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“I can’t tell you how frightening it is to be summoned from a meeting for an emergency call from the police department!”
We are sitting in the kitchen at the oak table, Rocky’s eyes wide with the experience of having been to the police station and seen her sister released from behind closed doors, like a criminal out on bail in a TV play.
“I thought you or Rochelle had been in some horrible accident, or kidnapped, or Gramma’d been found dead . . .”
“I’m sorry. Mom. It wasn’t my fault!”
“You chose to help Danny and Alex break into a house. Whose fault was that?”
“Mom, it wasn’t just any house. It was Danny’s house.”
“No. It is not Danny’s house. It’s Danny’s father’s house.”
“Well, Danny’s father locked him out. Alex’s mom said he could stay there, so he just went home to get his things. That’s all.”
“Did you see a murderer when you were in jail?” Rocky asks.
“This is not a joke, Rochelle!” Mom says.
“I’m not joking,” Rochelle says.
“If those Neighborhood Watch people would mind their own business . . .”
“Erica! It is not the fault of Neighborhood Watch, or Danny’s father, or the police! What you were doing was wrong!”
We’re silent long enough that Rocky gets bored and goes outside
to play with Kitty.
“I don’t know what to think,” Mom says. “You’ve always had so much common sense, but where Danny’s concerned, good sense takes a vacation.”
“But Mom . . .”
“Really, if Danny had taken you to kill his father, rather than just rob from him, would you have gone along with it?”
“Mom! Danny took his own stuff!”
“What about the stereo speakers?”
“His dad doesn’t even listen to the stereo,” I say, knowing as soon as I’ve said it how lame it sounds.
I pick up my books and go back to my bedroom, leaving Mom sitting at the table. I wonder if Danny and Alex are out yet. It was different for me because I’m only seventeen. A policewoman took me to the station and had me sit in the waiting room until my mom came. But Alex and Danny are considered adults. They were handcuffed and everything.
As soon as Danny’s dad is notified of the situation, he should be able to clear everything up—if he wants to. But what if he decides to press charges?
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When I first got acquainted with Danny’s dad, he seemed like an ordinary dad, kind of quiet, but pleasant enough. It was fun to go to their house. Irene always had some project going, and as soon as anyone walked in the door she’d yell at them to come help her. Cooking, planting flowers, refinishing furniture, quilting, always something.
Even if Mr. Lara didn’t always seem interested, he was never mean. I guess maybe he misses her as much as Danny does and they take it out on each other. I wish they could help each other out instead of making things worse. At least I hope Mr. Lara will help Danny and Alex get released from custody.
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“Erica?” Mom calls softly at my closed bedroom door.
I open it, careful to avoid eye contact.
“Why don’t you come have a bowl of soup with me and Rocky?
You must be hungry.”
I walk out to the kitchen and sit down at the table. Mom hands me a bowl of chicken soup, left over from last night, and puts toasted bagels and carrot sticks on the table.
“I guess this will hold us until tomorrow. Something got in the way of my plan to go to the market after work,” Mom says with a sigh.
Things start closing in on me, my mom’s sadness, the look of curiosity and confusion on Rochelle’s face as she sneaks glimpses of me over her soup bowl, the anxiety over not knowing what’s happening with Danny and Alex at the police station.
“Give me your list, Mom. I’ll go to the market for you,” I say.
She gives me a long look. “No, I don’t think I want you out driving around tonight.”
I feel such a distance between us. My whole life my mom’s trusted me, and now she looks at me like I’m a stranger, and acts as if I can’t be trusted to go to the market.
“Whatever,” I say, and go back to my room to study.
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Between outlining the biology chapter, section by section, and writing out note cards, and visualizing each process as it’s explained, I begin to understand a bit about prokaryotes and viruses. But all the time I’m working on biology, I’m also worrying about Danny. Images of police brutality crowd out pictures of microfossils and I imagine Danny and Alex, on the floor of a cell, being brutally beaten—like I saw Rodney King being beaten on video tape in my social issues class.
I call Alex’s number but there’s no answer. Then I call Danny’s house, but there’s no answer there, either. I even call the police station and ask if Danny Lara and Alex Kendall are still being held. They don’t give out any information. I knew that, but I had to try anyway.
I set biology aside and open my literature textbook, finding where I left off in “Metamorphosis.” Poor Gregor Samsa, even though he’s turned into a beetle, his main worry is his job. That’s all his parents seem to care about, too, just that he can keep supporting them. His sister’s the only one who seems to really care about Gregor but even she’s so disgusted she can’t look at him.
Gregor is in a kind of jail, too, where he can’t leave his room because he’s too frightening a sight to other people. He’s hurt, and no one even knows to help him. God. I hope Danny’s not hurt. I feel so helpless, just sitting here, waiting. Finally, around nine, the phone rings and it’s Danny.
