Remember Me Like This (16 page)

“They usually do,” he said.

She followed the lazy S curve, watched the lean palms stream by. Later, the implications of Justin’s answer would fester in her mind: He’d been there before. The snippy old women who ran the store would have interacted with them, would have taken his or Buford’s money in exchange for feeder mice without understanding that he was in trouble. Later, she would try to remember why they hadn’t posted a flyer in the store, and she would decide for no good reason that the fault had been hers and it would feel like countless fishhooks piercing her lungs. But driving along Ocean now, she was safe, enjoying a swell of pride because she’d suggested a viable store.

The palm trees gave way to condominiums and sprawling homes behind brick fences. She said, “Was today okay?”

He nodded. He was wearing the sunglasses she’d bought for him at the mall, a shirt and cargo shorts, too. He said, “They’re saying they might go after the death penalty.”

There had been speculation about this on the news and in the paper, but she hadn’t given it much consideration. She knew Eric hoped they’d turn it into a capital case. Cecil, too. Laura was ambivalent. Whether Buford lived or died didn’t matter to her. She’d already gotten the only end result she needed.

They passed Cole Park and the fishing pier. She said, “Do you have feelings about that?”

“Him getting the death penalty? I think it’d be sweet. It’d be sick.”

Laura turned right onto Everhart Road. She knew there was something to say here, but didn’t know what it was. The subject seemed treacherous, not one she wanted to burden either of them with this afternoon. She wanted levity and sweet confessions; she wanted him to compliment her hair again, and she wanted to say she loved him and to hear him say it back. She wanted to hear about his girlfriend.

Pampered Pets was out of feeder mice, and so were PetSmart and Petco. None of the workers could explain the shortage, but each of them told her to check back in a couple of weeks after their next shipment. Justin stayed in the car at each stop, and Laura never went any deeper into the stores than she had to; she always kept the car in view. Not finding a mouse felt like a personal failure, and her head started to pound as she tried to think of another pet store to try.

“We can go to Aransas Pass. I think there’s a pet store out there. Maybe Rockport,” she said. They were outside of Corpus, heading home. “I remember we hung flyers in a place called Barks and More.”

“It’s okay. She’ll be fine for a while longer. Snakes can go months without eating.”

“We’ll go to Pampered next week. We can make an afternoon of it. I’ll make us a picnic lunch. We can eat by the Water Gardens.”

Justin said, “Garcia doesn’t think it will be a hard sell. He thinks a judge will go for it.”

“The death penalty?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“He’ll get what he deserves. There’s no doubting that. Either way, he won’t hurt anyone ever again.”

Justin’s eyes were fixed on something well beyond his window, the opaque bay or the sun-hazed outline of the Harbor Bridge. He stayed quiet as she drove. Then, without looking at her, he said, “Sometimes you have to thin the herd.”

“What’s that, honey?”

“It’s something he used to say when he’d read about someone getting executed. He’d always laugh.”

“Oh,” she said, her skin tensing. “Well, he’s probably not laughing now.”

“He might be,” Justin said, still looking away. “He might see all of this as one big joke.”

T
HAT NIGHT
,
SHE LAY AWAKE IN BED AGAIN
. E
RIC WAS ON HIS
stomach, breathing evenly. He’d been more himself since the barbecue, and though she could still sense his nerves around Justin, he was doing a better job of masking it. She both admired and resented his progress. He seemed to have transcended what she’d suddenly found herself mired in, a bog of doubt. (Had he gotten himself out as a result of her getting pulled in? Exhausted, hovering between sleep and waking, she wondered.) The house was quiet, save for the air conditioner and ceiling fans, the constant hum that she could so easily mistake for silence.

Then, as if continuing a conversation they’d already started, she said, “I wonder where she was when they found him.”

“What’s that?” Eric said, his voice startled and sleep-heavy.

“His girlfriend. I wonder where she was when she learned the truth, learned he’d been rescued.”

“What time is it?” Eric said, rolling onto his back, deciding whether he needed to swing his feet onto the floor, if he’d overslept.

“Was she happy for him, do you think? Or was she just disappointed, so disappointed she couldn’t—”

“It’s two in the morning. Let’s talk about it tomorrow with the social worker.”

“She must have felt like we did. Like the world just opened up and swallowed him whole.”

Eric had already drifted off again, still on his back.

“The poor thing,” Laura said. “That poor brokenhearted thing.”

