Keisha didn’t laugh. She said, “I know you feel a lot of anger toward your son, but I also sense that you love him very much.”
“Oh, you sense that, do you?”
“Yes, I do. And I know you’re actually very worried about him.”
“Because of these psychic powers you have?” Marcia asked sarcastically.
“No,” Keisha said. “Because I’m a mother. I have a son, too.”
Marcia’s face softened ever so slightly.
“Matthew. He’s ten. And believe me, there are days… But no matter what he does, no matter what kind of trouble he gets into at school, I love him. There’s nothing he could do that would ever change that. There might be times when I want to wring his neck, but I’d still love him as I was doing it.” Keisha smiled. “I’m joking, of course. About wringing his neck.”
“No, you don’t have to apologize,” Marcia said. “Justin, I swear… you just want to slap some sense into them.”
“I know.”
“He’s been a handful from the time he could walk, but once he hit his teens, it just got worse. Drinking, drugs, skipping school. I stopped giving him money because I knew he’d just blow it on drugs. But the thing is, this is the part that’s so heartbreaking, he’s such a smart boy.”
“I’ll bet he is,” Keisha said.
“I mean, anything he puts his mind to, he can do it. Computers, he’s a whiz with those. He can add up a column of numbers in his head. You say to him, what’s four hundred and twenty times six hundred and three, and just like that, he can tell you the answer. He’s probably some kind of genius, but instead of using his brain to accomplish something, he’s always trying to figure out how to work the system, get some money out of his mother, or”-and she nodded in the direction her husband had gone-“Dwayne. I know he gives Justin money behind my back. He’s got a soft spot for him, thinks I’m too tough on him. I think he was so taken with the idea of becoming a father, even a stepfather, that it’s blinded him to Justin’s faults. The thing is, he’s… there’s something not quite right about Justin. Sometimes he-and this is an awful thing to say, but sometimes he actually kind of scares me. Not physically, but what goes on in that head of his. I just wish…”
And then, without warning, tears welled out of her eyes and ran down her cheeks. “Oh, God, I hope nothing’s happened to him.”
Keisha got out of her chair and sat on the couch next to Marcia Taggart. “It’s going to be okay,” she said.
“I hope these will do,” Dwayne said, coming back into the living room with several items in his hands.
“Put them there,” Keisha said, indicating the coffee table, where she had already laid out two of her business cards.
Dwayne set them down gently. An iPod, a paperback copy of the novel American Psycho, a cancelled check, a plastic collectible figure of a grotesquely well-endowed woman in superhero garb.
Keisha handled them dubiously. “I’m not sure about-would you have an article of clothing? Something Justin wears regularly? Something that suggests his personality?”
Marcia said, “Get one of his hats.” She looked at Keisha. Her eyes were suddenly very weary. “Would a hat work?”
“I think so. In the meantime, let me have a look at these.”
Marcia picked up the cancelled check from the things Dwayne had delivered to Keisha and scowled. After a shake of her head, she folded it in half and held it in her fist. With her other hand she picked up the female action figure and studied it as though it were some obscure artifact from an alien civilization.
“Justin collects these things,” she said. “I just want to throw them all into the garbage. What’s a man in his twenties doing with toys like these? He must have five hundred of them. I don’t even know who this is supposed to be. Wonder Woman or-”
“Shh,” Keisha said gently, and closed her eyes. She handled the toy, then opened her eyes and picked up the iPod.
“He listens to this a lot,” Keisha said.
“He does.”
“I can feel… when he carries this, it’s often in his shirt pocket, right next to his heart,” she said.
“Well, I guess that’s where lots of people carry them,” Marcia said, looking skeptical again. “When you touch his earbuds, are you going to say he wore them right close to his brain?”
Keisha smiled ruefully at the woman. “I thought we were starting to get along.”
“All I’m saying is, that was a pretty obvious observation about the iPod.”
Keisha closed her eyes again and ran her fingers along the cool surface of the device. “I’m seeing… his eyes are closed.”
Marcia said, “What do you mean, closed? Like, sleeping? You see him sleeping? Lying down?”
“I don’t know. I’m just seeing him… I’m sure this doesn’t mean anything.”
“No, what is it?” Marcia asked. Pretty interested for someone so cynical.
“I don’t know whether he’s sleeping, or if it’s something else.”
“Like what? Are you saying he’s-are you saying he’s not alive?”
“No, I’m not saying that. I’m sure he’s alive. But his eyes are closed, and I’m wondering if he might be unconscious.”
“But you really don’t know,” Marcia said impatiently. “Don’t get me all upset if you don’t know what it-”
“Here’s one of his hats,” Dwayne said, coming back into the room. It was a basic ball cap, blue with a green visor, and a Hartford Whalers logo on the front.
Marcia opened her fist and displayed the check for her husband. “What’s this?”
“Justin endorsed it. His signature’s on the back,” Dwayne said defensively. “Keisha said she needed a sample of his handwriting. I didn’t know what else to get. Kids today, they do all their writing on the computer.”
“You wrote him a check for two hundred dollars behind my back?”
“Marcia, really, this isn’t the time.”
“Let me see that,” Keisha said, and took the check from the woman’s hand. She flipped it over and ran her index finger back and forth across Justin Wilcox’s signature. Wilcox was the last name of Marcia Taggart’s first husband, Justin’s father. “Can I have this?”
Marcia snatched it back, and tore away all the sections of the check surrounding the endorsement, including the part on the front with the account number, then returned the shred of paper bearing the signature to Keisha. “I don’t see any sense in giving you all my husband’s banking information.”
“Oh for the love of God,” Dwayne said. “Why not insult the woman while she’s trying to help us.”
“It’s all right,” Keisha said with unoffended patience as she tucked the slip of paper into the pocket of her jacket.
Marcia, plowing through her opportunity to apologize, said, “You were seeing Justin with his eyes closed. What’s that supposed to mean?”
Instead of answering, Keisha took the hat from Dwayne, stood up and started to walk around the room very slowly.
“What are you doing?” Marcia asked, but Keisha, who seemed to have slipped into some kind of trance, did not respond.
“Just let her do her job,” Dwayne said.
Keisha was saying something under breath, mumbling. Marcia said, “What did you say?”
She held up a hand and continued wandering. Then she stopped abruptly, turned and looked at Marcia. “What does scarf, or scarfy, or something like that mean to you? Does that word make any sense?”
Marcia’s mouth opened. “What? That doesn’t mean anything. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Keisha made a show of mental struggle. “Could it be ‘scar free?’ Is that possible? I’m seeing some kind of office. With empty filing cabinets. But ‘scar free,’ that must be wrong. Does Justin have any scars? Let me see his picture again.”
Dwayne had shown her a picture of his stepson moments after she’d arrived, a framed high school graduation shot. A thin boy, with a long, angular face. Dwayne was about to grab it off the mantel and show it to her again when Marcia said, “Oh my God. You said ‘scar free?’ Is that what you said? That does mean something.”
Keisha stopped kneading the hat in her hands. “What?”
“It was a clinic,” she said quietly.