Thirty-One
OVER DINNER ON WEDNESDAY, Ivy says, “Can I bring cupcakes to school on Friday? I said I’d bring cupcakes. It’s Ethan’s goodbye party.” She adds, a little wistfully, “Diana likes vanilla cupcakes but not chocolate. But I like chocolate.”
“Sure,” Mom says. “I’ll buy some tomorrow—I can get half vanilla, half chocolate so—”
“Hold on,” I say. “A goodbye party for Ethan? Where’s he going? Did he say?”
“To sleep-away school,” Ivy says. “He won’t live at home anymore.”
“Fuck.”
Ron says, “Hey, hey—watch the language, Chloe.”
“What’s wrong?” Mom asks me.
“David told me this might happen.” I push my plate away. I’m not hungry anymore. “And it’s all my fault.”
“Why is it your fault?”
“Because I let him run away.”
Ivy says, “Ethan tried to run away from school today too, but the security guard stopped him. Ethan was crying and hitting his head a lot and had to go sit with Kimberly in the Self Management Room. He’s never had to go to the Self Management Room before, but Ajay has to go almost every day.”
Mom reaches out and touches my hand. “It’s not the end of the world,” she says gently. “It probably is safer for him at a boarding school.”
“But there’s no way they’re sending him to a good place. I mean, come on, it’s been, like, three days, and they’re already shipping him off? They must have just grabbed at the first school they saw. And he won’t have David to watch out for him anymore. And David won’t have him.” My voice breaks, even though I’m trying hard not to let it. “The two brothers are everything to each other. And their stepmother doesn’t care.”
“Where’s their biological mother?” Mom asks. “Why isn’t she getting involved?”
“She totally abandoned them and started another family. Which is basically what their father’s done too, except at least he lets them live with him.”
“Those poor boys. It all sounds very complicated.”
“Yes,” Ron says, and I raise my head to glare at him. He’s going to tell us all about how hard it is to parent difficult kids and how I’m being unfair to Ethan’s stepmother, and then I’m going to lose it, I’m just going to lose it, and it’ll end with both of us screaming at each other.
There will be blood.
Only that’s not what Ron says. What he says is, “It’s complicated, but that doesn’t excuse sending the boy away. When that woman married their father, she made a commitment not just to him, but to his sons. And shipping Ethan off makes it sound like she’s not honoring that commitment.”
I stare at him, open-mouthed.
Mom says, “Yes, of course, you’re right about that.”
And I find my voice enough to say, “Yeah.”
I’ve never told Ron he was right before.
He’s never been right before.
“It’s something I’ve thought a lot about,” he says. “I take my responsibility to you girls very seriously.”
Mom says, “But we don’t know all the details. I don’t think we should judge the stepmother too quickly—she may feel like she really doesn’t have any choice.”
“I wonder if it would help if I tried talking to her,” Ron says.
“Really?” I say. “You’d do that?” Has he gone crazy? Have I?
“She might listen to me. We have parallel situations. I know exactly what it’s like to be the stepparent of a kid who—” He glances at Ivy and doesn’t finish his sentence. “Anyway, maybe she’d listen to me if I said I understand where she’s coming from but I really think she should reconsider her decision. If you give me her phone number—although maybe it would be better to go in person?” He appeals to Mom. “Do you think she’d be more likely to listen if I went to their house?”
“Maybe,” she says. “But—”
He cuts her off. “I say let’s do it. What have we got to lose?”
“Really?” I’m stunned. “You’d really do that?”
“Of course,” Ron says, and does that peacocky thing to try to impress us, stretching up his neck and rounding his shoulders with his musculature.
“Cool,” I say. “Let’s go.”
Less than an hour later, we’re all in the car heading to the Fieldses’ house.
I don’t know if we’ll actually be able to help at all, but I’m glad we’re doing something to try.
Ivy wanted to come with us. I’m not sure she completely understands what kind of a visit this is going to be, just that we’re all going over to Ethan’s house to talk about him, and she doesn’t want to be left out.
“I go to school with Ethan,” she pointed out when we were getting ready to leave. “He’s my friend. So I should be there.”
I let Mom and Ron lead the way up the stone path to their front door. It’s oddly comforting to follow them and for once not have to be the one in charge.
Mr. Fields answers the door and responds to my mother’s cheery “Hello!” by silently pointing to the NO SOLICITORS sign.
Seriously?
I step forward before he can shut the door on us. “Hey, Mr. Fields, remember me? We met the other day. I’m David’s friend, and my sister goes to school with Ethan.”
“And we’re their parents.” Mom holds out her hand. “I’m Jeannie, and this is my husband, Ron.”
“Nice to meet you.” Mr. Fields shakes their hands. “Forgive me—I didn’t know you were coming. No one tells me anything around here.” He turns his head and shouts down the hallway. “Margot? We have guests.”
She comes out of the dining room, a cloth napkin balled in her hand. “Guests?”
David’s behind her. His eyes open wide with surprise when he sees us all filing in.
“So sorry to just drop in like this,” my mother says.
Mrs. Fields eyes her warily. “I’m afraid I’m confused . . .”
