You think of the undisturbed confetti on the floor of your room.
He goes on. “What about the email? Did you turn into Mr. Hyde one second to send the email and then pop back into being Caleb to receive it?”
You don’t answer.
“Whereas my mother has motive, skills, and opportunity.”
You ask, “Why would your mother do it?”
“Because. She’s mentally ill. Temporarily not herself.” Antoine pauses. “It’s grief.” Another pause. “And fear, for me.”
Fear again. You are tired of it.
“What’s she afraid of?”
With his fingers tight on the wheel of the car and his voice in perfect control, Antoine tells you about his own internal monster, which comes labeled with a genetic code instead of a lurid Victorian novel.
But in another way, you think, your monsters could be cousins.
Maybe what you are is also the result of some inborn genetic coding. You never chose Mr. Hyde. You don’t even share a single memory with him. But saying you have a bad gene sequence is no more of an answer than believing you have an inner evil twin, or that you’re possessed by a demon. None of these so-called explanations tell you why.
Or even: Why you?
And so what if one day somebody squints into an electron microscope and says, “Aha, Caleb, you have the Hyde sequence at the end of chromosome seven!”
It would explain nothing important.
Plus, this is what would follow: “Can we fix you? No. We can only see the defect.”
Antoine has had this exact same experience.
“There is no cure for Huntington’s disease,” he says. “It’s like being tied to the train tracks. I can’t hear the train coming yet, but I know it’s on its way.” He shrugs. “I’m doomed.”
And the monster’s damage isn’t ever confined to the monster. One way or another, the infection—the evil—spreads. Like to Antoine’s mother. Like to your own mother, who is now more a shadow than a living creature.
Then there is the peripheral damage, the innocents caught in the blast—like Saralinda, and Kenyon, and Evangeline.
Probably you are just like Antoine. Probably you have some nonstandard gene pattern inside you. Your father too—he is no more normal than you are, the way he shows one face to the world and another to his family.
But calling it a genetic thing doesn’t make the experience any less monstrous.
“I have years still,” Antoine says. “Maybe twenty, or even thirty. You know what? I want them.” He drums his fingers on the car wheel. “But my mother . . .” He shifts his attention from the road to you for one split second.
“Evangeline knows this. My mother has already tried to kill me, twice.”
You sit very still while he tells you about a partially severed brake line in Ellie Mae, the week after his father died. Then there was food poisoning, the following week.
“That’s really why I’m living at school this term.”
You say slowly, “Maybe if you tell Dr. Lee—”
“No! He can’t know. She’s temporarily insane, but she will get over it. She’s doing all the right things. She goes to a grief group. She sees a psychiatrist. She’s on serious doses of some medication. She just needs time. At least that was what I thought until now. Now I’m—I’m reconsidering.” He pauses.
“I don’t understand why she’d risk other people,” he finally adds. “Me, I get that. But you guys? And Evan? She’s been my friend since freaking kindergarten. My mother loves her—or she did when she was sane.”
His eyes flicker again to you, and then back to the road.
“I’m glad you came, Caleb. Let’s try this with her. Let’s show her you. A real person who she almost murdered. Let’s see if she can take in how far she’s gone. Shock her out of it.”
You’re still holding his copy of Dracula. “If she can’t?”
“If she can’t—then, new plan.”
“What plan?”
“I don’t know.”
He floors it then, all the way up to five miles above the speed limit.
It is the only indication of how angry he is.
Chapter 16. Saralinda
The car service gets me home two hours later than usual which is not so bad though I feel guilty about lying obviously, on top of which is shock horror sympathy about Antoine.
Also of course wretched worry about Antoine and Caleb facing Antoine’s murderous mother (right this minute possibly?), and that poor woman driven mad by grief.
In short I feel choked sad apprehensive and yet at the same time I am so glad to see our building, our home. I climb out of the car utterly eager for my room and my mother, pathetic. Maybe I am not ready to leave home after all even with Georgia by my side, the world is bad and sad, I am possibly not equipped I am still little.
I enter the lobby and push the button for the elevator. I need to not seem sad when I see my mother, who has X-ray eyes, also I hate that I lied to her, maybe I could tell her about Antoine? Just the Huntington’s disease part (she would be interested, she is always interested in illness), except I promised Evangeline I would not tell.
At this point however the delivery guy from the Chinese takeout place runs into the lobby and waves, so I hold the elevator door for him and he grins and lifts his brown paper bag which smells of sesame oil. He says, “Cold sesame noodles for your mother!”
“Really?” I am amazed.
The delivery guy holds out his hand for a high five which I manage (awkwardly).
More anxiety heaps on now because my mother only orders cold sesame noodles for celebrations or emergencies. Once I am in our apartment I calm down however. It is an emergency yes, but also a celebration.
My mother is happy.
“Big money, Saralinda! I have only a few days to get this grant application written!”
