The Kindness of Strangers (45 page)

He picked up his phone. The receiver smelled like bad breath. “Mom? Mom? Pick up your phone.”

Jordan tapped the glass, and she focused her gaze. She picked up her phone.

“Hi, Mom.” As the words left his mouth, he knew they were too cheery and fake.

Reece picked up his phone as well. Jordan saw his mother’s eyes flicker to Reece.

“Hey, there, cookie.” Her voice was hoarse, like when she’d had laryngitis one time. She wiped her eyes. Her nails were short and ragged, the skin around them scabbed.

“What happened to your hands?” It was a stupid thing to ask, but he had no idea what to say, especially with Reece—and maybe these other morons—listening to them.

She held the phone between her ear and shoulder and examined both hands, fingers spread wide, as if she hadn’t noticed the dried blood before. “Just a nervous habit, I guess.”

Jordan wondered what to say next. He knew they only had fifteen minutes, and it had already started, so he took a deep breath. “I think everything is going to be okay, and we can live together again, without
him,
don’t you? I think pretty soon we can—”

She closed her eyes, massaging her forehead, and Jordan shut up. She opened her eyes and smiled. He breathed again. “Is Sarah taking good care of you?”

He hesitated, trying to decide if this was a trick question. What would happen if Mom found out what he’d told Sarah about her? He wished he could tell Mom about planting his own tree, the way Sarah had argued with the guy at the nursery who told them it wasn’t a good time to plant a dogwood. How sad Sarah’d seemed about the cramped and twisted root-ball on the tree they’d found. How he and Sarah had dug the hole together while Nate and Danny were at school, patting earth around it. How he’d watered it every day. But . . . he remembered that funny feeling he’d had yesterday as he watered. This anger that bubbled up in him as he stood there patiently holding the hose. This feeling of,
See? I know how to take care of something. Nothing bad will ever happen to this tree.
The feeling had scared him.

He looked through the glass at his mother, who still waited for his answer. “Yeah . . . Mrs. Laden’s okay.” He wouldn’t call her Sarah. Not in front of Mom. He opened his mouth. He knew what he should say, but his lips and tongue wouldn’t say it. He had to force out, “B-but I want to live with you again. In our own house, just us.”

Her face did a funny shiver, and new tears ran down her cheeks.

Just us.
That image of her hands flashed into his brain again. No, this time would be different. “Mom? Don’t cry. You’ll get out of here. I know you will. Everyone will find out that it was all a mistake.” He wondered if the people in line were listening. Maybe not with the woman at Window Two still shouting “motherfucker” every other word.

He smiled at his mom and felt like his face might crack. It
would
be different, just the two of them. Wouldn’t it? It would.

Mom’s nose ran, and she didn’t wipe it. She looked at him as if she’d never seen him before in her life, as if she didn’t know who he was. She coughed once, a weird dry-heave sound, like his cat, Raja, about to cough up a hairball. The thought of Raja sent a bolt of anger, then panic, through him.
It was all my fault,
he thought, almost blurting it out loud.
All my fault, not yours.

To make up for it, he said, “I love you, Mom.”

She made a move as if to scoot her chair back, but she had a disk chair, too, and it didn’t budge. The abrupt movement made Jordan think she was going to leave. He’d blown it. She dropped her phone, the heavy black receiver hitting the counter with a loud whack that stabbed Jordan’s ear. She put her forehead on the edge of the counter, and Jordan watched her back heave as she sobbed.

A guard appeared behind Mom in the window. Jordan put his hand on the window, then smacked it with his palm. The guard looked at him, and Jordan shook his head. “Leave her alone,” he said into his phone, even though the guard couldn’t hear him.

The guard pursed his lips and looked at Reece, who nodded. The guard leaned on the wall behind Jordan’s mom, lurking there, watching her. Jordan didn’t like the way the guard looked at her. The guard hated Jordan’s mother, Jordan could tell.