“What happened?” I ask him.
“Alex’s mom got us released to her custody. My dad wouldn’t even bother to come to the station.”
“Did you call him?”
“Yeah, my one phone call. What a waste. He told me I got myself into the mess. I could just get myself out.”
Is it my imagination, or are Danny’s words kind of slurry?
“I’m a big boy now, my dad said. Then he started yelling at me about how I had to pay for the broken window—it’s got to be fixed right now ’cause he’s getting ready to sell the house. He told me that, while I was being held by the cops!”
“He’s selling your house?”
“Yeah. The house I grew up in, that the three of us fixed up all together. I’ll probably never, ever, even be inside that house again.” There’s a long pause and I think Danny is struggling for control. “And then he started in on how the stereo speakers got messed up when I disconnected them. ‘Thanks for your help, Dad,’ I told him, and then I hung up while he was still blab-blabbing away.”
“What did Alex’s mom say?”
“She’s cool. Getting us out tonight was nothing compared to what Joey put her through. The cops all still remember her from when they were picking Joey up all the time.”
“Was she mad?”
“No. She was a little, you know, feeling no pain.”
“From drinking? And they released you to her?”
“Yeah. They don’t give a shit. They’d of had to release us pretty soon, anyway.”
I start to tell Danny how upset my mom is.
“My wrists are all bruised, where they slapped the cuffs on me.”
“I was so worried they’d hurt you.”
“Pigs. They fucked up Alex’s arm when they shoved him in the car. If we’d been some of those little Sycamore Hills rich boys they’d have been gentle, but with us? Shoving guys like us around is how they get their nuts off.”
I’m pretty sure from the way he’s talking that Danny’s been drinking.
“My mom is so mad at me . . .”
“My dad’s a number one asshole.”
Yep. For sure he’s been drinking.
I try one more time to tell Danny about the argument with my mom, but he interrupts with “Alex has to call Gina now. Pups. We’ll talk later. Maybe I’ll stop by after everything’s quiet.”
“Not tonight.” I tell him. “Things are too weird around here.”
“Maybe tomorrow night,” he says. He hangs up without tapping three times.
I know Mom being mad at me is not as big a thing as being handcuffed and shoved around by the police, but I wish Danny would have had time to listen. I remember that time in Alex’s car, too, when I was trying to tell Danny about the woman with AIDS, and he didn’t want to hear any sad stories. I wonder why we always have time for his stories, but never for mine. Well, “always/never.” That is an exaggeration. Besides, my troubles really aren’t as big as Danny’s—no mom, and a dad who doesn’t care. No wonder he’s having a hard time.
I dial April’s number, knowing she’ll listen, but she’s not home.
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About ten-thirty, after Rocky’s asleep, Mom comes in and sits at the end of my bed, across from the desk where I’m still reading. She’s in her purple robe. Her face is clean and shiny from moisturizer, but her beginning frown wrinkles are deeper than usual.
“I want to talk to you,” she says.
I don’t want to talk, but I’m sure there’s no way to get out of it.
“I’m so worried about you, Erica. I don’t think you’re taking school as seriously as you always have, and I think you’re letting Danny run your life.”
“That’s not true! I care about Danny. I love Danny. But he doesn’t run my life.”
“Anyone who can get you to assist them in a robbery has too much influence over you. You are not a thief, Erica. I know that business today wasn’t your idea.”
“That was hardly a robbery, Mom. You’re making things lots worse than they really are.”
“I’m making things worse? I’m not the one who was arrested!” I sit petting Kitty, not knowing what to say.
“Your biology teacher called me at work this afternoon,” Mom says. “I go along for years, hearing only good things about you and then on this one day I get two phone calls, first from the school and then from the police department. What’s happening, Erica? Is it drugs?”
“Drugs? Is that what you think?”
“I don’t know what to think. All of those ‘is your child on drugs?’ check lists talk about sudden shifts in behavior and attitude.”
“Well, I don’t do drugs, Mom. I’m not stupid.”
“And I’m not stupid, either. I know all kinds of things go on at Alex’s house, and I know you hang out there sometimes, because Alice at work told me she saw our car there.”
“I don’t hang out there, Mom. I’ve probably been there about three times in my whole life, and that’s just been to drop Danny off, or pick him up or something like that.”
“Well, I want you to stay away from there. According to Alice it’s like a magnet for lowlifes.”
I think back to the lecture I got from the policewoman at the station this afternoon. She’d said I look like too nice a person to be hanging out with the likes of Danny and Alex. “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas,” she’d told me. I told her I work at the Humane Society and I like dogs. She said she did, too, but not the human kind.
