Each and All, Page 3

Chapter 3

  Ian was at the police station. Breathlessly, he told Laura that Amanda had been in a fight and seriously injured another girl. The girl was in a coma and Amanda was under arrest for assault. She got quiet and cold as she asked Ian to go on. He understood her shock, so he talked to her like a good lawyer, explaining how Amanda had been part of a group of girls who, it seemed, had repeatedly picked on the victim of the assault. It seemed Amanda had not been the leader of the group but had participated in taunting and may have been a part of some hair pulling. The girl who was the victim of the hazing had struck out and accidentally hit Amanda in the face, it was alleged. Amanda then punched her and the girl went down, cracking her head on the sidewalk. Amanda would be charged with aggravated assault. It was serious, but he hoped he could see her and arrange for bail, but it would be difficult at that time of the day.

  “I’m coming. Where do I meet you? I don’t care! Don’t tell me not to come.”

  He gave her directions and she got up and rushed off to what she thought would be the worst nightmare of her life. She had no idea of what was to come. The rest of the day was a cascade of fear and rage, humiliation and guilt.

  Ian was waiting inside the police station doors. Laura realized how badly she was shaking when she tried to get money from her wallet to pay the parking lot attendant. A five and a twenty dollar bill had fallen to the ground and as they blew away she lost hold of her other bills and she ended up desperately groveling to save whatever she could. She ended up with only a single twenty-dollar bill as she watched all her money blowing in the wind and the traffic on the street.

  It was with white dust on her knees and dirty brown hands that she met her husband, the rage and frustration in her eyes so intense he was actually frightened. He knew instantly that he was caught, that he would be the thin membrane separating the feelings of his wife and his daughter, feelings that would explode on contact. He saw her dirty hands and asked what happened.

  “Nothing, I dropped some money. How bad is this?” she demanded.

  “Pretty bad. I talked to the detectives that are working the case and they’re not too sympathetic. If the girl lives, the charge will be aggravated assault. If she doesn’t, it will be manslaughter.”

  “If she lives? Manslaughter? This was a catfight. My God!”

  “It happened outside the school and there’s a security tape of the incident the police already have in their possession. I’m trying to get to see it.

  “How could she? She’s a bitch, but she’s never been violent. She wears Save the Seals T-shirts for God sake.”

  “That was a long time ago.” Ian pointed out.

  “Thank God you’re a lawyer. How much is this going to cost? Can her parents sue us?”

  “First things first; there is a long way to go before we have to deal with anything like that.” he reassured her.

  “But it’s coming.” she insisted.

  “There is no way to tell what’s coming. We have to take this one step at a time. We’ll get through this.”

  “Sure, but how? Where is she? Can we see her? This is all about me. This is all about punishing me. We give her everything. We ask for nothing. This is all about proving to me that I failed as a mother.”

  “It’s not. It’s a stupid thing that got out of hand. We have to be cool. I’ve seen these kinds of things do more damage to families than they do to victims. She needs our support, surely you can see that?”

  “I can see that our daughter might go to jail. I can see we can be sued and financially wiped out. How much liability insurance do we have? Does it cover shit like this?” Her organizational mind was starting to be engaged. Life was logistics for Laura and the things that she knew would have to be rescheduled and moved were horrible.

  “I don’t know. We’ll have to figure it out.” But he did know and did not want to tell her that they had no personal liability insurance for criminal actions committed by their daughter. He was as scared as she was, but knew that he couldn’t show it to either her or Amanda.

  The hard sound of footsteps on the terrazzo floor echoed past them as they went looking to find their daughter, the sound of the footsteps muffled in the pulse of the blood beating inside Laura’s temple. Ian noticed something he’d never seen before in all the times he had walked down that hall: people were smiling; the faces of the people were no different than in any other public building. People went about their business while some walked on as their world was completely imploding. Life could alter irrevocably, explosively while other people had a nice day.

  Amanda’s fight had happened over lunch hour and detectives had started interviewing the participants only after witness statements had been obtained. When they were getting ready to interview Amanda, they had called Ian out of court. Amanda had waited. Ian had waited. And now Laura waited too.

  After an hour standing in a public hallway, Laura picked up her cell phone and started making calls. Ian was surprised and glad she had something to do other than feed her fear and anger. She called to cancel appointments for Monday and to apologize for having to cancel out on a corporate party the next day. She called Anthony Holtz and told him that she would be unavailable that weekend. He was enraged. It seemed that a comment he’d made to a reporter about his ex-wife’s new book, ‘that was by the way, flying off the book stands,’ seemed to have enraged her. He had merely said that she was a lousy mother, a lousy bed partner, and what was worse, a lousy writer. When she read his comment, she came to his house and put a copy of her book through his window. He thought this was all right, a good bit of theater. Even though the cat had fled, a ficus was damaged and very precious personal property had been destroyed, it would’ve been all right if only he had not rushed out of his front door in his bath robe to confront what he thought was a vandal, and not come face-to-face with his cursing ex-wife and a photographer who had taken his picture for the next day’s papers. Old poets in open bathrobes aren’t a pretty sight. This was humiliation, beyond the beyond. This was war. Laura told him that she had serious personal problems to deal with right then and wasn’t interested in any minor assault to his dignity.

  “Minor!” he screamed and slammed down his phone. Laura went to the washroom and washed the money grubbing dirt from the parking lot off her hands.

  Ian waited and thought about his daughter. Secretly he liked her wild hair and clothes, her electric intelligence and free spirit. He knew everyone outgrew rebellion, especially if they were bright and had opportunities to make something of their lives. There weren’t many middle-class rebels past twenty. By then they had realized that the goodies in life were just too tempting. It was easy to rebel in a half a million-dollar condominium when Mommy and Daddy were paying the bills.

  What had happened was almost worse than a car wreck. If a person survived something like that, their life might barely alter its course. But this was something else again. If the girl died, his daughter might actually go to prison. A wrongful death lawsuit could actually wipe them out. They would never know it, but he was infinitely more terrified than his wife or his daughter. They never knew what it took for him to seem calm and controlled and sympathetic and understanding and brave.

  Finally, a detective came to get Ian because they were about to question Amanda, and he had indicated that he would be acting as her attorney. That meant Laura had to stay where she was and imagine what would be happening to her daughter. At least she knew that Ian would give her a full report, and in a way she was almost glad to be left behind because she didn’t know what she would’ve said or done when she saw her daughter. She had no idea whether it was rage or sorrow or the muffled groan of heartache that would’ve come out of her mouth. Laura stood there paralyzed. Her heart and head felt the G forces of pure adulterated fear. She had absolutely and completely lost control of her life in the instant it took for a soft skull to crack on a pavement. She had to do something. Someth
ing.