Jordan waited a long time while his mother cried. He stared at the top of her head and decided that it
had
to be different if the two of them got to live together again. She wouldn’t do those things anymore, not after being in jail and being on the news. And she would always remember how he had defended her and never told the police the truth about her. “Mom? It’s okay.” The receiver lay on the counter next to her head, so maybe she could hear him. One of her ears was red and scabbed, as if it’d been scraped. He’d gotten used to feeling the passage of time in his guts. He knew just how long a minute could be, and he knew that right now, unlike all those other times, the minutes were clicking by too fast. “Mom? Mom—we don’t get very much time.”

The guard finally stepped forward and touched her shoulder. Jordan read her lips through the glass. “Don’t fucking touch me.” She smacked the guard’s hand away. Jordan wished Reece hadn’t seen that. The guard talked to her, pointing at Jordan, but Jordan couldn’t make out the words. After a few minutes, the guard went back to leaning on the wall.

Mom turned back to Jordan. She placed one hand on the glass and, with the other, picked up the phone.

Jordan knew he should put his hand on hers, palm to palm—he’d seen that in the movies, too. He knew it would look good. He could picture himself doing it, but the rushing-water sound filled his head, even though there would be glass between them. He kept one hand on his phone, his other gripping the counter.

“I’m sorry, Jordan,” she whispered.

He squeezed the edge of the counter until his knuckles whitened. She shouldn’t say that in front of Reece. She wasn’t supposed to have anything to be sorry
for
.

“It’s not your fault,” he said sharply, wanting to remind her. And as he said it, he saw that it wouldn’t be different at
all
if he lived with her. She’d do those things she always did, and then she’d laugh and talk as though nothing had happened. But that picture filled him with panic, just like thinking of Raja had. “Everything’ll be all right,” he promised, needing to believe it. “I can stay at the Ladens’ until you’re out.”

She raised her eyebrows and seemed to wake up out of her weirdness. She drew her hand away from the glass and twisted her hair around one finger. She looked past him, at the bright, white hall behind him. “You shouldn’t be here.”

His stomach fell away, and if glass hadn’t separated them, he might’ve flung himself at her feet and grabbed her legs, hanging on tight so she couldn’t shake him off. “No, I want to. I want to visit you.” He hated how begging and whiny his voice came out.
Stop it.
He would
not
cry. She was supposed to say that she wanted to see him as often as she could. And she was supposed to write him letters every day. She only wrote once last week.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “Do the doctors say you’re fine?”

He stared at her, hot blood filling his face and ears. They never talked about that. Ever. Even after the first time, the worst time. She’d bring him “medicine,” but they never talked about what it was for. She’d just leave what he needed—Epsom salts and the pads—and he figured out what to do with them. He knew that Reece saw that awful, branding heat in his face. He thought his ears might explode.

“What did the doctors say?” she repeated.

“I’m fine,” he rasped, sounding like he was the one with laryngitis.

“Do you feel good?”

He nodded. What was wrong with her?

“Are you playing soccer?”

He shook his head. His hot skin itched.

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “I wasn’t at school for tryouts, and . . . I dunno . . . I never really liked it.”

He thought for a minute she might get mad, but if she was going to ask about his . . . his
body,
he guessed all the rules had gone out the window. He pictured little white strips of paper, with typed rules on them, fluttering out of the jail’s window on the breeze. He thought about saying, “I only played because it was part of the façade,” but he didn’t. “Mom, they say this judge is really big on keeping families together. You’ll be out soon, and we can get back to normal.”

Mom laughed out loud. “Oh, cookie . . .”

Dizziness made the room go shimmery again. Why was she acting like he’d made a joke? He wished he had the guts to tell her to shut up; she was ruining all his hard work.

Before she could answer, the guard tapped her on the shoulder, and she flinched. Jordan heard the man say, “Time.”

