Interference (17 page)

“Where's
Ellen
?” Jude says.

“Not on right now.”

Jude leaves the room. He isn't interested in anything but
Ellen
. Claire listens to the newscaster say, “The scope of this perversion is astounding. Especially in such a small town.” Claire wants to take the remote control and throw it at the TV. She wants to break something. Justified anger like this makes her glow. She feels warm and full and sharp. It's easy to be angry at these criminals. A good thing to be furious about. What they do to kids. What they do to the world. It astonishes Claire.

She wishes Ellen's show was on. She wishes she were cuddled on the couch with Jude. But then she's also pleased to be mad at something other than her body, her cancer, her illness.

“Is she on yet?” Jude is back in the room.

“No, not yet.”

He leaves again.

The newscast ends. Ellen is there, on her chair, talking to a beautiful movie star about her new movie. Claire sinks into the couch to watch. “Jude,” she calls out, “she's on.”

Ralph comes in and asks what's for dinner.

“For god's sake,” Claire snaps. “Make it yourself.”

The brother has taken to watching Jude. All the time. Jude can feel the brother's gaze on his back in class or in the hallways between classes or when he's in the dugout kissing the sister. It's hot, his gaze. Penetrating. Jude likens it to a laser beam. Like radiation. He feels burnt sometimes. The sister is losing interest in just kissing. She wants more. She puts Jude's hands where she wants them. Breasts, hips, legs, thighs, between the thighs, crotch. She holds his hand there and sighs. She tries to touch him, but Jude pulls away. If the brother is there, which he often is, he snorts. He says, “Gross,” and “Get a fucking room,” and the girl says, “Why don't you just leave us alone?” Jude is caught in the middle. Balancing on the edge. Hanging over a precipice. Like a hang-glider with no glider, like a parachutist without a parachute, a pilot without a plane, a hockey player without a puck. Jude's English class is studying similes and so he peppers his speech and his thoughts with them.

Jude has never seen his mother mad at Ellen but today she is. Today she sits on the couch next to Jude, her arms crossed in front of her chest, and she scowls at the TV. Her legs are crossed and one foot is furiously pumping up and down.

Ellen's guest needs a new kitchen. She's lost her job. Her kitchen is a mess. Ellen is having one made for her and, for some reason, this bothers Claire. She doesn't know why. She looks over at her own kitchen, the stained and cut-upon counter, the broken tiles on the floor, the splattered backsplash, and she is angry.

“What did she do to deserve a new kitchen?” Claire asks.

“She wrote a letter to Ellen,” Jude says. “It's as easy as that.”

“Not fair.”

“Life's not fair.” Jude looks at his mother. She looks at him. They laugh.

“I'm supposed to say that to you,” Claire says. “That's the kind of thing I say to you all the time.”

“I'm just imitating you,” Jude says. “Because I know that's exactly what you'd say to me.”

“Well, it's not. Fair. Life.”

“Nope.”

Ralph is in the kitchen filling up a pot with water. “Pasta,” he says. “I think we'll have pasta tonight. Sound good?”

She doesn't show up at the dugout. It's cold. A sharp breeze. Jude is there by himself. Wondering. Thinking. Should he stay here or go home? And then, suddenly, the brother drops down beside him. Sits close.

“She's not coming?”

“Not today. She felt sick or something.”

“Great,” Jude says. “I'll probably catch it and then give whatever she has to my mom and then —”

Jude is rambling.

The brother reaches over and grabs Jude's head. He turns Jude's face towards his own, looks at Jude, fierce, and stops Jude's words with his mouth. Hard. Jude recoils at first, pulls back, but the brother smashes his mouth against Jude's, keeps Jude there, stuck to him. He is stronger than Jude and Jude can't pull away.

And Jude's heart is racing, his heart, his heart, his heart . . . his mind has stopped. His heart pulses and beats and pounds until Jude can't feel anything or think of anything. Jude doesn't want anything for the first time in his life. There is nothing. Just the brother's lips and tongue and hot mouth. Everything else has gone black. The world seems simple. As if everything in it has been erased. No dugout, no girl, no metallic tasting braces, no
Ellen
, no mother.

Jude's mother kisses him goodnight. She comes into his room and sits on his bed. He has his laptop on his lap and it is hot and he's working on his history essay in bed. She sits there, staring at him.

