Touch (22 page)

“So,” Susan said, and Emma realized suddenly that Susan was like a miniature version
of Amy, “Why did you come home? You didn’t
need
to put up a new high score; Phillip’s too much of a klutz to beat the old one.” She
snickered and added, “He’s been trying, though.”

She had asked the question that Phillip and Leslie couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. But they
listened for the answer just as apprehensively as if they had.

“I wanted to come home,” Mark told her. He turned toward his mother, who sat frozen,
like a cornered mouse trying to avoid a large, hungry snake in a small glass aquarium.
“I wanted to ask Mom why she left me in the ravine.”

* * *

Emma had come here for Mark. For Mark. She reminded herself, because she needed the
reminder. Phillip’s face shuttered. His mother’s couldn’t crumple any further. Susan,
however, lost some of her childish directness, but she didn’t look surprised by Mark’s
statement. She turned to look at Phillip; her glance seemed to take in everything
in the room that didn’t include her mother.

Phillip was silent. He opened his mouth and closed it. Emma thought he wanted to deny
the truth in Mark’s words and realized that on some level, he’d known. He’d known.
But he knew his brother, probably better than Emma knew Michael; he knew that empty
words of comfort or denial would change nothing.

She saw the same thing in Susan’s face and realized a second thing: Mark was, unintentionally,
asking them to make a choice between himself and their mother. Mark was dead. Their
mother was alive.

And her father was right: Mark loved his mother, even if she had killed him. Susan
and Phillip loved her as well. She had done something monstrous—but to them, she wasn’t
a monster. Monster or no, they failed to look at her. They looked at Mark and then
looked away.

Mark didn’t notice. He looked at his mother and then tugged Emma’s hand. She followed
where he led in silence, although she could no longer feel that hand; it was numb.
He stopped a yard away from where his mother sat, drink in her hand like a useless
shield. The liquid shook.

“Mom, why did you leave me in the ravine? Did you forget about me?”

“I didn’t—I didn’t leave you in the ravine.”

Emma couldn’t even feel outrage at the lie.

“You did.” The words themselves were all of the accusation his voice contained; he
was stating fact and stating it inexorably, the way Michael sometimes did. “You left
me in the ravine. You told me to wait for you. You told me not to move.”

“Mark, baby—” She swallowed. Drank.

Never drink when you’re angry, Sprout. Never drink alone
. She glanced at her father, remembering his words, and remembering as well the sharp,
acrid taste of his drink. She couldn’t recall how old she’d been at the time, and
his words hadn’t made a lot of sense then; they made sense—as so many of his words
did—now.

This, Emma thought, watching, was what she had wanted. She had wanted Mark’s mother
to face her crime. She had wanted his mother to know that people knew. But she felt
no sense of triumph, and looking at Mark, she realized he didn’t either. He was standing
in place awkwardly, stiff with anxiety; he looked—at the moment—like a very young
Michael.

He blamed himself.

Michael had often blamed himself. God, she hated this. “Leslie.”

Mark’s mother looked up at her, as if she were drowning and Emma herself was a life
buoy that had been tossed just out of reach. Emma swallowed. She had come here for
Mark. Not for Leslie. Not for Phillip or Susan. But Mark didn’t need Emma’s anger.
He didn’t, she understood, need his mother’s pain, either. What he needed—and what
Michael needed almost by osmosis—was to understand.

Not to forgive. Not to judge. Simply to understand.

S
HE LET GO OF HER ANGER, or at least untangled it. The wreck of the woman curled defensively
on the couch in front of her helped. It had always been hard to stay angry at Petal
when he lay, belly to floor, his eyes wide, his voice pitched in a pathetic whine.

She’s not your dog, Emma
.

No.

“Leslie,” she said again, in a gentler tone. “Mark isn’t here to judge you. It’s not
what he does. What he needs—right now—is to understand why things happened as they
did.” She exhaled. “He needs to know that it wasn’t his fault. He needs to know that
it wasn’t punishment for something he’d done.” And it couldn’t be, Emma’s voice implied.
“You can’t bring your son back to life.”

