The Kindness of Strangers (31 page)

Jordan Kendrick was moving into their house tomorrow morning.
This
morning, really. In about seven hours. And it freaked Nate out. He’d wanted this, but now that it was about to come true, it terrified him.

He turned on his light, popped a klezmer CD into his Walkman, and listened to the mournful tunes. This would be Nate’s last night in his own room for a while. Jordan was already changing their lives. Maybe not directly, but some of the new changes wouldn’t be happening if Nate hadn’t set this in motion. Like that feeling Nate had gotten last night when he’d heard Mom laugh at the home visit. Mom had served her famous monster cookies, hockey-puck thick and lumpy with M&M’s. When Reece and Lorraine, the other social worker, tasted them, they moaned like they were having orgasms or something. Reece had said, “Oh, man, I gotta have a glass of milk with these.” And Mom had laughed. It was such a rare sound that it actually startled Nate. It was a for-real, laugh-out-loud laugh that wrinkled her nose. He had to smile, watching her. But it made him feel cold. And he got even colder when she actually went to get the glass of milk.

The worst, though, came at the end of the visit. Reece asked Mom, “Are you seeing anyone? Do you have a boyfriend who might be here at the house at any time?”

Nate had almost busted up laughing at the absurdity of the question. Get real. But Mom’s face stopped him: A hot, red wash crawled up her face. “No,” she said. “But . . . would it be a problem if . . . if I did?”

What?
Nate had felt like he’d stepped off a cliff into thin air. While Reece and Lorraine asked Mom a ton of questions and Danny just sat there looking terrified, Nate sat across the room from his mother and tried to look at her like he didn’t know her and just saw her in a crowd somewhere. Damn. She was old, but she was pretty. A boyfriend? How the hell could she have a boyfriend? But, shit, it had been two years. Hamlet’s mom didn’t wait two
weeks
. Two years. What was wrong with that? But it made his jaw tighten, made him tense.

And it was worse because she
blushed.

Damn. Now he was really awake. He might as well do something. He reached for his paperback copy of
Hamlet
. He was supposed to write a scene in iambic pentameter that provided an answer to one of the questions left hanging in
Hamlet.
There were so many he wondered why the play was famous. Tony claimed he was writing a sex scene between Ophelia and Hamlet. Big surprise. Mowaza planned a scene revealing that Ophelia was pregnant, which at least explained why she flipped out when Hamlet was such an ass to her, but Nate was more interested in Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude. Was she guilty, too? Or just clueless? He thumbed through the script, looking over her lines on the pages he’d dog-eared. Maybe he should go downstairs to the computer and start writing this scene. He ditched the Walkman, pulled on some sweats, and tiptoed into the hallway.

About the same time it struck him that he wouldn’t be able to use the computer because of that pain-in-the-ass padlock—and no way would he consider waking Mom up at two in the morning—he saw light glowing from downstairs.

The hairs on the back of his neck lifted. It freaked Nate out that Mr. Kendrick was still out there. Jordan had told Nate the police would never catch his dad.

He crept down the stairs, every nerve and muscle charged, wondering if he should go grab his hockey stick, and peeked around the corner into the living room. There sat his mom, in her yoga pants and T-shirt, in front of the computer, braiding and unbraiding her hair over one shoulder as she read the screen. Laughing at his jitters, he stepped into the room.

But Mom jumped up from her chair and let out a little shriek.

“Jesus, Mom. You scared me,” he said.

“
I
scared
you
?” She laughed, holding a hand to her heart. “Look at us. We’re a little jumpy, aren’t we?”

“Do you
ever
sleep anymore? What are you doing?”

“Oh . . .” She glanced at the screen, and Nate saw a photo of a young African-American girl’s face, with text beneath it. His mom turned back to him, and he noticed that her eyes were pink and watery, like someone stoned. “This is the Children’s Services Web site.”

Nate pointed to the photo. “Who’s that?”

His mom looked down at her bare feet and fidgeted with the neckline of her T-shirt. “They have this . . . menu, I guess you’d call it, of the kids who need homes.”

He looked at the little girl. She beamed a huge, toothy grin at him, eyes sparkling, no hint at all in that happy face as to why she was on this computer screen looking for a home. “What happened to her parents?”

His mom shrugged. “The bios don’t tell you that.”

Nate sat in the chair she had occupied, to read the text. Mom sat on the arm of the couch, reading over his shoulder.

The screen read, “
Monique is a very affectionate, friendly, and outgoing child. She interacts well with adults and peers. She enjoys reading, drawing, and skating. Monique is in counseling to address posttraumatic stress disorder due to her past experiences. It is important to Monique that she is allowed to maintain contact with her older brother.
”

He clicked the corner of Monique’s picture, and it shrank to become one of about forty smaller photos, with names and ages listed beside them. Damn, there were
so many
.

At the home visit, Nate thought the questions Lorraine and Reece asked were such bullshit. Actually checking that the windows opened in case of fire, that their wiring was in good condition, that they had running water and no firearms. Stuff like that. Reece had said, “I know all this seems rather ridiculous, but the bottom line is, we’re entrusting you with someone else’s child. We have to know that this child is safe.”

Someone else’s child. Nate kept forgetting that. It seemed stupid that some kid who lived in a house where anyone who wanted could have sex with him might be considered in danger living with this family because one of their windows was painted shut. Or that faulty electrical wiring was a more serious threat than the sick stuff he’d seen in the photos.

And here were forty kids who were all “someone else’s child,” too. They couldn’t all have parents like the Kendricks, could they?

“This is depressing,” Nate said of the forty faces. “Why are you looking at these?”

“Oh, I was e-mailing Reece and just started looking around.”

