Language Arts (23 page)

In his wake, staining the expanse of the white dojo mat, was a wide swath of gleaming, viscous blood.

•♦•

Charles initiated the conversation. He had to; Ali would never do it.

“What is it going to take, Alison? A broken nose? Fractured eye socket? Knocked-out teeth?”

She was sitting on their bed, holding a bag of frozen peas to her cheekbone.

“I've got it under control.”

“Are you listening to yourself? Have you looked in the mirror? When I come home, I don't know whether I'm going to find the police waving a domestic-abuse warrant with my name on it or you comatose on an ambulance gurney.”

“Don't be ridiculous.”

“You think that's ridiculous? What do you tell your friends, the people at work, about the bruises, the scratches, the bite marks, the bald spots? What are you telling your parents? Do you really think no one but me is paying attention?”

When she didn't respond, Charles sat down on the bed. “It just isn't working,” he said. “You've done everything possible. No one could have done more. We have to start facing the fact that—”

“No,” she said. “
No.
I will not accept that. I will not hand him off to strangers. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

“And you know this how? Do you want him to
kill
you, Alison? Because something bad
is
going to happen, there is no other way this is going to play out, and if you can't see that, maybe you need proof. I have plenty . . .”

Charles crossed the room and yanked open the top drawer of his bureau; it fell on the floor, scattering several years' worth of clippings. He grabbed a stack at random and began reading: “‘Ballard Resident Attacked by Disabled Son Suffers Miscarriage, in Serious Condition.' ‘Fierce Protection of Mentally Challenged Son Costs University Professor Her Life.' ‘Autistic Child Who Started Fire Survives; Mother, Sibling Die'—”

“Stop it, Charles,” Alison said. “Please. I understand that you're worried about us, but I have to keep trying. I can't give up.”

“I'm not suggesting that you give up, Alison. I'm just suggesting that there might be another setting where he could be better cared for, and our family could be safe.”

“But he's our
son,
Charles,” she appealed, “he
is
our family, and he's only six years old.”

Not long after, Charles arrived home late from school and found her in Cody's room, sitting on his bed, watching him sleep.

It was the fact that one of her hands was resting lightly on their son's head that made Charles know something was seriously wrong; touching Cody, awake or asleep, was a calculated risk. Her other hand was clutching a section of newspaper.

“Alison,” Charles whispered. When she turned around, Charles saw that she'd been crying. “What's the matter?”

She got up, careful to shift her weight in a gradual manner. Her weeping continued, noiselessly, and she didn't speak until they'd passed out of Cody's room, closed the door, and made their way down the hall and to the first floor, where they stood next to the efficient, under-the-stairs office she had so meticulously crafted.

“We can't . . . ,” she said, turning to face him and then starting to cry again.

“Ali. Honey. What is it? What?”

“No matter what happens, we can't let something like this happen. We can't
ever
see his picture in an article like this.”

Her body went limp and she leaned into him, dropping the newspaper to the floor at their feet.

•♦•

It occurred to Charles that he was sitting in almost exactly the same spot where he'd held Alison that night, where he'd seen this article for the first time.

LAWSUIT ALLEGES THREE DISABLED MEN WERE ABUSED; THEY WERE LEFT AT GROUP HOME AFTER STATE HAD BEEN WARNED.

The accompanying photograph—yellowed now, but still just as striking and memorable as it was the first time Charles saw it—was a close-up of the oldest victim. He looked much younger than he actually was.

The faces of some disabled adults can be like that,
Charles thought.
Cody's is; smooth, ageless, unmarked, the sinless portrait of Dorian Gray.

The man had pale skin, neatly trimmed light brown hair, luminous aquamarine eyes;
cherubic
would be an apt description. His hands cupped a small stuffed animal he held next to his cheek, as if protecting it: a beanbag puppy that had one black-spotted eye. He spoke infrequently, the article said, but when he did, it was through this small creature, whose name was Boo. He'd been repeatedly beaten and sexually abused by his caregivers. At forty-two, he had the mental capacity of a five-year-old.