Mom explains who we are again, and recognition dawns on Mrs. Fields’s face. “Oh, yes, I remember you girls,” she says. “I believe you had something to do with our scare this week.”
“I’m really sorry,” I say. “I feel terrible about that.”
“To be fair to you, Ethan was supposed to be under his brother’s supervision at the time.” She glares accusingly at David. “But the good news is that Ethan is safely upstairs right now, and this whole awful incident has helped us make some difficult decisions.” She turns back to Mom and Ron with a brittle smile. “So . . . to what do we owe the honor of this visit?”
“Actually,” Ron says, “we’re here to talk about those difficult decisions you just mentioned.”
She blinks rapidly. “I’m sorry?”
“Maybe we could all sit down?” And, with a flick of his fingers through his dyed hair, Ron marches right into their living room. His unwarranted self-confidence is actually kind of useful right now.
Mrs. Fields watches him go, gestures at her husband to follow Ron, then runs back into the dining room.
David comes over and whispers to me, “What the hell’s going on?”
“We’re here to help. If we can.”
“Ethan’s my friend,” Ivy says. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Where is he?” I ask David.
“Margot’s been making him stay in his room when he’s not at school. She said we can’t take any chances on him running away again.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah—although I think he kind of likes it. He gets to be on the computer all the time. His favorite thing.”
Mrs. Fields emerges with the baby in her arms, and we follow her to the living room, where Ron and Mom have planted themselves side by side on the sofa. The Fieldses exchange slightly pained looks, but it’s clear their guests aren’t leaving anytime soon, so they sit down too—Mister on an armchair, Missus settling herself on a chair with the baby on her lap. There’s some mushy stuff on his face again.
/> “That’s probably not throw-up,” Ivy whispers to me. “It looks like it could be, but it’s probably not, right?”
“Definitely not. It looks like mashed carrots.”
Ivy retches a tiny bit, but quietly enough that I’m the only one who hears.
“All right,” Mrs. Fields says, while David, Ivy, and I find places to stand behind the sofa. “So what have you come to say?”
Mom speaks. “So my girls tell me that Ethan is being sent away from home? They’re a little concerned about it, and we thought maybe we could learn more about your thought process.”
Mrs. Fields says, “I don’t understand why this would be any business of yours. I’ve never even met you before.”
“Our kids are so close,” Mom says. “My girls just adore your boys.”
“Adore?” David repeats skeptically in my ear.
“Her word, not mine,” I whisper. But then I grin at him. He misses it—he’s back to watching the conversation.
“How nice,” Mrs. Fields says, crushing her baby against her chest like she needs to protect him against us—or maybe wants him to protect her. “At any rate, yes, it’s true—Ethan is going to boarding school. He’s really excited to be trying something new.”
“No, he isn’t. He said he’s sad he’s going.” Ivy’s hands are fluttering at her sides, but she’s speaking up, which I know is hard for her around people she doesn’t know. “At school. I was there. He said he doesn’t want to go. He said he wasn’t crying, but Diana said he was. And his face was wet, so I think he was too. He was lying, I guess.”
There’s a pause. Mrs. Fields says uncomfortably, “Saying goodbye to your friends is always difficult, but that doesn’t mean—”
David cuts her off. “Ivy’s right: he wants to stay home. And you know it.”
“He’ll feel differently once he sees where he’s going.”
“I doubt it. What do we even know about this place?”
“It comes highly recommended.”
“By whom?” he says. “The National Association of Parents Who Want to Get Rid of Their Children?”
“David!” says his father. “You’re out of line. Your stepmother and I worked hard to find the right place—”
“How much work could it have been? It’s only been a few days.”
“We had to move quickly,” Mrs. Fields says. “We can’t continue to have the kind of crazy situations that bring the police into our lives.” She kisses the top of Caleb’s head. “I want a healthy home life for all of us.”
Ron says, “Can I just say something?”
She doesn’t give him permission, just waits, a cold smile frozen on her face.
He says, “You know, you and I . . . we’re kind of the same.”
“Excuse me?”
“We both married into families that were already dealing with some pretty heavy stuff.” He glances at me, his eyebrows raised. “It’s not always easy—I’d be the first to admit that.”
“You’ve never had to deal with boys,” Mrs. Fields says.
“Trust me, girls aren’t exactly a walk in the park. And I’m not saying we’re right out of a Norman Rockwell picture or anything, but when I married Jeannie, her kids became mine. I want what’s best for them, and I always will.”
“Are you implying that I don’t feel the same way about my husband’s children?”
“Of course not. I’m just saying—”
She cuts him off. “I assume David asked you all to come here tonight. I know he’s not happy about this decision but—”
“He didn’t ask us!” I say. “He didn’t even know we were coming.”
“No?” She purses her lips.
Oh, great. She blames David for our intrusion.
“I know we messed up that day,” I say, looking back and forth between her and her husband. “All of us kids. David should have come in with Ethan, and I should have noticed he was missing, and Ethan shouldn’t have run away. We screwed up, and the whole thing must have been really awful and scary for you. But overall, hasn’t Ethan been doing great? I mean, he’s happy at school, and he’s totally sweet and tries really hard . . . Why give up on how well he’s doing because of one bad day? If you let Ethan stay, we’ll all do whatever we can to help. Like, I could watch him when David can’t.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Fields says. The baby squirms, and she stands up and bounces him on her hip. “But we’ve made our decision. I really don’t see the point of all this.”
