30
Mark
June 1995
Mark was awakened by voices outside the bedroom window around two o’clock in the morning. People walked past all the time, but Mark recognized Mae’s voice—he hadn’t seen her in almost a week. He eased out of the bed so as not to wake Sienna curled up on the other side. It was finally warm enough that he didn’t need to sleep in thick socks and flannel pajamas, but he still slept in the bottoms when Sienna was with him. He’d made it to the living room and flipped on the light just as the front the door opened. Mae was framed in the doorway, looking small and anxious.
Despite everything, all he wanted to do was pull her into his arms and tell her they could still make this work. They could be a family again. A hulking form stepped over the threshold behind her, and Mark’s eyes went from Mae’s thin face to the wide-shouldered man with a tattoo of some kind on his neck—an eagle, Mark realized, talons facing out and the wings wrapping around to the back. Mark’s shoulders fell—the guy was huge with a shaved head and icy blue eyes that froze Mark to the spot. This must be David—she’d thrown him in Mark’s face often enough—but Mark had pictured a scrawny addict like she’d become these last few months.
“I came to get some t’ings,” Mae said, her chin lifted but her eyes nervous enough to trigger Mark’s protective instincts. She’d told Mark about David early in their relationship. She’d met him when she was sixteen years old. He had been married with kids but helped fuel her growing drug problems. Four months ago, she’d said his name again in an argument—asserting that David loved her unconditionally, whereas Mark had all these expectations. That was when Mark learned David had found her again and Mae had let him into their lives. It had to be the drugs that blinded Mae to the truth about this hard man. It was Mark who loved her.
Mark swallowed and focused his attention on Mae.
“Can we talk?”
“No,” David said, his voice low and gravelly in his throat. “She needs to get her stuff.”
All of it? Mark wondered. Did that mean she wasn’t coming back this time? The thought made him dizzy. Not that they could go on living this way either, but held on to the hope that at some point Mae would sober up. He felt pathetic to still want her after all that had happened, but the Mae he loved was still in there somewhere, and he’d convinced himself that if he could just find her, he could bring her back and they could get married, leave Canada, and make a new start. He’d lived on that fantasy for months and didn’t know what he’d do without it.
Mark pulled together his courage and kept his eyes on Mae. If he could still love her after everything she’d done, she must love him too. Down deep somewhere. His voice was calm when he spoke. “Mae, can we please talk?”
She looked at him with anxious eyes and shook her head. She’d cut her hair short about a month ago; it made her look even younger and more vulnerable than she had before. David had to be pulling the strings and keeping her sick so that she would stay with him. The guy had to be thirty years old at least. Mae moved to step around him. “I just need to get my t’ings.”
Mark reached out to touch her arm, but a thick hand shoved him hard in the shoulder, sending him flying backward into the wall shared by the living room and the bedroom. Years of high school wrestling rushed to the surface, and Mark didn’t hesitate to charge back, catching David full in the chest and sending him to the ground. Mae started yelling, part French, part English. Mark managed to straddle David’s chest before David roared and rolled him off. Wrestling skills hadn’t got Mark as far as he’d like, but he didn’t give up—couldn’t give up. This was his family he was fighting for; his everything. Frustration and heartbreak rose to the surface, sharp and flaming, adding fuel to his fury and his fists.
It took two police officers to split the men up some time later—the meager furnishings of the living room broken, torn, and scattered by then; both men were bleeding and winded. David was taken down to a police car amid curses and threats, while Mark was put into cuffs and pushed onto the couch. Blood dripped from his nose, and his left eye was nearly swollen shut. He began to cry, dropping his chin against his bloody chest as though that could give him some semblance of privacy. People came and went from the apartment, but he didn’t look up, embarrassed to be the guy in this situation. He had ignored his better judgment from the start with Mae, and look at the mess that had caused. His mother’s voice rang in his head. “You made your bed. Good luck sleeping easy in it now.”
After a few minutes an officer sat next to him on the couch and undid the handcuffs. He handed Mark a wet paper towel that Mark used to wipe the worst of the blood from his face. The front door was closed, but Mark could see people moving outside the front window—he was certain the entire complex had been awakened by the brawl. He wanted to explain that he wasn’t this kind of person, he was almost a college graduate, hardworking, and from a good family. This wasn’t his fault, but then it was his fault, wasn’t it?
