IGMS Issue 50 (11 page)

To Tara's relief, there was no sign of smoke. Adult responsibility averted.

The scrap was crowded with writing. Symbols and weird little geometric designs covered both sides. She'd taught Jack's Cub Scout den basic cryptography last year. Simple things like substitution cyphers. The writing on the paper wasn't anything like that. It looked more like Arabic or Hebrew . . . or maybe just really bad cursive. The longer she stared the more . . .
dense
the symbols seemed to become, as if every dip and peak held more than just a pen-stroke. The ink seemed to itch and crawl, somehow, drawing her vision down into them, to lose her sight in examination, and tangle her mind in . . .

"Go, go!" Zandy sang from her stroller.

Tara blinked. The smell of burning was stronger in the air, and the woods were suddenly quiet. She flicked her hand against the paper. Maybe, just this once, it wouldn't be a bad thing to litter. She looked at the scrap of paper again, but there was no sense of whatever she'd felt before. No dense code, no crawling ink. Just torn notebook paper, and bad handwriting, and a burned corner.

Tara crammed the scrap into her pocket. She took the long way home, bouncing Zandy's stroller in front of her as she jogged. By the time she tossed the scrap in the trash can in the garage, she'd almost forgotten how the symbols had captured her eyes. How they'd made her stand still for a long minute, delving into them.

She was reminded when she walked through the front door.

The house was as quiet as the woods. Even with Zandy streaking in front of Tara, peeling off jacket, shoes and socks, little feet slapping the hardwood floors, a heavy silence pervaded the walls. Tara picked up Zandy's discards and shut the door. Did the sound echo? For the second time in an afternoon, Tara was brought to a standstill, wondering.

The silence was broken by the sound of a bathroom faucet being turned on in the kids' bathroom upstairs. Zandy was playing with something electronic and jangly in the den; it was too early for Tommy to be home from soccer. So . . . Jack. Tara tossed Zandy's shoes and socks into the closet by the front door, hung her jacket on the hook, and started up the stairs.

"Jack," she called. "I'm home."

The faucet kept running, on and on. There was another sound too, a kind of hiccupping breath that hooked upward to a whine. Tara knew all the sounds her three kids could make, and knew when one of them was hurt and trying not to sound hurt.

Jack was bent over the sink, blood dripping from the end of his nose. "It won't stop bleeding, Mom," he said. His voice cracked.

Tara pulled some toilet paper free for his nose. The hurt didn't stop there: a lump bulged on the side of Jack's head, and a bruise had formed around his left eye. She brushed against him, laying a hand against his ribs, and he squeaked with pain. His jeans were soaking wet and covered in dirt and clay and mud.

He smelled like smoke.

Tara got his nose plugged, and fetched a couple small bags of frozen peas for him to hold against his head and his eye. When she came back, Jack was sobbing. She sat on the floor of his room with him, holding him around his thin shoulders as he shook and cried. She had to change out the toilet-paper plugs a couple times, but she didn't try to question him until he'd calmed down.

"I got in a fight," Jack said at last.

"You were fighting? Jonathan Lorenzo Howard . . ." Tara trailed off. "Tell me what happened."

He shrugged. Wariness passed through his eyes. "I don't know. Nothing."

"Nothing" didn't give a ten-year-old a bloody nose. "Nothing" didn't put a lump on his head. "Nothing" didn't make him sob like . . . A hot, powerful anger surged in Tara's gut, demanding answers, demanding reasons. But Jack took a breath and let it out again in a long, pitiful whine. A new sound, unknown to her family's vocabulary. Jack buried his head against Tara's side, crying again as if he'd never stopped.

Let him calm down, let him settle. She'd ask again. Later. It was a weekend, they had Saturday and Sunday to investigate, and Mike would be here, too, and together they could coax the truth from him.

She caressed Jack's neck and back, and kissed the top of his head. There was mud in his hair, of course. She grimaced, squeezed his shoulders, and realized that Zandy was being far too quiet downstairs. Even here, even with Jack bleeding and sobbing, life had to go on. Children to tend, dinner to prepare, all and everything on a mother's daily grind, but what she wanted was here in Jack's room.

She was old enough that her wants couldn't hurt her. Maybe. She held Jack until he caught his breath, and then rubbed his bare arms before standing up. "When your nose stops bleeding you need a shower," she said. "We'll talk later."

Jack mumbled something that sounded like agreement.

"No, Elaine," Mike was saying. He had Randy Holdquist's mom on the phone and was trying to get Zandy's feet into her PJs at the same time. "Jack didn't say anything about Randy. I was just checking to see if you knew anything."

He saw Tara standing there, made a face at her. Zandy chortled and began kicking her feet. Mike caught her legs, pushed them swiftly through the cuffs of her pajama bottoms, and zipped the zipper up to her neck.

"I'll tell Tara," he said into the phone. "Tell Patty hello for us."

He hung up, and dug his fingers into Zandy's ribs. She squealed. "I was on the phone, you little monster," he growled at her. "Don't you know how to get your own pajamas on? When I was four, I was putting on two, three pairs of pajamas every night, and Grandma and Grandpa never had to help me, not even a little."

"Help me, help me!" Zandy shouted through her giggles. "Pajama bottoms!
Bottoms,
daddy,
bottoms
!"

"What did Elaine say?" Tara asked.

