In the Blood (29 page)

Next I checked the search-engine history. Again, at first glance it was pretty benign: questions about getting to the next level on his video game, general inquiries about bats in New York State, cool and scary scavenger hunts, killer chess moves (little bastard; I’d done the same thing). You could tell a lot about a person from his search-engine history. Don’t we all enter our questions into a little box on our computer screens? We expect all the answers to be there now, at our fingertips. Whatever ails us, worries us, interests us, makes us wonder. It’s all just a few keystrokes away, the whole universal net of knowledge accessible in a heartbeat. Our stream of consciousness is recorded now in digital form. Wading through Luke’s, I almost—almost—breathed a sigh of relief. He was just a kid after all. He found some spooky stuff online and he was trying to scare me. Any connection to the things that I was hiding was coincidence. I almost thought that. I almost had myself a good laugh.

Then, down near the bottom of the list, I saw my mother’s name. The sight of it cut a valley through me. He’d entered it weeks ago. In fact—I did some quick figuring in my head—he’d entered the name into his computer a week before I answered Rachel’s ad. I sat, staring at the screen, struggling to piece together how that might be and what it might mean. I ticked back over the last few weeks, months, to think how he and I might be connected. But there was nothing, just a dark churning in my mind. He does know me, I thought. He knows who I am. And with this thought, I felt equal parts terror and
relief. The weight of lies is a terrible burden. It’s always a relief to lay it down, no matter how horrible the consequences.

There was a noise downstairs and I froze. I waited, feeling my heart thump in my chest. Then I heard it again and relaxed. It was the stupid icemaker, dropping cubes in the tray. I turned back to the screen and again began to follow the trail of his research. There was a mass of information about my mother and her murder—feature articles, entries on the crime Web sites, links to documentary footage, news-story clips.

Naturally, there was also a wealth of information about my father. There was the group lobbying for his freedom, led by a private investigator and a journalist who had recently published a book. They believed that my father, due to the sensational nature of the case, didn’t get a fair trial. Because he himself had been an acclaimed journalist before the murder, the media feeding frenzy was significantly ramped up and the pressure on the police to make an arrest was high. There was another man, my mother’s alleged lover, who was never found. The police, they claimed, arrested the most likely suspect even with a dearth of physical evidence, largely because of “the eyewitness testimony of a distraught and mentally disturbed child.” That would be me.

The group had another member—my father’s fiancée. She was a lawyer who’d worked on his case and subsequently fallen in love with him. As you might imagine, I worked very hard not to think about any of this, ever. I never watched television. I had hidden myself away in a little school under another name, and Bridgette and Sky had worked tirelessly to keep me cloistered and protected. But here it all was, scrolling out before me on an eleven-year-old’s computer screen.

I saw pictures of a much younger me, looking as grim-faced and pale as a corpse, blank really. That’s what the media kept saying
about me: that I was blank, unemotional, odd. I was always sandwiched between my aunt and my grandmother (who died the year after my father was convicted. It took all the life out of her, really. You could see her draining, shrinking, growing gray).

In the pictures, though it was more than six years ago, I didn’t look that different than I do now. I had the same short haircut, the same stooped, too-thin frame. I had always considered myself exceedingly ugly—and the taunts of my classmates had served to confirm my low opinion of myself. I was more comfortable with my looks now. I no longer imagined that people were gawking at my small body, my pallor. Because I’d figured out how to make these things work for me. And I’d figured out that no one cared, not really. No one gave a shit about anything but himself. People were addled by their own chatter, their own personal litany of fears and insecurities, self-loathing, and selfish desires. Hardly anyone could hear over that. I was invisible if I wanted to be. And that’s what I would have been if not for Beck. She was the first person to notice me, the real me. She was the first person who ever really wanted me, who wanted to love me.

I pushed myself away from the computer. I couldn’t look at it anymore. I was about to leave, get my stuff and run as far away from this house as I could get when I noticed the light on in Luke’s walk-in closet. It beckoned me in.