“How are you doing these days?”

Jude looks away from his laptop and into his mother's eyes. Into her concern. “Fine?”

“Good. That's good.”

“How,” Jude asks, “are you doing?” But he doesn't want to know, he doesn't want the answer to this.

And his mother senses this, because Claire is aware, she is smart, she is sensitive. “Great,” she says, happily. “I enjoy our
Ellen
time together.” She ruffles his hair.

“Me too.” Jude smoothes his hair back into place.

“We should dance more,” Claire says, laughing. She stands up from the bed and dances towards the door. A crazy dance, a funny dance, an Ellen dance. Swaying her hips and bending her legs. Arms in the air.

Jude laughs. He rolls his eyes back into his head.

“I'm practising for when I get on
Ellen
,” she says, and she dances out of the room.

12

Tom is at work when Maria calls. He is thinking about the woman in the coffee shop this morning who asked him if he liked cream and when he said, “Sure,” she laughed as if he had said something particularly suggestive. She even licked her lips. Tom is trying to figure out what she meant by it all. Cream in his coffee? He likes cream in his coffee. “Sure” isn't really that suggestive, is it? Tom sometimes feels so out of it, as if everyone else in the world is participating and he's on the sidelines, watching and not taking anything in. It seems to him that he doesn't understand the little innuendos. Maria says that he never notices when a woman looks at him, but Tom has never seen a woman look at him — not in the way Maria says they do. Something happened when he got married or when Becky came along, something turned him from being aware of the sexual energy out there to being aware of nothing. He feels as if he's gone through the last fifteen years as merely a big lump of unformed clay. In the last several months, however, Tom is noticing more. Not understanding more, just noticing more. So when the phone rings and it's Maria it surprises him out of his thoughts.

“It's Becky,” she says. Tom stands at his desk and looks around the open office, at the workers, like bees, all huddled in their grey cubicles, typing on their computers, talking on their phones, shuffling papers. His mind clears and sharpens. He can hear his own breath.

“What happened? Is she okay?”

“You need to come home. Now.”

This is the moment every parent dreads and yet expects. Something has happened to their kid, they need to go home. Now.

“What? What is it?”

“It's Becky. Just come home, Tom. We'll talk about it when you get home.”

“But, Maria. Is she okay?”

“Sort of.”

“What do you mean?” Tom is frantic now, imagining his daughter's legs broken, her hand cut off, her head split open — or worse. He imagines she's dead or missing. It occurs to him that missing is much worse than dead. He's never thought about that before. You would think each horror would be equal, but the thought of her missing stops his heart. The office seems to go quiet all around him. Tom can't breathe.

“Calm down, Tom. She's home from school. I just need you to come home and talk with her. With me. All of us. She's done something bad.”

Tom puts his hand on his heart. “You could have said that, Maria. You could have said she was okay. You could have mentioned she was at home.”

“I did say she was okay. I don't know what the problem is, Tom. You're overreacting.”

“No, you didn't. You didn't say she was okay.” He pauses. “I'll come home now.” Tom hangs up the phone hard and gets his coat off the hook on his cubicle wall. He walks towards the elevators at a fast pace. He tells Rick he'll be back later in the afternoon.

Even though Maria said Becky is home, Tom can't get it out of his head that she's gone, missing, hurt. He wonders where Maria's sense is, where her brain is, where her soul is — she reacts and acts and shouts and complains. She is always making his heart speed up — and sometimes this is good, but most of the time this is bad. If Tom didn't work out sometimes, if he didn't take Dog for a walk occasionally, he's sure Maria would shock him into having a heart attack. Someday it will happen.

Mary-Beth, from Human Resources, is in the elevator when it opens. Tom smiles at her as he walks into the box. He smiles tightly. He's still mad. He doesn't know Mary-Beth well but it occurs to him that he feels different when he sees her. His back straightens slightly. He feels warm. She smiles back at him and then turns to the front of the car. Tom sidles in behind her and watches her body as she stands there staring at the numbers. He looks at her straight back, her long legs, bare and sleek. None of those nylons Maria always wears. Her legs are tanned as if she's been somewhere south. He looks at her ass in her tight skirt. Round. Full but toned. And he knows that if she turns around — he saw it on the way into the elevator — he will see her substantial cleavage. Tom isn't a breast man, but these breasts, well, she wears clothes that highlight them. Maria, on the other hand — Tom's temples pulse when he thinks of her — has little cleavage. She's tight and toned and muscular. No soft curves. Mary-Beth turns towards Tom, as if she knows he's watching her, and she smiles again. She brushes her hair off her shoulders. The doors open. “Bye, Tom,” she says, and leaves the elevator.

