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When He Fell
Kate Hewitt


The powerfully gripping new book from USA Today bestselling author Kate Hewitt.Josh and Ben are nine years old and best friends, until a single, careless act in the school playground destroys the lives of both families – and wrenches their small Manhattan school apart.As both mothers Maddie and Joanna try to find out what really happened between the boys, they discover the truth is far more complicated and painful than either of them could have ever realised… with lasting repercussions for both families.And when tragedy strikes again in the most unexpected of ways, the lives of these two women will be changed once more, and this time forever.When He Fell explores the issues of parental responsibility and guilt, and whether there are some acts that human nature just cannot forgive…







A heartbreaking page-turner for fans of Jodi Picoult and Diane Chamberlain from USA Today bestselling author Kate Hewitt.

Josh and Ben are nine years old and best friends, until a single, careless act in the school playground destroys the lives of both families – and wrenches their small Manhattan school apart.

As both mothers Maddie and Joanna try to find out what really happened between the boys, they discover the truth is far more complicated and painful than either of them could have ever realised… with lasting repercussions for both families.

And when tragedy strikes again in the most unexpected of ways, the lives of these two women will be changed once more, and this time forever.

And Then He Fell explores the issues of parental responsibility and guilt, and whether there are some acts that human nature just cannot forgive…


And Then He Fell

Kate Hewitt







Copyright (#ulink_f1287fb1-d7de-5977-b959-eeba777a4e13)

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2015

Copyright В© Kate Hewitt 2015

Kate Hewitt asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition В© June 2015 ISBN: 9781474034654

Version date: 2018-07-02


KATE HEWITT

After spending three years as a diehard New Yorker and four years in a remote village in the Lake District, Kate now lives in the glorious Cotswolds with her husband, five children, and Golden Retriever.

She writes women’s fiction as well as contemporary romance for Mills & Boon Modern, and whatever the genre she enjoys delivering a compelling and intensely emotional story. Find out more about her books at www.kate-hewitt.com (http://www.CarinaUK.com), and follow her blog at www.acumbrianlife.blogspot.co.uk.


To those who have found hope amidst tragedy, and strength in suffering. You know who you are, and you have been an incredible encouragement to me in the difficult times I’ve faced.


Contents

Cover (#u95311364-ecd7-5b53-88dc-6bf8235746d3)

Blurb (#ucfe8e851-2291-5865-a351-7264843fe311)

Title Page (#u2ec8aa32-3f59-5ff1-961f-8b61a1397475)

Copyright (#u669c1907-c985-5809-9e1e-43b97953c0a9)

Author Bio (#u44c01fcf-f4bc-5c57-b046-16eef8c868d8)

Dedication (#u65f1c66b-ee25-5534-bf58-30128d135b90)

Chapter 1 (#u8310db8c-e841-5534-b887-ac0e5d9001d3)

Chapter 2 (#u3c6e9935-86ea-5b3f-9013-f84692bda447)

Chapter 3 (#u8db6b0e0-4cd2-521a-af66-73a7f24958fd)

Chapter 4 (#u6706e2e1-9f75-5929-98e9-542c841cd9ae)

Chapter 5 (#u429c677d-42d2-51af-826d-0c758b09b914)

Chapter 6 (#u42b7dbac-4eab-582b-99da-cdeb26a8abb6)

Chapter 7 (#u29d102cf-0b72-5cf9-ac33-149ce09a2a8a)

Chapter 8 (#u15a98083-3927-5b6b-a3ed-94d6e66dc804)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Endpages (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher


1 MADDIE (#ulink_c5192aeb-6553-578f-9f11-2c00322f6da2)

My phone rings on a Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of a meeting. Not an important meeting, nothing crucial or critical or even remotely urgent. Just a boring meeting to go over new HR procedures for the pharmaceutical company I hate working for. But one of Alwin Pharmaceuticals’ policies is no phones in meetings, and so I reach into my bag and switch it to silent without so much as glancing at the screen. My boss, Elena Drummond, gives me a pointed look and an over-loud throat clearing before she continues.

It’s only later, when I’m back in my cubicle in a fluorescent-lit office on the fourteenth floor of a nondescript building in midtown, that I happen to glance at it, and then only because it falls out of my bag when I toss it onto my desk.

Missed Call. Ben’s School. I put the ID in as Ben’s school rather than its full title, The Burgdorf Institute for Committed Learning, because I joke to people, even as I mean it semi-seriously, that it sounds like a mental institution. Sometimes I wonder if it is. I certainly don’t fit in with the two kinds of mothers whose children attend Burgdorf. First there are the hippy-dippy types like my friend Juliet; her husband is a board member and hedge fund manager. They could afford to send their three girls to one of Manhattan’s best private schools but they chose Burgdorf because they are committed to its �principles of learning as exploration’ as well as Burgdorf’s motto, �Educating The Individual As Well As The Citizen’. Whatever that means.

The other kind of mother at Burgdorf is the pinched and bitterly disappointed woman whose child hasn’t been able to get in anywhere else.

And then there is me. And Ben. But we’ve always been misfits, skirting the periphery of other people’s lives. I’m not sure I know how to do or be anything else.

Now I reach for my phone and press a button to return the call, sending up a silent entreaty to whoever cares that Ben isn’t in trouble. Again.

He is, as the headmistress of Burgdorf has rather acerbically put it, a lively boy. Lively is Burgdorf’s non-pejorative word for ill-behaved. Ben isn’t a bad boy; he’s just loud and rambunctious and restless. He doesn’t always respect boundaries or rules or personal space. He’s been in trouble—although Burgdorf never talks about children being in trouble; they just need to be redirected or channeled, as if they are water—for a variety of infractions: talking when the teacher is talking, throwing his pencil across the room, getting up when he is meant to be sitting down, pushing in the playground. Nothing major, but barely a day goes by without me receiving the pale blue form that his teacher, Mrs. Rollins, fills out detailing his latest sin. The note is headed in curly script: We Just Want You To Know.

For the last year I’ve been skirting around the topic of ADHD with Burgdorf’s counselor; no one at the school seems to like labels. And while I don’t want to slap a label onto my son, a definite diagnosis, with its accompanying potential solution, even if that comes in the form of prescribed medication, holds some appeal. I work for a pharmaceutical company, after all. I can see how a little Ritalin might improve a situation.

“Burgdorf Institute,” Tanya, the receptionist, answers cheerfully. She is twenty-two and interning in the office while she completes her Masters degree in Pedagogical Studies.

“Tanya, it’s Maddie Reese. I’m calling about my son Ben—”

“Oh, Maddie.” Tanya’s cheerful voice turns hushed, tragic. I still, feeling as if my insides have frozen solid. That is not the tone someone uses when your son has thrown one too many spitballs.

“Has something happened?” I ask, which is a ridiculous question because of course something has. It is just a matter of what. Of how bad.

“Oh Maddie, I’m so, so sorry—”

God in heaven. The words come into my head more like a prayer than an expletive. My throat is dry, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, and my frozen insides are starting to turn liquid. “Tanya. What is it? What’s happened?”

“I…” Tanya breaks off, and then says, “Let me put you through to Mrs. James.”

Ruth James, the Headmistress of Burgdorf. I sink into my chair, raking a hand through my hair, my fingernails snagging on my scalp. It feels like forever before Mrs. James comes to the phone, but in reality is twenty-two seconds. I watch the seconds tick by on the clock by my computer, each one matching the painful thud of my heart.

“Maddie.” Mrs. James’s voice is low and honeyed, sounding both warm and authoritative. It is a tone that she always uses, a tone that secretly annoys me because it seems so fake. I’ve joked to Juliet that Mrs. James must practice speaking like that when she’s at home, maybe into a microphone; it is such an actor’s voice. Juliet might smile a little when I say stuff like that, but she never jokes back. She is intensely loyal to Burgdorf and its staff. I’ve also joked to her that she’s drunk the progressive education Kool Aid, but she won’t even smile at that.

“I’m afraid,” Mrs. James says, her voice dropping an octave and becoming more of a hushed whisper, “that Ben has had an accident.” I don’t reply; my tongue is still sticking to the roof of my mouth and my mind is both numb and spinning. “He’s in the Emergency Room at Mount Sinai Roosevelt,” Mrs. James continues. “He was rushed there right away—”

Rushed. Rushed is not a good word right now. Somehow I manage to unstick my tongue and speak, although when my voice comes out it sounds strange, almost garbled. “What…what happened?”

Mrs. James hesitates, and I clutch the phone more tightly to my ear, so my fingers ache.

“He had a fall,” Mrs. James finally says, and her tone is careful, as if she is choosing each word with precision. “He hit his head. We did call you,” she adds, with the faintest hint of accusation in her voice.

“I was in a meeting,” I say, an apology, and then a wave of both fury and shame crashes over me. Why on earth am I justifying myself? “How bad—I mean, is he…is he all right?”

“He was knocked unconscious from the fall. The playground supervisor called 911 right away, and an ambulance was there within minutes.” She sounds as if she is reciting facts from a sheet, a checklist of what to do in an emergency, of how Burgdorf correctly handled the situation. “But if you want to go to the ER now—”

If I want to? Does she think there was a choice in this matter? That I might say I’ll pop by later, after I’ve plowed through some paperwork, when he is up and at it again?

“Of course I’m going to go,” I snarl, the anger that surges through me surprising me. I feel so many things in this moment: shock, fear, despair, and yes, still faint, frail hope. But anger trumps them all, and I don’t even understand why.

I walk out of Alwin Pharmaceuticals without telling anyone; I feel like every second that slips by was hurtling me towards the edge of a cliff, and I do not want to look down and see what yawns below me. I am caught in a riptide of events; words and phrases float through my mind like sticks being carried by that unstoppable current. He had a fall. He was rushed to ER. He was knocked unconscious when he fell.

I take a cab to Mount Sinai Roosevelt on Fifty-Eighth and Tenth Avenue, the edge of Manhattan, the Hudson River visible through the concrete alleyways if you crane your neck. In through the double doors to the massive, soaring lobby, my heart racing as I gaze around wildly for the entrance to Emergency.

“It’s around the corner,” the guard at the front desk tells me, his voice bored, his face a mask of indifference.

The people at the triage desk in the ER seem just as relentlessly indifferent. “Benjamin Reese?” They scan computer screens, taking forever, before glancing back up at me with blank stares. Perhaps I should find comfort in their lack of concern; surely it can’t be serious if they don’t know? If they don’t care?

“Please take a seat, Miss…?”

“Ms. Reese. I’m his mother.” My voice rings out, cracking on the last word, and still no sympathy. They must see scenes like this a hundred, a thousand times over; they are immune, inoculated against grief by the sheer number of times they witness it.