I turn to Mr. Fields. “You can always send him to school later, right? Keep him at home now but send him away if something else goes wrong? Can’t you give him one more chance?”
David steps forward. “Dad. Please. Listen to Chloe.” His hands are in fists at his side—not in a threatening way, just like he’s squeezing something that isn’t there. “Punish me, if you want to. Ground me, take my car away, whatever. I screwed up. But don’t punish Ethan. Don’t send him away.”
“It’s not a punishment,” Mr. Fields says. He rises heavily to his feet. “It’s a school. A good school that will be the right fit for Ethan. It’s just not working here at home for him, or for us.” He looks around the room. “I’m sure you all mean well, but I’m not thrilled about being ambushed by strangers.”
“We just care a lot about Ethan,” I say.
“Not as much as we do,” he says. “Now it’s time for us to finish our dinner.” And he leads us all back to the front door.
In the car, Mom says, “I think we planted seeds of doubt. Maybe they’ll take root?”
I don’t even call her out on the stupid metaphor. Her optimism is just sad. There’s no way Mrs. Fields will change her mind—it’s clear she’s decided the safety of her baby is in some way dependent upon Ethan’s being exiled. It doesn’t make any sense, but her husband doesn’t seem to care that it doesn’t. He’s just going to do what she wants.
I lean my head back, stare up into the darkness at the top of the car, and listen to Mom and Ron talk.
Inside the house, I’m about to head up to my room when I stop. “Hey, Mom? Ron? Thanks for trying.”
“Did Chloe just thank us for something?” Ron asks my mom. “Pinch me, I’m dreaming.”
“You’re welcome,” Mom says, rushing over to give me a hug. “I’m sorry it didn’t help more.”
“I told them Ethan was sad to be leaving,” Ivy points out.
“It’s good you said that,” I tell her.
“I know he’s sad now,” Mom says. “But maybe he’ll end up liking the school. The father said it was a good one.”
“What else is he going to say? That he’s throwing his son to the wolves?”
“I’m sure he cares about his son.”
“I’m not.”
Ron says, “The important thing is that you girls know this would never happen to you—we would never send you away anywhere you didn’t want to go.”
Maybe Ivy and I didn’t exactly win the lottery in the stepparent department—Ron manages to annoy me with every word out of his mouth—but I guess we could have done worse. He may criticize and try to change us, but he’s never once made either of us feel like our home isn’t our home or that he wishes we were gone. And that’s something.
Actually, after this last hour, I’m willing to admit that it’s a lot.
Thirty-Two
I CAN’T BRING MYSELF to get in touch with David—until he confirms the worst, I can still hold on to some hope that maybe his father and stepmother have changed their minds.
But I’m pretty sure that if there were good news, he’d text me . . . and I don’t get a text.
The next day, I see him in the hallway at school. He keeps moving past me, until I grab at his sleeve to stop him. “Hold on—what happened after we left?”
“What do you think?” He jerks his arm away.
“Oh, shit,” I say. “They didn’t change their minds.”
“Big surprise.” He keeps going.
/> I want to yell after him that he’s not being fair, that he has no right to treat me like I’m one of the villains here, that I’m in pain too, that he hasn’t even acknowledged that my entire family trooped over to his house last night to try to help.
But we’re in a crowded hallway and he’s moving fast, so I just let him walk away without saying any of that.
At lunch, Sarah and James are already sitting together with a couple of other kids when I enter the cafeteria. Sarah catches my eye and pats the seat next to her. I take it, and she starts telling me about how she and James are making plans to see a movie, and do I want to go with them on Saturday?
I feel like I’m underwater and she’s talking to me from up above, her face flattening and widening and receding, her voice faint and distant. I can barely process what she’s saying.
She’s waiting for a response, so I say, “Yeah, maybe. I’m not sure.”
“Was that a yes or a no?”
“Sorry. I just haven’t thought about the weekend. There’s so much to deal with right now . . .”
“I know,” she says generously. “I have, like, three tests tomorrow, which isn’t even supposed to be legal.”
“History’s the one that worries me,” James says.
“Want to study after school?” Sarah asks him.
“I have practice, but after that?”
She turns to me. “How about you, Chloe?”
“I’d like to, but I think Mom wanted me available to pick up Ivy today.” Not entirely true, but sometimes she does ask at the last minute, so it’s not a total lie either.
“No worries,” Sarah says, and James echoes her.
I really do appreciate how nice they’re both being. James could have turned into a dick when we broke up. I haven’t been talking as much to Sarah lately, and she could hold that against me. But instead they’re both working hard to keep our friendship intact. It’s not their fault that all I can think about is what’s going to happen to Ethan and that right now I can’t even remember what it’s like to care about a history test.
Maybe they’re a little relieved I said no. Certainly they don’t seem to mind. They start talking about what might be on the test, and I eat bits of my bagel and sort of listen and sort of let my mind wander.