“I think my family has done everything we can for Marshall,” said Leila when Maggie stayed silent. “He’s almost an adult. We have to save ourselves sometimes, Maggie. You should know that.”
“A boy like Marshall might not have the tools to save himself.”
“I’m sorry,” Leila said. Maggie felt as much as she heard Leila hang up the phone.
After that, Maggie called Marshall’s mother and got her voice mail. She left a message, thinking that she heard doors closing, windows latching all around Marshall. This was what happened. Abused boys became dangerous men. Those around them with a self-preservation instinct-even the people who loved them-started to move away.
• • •
Maggie was thinking about all of this, staring at but not seeing or hearing the television, when the front door opened and then shut hard. She heard heavy footfalls on the staircase. By the time she got to the foyer, she saw only her son’s feet at the top, turning the corner to his room.
“I ordered pizza,” she called.
“Not hungry,” he yelled back and slammed his door.
A moment later angry waves of thrash metal washed down the stairs-high-speed riffing and aggressive bass beats. Sometimes Maggie felt separated from her son by a wave of noise, harsh, ugly music she didn’t like and couldn’t understand. Even when he was down in the basement, pounding on his drum set, the sound kept her at bay. She remembered the music she used to listen to when she was his age, finding herself-The Smiths, The Cure, Joy Division-characterized by the typical angst and yearning, maybe even a bit of anger. Ricky’s music seemed so full of rage; she wondered what that said about him, if there was a whole universe inside him that she just couldn’t visit.
Jones had been an angry young man-furious at a father who’d neglected and eventually abandoned him, resentful of a mother who smothered and clung to him in the absence of her husband. Maggie remembered bar fights and road rage, a few on-the-job complaints, one even making it as far as civilian review. But he’d mellowed over time, even though she could still see that younger man when Jones and Ricky went at it. Maybe it was hereditary, anger. Maybe it lay dormant in boyhood, the disease taking hold in late adolescence. Then it either burned out before any damage was done, or took control.
She walked up the stairs, stood at the door, and put her hand on the wall, feeling the textured sunshine yellow paint with her fingertips. The wall vibrated with the sound coming from inside her son’s room. She offered a tentative knock on his door. No response. She knocked louder.
“What?” he called from inside.
“Want to talk about it?”
“No. I don’t.”
The volume of the music increased. She could push inside or walk away. She could force a conversation, which might turn into a fight. Or just let him come to her when he was ready. She hesitated a moment, conflicted. Then she opted for the latter, moving quietly down the stairs, feeling that strange loneliness again. Uselessness, she thought, was the permanent condition of parenthood. In her office, with her patients, she always knew what do to, what to say. Why, then, with her own family did she so often feel at a complete loss?
For a while, she’d held on to some illusion of control. And then, right about the time Ricky gave up his afternoon nap, she finally understood that for all the schedules and consistency, the rewards and reprimands, ultimately it’s the child who chooses how to behave. It’s the parent’s responsibility to provide the safe environment, the predictable rules, the loving discipline, and the healthy meals, but ultimately the child has to be the one to put the broccoli in his mouth, chew, and swallow. Jones still labored under the delusion that he could bend Ricky to his way of thinking, that with anger, hard words, and harsh punishment he could force their son to do and be what he wanted-in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
When Maggie reached the foyer, the twin beam of headlights swept across the far wall. She walked to the window and saw the pizza delivery car in her drive. She glanced at her watch, then went to the kitchen for her wallet. When she returned, the delivery boy was peering in one of the windows. She opened the door, was surprised by how cool the air had turned once the sun had set.
“Hey, Dr. Cooper.” The delivery boy went on to say something else, something about a cold front moving in, but she barely heard him. Her eyes fell on a figure standing across the street. He leaned against a tall, old oak, washed in the glow of lamplight. It was too dim and he was too far, so she couldn’t quite read his expression, though she recognized his bearing, those permanently slouched shoulders.
She stepped through the doorway and came to stand beside the delivery boy. She could smell warm pizza, cheap aftershave, wood burning on the air. She crossed her arms against the chill.
“Marshall?” she called.
She waited for a hand raised in greeting, or for him to start walking across the street. Maybe he felt bad about their session, wanted to talk about it. That would be a good sign. But he stood rooted.
“Marshall, is everything all right?”
She felt the quickening of her pulse when he still stayed silent. She was about to move toward him, to cross the street and bring him inside. She’d confront him head-on. She needed to show him that he didn’t intimidate her, if that was what he was after. But then he took off at a run. She looked after him until he was just a pair of white sneakers, then was swallowed by the night. A moment later she heard a car door slam, an engine rumbling to life.
“Twenty-four fifty,” the pizza boy said. “Dr. Cooper?”
“Yes. Sorry.” She handed him thirty, told him to keep the rest, and he, too, took off at a brisk jog, toward his parked car. Just a kid, he looked barely old enough to be driving. He didn’t seem to think much of the strange encounter, was only concerned with his next delivery. She held the hot pizza boxes and salad, still looking after Marshall. She had no reason to be afraid. But she found that she was.
An hour later, Maggie was still waiting on Jones. The pizza boxes sat one on top of the other on the cold burners of the stovetop. The salad was in the fridge. Ricky wouldn’t come down. Jones hadn’t answered at the station; his assistant, Claire, was obviously gone for the evening. There was still no answer on his cell phone. She tried not to worry. As a cop’s wife, she’d learned not to. Jones had taught her early in their marriage that if there were something to worry about, she’d know right away. That was when he worked patrol. Now that he headed the detective division in a relatively small department, there was less reason to worry than ever.
The Hollows was a small, relatively affluent town, about a hundred miles outside of New York City. There were some challenged areas in the district, daily problems with drug dealers, domestic violence; there had been an armed robbery at a liquor store a few months earlier. Recently, a man had killed his wife and then himself, suffering a breakdown after learning she’d had an affair. There were the usual break-ins and petty crimes. It wasn’t the kind of small town where everyone knew one another and nothing ever happened. But it was a relatively safe and quiet community. People who had grown up in The Hollows often returned after college to raise families. Doctors, lawyers, businesspeople who worked in the city commuted home by train on weekday nights. It had that quaintness to it, the kind that rich urbanites started to crave in their forties, when the glitz of the city ceased to glamour them. It was a nice place to live, with good schools, a lively center with trendy boutiques, an independent bookstore, a couple of nice restaurants, and The Hollows Brew, an upscale coffee shop that hosted a weekly poetry reading, showed the work of local artists on its walls, and had become a kind of general meeting place.
Maggie had never thought in a million years that she’d end up back in The Hollows. But she had. She didn’t regret leaving the city behind and starting a practice here, in the town where she grew up. But sometimes, in a low moment, she wondered what would have happened if her father hadn’t died, leaving her mother alone. Would she ever have come back here?
She picked up the phone and dialed her mother. It wasn’t until the fourth ring that Elizabeth picked up. Maggie had noticed over the last couple of weeks that it was taking her mother longer and longer to get to the phone.
“Hey, Mom,” she said. She tried to sound upbeat even though she knew it was pointless. Elizabeth always knew what Maggie was feeling, no matter how she tried to hide it.
“Hello, Magpie.”
“How are your attic guests?”
“Quiet, too quiet,” said her mother, mock-ominous. “And possibly raccoons.”