  She called Amanda’s school, not expecting that anyone would be there so late on a Friday but it was only the second ring when the phone was answered and she found herself talking to the vice principal. The conversation that followed dropped her through a pit of outrage that opened under her like a gallows’ trap door.

  The first thing he told her after she introduced herself was that Amanda had become a part of a rather unsavory group.

  “Unsavory. What’s unsavory?” she demanded.

  “Well, I can’t really say.” he replied, and sounded very condescending.

  “Why not? I’m Amanda’s mother. I have a right to know what goes on at her school.”

  “I’m not sure you have the right to know anything. Parental rights, if I’m not mistaken, have to do with what goes on at home.”

  “So what can you tell me, about what happened today?” Laura was furious.

  “There are a number of implications when an act of violence occurs on school property which means that I’m not at liberty to either discuss or make statements about any act which may have occurred.”

  “That’s right; we’re going to sue your ass because our daughter injured another student.”

  “Even though you are being ironic, I’m still not at liberty to say anything further.”

  “Well maybe you can tell me this, has she been in any trouble like this before, hazing other students I mean?”

  “She has. But I don’t feel that, considering the circumstances, I should talk about that either. A certain teacher did put her on a waiting list for a guidance interview.”

  “Why was that?” Laura insisted.

  “You’d have to ask the teacher, although I doubt she would be permitted to talk to you before she talked to our legal counsel.”

  “Are you a school or a liability claims department?”

  “It seems we are both.” he snapped back.

  “When I picked up this phone I did not want to sue you. I wanted to tell you that I was sorry my daughter hurt one of her classmates. I felt very guilty and responsible for what she had done. Now I definitely want to sue your ass and I think your attitude has had a big part in making my daughter such a bitch.”

  He hung up. “He hung up on me.” She said to no one but herself. She had to take deep breaths as she started pacing back and forth in the hallway like an experimental rat in a cage. Finally when she realized that people were staring at her she stopped and leaned back against the concrete wall and stared out into space. It was shock. It hit hard and deep making her feel numb and cold and quiet. From boiling rage to icy calm she rode the sine wave of panic, losing all sense of her body. That was the way Ian found her, leaning against the wall looking wide-eyed and almost casual. He began to tell her about the interview then saw that she wasn’t following what he said.

  “Aren’t you interested in this?” he asked as he searched her face for a reaction.

  She put her arms around him and held him and started to cry. He hadn’t seen Laura cry in many, many years.

  “She has to stay tonight.” he told her, “I think we might be able to get her home tomorrow. Let’s just go home.” He held her stiff body until it sagged under the tears, then he put his arm around her waist and led her out of the police station.

  They left her car in the parking lot and Ian drove them home in his Lexus. She sat beside him silently all way home, her tears running nonstop. Ian let her cry. He was seriously shaken by her tears.

  At home, he made her a double Scotch after she threw herself into the big brown calfskin sofa. She drank half the drink before she spoke.

  “Okay. What happened?” she asked, softly.

  “It looks pretty bad. They showed us the tape. Amanda was with six other girls who were pushing the victim and pulling her hair.”

  “What was Amanda doing?” Laura asked impatiently.

  “She was doing most of the talking. She was in the girls face. There’s no sound on the tape, so there was no way to tell what she was saying. The girl was just flailing and hit Amanda accidentally. Amanda punched her right in the face like she’d taken boxing lessons all her life. The girl dropped like a stone. She hit her head pretty hard. There was a lot of blood. Everyone ran except Amanda. She just stood there looking at the girl bleeding until a crowd started forming and then she just walked away.”

  “Do you know name of the girl who was hurt?”

  “Stacy Peak. She was top of her class.”

  Sometimes there is a numb silence that happens between parents when they are considering everything and anything they may have done to create a child who has come to desperate trouble. The liquid goodness of love that hardens into cold responsibility may have unseen cracks that can swallow a life completely. That was the way they felt when they fell asleep deep in the morning with just their little fingers crossing.

  Before Ian had come to bed he called the hospital for the third time to ask about the condition of the girl with the fractured skull. It was only after the third call that they told him anything. She had brain swelling. They would keep her in a coma. They would know more in a few days. When he asked about the parents, the nurse on duty asked if he wanted to speak to the father of the girl. His insides turned to lead as he said that he would. When the father came to the phone, it was Ian’s turn to cry. He was not sure if the man could tell that as he told him how sorry he was for what had happened. It was awkward and horrible to apologize for his daughter’s brutal behavior, but he did it the best he could. He told him that Amanda had never hurt anyone before in her life. He asked him to believe that she couldn’t have meant it. The father had listened quietly as Ian spoke. But when he said that Amanda couldn’t have meant it, the father replied that he found that hard to believe because his daughter’s nose was completely shattered, that Amanda had bullied his daughter for a year and made her life into a very public hell. Ian just kept saying he was sorry, so sorry. He didn’t tell Laura that he talked to the father until the next day.

  “Oh, Jesus!” she had groaned and went back to sipping her coffee.

  It was nearly noon the next day before Amanda was charged with aggravated assault and released to her father’s custody.

  Before they went in for the hearing, Ian heard the whole story for the first time. Between her tears of defiance and fear and self-pity there was little remorse he could see for what she had done, and it was that which he knew he had to find within her, if he was going to save her from the worst personal and public penalties.

  “I want you think about that girl lying in intensive care, her face swollen black, her head shattered from where she fell.” he said softly.

  “I know. I know. Why are you saying that? Don’t you think I feel bad enough?” she demanded.

  He told her the truth. “No, I don’t think you feel bad enough. And unless you and everyone else can see how badly you feel, people will think you deserve a far more severe punishment. The legal system is the only place that compassion is self-serving. You’re going to have to grow up really fast now. You are going to have to learn that responsibility sometimes hurts.”

  “So what do you want me to do? I can’t change anything. Am I supposed to go around crying about how sorry I am all the time?” She looked like she was going to cry again.

  “You can’t change what happened. But you can change what you’re going to do about it. You can reach out to her family. You can express your sorrow to the detectives and to the crown prosecutor. And you can stop making any, and I mean any excuses for yourself.”

  “But I have some. It wasn’t all my fault.” Amanda pleaded.

  “It was absolutely all your fault. The sooner you decide that’s the truth, the sooner this will start to be over.” he insisted

  “But there are excuses. I didn’t mean to hurt her. She hit me. I just snapped. “

  “That’ll be obvious, if it’s true. But you are not the one to say it,
I am. And there are two sides to me being your lawyer. I’m going to look like a father making excuses for a child I couldn’t control, so you will have to help me by appearing to be a client that understands and accepts responsibility for her actions.”

  “But that’s not fair.”