She scrambles on her knees by the printer where several dozen pages have landed on the floor. She runs to put them in her bedroom/office and comes out with her face absolutely split by the width of her smile. For a second I can almost (almost) forget everything that happened today and all I want is to go to her and hug her and be hugged. But she’s not looking at me, she has already turned to get her purse for the delivery guy and she keeps talking a mile a minute. (By the way this is not usual, she is often kind of dour and fretful even when something good happens because she is “waiting for the other shoe to drop,” as she calls it, which is a metaphor I truly get on account of my equally good foot.)
She rummages in her purse. “They know perfectly well they should have given me a month to do this, so guess what? There’s a big bonus when I turn it in, and then there’s a second bigger bonus later on, if they win the grant.”
She pays the delivery guy including a twenty-dollar tip (!!!) and he salutes us with one hand as he leaves happily. Who is this smiling extravagant woman and what has she done with the real Ursula de la Flor?
“I hope I can do it,” she says, and now there is the forehead wrinkle and my heart melts, it is already a puddle from everything today.
“You can, Mom. They hired you because they know you’re the best.”
“Well.” My mother smooths her hair self-consciously. “Maybe. Anyway, there’ll be no cooking around here for a few days. Everything happens all at once, doesn’t it?”
“What else happened?” I sit down on my chair next to the printer and prop my chin on one hand.
“Oh, nothing, nothing, I just mean this job.” My mother has her back to me again, occupied with the takeout. “I got you plain chicken and broccoli, okay?”
Which is my usual safe meal from this takeout place. “Sure,” I say. I count the cartons as she unloads them. “Wait, did you get four orders of cold sesame noodles?” Because that is unprecedented.
My mother gets all defensive which i
s adorable. “I need it. I’m going to live on it while I work. I don’t want to have to stop and think about food.”
“Good idea,” I say and prepare to tell her my lie about why I had to stay at school this afternoon.
Only she doesn’t do her how-was-your-day question paired with her intense-probing-look, she just says, “I have to get back to work now. No interruptions unless it’s an emergency. Oh, and please don’t talk to me when I take stuff off the printer. My mind will be elsewhere.”
“I get it,” I say.
“Thanks.”
The door of her room/office clicks shut behind her and her fork and her cold sesame noodles, which is when I realize she also did not say one single word about blood sugar testing or insulin injections. So wow, it must be really big money. Yay!
Also, this is what I wanted, to take care of myself, so I should not feel a tiny bit bereft.
In my horrible bathroom I do a perfectly competent job of checking my blood sugar, which is high but not terrible, probably thanks to Evangeline’s cheese. I consider the numbers carefully and decide how much to inject taking into account the chicken and broccoli carb count, and I write down everything in the record book very meticulous and responsible.
Then I shoot up. There is no other way to say it and along with injecting insulin, I have the not-so-good kind of thoughts where I imagine, oh, Caleb watching me do it and maybe thinking it is disgusting and so am I. The fact is I have needle scars all over me and rough places on my skin from years of injections, I am told I have sensitive skin and most diabetics do not have this problem which believe me it did not help to hear. Also there is my equally good foot which does not match the other foot and ankle, smaller yet swollen, weird bone structure beneath, so you can see there is something wrong with it.
I think about this, then remind myself not to be self-absorbed, it is truly a small problem compared to Antoine’s.
On my way with Georgia to the kitchen to get my chicken and broccoli I stop in front of my mother’s door. Of course she’s busy I must not interrupt and I don’t, of course not. I am fine after all and I am okay alone, just blue.
My fairy godmother is clearly at work again because for most people having friends is not traumatic.
Chapter 17. Caleb
Antoine’s house is impressive, in a suburban neighborhood of large lots with plenty of trees. In the driveway, he parks Ellie Mae next to another car, a white Subaru. “She’s home,” he says, with a nod toward the house’s lit window. He doesn’t look at you as he gets out and walks to the front door. Silently, you follow.
From behind, you watch while Antoine tries to open the front door. He tries again. And again. You realize, before he seems to, that his mother has changed the lock on him.
Locking your kid out is a far cry from trying to kill him . . . and yet.
You’re not sure what to say. Finally you land on “Do you still want to try to talk with her?”
He nods, his face carefully blank.
You press the doorbell. A recording of “Jingle Bells” plays.
Antoine says, “We never got around to reprogramming the doorbell last year.”
Nobody arrives to open the door.
“Stay here. I’ll try the back.” Antoine disappears, you wait, and after a couple of minutes, he returns. You don’t need to ask about the back door’s lock.
You ring the bell again. “Good King Wenceslas” this time.
“Maybe someone else took her somewhere. Or she’s asleep.”
Antoine shakes his head.
Your own mother does a lot of deep sleeping. Three fire trucks could race through her bedroom, alarms blaring, and she wouldn’t wake. “I love to sleep,” she says, but you know it’s more than that. Prescription drugs are her friend. You aren’t sure if your father is right or wrong to provide them to her. You cannot judge. Maybe she’s better off in her haze. Anyway, it’s her choice. She’s the one who takes them.