“I need to ask you some questions, Mr. Chadwick.”
Mark nodded sheepishly, unable to meet the officer’s eyes and terrified that he was going to be arrested.
“Can you confirm that David Vandersteen arrived with Mae Gérard around two o’clock this morning?”
“Yes.”
“And she used her own key to gain entry to the apartment?”
“Yes.”
“And did you attempt to detain Ms. Gérard?”
Mark lifted his head to look at the officer, a man in his thirties. Probably a father himself, but with a wife who took care of the kids and kissed him when he got home from work every day. “I didn’t try to detain her,” Mark said, shaking his head. “I wanted to talk to her, that’s all. She’d come to get her stuff, she said, but she seemed scared of that guy and I needed to talk to her. We have a daughter and—is Sienna okay?”
A new level of dread lashed through him like a prairie thunderstorm. He’d left Sienna asleep on the bed and hadn’t thought about where she was since. He tried to stand, but the officer pulled him down. “Mae and your daughter have gone to a neighbor’s apartment. The child is your daughter?”
Mark stiffened. “Of course she’s my daughter.”
“You’re listed on the birth certificate?” the officer pressed.
“Yes,” Mark said. “I can show it to you.”
The officer let him go to the drawer in the bedroom where Mark kept all the important papers. He sifted through the papers until he found the longer birth certificate, the one with both his and Mae’s names listed—the other birth certificate didn’t have any parent information. He noticed blood on his shaking hands and hoped it was David’s. The neighbor Mae had taken Sienna to wasn’t Jill, was it? That woman would burn in hell for drawing Mae back into addiction. Mae had smoked weed with her in the beginning, and that seemed to spark the desire for speed and some other pills that Jill was no doubt dealing. It was when she needed something harder than what Jill had to offer that Mae had called David. He could burn in hell too. And Mae . . . Mark still wanted to hope that she could get over this.
The officer looked over the certificate and then up at Mark, concern in his eyes. “You’re not married to Ms. Gérard?”
Mark shook his head, embarrassed all over again. Explaining that they weren’t married so that Mae could get better government assistance did nothing to make him feel like a decent person.
“And you’re American.”
“I’m a permanent resident here. I have that paperwork too.” He started to stand, but the officer waved him back to the couch.
“Mr. Chadwick,” the officer said, handing the birth certificate back to him. “Do you understand the precarious nature of your situation?”
Mark swallowed. “Am I under arrest?” He couldn’t go to jail . . . the very idea made his blood run cold.
“No,” the officer said. “But Ms. Gérard has indicated that she has renewed a former relationship with Mr. Vandersteen and has every intention of severing ties with you.”
Mark’s stomach sank, and he blinked back the tears rising in his eyes. “What about Sienna?” Mark asked, once he had enough control to speak. When Mae had started disappearing for days at a time, first two, then three, then a week, she had left Sienna behind. He wanted Sienna with him, but he’d had to call in to work twice already when Jamie, an older woman on disability who lived two doors down, hadn’t been able to babysit during the weird hours he worked—three a.m. to three p.m. He had been looking for a job with normal hours for a few weeks and had an interview at a meat-packing company tomorrow afternoon. Or, rather, today.
The officer continued, “You have a daughter together, but you are unmarried and Ms. Gérard is the mother and a Canadian citizen. Do you understand what that means?”
Mark looked up again and shook his head.
“You are not a citizen, Mr. Chadwick. If not for accounts from your neighbors, as well as Ms. Gérard, about what took place tonight, you would likely be in the backseat of a police car just like Mr. Vandersteen is right now. Were you to be convicted of assault, you would lose your residency and be kicked out of this country. Permanently.”
He held Mark’s eyes, and Mark stared back at him as the bitter knife of reality twisted in his gut. “What about my daughter?”
“That is precisely the point I am making, Mr. Chadwick. Your parental rights do not supersede the laws of this country.” He paused, compassion softening his features. “Ms. Gérard’s record is familiar to us, as is Mr. Vandersteen’s, but at present we do not have cause to remove your daughter from her mother’s care. The next time Ms. Gérard is arrested could be the time she does lose custody; you need to be ready for that by proving yourself a capable caretaker—if you can show you’re committed to staying in Canada, all the better. Your daughter is going to need a stable influence, and you won’t be much help to her back in the States.”