“No one can do that,” Mark told Emma.

“Believe that I know that,” Emma replied, never taking her eyes off his mother. “You
can’t bring him back. You can’t undo what’s done—it’s done. It’s over. It’s in the
past. What you
can
do is give him a measure of peace. You can answer his question. It’s the only answer
he cares about, now.

“You took him to the ravine. It was freezing outside. You asked him to stay there.
He tried to do what you asked of him, even if he didn’t understand why. He needs to
understand why you asked it.” She glanced, then, at the living children.

They were watching their mother. Phillip looked tired or weary; Susan was a wall.
They knew what their mother had done. Mark seemed oblivious to anything in the room
that wasn’t his mother. Even Emma, her entire arm now numb, was like a shadow.

“Mom?”

“I went back for you,” his mother said, her voice breaking. “I went back. You were—”
She looked at her empty glass, and handed it blindly to her older son. “I called the
police. I told them you’d gone out and you hadn’t come home. I didn’t mean to leave
you there to—” She looked at her two living children.

“But why did you tell me to wait there?”

She closed her eyes. Opened them. They were bloodshot, ringed, and almost without
hope. Emma thought she would lie. A lie—if it was believable—might be a kindness.
But Leslie had passed beyond the point where a lie had any meaning to her. She couldn’t
protect herself, and Emma realized, watching her, that she had given up trying.

“I was never a good enough mother for you,” she told her son. “I don’t mean that you
thought I wasn’t good enough—I
wasn’t
. I was only barely good enough to handle Phillip and Susan. You needed someone patient.
You needed someone consistent. I—I tried.”

Phillip took a step toward his mother; Susan caught his arm. They exchanged a silent
glare, but their mother didn’t notice. She was staring at her dead son as if—as if
she could engrave the sight of him into her vision so that she never lost it again.

“But it was hard for me. I’m
not
logical. I’m not mathematical. I’ve always reacted emotionally. Before you went to
school, it was easier. If I didn’t understand you, I understood how to work with you.
I knew our routine.

“But school changed that. The other kids changed it. The other mothers.” She shook
her head. “They’d look at you, and then they’d look at
me
, like it was my fault you weren’t—”

Emma said, “Please do not use the word normal.”

Mark glanced at her for the first time since he’d entered this room.

“What word would you like me to use instead?” Leslie replied, with more heat and less
pathos.

“Try ‘like their children.’”

Leslie closed her eyes. “Mark was never like most of the other children.”

“No. But he didn’t have to be.”

The eyes shot open. “He did if he wanted to have any friends! He did if he wanted
to be left alone instead of being bullied. If he could have fit in—” She exhaled sharply.
“He was lonely. He felt isolated. You probably have no idea what that’s like.”

“I understand lonely,” Emma replied.

“No, you
don’t
. Don’t tell me you’ve ever lacked friends. I won’t believe it.”

“My father died when I was eight,” Emma shot back. “My boyfriend died this past summer.
I
know
lonely.”

“You don’t know it the way someone like my son does, and you never will.”

Emma started to speak; Michael interrupted. Mark looked up at Michael, too. “I’m not
like other children—or other people. I’m like Mark.”

Mark’s mother blinked.

“I don’t know how to be like other people. I know how to be like me. But I have friends.
I’m not always lonely.”

“And people are never mean to you?” Mark’s mother demanded.

Michael thought about this. “Some people are mean to me,” he told her. “Some people
are mean to everyone. It’s impossible for me to like everyone,” he continued. “I don’t
know anyone who likes everyone. So it’s impossible for everyone to like me. There
will always be people who can’t.”

Leslie opened her mouth, but Michael hadn’t finished.

“If I learn to pretend—if I pretend to be someone else—the people who like me won’t
like
me
. They’ll like what I pretend to be. That’s not the same as being liked. Those people
wouldn’t be my friends because they wouldn’t know me at all.”