“Please take a seat,” the woman repeats in a monotone, and without any other options, I do as I am told.

Five minutes later a nurse comes through the double doors of the ER ward and calls my name. I rise from my seat like a puppet being yanked on a string and walk towards her on stiff, marionette’s legs.

“Ms. Reese?”

“Yes—”

“You are Benjamin Reese’s mother?”

“Yes—”

“Please come this way.” I follow her through the double doors; they swing heavily behind me, making me feel as if I’d been entombed in the ER. She leads me to a small waiting room with green vinyl seats and a fake potted plant on a little fake wood table and I stop on the threshold, not wanting to go in. Not a little room, the little room where in the sappy movies the camera pans back from behind the glass, and you watch the doctor give the parents the terrible news, see them silently break down. Not that room.

“If you’d like to wait here, the doctor will be in to see you shortly.”

It is that room. And I am in it.

I pace the room; it is tiny, and it only takes three steps to cross it. I press my hand flat against the wall and then push off, as if I am swimming. I feel as if I am swimming, or wading through thick, cloying mud; it’s becoming hard to breathe. My mind skitters towards possibilities and then darts away again, fast. I can’t bear to think about any of them even for a second. I wish I could call someone, but there is no one. My life isn’t like that. It never has been.

I could call Juliet, maybe; she is my closest friend, perhaps my only friend. I know she would come if I ask her, and yet I resist making that call. I don’t want to make this real.

Then I think of Lewis, and my heart lurches with both despair and need. Lewis would know what to do in this situation. Lewis always knows what to do; he’s the most comfortingly capable person I’ve ever known. But I can’t call Lewis; I haven’t spoken to him in two weeks. And he’s not mine to call.

“Ms. Reese?”

I spin around to face a doctor in a white lab coat. He has thinning hair and glasses and he carries a clipboard; his face has that neutral look that doctors do so well.

“Where is Ben?” My voice comes out in a crack of accusation.

“I’m Dr. Stein,” the man answers, the faintest of rebukes in his voice for my having skipped such pleasantries. “And Ben is in a room across the hall. He’s had a fall and hit his head, as I believe you are aware. We’ve currently put him in a medically-induced coma, for his own protection and safety.”

I stare at him. “A what?”

“When Ben fell he experienced some trauma to his brain. There has been some swelling, some shearing…”

Shearing? I think of sheep. “I don’t know what that means.”

“When a person receives a traumatic injury to the brain,” Dr. Stein explains, his too-patient voice grating on my already raw emotions, “the axons in the nerves can be damaged or even torn. That’s what we call shearing. The injury to his brain also caused swelling, which increases the intracranial pressure. If that continues, we can relieve it by drilling a hole in his skull.”

Quite suddenly I feel as if I could be sick. Dr. Stein must see that in my face because he says with some alarm, “Ms. Reese?”

I swallow bile; my tongue feels thick in my mouth. I sit down hard on the vinyl sofa and rest my head on my knees. A few deep even breaths and I manage to speak. “Is he going to be all right?” I want the bottom line. Clearly I can’t handle the details.

“I can’t answer that question definitively,” Dr. Stein answers.

“Can you tell me anything?” I ask, my face still pressed to my knees. The room is fading in and out and I am having trouble breathing. My skin feels cold and clammy, my hands and feet tingling with pins and needles. I know I need to start coping, because Ben doesn’t have anyone else, although not for lack of trying on his part. For the last six months or so he’s been asking for a dad. Asking about his dad, and I don’t have any answers. Not ones I’m prepared to give.

“We will keep him in the coma in order for his brain to heal,” Dr. Stein explains. “The next twenty-four to forty-eight hours will be critical.”

I raise my head; the room swims before me. “Critical?” I repeat. “In what way?”

“For his survival, Ms. Reese,” he says and I reel back as if I’ve been struck. “Is there someone you can call?” Dr. Stein asks, because clearly he can see that I’m not coping well. “Someone who can be with you?”

I think again of Juliet; she’ll be with her three girls now, getting them from school, running them to various activities around the city. Ballet for Emma. Tae kwon do for Hannah. Archery for Lily. Juliet has a full-time aide—her word—to help her with the business of managing her three children’s privileged lives. But even with her aide, I know she’ll be busy; she might have even switched her phone off.

And then I think of Lewis. “Maybe,” I say, and I reach into my pocket to curl my hand around my phone. The thought of talking to Lewis, of hearing his steady voice, comforts me. “But first I want to see Ben.”

Dr. Stein nods. “When he is a little more stable, we’ll transfer him to the neurology department. But for now…” He opens the door, gesturing for me to go first even though I don’t know where I’m going. I step out of the room; I’m in that post-adrenalin rush, jelly-limbed and icy with cooled sweat. Distantly I hear the sound of a busy ER: beeps and sirens and someone crying. Another person groans.

“Right this way,” Dr. Stein murmurs and I follow him to a room with heavy, swinging doors. a room that has bright lights and too many machines, all surrounding a boy in a bed who is utterly still and silent. My son.

I walk slowly towards him, barely trusting my legs to keep me upright. The machines beep and whirr and sound very loud in the room; a nurse stands by his head, checking something. I have no idea what. I have no idea about any of this.

I take a step closer to Ben. Remarkably he doesn’t look that injured. There is a bandage on his wrist, and Dr. Stein murmurs that it might be broken, but they can’t take an x-ray until his condition is more stable. There are no internal injuries as far as they know; the damage is merely to his brain. His brain.

There is a little dried blood on his cheek, and his left eye is swollen shut. He is breathing through a ventilator and other tubes trail away from him like snakes.

His head is wrapped in white bandages; it reminds me of when he used two rolls of toilet paper last Halloween to dress up as a mummy. Lewis and I took the boys trick or treating, and we shared a bag of candy corn, both admitting to a secret weakness for those nauseatingly sweet triangles of sugar. It seemed like a lifetime ago; only a year, but a different reality. This is what is real now and yet I can’t take it in; everything in me resists.

I sink into a chair by his bed and reach out to touch Ben, but my hand falls short. I am afraid to touch him, to hurt my son. His golden-brown lashes fan his cheeks, and he almost looks peaceful, despite the bandages and bruises and tubes. Surely he cannot be as damaged as all that. Only this morning he was bouncing around, kicking his soccer ball, scuffing the walls. Only this morning I snapped at him as I wrote out a check for the month’s afterschool club and tension knotted the muscles of my neck, throbbed in my temples. All because of a lousy check, a stupid soccer ball.

Tears crowd my eyes, gather in my throat, and I swallow hard.

“When do you think he’ll come out of the coma?” I ask, and my voice quavers.

“When his condition is more stable, we will attempt to bring him out of the coma,” Dr. Stein tells me. “But first the ICP needs to reduce.”

“The ICP?”

“Intracranial pressure.”

“When will that be?” I’m hoping he will answer in hours, but his hesitation tells me otherwise.

“Perhaps in a few days,” he says, and I can tell he is temporizing. “As I said before, the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours are critical.”

I nod, and reach out to stroke Ben’s uninjured hand. His skin is still soft, like a baby’s, but I’ve noticed lately he is starting that headlong tumble into pre-adolescence; he has become obsessive about me not seeing him getting undressed, and he needs to shower more than he used to. The hair on his legs and arms has become darker, coarser, not the white-blond, baby-fine hair of his toddlerhood. He’ll be ten in March.

“Ms. Reese?” I can’t tell if the doctor sounds impatient or sympathetic. Probably both. “You should wait outside.”

I turn to look at him. “I can’t be with him?”

“It’s better now if you leave us room to monitor his condition. Just in case.”

Just in case of what? I am not brave enough to ask the question. I nod and with one last look for Ben, I leave the room. Dr. Stein directs me back to the private waiting room where people hear bad news. I don’t want to go there, but I can’t face the huge ER waiting room either.

I sink into a chair, my mind still spinning, straining in denial. I can’t believe this is happening, that this is happening to Ben, to me, and yet another part of me is not surprised at all. Another part of me, a secret, ashamed part, has been waiting for something like this all along, has known I would never get it right, that I could never manage to bring up a child right, or even at all.

An animal sound of pain escapes me, and I reach for my phone. I punch in Lewis’s number recklessly; I don’t care about the consequences. I need someone now and it’s just a call. I’m not hurting anyone.

But I falter when his phone switches over to voicemail, and in the end I only manage one broken word.

“Lewis,” I whisper, and then I disconnect the call and press the phone to my forehead, squeezing my eyes shut tight as I do my best to block out the world.


2 JOANNA (#ulink_2c2fb197-4930-5818-a4b0-0f095a8d2266)

The day it happens is like any other. No one talks to me when I pick Josh up at school, although no one really ever talks to me. I’ve never been too friendly with the other mothers at Burgdorf, besides a few tight-lipped smiles when I manage to attend an event. Usually Lewis does the drop off and pick up; I work from eight until six or seven most days. But today I pick Josh up myself, because I’ve had a cancellation. And no one says anything.

“Hey there,” I say to Josh as he comes out of Burgdorf’s bright blue doors. A few other mothers and nannies are gathered on the sidewalk in tight little knots; the mid-October wind is chilly, funneling down Fifty-Fourth Street and they hunch their shoulders against it. Burgdorf rents an office building in midtown; only twenty years old, the school doesn’t have the kind of money that most Manhattan private schools have, with their Brownstones and big endowments.

Josh comes to stand before me, unspeaking, but this isn’t surprising. Josh has always been on the quiet side.

I’ve battled against Josh’s silence since he said his first word at the age of two and a half. No. Spoken very softly when I put peas on his plate, and Lewis and I rejoiced as if he’d just given a speech about world peace.

He said a few more words over the next few months, and then we sent him to preschool and he didn’t say anything for a year.

The director at the preschool advised testing, and so I took him to various doctors, all of whom flirted with different diagnoses. They ruled out autism or anything �on the spectrum’, as has become the parlance. I was relieved as well as a tiny bit disappointed. At that point I craved a diagnosis, an answer. I wanted this to be a problem I could fix, or at least treat.

They moved on to other conditions: social anxiety disorder. Social phobia. Depressive disorder. Nothing was definitive. No one offered us anything besides more therapy, possible pills. None of it really worked.

Lewis was, although he tried to hide it, exasperated with me. “He’s just a quiet kid, Jo,” he said more than once. “Let him be. He’ll come out of it when he’s ready.”