Heartbroken parents left with few options . . .

The subjects of the article faced dismal futures. One would have to move back in with his sixty-eight-year-old father, who was suffering from mesothelioma; another would likely be institutionalized, since his retired parents had depleted all their funds; a third was being taken in as a charity case by an order of Catholic nuns who ran a small, underfunded experimental school for boys with autism on Shaw Island.

We spent everything we had, we thought it was safe, we love our son, we'd never knowingly put him in a situation like this, what parent would, we don't know what will happen, who will take care of him after we're gone?

Charles stood up. He still couldn't decide which bin was appropriate for this material, so he returned all of it to the box, leaving it where it lay.

Dad, I have a question. A big, important question.
It was the voice of Emmy as a child.
How can you tell if a cardboard box is a girl or a boy?

The question—unexpected and perfect in its koan-like absurdity—made him start laughing so convulsively that his knees gave way and he fell back to the floor in a quivering heap.

Given this giddy state of affairs—and the fact that his resolves toward efficiency and decisiveness had all but vanished—Charles figured that he might as well uncork that wine.

The person who made Garrett and Rita Marlow's social life possible was Catherine Bernadette Ryan. In the lexicon of Charles's childhood, it was
Catherine
who defined the word
babysitter
.

The Ryans lived in a nondescript one-story brick rambler that was across the street and two doors down. It looked far too small to accommodate the two adults, nine children, and numerous pets that poured in and out each day, and for that reason it laid hold of Charles's imagination.

Maybe the Ryans had a hidden bunker—or (inspired thought!) a
bomb shelter.

In the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis,
bomb shelter
was one of several new terms that had begun infiltrating adult conversation. Charles had learned from a recent
Life
ad that an adequately stocked, standard-size bomb-shelter unit could provide a safe habitat for five people for a period of three months.
Hell, Garrett,
he'd heard their next-door neighbor Hank Helmsdorfer remark while flipping T-bones on the backyard grill,
think of the money we could save if we went in on one of those things together!

Charles understood the reasoning: Mr. and Mrs. Helmsdorfer were childless, the Marlows were only three, so the standard five-person size would be perfect; however, even though he was as worried about nuclear annihilation as the next nine-year-old, he was even more worried about what it would be like spending ninety days cooped up with a group of adults that included his parents, whose escalating aggression toward each other would probably erupt in a mushroom cloud the minute they sealed the shelter hatch, so they'd all end up dead of radiation poisoning anyway.

If and when the air-raid siren went off, Charles planned to make a beeline to the Ryans'; they'd surely ordered the deluxe-model bomb shelter designed for Catholic families.

The Ryans were not part of the Marlows' social sphere; Charles suspected that their fecundity was an issue: they were
real
Catholics, they
procreated.

They also worshipped. Every Sunday, the voices of the Ryan family could be heard raised in a choral free-for-all as they crammed into their wood-paneled station wagon and barreled across town for early Mass at the Cathedral of St. James. The Marlows slept in. They could leave as late as eleven forty-five and still arrive in time for noon Mass at the newer, more progressive congregation, St. Matthew's, a mere three miles away.

Catherine was fifteen—old enough to be responsible, too young to have a boyfriend (or so Rita Marlow believed); in birth order, she was somewhere in the middle, so she knew her way around children, and her proximity was another plus.

For all of these reasons, Catherine enjoyed regular gainful employment at least twice a week for periods far outlasting the length of a level-one aikido class followed by five minutes in the Burger King drive-through.

One of the many reasons Catherine had earned Charles's special affection was that she always let him stay up late—not because she was unreliable or disobedient, but because they had a long-standing secret pact upheld by the promise of mutual, illicit rewards: from ten o'clock until midnight, Charles ate popcorn and watched
Creature Feature
in the TV room while Catherine rendezvoused with her boyfriend out in the back alley, in his car.