  “How’s that? Every time you think that, just think about what that little girl in intensive care would think was fair. Think about what her parents would think was fair. What if it was her that socked you and your mother and I were the ones waiting to see if you were going to live or die?”

  She started to blubber and Ian’s heart heaved in time with her gasping sobs, and then he pulled her to him and held her closer than he had for many years.

  “I really am sorry.” she sobbed

  “I know you are. I know you are.” he reassured her.

  Outside the hearing room Laura had talked to Anthony Holtz on her cell phone. He was being petulant, angry, seething with the desire for vengeance for his public humiliation, which somehow Laura was supposed to provide. He wanted his hand held like a little boy as his fierce publicist Mama marched down and throttled his mean ex-wife.

  To distract him, Laura suggested that he plan one big nasty reply, something legal or something public. But he had to promise to warn her before he did anything. It was then she suggested he rent the video of War of the Roses and see how two people who really hated each other dealt with divorce. “Love, pah!” he shouted. She thought a mission would distract him; she thought he’d sublimate his rage. She didn’t think that what she was doing was setting him on course that would make him, and to a lesser degree her, famous. On a hunch that he might do something, she called a young photographer friend and told him about Anthony and said he might be worth staking out. He thanked her and did as she asked because Laura had done him some favors before that had turned out to make him some money. He had no idea that when he followed Anthony that afternoon as he set out on his errands of rage that he would take a picture that day that would end up on the front page of more newspapers than any other picture he would ever take in his life.

  Laura then shut off her cell phone and it was a hard thing to do because she was the spider in the sticky web of life waiting for the tug and the struggle that said it was ready or unwilling to pay.

  While she waited for Ian and Amanda for what seemed like hours, she wrapped her arms around herself, arms crossed to protect her from the heart blows to come. When Ian came through the door with Amanda, she almost didn’t recognize who they were, they looked so normal, so much like anyone else, so much an alienated part of her being.

  The gel that had held Amanda’s fine hair flat like a helmet had been washed out with hand soap from a dispenser by a bathroom sink. The hair dye he brought with him was the colour he remembered his daughter having until the last year of her life. Without protest, he bent her head over the sink and felt his daughter’s lovely skull through cheap plastic gloves. He helped her dry her hair with paper towels and when they were done with the practical intimacy, her hair showed the simple, expensive cut and style that framed her face so she looked like a pixie child. She looked nervous and sweet. Laura got a hot foot, stepping in the small puddle of love that dissolved out of the icy anger of her heart when she looked at her daughter’s hair.

  ‘I should never have been a mother.’ she thought to herself. ‘It wasn’t fair.’

  When mother and daughter looked in each other’s eyes they were both uncomfortable and afraid of what the other was seeing. They were both afraid that what each would see was the absence of love in the other. They were both sure they saw it. They were both sure they had done things that could never be forgiven.

  Amanda was a quick study. “I’m sorry I hurt that girl.” she said to her mother and looked like she meant it.

  “I know.” Laura said, coldly. “Let’s just go home.” They turned and left, Ian holding his daughter’s hand.

  In the Lexus, no one knew what to say or how to say it. No one knew how to be normal. All the things each of them felt, all the things that could always go unspoken, all the things they could never express were massed behind the crack in the dam that came from a young girl’s head hitting pavement.

  Sometimes a simple question can be a dam buster. Amanda asked her mother, “So, did you listen to my phone messages, or what?”

  “I never thought of it, but I suppose we should have. There are probably incriminating statements from your low- life friends. That’s what you people do when you swarm innocent victims, call each other up and brag about how tough and how cool you were.”

  Ian realized that Laura was probably right. There might be evidence on the computer or the answering machine. It would be the first thing he checked when they got home. But he would almost forget to do that because of the flash flood that roared through the Lexus exploding over them like a wall of water hitting a trailer park.

  “This hasn’t been easy for me.” Amanda pleaded.

  “You? I suppose you are the victim in all this, the innocent party? The rest of us are supposed to give you a big hug and say,’ poor baby’. You may have killed someone and we’re supposed to be there for you. When are you there for us?” Laura was furious.

  “Be there for me? That would be a change. Just think of this as giving me some quality time, if you can fit it in your schedule.” Amanda shot back.

  “You made it clear that you prefer your low-life friends. Are they there you for you now, or are they talking about how cool it is that you may have killed someone and you may be going to jail?”

  “Don’t keep saying that. Why are you being so cruel?”

  “You both have to stop now.” Ian interrupted, “Trust me; this is the stuff that breaks families apart. I’ve seen it too many times.” He was begging them both to stop.

  “So what are we supposed to do, just sit here and say that’s fine dear, torment anyone you like dear, ruin your life and ours dear?” Laura glared at her daughter.

  “Fuck you Laura!” Amanda spat.

  “I couldn’t do it anywhere near as well as you do, dear.”

  “Stop it! Now! “Ian screamed and his women stopped for a breath. Three beats of silence and many more heartbeats fell before Amanda turned away and glared out of the window. Laura’s cell phone buzzed the second she turned it on, then did it again, and again. Amanda snorted her contempt at the arrival of her rival but said nothing, mostly for her father’s sake. For the moment, Laura ignored the phone and told her daughter her snort was noticed. “You’re so good at laying on yuppie guilt, Amanda. That may justify you being an asshole, but it doesn’t come close to justifying what you did. Hello.” She answered the phone and it was amazing that her voice was back in control. It was Brian her photographer friend following Anthony Holtz. Laura listened and almost forgot her rage because of what she was hearing.

  He had followed the poet to his former home in Rosedale where his ex-wife still lived. Anthony had first gone to a graphic design studio and had a photo of his wife blown up and made into a life sized cut-out. He had then stopped at a grocery store and then a garden center before proceeding to his former home. There he had gone to a huge ornate fountain splashing water in cascading layers over a cement gargoyle into a big central pool full of his ex-wife’s prized Koi. First he poured huge boxes of cheap soap flakes and a bag of horse manure into the fountain. Then he rammed the life size cutout of his ex-wife directly onto one of the four cherubs peeing into the fountain so that it looked like the tiny male genitalia were coming out of his wife’s crotch. Anthony had then stood back and watched the fountain starting to froth and foam with the black manure and the soap flakes as it recycled the water over and over again. When the foam was billowing over the sides of the fountain he walked to the front door and hurled her book through the front window. In only a few moments she had come screaming outside. ‘Just returning your book.’ he had shouted at her and started to laugh wh
en she saw the fountain and then started to scream and panic. She had rushed into the house and come back out with a bucket and fishnet running to the fountain where she started groping around with a net for her prized carp.

