Fragile (8 page)

Travis had been pulled over on the interstate, driving the wrong way at more than eighty miles an hour, blood alcohol over 0.2, his service revolver exposed on the seat beside him. Had he been in The Hollows, the incident would have been swept aside. But he was unlucky enough to run into a state trooper. It was his third offense in a decade, and this meant mandatory jail time, as well as the loss of his job.

“I don’t know if that guy is more dangerous on or off the job. But I guess we’ll see soon enough,” said Jones.

“I’m worried about Marshall.”

“You do what you can for him, Mags. But keep your distance. You’re his doctor, not his friend. It’s a professional relationship.”

He was right, but she still bristled at the comment. She quashed the urge to snap at him.
You think I don’t know how to keep a professional distance?
But after the fight last night, she was weary of angry words. It had started with Ricky about the tattoo, then morphed into something larger between the two of them. It was the old argument about how he
was too hard and she was too easy, how she always took Ricky’s side and he was always the bad guy. Thinking about it, she couldn’t even remember who said what, the memory was just an angry blur, like a landscape seen through the window of a car driving too fast. They’d been up late arguing and finally come to grudging peace before bed. She didn’t want another night like that.

He put a hand on her arm. “Don’t be mad,” he said. “I know you care about your patients. I just need you to protect yourself, too.”

Her annoyance dissolved instantly. “I know,” she said. “You’re right.”

She knew where the professional line was in terms of behavior, of course. But she didn’t seem to have a stopgap internally, didn’t always know when or how to stop caring on a personal level. It left her feeling drained sometimes, though she was better at protecting herself than she had been when she was younger.

“What about you?” she asked. She shifted in her seat, thinking the cushions were getting stiff and needed replacing. “Are you doing okay?”

There were leaves floating in the pool. They’d need to have someone out to clean and winterize, cover it for the season. Every autumn, she thought about her private promise to swim laps every day in the summer, enjoy the pool more on the weekends. And at the end of every season, she looked back with regret, thinking she could count on the fingers of one hand the times she’d done either.

“I’m just tired,” he said. “Just really tired.”

In the dim light, she watched him. He had his head back on the chair, looking up at the stars. She could already tell by the set of his jaw, the way his arms were folded across his body, that he wouldn’t say more. She drained her glass and thought about another, then noticed that the cut on her finger had started to bleed again.

She got up to bandage it, and when she returned, Jones had already gone inside. She found him lying on the couch, the remote in his hand.

“Want to watch anything?” he asked. But she knew he’d just flip through the channels until he found something that interested him.

“No,” she said. “Maybe I’ll just catch up on some paperwork.”

But he was already tuned out, just gave her a little nod. She stood in the doorway a minute, watched him settle in. She went upstairs and listened
at Ricky’s door, heard him singing along to something on his headphones. She worried that he hadn’t eaten but figured he’d know there was pizza downstairs when he got hungry. Then she drifted back to her office, unlocking that door, moving through quietly, and closing it behind her.

Their house was
always
dark, not like at Leila and Mark’s, where every light was always shining and there was a television going in one room, a radio playing in another. Everyone was always talking, yelling from room to room, his cousins were in and out, chatting on the phone, speaking in loud voices, laughing, arguing, goofing around.

Boys,
please
, Leila’s eternal plea. The
noise
. But she never really sounded angry, not in the way he was used to. Even when she was scolding, she always seemed on the verge of laughing.

The refrigerator was always full to bursting; there was always something simmering on the stove. There was no room for dark or quiet or cold in that house.

“It’s a three-ring circus over there,” his father complained. “How did you stand it?”

“The circus is
fun
, Dad. People laugh and have a good time.” He’d tried that good-natured joking around that was acceptable at his aunt’s house. But it didn’t work with his dad.

“The circus is for idiots.” His father’s words had the sting of a hard slap. Then, as if the slag weren’t already implied, “You must have felt right at home.”

Marshall
had
felt right at home. He really had. But when the judge had asked him where he wanted to live, he’d said, “I want to be with my dad.” And he
had
wanted that.