One typical date-night afternoon, Charles was watching cartoons waiting for Catherine while his mother got ready. She often came in and out a few times, modeling possible wardrobe choices.

“Do you like this dress?” she asked without preamble. “It's brand-new. It came from Frederick and Nelson's.” She pointed to an embroidered bouquet of large, colorful flowers and leaves winding up from the hem to the bodice. “See this? It was done entirely by hand. It's called
crewelwork.
” She regarded Charles and sipped on her martini, in which floated a translucent pearl onion; it looked like the shrunken orb of a blind midget. “Your father picked it out especially.”

“When is Catherine coming?”

“Soon . . .” She lit up a cigarette and glanced out the window toward the Ryans' front yard. “God, just look at all those kids,” she mused quietly. In an uprising three-note melody, she added, “Bing-bing-bing,” a chipper vocal flourish that was at odds with her masklike face.

Is this the right moment to ask?
Charles wondered. He decided to risk it.

“Why don't we have more kids?”

She turned from the window. “Phrase the question properly, Charles. What you
mean
to ask is, ‘Why don't you and Dad have more children?'”

“Well, why don't you?”

Rita Marlow patted her helmet of hair and took a long drag on her cigarette. “Probably because God knew that I could only be a good mother to one,” she said, gazing again at the Ryan youngsters through a cloud of smoke. “Like Mary.”

After popping the pearl onion in her mouth, she rolled it around a few times before trapping it between her back molars and biting down on it, hard.

•♦•

“And the certificate of merit for Palmer penmanship goes to . . .”

Mrs. Braxton paused for dramatic effect, as if there were an official-looking sealed envelope stashed within the depths of her Playtex Cross Your Heart, as if terrific suspense surrounded the identity of the honoree, and her teasing delay would prolong the audience's tortured anticipation.

“. . . Charles Simon Marlow!” Mrs. Braxton gestured her meritorious pupil to the front of the room, presented him with a framed certificate, and then stood aside, initiating a round of applause that was taken up dutifully if weakly by the rest of the class.

Only Dana showed exuberance, bowing his head so that his gaze seemed directed at his sternum, ducking and bobbing his upper body in an odd manner, extending his fully straightened arms, anchoring his triceps to his ears, and clapping quickly and rhythmically, a kind of performing- circus-seal effect.

“Yay! Yay! Char-Lee! Char-Lee Mar-Low!”

Was Charles proud for having risen above his usual mediocrity?

Yes.

Would he have preferred to hear Donnie Bothwell cheering his accomplishment? An ally who was neither a reviled teacher nor a ree-tard but a fourth-grader from the ranks of developmental normalcy?

Absolutely.

But in Donnie's absence, Charles gratefully received the peculiar fanfare offered up by Dana McGucken, and it was to him that he raised his eyes and muttered,
Thanks.

The class's energy soon lagged, but Mrs. Braxton allowed Dana to continue his huzzahs and applause a while longer.

“The ree-tard
loves
him,” Mitchell mumbled.

“The ree-tard is his
girl
friend,” Bradley added.

“Fruit.”

“Faggot.”

“Creep.”

“Queer.”

“Yay!”

“All right, Dana,” Mrs. Braxton said, resuming her place at center stage. “That's enough. I'm sure we're all very proud of Charles.”

Dana kept clapping and cheering as Charles headed back to his desk.

“Yay, Char-Lee! Char-Lee Mar-Low!”

“Dana McGucken,” Mrs. Braxton admonished, her voice assuming its familiar edge. “Quiet down.”

But Dana swiveled around in his desk, his extended arms now suggesting a giant compass needle pointing to the true north that was Charles's location, and began chanting: “Char-
Lee
Mar-
Low!
Char-
Lee
Mar-
Low!
”

“Dana McGucken! Silence! Now!”

Startled, Dana's smile collapsed, his face blanched even paler, and he folded in on himself and began frantically massaging his hand.