“I think Danny’s made a very bad choice, to move in with Alex. I just hope you’re not making bad choices right along with him.”
I sigh. “Mom, are you mad at me because of some rumor you’ve heard about the place Alex lives?”
Mom gives me a long look, then says, more calmly, “You’re right. That’s not fair . . . Mrs. Costanza says she’s concerned about you—your last two tests have not been good, and your homework’s not up to its usual standards.”
I shake my head in disbelief. April’s barely getting Ds in some of her classes and no one ever calls her parents. I let my grade in biology drop to a B plus and the communications systems are buzzing.
“Erica . . .” Mom takes a deep breath. “Are you pregnant?”
I turn around in my chair to look my mother straight in the eyes. I’m so angry I can feel the rhythm of my heart pounding in my head.
“You accuse me of being a thief! You think I’m on drugs! You think I’m pregnant! I make one simple mistake of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and all of a sudden you think the worst of me!”
“I don’t think the worst of you. I just don’t know what to think!” We are both crying now. Mom’s face is red and mine must be, too. Kitty is whimpering at my feet, looking back and forth between me and Mom.
“You never tell me anything anymore,” Mom says, “and when I ask you anything personal you always avoid the question . . .”
Always, never, I think. I take a deep breath and try to calm down, to remember what I’ve learned in Peer Counseling about communication patterns.
“We’re both really upset, Mom. Could we sleep on all of this and talk some more in the morning?”
It turns out my mom didn’t take that class.
“I’m not finished,” she says, angrily. “I know you care about Danny. But he’s going nowhere with his life, and if you stay with him he’ll drag you down too. You’d be better off without him.”
“Mom . . . you wouldn’t say that if you knew Danny the way I do.”
“I know what I see, Erica, and I see you not doing as well in school, and getting arrested, and I see Danny not working . . .”
“He’s planning to get a job . . .”
“. . . not finishing school, just floating along. I don’t respect that. I just don’t think he’s right for you.”
“I’m the only one who can judge who’s right for me,” I say. “I love Danny, and he loves me.”
“I want you to broaden your scope a bit, start dating other boys.”
“But that’s not what I want! You’re treating me like I’m Rochelle’s age.”
Kitty lumbers over to Mom and lays her head on Mom’s leg. Mom scratches Kitty behind the ears, then sighs.
“You’ve done so well all through high school, and you’ve always been such a delight as a daughter, I just don’t want anything to go wrong for you at this stage of your life, and I’m afraid you’re much too serious with Danny.”
“But Mom, I have to decide what’s right for me. I’ll be on my own at college in less than a year. I’m not a child anymore. Look at you. You were married when you were my age.”
“Yes, well, sometimes I wish I’d listened to my mother about that.”
“Gramma loves Dad.” I say.
“But she thought I was too young to get married, and in a way she was right. I’d have been better off if I’d gone to college.”
“And not have been bothered with Dad, or me, or Rochelle?” I ask, ready to be even more angry at her answer.
“It’s not that simple, Erica. You know I love Dad. And I can’t imagine not being your mom, or Rochelle’s mom. It’s just that I don’t want you to do anything that will get in the way of going to college and becoming a veterinarian. I want you to be smarter than I was.”
“I’m going to college, and I’m going to be a vet. You don’t have to worry about that. But you can’t tell me not to see Danny.”
“Would you at least go out with other boys now and then?”
“Maybe,” I say, knowing I won’t do that, but tired of the argument.
Mom sighs. “Well, I guess I can remember what it’s like to be seventeen and in love. But that was different.”
“Why?”
“Dad was a responsible person, working, going to school. Your dad was never lazy, and he never blamed anyone else for his problems. Danny’s life seems to be getting worse and worse, and it’s never his fault.”
“You just don’t know him the way I do,” I say.
“Sometimes I wonder if you know Danny as well as you think you do.”
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Late in the night, when it’s early in the morning in Germany, I hear Mom talking to the overseas operator, trying to get through to Dad. Because I know she’ll be talking about me, I open my door a crack to listen.
I catch bits and pieces of what my mom is saying—arrested, Danny, school.
“I talked to her about seeing other boys . . . I think maybe she will.”
There’s a long silence from Mom, so I guess Dad is giving her his ideas on the whole subject. Then Mom says, “I’m so tired of trying to be mother and father both to these girls. Rochelle’s always been a handful, but I didn’t expect such problems with Erica.”
Whatever Dad says back to Mom makes her mad.
“That’s easy for you to say, isn’t it? You’ll come waltzing in here at Christmastime, the returning hero, while I’ve been doing all of the everyday dirty work for the past five years.”
I get up and close the door. I can’t wait to go away to college and live my own life. At least that will be one less kid for my mom to complain about.