But Josh wasn’t just a quiet kid. He wasn’t just shy; he was, as one doctor had said, selectively mute. He didn’t speak for the entire first year in preschool; not one word to anyone, not even to us at home. Kids tried with him at first, offering a toy, touching his shoulder in a game of tag. He never responded, except to shy away or duck his head. Eventually the other kids saw he was different and they stayed away. Their mothers didn’t invite him to their children’s birthday parties, even when there were whole-class invitations. Kids thought he was weird, and he was weird.

But we’ve progressed a long way from those dark days, since he’s been at Burgdorf. I’d picked the school particularly, because it catered to �the whole child’ and was, on the brochure, �a place for positivity’. Lewis rolls his eyes at that kind of language and I suppose I do too, a little, but I still feel it’s what Josh needs. Kids at Burgdorf have a lot more freedom to express themselves—or not, as Josh’s case may be. They don’t have to conform to a standard, and since Josh can’t and won’t, it’s the perfect—or at least the best—place for him. In kindergarten he started speaking again; in first grade he even made a friend. Ben Reese. The two have been best friends for nearly three years. Josh’s first and only friend, and I am as proud as if I managed the whole thing myself.

In reality I’ve only met Ben’s mother Maddie a couple of times; I’ve only seen Ben a little more than that. When they have play dates—an expression I loathe and yet accept—Lewis usually takes them out while I am at work.

Now Josh and I ride home on the subway, all the way from midtown to Ninety-Sixth Street, and he doesn’t speak the whole way. I am not bothered; in fact I am scrolling through some emails on my phone. When we pull out of the Eighty-Sixth Street station Josh rests his head briefly against my arm.

I touch his hair lightly; his eyes are closed. “Are you tired, Josh?” I ask as I delete an email from my phone. He doesn’t answer, and I decide he is.

We arrive home fifteen minutes later and Josh disappears into his room, as he often does, usually to read one of his Lego or nonfiction fact books. He’s insatiable when it comes to trivia; most of our conversations involve Josh reciting all he knows about some specialized subject. Did you know earthworms can live for up to eight years? But they die if their skin is dry. They have nine hearts.

I cannot retain the trivia, although I do try to listen to Josh and absorb it. I enjoy the evidence of his passion, even if it is simply for a collection of forgotten facts.

His other passion is Lego, although he’s never actually built anything with the blocks. He just likes studying the designs in the Lego books we’ve bought him.

While he’s in his room I make him a snack of dried fruit and nuts and pour a glass of water, the healthy alternative to cookies and milk. Lewis rolls his eyes at my insistence on things like limited screen time and no sugar or additives; he grew up on Twinkies and endless TV. But this is the plight of the modern mother; if I didn’t do these things I would be judged. Condemned. Add the fact that I am a dentist and a mother in Manhattan, and it all becomes exponentially more intense.

Lewis comes home as I am making dinner, a healthy meal of brown rice and low-fat chicken strips seasoned with paprika. I’m not very good at cooking, not like Lewis, who can throw together a bunch of ingredients with careless ease and emerge with something that tastes delicious. I follow recipes to the millimeter; it’s how I’ve always lived my life. Lewis will laugh as I level off a teaspoon, eyeing its flat surface like a nuclear physicist measuring plutonium. He never measures anything, and somehow it all works out for him.

“How was work?” he asks as he comes in the door. He shrugs off his scuffed leather jacket and rummages in the fridge for a beer. As usual when I see him I feel my insides lurch with that intense mix of love and trepidation that I’ve felt since the moment Lewis laid eyes on me at a party when I was a grad student and he worked as a maintenance man for an apartment building in Queens.

I never thought he’d be interested in someone like me. Someone who was tall and lanky with the awkwardness of a giraffe rather than the grace of a gazelle. I’d sat squeezed on a sofa at that party, a plastic cup of cheap wine clutched in my hands, and wondered why I’d come. I’ve never been good at parties; small talk has always defeated me. But I was in my first year at Columbia’s College of Dental Medicine, and I was determined to make friends.

Lewis was the kind of guy who was so inherently comfortable in his own skin that you couldn’t help but feel jealous. You wanted to be like him, or if you were a woman, you wanted to be with him. I wanted both.

When he plopped himself down on the sofa next to me, elbowing someone else out of the way, and then actually talked to me, I was incredulous. I couldn’t believe this charming man with the curly dark hair and the liquid brown eyes, the workman’s physique and the big, capable hands, was interested in me.

He asked me to dance. When we stood up I realized, to my complete mortification, that I was a good two inches taller than he was. I slouched towards the cleared space that served as a dance floor; Lewis rested his hands on my hips, unconcerned, while I contorted my body to somehow seem shorter than he was. We danced for two songs before Lewis offered to get me another drink. I accepted in the vain hope that alcohol might strip away a few of my inhibitions.

He spent the entire evening with me. I don’t remember what I said; I babbled about wanting to be a dentist and when Lewis opened his mouth to teasingly show me his gold crown I laughed in a high, whinnying way, like a horse. I was so incredibly nervous; my hands were sweaty around my plastic cup. I was afraid he’d leave me alone, and yet I almost wanted him to, was desperate for him to, because being with him was so intense, so invigorating. By eleven I was exhausted.

Lewis walked me to the subway station, and asked for my phone number before I went down the steps. I remember scrabbling in my bag for it, because I hadn’t actually memorized my own number. I remember asking for his, shyly, blushing, and he’d rattled it off with a grin. I remember almost blurting why are you interested in me before I thankfully thought better of it. And then I half-floated, half-stumbled home, caught between euphoria and terror that I might see him again.

“Where’s Josh?” Lewis asks as he pops the top on his beer and raises the bottle to his lips.

“In his room, as usual. You know how he is.” I speak lightly, as if in doing so I can dismiss the years of worry, of terror, of doctors and diagnoses, and make everything seem normal. It is normal, for Josh; I know I need to accept who he is, and who he isn’t. And I have accepted it, for the most part. It is only occasionally that I wonder if things are truly okay, or wish that they were different.

Lewis wanders over to the TV and flips it on before flopping onto the couch. I watch him sprawled there, torn between reminding him of our no screen time rule during weekdays, at least when Josh is awake, and just watching him, my heart suffused with love.

Lewis must sense my stare for he glances up from the TV, smiling slightly as he raises his eyebrows. “Come here,” he says, and I leave the chicken hissing and spitting on the stovetop and walk towards him. He holds out his arms, and I snuggle into him as best as I can; I am all awkward angles and elbows, but somehow when Lewis puts his arms around me, I soften. I fit.

He strokes my hair absently as he watches the news and I close my eyes and savor the moment until I smell the chicken starting to burn and I rise reluctantly from the sofa. I turn the chicken to simmer and start to set the table.

I call Josh, and he comes into the dining alcove, its one window overlooking the concrete courtyard behind our building. We live in a classic six on Central Park West, in a shabby building that has the benefit of a doorman and a nice address. The lobby is all peeling plasterwork and scuffed marble, and the residents tend to be people who have lived there forever or, like us, saved every last penny to buy real estate in Manhattan.

I dole out the chicken and rice while Lewis gets another beer and Josh sits at the table, his head bowed. I finally notice that something might be wrong.

“Josh?” I ask, pitching my voice light because I know I tend to panic. “You okay?”

He nods, his head still lowered, his dark, silky hair falling in front of his face. Lewis glances at him, frowning slightly, but he doesn’t press. Lewis is of the old-school belief that you let kids fall and scrape their knees so they can get up again, bloody and proud; you let them be bullied so they learn to be tough. Yet he is also the more involved parent, doing the school run and being at home in the afternoons, even if his philosophy is to be uninvolved. I, for better or for worse, am the opposite.

Lewis starts talking about a new piece he’s making, a set of built-in bookcases for some Park Avenue family. For the last ten years he’s had his own woodworking business up in Harlem.

I listen and make interested noises, ask a few relevant questions. I do all the right things, even as I glance again at Josh and start to feel worried.

“Hey, Josh.” I touch his head lightly, the tips of my fingers brushing his hair. “School okay?”

“Yeah.” He toys with his fork, pushing rice around on his plate, and then arranging the grains in a pattern. “It was fine.”

“How did your history project go?” He’d brought in a poster he’d made on the American Revolution; Lewis and I had both helped with it, all of us squealing in disgust over the little-known fact that George Washington’s false teeth were not made of wood, as many believed, but rather of human teeth he’d bought from his slaves. Josh had been particularly revolted by the thought of having other people’s teeth in your mouth, never mind the injustice of them belonging to Washington’s slaves.

“I didn’t get to present it,” Josh says. His head is still bent as he focuses on arranging the grains of rice into a perfect square. “Tomorrow, maybe.” He sucks in a breath and lets it out slowly, which has always been his signal that he is done talking.

So I force myself to let it go. To stay relaxed, because I know I worry too much and I need to trust that if something is wrong, Josh will let me know. Even if he hasn’t before.

After dinner Lewis clears the dishes and Josh retreats to his room. I frown at the closed door, debating whether to go in. I could suggest we read together, as we’ve done some evenings. It was my idea and Josh agreed reluctantly, but I think he likes the Narnia books I suggested. He doesn’t protest, anyway, when I get one out and sit by his bed to read it aloud.

But it’s still early, and I have a mountain of paperwork to get through. I’ll ask again at bedtime, I decide, and read to him then. Maybe while we’re reading he’ll talk a little more, open up about whatever is bothering him. And really, what can it be? He’s only nine, after all. Maybe Mrs. Rollins scolded him, or someone pushed him in line. The traumas of an elementary education.

I am still standing there, staring at the door, as Lewis comes up to me and places a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Jo,” he says softly, and I lean back against his chest as his arm encircles me.

“How did you know I was worrying?” I ask, and Lewis presseds his thumb to the middle of my forehead.

“You had your little worry dent going on,” he says, and I manage a laugh.

“Total giveaway,” I agree and I rest there for a moment, savoring Lewis’s embrace and letting myself believe that everything really is okay. The reassurance soaks into me, allows me to relax.

We’ve worked so hard for this, the three of us. We’ve put the difficult times behind us, the tragedy and fear and the dreaded silence. Even though life sometimes feels like walking on a tightrope, everything teetering, I choose to believe we’re steady now. We’re solid.

Lewis cleans up the kitchen while I do paperwork, and Josh stays in his room until bedtime. At eight-thirty I knock on his door and push it open, my heart lurching a little when I see him lying curled up on his bed, his knees tucked up to his chest.

“Josh?” I move closer, and then perch on the edge of his bed. “Josh. Honey. Is everything okay?” I should know better than to ask my son such an open-ended question. Josh deals in facts. The only way to get information from him is to ask factual yes-no questions. “Did something happen today to make you sad?” I try. “Did Mrs. Rollins yell at you?”

“No.” His voice is barely audible.