“Why, Son?” the judge had asked with something like disbelief. He remembered that office, overwarm and dusty. The judge sat behind a giant wood desk that Marshall would swear was designed to make people on the other side feel small. The shelves were lined with books, matching leather-bound volumes. He remembered that a few years ago,
this judge who looked so imposing now in his big black robe had slept on their couch, too drunk to drive home after a poker game. “Why would you want that?”

“Because he’s my dad.”

It was all Marshall could think to say. There was something deep within him that clung, held on tight. Even when he hated his father—and sometimes he really, really did—there was still a part of him that waited like a puppy for a bone. Anything—a smile, a pat on the shoulder. Anything.

Now he heard his father hammering in the basement. He flipped on the fluorescent light in the kitchen and walked over to the refrigerator. There were some dishes in the sink; the garbage was starting to smell. In the fridge, a six-pack of Miller Lite and the leftover Chinese takeout from last night sat lonely and uninviting. He let the door swing closed, then reluctantly walked down the hall and descended the stairs to the basement.

“You’re late,” his father said. Marshall sank onto the bottom step, wrapped his arms around his shins.

“Sorry.”

His father didn’t look up from what he was doing. “Where were you?”

Marshall didn’t answer. Travis let the hammer drop and turned his gaze on his son. Something about the look on his father’s face, and the hammer in his hand, made Marshall’s heart beat fast, his throat go dry.

“I told you to stop going there,” Travis said.

“I told her,” said Marshall quickly. “I told her I didn’t want her in my head anymore.”

Even saying it now, remembering how she’d looked at him, he felt sick. He didn’t tell his father how he’d hung around her house for hours, almost went to see her to apologize, then ran off when she came out and spotted him, too afraid, ashamed, confused to say what he wanted to say. All the words and emotions jammed up in his throat and his chest. All he could think to do was run.

Travis gave his son a nasty smile. “And what did she say to that?”

“She said it was my choice to come or not.”

“Damn right it is,” said Travis. He went back to his hammering, a slow lift and a heavy drop.

He was building shelves for his office. His father had a talent for things like that. The walls were painted, the new carpet laid. The office was starting to look good. They’d put together his desk, bought a computer on credit. They’d had a phone line installed and ordered a plaque:
TRAVIS CROSBY INVESTIGATIONS
. He was proud that he’d helped his father, even if Dr. Cooper didn’t seem overly impressed. What did she know?

“So where were you all this time?”

“I went to see this girl I know.”

“Oh, yeah?” Travis looked up at him, a crooked smile on his face. There was a shade of shared mischief there, the slightest hint of approval.

“And?”

“And we hung out. I took her for a ride in the car. She had to go home; she’s got a strict mother.”

“Is she a slut or a good girl?”

Marshall let out a little laugh at that. “I don’t know,” he said. He felt the heat rise to his face.

Travis gave him a look. “That was a trick question, Son. They’re all sluts.”

Now it was Travis’s turn to laugh; it sounded more like a cough. Marshall looked down at the toes of his combat boots, which he’d bought from the army-navy shop in town. He had that feeling he always had with his father, like he’d failed a test he didn’t know he was taking. No matter what answer he gave, it always seemed to be the wrong one.

“At least you’re seeing a girl in the flesh instead of living your life on that box upstairs.” His father meant the computer. Why he insisted on calling it a box, as if he didn’t know what it was or what it did, was beyond Marshall. His dad wasn’t
that
old.

“I didn’t hear you complaining when we hacked into Mom’s Facebook account,” said Marshall. He brought this up as often as possible because it always made his father smile.

Predictably, Travis let out a laugh at the memory. “That
was
pretty cool. Did she ever figure it out?”

“Nah. But she’s not seeing that guy anymore.”

Marshall had a gift for figuring out passwords. It really wasn’t that hard; most people were pretty lazy, wanted something easy to remember and then used that same password for everything. He knew his mother’s password for the wireless router at her place was his name and the year of his birth. Marshall figured it was probably the same for Facebook, and he was right. Last week, he and his dad had logged in to her account and left a wall message on her boyfriend’s page: I don’t want to see you anymore. Your dick is too small. You’ve never satisfied me.