Jordan felt he should pull up the tree at the Ladens. He didn’t live there; it wasn’t his home; that wasn’t his family. “I’ll come back next week. Write me, okay?”

But she only mouthed, “Bye,” and let herself be led away.

Jordan hung up his phone. He had a façade again. A new one. But either he’d gotten soft and lazy in this past month or the façade had gotten lots harder.

Chapter Twenty-five
Nate

N
ate sat on the curb in the dark and wondered what the hell had just happened. He had been naked in the same room as Mackenzie, and now here he sat, dressed and alone. Shit. This was the night Nate had been waiting for his entire life. Mackenzie’s parents were gone for three days, at a conference in Philadelphia. He and Mackenzie could be all alone in that huge house. They could take their time. No hiding, no hurry, no contortions in a car.

And he’d blown it. He’d fucking blown it.

He felt that concussion-stunned dizziness that came after being blindsided on the ice. He had a sneaking suspicion that he and Mackenzie had just broken up. Shit. They’d broken up because he wouldn’t sleep with her. Great. He couldn’t wait for
that
to get around. He’d never get another date again. And she probably thought he had some weird obsession with Jordan, something wrong and kinky, bringing up the kid the way he did.

Nate moaned and put his head down on his knees. He was a loser. What a fucking loser. They’d been
naked.
They’d planned it for weeks. They had condoms. There’d been candles. And that warm, honey scent of her that made him dizzy. They’d whispered. There’d been something reverent about it.

The sensation of her bare flesh on his own had produced the same click and hum somewhere deep within him that getting high did. That same slowing down, moving into time that felt deeper, thicker, like moving through water.

Their first time. He had wanted to remember every detail. He’d knelt above her, hardly able to believe that this phenomenal body invited him, welcomed him, totally trusted him.

He’d been
right there
.

And then the damn kid wouldn’t stay out of his brain.

Nate had returned Mackenzie’s favor from the snow day. He’d licked a line down her belly back to that triangle of red fluff. He’d tasted that metallic tang of her. She put her hands in his hair and squeezed and released her fingers against his scalp.

And Nate had lifted his head abruptly, forcing her to let go—forcing away the image of Mr. Kendrick holding Jordan by the hair. Mackenzie kept smiling, though, eyes half closed, and flung her arms over her head, past the nest of blankets she’d made, her pink-painted fingernails burrowing into the carpet instead of Nate’s hair. Nate saw Jordan’s fingers clutching handfuls of the white shag carpet. Nate blinked, then looked at Mackenzie, letting her naked body, her smile, draw him back.

The scent and taste of her made him so drunk his fingers felt numb on the condom wrapper. As he finally tore open the foil, his brain kept repeating,
This is it, this is it.
The moment he’d been waiting for. Their first time.

Had the kid even known what was happening his first time? When did he realize? Nate didn’t want to, but his mind tried to take him there, tried to imagine the sensation, the logistics. It had to hurt. There’d been blood in the pictures. Nate shuddered and looked at Mackenzie, wanting to see
her.

Those pictures were a world apart from this, from him and Mackenzie, weren’t they? He and Mackenzie both wanted it. He slid the condom from the foil. So what the hell was he waiting for?

“Nate? What’s the matter? Don’t you want to?” Mackenzie lowered her gaze from his face, and her forehead crinkled. She could see the obvious fact that he did want to,
yes, yes, yes,
and that he could, but . . . “What’s wrong?”

He couldn’t speak. His brain screamed,
What the hell are you doing? Don’t stop!
Oh, Jesus, he was blowing this big time. But the candlelit room seemed crowded with importance. Because of Jordan he felt this obligation to make the act almost sacred.

“Mackenzie—I . . . I don’t think . . . I mean . . . maybe we . . .”

She stared at him. Her eyes glittered with disbelief.

He opened his mouth but didn’t know what to say.
You are fucking blowing this, you loser,
he told himself, but when he managed to speak, he stammered, “M-maybe we shouldn’t.”