Mike let Zandy up off the floor. She tore from the room and bumped down the stairs. Mike said, "Randy's been grounded since Wednesday. She had him cleaning up their basement all afternoon."

"That's all the usual boys, then." Tara rubbed the tips of her fingers together against her leg. She could still feel the warmth of the paper if she closed her eyes, the heat of the charred edge against her thumb. She could still smell the smoke in Jack's curly hair and lingering on his clothes.

"We haven't called the Patels yet . . ."

"They moved out a couple weeks ago." Tara leaned against Mike, and he put his arms around her and held her. Below them, around them, their home
breathed
: the thrum of the ceiling fan, the shush of a toilet tank refilling, Zandy singing some inane song to herself, Tommy's tapping on the computer in the den. Mike's breathing, breezing the top of her head. Her own breathing, against his heartbeat.

And Jack?

"You think he's ready to talk?" Mike asked.

Jack's door was closed. No sound from there, no singing, no playing, nothing. "He was distraught, Mike. He sounded broken."

Mike took a breath. He was going to say something flippant. Something about boys being boys, or to wonder if Jack had gotten any good punches in.

He closed his mouth and stroked her back instead, finding the tense spots in her shoulders and neck. He said at last, "We've got all weekend to pry the truth from him."

"I was hoping you'd insist on fussing at him," Tara said. "Then I could shout at you for being unreasonable. I need to . . . I need to fight something."

"Tommy's calculus grade slipped again," Mike murmured. "You can go fight with him."

"No. Angela's coming over to help him study." Angela Heggins was the girl next door. Tommy had grown up with her as an on-again-off-again girlfriend through grade school and junior high. They hadn't seen much of each other since starting high school. Different paths, despite how close they'd been as little kids. Tommy's path led mostly toward team sports; Angela Heggins's path, as far as Tara could determine from the late night shouting matches with her grandmother, led toward drinking, partying and team sports of a different kind.

"Maybe that will get Jack out of his room," Mike said. "He's always had a crush on Angela. He'll tell her what happened, and then she can tell us."

But Jack didn't come down all evening, not even to say goodnight. After Zandy was put in bed, after Angela left, after Tommy had turned off Sports Center and gone to his room, Tara stood in the hallway by Jack's door, listening. She could hear him snoring a little, and cracked the door open. A stripe of light painted his bed. He was curled under the blankets, knees up to his chest. Only the top of his head poked out of the sheets. Tara paused a moment, watching his shoulders rise and fall with his breathing under the blankets. Breathing in time with her home's breathing after all. She closed the door and went to her own bed.

Mike held her in the darkness, and the breathing of her home--the banality, the simplicity, the silliness--coaxed her eventually to sleep.

Tara dreamed of a storm, and her boys fighting. She woke up and found both were true.

Wind pushed against the walls of the house, but the boys were even louder, shouting over each other. At this rate, they'd wake up Zandy. Maybe Mike, even. Tara pulled her bathrobe on and stormed into the hallway, shushing them.

The ruckus came from Tommy's bedroom. Tommy held Jack down on the floor as Jack kicked and struggled. Tara bulled into the room and pushed Tommy off.

"Thomas Michael Howard, what are you doing?" There was rage in her voice. It scared and thrilled her, this naming-of-full-names voice, this mother-goddess voice.

Tommy reeled backwards, banging an elbow against the wall. There was something on him. A scratch? Long and scarlet, it extended from just above his temple, down his cheek and neck, reaching his bare abdomen and lower. The room wasn't bright enough to see it well.

"He wrote on me, Mom!" Tommy said.

Jack scooted toward the wall. Tara let him go. She took a step backwards, and fumbled for the light switch.

"I woke up," Tommy said. His voice hitched. His face reddened. He looked away from her. "He was writing on me, and I woke up. He was trying to pull down my underwear."

Tara swallowed. The wind pushed and howled outside. Where was the mother-goddess now? Gone, gone . . . "Let me see," Tara said, and turned Tommy's face toward her.

It was not a solid line of red. The marks weren't marks--they were symbols. Symbols she knew. Things she'd read on a burned piece of paper, that had brought silence to her world, and now strangeness, now dread.

Jack held a red marker. His eyes were huge, dark, and wet with fear and wonder.

"What is this, Jack?" Tara asked.

He just stared.

"
Jack
!" she screamed.

He flinched like she'd slapped him and clutched the marker tightly to his chest.

Mike's heavy steps drummed in the hallway. "Tara, what--?"

He stopped in the room. Tara saw his eyes take them in. Herself; Tommy; Jack. His eyes found the red line on Tommy's face. They followed it until it disappeared into Tommy's boxers. She saw his eyes latch on to the red marker in Jack's hand.

"Boys, explain this," he said.

Tommy started to answer. Tara didn't hear him. She was looking at Mike, and so her eyes were on the hallway. There was movement by Mike's leg. There was a sound from behind him, a soft sigh. The wind howling, Tommy explaining, and why was it amidst all that noise, that she heard a sigh as soft as a breath?

Because it was Zandy's sigh, and before today, she had known all the noises her children could make.

Zandy was standing there by Mike's leg.

Standing there naked, her little body covered in those red symbols, in
Jack's
symbols, so they crossed her like ropes or veins.

Inside, the house fell silent.

Outside, the wind chuckled and roared.