Every Fifteen Minutes (22 page)

Eric ignored her talk, which struck him as profoundly ugly in the circumstances. “You need to think and help me—”

“Max, Max, Max, that's all I ever hear, everybody's worried about Max. My mother, all the time worried about Max, he has no friends, he spends too much time on the computer, that's all I ever hear.”

“Marie, time is of the essence here. Did he have any friends at all, at school or at work, even from the neighborhood, that you know of—”

“Nobody needs to worry about Max, believe me. I can tell you right now, he's a liar, a what-do-you-call-it, a
pathological
liar. You can't trust him.” Marie pushed a stray strand of light brown hair from her face, trying to smooth it back into a long, messy ponytail. “He says he doesn't have friends, but I hear him on the phone at night, talkin' to somebody.”

Eric's ears pricked up. “Who, do you know? Another kid from school? Or work? A gamer?”

“God knows, you can't believe
anything
he says, I know. Nobody knows him better than I do,
nobody
. I nursed that boy and he looked at me funny from the minute he was born. There's something really weird about that kid and there always was. He's not like everybody else. He's not normal—”

“But who was he talking to? Did you tell the police about that?”

“No, he coulda been talkin' to himself, for all I know, or trying to fool me.” Marie waved him off, seeming to take it back. “You think you know Max, but you don't. He got you fooled. That kid is
crazy
. His father was the same way, but he wasn't as smart, didn't hide the crazy as well, just had a weird look in his eyes. Max pulls that little-boy-lost routine, but believe me, I know better. That kid is a master manipulator. He manipulated my mother and got everybody at that school fooled. He's so damn smart. He was in gifted from third grade, and if he's a genius, he's an evil genius.”

Eric doubted that Max went to the mall, so there had to be another place. “Did he go to the school, to the park, a ballfield, or a place like that?”

“No, no, no no, he should be here, but he's nowhere to be found. Do you think he cares about me? It's
my
mother who died, not his.
His
mother is alive and sitting here by herself, all by my lonesome. Zack had to go out of town, and Max knows that, but does he care? Is he here to take care of me in my hour of need? I ask you, what about me? Why doesn't
anybody
worry about me? Why doesn't
my own mother
worry about me? They don't show me any respect, they
kick me when I'm down,
they don't know what it's like, they don't know my pain, they have no idea.” Marie seemed to pause, focusing on Eric anew, with a deep frown. “I want to know who the
hell
you think you are,
Doctor.
Where you get off seeing my son without my permission, without me even
knowing.
He's not eighteen yet, do you know that? How is
that
legal? You tell me.”

“It is legal,” Eric answered, calmly. “Even though Max is a minor, he can seek counseling without parental consent.”

“I don't believe that for a single minute, that can't be legal, that's definitely
not
legal!”

“It is, but I have an obligation to speak with you if he becomes suicidal, and that's why I came tonight. I'm concerned that—”

“What does he talk about when he sees you, huh?” Marie sniffed, arching a thin eyebrow. “He probably tells you all about me, they always blame everything on the mother, don't they? What does he say about me?”

“I'm not permitted to tell you what we talk about—”

“What do you mean you're
not permitted
to tell me? He's my son, my only child. I'm his mother. I have every right to know.” Marie folded her arms, bouncing on the balls of her barefeet but almost tripping on her hem. “I want to know what he said about me, or I'm not telling you a
damn
thing.”

“Marie, if we can cooperate we can help him—”

“How'm I gonna live now? What am I gonna live on? My salary, it sucks! Max knows where her money is, like three different accounts, plus she gets Social Security. I looked through his room and his desk but I couldn't find it. I tried to get into his laptop, too, but he has it under a password. Did he talk to you about the money? Did he tell you where the money is?”

“I can't answer what he did or didn't talk about in therapy,” Eric answered, but he was starting to form a plan.