“Did you get in a fight with someone?” I think about Ben, but Josh never fights with Ben, as far as I know. They are utterly unlike each other; Ben is loud and rambunctious and hyper. I’ve wondered, on the few occasions that I’ve met him, if he has ADHD. Josh is none of those things, but somehow the friendship works. Opposites attract, I guess. Look at me and Lewis.

“No,” Josh says again, so softly. He squeezes his eyes shut and my heart flips over in fear. I can’t shake the feeling that something is really wrong, and I need to know what it is.

“Tell me,” I say quietly. “Tell me what’s wrong, Josh, and I’ll fix it for you. I promise.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know they’re not quite right, that they’re a promise I can’t necessarily keep, and yet I mean them. I mean them so much.

But Josh just hugs his knees more tightly to his chest and keeps his eyes closed. He doesn’t say anything, which is not a surprise and yet still a worry. After a moment I rise from the bed and fetch his pajamas. He takes them obediently, and I rest a hand on his shoulder for a moment before I leave the room for him to change.

In the living room Lewis is sitting at the desk by the window, going over some invoices. His phone beeps with an incoming voicemail and he glances at it, frowning, before tossing it aside.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

“Yeah, just a work thing.” He gives me a quick, distracted smile.

“I’m worried about Josh.”

Lewis sighs. “I know you are, sweetheart.”

I stand behind him, resting my hands on his shoulders. “He really doesn’t seem himself, Lewis.”

“We all have bad days.” Lewis glances up at me, patting my hand before turning back to his paperwork. “He’ll be fine.”

I remain there a moment, taking comfort from Lewis’s warmth, his steadiness, his certainty that life will fall into a usual, peaceful pattern. I’m amazed at Lewis’s faith sometimes; his own childhood was tempestuous, with his mother dragging him across the country after a bitter divorce and then basically ignoring him for the next ten years while she went through several deadbeat boyfriends. Yet despite all that Lewis still possesses a seemingly unshakable faith that things will work out for us, for Josh, even when they haven’t in the past. But I don’t think about that.

I finish tidying up the kitchen and then I go back into the bedroom to say goodnight to Josh. He is already huddled under the covers, his eyes closed, his breathing even. I wonder if he is asleep—maybe he really is just tired—but then I notice how tense his shoulders are, scrunched up by his ears.

“Josh,” I say softly, and he doesn’t reply. He doesn’t even open his eyes. I decide to play along that he is asleep, just for tonight, because maybe all he needs is a little space, a little time. Maybe he did just have a bad day as Lewis said.

Gently I pull the duvet up over his shoulders and brush a kiss on his forehead, my lips barely touching his skin. I breathe in his little boy scent of soap and sweat and sunshine, my eyes closed. Then I tiptoe from the room and close the door softly, and hope that just as Lewis always believes, everything will look better in the morning.


3 MADDIE (#ulink_2c2fb197-4930-5818-a4b0-0f095a8d2266)

That night in the ER Ben experiences storming, which is a term I’d never heard before, but which Dr. Stein explains to me. Storming is, in layman’s terms, when a person’s vital signs go haywire; Ben’s temperature rises and then drops, his body seizes, his heart rate is all over the place. Dr. Stein tells me this happens in �roughly fifteen to thirty-three percent of all TBI cases’—TBI being traumatic brain injury. I am starting to know the acronyms, and I hate them all.

When I ask Dr. Stein why this happens, he launches into a lengthy soliloquy on possible causes of storming. Maybe it’s �sympathetic’, and is part of the recovery process. Maybe it’s a reaction to the drugs he is receiving, or a change in dosage. Maybe it’s a neurological response to the initial trauma. Blah blah blah. I am desperate to understand, and yet this is a language I don’t speak. I want bottom lines and doctors don’t give those. They don’t deal in promises.

I stand at the door and peer at Ben through the window; the sight of his body flailing in the bed, the machines beeping faster and louder, is beyond terrifying to me, but I am coping better now, or perhaps I am simply numb. Numb and utterly exhausted, living in this terrible stasis, and I have no idea what happens next.

Lewis hasn’t called me back. I didn’t expect him to, but I am still disappointed.

At ten o’clock that night I break down and call Juliet. I need to talk to someone.

“Oh, Maddie,” she exclaims as soon as she answers the phone. “Is Ben going to be okay?”

Shock slaps me in the face. She knows. Juliet knows about Ben. How? Why? And why didn’t she call? I swallow down my own question to answer hers.

“I don’t know, Juliet. He’s in a medically-induced coma.”

“Oh, no.” She let out a muffled sob and I feel an unreasonable dart of anger, because I haven’t permitted myself to shed any tears, but she can? She has that presumption?

“How…how did you know?” I ask. And then I realize how little I know; I don’t even know how or where he fell. I’ve been too busy coping with the result to wonder about how it happened, or where, or why. And suddenly I feel like I need to know these things, that they might be important.

“I…” Juliet hesitates. “I was on playground duty.”

Burgdorf parents are required to volunteer for the school three hours a week; I usually end up stuffing envelopes or doing data entry after work, while Ben is in afterschool club. Juliet does the �fun’ things, the field trips and playground duty. She was there when Ben fell. Which means she knew about this for hours and hours, and yet she never even called me.

“It happened on the playground?” I finally ask, and my voice sounds scratchy, hoarse. “Did you see him? How did he fall?” I blurt the questions, needing facts.

“I didn’t see,” Juliet says quickly. “The kids were running all around, you know how it is. It all happened so fast…” She trails off, helplessly, and I close my eyes. Does it really matter if he fell off the slide or the swing? Or maybe it was the huge concrete climbing structure in Heckscher Playground in Central Park, where the kids often go for recess. Ben’s twisted his ankle or banged his knee on that thing more than once. Wherever he fell, it landed him here, fighting for his life.

“I’m so, so sorry,” Juliet says. “They rushed him to the hospital. The paramedics were so good…”

I can feel the sting of tears in my eyes, and I can’t believe that after everything that has happened, I am going to cry now. “You didn’t even call me,” I choke, and I am ashamed at how needy I sound. I’ve learned not to be needy, not to depend on anyone. A lifetime in foster care makes you an expert in self-sufficiency.

“Oh Maddie, honey, of course I wanted to,” Juliet says, her voice breaking. “But I knew Mrs. James would contact you first and I didn’t want to barge in before she could tell you the details…”

But she wasn’t there. You were. And you’re my friend. The protests lodge in my throat like stones.

“…And then with the kids… Emma had ballet exams today…” She trails off, and I know she realizes her excuses are cringingly, shamefully lame. And I don’t understand why Juliet is failing me like this, because I’ve always considered her a good friend.

I don’t have a lot of experience with friends of any kind, but I’ve known Juliet for ten years, since Ben and Emma were babies. For the last three years she has treated me to a ticket to the school’s annual charity gala, and made sure I sit at her table. She’s given me her castoff clothes even though they’re not my style at all. They’re still good quality. She’s had me over for Thanksgiving when they’re in the city and she knows I have nowhere to go. Why didn’t she call me when she knew my son was in the ER, in a coma?

“He’s going to be okay, though,” she says, and her tone is deliberately upbeat. Maybe she’s trying to mimic Burgdorf’s environment of positivity, but I feel none of it now.

“I have no idea,” I tell her flatly. “The doctor told me the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours are critical.” I pause. “As to whether he lives or dies.”

“Oh, Maddie…” Juliet’s voice is like the cry of a small animal, as if I’ve hurt her with this information, and suddenly I can’t take any more.

“I have to go,” I say abruptly, and I hang up. I walk back from the little waiting room to the doors of Ben’s room—a journey I already feel I’ve made a thousand times—and peer in the window. Ben is still restless and agitated, his body jerking spasmodically as the doctors and nurses attempt to subdue him. I can’t bear to see him like this, and yet I can’t look away either. All I can do is wait.

Wait and wonder, because as I replay the conversation with Juliet something doesn’t feel right. Juliet would call me. She’s the type of person who calls, who cares.

Why didn’t she see how Ben fell? Why didn’t she give me any details at all?

I can’t help Ben now, and so I focus on what happened. On finding out what happened. I call Juliet again. She answers after the fourth ring, her voice a little wary.

“Maddie?”

“I just want some details,” I burst out. “About how it happened. Was it on Heckscher Playground?”

“Yes…you know that’s where they go for recess when it’s nice out.”

“Where was he? On the climbing structure? Or the swings—”

“I…I’m not sure.”

“But if you were on duty,” I persist, trying to keep my voice reasonable, “you were looking. You must have some idea.”

Juliet hesitates. I can hear her breathing, and for some reason it makes me angry. “On the climbing structure,” she finally says. “I think.”

You think? I bite the words back. “Okay,” I answer, managing to keep my voice even. “Okay. Thanks.” And then I hang up.

I feel prickly with suspicion, with hurt. Juliet saw my son fall, or at least was there when it happened. She saw him taken away in an ambulance. Why didn’t she call me? I don’t understand how she could be so callous. Ballet exams.

I press my fists to my gritty eyes. I met Juliet in a mother and babies group, when Ben and Emma were both eight weeks old. I went to save my sanity, because dealing with a fussy, disgruntled baby in my box of an apartment all on my own for twelve hours a day was testing the limits of my endurance. Juliet was there, looking beatific and Botticellian, nursing her chubby, pink-skinned daughter with an ease that I was too tired to envy.

Juliet took me under her wing that first day; she told me about cabbage leaves for sore boobs—I just smiled, since Ben was firmly on the bottle by then—and how it was okay to still be wearing maternity jeans. “The fourth trimester,” she said cheerfully. She looked beautiful with her long, curly golden-brown hair, her generous, unapologetic figure, her expensive yet careless clothes. She basked in motherhood, reveled in it, while I sat there clutching Ben as if he was a stick of dynamite that had been super-glued to my fingers.

Juliet has guided me through the choppy waters of motherhood ever since then, always offering me the latest advice on healthy snacks and limiting screen time and intelligent play; I don’t really take any of it on board but I appreciate her earnestness. She popped out two more babies while I struggled alone with Ben, and I watched from afar as she took her growing brood on holidays to Florida and the south of France. I was never jealous, or at least not that jealous. Our lives were too far apart for me to envy her penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue, or the succession of au pairs, nannies, and aides that paraded through her household �just to give her a little help’, or even her silver-haired hedge fund manager husband Bruce, who worked fourteen-hour days and still was a doting dad.

No, I didn’t envy her any of that, at least not more than was natural, because I knew if I let myself I’d drown in a sea of jealousy. I’d destroy myself by wanting what I knew I could never have, and I’m smart enough—mostly—to keep myself from that toxic cycle.

