“But he had one nonetheless,” said Mr. Cruz. “He told the student that it was hypoallergenic.”
“Why would he do that?” I said. I looked at my son, who was still looking at his nails. “Why would you do that?”
No answer.
“There was a kerfuffle on the playground a couple of days ago,” said the principal. “The other student pushed your son. A teacher intervened.”
“Why wasn’t I made aware of this?”
“You were sent an e-mail,” said the principal, straightening up his shoulders. “It was a fairly minor incident. But whenever there’s a physical conflict, we inform the parents.”
I never received an e-mail. But it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t been home in the afternoons. He could have easily gone to my computer and deleted any message from the school. He was staring at me now.
“Is he all right?” I asked. “The child.”
“He will be,” said Mr. Cruz. “There have been other incidents, as you know.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Do we have the right e-mail address for you?” he asked, looking at his computer screen.
“What other incidents?”
Mr. Cruz regaled me with my son’s activities over his first three weeks of school. He pulled the fire alarm on the first day. He was caught doing so by the security camera. He relentlessly taunted a little girl for being adopted, causing her to have an epileptic seizure brought on by stress (according to the girl’s mother). He wrote profanity on the chalkboard during math class when he’d been asked to solve a problem on the board. Now this.
“Do you deny any of this?” I asked my son.
“No,” he said. “But I did think I smelled smoke. That girl called me a shrimp, because I was the smallest kid in class. I was just giving her a taste of her own medicine. And the problem the teacher gave me was too easy. I had some extra time.”
Here I saw what my mother had been talking about: the smile-the slight, cruel little turn at the corners of his mouth. I hadn’t seen it before. My heart filled with dread at the sight of it. The principal asked him to wait outside, which he did, exiting in the most sullen way possible with a dark backward glance and a slam of the door. It was theater, though. He didn’t care. He wanted to be thrown out; he wanted to be home with me.
“The sandwich was a clear retaliation for the events of the day before,” said Mr. Cruz. “The other student is quite large, somewhat of a bully, and suffers from learning challenges. He did overpower your son, who has been taking some guff for his small size.”
I felt myself nodding. The room was growing hot, and the principal’s voice distant.
“So I see why he was angry. But the premeditation is what disturbs me, as it should you. He sought revenge in both cases and exacted it. That’s not normal. The other things-the fire alarm, the profanity on the board, okay. We deal with that here. But this-it’s disturbing. The other boy could have been killed. And he knew it.”
“Yes,” I said. “I agree that it’s very upsetting. What do we do? We brought him here because you specialize in difficult children.”
“We are not equipped to handle a behavior problem like your son. You’ll need to find a facility more suited to his needs.”
I couldn’t believe how many different ways there were to express this sentiment, which I had heard a total of five times now. I don’t remember the rest of the visit, or the car ride from the school to our house. I quit my job that afternoon, and I called my husband and asked him to come home. But it was too late.
Knowing what I knew, I shouldn’t have left them to go to the store. I should have known that he heard my mother and me talking that night, that he knew I had already called the school upstate.
I should have had Mr. Cruz’s words ringing in my ears: But the premeditation is what disturbs me, as it should you. He sought revenge in both cases and exacted it.
What happened is unclear. My mother’s memory of the events is fuzzy. And my son claims-passionately and tearfully-that he had no idea what precipitated my mother’s fall in the bathroom, where her head knocked against the marble tub and she lay unconscious until I returned home from the store. My son was upstairs playing video games, and it was another fifteen minutes of my putting groceries away with no sound from behind the bathroom door in my master bathroom (which she never used) before I got concerned. I finally pushed my way inside the unlocked door and found her lying there, still and pale.
She regained consciousness in the hospital, but has a severe concussion and her doctor wanted her to stay overnight for observation.
“What happened, Mom?” I asked her when we were alone. She’d told the doctor that a rug slipped out from beneath her and she’d crashed backward.
“A very common fall,” he’d said. “You’re very fortunate it wasn’t worse, and that you weren’t alone.”
She swore to me that she didn’t know. She thought the rug might have slipped, and in fact it did look as though it had been bunched up on the floor.
“But why did you use that bathroom, and not the guest bathroom?” I asked.
“The door to the other bathroom was locked,” she said. “I thought he was inside, using the toilet, too embarrassed to answer when his grandma knocked on the door.”
It could have been an accident. There is no evidence to suggest that my son had anything to do with it. I inspected the rug, and there was nothing except a little extra water on the floor. The shower often sprayed out onto the tile if it wasn’t turned in the right direction. And perhaps I missed it this morning, didn’t wipe down the floor well enough. Maybe it was my fault.
In my heart, I don’t believe he would have willfully hurt his grandmother. I know he has problems, serious ones. But I know he loves her. In a lot of ways, he’s like a scientist. He does things just to see what the outcome will be. It’s not malice but a lack of empathy, an inability to envision consequences to others. You probably think that I am deeply in denial, diary. Maybe you’re right. But I have to cling to it, my faith that my son does have a heart. It might be slower than other hearts, but it does beat.
My mother is sleeping now, and my husband is home with our son. He seemed relieved to be called home, to be needed. And he knows that we need to talk, to make some decisions about our life and about our boy. We have to help him, if we can. And we have to help ourselves, as well as everyone else who may cross his path.
19
Dr. Cooper was waiting for me in her doorway, looking motherly and concerned. She had a mass of copper curls and a pretty, freckled face that always seemed to hold precisely the right expression. In her aura, I felt myself relax.
“How are you doing?” she asked as soon as I was inside.
I shrugged. “Not too great.”
“Okay,” she said. “Come in.”
Everything came tumbling out of me-everything to do with the police, with Luke, the scavenger hunt, Langdon. I told her about the Fakebook page and all the accusations there. She listened nodding, not reacting.
“Maybe your friend Ainsley has the right idea,” said the doctor. “Have you thought about going home?”
“I don’t have a home,” I said with more venom than I would have intended. I would have liked nothing better than to go home, someplace where I was safe and loved and accepted. But that place didn’t exist.
She pulled her mouth into a sympathetic line, bowed her head a little.
“To your aunt’s house,” she said. “You know your aunt would welcome you. She wants to be there for you.”
“And, while I’m down there, drop in on my father? On death row?”
“You’re angry,” she said. “I get it.”
“It doesn’t really seem fair, does it?” I asked. “I mean, is it me? Doesn’t this seem like quite the shit pileup?”