“Then how did they pay you, by check? I want to know that account number. I have every right to know where that money is, every penny of it. I'm going to get what's coming to me and I'm not going to let that kid, or
her,
do me out of what's mine.” Marie gritted her teeth in anger. “God knows where they hid her checks, you'd think there would be one around, but that kid is such a
sneak.
”

“You know, if I could see his room, I might be able to find the accounts, or something that can lead to the accounts.” Eric thought that if he could look around in Max's bedroom, maybe he could find something that would tell him where the boy had gone. His professional instincts told him that it might be a boundary violation, but he wasn't going to stand on technicalities if it could save Max's life.

“Why the hell not? Follow me.” Marie walked away, somewhat unsteadily, lifting her bathrobe so she didn't trip.

Eric followed her to the left, where there was a short stairwell.

“Let there be light.” Marie clawed the wall, hitting a light switch on the second try. A frosted glass fixture went on overhead, illuminating a brown carpet in a stairwell in need of vacuuming. Scuffmarks marred the off-white walls, and nothing was hung on the wall going up the stairs.

“Here let me help.” Eric worried Marie would fall even though she put a hand on the banister, so he guided her by the elbow, climbing the stairs.

“Aren't you such a gentleman?” Marie chuckled under her breath, and they reached the second-floor landing together, where she flipped on the other overhead light. There was a short hallway with three closed doors, but only one had a large black poster of a robot/camera, which read Portal. It looked like it had come from a video game, and Eric didn't know if it was a pun, but he followed Marie as she opened the door and went inside.

Eric crossed the threshold, though red flags started waving. He had never been in the bedroom of a patient and sensed that his colleagues, and maybe even Arthur, would have disapproved, but a life was at stake. The air smelled fresh, the white walls unscuffed, and Eric sensed that Max's bedroom was probably the neatest, cleanest room in the house, an oasis amid the clutter, chaos, and grime.

It was a small room, with two windows on either side of a queen bed with a gray-and-white striped comforter, neatly tucked in around the sides. On the left was a wall-mounted metal bookshelf that held school books, lined up, and underneath that, a black computer desk with two large monitors, a keyboard with a plastic cover, and an array of video game joysticks and controllers, one shaped like a gun. The floors were hardwood, uncovered except for a blue rag rug beside the bed. Eric didn't see anything that would lead him to know more about where Max could be or who he had been on the phone with.

Eric walked to the desk. “Marie, would you mind if I looked in his drawers, just to see if there's anything that can help?”

“Suit yourself,” Marie answered, seeming to have forgotten Eric's pretense for searching the room, that he was looking for bank accounts. Maybe she'd realized that he'd wanted to snoop or maybe she didn't care.

“Thanks.” Eric opened the desk drawers, one by one, and inside them were school supplies, Bubblicious, Skittles, comic books, manga books, and old boxes of Magic cards. Eric drew the line at going into the computer and he didn't know the password anyway.

“You see he keeps everything neat, he always did, even put his toys away when he was little, stacked up all the blocks, the crayons in the right holes in the box, he dried off all his own paintbrushes, all by himself. He never gave me any trouble, not really.”

“He painted?” Eric straightened up, remembering the waterpaints that Max had described and his ritual of saying the colors.

“Loved to paint, painted all the time, I stuck the pictures somewhere, I saved a lot of them.”

“I'd love to see them.” Eric eyed the video game posters that lined the far walls, neatly tacked up in a row like an alternative art gallery of robots, zombies, transformers, and paramilitary types, with anonymous masks for faces, above Sine Mora, Assura's Wrath, The Walking Dead, World of Warcraft, Game of Thrones, Diablo III, Tomb Raider, Dark Souls 2, Wolfenstein: The New Order.

“Video games, right? We
get
it.” Marie snorted. “I'll tell you, once that boy latches onto something, he latches onto something. He's obsessed with these games, I tell you that. He used to try to explain it to me, what the plots were like, when he was a little boy. He used to talk to me, we got along good then, just him and me.”