Tom is shocked that she knows his name. He has to think to close his mouth.

Tom enters the house, throws his keys in the bowl in the front hallway. Dog comes to greet him. Sniffing and groaning, his back legs almost collapse from the wiggling excitement. Other than Dog, there is no one around. He hears nothing.

“Hello?”

“Tom, we're in here.”

Back towards the kitchen. Tom follows Dog, who follows Maria's voice.

They are sitting at the kitchen table. Becky hunched over, her coat on. Maria is wearing her yoga pants and coat. Her hair is in a ponytail.

“What's going on?”

“Sit down.”

Tom gives Becky a sympathetic look, but she doesn't look up from the table.

“I was at yoga,” Maria begins. “I was doing a class at lunch, taking a break from work.” Tom nods, but he's not listening and he's aware that he's not listening. Instead, he's thinking about Mary-Beth in the elevator. He can't help it. The comparison between her softness and Maria's sharp angles is astonishing. He's never thought of Maria this way before — all edges and dangerous points — but now he can't stop thinking this. “And the school called. Mrs. Tanner wanted me to come pick Becky up immediately.”

“Mrs. Tanner?”

“The principal, Tom. Don't you know anything that goes on around here?” Maria sighs. “Marge Tanner? She's been Becky's principal for years. We talked to her just recently about the person Becky kept seeing. The man she thought was watching her, remember?”

“Oh, yes. The principal. What did you do, Becky?” Tom can't imagine what she could have done. Look at her here. She's huddled up, leaning heavily on the kitchen table, looking so sad and sorry. Is that a tear? She might be crying. He wants to reach out and touch her shoulder but he knows Maria will be angry if he does. “Maria, what did she do?”

“I didn't do it,” Becky says. “Not like they said I did. They just hate me. They hate me because I'm always cleaning.”

“Her pants,” Maria says. “They said she had them off when they found her.”

It isn't as if Tom would act on any of the images in his head, on his emotions and imagination — Mary-Beth in the elevator, the woman with the suggestive cream reference — it isn't as if Tom is guilty of anything. But, in these last several months, these things that have been happening to him have made him feel alive again. These small images — the Mary-Beths of the world — they keep popping into his mind. Half-dressed, seductive, wonderfully soft and sweet women. Who want what Tom has. Whatever that is.

“Her pants?” Suddenly he's paying attention. “Off? What do you mean? Who said this? Who found her?”

“There's this guy,” Becky says. “At the school. They hate him like they hate me.”

“The principal said that the kids said that Becky initiated it.”

“Mom, I wouldn't do that.” Becky begins to cry. She stands and goes to the kitchen sink and takes the sponge out of the draining rack. She wets the sponge, squeezes it out and begins to wipe the counters.

“Becky, sit down.”

She keeps wiping. “They lied. They all lied to Mrs. Tanner and she believed them.”

“I'm not sure . . .” Tom begins.

“They said he was licking her,” Maria shouts. A little scream. She puts her hands up to her face when she says it, covers her mouth. Her eyes are so wide Tom thinks they might fall out of the sockets.

“What? Where? Who?” Tom stands up. “What?”

Becky cries. She wipes and cries. “I didn't do anything. They're lying.”

“Other children saw this. They told the principal.”

“Where, Becky?”

“In the field behind the play structure,” Maria says.

“But it's cold,” Tom says. “Weren't you cold?” He doesn't know why he says this and the minute he says it he wants to take it back. Maria stands and puts her hands on her hips.

“Tom,” she says.

“What happened to the boy?” Tom asks.

Becky sobs loudly. She crumples to the floor. “I didn't do anything. Don't you believe me? They are lying. They are all lying. They hate me. They hate him.”

“Maria, what's going on?”

“They are lying to hurt me. They hate me. I didn't do anything.”

“The boy was suspended,” Maria says quietly. “And Becky has been suspended too.”