But I still wish now that she’d called me. It makes me wonder why she didn’t, and then it occurs to me that no one from Burgdorf has called me. Ben has been a student there for three years, since first grade, and not one person has reached out. Not even Mrs. James, who knows I’m here. The insensitivity of it, for a school that prides itself on being so caring, burns. Don’t any of them care about me, about Ben?

Ben. Just this morning he was bouncing around the apartment, kicking his soccer ball against the doorway even though it annoys my neighbor on the left, a single woman with a boyfriend I suspect is married to someone else. I know the signs.

I yelled at him for kicking his soccer ball, and as I bolted a cup of coffee and stuffed a browning banana into his lunchbox, I relented and let him go on his DS for five minutes before we left for school. I am always relenting.

Did we talk on the way to school? I search my memory, trying to conjure up some meaningful conversation when in my heart I know there wasn’t one. I might have scolded Ben, told him to slow down or keep up or not to jump up and try to touch the tops of the street signs because someone knew someone who lost a finger that way. But we didn’t talk. Sometimes I wonder if we ever do.

And when he went into school? I try to picture the moment; me standing on the sidewalk on Fifty-Fourth Street, not even hiding the fact that I am checking my phone, that I am worried about getting to work on time.

Did I watch Ben go in through the double doors? Burgdorf is in an old office building in midtown but they’ve tried to make it look more child-friendly. They painted the doors bright blue and they hung a banner outside, with the school’s logo: three blue interconnecting circles that symbolize heart, hand, and mind.

As I search my memory now I acknowledge the hard truth: I didn’t watch him go through the doors. I didn’t even wave goodbye. I have a horrible feeling that I was already turning around, walking in the other direction before he’d even gone inside.

The night stretches on and Ben starts to storm again; Dr. Stein tells me this but advises me not to look in the window. I swallow hard, because I don’t want to imagine what my son is doing that I shouldn’t witness, and yet I do. Of course I do.

Sometime around dawn they settle him again and I finally get an update. If Ben can remain stable today, without any more storming episodes, they will transfer him to the neurology department tomorrow morning. Next they will see if he can breathe without the ventilator and then, in a few days, �all things going well’, they will attempt to take him out of the induced coma. That’s the best case scenario.

“And then,” Dr. Stein says, “we’ll begin to assess how much trauma his brain has sustained.”

Which is something I’m desperately afraid to discover. Dr. Stein briefly lays a hand on my shoulder.

“This might be a good time to recharge yourself,” he says. “Get a cup of coffee or better yet, a meal. Go home for a few hours.”

I blink at him in near-incomprehension. Go home? But then I nod, because I can’t live at the hospital and I have a feeling I stink.

I emerge onto Fifty-Eighth Street at seven o’clock in the morning; it is a bright, crisp autumn day and Manhattan is stirring all around me as people climb into cabs or walk briskly down sidewalks to work. I see people with trench coats and brief cases and smart phones, Starbucks cups and wax paper-wrapped bagels in hand, everyone busy, busy, busy, and I marvel that just twenty-four hours ago I was like them, and I was annoyed. I didn’t even realize how easy my life had been. And I’m afraid I still don’t know how hard it’s going to get.

Even though it’s only a dozen blocks I take a cab to my apartment building on Tenth Avenue and Forty-Seventh Street as I’m way too tired to walk. I live in a modern building of box-like apartments in Hell’s Kitchen, all aimed at the young upwardly mobile corporate types, which was what I was when I rented my one-bedroom eleven years ago; I’d just been given a promotion at Alwin to Sales Associate and I was thrilled to move out of the tiny walkup I was sharing with a woman I’d met on my training course.

Since Ben’s birth I’ve toyed with the idea of moving; the building and neighborhood are not very child-friendly. But moving costs money. Getting a decent apartment in Manhattan requires a broker’s fee, which runs to thousands of dollars. And there’s the actual cost of moving, not to mention the exhausting process of searching for a place, applying to rent it, and getting through all the checks…

Renting in Manhattan is not for the faint of heart, and buying’s even worse. Not that I’ve ever had the money even to think of buying. And so I’ve stayed where I am; about five years ago I hired someone to build a wall across the dining alcove to make a bedroom for Ben. Before that I’d stacked bookcases to make it more private, but the light from the living area still filtered in and Ben’s always had trouble sleeping. The wall has helped, even though it turns the living area into a windowless cave.

People are hurrying out of the building as I come in, everyone moving quickly to get to work and no one meeting my eye. Not that anyone does; it’s not that kind of building. The doorman murmurs a greeting—there are over a dozen doormen on rotation and none of them know my name—and I move past him slowly. My feet feel like cement blocks.

Upstairs my hall is quiet; everyone has already gone to work. I unlock my door and step into my apartment’s tiny foyer. The first thing I see is Ben’s soccer ball, kicked into a corner before we left, and an unruly sob escapes me before I can bite it back.

I toss my keys onto the table and press a fist to my lips, willing the other sobs back. I’m afraid if I let them out I’ll never stop crying. I’ll fall apart completely, and I don’t have the luxury of that now.

I move through the apartment, stripping off my filthy clothes, and then step into a scaldingly hot shower. I let myself cry a little bit in the shower, as if the streaming water can hide the tears from myself. They slip down my cheeks as my shoulders shake and my mouth forms a silent scream. I wonder how much emotional pain a person can endure, can hold. I feel as if it is spilling out of me, and I crave the comfort of another person, anyone to help me carry this burden.

But there’s no one.

After my shower I dress and then gather some things together for the hospital. I have no idea how long I’ll be staying, or how often I’ll be able to come back here. I pack some basic toiletries and a few changes of clothes; it’s only when I see the red light blinking angrily on the answering machine, like an accusing eye, that I remember I walked out of work yesterday and haven’t so much as sent a text as to where I went or why.

With my heart thudding sickly, I scroll through half a dozen missed calls and texts from my boss on my cell that I hadn’t even opened yesterday. I dial my boss Elena’s cell. She answers on the first ring, her voice a screech in my ear.

“Madeleine, where the hell have you been?”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Elena—”

“Did you remember the meeting we had with the Boston reps yesterday afternoon? The presentation on dapaglifozin you were meant to give?”

I remember now; I had a PowerPoint presentation on a new medication for diabetics that had just been approved by the FDA. It was a big deal, and yet now it means less than nothing to me. It’s all so trivial, so meaningless. Jobs. Work. Money. But no, I need money.

“Elena, listen,” I interrupt, and she sucks in an aggrieved breath. “My son Ben had an accident at school. A…serious accident. I went to the hospital yesterday as soon as I’d heard, and…” I can’t make myself continue.

“And?” Elena asks in ringing tones, clearly unconvinced by my little sob story.

“He’s suffered a traumatic brain injury,” I say, the words squeezed out of my too-tight throat. “They’re not…they’re not sure if he’s going to…” I stop. Elena lets out a huff of breath.

“Maddie?”

“Live,” I finish, and there is nothing but silence.

Ten minutes later Elena has granted me indefinite compassionate leave; she informs me rather gruffly that I will have to consult HR regarding the current policy of payment.

“I still have ten days’ annual leave,” I say. I know Alwin doesn’t grant compassionate leave until you’ve used up all your vacation days.

“Maybe you’ll be back by then,” Elena says. I almost want to laugh. I know she means it as an encouragement, but even I am realistic enough now to know I won’t be back after ten days.

Will I? The truth is I have no idea what situation I’ll be in, in ten days. What situation Ben will be in. And I feel too tired and alone to hope.

As I’m getting in the elevator, my phone buzzes with a text message. My heart lifts and then crashes again when I see it’s from Lewis: I need to cancel this afternoon.

Josh and Ben were going to get together, I recall. Lewis and I had talked about taking them bowling downtown, after I got off work. That was before, of course. Before Ben’s fall. Before I messed things up with Lewis.

Before everything changed.


4 JOANNA (#ulink_2c2fb197-4930-5818-a4b0-0f095a8d2266)

That night I don’t sleep well, because I’m worried about Josh. I don’t bother Lewis with my concerns; I tell myself I’m overreacting.

“Just let him be, Jo,” he’d say, if I mentioned Josh’s withdrawn silence again. And so I don’t. I tidy the kitchen a little more and I pack Josh’s lunch for tomorrow and leave it in the fridge. Lewis finishes his paperwork and then stretches out on the sofa to watch the news while I get ready for bed.

At eleven I slip into Josh’s room to check on him. He is asleep, curled on his side in the fetal position, and when I bend closer I can see the streaks of dried tears on his cheeks that are still smooth and soft as a baby’s. I draw a quick, horrified breath at the thought of my child crying alone in the dark. I touch his head; his hair is soft beneath my fingers.

Then I tiptoe out and go into our bedroom; Lewis is stripping down to his boxer shorts but even the sight of his well-muscled body, a body that takes my breath away even after twelve years of marriage, does not distract me.

“Josh’s been crying,” I say quietly. Lewis glances at me, eyebrows raised.

“How do you know? He’s asleep, isn’t he?”

“Yes, but I could tell he’d been crying. I could see the tears dried on his cheeks.” A lump forms in my throat and I swallow hard. “Something’s really wrong, Lewis.”

“Okay.” Lewis sits on the edge of the bed to take off his socks. “Something’s bothering him, obviously. We can talk to him in the morning.” He glances up at me. “But you know if he wanted to tell us, Jo, he would.”

“You know Josh isn’t like that.”

Lewis sighs. “You know it too, and yet you keep pushing him. He’s not going to talk if he doesn’t want to.”

“He’s nine years old, Lewis. He doesn’t have the necessary tools to talk about his feelings.”

“I don’t know what else we can do besides ask him in the morning.”

I don’t either. I wish there was something more, something I could be sure of. When it comes to your children, you never know when you’re getting it right, and I am constantly terrified that I am getting it wrong.

Maybe Lewis’s let-them-be hard knocks school of philosophy is better for your kids, I think as I slip under the covers. Maybe I’ve mothered Josh too much; maybe I’m smothering him.

I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, my stomach knotted with anxiety.

I turn on my side and tuck my knees up to my chest like Josh had. Eventually I fall into a doze, only to waken a little when Lewis pulls me towards him and fits me snugly against the warm wall of his chest.

He strokes my hair gently, his palm cradling my cheek. “It’ll be okay, Jo,” he whispers, and finally I relax into a deeper sleep.

The next morning Josh is silent and a bit morose, and I react by being almost manically upbeat, as if I can jolly him into a good mood by sheer force of will. I push back my morning appointments so I can take him to school, and I make scrambled eggs and toast instead of the usual low-sugar cereal and fruit for breakfast. I even allow him a cup of hot chocolate, an unimaginable treat. He only drinks half of it.

