The Dead Place (14 page)

The man was thirteen when his father died. It was a gradual thing, this death that started with a cough that wouldn’t go away.

His mother had warned him about his smoking. She’d said that no good would come of that and wasn’t it bad enough that he’d had to take care of miners all these years, hadn’t he seen enough black lung to teach him anything?

The cancer took him in less than a year, shriveling his body so that at the end the boy could support his weight as he hobbled down the halls of the county hospital.

He’d go there after school, coming in to the dim room to see his father’s wan face light up and listen to him ask, as he did every day, “Do you feel like some Jell-O?”

It was the only thing he wanted to eat anymore, and the boy wasn’t sure that he could even taste it. The boy’s mother clucked her tongue over this when she visited.

“You’ve got to eat more than that or you’ll never get your strength back.” Though she’d been right there in the room when the doctor said that there was nothing they could do and it was just a matter of time.

Sometimes, she sent the boy to the hospital alone, claiming that she couldn’t bear to see her husband like that, though the boy noticed that she didn’t seem overcome with grief.

Through his father’s last winter, the boy’s mother made him keep up with schoolwork, music lessons, and the deportment classes offered by the only woman more socially conscious than her. On Wednesday evenings, he put on a pressed shirt and his Sunday suit and learned to waltz and speak properly along with fifteen other unhappy children. On other evenings, he sat alone at the piano in the front room while Poe worked alone in the basement beneath him.

His mother drilled good manners into the boy, practicing with him at the scarred Formica table in the kitchen, teaching him the proper placement of silverware and how to hold it. “Don’t clutch your spoon like that,” she said angrily, adjusting his hand. “If you act like a convict, you’ll be treated like one. Manners make the man.”

And he knew without her saying it that she didn’t like the way his father had sometimes chewed with his mouth open or reached for the bread without asking for it to be passed.

It was June when his father died. His body was brought back to his own funeral home and Poe prepared him for burial.

“Here, take him this suit.” His mother thrust his father’s Sunday suit, the black wool shiny with wear at the elbows and knees, into the boy’s hands.

Poe was washing the body when the boy came down the stairs. His father looked desiccated, his face hollow. The boy was suddenly frightened, but then Poe took the suit from his hands and held out a cloth, and once the boy touched it to his father’s skin he was okay. He placed his own hands on the body, the coolness of the skin exciting and centering him, bringing him more fully alive than he ever was without it.

Together, they washed the body. When the boy looked up, Poe was weeping.

Two weeks after the funeral, the boy left the town with his mother. She smiled and laughed, flirting with the taxi driver as he loaded their bags into the trunk of the car she’d hired to take them to the train station.

“This is a new start for us,” she said as the whistle blew. The train chugged slowly out of the station, and she squeezed his arm. Her touch repulsed him. She was standing next to him and he was taller now, tall enough to see the vein throbbing against the side of her chicken-like neck.

He felt his hands itch to circle it, to press against her windpipe until she stopped talking. They were passing a vacant lot, and he thought about what it would be like to hurl her from the train, leaving her broken body to rot in a bed of weeds and broken glass.

There was something depressing about being in a high school on a Friday after school was out. The last of the student cars rushed out of the parking lot as Ian and Kate arrived. Ian parked the Toyota next to a cluster of teachers’ cars, all huddled together in one corner as if in defense against the student body.

They found Grace slouched against the wall outside of the principal’s office. She affected a look of unconcern and cool, looking hip in her jeans and T-shirt while listening to her iPod with a fierce scowl on her face, but she kept picking at a spot on her jeans and Kate knew that the “who cares” attitude was just a pose.

“I don’t like having my workday interrupted for a meeting to discuss your behavior,” Ian said in greeting. Grace hunched her shoulders, but didn’t respond.

“Why, Gracie?” Kate thought she’d try a gentler tone, but wasn’t surprised when that didn’t get an answer.

It wasn’t the first time they’d been summoned to school to discuss their daughter’s misbehavior, but it was a more recent phenomenon. As Kate watched Grace, she remembered an earlier version of her daughter, the elementary school student who’d proudly marched off to school each morning with a neatly arranged backpack, who’d been bursting with news every afternoon, and who’d been traumatized by getting any grades lower than As or Bs.

How fast kids changed. Last year, at the pricey private school where she’d been a scholarship student, multiple meetings had been called to discuss their daughter’s “failure to thrive” in the “nurturing environment.” It had been humiliating.

At Wickfield High School, things operated a little differently. For starters, there was no secretary to greet them with offers of coffee or tea, nor a tasteful outer office decked out in rich woods and expensive art. There was no hint of Ivy League at Wickfield High and no outer offices.

A broad, puffer fish of a man stood in the front hall wearing jeans and a T-shirt that seemed too young for his age, which was probably mid-fifties. He had close-cropped graying hair and a broad smile that was so smarmy that Kate exchanged looks with Ian.

