She grabbed her purse from behind the reception desk, rustling around inside trying to locate her keys. “Can you tell Mrs. Brown I had a family emergency?” she said to Carly. “I’ll call my other clients.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’ll be okay.”
It took four tries before her car started. Fucking starter. She was shaking when the engine finally roared to life and she backed out of the lot behind the salon and onto Depot Street. She wondered if she should get Gracy early from school. Kindergarten pickup was only a couple of hours away. But then again, she didn’t want to scare her. Trevor was probably just at home, probably sitting on the couch watching TV, eating up half the contents of the cupboards. She’d yell at him, tell him how she lost a client because of him. Kurt would come home and deal with punishment. It would be okay.
But when she got to the house, Trevor wasn’t there. And there was no evidence to suggest he had been there at all. She felt her muscles go liquid as she ran through the empty house. “Trevor!” she hollered down the hallway.
Silence. Only the ticking of the kitchen clock.
She tried to think about the places he might have gone. As far as she knew, he didn’t have a single friend in the world, no one to ditch with. He never asked to have friends over. He was never invited to anyone else’s house. Elsbeth’s eyes stung. If he had a friend, he’d have a place to go. She felt sick at the enormity of his loneliness.
She went into their bedroom, hoping there might be some sort of clue there. Gracy’s bed was unmade still, a mess of pink flowers and ratty stuffed animals. Trevor’s side of the room was tidy. His camouflage comforter was tidily pulled up to meet his pillow. His drawers were closed, his clothes neatly folded inside. There was nothing on his dresser, and the clothes in his side of the closet hung empty on their hangers. She rifled through the top drawer of his desk, finding nothing but pencils, loose coins, and film.
The camera? Where was his camera?
He’d left it here this morning; she was sure of it. She’d seen it on his dresser when she turned out their light after he and Gracy got on the bus. But now it was gone, which meant that he
had
been here. He’d come home, grabbed his camera, and taken off again. Maybe he
had
run away. Shit.
She went to the kitchen and got her phone from her purse, dialing Kurt.
“I think he’s run off,” she said. “There’s a sandwich on the counter I think he must have made and forgot. And his camera is gone too. That means he’s been home. Nobody took him.”
“Jesus,” Kurt said. “Listen, I’ll call the police station. Maybe you can check in with the school again. Someone there might know something. He’s close to his art teacher. Maybe he talked to her.”
Elsbeth called the school next, sitting down at the kitchen table.
“Hello, this is Trevor Kennedy’s mother. You spoke to my husband earlier. I was hoping I could speak to Trevor’s art teacher?”
“Mrs. Kennedy, Mrs. Dubois was hospitalized this weekend after a heart attack.”
“Oh my God,” Elsbeth said, her hand flying to her chest. “Does Trevor know?”
“He might, though we haven’t told the children the details yet.”
Elsbeth said, “Okay, thank you.”
“Please let us know if we can help,” the woman said. “You know, most of the time they come back. Probably just got upset and needed to clear his head.”
Elsbeth clicked her phone shut and shook her head. What was she supposed to do now? She picked up her phone and looked dumbly at the keypad. She dialed Kurt’s number again, and he picked up after the first ring.
Then the front door opened slowly. Trevor stood, hulking in the doorway, the camera slung around his shoulders. He looked like he was waiting for punishment, his head hanging to his chest.
Elsbeth felt a rush of something flood her body. Something powerful.
“Oh, honey, he’s home,” she said to Kurt. “He’s here. I’ll call you back.”
“Where did you go?” she asked, trying not to let her relief turn into anger. “We thought somebody took you.”
Trevor shrugged. His hair was filled with twigs. He looked like an animal, like something wild. He shrugged again, shoving his hands in his pockets, staring at the ground.
Elsbeth felt something snag in her throat. “Is this about your teacher?”
Trevor looked up at her, cocking his head distrustfully.
“Come here,” she said, motioning for him to come to her. He continued to look at her suspiciously. It killed her that he seemed so reluctant to trust her. Feeling almost desperate, she stood up and went to him, hugging him hard, realizing she couldn’t remember the last time she’d held him. He was so big now, a child in a man’s body. She didn’t recognize the smell of him. The feel of him in her arms.
“Listen,” she said, pulling away, peering into his icy blue eyes, wanting only to make everything all right. He looked at her, confused, his bottom lip already quivering the way it had when he was still just a little boy. “She’s in the hospital. And they’ll take good care of her there,” Elsbeth started, not knowing how to say this without breaking his heart.
Trevor’s whole body stiffened and his eyes went dark. His fists clenched, and he started to shake his head hard. He pulled away from her. God, why didn’t she wait for Kurt to come home to tell him?
“It’s okay, sweetie,” she tried, but his whole body was tight and angry now.
“No, it’s not!” Trevor growled, and as his voice grew, his body seemed to grow as well. She realized then that he could harm her if he wanted to. If he lashed out the way he used to as a little boy, she could actually get hurt. She was, for the first time,
afraid
of him. She cowered despite every attempt not to. How could she be afraid of her own son?
“Listen, Daddy will be home soon ... maybe he can take you to the hospital to see her?”
“No!” he screamed again, this time just inches from her face. His breath was hot and wet. And then he ripped the camera from around his neck and threw it across the room. It landed on the floor, the back opening and exposing the film inside like guts. They both looked at it in disbelief, as if it had flung itself across the room. Then he rushed to it, picked it up like a baby bird fallen from a tree, and cradled it in his hands, tears streaming down his cheeks. The anger was gone, exorcised, and now he was six years old again. Just a terribly sad little boy she didn’t know how to reach.
“Can I help you fix it?” she asked, afraid he might lash out again, but he only shook his head.