Marshall hadn’t seen or called his mother since then. If his mother suspected him of hacking into her account, she didn’t get in touch to say so. Marshall noticed that she’d “unfriended” the loser she’d been dating, and that her boyfriend (now
ex-boyfriend)
had done the same to her. Mission accomplished.

Josh, Amber’s boyfriend, had been equally easy. His nickname on the football team was All-Star. Marshall guessed that was his password, and, again, he was right. Now the school was buzzing with Josh and Amber’s breakup. But, of course, she still didn’t seem that interested in Marshall, not even with the cool car and smokes. In fact, she’d practically run away from him.

His father went back to his hammering. It took Marshall a minute to realize that whatever nail Travis had been hammering was already sunk deep into the wood. Why was he still hitting it like that? Marshall stood and started to move back up the stairs.

Marshall didn’t have a lot of good memories of his father. Dr. Cooper had asked him to think of some moments when he’d felt happy and safe with his dad. He wasn’t sure what the point of that exercise had been, unless it was to make him feel more like shit than he already did. But he did come up with two occasions.

There was the time they went to the zoo together and his father had bought him an ice cream. He remembered that because it was his own cone; he didn’t have to share it. They’d seen some tigers. His father had said, “Man, they’re beautiful, aren’t they?” Marshall remembered looking
at his father’s face and seeing something strange there—maybe it was awe. Travis had dropped an arm around Marshall’s shoulder and squeezed him tight. Marshall remembered that his happiness had felt like a swelling in his chest.

Once, Travis took him to the beach. Neither of them had been wearing bathing suits, so they swam with their pants on. They’d jumped huge waves and laughed when they wiped out. They’d driven home wet and shivering, ordered a pizza, and watched a game afterward.

Also, it was always safe to be around Travis when he was busy building something. His temper didn’t flare when he had his mind on a project, or when he was having a good time doing something. It was places like the dinner table or the couch that should be avoided, anytime Travis was idle and looking for someplace to direct his attention.

“Need some help?” Marshall asked.

His father shot him a look, a kind of up-and-down appraisal, ending in a sneer of disapproval. “An hour ago maybe. But not now.”

Marshall stood for a moment, watching his father’s thick arm lift and drop with the hammer. He wanted to say,
Dad. You got it. You can stop hammering
. But he didn’t. Then, when it was clear his father didn’t intend to look up again, Marshall turned and shuffled back up the stairs. He took the sack of egg rolls from the fridge, threw it in the microwave for a few seconds, and carried it upstairs.

Marshall closed the door to his room and waded through the junk on the floor—gaming magazines, clothes that needed washing. He accidentally kicked an empty Coke can, and it rattled under the bed. He sank into the tattered gray computer chair in front of his homemade desk—two planks of wood balanced between stacked red milk crates. The familiar sense of relief washed over him as the screen came to life and he entered his password.

Online it was all different.
He
was different. He could visit with people who wouldn’t give him a second glance in real life. Like Charlene Murray. He logged in to Facebook and checked his in-box. It was predictably
empty, though sometimes he heard from a girl named Maya, whom he’d met in a science fiction chat group on AOL last year. She had an impressive knowledge of the genre, but she used a picture of Hello Kitty as her image on all the social networks, which meant she was probably ugly or fat. Still, he enjoyed talking to her and was disappointed that she hadn’t answered his last message.

He went straight to Charlene’s page, as he always did, checking first for any new photos of her. Then he checked his status updates; there was nothing new. He reread the only message she’d ever sent him personally, after he’d added her as a friend and she’d accepted. Hey, Marshall! Thanks for the friendship. See you at the Nook on Friday?

He’d thought it was a personal invitation until he realized that her band was playing at the club that catered to the underage set, serving sodas and junk food rather than booze. She’d sent that message to everyone. Still, wasn’t there something about the message she sent to him that was different? He thought so, though he couldn’t say what.