My mother just said she was sorry, but she did what she knew how to do. She was trying to protect us the only way she could. How could she have done more? There was no blueprint, no helpful book written on how to help your children move on from the murder conviction and execution of their father. Remember, she begged us, that she, too, was in terrible pain. And of course my sister and mother worked it out. I stayed away from the conversation, because I was really fine with denial, with holding it all in, pretending it never happened. That was so much easier. I wondered why my sister didn’t see that.
But that’s my mother, unseeing, uncomplaining, utterly accepting of the people in her life. She didn’t like to talk about unpleasant things. So, I felt my whole body stiffen as we sat on the porch.
“I’ve been doing some research,” she said. She cleared her throat. “Your sister has been helping me.”
“Oh?”
“There’s a place, a school that specializes in children like my grandson.”
“Children like him?”
“Disturbed children,” she said, looking straight at me. “Troubled children, dear. He is that. Of course you know he is.”
A little gasp caught in my throat and my eyes filled. She reached out a hand and laid it on top of my arm.
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “But you need to do something. You know that your sister will never come here again with her children. Your husband has all but left you. And I have to say, I’m at my limit with his rages, and those visions-which, by the way, I don’t believe are quite sincere-and all his lies. He’s isolating you.”
I sank my head into my hand, not knowing what to say.
“There’s a school,” she said again. “They’re making some headway with children like him. There’s therapy, discipline, a different way of teaching. The children live there eight months out of the year, so it’s not forever. It’s like boarding school.”
A cold dread settled over me. What was she saying?
“I can’t send my child away, Mother,” I said softly. There was a crow sitting on the railing of our deck. He was big and jet black, looking straight at me. I tried to shoo him away, but he wouldn’t go. I couldn’t look at my mother, heard her take a swallow of wine and put her glass down on the table between us.
“He’s getting older,” she said. “And bigger. He’ll be eight next month. How much longer will you be able to control him?”
My mother was a woman of allusions, of subtleties. She was the kind of mother that led you to making the right choices and then allowed you to take all the credit. This kind of direct confrontation was not her style. How desperate she must have been, how worried.
“What happened?” I asked her. “What did he do?”
She released a sigh, took another swallow of wine. “He tripped me,” she said easily. “I fell down the stairs.”
I looked at her. “What? When? Mom, are you hurt?”
I had noticed her limping and asked her about it on Tuesday. She’d said her sciatica was acting up, which I knew meant she was getting overtired. And I felt guilty for going back to work part-time. My son was resentful about it; my mother was getting too old to care for children every day. But I selfishly didn’t ask her if it was all too much for her. I liked having a job, getting out of the house, talking to people. I felt like a real person for the first time in years. I was giddy with it.
“On Monday,” she said. “He claimed it was an accident. But it wasn’t.”
“How do you know it wasn’t?” I asked before I could stop myself. I so wanted her to be wrong about this.
She shook her head and offered me a sad, tight smile. She was still a pretty woman, petite and always put together, with her makeup done.
“I saw him, too late, stick his foot out,” she said.
She was patient, not angry that I didn’t want to believe her. There was a little quaver to her voice and the sound of it shattered me inside. “But really it was the look on his face that told the tale. He didn’t run down after me. He just stood there. Honey, he smiled.”
I grabbed her hand. “Oh, Mom, no. Please no.”
“You must know what he is,” she whispered. “You must.”
I could hear my sister shrieking, You knew what he was, Mom! You must have known. He slept in your bed.
“The medication,” I started, but didn’t finish. His most recent diagnosis was bipolar disorder, which no one believed. But the medication seemed to be helping somewhat. He was calmer, sleeping through the night.
“There’s no medication for that child,” she said. “He is what he is, just like his grandfather. It’s bad wiring, dear. I didn’t know it when I saw it the first time, in my own husband. But I can’t pretend not to see it now-the blankness, that black hole inside him.”
“No,” I said. It wasn’t true. There was some goodness in him, some of me, some of his father. I didn’t believe he was irredeemable. A mother knows these things. And I told her as much.
“Then send him someplace where they can help him, where they can teach him to live right, if nothing else. You can’t do it here. You’re enabling him. I’m sorry, sweetie. But it’s true. You just move him from school to school, hoping his reputation doesn’t follow, that he doesn’t hurt anyone else. But he always does.”
I cried and cried. She stroked my hair and told me that she loved me, but that she couldn’t be alone with him every afternoon anymore. I’d have to quit my job, or work only when he was in school. And anyway, it was about her time to return to Florida.
We stayed up talking for I don’t know how long. In the end I agreed to look at the school, to consider it. I would call my husband in the morning and ask him to come home. Our situation, I would tell him, had reached a crisis and decisions had to be made. He would help me; I knew he would. In spite of everything, I knew he still loved me.
When I went upstairs to check on my son, his door was open. I knew that I had closed it because I always did. The light in his bathroom was on. Had he heard us? Had he been listening in, as we had often caught him trying to do? But he was sound asleep. Curled in his comforter, still very small for his age, and underdeveloped in every way but intellectually, he looked like the angel child I’d never had. I tried to imagine him pushing children from jungle gyms, biting classmates, hurting the class guinea pig, tripping his grandmother. All the things he’d done to others, which I knew were true but had never witnessed. And he looked so small, his cheeks flushed with sleep. How could he be what he was?
The next day, the call came from the school to pick up my son early. The principal was waiting for me the hallway near the main entrance. He was a young man, blond, pasty, wearing chic, slim black trousers and a crisp white button-down. I had liked him on sight when we first met; but all his warmth and joviality had disappeared.
My son was sitting on a couch in the office waiting, looking proper and innocent in his navy-blue-and-white uniform, with its little red crest embroidered on the chest of his polo shirt.
I sat beside him while the principal took a seat behind the desk.
“Would you like to tell your mother why we’re here?” he asked. “Or shall I?”
My son shrugged, looked casually at his fingernails. “It was an accident,” he said lightly.
“He gave a classmate a peanut butter sandwich today,” said the principal. “This student has a severe nut allergy. And he was rushed to the hospital.”
Mr. Cruz, that was his name. They are all running together, these school officials with their stern faces and devastating words. I had packed the lunch this morning-macaroni and cheese, baby carrots, an apple, some steamed broccoli in a thermos. There was a strict no-nuts policy at this and most schools. Every mother with a school-age child knows that.
“I didn’t pack him a peanut butter sandwich,” I said.