  The famous photo the young photographer took was of Anthony standing beside his wife as he howled with laughter as she was bent over with her head buried in the soap suds looking like one of those painted folk art cut outs some people put in their flower beds. And the best touch of all was the peeing foam board cut-out of his ex-wife dressed in sado-masochistic studs, chains and leather. She was even holding a bullwhip. Brian couldn’t stop laughing, telling the story for the first time.

  “Is that police sirens I can hear?”

  “The police are here. So is every newspaper and TV station. Anthony must have called them just before he arrived.” Brian explained.

  “We’ll be there in ten minutes. What’s the address? Keep taking pictures.” Laura ordered.

  The only thing that Laura had said during the phone call was about the police sirens and so both Ian and Amanda were relieved when she told them what was going on. She told Ian the address in Rosedale and he asked her, “If you show up there won’t everyone think this was a big setup you engineered?”

  “They’ll think it regardless, but you’re right, I’d rather not be there answering questions. This should be Anthony’s moment in the sun. She chuckled then returned to the moment as she heard Amanda crying. “Let’s go home.” she said softly.

  She called Brian and told him to just keep on taking pictures and that she wasn’t going to come. In a way everyone was disappointed by her decision: Ian because this was something that might deflect the anger and pain everyone was feeling; Amanda because she was missing her mother looking like a complete fool; and Laura because she was missing the greatest media event she thought she could have never even imagined.

  At home, they took their respective positions: Ian in the kitchen making some food; Laura on the phone trying to keep track of developments at the fountain; Amanda in her room on her bed playing back a full tape of messages.

  Ian had brought Amanda tea with lemon, just the way she liked it in her tall porcelain mug. She smiled wanly as he put it on her bedside table, making it clear with her eyes that the fast talking breathless voice on the phone was important for her to hear.

  “Try not to make your mom angry. You have to try to be strong.” he whispered. She rolled her eyes and saw for the first time the fear that was showing in his. He was caught in the middle between two implacable opponents who fought with a growing vicious desperation, the weaker and the more vulnerable they felt. He was the permeable membrane that he wished could keep separate the weaknesses of the two women he loved, but would let pass the love and the tenderness neither Laura nor Amanda could bring themselves to express.

  In the living room, Ian handed Laura a big glass of red wine. He sipped his own as he listened to the update on the Anthony Holtz fiasco in all its slap stick details.

  The ex-wife had set her two Rottweilers on the media and everyone had scattered for their lives as they tried to take pictures of each other and shout questions at Anthony who had managed to climb the big fountain gargoyle from where his ex-wife was trying to dislodge him with the big cut-out of herself resplendent with whips and chains. Anthony had just laughed until she clipped him and he lost his balance and fell down and broke his arm as she continued to flail him with the life size cut out of herself. That was the money shot! It just got better and better…media wise.

  Before the ambulance came and the dogs were put away, Anthony had crawled to the protection of a television satellite truck while his wife bailed out the fountain and found the flopping fish which she then deposited in a brass bucket filled with water she brought from the house. The beautiful brilliant shining fish continued to flop out of the pail onto the grass as the ex-wife begged for people to help her. Nobody helped. Everybody laughed. “These fish are irreplaceable.” she screamed. “If they die, you die, Anthony,” she would occasionally scream toward the ambulance at the top of her lungs.

  The next day the local newspapers all carried her comments and his explanation of his actions and behavior. “I was just returning her book, and just thought she could use some more soap flakes and horse shit so she could start working on a sequel.” The comment was a cut line for the picture in the morning tabloid paper, the picture that would become so famous: the soap suds billowing under the gargoyle, the old poet warding off the blow with his ex-wife’s S and M image. Next to that picture was the one of his ex-wife in a short skirt with her butt showing as she bent over into a mountain of soap suds beside a peeing cut-out of herself looking like the cruel mistress of soapy domains. I was media gold; screwing up as cultural event.

  It was funny but, as Laura told the story with little relish, neither she nor Ian laughed. In bed early that night, after an un-thawed, oily pizza, Laura had finally turned off the phone so it would be answered by her service. She hadn’t wanted to do that, but Ian insisted she would need her sleep. Before the long hours when sleep would come, they had talked and then fought and then mildly hated one another. Like many of their fights, it started out by trying to decide how things would have to change in their lives.

  “We’re raising a time bomb.” Laura had begun, “She’s going to explode her life, I don’t want her to blow up ours. If we somehow get through this, what are we going to do?”

  “I’ve already started looking for a good therapist.” he replied.

  “Great! My best friend is a therapist and her daughter makes Amanda looked like a Mousekateer. We have to do something. Isn’t there a strict private school at least? Responsibility rehab?”

  Ian was outraged. “Right! A nice exclusive private school full of teenage screw ups and lost causes. You just want to shift our problem to somebody else.”

  “Why not? We obviously can’t solve it. Or maybe we should just let her quit school like she keeps threatening. Let’s kick her out and let her live on the street and sell her ass for somebody who will truly love and appreciate her.” She was getting angry.

  “What you really mean, is let’s just find a nice way to give up on her. If she leaves this house, I go with her.” He was now both hurt and angry.

  “So what’s your idea, cut off her phone privileges, cut her allowance? I’m sick of cutting her slack.” Her voice was rising.

  Ian’s voice rose with hers, “Part of this is our fault. If she has to change, so do we.”

  Then Laura started shouting, “No! No! No more yuppie guilt. No matter what we do, it’s never enough. It’s always our fault. I’m not going to martyr my life for a spoiled, self-indulgent bitch, just because you spoiled her.”

  “Well, we’ve given her good basic training in self-indulgence.” he shot back and that was what sent Laura over the top.

  “You mean that I’m the spoiled self-indulgent bitch that taught her all the ropes.”

  “She’s your daughter. She’s your responsibility. She’s like she is because of us.”

  “Even if you’re right, I don’t care. I’m sick of feeling guilty. I’m sick of being afraid of hurting her tender little psyche. I’m sick of you defending her. And I’m sick of you blaming me. Maybe you two should just find a place together and you and your precious can finally make each other happy.”

  The rage in her brown eyes was electric and he could see that what she was saying was more than the rhetoric of anger. She was resentful and angry at him for being closer to her daughter than she was. She couldn’t stop herself. “It’s always my fault, my choices that make her so screwed up: my not being home; my not baking cookies and teaching her ways to make a man happy in the kitchen. It’s my not doing this! My not doing that! My not being there for her, whatever the fuck that means! Well fuck you and your daughter Electra!”

  These were words that he was so shocked to hear, so shocked to imagine were unsa
id inside his wife, so much a betrayal of his feelings for both Laura and Amanda that the rage inside him imploded like a television tube struck with a hammer. Inside all the images of rage was emptiness. Inside all the things that looked so real was a vacuum. Inside all the images he believed to be true was the difficult course of ordinary love. Now those images dissolved leaving him facing a hard woman who saw his love for his daughter as incestuous, self-indulgent and sick. His most vulnerable button was his daughter. She had pulled its connection out by its umbilical cord.