“Mr. and Mrs. Corbin?” He stuck out a plump, surprisingly strong hand for them to shake. “I’m Harold Trowle. I thought we should meet alone first and then Grace could join us after we’ve talked.”

Grace looked indifferent, and sank onto a bench along the wall as if she’d run a marathon instead of having spent two minutes in the company of her parents. Harold Trowle ushered Kate and Ian through his office, a small space crowded with laminate office furniture including floor-to-ceiling bookshelves overflowing with college catalogs, and into another room that he referred to as the “lounge.” This was a large, open room that looked like it had been decorated to establish the guidance counselor’s coolness factor with his teenage clientele.

Large beanbag chairs took up one corner. Kate couldn’t imagine Harold Trowle settling into one of them. There was a motivational poster of sculls on the river next to a poster of the Ramones.

In the center of the room was a table that reminded Kate of a peanut. “This is where I like to dialogue,” Harold said, making Ian wince. The guidance counselor straddled a plastic chair at the top of the peanut, his boots resting on either side of it, and offered Kate and Ian seats around the bottom. He opened a folder resting on the table in front of him.

“As I think we discussed on the phone, Grace has unexcused absences for”—he perused the file, tapping with one broad finger—“six days.”

“Six?” Ian sounded aghast. “I thought it was only four. Why weren’t we notified?”

“You were, Mr. Corbin.”

“When? We hadn’t heard from anyone here until I got a call two days ago.”

“A letter should have been sent to your home.”

“Did you receive a letter?” Ian looked at Kate, who shook her head. She couldn’t remember a letter. “We didn’t receive any letter.”

“Let me see…” Mr. Trowle flipped through pages in his folder. “Yes, here it is. Letters were mailed on the tenth of September and the twenty-first.”

Ian frowned. “I’m telling you we never got them.”

Harold Trowle’s mouth quirked in an indulgent smile. “In cases like this, we find that the student has often intercepted the mail.”

Kate felt her cheeks flush, and saw that the color was high in Ian’s face, too, but before either of them could respond, Harold Trowle filled the silence.

“As you’ll see, her grades have slipped.” He fiddled with the papers in the folder, extracted a sheet, and slid it across the table with one pudgy finger. Kate got to it first, and Ian immediately pulled his chair closer. It was a computer printout of Grace’s classes and her current grades.

“She’s getting a D in English?” Ian said. “How is that even possible?”

“If you don’t attend class, then it’s very easy,” Mr. Trowle said. “English is an afternoon class and according to our records two of Grace’s absences coincided with exams.”

Kate skimmed over the grades once, then read the sheet again, more slowly, feeling shock give way to anger and anxiety. Their cheery straight As eighth-grader had metamorphosed into a surly, below-average tenth-grader. Grace currently had a C in Geometry, a C in Biology, C-in History and another D, this one in Spanish. “Her only decent grade is in Gym,” she said.

Harold Trowle nodded. “I’m sure you understand why we’re concerned.”

Ian’s laugh was short and harsh. “
You’re
concerned?”

“I don’t know why she’s doing so poorly,” Kate said to Harold Trowle. “She’s very bright—you must have seen her test scores.”

He held them up and waved them. “Yes, clearly this isn’t her best work. Some students find the adjustment to high school very hard.”

“She’s had over a year to adjust,” Ian said. “This has nothing to do with adjusting—it has to do with effort.”

“She’s new to the school.” Kate knew even as she said it that she was making excuses for her daughter, and Ian pounced.

“So what? She was new last year, too, and every kid was new at that school. One of the best schools in the city, a far better education than I ever got, and what does she do with the opportunity?” It was a rhetorical question, but Harold Trowle looked as if he wanted to answer it. Ian didn’t give him the chance. “Squandered. All that effort and money—completely squandered.”

Kate felt the same anger, but now some of it was directed at Ian. Did he really blame Grace for all of this? “We know why her grades dropped last year. It was that creep.”

She couldn’t bear to say his name; it felt like dust in her mouth. Ian shifted his scowl from the grades to her face.

“That’s been over for some time and look at this.” He slapped the paper. “We made this move so she could have a fresh start and she’s not doing any work.”

Something occurred to Kate. “How is she getting off campus?”

Harold Trowle looked relieved at having Ian’s diatribe interrupted. “What was that, Mrs. Corbin?”

“Grace takes the bus to school every day, so when she skips school, how is she getting off campus?”

Wickfield High School was outside of town; there was nothing within walking distance except some suburban homes. Was she just pretending to get on the bus every day? No, because either Kate or Ian had seen her off and sometimes, if everybody was running late, Ian had driven her himself.

Mr. Trowle sifted through the folder again with a slight frown of concentration. “Students are allowed cars on campus, so my guess is that she’s leaving with a friend or friends who are also cutting class.” His face lightened as he extracted yet another sheet of paper. “Here it is—we had one report of Grace being seen leaving campus in a brown car, but that’s all the information we have. Sometimes teens act out because of things happening at home. Are there problems at home? Perhaps between the two of you?”