Lewis comes in as Josh is cutting his untouched toast into even pieces.

“Hey, buddy,” he says lightly, resting a hand on Josh’s shoulder. I see Josh tense, and he gives Lewis a quick, searching look that I don’t understand. “How are you doing this morning?”

“Fine.”

“Do you mind if we go bowling another day?” Lewis asks, and Josh stares at him unblinkingly. I frown.

“Bowling…?”

“I was going to take Ben and Josh bowling,” Lewis explains. “After school. But I’ve got an appointment uptown.” He glances at Josh whose expression has not changed. I cannot read it at all. “That okay?”

“Yeah.” The word is barely audible.

“Everything’s okay with Ben, isn’t it?” Lewis asks, his voice deliberately light. “You guys haven’t argued or anything?”

Josh’s eyes widen and I see his hands clench on his knife and fork. “No,” he says after a moment, but I feel as if he is hiding something. But why would Lewis think Josh and Ben had argued? Is that why he canceled their plans? What does he know that I don’t?

I feel like I’ve missed a scene in a movie, as if someone pressed fast forward without telling me.

Josh rises from the table. “I’m going to go brush my teeth.”

After he’s left, I turn to Lewis. “What was that about?”

Lewis takes a sip of coffee, shrugging. “What do you mean?”

“Why do you think Josh and Ben have argued?”

“I thought that might have been what made Josh upset.”

“But they don’t argue usually, do they?” In that moment I realize how little I know about Josh and Ben’s friendship. Lewis is the one who handles the play dates, who picks the boys up from school. I’ve never considered just how ignorant I am about the details. I’ve just been happy that Josh has a friend.

“Not often,” Lewis says, and reaches for the newspaper. “But I thought it might be a possibility. In any case,” he adds as he snaps the paper open, “Josh will tell us in time. We’ve just got to be patient.”

Josh comes back into the room and so I don’t press Lewis. Instead I smile and ruffle Josh’s hair. For once he doesn’t duck away from my hand; instead he leans a little into me, and my heart melts and yearns with mother love.

“Ready for school?” I ask, and he nods.

Lewis heads to his workshop uptown while Josh and I wait for the subway on Ninety-Sixth Street. It is another beautiful autumn day, crisp and clear, the sky a brilliant, hard blue. In the distance the leaves on the trees in Central Park are just starting to turn. Everything dazzles.

We don’t speak on the subway; the morning commute makes conversation impossible anyway. At Seventy-Second Street Josh gets a seat and I remain looming over him, hanging onto one of the straps. We make it to Burgdorf with just two minutes to spare before the doors close; being late costs twenty dollars a pop, a fact that outrages Lewis, considering the over thirty grand price tag the school has already. So far this year we’ve paid over a hundred bucks in late fees.

I bustle Josh towards the door; parents are encouraged to stay outside so children can �value their independence’ and get to the classrooms by themselves. Of course, most parents ignore this rule. We Manhattan mothers are a pushy lot. I consider going into Josh’s classroom, introducing myself to Mrs. Rollins, and mentioning that I think something is bothering Josh. But then the bell rings and the doors close and I know his teacher—whom I haven’t even met yet—will be annoyed at having a parent wanting a private word when the school day has already started. Plus I have an appointment at nine.

Still I take a moment before Josh goes in to hold him by the shoulders, look into his eyes. “I love you,” I say, and Josh blinks rapidly. For a second I wonder if he is going to cry, and the thought makes me want to cry. “You know that, don’t you, Josh?” I press, my voice choking a little. “I really, really love you.”

He nods, still blinking, and then he twists out of my grasp and goes into the classroom. I turn away from Burgdorf and head downtown to my office on Forty-Second and Sixth, trying to banish my lingering fears.

Two years ago I opened my own private dental practice, after working for a larger practice uptown. In theory it was meant to give me more flexibility so I could spend more time with Josh, be there for drop offs and pick up and the sports games that have never actually materialized, because Josh hates sports. In reality operating a private practice is a ton more work. I’m responsible for everything, and the bills and maintenance costs I have to heft by myself mean I never turn away business. I rarely get home before seven at night, and I’ve even had to go in for emergency appointments on weekends since they pay the best.

Still, I enjoy my work. I went into dentistry by default; my parents, retired now, were both cardiothoracic surgeons and although they’d never said it out loud, I always knew they wanted me to go into the same field. Their disappointment in my life choices has always been conveyed by silence rather than words.

I would have gone into cardiothoracic surgery just to please them, but I couldn’t stand the intensity, and the idea that you might, quite literally, have someone’s heart in your hands made me feel sick and faint.

So I applied to dental school instead, and spent four years training to become a dentist with a specialty in periodontics at Columbia with my parents acting as if I were learning how to clean toilets. Of course, they never said that. But their silences have always been eloquent.

The surprise for me was that I actually enjoyed it. Defaults are usually disappointments, but I’ve never regretted becoming a dentist. I like being able to fix problems, and usually relatively easily. A cavity can be filled; a broken tooth can be capped.

Of course, there are the usual hassles: patients come in with an abcess or dentures or a need for multiple root canals. Sometimes there are worse problems, white spots or bumps on the gums that indicate oral cancer. I’ve had several cases where I’ve had to refer a patient to an oncologist. But at least I was there at the start. I don’t want to be the one who is there at the end.

Normally, though, my day is one of scheduled appointments, fillings and root canals and restorations, along with the cosmetic work our culture of airbrushed beauty demands. I’ve said on more than one occasion that I can see the charm in a crooked smile. In point of fact, my own teeth are not perfectly straight, but I don’t have any fillings, either.

Barbara, my receptionist, raises her eyebrows at me as I come into my small office on the second floor of a Brownstone across from Bryant Park. I’m not usually this late, and my nine o’clock is already waiting, flipping through one of the magazines in the waiting room.

“Everything okay?” Barbara asks in a murmur after I’ve greeted the patient and go back to take off my coat.

I nod. “I just wanted to take to Josh to school. He’s having a bit of a tough time.”

Barbara clucks sympathetically. She has no children, has never married, and I’ve only given her sparing details about Josh because I know she won’t understand. I don’t know if anyone will understand; so many people want to either label or fix Josh, or just leave him alone. I want none of those and all of them at the same time.

I’ve just finished my third appointment, a straightforward filling, when my cell rings. I check the screen and my heart seems to hang suspended in my chest when I see it is Burgdorf calling.

“Mrs. Taylor-Davies?” a woman asks and I clear my throat.

“Yes?”

“This is Mrs. James from The Burgdorf Institute for Committed Learning.” Mrs. James, I’ve noticed, always refers to the school by its full and rather ridiculous name.

“Yes?”

“I was hoping you and your husband might come into the school today, to talk about Joshua.”

My hand, now slippery, tightens on the phone. “Josh? Why? Is something wrong?”

A tense pause. “I don’t like to discuss these things on the telephone. Could you and Mr. Taylor-Davies come in at one-thirty?”

I glance at my watch; that’s in less than an hour. It will be difficult, but it’s obviously important and I don’t really feel like I have a choice.

“Okay,” I say, and then, my stomach knotting, I call Lewis.

“Why the hell does she want us to come in so quickly?” he demands.

“She wouldn’t say on the phone—”

“Of course she wouldn’t,” Lewis says in disgust. Lewis has never been a fan of Burgdorf and its alternative approach to education. When I first showed him the brochure, he did an Internet search on the educator whose philosophies Burgdorf is founded on, Johann Pestalozzi.

“You realize this guy was a total loser, right?” Lewis asked me as he looked up from his laptop. “He reduced his family to poverty, he tried to farm and it failed. He started a school and it failed.”

I scrabbled for the brochure, searching for the brief paragraph on Pestalozzi. “He started another school at Burgdorf Castle that was innovative for its time,” I read a bit desperately. Lewis just shook his head.

Lewis might not have liked Burgdorf but he accepted its necessity; he recognized that the intense atmosphere of Manhattan’s competitive private schools would be unbearable for Josh, and the brutal social dynamics of public school would swallow our son whole and spit him back out in seconds.

“This meeting is obviously important, Lewis,” I say quietly. “Maybe she’ll tell us what’s bothering Josh.”

“You really think she knows?” Lewis asks, but he relents. “I’ll meet you at Burgdorf.”

At one-twenty I am standing outside Burgdorf’s bright blue doors, waiting for Lewis. Tension coils tighter and tighter inside me as I scan the busy streets for his familiar figure, that easy, loping walk. I have no idea what awaits us inside the school, what Mrs. James wants to discuss with us, and why she wouldn’t mention it on the phone. Josh may be quiet, but he’s generally a good kid. He obeys his teachers, he does his homework, he doesn’t tease or bully or fight. Yet Mrs. James sounded as if he were in trouble, and considering how withdrawn Josh has been for the last two days, that doesn’t seem like an impossibility. But I hate the thought of it.

Lewis finally shows up at one thirty-five. “Subway stalled,” he mutters, and I can tell from the way his mouth compresses and his nose looks pinched that he is worried about this meeting too.

We head into the school together; although Burgdorf is in an office building, they have done a good job of making it child-friendly; the walls are covered with children’s art work and there are chalkboards and whiteboards for children to add their own spontaneous creations.

Mrs. James’s assistant Tanya ushers us into her office, that inner sanctum, immediately, which makes my stomach lurch. This is feeling more urgent and awful with every moment.

Mrs. James rises from behind her desk and holds out a hand which Lewis and I shake in turn. I would have expected the headmistress of an alternative school like Burgdorf to be relaxed, easygoing, even a bit hippyish, but Ruth James is none of those things. In her mid-fifties with a steel-gray bob and pale blue eyes, she is elegant and dignified and more than a bit remote. Sometimes I wonder how much of Burgdorf’s philosophy she actually believes in. Maybe this was the only headship she could get.

She waits for us to sit before sitting down herself and then folding her hands on the desk in front of her.

“Obviously you know about Ben Reese’s accident yesterday,” she begins, and Lewis and I both gape.

“I’m sorry, we weren’t aware that Ben had an accident,” I say after a few seconds’ silence. “Is he all right?”

Mrs. James’s eyes narrow and her lips purse. “No, he is not. He is in the hospital with a serious brain injury.”

“Oh, no.” Shock ices through me. How will Josh cope without Ben, his best and only friend? And then I feel ashamed because I am thinking of Josh, rather than Ben, who sounds like he is seriously injured. “I’m so sorry,” I say.

“Josh didn’t tell you?” Mrs. James says after another expectant pause, and I feel my face heat even as my hands go clammy. Josh’s sorrowful silence last night makes sense now, but why wouldn’t he tell us his friend was hurt? Why wouldn’t he share something like that?