  “Maybe we will have to look for a place. Maybe we are done. But first we have to get through this crisis.” he said coldly.

  She knew that he meant the crisis of the girl in the coma and Amanda’s legal problems. But she knew for the first time there was a greater crisis. It was always her who threatened a divorce when they fought. This time it was him. This time he said it with a calm voice like the voice he used when he was making a closing argument. She was so angry and hurt she didn’t care. When he said he was going to sleep and he turned his back to her, she lay calmly back on her pillow. They didn’t sleep for a long time. They knew that Amanda had heard most of what they had said. They knew it while they were talking, even though they couldn’t stop themselves. Ian was sick at the thought. Laura was almost glad.

  As she lay there unsleeping, Laura went through the crimes she had committed that Ian would be preparing as charges. Her late parties, her trendy friends, her unending attachment to communication devices, time for staying fit with no time for her daughter, teaching her daughter nothing but style and grammar while insisting that her daughter know how to be responsible and mature, these were just some of the charges she was sure that Ian was preparing for discovery. The trial she was sure she would now have to endure was coming. She had no idea that he would once again be called on to be her greatest defender. Before they fell into a final cold silence they crossed another line, a final accusation and admission. “I tried a fuck of a lot harder to be a good parent than you have. “Ian said to the night stand.

  “Well, you get a big fucking A. Maybe you’d have done a lot better if I hadn’t been here.” she replied with a dead voice.

  “I probably would.” He had the same dead voice.

  Too far. Too far from shore. It seemed there would be no saving themselves from this.

  “So it’s all been a big lie. Perjury.”

  Before Ian fell asleep half an hour later he lay there and hated her for saying that most of all.

  Sunday morning and she was gone before he got up. Before she left, she walked in on Amanda and threw the little red book of bourgeois alienation on her bed. “It’s Catcher in the Rye, the cri de Coeur of despoiled youth. You may be fucked up, but you’ll be glad to know you’re not alone. I’m so sorry we gave you everything but the meaning of life. How selfish of us.” she said coldly and turned and walked away. Amanda looked truly heartbroken when her mother left her there.

  Ian didn’t know and Laura didn’t tell him that she was going to treat the day like a workday. She worked out at the fitness club, showered and went to her office. It was too early for calls on a Sunday so she sat looking at the morning papers that all had the picture of Anthony and his ex-wife by the fountain. She read the articles and let her mind climb and fall between the joy and excitement of what work would be like that week and the fear and the horror of what was sleeping at home.

  Ian had taken the whole day to try to talk to Amanda, to work out a plan, to try to reach her and shore up her spirit. He didn’t know and did not want to ask what she’d heard through the wall the night before. He had gotten permission from the father to call and ask about the injured girl’s condition, and both he and Amanda were almost giddy with relief when he was told the girl was conscious and speaking. They both began to put their fingernails deeper into the hope that the worst wasn’t going to happen. Their one flare up happened when he asked Amanda not to speak on the phone or reply to any email messages that came from any of her friends who had been at the scene of the fight.

  “If you talk to them and it’s recorded, if you write to them and it stays in their computer, what you say can be subpoenaed, so I don’t want you talking about what happened or justifying yourself to anyone.” he insisted. He took her cell and laptop.

  She pleaded with him saying that she would not talk about the incident, but he was adamant that she couldn’t help but do so when that would be all her friends would want to talk about. That was how Amanda was sentenced to solitary confinement. Like most people, especially people her age, she couldn’t stand it for very long. Ian asked her what she thought would be the hardest thing for her to deal with while she was getting through this time.

  “I don’t want a go back to school.” she said, “Everybody will be looking at me. They’ll all be talking about me. It’ll just feel so gross.”

  He didn’t understand that what she was saying was that she was like an injured animal and the pack at school would smell blood and attack at the first sign of pain or weakness. She didn’t know or want to tell him that. He had no way to imagine what she feared would be too real.

  “But I’ll have to talk to my friends. They’ll make me talk about what happened. You just told me not to talk about it.” she pleaded.

  “And you shouldn’t. But no matter what you say, unless it’s recorded, it will be their imperfect recollections against yours.

  Try as he did, he couldn’t get her to agree that she had to go back to school. He decided to let her have a couple of days in her room where he believed she would get bored and the incident would begin to be forgotten at school.

  The purest pain he inflicted on her came after he talked to Stacy Peak’s father. Ian had asked if it was all right if he and Amanda came to the hospital to visit with Stacy so Amanda could apologize. When he told Amanda where they were going, she looked like he had shoved a harpoon through her stomach; she had literally bent over from the blow. He would not relent.

  They had to go through elevators and hallways and through one huge swinging door after another until they came to the intensive care waiting room. There were bad prints of bad art on the walls and there were hard armchairs entirely filled with anxious looking people. Ian and Mr. Peak locked eyes the second they entered. The mother’s eyes froze Amanda beside her dad.

  Introductions were horrible. The look Mr. And Mrs. Peak gave Amanda hit them both like battery acid. Just into their forties, they looked much older, obviously working-class people. Ian had made Amanda dress in a skirt and a blouse, which were probably things she would’ve never worn again in her life. They were things her mother had bought her. She looked like the girl she was, or had been.

  Amanda apologized and the words came out of her throat so soft and quiet and dry that Ian was very disappointed they could barely be heard. She didn’t cry when Mr. Peak told her it was a brutal thing she had done. Then Mrs. Peak, in a cold angry voice, described to both of them the terror her daughter had suffered from the beginning of the year when Amanda and her friends had decided to attack her daughter like a pack of dogs.

  “I know we did that. I’m very ashamed.” she said in a stronger voice. “I don’t know how I could do such a thing to someone who never hurt me at all. I’m really so sorry.” She sounded sincere. She had to be sincere. Ian was almost proud of her.

  “All right then, let’s go see Stacy.” said Mr. Peak. Amanda’s eyes grew wide in terror.

  More sets of huge swinging doors between long hallways brought them to intensive care where father and daughter went in anticipating a tsunami wave of revulsion and heart pounding regret. That was exactly what they met in the big white bed, coming from a tiny girl with a blue and red face and a pure white bandage holding her reconstructed nose. The frightened blue eyes that looked up at them broke everyone’s heart: her parents once more, Ian’s and Amanda’s for the first and most heart wrenching time. It was like clubbing a s
eal pup. Stacy looked like a child.

  “I’m really sorry.” Amanda began through her tears, “I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have hurt you. I’m really sorry.” Her tears trickled down her face but she spoiled it for everyone when she said, “Why did we have to come here?”