L
ETICIA
“L
ETTY
” V
ILLARREAL SPECIALIZED IN ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY
. She didn’t have a Ph.D., but Laura had to stifle urges to call her Dr. Villarreal. Letty was a pear-shaped woman with a penchant for floral-print blouses and tightly curled bangs. Ivies and ferns crowded the windowsills in her office. Thick white binders bowed the bookshelves. She kept a jar of candy on her desk, suckers and jelly beans and gumballs, and a wicker basket in the corner of the room filled with toys and stuffed animals. Laura liked her. Letty laid her palms flat on her desk when she had something serious to say—
Family reunification is a process, not a product,
or
Has either of you heard the term “Stockholm syndrome”? Traumatic bonding?
—and she steepled her fingers while others spoke. She seemed smitten with Justin, devoted to caring for him in a genuine way. She seemed to hold in her mind both the pain he’d endured and the courage that such endurance required. Laura regularly wanted to hug her.

And that Letty was now in their lives made the extent of Justin’s
abuse impossible to ignore. Sometimes the knowledge lit a scalding flare of anger behind her eyes. Other times, she was struck mute, no more capable of forming sentences than a woman who’d bitten off her own tongue. She was weak in the face of his suffering and weakened further by the necessity, the blood duty, of summoning strength. But it was as if her bones had been pulled through her skin, slid from her flesh one by one, until she was reduced to a formless puddle of herself. She was constantly shocked that no one seemed to notice how she’d diminished, how what remained of her was of no use.

On Friday, they dropped Justin at Garcia’s office for his appointment, then walked two blocks from the county courthouse to the social services building. Eric had polished his boots and tucked in his shirt before they left for Corpus, and Laura wore her dolphin pendant. She put her hair up in a bun. She carried a Moleskine notebook the way she used to carry her textbooks walking to school, clutched to her chest. The heat was sluggish, torpid. Humidity dragged on her skin. Her purse hung from her shoulder, bounced against her hip as she walked. She had to keep stopping so Eric could catch up.

Letty was misting a fern when they arrived. Laura said, “Mine always die. You’ll have to give me your secret.”

“Turner’s nursery,” Letty said, putting the water bottle in her desk drawer. She motioned for Laura and Eric to sit, then lowered herself into her chair. She said, “I buy a new one after I’ve drowned or starved the previous one. Same pots, different plants—that’s my secret.”

Laura liked the answer, liked how the candor put her at ease. She wondered if Justin felt a similar relaxing. She also wondered if any of the white binders on Letty’s shelves contained information about her son. Immediately, she had a fantasy of being left alone in the office and scouring the pages for an analysis of her son’s psyche, his symptoms and prognosis.

“So,” she said, “how’s the little man today? I imagine this week’s been a bear.”

Laura wrote the words
little man
in her Moleskine, drew a box around them.

“He’s holding up,” Eric said, then looked to Laura for her assent. She nodded.

“He’s sleeping a little better,” Laura said. “I think talking with you helps. He seems to feel better afterward.”

Letty’s hands steepled. She wore two gold rings and a green Bakelite bangle. She said, “He has many admirers around here. He’s become a source of great inspiration.”

In her notebook, Laura wrote:
Admired! Source of great inspiration!

Eric said, “How do
you
think he’s doing? Has anything become clear in your time with him?”

“What’s most clear is he’s happy to be home.”

“There’s a lot of that going around,” Eric said.

Laura’s eyes went to the ferns on the window, the fronds lightly stirring in the air streaming from the ceiling vents. She wondered how long Letty’d had those particular plants—then it occurred to her that the story about Turner’s nursery was very likely fictional. Letty seemed like someone who could keep ferns alive. Maybe the plants had been sent from patients she’d helped. Laura thought to bring one of the plants from home for her.

Letty had been talking. She said, “You’re in the midst of a huge adjustment, and even positive adjustments come with confusing pressures. Some parents in your situation suffer from post-traumatic stress, depression, panic attacks, you name it.”

Laura considered writing this down, but didn’t. It sounded trite to her, and selfish.

“Treat yourselves from time to time. Go to a nice dinner, maybe a movie, or stroll along the beach. The boys can tag along, but it’s not a bad idea to leave them alone occasionally.”

“Justin hasn’t wanted to get out much,” Laura said, maybe too pointedly. She wanted the discussion to move back toward him. “We love having him to ourselves, but it’s something we’ve noticed. He hasn’t wanted to see anyone.”