“No, he didn’t,” I say, because how can I say anything else? I glance at Lewis; he is silent and stony-faced, but I see how his face is pale with shock. We endure another few seconds’ silence.

“Don’t you think,” Mrs. James finally says, her gaze swiveling from me to Lewis, “that’s rather odd?”

I glance again at Lewis; he has folded his arms and is staring straight ahead.

“Yes,” I finally say. I meet Mrs. James’s gaze, squaring my shoulders. “Yes, I do think it is rather odd. But there must be an explanation.”

“There is,” Mrs. James answers, and now her voice sounds decidedly cool. She draws herself up, her steely gaze moving between the two of us. “The truth is, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor-Davies,” she says, “I have reason to believe that Josh pushed Ben.”


5 MADDIE (#ulink_2c2fb197-4930-5818-a4b0-0f095a8d2266)

I am just coming back to the hospital at around nine in the morning when Mrs. James from Burgdorf calls me.

“Maddie,” she says, and her voice is as smooth and assured as ever. “I just wanted to check how Ben is doing.”

I grit my teeth; I don’t know why her concern irritates me, but it does. I imagine her at her desk, scratching off the first item on her to-do list. Call Maddie Reese. “He’s still in a coma, Ruth,” I say before I can help myself. Our headmistress has never invited anyone to address her by her first name. “So I’m afraid I can’t really answer that question.”

There is a slightly chilly pause. “I’m sorry to hear that. Of course, if there is anything we at Burgdorf can do…” She lets this useless sentiment hang in the air for a moment before she continues, “I’ve asked Mrs. Rollins to keep his homework assignments for him.”

I almost laugh, or maybe scream. Does she actually think I care about Ben’s homework assignments?

Mrs. James seems to be waiting for me to say something, probably thank you, but I can’t make myself say it. Instead I hear myself say in a hard voice, “I’d like to know more about Ben’s accident.”

Silence.

“What…what do you mean?” Mrs. James asks, and although she still sounds assured, her delivery isn’t quite as smooth, and suspicion hardens inside me. First Juliet, now Mrs. James. What the hell is going on?

“Just what I said,” I say. “Nobody has told me anything except that Ben fell. Where did he fall? How? Where were the playground supervisors when this happened? Why didn’t they see anything?” Juliet. Where was Juliet?

“I don’t know all the details,” Mrs. James says after a second’s pause, “as I wasn’t there. But of course I can talk to Mrs. Rollins—”

“You mean you haven’t already?” I cut across her. “A child at your school suffers a life-threatening injury and you haven’t even talked to his teacher?”

Mrs. James is silent. “Ms. Reese,” she finally says, and her voice is quiet, commanding. “I understand you are worried about your son. But please be assured that we have followed all the protocols this situation requires—”

“This situation is my son’s life,” I shoot back. “I don’t care about protocols. I want details. Answers. I want to know how my son fell, and why no one even noticed. I want to know what the hell happened.”

I hear Mrs. James’s sharply indrawn breath but I don’t care if I’ve offended her. I am too angry.

“I will talk to Mrs. Rollins as soon as possible,” Mrs. James says stiffly. “And let you know what she says in due course.”

“Fine,” I answer. “Please call me back as soon as you can.” I’m not going to thank her for doing her damn job. And yet as I disconnect the call I wonder at the wisdom of throwing a fit at my son’s headmistress. But then maybe she won’t be his headmistress any more. Maybe Ben won’t be going back to Burgdorf; maybe he won’t be able to.

I slide my phone into my bag and hurry into the hospital; I’ve been away from Ben for nearly two hours. I am shaking from my conversation with Mrs. James, but I force that out of my mind as I approach the heavy double doors that lead to the ER and Ben’s room.

The new nurse on duty informs me that Ben is now stable enough for him to be transferred to the neurology department. I wait for an hour before they are finally ready to transfer him; I watch with my heart in my mouth as two orderlies carefully move his supine body from the bed to the stretcher. Machines attached to him beep and shriek and I resist the impulse to cover my ears with my hands.

I follow them up to the neurology department, which is an oasis of calm compared to the ER. There are no sirens or screams, no weeping or groans. Every patient has a private room and the nurses and doctors seem both focused and friendly. The knot of tension that has resided between my shoulder blades since I first got that phone call loosens ever so slightly.

Now that Ben is in the neurology department, he has a new doctor, a brain injury specialist, Nadine Velas. She introduces herself to me as soon as Ben is settled, taking me to her private office and pouring me a Dixie cup of water which I sip awkwardly.

“So, Ms. Reese.” She scans Ben’s file. “May I call you Madeleine?”

“Maddie,” I say, and she looks up and smiles.

“Maddie. I know things have been moving very fast for you, and you’ve probably had a ton of information thrown at you. So I’m here to ask you if you want to ask me any questions.” She smiles again and waits, her hands folded on her desk. She is a pretty, vibrant woman in her mid-forties; I can see a bright pink top underneath her white lab coat. I instinctively like her, more than the stern-faced doctor down in the ER.

I have about a million questions to ask her, but I manage just one. “When do you think Ben will wake up?”

“I can’t answer that for certain,” she tells me. “But if he remains stable through the next few days, we’ll start considering reducing the medication that is keeping him in a comatose state. For better or worse, the brain is a tricky thing. There is no predicting how it, and how Ben, will react to the lowered dosage. So if his body resists and he experiences another storming episode…” She waits, eyebrows raised, to check if I know the lingo, and I nod. “Then we’ll have to proceed very carefully. But for now I’d say we’ll start considering when to wake him up in the next forty-eight hours.”

I nod, suddenly overwhelmed because yesterday Dr. Stein was telling me the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours would be critical to Ben’s survival. Now Dr. Velas isn’t talking about if he survives, but when he wakes up. This is progress.

“I also should say at this point that there are no guarantees about what Ben’s capabilities will be when he does come out of the coma,” Dr. Velas continues, her tone one of quiet warning. My relief lasted all of two seconds. “It’s impossible to tell how badly his brain has been injured, or what faculties will be affected.” She pauses to check I’ve digested this, and I manage another nod, this one jerky. “His movements might be limited, or his speech or his memory, or all three. I simply cannot say at this stage.”

“Can’t you…can’t you tell from the CT scan he had when he first came to the ER?” I ask.

“We can tell what kind of injury he has,” Dr. Velas agrees, “and in this case, we know he has a contusion on the left temporal lobe. How that manifests itself when he is conscious, we’ll just have to see.”

“But the contusion…” I stumble slightly over the word, “will heal, won’t it? Isn’t it just like a…like a bruise?”

“Yes,” Dr. Velas says gently, “a bruise on the brain. There will still almost certainly be existing and pervasive brain damage.”

The words together jar me; they are what I haven’t wanted to face. Brain damage. I don’t want to associate them with Ben, with my son, with my life. And yet Dr. Velas spoke them with an awful, quiet certainty.

I spend the rest of the day alternating between the waiting room, the hospital’s restaurant, and Ben’s room. I sit by his bed and study his face, his rounded cheeks, his sandy brown hair, the freckles dusted across his nose.

Sitting there in the quiet solitude, the only sound the steady beep of the machines that surround him, measuring all the vital signs I don’t really understand, I let my mind wander through the last nine and a half years of Ben’s life. I search for good memories, and I am ashamed at how few of them there actually are. So much of my life with Ben has been a weary struggle through a blur of days: the exhaustion of his infancy, the endless tantrums of his toddlerhood, and then off to school where I was always wrestling and negotiating and ultimately relenting. Summers and holidays have been a maze of patched-together childcare; as an Alwin employee I get seventeen days of vacation a year. Ben has three months of summer vacation. None of this has been easy.

But there are moments I remember, moments I hang on to now. Ben taking his first steps, toddling across the living room while I wait with my arms outstretched, his incredulous, beaming grin branding my heart. A vacation we took when he was five and he still liked to snuggle, at least a little bit; hugging Ben has always been like trying to hold on to a fish. That summer we rented a tiny cottage on Fire Island for a week and played on the beach all day long, read stories at night. I felt like a real mother, like the kind of mother I’d wanted growing up, the kind of mother I wanted to be to Ben if I could only figure out how. If I could only be strong enough.

Then I let myself think of more recent memories, of afternoons in Central Park with Lewis and Josh. In September Lewis brought kites he’d made himself and we flew them in the Sheep Meadow, laughing, our heads tilted towards the bright blue sky. Movies at Lincoln Center, bowling downtown, a trip to the working farm in Queens. In the last two years the four of us have spent a lot of time together. Happy times; the memories are infused with a golden light, like a movie montage.

We were almost like a family. The family I’ve never had. At least, it felt that way to me, and I think it did to Ben too. Over the last year he’d started asking about his dad, wanting to know details, and of course I couldn’t give him any. But I could give him time with Lewis. That felt important, necessary, even as I recognized it couldn’t possibly have been as important or necessary to Lewis as it was to us.

I was the one embroidering daydreams, letting myself pretend it all meant more than it did. Lewis was just hanging out with his kid and his kid’s friend. I know this, of course I know this, but it still sits like a leaden weight inside me.

Juliet texts me at lunchtime: Thinking of you xo which makes me grit my teeth. That’s it? One lousy text? I don’t reply.

By two o’clock in the afternoon Ben’s condition is neither worse nor better, which frustrates me. I want Ben to wake up and smile at me and ask for his soccer ball. I want someone to talk to; the loneliness, a loneliness I’ve dealt with my whole life, is starting to make me feel crazy.

I was raised in foster homes since I was four years old, so I know a lot about loneliness. My parents divorced when I was a baby, and my father walked out without, as far as I know, a backward glance. I certainly never saw him again. My mother spiraled down into depression, according to the files I accessed when I was eighteen, and when I was four I was removed from her care for �gross neglect’. Apparently I only weighed twenty-eight pounds, so she must have forgotten to feed me. I don’t remember any of it, not even a few blurred snatches of memory. It’s as if a curtain has been drawn across the first four years of my life. I do remember monitored visits with my mother over the next few years, as the social services sought to find a way to get us back together. I remember sitting on a hard plastic chair while a woman across from me, a woman who still has a blurred face, talked and sometimes cried quietly. I remember wanting to leave, fidgeting because I needed to pee, feeling uncomfortable and impatient and confused.

When I was eight the visits ended; my mother had killed herself.

By that time I’d been bounced around a few foster homes. I’d had a couple of long-term placements, but as I wasn’t �available to adopt’, I was always relinquished, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes not so reluctantly, back to the system. I was a quiet, morose kid, and I grew into a surly and wild teenager. My mother had been an only child whose parents were dead and my father was AWOL, so there were no relatives to take an interest.