  “Because you hurt Stacy so much; it’s only fair she sees that what you’ve done is hurting you too.” Ian said firmly.

  “I know. I’m sorry.” Amanda turned and threw herself into Ian’s arms and cried like a baby. She had a heart she couldn’t deny.

  “It’s okay.” came Stacy’s dry voice from the bed, sounding pinched and weak and nasal, and Ian was so moved that he nearly broke.

  “We just came so Amanda could tell you how sorry she was for hurting you. Maybe we should go now and let you rest.” he said to Stacy.

  Then Stacy said the most heartbreaking thing Amanda could ever have imagined.

  “I always really liked you. Why couldn’t you like me just a little?”

  What Amanda said in reply was almost as sad and as tragic. “But I did like you. I still like you. I wanted others to like me more.” she said, and then begged her father to go. Both of them left with their heads spinning with the sick reality of what good people could do to others. Amanda felt so ashamed, yet Ian couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming love for his daughter. They each left unspoken what the other one most longed to hear.

  Laura came home at eight o’clock that night and Ian knew that this time it would be hard to heal the hurt that had come from what had been said before dawn. This time he did not know how to back down, did not know how to apologize, did not know how to reassure her of his love. His heart no longer had the buoyancy to hold them up while they struggled back to shore. He did not know how to lift her up again where she belonged. He could see that her heart was treading water. He was terrified of what he’d do this time when she tired.

  D.I.V.O.R.C.E., somebody may be going away. Either of them, both of them, neither of them, who would be living in this place when all things were said and done; leaving behind all the things that could never be unsaid, all the things that could never be undone.

  As Laura sat with a drink, Ian told her about the day, about his talk with Amanda and about their trip to the hospital. He hadn’t called her with the good news that Stacy had regained consciousness and her parents were willing to let Amanda come and apologize. Good will was essential if there were going to get through the liability that hung over them from Amanda’s act. Laura listened and the relief she felt did not show. The only thing she said when Ian stopped talking was that Amanda had to go back to school. He agreed, but said it would probably be better if she had a couple of days to get herself together and prepare herself for her friend’s reaction. “God knows, but they may treat her like some kind of hero. She’s been in jail and that seems to be cool to a twisted adolescent consciousness. We shall overcome. I know a good therapist who says she’ll talk with Amanda.”

  “No one wants a fellow with a social disease.” Laura sang softly, almost to herself. “I’m going to bed. I’m feeling about half past dead.” she said and left the room. It was one of her favourite lines. As she passed Amanda’s room she heard her daughter’s voice. She was on the phone her father had returned. She was laughing. She didn’t think there was anything her daughter could do to make her feel worse than she did. That laugh did it.

  Tuesday night Laura decided on dinner at George’s apartment. She had found him in the phone book. The finding was simple, the going was hard, but she knew she wanted to see him. She knew she wanted to feel something that didn’t make her feel so helpless. Any imaginary port in a storm that was just too too real.

  The media storm that followed Anthony’s fountain performance was a matter of holding back a tidal wave of people wanting her attention. It was like a Chinese dinner of media options. She would take two from television, three from the press, and one from the radio column, Hot Times. The rest was dealing with party invitations. People wanting Anthony to appear and make them Hip and In and so Over the Top Now. Any other week in would have felt like falling into a bed of cold hard cash.

  At home she was helpless because she was just the same old wet blanket. She dressed knowing she would make love with George. She would ride his body back to dry land. As hard as it was to make the final decision, once she made it she followed through with a cool determined élan.

  The small, modern bachelor apartment was filled with modern art. Everything was abstract, nothing representational, everything looking vainly for its pure form. She liked it. He had kissed her sweetly on the cheek as she entered and saw the polished Walnut table set with two places at its opposite ends, set with fine china and crystal glasses just as he said he would do. It gave her a flutter that she greeted like the first butterflies of spring. Wonderfully, he said absolutely nothing as he led her into the kitchen where he was cooking. He opened pot lids and opened the oven to show her the things that were cooking, filling the room with the smell of exotic spices.

  “I’m just going to make a salad.” he told her, and then she stopped him and slowly unbuttoned his soft cotton shirt, pulled it from his jeans and slipped it off his shoulders as she looked him in the eyes. When his hands came up to touch her, she shook her head and they fell back to his sides. He was smiling a self satisfied smile.

  “I’ll watch while you make the salad.” she said and watched him begin, walking around the kitchen naked to the waist. He moved between the refrigerator and a cutting board preparing the ingredients of the salad, and when he was almost finished chopping pieces of red pimento, she walked up behind him and reached around his waist, undid his belt and button and zipper and slowly slid his designer jeans down his legs. When they were bunched at his feet she simply told him to ‘lift’ and she took off his Italian loafers then took away his jeans and draped them over an empty chair. The rest of the salad was put together while he walked around in his socks and fresh tight underwear that were obviously starting to strain.

  “So how was your day?” he asked with a grin, obviously loving every moment of dinner preparations.

  “At work, it went well.”

  “That’s good.”

  Then while he was shaking the dressing in a lovely crystal bottle, she walked straight up to him and knelt down in front of him then reached and slowly pulled down his underwear to reveal his obvious rampant excitement. Wishing and hoping, she looked like she was getting ready to actually pray, her eyes to heaven. She stood up and walked back to the end of the counter and let him continue, naked, except for his socks, watching him ladling food into fine serving bowls. When he went to the oven and opened the door and the sweet smell of the rack of lamb fell into the kitchen, she followed him and pressed herself into his back and reached around and touched him and he groaned as if her hand had been filled with hot coals.

  For a long delicious half a minute she wouldn’t let him move. Then she let go of him and he turned around sweating and naked and looked at her standing there dressed and cool and lovely. Then he kissed her and they melted into each other’s arms, the hot dry blast of the air from the stove falling around them. Heat waves shimmered through their bodies and swirled around in their heads as they kissed more and more voraciously. Then she let him go and took his hand and led him to the polished Walnut table. She sat in the center of the table where the serving dishes were meant to be placed between the two place settings of china and crystal and linen. She pulled her shirt waist dress over her long legs as she looked him straight in the eye and he moved between her legs. She lay back and her only word was, “Now.”

  He reached under her and pulled off her panties and pushed her dress up further and she lifted her legs and in an instant he was inside her. Neither of them could have lasted long because of the power of anticipation, thoughts of technique and patience and performance exploding in pure desire. During sex Laura often let her mind roam fr
ee among images and feelings real and remembered, seen and imagined in free associations of desire. Not this time. They made love fast and deep without even a word, and when they came it was only a heartbeat that separated them, filling the apartment with ecstatic groans. Laura’s arms lashed out to her sides and just as he said, the crystal and china shattered as it flew to the floor.