Mark’s brow furrowed as he worked his way through Michael’s words.

“Are you lonely?” Michael continued.

Leslie blinked. After a long, confused pause, she nodded. She held out her hand for
the empty glass in Phillip’s hand. Phillip kept it.

“Are you normal?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re
still
lonely. Being normal hasn’t made you happier. If it hasn’t made you happier, and
you’re the adult, why did you think it would make Mark happier?”

“Because,” Phillip said, coming once again to stand between his mother and Michael,
“she thought Mark would be happier if people liked him more. And he would have been.”

“Maybe he wouldn’t be dead now, either.”

Phillip’s jaw set. He couldn’t see the way his mother flinched—but he didn’t have
to. Love was complicated. It was never all one thing or the other. But when he met
Emma’s eyes, he flinched, his expression shifting into almost open pain. Phillip hadn’t
killed his brother. Emma thought, if he’d known where Mark was, she wouldn’t even
be
here tonight; Mark would. And he would be alive.

Phillip knelt, surprising Emma. He knelt in front of Mark to bring their eyes to the
same level. “The day Mom took you for a walk, two things happened.”

Mark nodded, waiting.

“Jonas broke up with her.”

Mark glanced at Susan, and Susan nodded.

“And her boss sent her home from work with a warning.”

“But—why?”

“Because she had to leave work in the middle of the day twice that week. Do you remember?”

Mark wilted. “To come get me.”

Phillip nodded. “At school. The school called her. She had to leave. Her boss told
her she wasn’t committed enough to work.”

“But she—did she lose her job?” Clearly work meant something to Mark.

“No,” Susan said, joining both of her brothers and their conversation. “Because you
died. Her boss wasn’t very understanding about the school stuff, but she wasn’t a
monster. I think she felt guilty, after.”

Oh, the words. This is what her father had meant. Monsters—no. People were people.
They were capable of monstrous actions, yes. But they were still people.

“Did Jonas break up with her because of me?”

Phillip and Susan exchanged a glance. “Not just because of you,” Mark’s brother said.
But Susan said, “Yes.” When Phillip’s eyes narrowed in her direction, she folded her
arms across her chest. “What? Mark’s different, but he’s not an idiot. He’s never
been completely stupid.”

“Mom?”

Mark’s mother said nothing. Mark moved, dragging Emma with him.

“Mom, was it because of me?”

Emma saw the yes lurking in his mother’s eyes. And she saw the no his mother wanted
to replace it with. They were in perfect balance for just a moment. “I came home from
work. Jonas called. We had an—an argument. I couldn’t—I can’t—afford to lose my job.”
She was crying now, but the tears trailed down her face like an afterthought. “He
loved me. He said he loved me. But he needed to know that he was the most important
thing in my life. That we had the same goals.

“He asked me to send you to your father.”

Mark flinched. “Just me? Not Phillip or Susan?”

“He told me,” his mother continued, “that I’d done enough for you. I’d done all the
hard work. I was going to
lose my job
if I didn’t turn things around. Ian had gotten off easy. It was Ian’s turn. And Ian
has a new wife. He has someone else to help him around the house and to help with
kids.”

“She
has
kids,” Susan said.

“Well, so does your father.”

“I don’t
have
a father,” her daughter shot back. “And I don’t
need
one.” She turned and leaped onto the couch and put her arms around her mother. Emma
wanted to cry, because Emma remembered almost
being
Susan. And saying the same things to her mother, to Mercy, in the early years. But
her father had died. In no other way would he have left them. Susan’s father was still
alive, somewhere. Alive and no part of his children’s lives.

Emma looked across the room at her father; he was watching Leslie and her daughter
as if—as if he wanted to step in and join them, to offer the comfort that an ex-husband
and absentee father had probably never offered them.

“Why didn’t you say yes?” Mark asked. Mark was probably the only person in the room
who could.