Nate clenched his jaw. He didn’t know why the idea of his mom e-mailing Reece disturbed him. He looked at her, in her sweats on the couch. She looked haggard with no makeup on. She sat on the couch and drew her legs up under her. “What are you doing up?” she asked.

Nate closed the site and shut down the computer. “Couldn’t sleep.”

Curled up on the couch, she looked as if she’d sit there forever and listen to whatever he wanted to say. He drilled several phrases in his mind. Something like,
I think it’s all my fault Jordan ended up in the hospital.
Something like,
I knew Mrs. Kendrick was sick and twisted a long time ago and I didn’t say anything because I thought maybe . . .
maybe what? That he’d get to screw her? That they’d have some kinky, made-for-TV-movie affair? He took a breath and asked, “So . . . how’d Danny’s appointment go?” He hadn’t asked Mom yet. He’d asked Danny, who just shrugged and said, “Okay, I guess. I don’t know why I have to go.”

Mom leaned her head back against the couch. “I don’t know. He really, truly can’t seem to tell me why he printed that picture. All he’ll say was that Jordan was ‘mean’ to him. I’m not in there with him for the appointment, remember.” She sighed.

Nate did remember. He’d hated the therapist Mom sent him to at first but then was really glad he had him. It was easier to talk about Dad to someone other than Mom. He was always afraid he’d just make Mom cry.

“So tell me,” Mom asked, “do you know how to get to porn sites on the computer?”

“Mom, Kramble said Jordan wasn’t
on
any porn sites. The Kendricks were too smart for that.” He watched Mom frown. She looked like a person trying to remember something. “Why? Did Detective Kramble find something in the computer lab?”

“Not yet. He wants to talk to Danny again.” She chewed her lip, then looked up at Nate. “You never answered my question: Do you know how to get to porn sites?”

“I’ve never tried.”

She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows.

“I haven’t! God, you always act like I’m some sex maniac, Mom.”

She said softly, “I owe you an apology, don’t I? That
Hustler
magazine really was Danny’s, wasn’t it?”

“It sure wasn’t mine. Down in a dark basement with a rabbit watching me is not exactly my idea of a great place to”—Jesus, what was he saying?—“To . . . you know.”

Mom looked at him with the oddest expression. “To what?”

“Nothing. I mean, you know what I mean.” His face burned. His knee bounced. He wanted to disappear even thinking about that in the same room as his mother. He turned back to the dark computer and played with some keys.

Mom laughed. He glanced at her, but she’d covered her face with her hands. “Ohh . . .” She looked up at the ceiling. “There are times I really,
really
wish your dad was here.”

Nate laughed, too, feeling a little less stupid. This was one of the first times they’d mentioned Dad without being sad or serious. He cleared his throat. “Everything’s fine.”

“You sure? I’m not supposed to have some talk about . . . that?”

“Mom! What do you think I need? Instructions?” His ears were so hot they actually hurt.

She laughed again and pulled her hair across her face for a second. “I don’t know. I never had a brother. I have no idea what I’m supposed to tell you.”

“You don’t have to
tell
me anything. I figured it out. Like, years ago.”

Her face was as red as his felt, but they both laughed. She suddenly grew somber and asked, “So you think Danny’s just . . . masturbating with this porn?”

His face managed to burn even hotter. He shrugged.

“Well,
Hustler
’s pretty disgusting. And then the Jordan picture! That’s too disturbing, that he’d use an image like that to—”

“I bet showing the Jordan picture was something different,” Nate said, not wanting to picture Danny getting turned on by those images. This conversation was whacked-out. “He was trying to . . . I dunno, get attention or something.”

“But . . .” she shook her head, pale worry replacing the fading red in her face.

Nate studied his own bare feet, gnarled and callused from his skates.

After a silence Mom said, “I hope Danny and Jordan are going to be okay together.”

“Mom! He’s coming
today
.”

“I know. I know. I’m not saying I’m changing my mind. . . . But I sure wish I knew what made them so unfriendly to each other. What if Jordan finds out what Danny did at school? And Danny needs help. Doesn’t it seem unfair to bring the focal point of his problem—whatever the problem is—into our house? I don’t want Danny to think I care about Jordan more than I care about him.”

Something weird had just passed between them. Nate sensed it, and from his mother’s expression, he knew she did, too. It felt unfamiliar, almost scary for her to confide in him. They hadn’t argued for weeks. This new way of being felt like speaking a foreign language.

Nate’d worried about Danny and Jordan, too, but he didn’t want to agree with her. He owed Jordan, and there was no way to tell his mom that. “We can help them both, can’t we?”

She smiled. “We’re going to have to.”

She ran a hand through her thick black hair, scratching her scalp and yawning. Watching her made Nate yawn, too. He looked at his
Hamlet
script and thought,
Yeah, right.
His eyelids felt sticky when he blinked, like they might glue shut. “Night, Mom.” He stood, and he almost leaned over her to kiss her on the forehead. He saw the movement in his mind, felt it in his muscles, but he stopped himself.

He left the room and went back to bed.

Chapter Sixteen
Sarah

S
arah felt light-headed when Jordan arrived at the Laden house on nine o’clock Sunday morning.

“They’re here!” she called up the stairs when she saw the city car. “Just act natural. We don’t all have to greet him at once. Where’s Danny? Now, remember, we need to give him space and not hover—”

“Mom, chill, okay.” Nate rolled his eyes in the way that drove her crazy, that suggested her every request was neurotic. “Jesus, just relax.”

“Nate, I’ve asked you not to say that.”

Sarah let Reece and Jordan into the house. Everything she did felt surreal and dreamlike. She had to keep telling herself this was really happening.

Jordan sat on the couch, his posture and expression expectant.

“Hey, man,” Nate said. “You’re finally here.”

“Yup.” Jordan nodded, then looked at Danny. “Hey, Danny,” he said.