  When they descended from their orgasms and looked at one another, it was with amazement and appreciation as he stood over her sweating, her silken legs brushing his arms as they came down, and then they separated and she sat up and pulled him to her, her fingers reaching into the hair at the back of his neck. She kissed him sweetly and whispered, “Young girls just don’t know how to live. It takes a woman to know how it’s done.”

  “Truly.” he gasped, then she pushed him back and he watched her get off the table and walk to the door where she turned around and said, “I’ve got to go. I just came for appetizers.” She opened the door and was gone as he stood there naked and grinning and amazingly he could feel the pulse of desire rekindle in his groin. “Now, that’s how it’s done.” he said out loud. “Bravo!” And he began to wildly applaud her even in her absence, her panties still in one of his hands. As she walked away from his door and heard the muffled applause, it was the first time in four days that she had smiled. That night, George, as he did too often, sat home alone and drank until he slept. That night he did it with a fluttering heart.

  The fear, the anger, the loss and desperation Ian felt as he’d gone through the two days after his visit to Stacy Peak with Amanda gave him a feeling of emotional vertigo, the breathless feeling of reaching out for someone, losing touch and falling and falling and falling backward. For the first time in his marriage he felt it was actually falling apart. He knew the fall was one step away. He wasn’t sure if and how he would survive when he finally hit the ground.

  Tuesday evening when Laura came through the door, the look in her eyes was like a hand reaching out to save him. The secret process of rationalization and forgiveness and illicit sex had somehow transformed her, the hate he’d seen, the contempt that he’d felt directed so powerfully toward him was gone. Pulled back from the abyss, she looked in his eyes and smiled. She wouldn’t leave him. He felt it. He could never leave her. Now, he knew that too. And when she touched him, they flowed together like fabric in the wind and he felt free and breathlessly happy.

  Laura saw his relief. Then she too knew she would stay. The irony of having come from betraying him a brief hour before made it all feel so bittersweet. As she held him in her arms, she also knew that her affair with George wasn’t over. He was the release of her romantic imagination. He was her release from the prison of expectations. It was something so strong she felt she just couldn’t let slip away so soon.

  “Leave Amanda to me.” Ian said to her. She nodded and smiled and it was just what she hoped he would say.

  After a few days Ian got Amanda to go back to school. Rock music and boredom and phone friends and not talking about her case did what persuasion would not do. At first, even pointing out that if she was not in school, it would make it more likely she would serve time in jail hadn’t broken her resolve. She had learned in the last year to spin her own reality. She had become an expert at deflection and denial. The truth was that somebody always cleaned up her spilled milk, all she had to do was a wait or cry, or both.

  After she went back to school, Ian tried talking to her about the cold reactions of teachers, and the cruel remarks of her friends and she had given him enough to satisfy him that she was surviving all right. The real feelings, the deep feelings that Amanda felt she had saved for her best friend Kara Kovak, the bad influence, the bad seed of quick anger, the white trash talk tendency to whip herself over the least rejection she received. As she often said, Kara took no shit from anyone because she kept getting it dumped on her all the time. Amanda reassured her, Amanda stuck by her, Amanda accepted her for what she was.

  Now that it was Amanda’s turn to be in big trouble, Kara was there for her. Kara knew how to turn pain and fear into anger and defiance. As the next weeks went by, the two of them became closer than ever. Kara gave Amanda advanced lessons in how to say what her parents wanted to hear. The practiced teen aged lie would cut her slack. It would get her the freedom to do and to be what she really wanted. That neither of them knew what they really wanted somehow never became an issue. Life’s potential was no more than personal license. Life’s potential was a blank slate of self-indulgence.

  Laura saw George once, the week following their appetizer. The next week it was three times. Very quickly, the passionate inventions of illicit, imaginative sex had given way to technique and patience and performance. Their imaginations had connected like explosive charges, but their bodies responded with a timing and touch that still didn’t quite work like the well-oiled machine they had imagined. Everything was performance for George and Laura thought it was probably just that that she liked most about their coupling. And the fact that she was an adulteress and betraying her sweet Ian didn’t seem to bother her nearly as much as the realization that George was a drunk. He drank before, during and after every meeting she ever had with him. Very quickly she realized she would be facing a lot more than performance anxiety when the day would come when she would have to break off their affair.

  She quickly dismissed his interest in showing her and letting her experience ‘The Course’. She told him that she was there for the sex and the interesting distraction from her life that she could count on him to provide. When she said it, it was the first time he looked truly hurt.

  After they had sex they would lie in his bed and talk, mostly about Amanda.

  George knew the lines between the generations. All his relationships were with immature adults just like himself. The only difference between teacher and student was he had the maturity and intelligence to know how to use power. Laura was intrigued that he knew how to have power over young people, young women, when she had so little power or influence on her own daughter. Her own experience and knowledge seemed to be worth nothing. She did not understand why being a mother should make that so.

  That was why Laura got George to talk about the young women who had taken his course, many of whom still came back for one night stands and stolen weekends from unsuspecting mates. What he told her made her realize the loneliness that existed in modern marriage, the bittersweet loneliness that existed in being gifted or beautiful or bright. She realized the need that George satisfied was that he could take that lonely reality and make it into a brief, exciting, romantic, imaginative connection. George was the Harlequin romance of bright, gifted women. Laura was amazed that they could lie together for hours talking about his other women. She was also amazed at her own interest in Eugene Van Fleet’s wife.

  Under the waxy odor of Eugene’s own dying was the image of his wife, the capitalist dynamo, the big spider in the big web of family. What intrigued Laura was that she had done all this with such an unambitious husband and so many troubled, once or twice disposable children. Sharon Molloy Van Fleet. The name often went through her mind during the few quiet moments of her days.

  She had learned that on the farm of the Van Fleets had home schooled their children and now were doing the same with some of their grandchildren. They had invented a curriculum based mostly on music and history. George talked about the big schoolroom that looked like a coffee house, which served, on Saturday nights, just that very purpose. Everyone sang. Everyone performed. Sharon’s Newfoundland roots had become the basis of an educational system. When Laura learned that all of the adult children, except one, had advanced university degrees she was amazed and even more curious.

  It seemed that one of the activities the children did at school was learning about the furniture and glass and pottery that existed in the local areas that they were studying. It made them all mini-appraisers who could walk into any flea market with
a hundred dollars and come out with a whole lot more. By the time the Van Fleet children reached puberty they were all expert antique pickers.

  The picking of antiques had led to the furniture restoration business, which lead to the antique shop the eldest son had run in Toronto for years. Laura knew the shop. Laura even knew Eugene’s charming gay son, Wayne. She had been in the shop many times.