He folded his hands in front of him on the table, an unpleasantly eager look in his eyes. There was no ring on his left hand. It was at that moment that Kate decided she hated him.

“Things are fine at home,” Ian said, though the stiffness of his voice betrayed that as untrue.

Kate added, “All families have problems,” and wished she hadn’t when Mr. Trowle nodded.

“Yes, yes, of course they do. However, we do find that students with a habit of skipping school have more trouble than most. I know that you recently moved. Perhaps she’s going through a transition period?”

Was Grace really so unhappy? Kate thought of the conversations she’d tried to have about school and how Grace had blown them off. Everything was always “fine.” She felt a pang of guilt—should she have tried harder, understood that what she’d assumed to be a hormonal teenager’s surliness might be unhappiness?

Something the counselor said was niggling at her, though, some small, salient detail that was nevertheless important. What was it? He’d said that she was leaving campus in other friends’ cars, that she’d been seen leaving campus…

“Mr. Trowle, did you say the car was brown?”

“Yes.” He looked down at his notes. “A brown sedan.”

Ian looked at Kate. “What?”

“She’s seeing him again. He drives a brown Mercedes.”

The color fled from Ian’s face. “But we told her it was over. She promised us.”

It was Kate’s turn to laugh. “Yeah, and she gets on the bus every morning with the promise that she’s going to school.”

Grace had fallen asleep on the bench outside the administration offices. She looked younger somehow, more vulnerable curled up on her side with one cheek resting against her arm and her lips slightly parted. Ian shook her roughly awake.

“What?”

“Get up, right now.” He grabbed her arm and Grace jerked away. Ian’s lips thinned and he reached out to grab her again, but Kate blocked him.

“Ian, stop.”

“Don’t tell me to stop! She’s been lying to us for weeks!”

“I know, but that isn’t going to help—”

“Give me your cell phone!” Ian demanded holding out his hand to Grace. “Right now!”

“It’s mine.”

“Oh, no, it isn’t. We pay the bill for that, it’s ours.”

Grace dug in her backpack with deliberate slowness. When she emerged with the phone, Ian yanked it from her hand. He flipped open the lid and began punching buttons. Kate knew he was trying to search the call history.

“We know you’ve been seeing Damien Rattle,” she said.

Grace’s face went pink, then white. “No, I haven’t.”

“Don’t bother lying about it.”

Ian said, “You’ve told enough lies.” He snapped the phone shut. “So he’s changed his number, right? That’s why I’m not seeing it here? Very clever, but I’m going to find out what it is and see just how many calls you’ve made to that loser!”

“He’s not a loser!” Grace’s voice was similar in timbre to her father’s and held his entire wrath. Her hands balled in fists. “People don’t understand him.”

Ian laughed, just as he had at Harold Trowle’s comment. An ugly laugh, short and harsh. “Oh, I understand him all right.”

“You don’t even know him!”

“We know him well enough to know that we don’t want you seeing him,” Kate said.

“But I love him!”

“You’re not old enough to love anybody,” Kate said, but she couldn’t summon the anger of the other two. Instead, she felt a sick twist in her gut. The prayers of a desperate mother veered between Please let her not be sexually active and Please let them be using condoms. It shocked her to even be having these thoughts. Like most things in parenting, it came before you were ready, before you’d adjusted to the idea that your child would walk, would bike, would run away from you with every means at their disposal.

“I think we all need to take a breath,” Mr. Trowle said. He stood outside the circle just a little, his fleshy face looking from Ian to Grace and back again. “Let’s try to understand Grace’s perspective.”

“She doesn’t get a perspective. Not on this.” Ian’s face was red, his fingers tapping against his side in a way that suggested he itched to put them on Grace. Kate looked from him to Harold Trowle, and saw an expression of intensity and anxiety in the counselor’s face that suggested someone witnessing child abuse.

Except that Grace wasn’t abused, far from it. They’d given her all the love and nurturing any two parents could provide. Until a year ago, Kate had held onto the illusion that if you fed and clothed your children and put them in safe schools and provided them with every opportunity that you could afford, that you’d keep your child safe from the Damien Rattles of the world.

“Let’s all just take a deep breath and we can go back inside to talk.” Harold Trowle’s smarmy smile was in place, but the way he was fiddling with the cell phone attached to his belt made Kate wonder if he had school security on speed dial.

“Ian, he thinks you’re going to hurt someone,” Kate muttered, tugging on her husband’s arm.

Ian blinked, seemed to come out of his pater familias mode and really see the others. Kate linked her right arm through his and then her left through Grace’s. She looked at Harold Trowle with a bright, fake smile of her own.

“Yes, let’s do that.”

A further thirty minutes of humiliation followed, during which Harold Trowle laid out the school policy. Wickfield High would not suspend Grace, not this time, but she would have to serve Saturday detentions for the number of days she’d skipped, during which time she’d make up the class work she’d missed.