Michael opened his mouth, reminding Emma that her count was off by one. But he closed
it without letting words escape.

“What was I going to tell your brother and your sister?” his mother answered, putting
an arm around that sister and drawing her close. “Jonas—wasn’t happy. He pointed out
that I do earn more and that if we—if we were going to set up house, he needed me
to be employed. He—” she laughed. It was not a happy sound. “He needed a sign of commitment.
From me.

“And I knew—I knew he was leaving. He was already gone.” She closed her eyes. Opened
them. “I couldn’t—” she exhaled. “When you came home, I couldn’t deal with my life.
I couldn’t look at you and not see the thousands of ways in which I’ve failed at everything.
I just—I needed alone time. I needed the space.” She swallowed. “I took you out for
a walk. And I left you there.

“I didn’t mean to leave you there forever. I didn’t mean—” She pulled away from her
daughter and rose for the first time since Emma had entered the room. But she didn’t
walk away; she walked toward Mark. “I fell asleep, Mark. I—”

“You were drinking.” It wasn’t a question and it wasn’t—quite—an accusation.

“After my day? Yes. Baby—I’m so
tired
all the time. I’m so tired of doing it alone when I’m
no good at life
. I’m terrible at it. I never make the right choices. I never make the right decisions.
I—” She came to stand beside her older son, rather than behind him. “You were my biggest
failure. If I had been any good at being a mother, you’d’ve been happy. It killed
me to see you cry. To see the way the world treated you. The way other mothers looked
at you, as if you were stupid or alien. The way they looked
at me
.

“I worried
all the time
. I was always worried. I never knew when the school would call, when something else
would hurt you. I never knew how to make it
stop
. If I’d been a good mother, if I’d done the right things—” She lifted her hands,
palm up, as if offering to take her dead child into her arms.

And Emma saw the look on Phillip’s face.

“But I didn’t. I didn’t. I tried to talk to your father.”

Phillip said, “She didn’t ask him, Mark. She thought about sending you away, but in
the end, she didn’t ask.”

“Why?” Mark asked.

Phillip rolled his eyes. “Because she loves you. She loves us all.”

“But she took me—”

“Yes,” his mother said, voice low. “All I could see that day was failure. Everywhere.
I couldn’t . . . I wanted a few minutes of quiet. I wanted a few minutes when everything
I saw didn’t remind me of how useless I really am. I thought—”

“If I were different. If I hadn’t been born.” Mark had no mercy, but there was no
anger in the words. His mother flinched anyway.

But Phillip said, “Sometimes we just—we want a different life. We can’t
have
it,” he added. “And we don’t want it all the time. But sometimes we
all
feel that way. Even you.”

Mark looked confused. “You think that?” he asked his brother.

Phillip shook his head. “Of course I do. So does everyone in the world. Except maybe
Susan. When Mom woke up she ran out of the house. She barely put on a coat. It was
dark. We didn’t know where you were.” Phillip’s gaze hit the carpet. “Susan woke her
up. Susan said, ‘Mark’s not home.’ And, Mark? If
I’d
woken her up—if I’d woken her up
earlier
—you wouldn’t be dead.

“But I knew about Jonas. I heard her talk about work, and what her boss said. I knew—I
knew she needed to sleep. And I
let
her. So it’s not just Mom’s fault. It’s mine, too.”

Susan got up off the couch and came to stand on Phillip’s other side. “Are you mad
at us?” she asked Mark.

Mark looked confused.

“Are you mad at Mom?”

“I think I was. I think, before Emma brought me home, I was angry. But I was more
afraid.”

“Of what? You’re already dead.”

Phillip and Leslie flinched. Mark, of course, didn’t.

“I don’t know. I thought it was my fault. It was my fault I was dead. I thought I
had finally done something so bad I deserved to be dead. If I were normal—”

“We agreed we’re not using that word,” Emma told him.

“I didn’t.” He turned to his family. “But now I know Mom was having a really, really
bad day. The worst day ever.”