  George explained how the school curriculum somehow always came back to music. It was the glue and the potion that seemed to make everything come alive. It was the glue that had apparently bound disposable children into a real family. George loved the idea that performance could be the foundation of life. “For the Van Fleets, money doesn’t talk, it sings.” he said with obvious admiration.

  The more Laura heard, the more impossible it seemed, and it all seemed to have the same source in Sharon Van Fleet. For one of the few times in her life she felt strangely inadequate and second rate. When she thought about what Sharon had done, she felt curious and anxious and most strangely of all, somehow actually afraid.

  When George had suggested that they drive up to meet Sharon and see Eugene, it was only her fear and anxiety that had won out over her growing curiosity. It was even harder for her to reject the idea when George told her about how a half a dozen foster families came to the farm every summer and lived in log cabins and learned to work hard in their cooperative, working alongside the whole Van Fleet family. When George told how they would swim and sing and ride horses and play together, Laura was almost envious of those foster families.

  “For four months the foster families live there for free: no food bills, no clothing bills, no gas bills, everything is supplied for a few hours of work every day for which they are well paid. At the end of the summer all the families go home with a winters supply of canning and preserves that comes out of the garden they helped work. Sharon says that it’s families that need fostering not children.”

  ‘It was certainly true for her.’ Laura thought. “If it only was that easy.” she said.

  “I’m telling you that you and Sharon would connect. Besides, she’s probably better at dealing with troubled children than anyone I’ve ever seen. If you think you need some advice about Amanda, she’s really the one you should see.” George pressed.

  “That conversation wouldn’t be much fun.” she replied, but when she thought about it, she realized that what he said was a very serious reason to actually meet her.

  Without telling her parents, Amanda stopped going to school once more, and when Ian found out when the vice principal called him at work, he was absolutely enraged and frustrated and desperate. She had chosen her street friends over her family and school. It was like talking to her through her headphones while she sat listening to music and shutting out reality.

  That night when Laura found out that Amanda hadn’t been going to school, she had a hissing, screaming, apoplectic fit, storming into her daughters room to confront her with eye- popping ‘I’m nots and you’re nots and if you think I’m going tos. Don’t think that you’re going to... As long as you live in this house you will do exactly.... It’s over! I’m not going to put up with this shit anymore! Things are going to change around here!’

  Instead of Amanda’s usual response to her mother’s tirades: the ‘as if you really careds; the you can’t make me do anythings; the I don’t give a shit what you think; you’re not so perfect! I’ll just go and live with my friends!’ Laura was confronted with the dead stare of impassive indifference. It was finally recognizing that which made Laura realize how bad things had finally become.

  Amanda had refused to see the therapist who had told Ian that she was probably suffering from depression. When he objected that she had been eating well, that she had been polite and even smiled recently, the therapist said she was in denial about what she had done. Ian didn’t like the distant diagnosis. She didn’t look depressed. When he confronted Amanda she didn’t look guilty or upset that he had found out she cut school. She had calmly told him that she couldn’t understand why she would be going to school when her future was something she could no longer imagine. He didn’t know what to say to that. It seemed almost suicidal in its implication.

  “You haven’t thought about hurting yourself?” he had asked softly.

  “No, of course not. You really think I’m crazy or sick.” Amanda said with some obvious nervous anxiety.

  Her father tried to describe for her the possibilities for her future life. She would find work that would be a passion. She would find a partner who would give her life meaning. She would have children that were beautiful and loved.

  “Daddy, you’re such an incurable romantic. Show me who has that.”

  “Me and your mother.” he replied in all seriousness.

  “I thought Cleopatra was the queen of denial.”

  It hurt him deeply to hear that his daughter could so calmly deny the love that existed in their little family. It hurt even more to realize that what she said was partly true. He was a romantic and neither his work nor his wife nor his daughter had given him the meaning he had hoped for in life. The imaginary structures he had created for Amanda to inspire her hopes for the future were nothing more than stick figures standing outside a house with a green tree and a big yellow sun.

  “You can’t stay in your room for the rest of your life. You have to make some choices, eventually.”

  “Emily Dickinson stayed in her room her whole life and look what she left the world.” she said and her eyes carried an unspoken challenge to the way he and Laura were living their life.

  “Emily Dickinson stayed in her room, they say, because of a broken heart.”

  “It’s as good reason as any.” she replied, “But if everyone with a broken heart stayed in their rooms, there wouldn’t be anybody on the street. I just don’t see any point in going to school anymore.”

  “But how would you make a living?” he pleaded.

  “Who knows? Who cares?”

  “I care. Your mother cares.” he insisted.

  “I told to you that you were a romantic.”

  That was the way they left it. She was too smart to know how stupid she was being. Ian was helpless to know how to give his daughter some hope or belief in the possibilities of her future. And it scared him to realize that those were questions he no longer asked himself.

  Amanda then began to stay out very late with her friend Kara. A lot of the world didn’t sleep, or wouldn’t sleep looking for the endless party where fun might just possibly lead to some real and serious emotional connection. Imagination wasn’t funny. Young people found the stardust of hope at parties where they were intoxicated by depressants or stimulants or hard music that was so loud it was actually possible to feel it was part of you. Heartbeat might just come from back beat, you never knew.

  Laura decided to tell Ian about George. Her curiosity about Sharon and her serious desire to get some help in dealing with Amanda made her decide at last she wanted to go with George to visit the farm. Naturally, she didn’t tell Ian about the affair, just a sanitized version of her seeing George that was technically true, where omissions weren’t denials, where deception was done to be kind.

  “He called me. We had lunch. He told me about Eugene’s wife and how she was able to do miracles with kids that had serious emotional problems. Raising sixteen, or is it fourteen disposable kids certainly gives her a lot more experienced and expertise than anyone I can think of. I want to go to see her to see if she has some ideas about what we can do with Amanda.” she explained.

  She could see he was intrigued, because he was perhaps even more desperate than she was to find something to give Amanda’s life meaning. She declined his offer to go along with her because she thought it would be better if it was just two mothers talking. “Besides, I’m going to have to see Eugene. I don’t know what that’s going to be like. Me, George, Eugene; somehow I’ll feel better if I’m just dealing
with those old connections. I don’t want to have to introduce you and make small talk with somebody who is going to talk back through a computer. I don’t think this is going to be very much fun.”

  “Then by all means go. I’ve run out of ideas. Last night she came home after five in the morning and I think she was wrecked.”

  Laura thought of looking into Eugene’s eyes once more, the only eyes she had ever seen truly stuck with love; indelible, unrelenting, so unbearably hopeful and sad. He knew she knew he was out of her league. Yet still, without saying it to herself, she both hoped and feared he might somehow still love her. He had once told her that love doesn’t rust. She would see.