before. Hadn’t she sensed something was up with this mostly unnamed group of boys? Hadn’t she wondered if Frédéric was right and it was Brian’s Fusion he had seen downtown? Hadn’t she known, somewhere deep down, the perils of being a new kid, especially one whose self-esteem had been gutted so completely by the bad behavior of his parents? Wasn’t Jesse the precise sort of child most susceptible to getting in with the wrong crowd, doing whatever it took to be accepted?

  She felt her body relax, saw her elbows bend, her arms no longer ramrod straight against the wheel. It was no longer such an effort for her to breathe steadily. The desire to hit him, even to yell at him, had passed. “What’s shocking to me,” she said, “is that you like Ben Levin. And Sharon. You’ve been in their store a dozen times, and you’ve always said they were so nice—”<
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  “I know!” he cried, and the noise was like an animal caught in a trap.

  He pressed both palms to his ears, and she could see his arms trembling with the force. It wasn’t an act, then. He wasn’t a different kid. He was a confused one, a conflicted one, one who had made a huge mistake. Her heart didn’t break for him, exactly, and she wasn’t anywhere close to feeling bad for him—he was a perpetrator here, not a victim. But something inside her shifted a little.

  She wanted to push, to ask him if he had spoken up, suggested they find entertainment of a legal form, or at the very least pick a different target and leave the Levins alone. If he did and they ignored him, he should think about that, about what kind of friends they were. And if he had been afraid to speak up, he should think about that, too. Not that she’d allow him anywhere near them after this—not the three worst ones, anyway. She’d have to think about Trevor. But she told herself to go no further here. She wasn’t in the right frame of mind for a dispassionate discussion about his choice of allies, and neither was he.

  They drove a few more blocks before he finally dropped his hands to his lap. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him wiping away tears. He put his glasses back on, shoved his hands under his thighs, and kept his gaze trained on his shoes as she made the final turn onto their street.

  “So how long am I grounded for?”

  Markie considered the question as she pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine. They were home now, safely parked in the driveway. Finally, she could let him have it. She could feel her father’s “This is not how I taught you! This is not what I expect of a child of mine! As long as you’re living under my roof . . .” creeping up her throat, pressing against the backs of her teeth.

  She swallowed the lecture and turned to her son. “Why don’t we both go to sleep now, and tomorrow, when we’re not so exhausted, we can talk about consequences.” She looked at him sharply, ready to retract her statement if she saw even a hint of an I-got-away-with-it smile on his face.

  He nodded, his mouth a self-reproaching line. “Okay.” His hand moved to the door handle, but instead of pulling the lever, he let his fingers rest there. “Thanks, Mom. For picking me up. And for not trying to make me feel worse than I already do.”

  Inside, he stumbled down to his room. He forgot to close the basement door, and Markie could hear his soft snoring in less than a minute. She pushed the door shut, poured wine into a mug (as her stemware was still boxed up), and retreated to the family room couch. The rage she felt in the car had altered, and so had its targets. Yes, Jesse was to blame for his actions, and he would be punished. For starters, she would send him to the Levins’ store tomorrow to apologize in person. If they didn’t want to hear it—and who could blame them if they didn’t?—she would make him write a letter. After that, well, she was still thinking.

  But was she really going to aim all of her ire at a fourteen-year-old boy? Or his slightly older compatriots, none of whom had a completely developed frontal cortex? Kyle was old enough to know better, but had she honestly thought he would act any differently? Could she expect anyone who knew her ex to buy her line that all this time she had been counting on him to show their son the right way to manhood?

  Markie refilled her ceramic mug with more wine. Jesse hadn’t been a leader at Saint Mark’s, but he wasn’t a novitiate, either. If someone had come up with the asinine idea to sneak out in the middle of the night and vandalize a building, he would have had more than enough clout to decline without fearing a loss of social position. But those weren’t the kids he was dealing with anymore.

  Because his mother had wanted out.

  Away. To start over in a place where she could stop at the gas station without worrying that people would see what she was driving now. Run to the grocery store without suffering the pitying looks from across the produce aisle, the whispers in the deli line. “Years, evidently, right under her nose, and she never had a clue.” “Highly leveraged, all of it. I hear even the furniture was rented.”

  She hadn’t been able to move quickly enough. She had been in forward motion since the moment she discovered the extent of Kyle’s betrayals, on the fastest track she could find to escape the scene of her plummet from grace. File divorce papers. List the house. Find a rental in a new town, a new school for Jesse, a job where she wouldn’t be recognized—better yet, where she wouldn’t even be seen.

  No sobbing herself to sleep over the loss of what might have been. No lying in bed in the mornings, paralyzed with fear about whether she could make it on her own after all those years being part of a couple. No pausing to consider Kyle’s admissions, finally, his pleas for a second chance, his promises he would do better. No time in reverse or even neutral. Move, move, move.