“She's only twelve years old, Maria,” Tom says. “Twelve years old.”

At work the next day Tom is on the lookout for Mary-Beth. He sees Susan leaning over Simon's desk, talking to him. From the side, she is stunning. She notices him looking at her and turns and waves. Tom waves back.

What is happening to him? For years he has noticed nothing. Now he can't stop noticing things. As if a switch has been turned on. A light bulb in his brain. In his pants.

Pants. Becky said it didn't happen and Tom wants to believe her. But why would the kids at school lie? She says they hate her. They hate the boy. She says they are mean and evil. Tom can't imagine, though, that they would know what oral sex is and how to explain it to a principal if they'd never actually seen it happening.

Maria, in bed later, confessed to Tom that she can't imagine Becky with her pants down. “She's terrified of dirt, of germs,” Maria said. “Can you see her doing that?”

“How do we prove that she didn't?” Tom said.

Becky is home every day with her mother. Maria has had to take personal days at work. Tom comes home each day to their anger, their individual silence, to Becky's shame. He rushes back to work each morning. So relieved. Becky is to stay home for two weeks. Maria says she doesn't know how much more of this she can take. Tom might have to take next week off, she says. Her work won't let her be away this long. She says they should move schools. Or even move houses. She says they should get rid of Dog because he's always needing to be walked and she can't walk him because her back hurts when she walks too far. She says they need a new kitchen countertop because Becky has worn the finish off it with her incessant wiping. She says he's not paying attention, he's not listening, doesn't he care?

And, at work, Tom is surrounded by perfume. Mary-Beth in the elevator. Susan in the hallway. Ruth in her cubicle, braiding her hair, her arms high behind her head and her tank top sleeve open enough for him to see the cup of her armpit, the swell of her breast. Tom remembers back to that fall day when that man with the scar down the middle of his face helped him rake his lawn. He remembers how impressed he was with the confidence in the man, the ability to ignore the stares. Tom thinks maybe he did learn something from that day about how humans perceive themselves. Because the more he smiles at women at work, the more they smile back at him. The more he feels they are sexy and beautiful and individual, the more they seem to feel that way about themselves, and the more they feel that way about themselves, the more Tom thinks of himself as something they could want or need or even like. Because he is sure they are looking at him differently now. As if he's giving off a scent that's even stronger than their perfume.

He hasn't had the nerve to go down to the car wash and pay the scar-faced man for the raking job. It seems to him there might be a statute of limitations on how long you can go between paying for work that has been done. And his statute is long gone. The whole thing would just be shameful now. So shameful that he hasn't had the nerve to answer Art Spack's emails from the men's shelter. So Tom ignores the emails and hopes they will go away.

Maria is giving Becky talks. Talks about sex. Talks about boys. Talks about self-respect. Talks about self-control. Tom tries not to listen but sometimes he can't help it. Sometimes he wants to take Becky in his arms and tell her everything will be okay. Sometimes he wants to tell her not to listen to her mother. Sometimes he wants to leave the house. So he takes Dog for walks and runs. He disappears into the night. He leaves for work early in the morning.

It is Becky's first weekend after being suspended, and Tom has to work on the Saturday. Maria is incensed.

“I've spent the whole week with her,” she says. “The least you could do is take the weekend off and do something with me, with her.”

“I can't get out of it. Human Resources scheduled me this weekend. We all have to take turns. This is my turn.” Tom doesn't tell Maria that he could easily have switched weekends with someone. He doesn't know why he doesn't tell her but he's pretty sure it has something to do with how angry she has been lately. With Becky home Maria can't go to work and when she can't go to work she can't do her yoga and when she can't do her yoga her back aches. When her back aches she becomes angry.

“I'm in pain,” she says. “I'm always in pain.”

Tom is at work. Saturday. It's quiet. He's the only one on his floor and so he wanders around to all the cubicles, looking at the photos and other decorations people have put up. There is a picture of Susan with a baby. He didn't know she had a baby. There is a picture of Simon with his arms around another guy. The guy could be his brother. Or maybe Simon's gay? Tom doesn't know. He doesn't really care except for the fact that he feels bad that he doesn't know these people who surround him every day. Tom needs to open his eyes to more than the beautiful women around his office. He needs to start seeing the world he lives in. Really seeing it. Getting to know the people around him.