moms and dads looking panicked behind brave faces. Krissi Cates had plopped herself in the middle of the floor and was playing dolls with a large, dark-haired young man who sat cross-legged in front of her, ingratiating himself. They were those spongy, unpretty dolls Patty had seen in Movies of the Week—with Meredith Baxter Birney or Patty Duke Astin as determined mothers or lawyers. They were the dolls that kids used to show how they were abused. Krissi had stripped the clothes off both dolls and was placing the boy doll on top of the girl doll. She bumped it up and down, and chanted nonsense words. A brunette girl watched from her mother’s lap while eating icing from under her fingernails. She seemed too old to be in her mother’s lap.
“Like that,” Krissi concluded, bored or angry, and tossed the doll aside. The young man—a therapist, a social worker, someone who wore Shetland sweaters with plaid shirts underneath, someone who went to college—picked the doll back up and tried to get Krissi’s attention.
“Krissi, let’s …” he said, holding the boy doll carefully off one knee, the doll’s penis drooping toward the floor.
“Who
Patty strode across the room, ignoring all the parents, who began standing, wavering like strummed wires.
“Krissi?” she said, crouching down on the floor. “My name is Patty, I’m Ben Day’s mom.”
Krissi’s eyes widened, her lips quivered, and she scooted away from Patty. There was a second of silence, like a slow-motion crash, where she and Patty stared at each other. Then Krissi tilted her head back and yelled: “I don’t want her here!” Her voice echoed off the skylight. “I don’t want her here! You said! You said I wouldn’t have to!”
She threw herself on the floor and began ripping at her hair. The brunette girl ran over and wrapped herself over Krissi, wailing, “I don’t feel safe!”
Patty stood up, spinning around the room, saw parents with frightened, revolted faces, saw Diane hustling Libby behind her, toward the door.
“We’ve heard about you,” Krissi Cates’s mother said, her sweet, drained face twisted into a ball. She motioned back to Maggie Hinkel, Patty’s old classmate, who blushed at Patty. “You’ve got four kids at home,” she continued, her voice tight, her eyes wet. “You can’t afford a one of them. Their daddy’s a drunk. You’re on welfare. You leave your little girls alone with that … jackal. You let your son prey on girls. Jesus Christ, you’ve let your son
The Putch girl stood and screamed then, tears rolling past the bright stars on her cheeks. She joined the pack in the middle, where the young man was murmuring soothing words, trying to maintain eye contact with them. “I don’t want them here!” Krissi yelled again.
“Where’s Ben, Patty?” Maggie Hinkel said, her spade-faced daughter sitting beside her, expressionless. “The police really need to talk to Ben. I hope you’re not hiding him.”
“Me? I’ve been trying to find him. I’m trying to straighten this out. Please.” Please help me, please forgive me, please stop screaming.
Maggie Hinkel’s daughter remained quiet, then tugged at her mother’s sleeve. “Mom, I want to leave.” The other girls continued to howl, watching each other. Patty stood, looking down at Krissi and the therapist, who was still cradling the naked doll-boy that was supposed to be Ben. Her stomach seized, flushed her throat with acid.
“I think you should leave,” snapped Mrs. Cates, picking up her daughter like a toddler, the girl’s legs dangling almost to the floor, Mrs. Cates wobbling with the weight.
The young therapist stood up, inserting himself between Patty and Mrs. Cates. He almost put a hand on Patty, then moved it to Mrs. Cates instead. Diane was calling from the door, calling Patty’s name, or Patty wouldn’t have known to move. She was waiting for them to close in on her, scratch her eyes out.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Patty was yelling into the room, frantic and dizzy. “It’s a mistake, I’m so sorry.”
Then Lou Cates was in front of her, grabbing her by the arm, as if he hadn’t just invited her in, and walking her toward the door, the keening of four girls behind her. Mothers and dads were everywhere, grown-ups taking care of their children, and Patty felt stupid. Not foolish, not embarrassed. Unforgivably stupid. She could hear the parents cooing things to their daughters:
Just before Lou Cates propelled her from the room, Patty turned around to see Krissi Cates in her mother’s arms, her blond hair over one eye. The girl looked at her and said simply, “Ben is going to hell.”
Libby DayNOW
I’d been commissioned to find Runner, but all my feverish, ambitious action of the past week was slopped on the floor next to my bed, like a soiled nightgown. I couldn’t get up, even when I heard the kids make their sleepy duckwalk past my house. I pictured them in big rubber rainboots, clomping along, leaving rounded footprints in the March muck, and I still couldn’t move.
I’d woken up from a miserable dream, the kind you keep telling yourself doesn’t mean anything, shouldn’t bother you because it’s just a dream, just a dream. It started back at the farm, but it wasn’t the farm really, it was far too bright, too tidy to be the farm, but it was and in the distance, against an orange horizon, Runner was galloping toward the farm, hooting like an Old West cowboy. As he got closer—down our hill, through the gate—I saw that his gallop was actually a rickety, bumpalong motion because his horse had wheels. Its top half was flesh, but the bottom was metal, spindly, like a hospital gurney. The horse whinnied at me in panic, its muscled neck trying to separate from the metal below. Runner leapt down, the creature rolling away, one wheel busted, an irritating grocery cart of an animal. It came to a stop near a tree stump, its eyes going white, still struggling to pull itself apart.
“Don’t worry about that.” Runner grinned at the horse. “I paid for it.”
“You got a bad deal,” I said.
Runner’s jaw tightened and he stood too close to me.
“Your mom says it’s fine,” he muttered.