I stood among Luke’s legion of blue jeans, chinos and cords, and primary-colored shirts, organized by shade and sleeve length. I snooped through a few of his drawers—underwear, socks, folded T-shirts in soft, scented stacks. Something, a draft, a sound, caused me to look up. And that’s when I saw the attic access door. I reached to pull on the dangling string, and the door came down easily. And a ladder unfolded smoothly with it. I looked up into the dark maw of the attic, and didn’t hesitate a second before I climbed up.

Do you believe in fate, diary? Do you believe that our whole lives are laid out before us, a path from which we cannot veer, with a predetermined end from which we cannot escape? I never believed in that. I always believed that you created your life. I always thought that all your power lay in your choices. I don’t believe that anymore.

The choices we made to bring us to Florida, to enroll our son in this new school, to be a family, a real family for maybe the first time? These were the right choices. They were positive and proactive. And it was, for a time, good for everyone, most especially our boy. But were these choices really? Or were they reactions? Reactions to something that life had thrown at us, something we didn’t choose and didn’t want. Is there a difference between reaction and choice? I don’t know the answer.

The good news is that our years down here have made all the difference for my child. Thanks to the teachers and counselors at his school, the success of a cocktail of medications he has been taking, his behavior has normalized. And the onset of puberty,
albeit a much delayed onset, seems to have mostly corrected the hormonal imbalance he’d been suffering from. He’ll always be small. He’ll have little hair growth, and no discernible Adam’s apple. And, even I have to admit, there’s something decidedly feminine about him. But he’s calmer. Of course, he’s calm almost to the point of being flat. That’s the medication, though. He has loving moments, sweet moments. Moments when he seems just like any other kid. And for us, that’s a miracle.

People sometimes mistake him for a girl, but this doesn’t seem to bother him.

“I don’t feel like a boy or a girl,” he told me recently. And I didn’t know what to say. “I don’t know who to love.”

“Romantic love is overrated,” I told him. “Love yourself first.”

He nodded, seemed to understand. But maybe he didn’t. I only meant to say that I didn’t care about his sexual orientation, that he was free to be whoever he was. I just wanted him to find a way to be happy, in spite of his challenges.

And for the first time ever, I have hope that he might do that. He has attended the school for four years now. And his doctors believe that he is well enough, strong enough, to come home and go to a normal high school. And I agree. I am ready for him to return to us full-time. I only wish he was coming home to happier parents.

My husband and I have agreed to stay together for the sake of our son. I know: what a cliché. But there we are. Because our child’s mental health is so fragile, and I don’t believe he can handle another blow to his psyche, we have agreed to live our separate lives together. We won’t argue or fight in front of him. We have promised each other not to do that, and I hope we can be true to our word. I am not always great at biting back my
feelings, or keeping from goading him when I’m angry. And my husband’s temper, his rage—it’s a force to be reckoned with. Is it any wonder our child has so many problems?

Whatever renaissance we briefly experienced in our love has waned again. I still have those dates in my calendar, those secret assignations where I pretended that he was my lover. It seems silly now. Any married couple knows that passion might be the pilot light of a successful relationship but it is not nearly enough to sustain you through the years. When hardships befall us, we don’t come together. We break apart.

He lost his job a while ago, or rather, his job disappeared from underneath him, leaving him in a professional free fall.

It was the blow to his ego, the loss of pride, the loss of the one thing he knew he could do better than anyone else. That’s what did him in. Because even when he was failing at home—disturbed child, marriage in tatters—he’d always had the work that he loved. The assignments that took him all over the world, the prizes and accolades, the television appearances—they nourished him. Without it all, he was starving.

Naturally, he blamed me. Because it’s always my fault. I had asked him to spend more time at home, so he took fewer and fewer assignments. We moved from New York, the hub of the universe, to Florida—its armpit according to my husband. Later, he took a position as an editor at his paper’s local field office. It felt to him like being put out to pasture. He was doing less and less of what he loved. At first, he said it was a gift, his opportunity to write the book he’d always wanted to write. But he didn’t do that.