“Another aspect of Stockholm,” she said. Her palms went flat against the desk. “It happens. He’s afraid to let go of friends he had in the Away Life, and afraid the friends he had before won’t embrace him. He feels tainted. But he’s only been home a couple weeks. I’m not concerned right now. I suspect he’ll thaw sooner than later.”

Laura wrote:
Away Life. Tainted? Aspect of Stockholm. Will thaw.

“It’s also possible that his social development will become arrested. It can just stop. There can be disturbances of every kind—eating disturbances, disturbances in his sexuality and attachments, disturbances in fear-based behavior. Victims of childhood trauma often won’t have the vocabularies to describe their emotions.”

“He told his brother about friends he’d made in Corpus, but he hasn’t directly mentioned them to us,” Laura said. “He’s pretty tight-lipped about everything. He doesn’t say much at all.”

“He hasn’t shared much here, either. We have to be patient. My guess is Justin doesn’t want to hurt your feelings, while at the same time he’s coming to terms with losing his old friends. He knows he’ll never see them again.”

“Is that set in stone?” Laura asked. “With his friends? We know nothing could happen for a while, but if his friends were a source of, I don’t know,
shelter
for him, is there a chance he could reconnect with them at some point? Is there a chance that would be useful?”

“The friends he was closest to in Southport have moved away,” Eric said.

“I would strongly discourage any interaction, now or later. His friends in Corpus are, I’m sure, great kids, but they’re best left undisturbed. When he’s ready, he’ll make new friends or reconnect with old ones from home.”

“We just want him to feel loved, supported,” Laura said.

“He does. He absolutely does,” Letty said. “The children who survive this kind of trauma often do so because of what they were forced to leave behind. He was able to find meaning in each day, a reason to believe he should keep going, and more often than not, that was something instilled in him long before he was taken.”

“Thank you,” Eric said.

“Yes,” Laura said. “Thank you.”

She made a note to check the library for books on Stockholm syndrome.

The room went quiet, which made Laura feel rushed, as if she needed to squeeze more out of their time together. She said, “We’re just worried he’s bottling everything up. He seems really, I don’t know, kind of
fine,
and I worry he’s not.”

“He’s not fine,” Letty said. “He’s home and safe and things are getting better and better, but he’s hurting. He’s absolutely hurting. Maybe we’ll see signs of this soon, maybe later, maybe never. This is a long and slow process. We can’t ask the questions we want to ask. He’ll open up when he’s ready, if he’s ever ready.”

“We trust you,” Eric said. “We appreciate everything you’re giving him.”

“He’s a good kid, a strong kid, and everyone’s working to give him the life he deserves. He’s also a teenager, a boy who should be learning to drive and falling in love with a new girl every other day. He understands this better than we do. He absolutely does. Our job is to assure him that these terrible things that happened to him are not who he is.”

“Driving,” Eric said. His voice was light, dreamy.

“Do what?” Laura said.

“It hadn’t even occurred to me. He needs to learn how to drive. He’ll turn sixteen in November.”

“Absolutely,” Letty said. “You probably still think of him as an
eleven-year-old. It’s very natural, very understandable. The family’s development can become arrested, too.”

“He had a girlfriend,” Laura said. “That’s something else he told Griff.”

“Marcy,” Letty said. “The redheaded athlete.”

“Is she in the same category as the other friends?”

“I think so. I’m sure she’s sweet as can be, but I don’t see her benefiting Justin anymore.”

“Thank you,” Laura said.

In her notebook, she wrote:
No friends. No Marcy. Never.

W
HEN THEY PICKED
J
USTIN UP FROM
G
ARCIA
’
S
,
HIS SPIRITS WERE
high. So were his father’s. It was as if they’d woken from a perfect sleep while Laura had been pacing the halls all night. She sat in the backseat, watching their car’s reflection stream past on the windows of the downtown buildings. If anything, she thought she would’ve been pleased to leave Justin’s girlfriend—athletic, redheaded Marcy—in the past. But she still felt petulant, passed over. It felt as though Letty had dashed some hope that Laura wasn’t aware she’d been nurturing. She leaned her head against the window, closed her eyes. The backseat smelled vaguely of chlorine and fish; the shirts she’d worn at Marine Lab were still on the floorboards. Maybe she missed Alice. The possibility that her dourness had nothing to do with Justin was bracing. She pinched her dolphin pendant between her thumb and forefinger.