Eric heard the tone of her voice changing, softening, and her gaze had strayed from the posters to a single photograph, on the night table. It was of Marie herself as a lovely young mother holding a giggling baby boy, who must've been Max. Mother and son were looking into each other's eyes, and Marie was smiling at her baby boy, who reached his pudgy hand toward her face.

“He was so cute then, so smart, even then, he was a good baby, really good baby, he never cried or fussed, wherever you put him, there he stayed, looking at books or DVDs, he would watch anything, even then.”

“How old was he, in that photo?”

“There, he was one, just cut his teeth, had a full set, that's a sign of intelligence, you know.” Marie's eyes filmed. “We were close then, even 'til he was five or six or seven. When he first started school, I used to read to him at night, and he loved that.”

Eric thought of Hannah, roughly the same age.

“I gave this to him for his birthday.” Marie walked over to the bookshelf, and next to the trig textbook sat a small plush rabbit of threadbare yellow, folded over on itself, collapsed. She picked it up.

“Which birthday, do you remember?” Eric asked, to get her talking.

“Sure, his third, we lived in Delaware then and we rented a nice place, a studio apartment near Lewes. That was our bes' time, our
best
time together, just him and me.”

“When did you move from there?”

“When he was four, almos' right after, I remember this bunny was all he wanted for his birthday, he saw it in the Kmart and he had to have it, and he loved it.” Marie returned the toy to the bookshelf and tried to make it sit up, but it doubled over again, his ears flopping forward. “Right after then, I met Bob, and he drank, and I started drinking with him, and I moved to Aston with him, then we broke up, but in the meantime, we los' our way together, Max and me, we los' each other. I didn't know you can lose people but you can, you lose your way and you lose the people on that way, and I think I became a bad mother.” Marie turned to Eric suddenly, her eyes brimming. “I know you think I'm a bad mother. I am, I know it too.”

“I don't judge,” Eric said, though he had been. He tried to tap into his professional self. “I know it's hard to be a parent, and we all make mistakes.”

“Do you have kids?”

“Yes, a seven-year-old girl.”

“Nice, what's her name?”

Eric realized he'd never had a patient ask his child's name, then he reminded himself that Marie wasn't a patient. “Hannah.”

“You get along, spend time with her?”

“Yes.” Eric felt his throat catch. He didn't want to lose his way with Hannah, ever.

“That's good, don' make the mistakes I did, you gotta hold him close, you gotta always stay in touch with him.” Marie blinked tears from her eyes, and though she seemed to be sobering up, Eric wasn't sure she was addressing him anymore, but her former self.

“Tell me what happened with Max.”

“I tried to be a good mother, and I was for a long time, but then I turned bad, and okay, so maybe I drink, I admit it, and I'm not proud of it, I'm not, I went to rehab once but it didn' work.” Marie smoothed her hair back into its ponytail, then tugged her bathrobe closed in front. “But that's normal, everybody says it, relapse is a part of recovery and all that, everybody has trouble now and then, that's when we moved up here with my mother, and she did such a good job with him, and he loves her so much, he does, more than me, I know it.” Tears welled in her eyes, and she sank onto the bed, hanging her head. “Now it's too late to change it, to get it back, he's grown up, it's over.”

“It's not too late, it's never too late.” Eric crossed to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “We need to find him, and if we find him, I promise you I can help him. I can get you some help, too.”

“No you can't, it's not possible.” Marie shook her head, wiping her eyes with the cuffs of her overlong sleeves.

“Yes, it is possible. All you have to do is want it, Marie. I've seen people turn their lives around, people in a lot worse shape than you.”

“For real?” Marie looked up, her eyebrows lifting, her aspect newly hopeful, and Eric heard Max's voice in hers, remembering he had said the same phrase, during session.

“Yes, for real.” Eric told her, but first he had to find Max.

And he had only one move left.

 

Chapter Twenty-six

Eric left Max's street, driving with the phone to his ear, leaving yet another message for Max, who hadn't answered the call: “Max, it's Dr. Parrish calling you again. Please call me, no matter how late. I can help, so please call.” He hung up as he drove, then dialed 911.