Initially, our renewed passion distracted him from his career issues. But that proved short-lived. That was always the problem;
without the big stuff—the passion, excitement, success—the little stuff was never enough to sustain us. The fighting started up again, the blaming, the accusing. It often got physical. I am ashamed to admit that there was a small, dark place inside me that enjoyed those battles. It was almost as if we craved and needed the drama. It was a welcome distraction from the day-to-day of a job he hated, the bills, the laundry, the house. Sometimes it seems as if, as a couple, we aren’t equipped to handle a normal existence. It’s almost a relief to connect in anger when we can’t connect any other way.

Now even our son has normalized to the extent that he will. Tomorrow, he’s starting at a well-regarded private high school near home. And my husband has sworn that he intends to hunker down into his novel—which is what all journalists do when they’ve been downsized. But I’m not sure that the quiet work of sitting and writing will agree with him—without the bustle of travel, the pressure of deadlines, the thrill of the interview. He’s just begun and already he is noticeably more cranky, sulky, frustrated.

And me? What about me? you ask. I suppose I’m all right. I volunteer at a group home for abandoned adolescent girls. Drawing on my distant and none-too-impressive fashion background, I teach them how to dress for success. I teach them about the message they send with their bodies, the clothes they choose, the signals that inadequate hygiene telegraphs to other people. I show them what’s appropriate for school, for job interviews, even for dates.

It might seem silly and frivolous. Does it? But I can see the girls’ self-esteem improving as they start to take pride in their appearance, maybe for the first time. I pay attention to each
of them, helping them with hairstyles, light makeup, bringing clothes from my own closet, buying some things for each of them. I teach them to choose clothes that are appropriate, pretty, but not suggestive. And it’s funny how paying attention to these small things seems to make a big difference in how they feel. And I think I’m helping. And in helping them, I’m helping myself.

Sometimes my son comes with me. And the girls treat him like a pet, doting on him and telling him how cute he is. He still does have that delicate, doll-like beauty he always had. I have discovered about him that he feels comfortable surrounded by the company of women and girls. Something about him relaxes and grows easy; he smiles with them, even laughs. He fits in with a group of girls struggling to find themselves, to find their way. He lets them dress him, put makeup on him like a doll. And maybe it’s weird. But he seems so happy that I let it be. He wipes the makeup off in the car, before we get home to his father.

So that is our life right now. And even though I wouldn’t say that we are happy and there are so many things I’d like to change, I don’t see how things could be any different than they are. We have reacted to our circumstances, and those reactions have formed our life.

I think this will be my last entry, diary. I hope you won’t be offended, but I am not sure I need you anymore. It’s time to move on from navel-gazing and moaning about the hardships in my life. Journaling about my feelings is starting to feel like a waste of time. There are no answers here with you. And I think it’s time to start the business of accepting my life as it is, and just living every day the best way that I can.

I have come to believe that all those New Age ideas to which my sister clings, and which sound so nice on paper—all of that
stuff about choosing your own destiny and making your life and asking the universe for what you want—that maybe all of it is just bullshit. There’s no divine and mystical force, no karma, no what-you-give-you-get-back kind of balance. No, I no longer believe that we create our lives. I think that maybe life creates us.

I climbed the ladder and it creaked beneath me. A heavy, musty smell wafted down on a breath of cold air as I emerged into a large, nearly empty space. A milky light washed in from a round window on the far side of the attic, and the effect was to give a misty-gray, nearly ghostly quality to the air.

It would have been spooky if not for the litter of candy wrappers on the floor. Kid contraband. The type of sweets—Snickers, Milky Way, Mars bar, gummy worms, Swedish Fish—that Rachel would never allow Luke.
Sugar turns him into a monster. We both know it and he craves it just the same.