I wondered if Lana had come to blame herself for my decision to send back Maddox. If so, she couldn’t have been more wrong. It wasn’t anything Lana had done that decided the issue. The blame had always lain with Maddox.
“Maddox had to go,” I said starkly, still too appalled by the evil I’d seen in the subway station to reveal what had truly convinced me to send Maddox back.
The thing that struck me as most odd now, while Lana sipped nonchalantly at her coffee, was the sweetness that had preceded that terrible moment. Beauty and the Beast had come to its heartbreaking conclusion, and, along with the rest of the audience, we were on our way out of the theater, Lana on my right, Maddox on my left. As we approached the front doors, Lana suddenly bolted ahead to where items associated with the show were on sale. Maddox, however, remained at my side.
“I liked it,” she said softly, and with those words, she took my hand in hers and held it tenderly. “Thank you.”
I smiled. “You’re welcome,” I said as my heart softened toward her, and I once again harbored the hope that all would be well. Lifted by that desire, I stepped over to the counter and bought two refrigerator magnets. I gave one to Lana, who seemed much more interested in the T-shirts, and the other one to Maddox.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “I will always keep it.”
She turned toward a couple who were exiting the theater. They had a little girl in tow, each holding on to one of the child’s hands.
“That’s what I want,” she said in that odd way she sometimes said things, looking off into the middle distance, speaking, as it seemed, only to herself. “I want to be an only child.”
By then, Lana had made her way to the theater’s front door. “Can we go to Jake’s, Dad?” she asked when we reached her.
Jake’s was a pizza place in the Village where we tended to have dinner on those days that we found ourselves downtown and didn’t want to rush home to cook.
I looked at Maddox.
“Jake’s okay with you?” I asked happily.
She smiled that sweet smile of hers. “Sure” was all she said.
The subway was only a few blocks away. We walked to it amid the usual Times Square crowd, at that time a curious mixture of vaguely criminal low-life and dazzled tourists.
On the train, I sat with Maddox on one side and Lana on the other, a formation that continued as we exited the train and made our way to the restaurant. During the meal, Lana spoke in a very animated way about Beauty and the Beast, while Maddox remained quiet, eating her slice of pizza slowly, sipping her drink slowly, her gaze curiously inward and intense, like one hatching a plot.
We were done within half an hour. The restaurant was near Washington Square, and so, before returning home, we strolled briefly in the park. Lana glanced up as we passed under the arch, but Maddox stared straight ahead in the same inward and intense way I’d noticed at the restaurant.
“You okay?” I asked as we left the park and headed for the subway.
Again, she offered me her sweet smile. “I’m fine,” she said.
We descended the stairs, then one by one we each went through the turnstiles and headed down the long ramp that led to the uptown trains. We were about halfway down when I heard the distant rumble of our train heading into the station. “Come on, girls,” I said and instinctively bolted ahead, moving more quickly than I thought, as I realized when I turned to look behind me.
The train had not yet reached the station, but I could see its light as it emerged from the dark tunnel. On the platform, perhaps ten yards behind me, both Lana and Maddox were running. Lana was skirting the edge of the platform, with Maddox to her left, though only by a few inches. I looked at the train, then back at the girls, and suddenly I saw Maddox glance over her shoulder. She must have seen the train barreling out of the tunnel, for then she faced forward again and, at that instant, leaned to her left, bumping her shoulder against Lana’s so that Lana briefly stumbled toward the pit before regaining her footing, as if by miracle.
I heard Maddox’s voice in my mind: to be an only child.
The little girl who’d been the object of Maddox’s murderous intent was now a grown woman with children of her own, and I had only to look across the table to reassure myself that I’d done the right thing in sending Maddox away. To have done otherwise would have put Lana at risk. Other children had done dreadful things, after all, and that searing episode in the subway station convinced me that Maddox was capable of such evil, too. She had declared what she’d wanted most in life and then ruthlessly attempted to achieve it. I had no way of knowing if she would make another attempt, but it was a chance I wasn’t willing to take, especially since the intended victim was my own daughter.
“Maddox had to go,” I repeated now.
Lana didn’t argue the point. “I remember the day you took her to the airport,” she said. “It was raining, and she was wearing that sad little raincoat she’d brought with her from the South.” She looked at me. “Remember? The one with the hood.”
I nodded. “That coat made her look even more sinister,” I said dryly.
Lana looked at me quizzically. “Sinister? That’s not a word I would use to describe Maddox.”
“What word would you use?” I asked.
“Damaged,” Lana answered. “I would say that Maddox was damaged by life.”
“Perhaps so,” I said, “but Maddox had done some damage of her own.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that she stole an answer sheet at Falcon Academy,” I said. “One of her classmates saw her.”
“You mean Jesse Traylor?” Lana laughed. “He just got caught himself. Cheating on his taxes.” She took a sip from her cup. “Jesse was the school apple-polisher, a tattletale who would have done anything to ingratiate himself with the headmaster.”
Cautiously, I said, “Even lie about Maddox?”
“He’d have lied about anyone,” Lana said. She saw the disturbance her answer caused me. “What’s the matter, Dad?”
I leaned forward. “Did he lie about Maddox?”
Lana shrugged. “I don’t know.” She glanced toward the street where two little girls stood outside a theater. “She apologized, by the way,” she said. “Maddox, I mean. For slapping me. Not a spoken apology.” She looked as if she were enjoying a sweet memory. “But I knew what she meant when she did it.”
“Did what?” I asked.
“Nudged me,” Lana answered. “It was a way we had of telling each other that we were sorry and wanted to be sisters again.” She smoothed a wrinkle from her otherwise perfectly pressed sleeve. “After we had pizza at Jake’s,” she said. “In the subway. We were running for the train, and Maddox gave me that hostile look she used when she was joking with me, and then she just nudged me, and that was her way of saying that she was sorry for hitting me, and that she knew I was sorry for what I’d said to her.” She looked at me softly. “And since we were both sorry, things were going to be okay.”
With those words, Lana finished her coffee. “Anyway, it’s quite sad what happened to Maddox.” She folded her napkin and placed it primly beside her plate. “The way she never got her balance after she left us.” She smiled. “And so she just… finally… stumbled into the pit.”
“Into the pit,” I repeated softly.
Shortly after that, we parted, Lana returning to her husband and children, I back to my apartment, where, with Janice out of town, I would spend the next few days alone.
I passed most of that time on the balcony, looking down at the tamed streets of Hell’s Kitchen, my attention forever drawn to families moving cheerfully toward the glittering lights of Times Square, fathers and mothers with their children in tow, guiding them, as best they could, through the shifting maze. I saw Maddox in every tiny face, remembered the tender touch of her small hand in mine, her quiet “Thank you,” for the little refrigerator magnet she had returned to me; the last bit of kindness I’d shown before sending her out of our lives forever.