You loved her once, when you were little. At least, you think you did. You’d like to think you did.
But Antoine, now. Antoine loves his mother. This woman who has locked him out. This woman who he believes tried to murder him—three times—and four other kids too.
The doorbell cycles through “Silent Night,” “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” “Good King Wenceslas” (again), and “Frosty the Snowman.” Antoine allows less and less time to elapse between songs. Finally he smacks the door with a flat, heavy palm.
“Mom!” he shouts. “Mom!”
He pounds with his closed fist. He adds a second fist. The door is made from good thick wood, and the house is large, but if his mother is inside (and not drugged), she must hear him. If this weren’t a suburban neighborhood of enormous private lots, the neighbors would hear him too, because he’s yelling loudly.
“Mom! It’s me, Antoine!”
It must be hurting his hands, to pound like that. His throat, to yell like that.
“Open up! You have to talk to me! You have to!”
You’re wondering how to stop him when a tall shadow appears beyond the decorative glass installed on one side of the door. The glass is thick and smoky and filled with a leaded mosaic of a flower, but there are bands of plain glass above and below the decoration, so you can see Mrs. Dubois standing in the entry of her house. Watching the door pulse. Listening to her son scream.
“Mom!”
Finally you say, “Antoine.” He doesn’t hear you.
You catch his raised upper arm. You nod toward the glass. He follows your eyes.
“Mom?” he says in a lower voice.
She doesn’t move.
“Mom, let me in.” Antoine has regained some calm, some patience, or at least the ability to fake it.
Still no movement.
Antoine is tall enough to look through the plain glass at the top of the decorative inset. He shields the sides of his face with his hands and presses up close.
“I came here because I know about the roof, Mom. We have to talk.”
She does not respond.
“We can figure this out together.”
She does not move.
“I understand the pain you’re in. I understand you’re trying to help me.”
Still nothing.
“But it’s wrong. This is not the way to handle my problem. Please. This isn’t you. This is not what you’re like. You would never do what you’ve done.”
Silence.
“Mom. Answer me.”
Finally Antoine breaks.
“You’re the sick one! Not me! You’ve snapped—you need help! Don’t you understand? That was Evan with me when the roof came down! Evan! You love Evan! No matter what you’re thinking about me and what’s best, why would you put Evan’s life at risk? Why?”
Beyond the glass, Mrs. Dubois does not so much as twitch.
Antoine draws a ragged breath. “There were three other kids there too. One of them is right here now. Caleb Colchester. Look at him! I dare you! Look at who you hurt! This is an innocent person!”
You, an innocent? After what you told him?
“Caleb saved all of us that day. Evan, and me, and two other kids, girls, who are good people. Saralinda and Kenyon. Those are their names! You owe Caleb, Mom. He might be the only reason that you’re not responsible for the deaths of five people! The only reason that’s not on your conscience—if you still have one. Do you?”
Beyond the glass, Mrs. Dubois moves at last. She takes a step away.
“You want to talk about going to hell now, Mom? Huh?”
She turns away.
Then she’s gone, back into the depths of her house. Gone.
But Antoine still pushes his face against the window. He still shouts.
Mom, Mom, Mom.
You don’t have any idea how long he does it.
Finally he stops. He turns back to you. You simply fall into step beside him as the two of you return to Ellie Mae.
He sits in the driveway, gripping the wheel, saying nothing for a long time. You sit beside him.
“I can’t believe she changed the lock,” he says.
You say nothing.
“She’s truly crazy. You see that, right? She needs help.” His fingers drum on the steering wheel. “Do you see?” He turns to you at last. “Do you see that she must be the one who collapsed the carriage house? That it wasn’t an accident?”
“It’s definitely possible,” you say at last.
He nods grimly.
He starts the car. He pulls out into the street, driving toward the setting sun and the darkening evening sky. It’s not the direction of school.
You’re thinking about the roof. If experts investigate it, they’ll find evidence of whatever happened. Antoine has got to know this as well as you do. Dr. Lee will call experts in, if they don’t come themselves. Insurance investigators. Police forensics.
Antoine is talking again. He has been following a similar chain of thought. “My mother is not a criminal. You have no idea what she’s been through, but I do. I’ll protect her, no matter what. We’ll get through this. I can’t figure out exactly how, but I will. I just need time to think.”
He sounds certain again. Antoine the president, Antoine the leader. No longer the little boy pounding on the door, screaming for his mother.
Never that boy again, ever, you think, and you have to look away for a moment.
But he needs to go further.
You say, evenly, “Let’s think this through. What if somebody had really died? Like you said before. Like Evan?”
“Nobody did, though. And now she knows I know, so it’s over. You guys will be safe.” He drives on for a while before adding, “I could contact her therapist. Ask him what to do.”
You think of your father, the famous psychiatrist. “Do you like her therapist?”
“I don’t know him. She only started seeing him in the summer. But you know, he’s a professional. He’ll help.”