Never Enough (25 page)

“Nope.” His dad put a controlling hand on Marcus’s shoulder. “He’s not going anywhere tonight. He’s got work to do around here.”

“So give your parents my best,” Marcus said, as if to hurry me out of his apartment. I was about to argue, say I wouldn’t leave, even if it meant us both getting the crap beaten out
of us. But then he added, “And tell your parents to get some biscotti for the restaurant. Certain people,” he said, “really love
biscotti
.”

The way he said the last part reminded me of something he’d said before. Like
polizia
, I thought suddenly.
He wants me to go to the police.

Marcus’s dad grunted, and Marcus opened the door to push me through.

“Biscotti,” I said, barely able to breathe out the word. “Got it.”

As he nudged the door closed behind me, I felt something fall into the back of my hoodie. Then the door shut and locked from the other side.

*   *   *

After finding Marcus’s key in the back of the hood of my sweatshirt, I ran all the way down three flights of stairs and dialed 911 from my cell in the lobby.

I’d never called 911 before, and I couldn’t help but think of how casually I’d taken the whole idea of an emergency number when we’d first learned about them in kindergarten. Emergency situations were not casual. In fact, my whole body shook with fear.

They asked me the nature of my emergency and patched me through to another operator. I had to look outside for Marcus’s address while trying to talk slowly enough so they
could understand me. When they asked if Marcus’s dad has any weapons, I just about dropped my phone. “N-not that I know of,” I said. “But maybe.”

They promised they’d send a couple of officers right away, but I paced the lobby and couldn’t stand the waiting. I’d assumed Marcus had just wanted me to call the police, but then why did he give me his key?

And what if Marcus’s dad did have a weapon? What if he even just broke a beer bottle? My stomach clenched at mental images of injuries produced by a jagged piece of glass.
What if the police hadn’t taken me seriously, or took too long to get here?

I hadn’t helped Claire soon enough, and I wasn’t going to make that same mistake with Marcus. I headed for the stairs and took them three at a time back up to Marcus’s floor. There were muffled sounds from inside, but they weren’t loud enough to tell what was happening. When I put my ear to the door, I could hear Marcus’s dad’s voice, but not what he was saying. I didn’t hear Marcus at all at first, but I figured he must be in there, must still be okay, if his dad was still lecturing at him. A sudden bang sounded from inside, like a baseball bat on a wall. Or against someone’s head. I closed my eyes, said a quick prayer, and fumbled the key toward the lock.

Even though I was moving as fast as possible, I felt like everything was in slow motion. Voices sounded from the
stairwell.
The police!
I backed up, leaving the key in the lock, just as two of them rushed from the stairwell door.

I waved them toward the door. The words “Go, go,” came out of me in a choked whisper.

When one officer pushed the door wide open, I saw Marcus with a bandanna shoved in his mouth. His dad held him by his neck against the mishmashed blinds of the front window.

“Stop! Please stop!” I yelled, and the slow motion went into hyperdrive. Suddenly everything was happening at once.

The officers had moved in behind Marcus’s dad, but he seemed to only notice me, yelling from the hallway. One officer told him calmly to release the boy, but in Marcus’s dad’s surprise, he whirled around and hit the cop, knocking him over.

At least he’d let go of Marcus in the process. The other cop pulled a gun on Marcus’s dad while the officer who’d been hit got to his feet.

Marcus’s dad clenched and unclenched his hands, like he was still deciding who to take his anger out on. Marcus yanked the bandanna from his mouth and rushed away from them, closer to me.

“Are you okay?” I whispered, now that the cops seemed to have gotten control over the rest of things. They handcuffed Marcus’s dad and were reading him his rights.

Marcus kept his still-fearful eyes trained on his dad. “Yeah. But you should go,” he said. “You don’t want to get caught up in the middle of all of this.”

I shook my head. “I’m not leaving you alone, Marcus.”

He finally broke his stare and turned to me. “You didn’t. You were here when I needed you, Loey. Now go home and be safe.
Please.
”

The officer who wasn’t reading rights looked over at Marcus. Without giving me time to reply, Marcus nudged the door closed between us.

Because the Arts Club was only a couple of blocks away, I ran to see Armando.
I couldn’t sit at home by myself right now, no matter how much Marcus wanted me to. My whole body was abuzz and I needed to do something to calm myself down. Armando could probably get ahold of Marcus’s mom to find out what was happening, and that, at least, felt useful.

I found the old man pacing the floor of his café.

“The police,” I said, out of breath when he looked up at me. “I had to call them for Marcus.”

Armando nodded like he already knew. “My niece call,” he said, and I assumed he meant Marcus’s mom. “She call back to tell me soon.”

An awkward silence followed where we looked at each other, then at the art on the walls. I had to avert my eyes from the Caravaggio with the man gripping the boy—it disturbed me even more now.

When the phone finally rang, Armando picked up on the first ring and nodded for several seconds, without saying anything. Why couldn’t Marcus have a slightly more animated uncle? How did I get involved with such a silent family? I paced again while I waited for him to get off the phone.

“Marcus fine,” he said, with the first smile I’d ever seen on his face. “He go to
polizia
building. You go home and he call you.”

*   *   *

I waited up most of the night, between staring at my phone, staring at my computer, and staring out my bedroom window in the far-fetched hope that Marcus might stop by at three a.m. I guess I nodded off, because when I looked at the clock, it was after nine.

I bolted out of bed and rushed for the computer. Still no e-mail. No phone call. Marcus was okay physically, but what else was happening? Was his mom blaming him? Was he blaming me?