  It was for the best, their clean break. New life, new start. She was doing it for both of them so they could move on. And she had moved on—from a passionless marriage, from the constant threat of financial destruction, from the lingering suspicion she was being lied to, cheated on, from the nauseating fear that at any moment she would be discovered for the poseur she was. Jesse, though, had merely moved.

  Markie stood, sloshing white wine over the side of her mug. She set it on the floor, shook her hand to fling off the drops, and paced to the side door. She checked the lock, checked it again, and paced to the kitchen counter. What had she been thinking, pulling him away from his friends, his classmates, their neighbors, the world he knew? Away from his father, most of all. Things would have been miserable if she’d stayed with Kyle, but weren’t they miserable now anyway, especially for Jesse? Kyle might not have been Father of the Year while they were married, but he was there, at least, most of the time.

  She stepped to the door again, turned right, stepped to the wall, right again, stepped to the couch, right again, lapping the room until she was back at the door. She had assumed she could do it on her own, play the role of father and mother. She thought she had such intuition, such a sense about how to handle him. They were so much alike, she had told herself. His needs would be teenaged versions of hers: solitude, quiet, a judgment-free zone, dinners on his own, TV in his room, no forced conversation.

  Back off, she had told herself. Give him space. Don’t push, don’t coddle, don’t crowd. It was the wrong call. Obviously. He needed something else, something different, something more than she was providing. But she had no idea what. More of Kyle? She couldn’t fix that, not now. She could try—she had been rehearsing for some time the next torrent of curse words she would leave on his voice mail—but she knew better than to think it would help.

  More discipline? She couldn’t bring herself to mimic her father, or even her mother, for that matter. Military school? She hadn’t had a child just to send him away, though, and it was the same concept her father followed: tear them down to build them up. She wouldn’t do that to Jesse.

  She did another lap of the family room, then another. Should she eat more crow, borrow money from her parents, suck it up and move back to their old neighborhood, where the fathers of his friends could spend time with him, show him how men should act? Put him back into Saint Mark’s, where he already belonged and didn’t have to prove himself?

  But did he belong there now? What if he had even more to prove after what had happened? Plus, did she want to uproot him again, so soon after doing it the first time? She had already run from their troubles once. Did she want to run a second time? Was that the kind of example she wanted to set for him?

  She had no clue where to go from here. Her own strategies hadn’t worked, her parents’ tactics weren’t ones she was willing to attempt, and while she was certain there must be something between the two extremes, she had no idea what it was. She hadn’t thought it through enough before she told Kyle they were finished. She had seen red, blown up, pointed to the door, and told him not to come back. Everything else was just details.

  She had not once considered whether she could actually pull off all those details. She hadn’t t
aken the time to think about what it would take for a single mother to raise a teenage boy. She had acted impulsively because she couldn’t stand pretending anymore. Because she wanted out, she wanted better. She, she, she. At what point, if ever, had she considered her son—what he wanted, what he needed?

  Markie poured one more mug of wine and returned to the couch. She took a few sips, then set the cup on the floor, wrapped her arms around her waist, and rocked forward, then back. This is my fault, she told herself. All my fault. She curled onto her side, her arms still wrapped around her waist, and cried herself to sleep.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sun through the window in the family room door woke Markie, and soon after, her throbbing skull let her know she wouldn’t be rolling over and drifting back to sleep. Her watch revealed what her head had already told her—it was almost eleven, she was hung over, and it was hours after she usually ingested her daily two cups of coffee. She would be paying for this all day.

  She stood, stretched, and kicked over her half-full mug of wine as she stumbled toward the kitchen. Cursing, she wet some paper towels, carrying them back to the family room to dab up the spill. She was on her way back to the kitchen to dispose of the soggy, sour-smelling mess when there was a knock at the door. She turned slowly—her head wouldn’t allow sudden movement—to find Mrs. Saint peering in the door’s window.

  Markie’s head pounded harder. She needed to hang a curtain there, she told herself, so she could pretend she wasn’t home when the neighbor knocked. Mrs. Saint motioned for her to hurry, then looked down at the ground, checking, it seemed, on whatever it was she had come to deliver. Markie told herself to get it over with fast: accept what the old woman was offering this time—partially uncooked cinnamon rolls from Ronda, a badly potted houseplant from Bruce, or some household item Mrs. Saint felt they couldn’t live without and had ordered Frédéric to go out and buy—say thank you, and send the woman on her way. After that, she could devote herself to starting the coffeemaker, locating the ibuprofen, and lying quietly until Jesse woke. She had an important conversation planned with him, and she would be of no use if she felt like her skull was about to shatter.