When he was able to close the back again and seemed satisfied that it wasn’t broken, he quietly went down the hall to his room and closed the door. And then Elsbeth started to cry.
Later, after dinner, instead of taking Trevor to the shed and punishing him for running off and scaring them half to death, Kurt had only nodded across the table at Trevor, patting his shoulder gently as he brought his dish to the sink. Elsbeth had told Kurt about his teacher but not about his temper tantrum, about how scared she’d been. She knew it wouldn’t help anything.
“I’m sorry about your teacher,” Kurt said. “I know she’s been real good to you.”
Trevor’s face was blank. Empty. It was as though he had left, as if he’d slipped right out of his body and abandoned it at the kitchen table. Like a wax figure at one of those museums. All that rage from earlier was gone. There was nothing in his eyes anymore. Not anger. Not even sadness.
“What happened to your teacher, Trevor?” Gracy asked. She had spaghetti sauce at each corner of her mouth. A splatter of it on her T-shirt.
Trevor turned to her, startled. A sleepwalker awoken from sleep.
She was putting peas in tidy rows on the tines of her fork. “I love my teacher. Do you love your teacher too?” she asked.
“She might die,” he said. His voice sounded strange. Far away.
“Trevor, don’t say things like that. You’ll scare her. Gracy, honey, she’s just in the hospital. She’ll be okay.”
Gracy’s eyes widened. She got up from her chair and went to Trevor, climbing up on his lap. She looped her skinny arms around his neck and buried her face in his neck. Trevor’s lip trembled, but he didn’t cry. He just stared straight ahead at the door as though he might make a run for it again.
“At least there are only a couple of weeks of school left,” Elsbeth said. “It’s almost summer. We can start planning our vacation,” she said, smiling hopefully at Kurt.
Kurt turned the hot water on in the sink, his back to her.
“I’ve been looking online. There are some packages for Disney World. You know, they have hotels right there at the park? You can even have breakfast with all the princesses,” she said to Gracy. Gracy lifted her head from Trevor’s chest, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Really, Mumma?”
“Of course, that might be too expensive, but sometimes there are deals. I’m going to keep looking.”
Kurt stopped running the water and turned around. “Trevor, go run a bath for Gracy. Gracy, go get your jammies on.”
Trevor lifted Gracy up obediently and walked with her down the hallway.
“What’s going on?” Elsbeth asked. Kurt had been acting strange since he got home. She thought it was because of Trevor, but now she was beginning to think it was something else all together. Something bad.
“I’m gonna be working a couple of night shifts at the 76 station.”
“What?” she said.
“A second job.”
Elsbeth felt her whole center getting hot.
“Only a few nights a week. Just through the summer.”
“But we were going to take a vacation,” she said, the hot center of her spreading to her limbs.
Kurt turned toward her, his face apologetic. “The kids will be out of school in a week, and we’re going to need to pay to send them somewhere while you’re working.”
“You promised,” she said, her breath like steam. She felt the words escape, hissing and then dissipating in the air before her face. Kurt didn’t say anything. Her face flushed and tears pooled hot and heavy in her eyes.
But then she realized it had just been a dream all along. He’d just been humoring her stupid daydreams.
Of course
they weren’t going anywhere. She’d been stupid to think otherwise.
“It’s only temporary,” he said, but nothing about this was temporary. This was just the way it was, the way it always had been, the way it would always be.
At the Walgreens that weekend, Elsbeth wandered the aisles aimlessly. She’d left the house before anybody else was even up. Kurt had worked his first shift at the 76 the night before, crawling into bed, smelling like gasoline, at seven thirty in the morning. She hadn’t been able to get back to sleep, and so she left.
She never went shopping at Walgreens without Gracy. She knew it was stupid. She knew that she was asking to get caught. But after wandering the housewares aisle, she found herself drawn to the sunscreen display that had been up since Memorial Day. She lifted each bottle to her nose, inhaling the scent of coconuts. She snapped the cap off an aerosol can and pressed her finger hard on the trigger. The spray made her nose sting and eyes water. She squeezed her eyes shut and thought about the beach, about the ocean, about the sun. Then she opened her eyes, glanced quickly around to make sure no one was watching and pocketed a stick of Banana Boat sunscreen for baby faces. When she looked up again, the checker girl, the one who’d had the baby, was standing there, staring at her.
Elsbeth smiled at her, wondering if the girl could see her heart beating through her T-shirt.
“Are you finding everything okay?” the girl said, accusingly.
Elsbeth nodded, suddenly wanting the girl to say something. Willing her to say something. Willing her to call her out.
But the girl just kept standing there, hands on her hips, staring at Elsbeth’s pocketbook.
Elsbeth felt light-headed. High.
Do it.You caught me. Say something.
She picked up a stick identical to the one she had pocketed, and studied it. SPF 50.
The girl’s eyes widened, but she was silent.
They stood like this for so long Elsbeth felt like she might pass out. Elsbeth looked her right in the eyes. Unflinching.
“Well, you just let me know if I can help,” the girl finally said and walked away, shaking her head.
Something about this pissed Elsbeth off. Her acting like she was any better than Elsbeth. She reached angrily into her pocketbook, took out the stolen sunscreen, and placed it back on the shelf. Her hands tingled and her head pounded. She left the store without buying anything. She had to sit in her car for ten minutes before her leg stopped shaking enough that she could press the clutch and hold it long enough to get the goddamned thing started.
O
n the morning of graduation, Crystal stood in the shower, letting the hot water beat against her face. When she opened her eyes, everything was blurry, like looking through her mother’s eyeglasses when she was a little girl. When her vision cleared, she touched the tender spot, the secret spot at her hip.