After splashing cold water on my face and brushing my teeth, I raced out the door in the same clothes I’d worn
yesterday. Dad’s car was gone, and I wondered, fleetingly, if he’d come home at all last night.

*   *   *

Armando stood behind his counter looking about as exhausted as I felt. “You hear something?” he asked.

I shook my head.

We sat together for nearly half an hour. We were afraid to phone again, just in case Marcus’s dad was back at home. There was a scuffing sound when the door opened and we both looked up.

Marcus.

He wasn’t himself, I could tell that immediately. He was jittery and looked in all directions before finally walking toward us. Judging by his nervousness, I figured they must have released his dad. But how could Marcus be here, then? I walked right over to him to find out, but then hesitated, not knowing what to say. Not knowing all he had been through. “Are you . . . what happened?” I asked.

“He’s gone,” Marcus said, nodding, almost like he was convincing himself.

Armando seemed to recognize that we needed some time alone. He placed a hand on Marcus’s shoulder, and then headed out with the excuse of going to call his niece.

“Do you . . .” I eyed him carefully. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He looked out the window, which I assumed meant no, but then he turned back to me and said, “It’s . . . I know I shouldn’t be scared anymore, but—”

“Is he in jail?” I blurted. Marcus was scaring me, too.

Marcus nodded. “Yeah. Turns out hitting that cop was the best thing he could have done, at least for us. He’s in custody. It’ll take some time for my mom to get used to things. She’s freaking out a little, but they have a counselor at the police station they brought in to talk with her.”

“Freaking out how?” If Marcus considered his jittery countenance even-keeled, I couldn’t imagine what his mom was like right now.

“They’re suggesting we move to a different apartment, which will probably cost more. The money’s the thing she keeps coming back to, so I said I’d get a job.” He looked around the cafe. “You know, a real job.”

A small sound escaped my mouth, but I bit my lip to quiet it. This wasn’t the end of the world. I knew Marcus and I could still see each other. The important thing was that he was safe. But it was still just . . . sad.

“When I was twelve,” he started without any prompting, “my dad was beatin’ on my mom. I came in and screamed for him to stop. ‘Just stop it!’ I yelled. You know what he did?” Marcus didn’t wait for my answer. “He grabbed me and tied me to one of our kitchen chairs. He used his old fishing rope
and it took about ten seconds of struggling for it to break through my skin.”

I almost couldn’t bear to hear it, but I knew Marcus had to get this out.
How many years had he been keeping it all to himself?
I gripped the sides of my chair beneath me to keep strong.

“He beat the crap out of my mom, right in front of me. She had blood coming out of her mouth and her ear. He slapped her, threw her, kicked her.” Marcus said the words evenly, but I could tell how much talking about it affected him. “I swore I would get her out of there—one day. She lay on the floor and I thought she was dead, and I still have nightmares of seeing her there. But the more I cried, the more he beat her. Eventually I just shut up. I stopped crying and stayed perfectly still. When he directed his attention to me, I was glad. I was ready for my beating. I could take it. I wasn’t dreading it; I was waiting.”

My hands cramped from holding on so hard to the chair—at hearing his story and knowing that Marcus had kept it all to himself.

“My dad kicked my chair over. Then he walked out the door. That was all he had for me, and that almost made it worse.”

Marcus doesn’t like to fight back,
was all I could say to myself, over and over again.
Marcus doesn’t like to fight back.
I
remembered when Marcus had gotten mad at me for talking back to the jocks at school, and tears rolled down my cheeks. He must have been terrified all the time. I put my hands over my mouth and blew into them. I needed the release.

Marcus reached over and grabbed my hands. He held them from across the table.

“Don’t cry, Loey.” I couldn’t believe
he
was consoling
me
. “Now he’s gone.”

When Mom first got home, she didn’t say much about her trip to California. We
sat down for dinner that night, without Dad and Claire, and then Mom started to fill me in.

“You know Claire’s only gone for a short time, right, Loey?” She never called me Loey, and it was enough to make me squirm. “She just needs a little help to get her nutrition sorted out. Then she’ll be back and we’ll try to get her college registration set for next fall. Maybe you girls can even go somewhere together.”

Mom certainly had it all worked out. I wondered if Claire knew about Mom’s plans. Or if Claire was aware she’d flown all the way to California for a bit of “nutritional counseling.” Last I’d heard, she was bumped to the top of the list
because of her severe health problems. Mom’s plan would have sounded great if I believed a word of it.

*   *   *

Later in the week when the phone rang, I could tell from Mom’s tone that Claire was on the other end.

“Oh, honey, is everything okay? How are you doing? Are they treating you well?”

I puttered around the living room, tidying up the magazines on the coffee table. Mom would probably talk Claire’s ear off for a good twenty minutes, but I hoped to say hi for a minute. Life wasn’t the same without Claire around. Our house was too quiet and felt like it was missing a limb. Or an organ.

Suddenly Mom thrust the phone in my face.

“Honey, it’s Claire. She wants to talk to you.”

I grasped the phone and put it to my ear before Mom had even let go.

“Uh . . . hi,” I said into the receiver, turning my back to Mom. I couldn’t believe Claire had asked for me after how cold I’d been when she left.

“Oh, Loey, I just needed to hear your voice.”

It was exactly how I felt, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I still hadn’t thought of
what
I should say, so Claire continued, “It’s not so bad here, Loey. They’re teaching me so much about my habits and my body image.”

I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me, and said,
“Oh yeah?” in as peppy a voice as I could muster. But Claire seemed willing to carry the conversation all on her own.