little girl, the smell of coffee brewing somewhere, his student record open on her desk, a pencil holder shaped like an elephant, flecks of dust floating in the bright sunlight. But what he remembered most was the calm he felt.
“Sometimes the Travis Crosbys of the world don’t understand anything else, Mrs. Monroe.” Back talk! He’d been taught better. He thought he’d get one of the legendary Monroe tongue-lashings. But when he looked up at her, she just frowned and shook her head. She agreed with him; he saw it in the pale blue eyes behind her thick lenses.
“Suspension, Mr. Ivy, though it does pain me. One week.”
He accepted his punishment and happily spent the week eating junk food and watching television, while his mother fretted about his “permanent record.”
“What will the college people say?”
His father, a research scientist who barely visited the real world, so lost was he in his own gray matter, surprised Henry by saying, “I have confidence that you did what you had to do, Son.”
“You do?”
“Sometimes the bullies of the world need a little humbling,” he said, echoing Henry’s own feelings. His dad was a good man, a bit absent-minded but always there when he was needed.
In Marshall Crosby, Henry saw himself but without the benefit of loving parents. Someone smart but lacking a sense of worth, abandoned by his mother, abused by his father. Someone being victimized by Travis Crosby. He’d wanted to give Marshall a break no one else had seemed willing to give.
As he got out of the car and crossed the street, he thought that Maggie was probably right. It wasn’t a good idea to visit the Crosby home, a run-down two-story in The Acres. The white paint, graying and chipped, some of the black shutters askew on their hinges-the whole place had an aura of neglect. The lawn was patchy, overgrown in some places, dead in others. The garage door stood open; it was so filled with old junk that there was no room for a vehicle. The old Chevelle that he’d seen Marshall driving around in sat in the driveway, its engine clinking as if it had recently been running. He stepped on the gray porch and felt the wood creak beneath his weight.
Henry didn’t just have Marshall on his mind. The news of Charlene Murray’s disappearance had rocketed through the school. There was an aura of worry and excitement in the hallways, klatches of girls gathered whispering, dramatic. He picked up snippets as he walked the halls.
An early-morning meeting at the school, with police and some of Charlene’s friends and their parents, had yielded nothing. Rumors abounded about a boyfriend in the city, someone she’d met at a concert, but no one knew a name or address. Calls to her cell phone went straight to voice mail. Other than the status bar update, no one had heard from her since early evening yesterday. Melody Murray looked cored out by worry, dark under the eyes; her voice was quaking. But the attitude of the police, Jones Cooper in particular, was that Charlene Murray was a runaway.
“She’ll come home when she runs out of money,” he’d said. “Or nerve.”
Maggie had shot her husband a look; then her eyes fell on Henry. After the meeting, Maggie told him about Marshall’s visit to her home, about her conversation with Marshall’s aunt.
“I feel like everyone’s backing away from him,” she said. “That’s what happens.”
Then, “Maybe you
Maggie was a person who cared too much. It was one of the reasons why he still loved her. Maybe he always would.
• • •
Henry lifted a hand and knocked on the door. It was flimsy, the glass in square panes rattling with each knock. The air had lost all the warmth and humidity it had held yesterday and taken a hard dive into winter. The lawns around him were a litter of fallen leaves, the trees already turning ashen fingers against the sky. No answer. He knocked again.
Just as he was turning to leave, he heard footsteps inside. A moment later Travis, thick-jawed and barrel- chested, opened the door. The two men regarded each other.
“What do you want, Ivy?”
Henry still remembered Travis lean and handsome. The man before him had deep lines at his eyes and around his mouth, a grayish cast to his skin. He was a bad facsimile of himself, had a chewed up, defeated aura.
“I’m looking for Marshall. Are you aware that he hasn’t been in school in a week?”
Travis offered an exaggerated shrug, took a sip from a big mug of coffee he held. “News to me.”
Henry felt a tingle of anger, a little flood of adrenaline. Travis leaned against the door frame.
“He told Dr. Cooper that he was helping you paint your office,” Henry said. He tried to subtly peer into the house behind Travis, but the big man filled the doorway.
“True. In the afternoons and at night, though. Not during the school day.”
Henry calculated that Travis had about fifty pounds on him. But he reeked of cigarettes. Henry ran five miles a day, lifted weights, even took a yoga class now and then. He was in good shape, just five pounds heavier than he’d been as a senior in college, and that was hard-gained muscle.
“Do you know where he is right now?” Henry glanced over at the car.
“You’re telling me he’s not in school, then I don’t know.”
Narrowed eyes, slack posture, a muscle clenching and unclenching in his jaw, Travis radiated a lazy meanness. It was an attitude he’d cultivated as an adolescent and then perfected as a town cop. Now that Travis had been stripped of his uniform, Henry thought the guy looked more dangerous than ever. It chilled Henry to think that Travis was no longer bound even by the code of the department.
“Look, Travis,” said Henry. “Marshall’s been doing really well. He’s been on medication, studying hard. I think he has a good shot at a school like Rutgers or Fordham. But he needs to keep it up, come to class. You want what’s best for him, don’t you?”
Travis dug his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels, seeming to consider Henry’s words. And Henry thought for a moment that he’d been heard. But then a derisive sneer spread across Travis’s face.
“And you think you know what’s best for him?” he said. “A bunch of head shrinking, pills, and history lessons?”
Henry felt his fist clench, felt the urge to take a step back and prepare to fight. But he kept his cool, thinking of Maggie, and held his ground.
“I do think some psychological help-medication combined with talk therapy-and a good education are the right things for Marshall, yes,” he said. “And most people would agree with me.”
“Well,” said Travis. “I’m not most people. And Marshall is
Instead of anger, Henry felt a kind of resigned sadness close around him like a curtain. He remembered how unsatisfying it had been to beat on Travis, how much it had hurt. Turned out Mrs. Monroe was right after all.
“When you see Marshall tonight, ask him to come to school, to finish out the year and get his degree. After that, it’s up to him.”
He didn’t look Travis in the face again, knew he couldn’t see that nasty grin without being moved to do something he didn’t want to do. So he turned and walked away.
At the bottom step, he heard Travis whisper, “Fucking faggot.” And he thought, but couldn’t be sure, that he heard Marshall, or someone, laugh in response. Henry Ivy kept walking.
Marshall thought he might throw up, but he pasted a wide smile across his face, so that when his father turned back from the doorway that’s what he saw. The effort of holding up the corners of his mouth felt like it would break his face in two.