And then, when I was fourteen, there was Esme. Esme was a career foster mother who always had a couple of kids in her duplex in Haddonfield, New Jersey. She was cheerful, brisk, and didn’t take any bullshit. She saved me from spiraling down like my mother did, into depression or drugs or worse. With her help, I finished high school and got into Rutgers for college; I completed a degree in Business Studies, admittedly overwhelmed by college loans, and then an internship at Alwin.

She’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to family, but we aren’t even that close. Esme has had a dozen foster kids go through her home since I was there, and she tries to keep in touch with them all but there’s so many, and besides, the ones she really cares about are the ones currently living with her. I’ve seen her a few times over the last ten years; I took Ben to see her when he was a baby, and she cooed over him before being distracted by the hell-raising five-year-old twins she’d taken on board. I understand the limitations placed on her, and I’ve been okay with that. I’ve had to be.

But now I break down and call her, because there is no one else.

“Maddie!” She sounds genuinely pleased to hear from me. “How are you, sweetie?”

“Not so good, Esme.” I take a shuddering breath. “Ben’s in the hospital.” Quickly I explain what happened, and Esme clucks her sympathy before saying, quite sincerely,

“I wish there was something I could do.”

Which says it all, really. Because she is acknowledging there isn’t.

We chat for a few more minutes and then I hang up the phone, feeling worse than before. Who else is in my life? Ben’s father has never, not even remotely, been in the picture. Juliet was my best friend but she’s clearly not all that interested; I have a few acquaintances from work with whom I’ve eaten lunch or grabbed a coffee during a break, but they’re hardly people I’d go to in an emergency. None of the parents from Burgdorf are on more than quick-smile-by-the-school-door terms, except for Lewis.

And as much as I want to, I know I can’t call Lewis. Not again. He didn’t respond to my one-word voicemail except to cancel our plans. Which means, I realize, that he must not know about Ben’s accident. But Josh must know. Josh might have seen him fall. They always play together at recess. Why wouldn’t Josh tell Lewis that Ben fell?

I grab my phone and press Lewis’s number. My heart is beating hard as I prepare for a conversation, perhaps a confrontation, but the phone just switches over to voicemail, and disappointment crashes through me. This time I don’t leave a message.


6 JOANNA (#ulink_2c2fb197-4930-5818-a4b0-0f095a8d2266)

Her words hang in the air as Lewis, Mrs. James, and I all look at each other. Lewis shifts in his chair; his hands have balled into fists.

“Why,” I finally manage, “do you think Josh pushed Ben?”

“I spoke to Mrs. Rollins this morning and several children have mentioned it,” Mrs. James says. “They are…concerned.”

But Josh is not a pusher. He’s never aggressive. Ben is the one who is hyperactive, who bounces around, who has no boundaries. Ben is the one who would push.

“I think,” Mrs. James says, “we should call Joshua in here to speak with us.”

“I’d like to discuss this a little more first,” I say as firmly as I can. “I don’t want Josh to be intimidated—”

“There is no intimidation involved, Mrs. Taylor-Davies,” Mrs. James says in quelling tones. I give her a disbelieving look and she has the grace to look slightly abashed. “We all want answers,” she says in a quieter tone.

“You’re acting like you’ve already found them.” Lewis’s voice is even and measured but I can feel the latent anger underneath it. I think Mrs. James can too.

“Based on what I’ve heard this morning, it seems quite clear that Joshua pushed Ben,” she answers.

“So you mean it was an accident,” Lewis says after a moment, his voice so very even.

Mrs. James’s purses her lips. “I’m not sure about that, Mr. Taylor-Davies.”

My whole body goes rigid and I can’t speak, can’t process what she is implying. “That’s bullshit,” Lewis says calmly.

Mrs. James stiffens. “Mr. Taylor-Davies, please.”

“Two nine-year-old boys messing around in a playground, and there is an accident. What are you trying to turn this into?”

“I am simply trying to find the facts of the matter,” Mrs. James answers with chilly dignity. “Ben’s mother, Madeleine Reese, has some questions. We, as a school, need to give her the right answers—”

“I know Maddie,” Lewis cuts across her. “She’s not behind this. You’re looking for someone to pin this onto, God only knows why, and it’s not Josh.”

“All I’m suggesting is that we talk to Joshua and see what he has to say for himself, so we can deal with the matter appropriately.”

“Appropriately?” Lewis repeats disbelievingly. “What the hell does that mean?”

Mrs. James draws herself up. “Naturally Burgdorf does not tolerate violence of any kind.”

“My son is not violent,” I say quietly. “If Josh pushed Ben, it was nothing more than an accident as my husband just said. A very unfortunate and tragic accident.” My voice trembles and I gaze at her, daring her to contradict me. “I can’t believe you would suggest otherwise.”

“I am not suggesting anything,” Mrs. James says primly, “other than that we ask Joshua to join us so he can explain himself.”

“Fine,” Lewis says, biting off the word. “Go get Josh.”

Mrs. James calls for her PA and we wait in tense silence while our son is fetched. My mind is racing, racing. Why wouldn’t Josh tell us about Ben’s fall? I’m afraid of the answer: because he pushed him. But why would Josh push Ben? He doesn’t push. He doesn’t get angry; he goes quiet. Nothing makes sense.

A few minutes later Josh appears in the doorway, his eyes huge and dark in his pale face. I rise from my chair and go to hug him; his shoulders are bony and thin under my hands and he leans into me for a second before he moves away.

“Josh, sweetie,” I say quietly. “Mrs. James and Dad and I want to talk to you about what happened yesterday.”

He nods slowly, and a sigh escapes him, a sound of defeat. “Okay.”

“Joshua, why don’t you sit down,” Mrs. James says. Her voice is brisk and to me it sounds unwelcoming. I grit my teeth, wishing she could try a little harder.

Josh takes a seat next to Lewis and rests his hands on the armrests of the chair; they look pale and thin, his fingernails bitten down to the quick. I wonder if that is recent; I don’t remember Josh biting his nails before.

“Joshua, can you tell me what happened yesterday at the playground?” Mrs. James asks.

Josh doesn’t answer. Seconds tick by, and no one says anything. I can feel tension knotting my shoulders, dread pooling like acid in my stomach.

I take a deep breath. “Josh,” I say softly. “Please answer Mrs. James.”

He takes a deep breath. “Ben fell,” he finally says, his voice so soft we all strain to hear it.

“How did he fall?” Mrs. James asks. Josh doesn’t answer. “Joshua?” Impatience sharpens her voice. “Did you and Ben have an argument? Were you fighting on the playground?”

“Talk about leading questions,” Lewis mutters.

“No,” Josh says softly.

“No, you weren’t fighting?” Mrs. James clarifies. She sounds like a lawyer.

“No,” Josh says again, and this time his voice is clear. He looks up at Mrs. James and meets her narrowed gaze unblinkingly. “We weren’t fighting.” And then he sets his jaw and I know we’d have an easier time pulling teeth rather than words from his mouth.

“Joshua, this is quite serious, you know,” Mrs. James says. “Some children in your class have said they saw you talking heatedly with Ben. They say they saw you push him.”

“And you trust their word over Josh’s?” Lewis demands.

Mrs. James swings towards Lewis to look at him severely. “When it is several children, yes, I do, Mr. Taylor-Davies. Yes, I do.”

“We weren’t fighting,” Josh says again. He sounds obstinate.

“Please,” I interject. “No matter how it came about, this was clearly an accident. Children push each other all the time. It’s just that a brain injury doesn’t normally result.”

Now I’m on the receiving end of one of Mrs. James’s chilly stares. “We take bullying very seriously here at Burgdorf, Mrs. Taylor-Davies.”

Bullying? The idea that Josh could be bullying Ben is ludicrous, laughable. Surely this woman realizes that.

“My son is not a bully,” Lewis says.

“We have policies in place to deal with physical aggression,” Mrs. James continues. “An act of this nature results in one week’s suspension. Any further infractions will require the Board to reconsider Joshua’s place at Burgdorf.”

It’s as if she’s lobbed a grenade right onto our laps. Lewis and I gape. Mrs. James sits with her hands primly folded in front of her and waits.

“Are you saying,” Lewis finally asks in a low voice, “that my son might be expelled? For possibly pushing one kid one time?”

“No, I am saying he will be suspended for one week, starting immediately,” Mrs. James answers. “If there is a repeat infraction, then we will be forced to consider expulsion.”

Her face is a bland mask as she holds our incredulous gazes. What has happened, I wonder in disbelief, to Burgdorf’s nurturing the whole child, �place of positivity’ atmosphere? It’s all a crock of shit, apparently, just as Lewis has said.

“This place is full of kids with syndromes and learning difficulties and all the rest of it,” Lewis says. His voice is still low, but furious. “There are kids pushing other kids all the time. I’ve been on playground duty, and I’ve seen it.”

Lewis has been on playground duty? This detail snags on my brain, because he never told me that. Why would he do playground duty? We paid the two thousand dollar exemption from the mandatory parent volunteering; both of us were realistic enough to acknowledge that we wouldn’t be able to manage it.

“Even so, Mr. Taylor-Davies,” Mrs. James says, which is no response at all.

Lewis stares at her for a long moment and then he rises from his chair in one abrupt movement. “Fine. We’re leaving.”

We are? I rise too, because what else can I do? “I have some serious questions about your handling of this situation,” I tell Mrs. James. I don’t want to say more in front of Josh.

“You will find,” Mrs. James answers, “we are acting in accordance with our published policy, the policy you signed upon Joshua’s admission to this school.” A policy they hardly ever enforce. So why now? Why Josh? I don’t trust myself to say anything civil so I just nod tightly.

“Come on, Josh,” Lewis says, and with one hand on our son’s shoulder, he steers us out of the headmistress’s office. School is letting out as we head down the halls to the double doors. A teacher is on duty; I don’t recognize her, and it isn’t until Lewis strides up and gets in her face that I realize this must be Mrs. Rollins.

“Do you know Josh has been suspended?” he asks quietly, but with menace.

Mrs. Rollins blinks several times. “No, I…I wasn’t aware,” she stammers. She can’t meet any of our eyes.

“Do you think that’s fair?” Lewis demands. “Considering?”

“It’s not my place to decide on disciplinary measures, Mr. Taylor-Davies,” Mrs. Rollins says. She’s still not looking at us.

“You were there on the playground?” Lewis presses. By now children are staring; a knot of mothers has gathered by the door, their highlighted heads bent together as they whisper and dart looks toward us. They remind me of a flock of blonde crows. “You saw it happen?”

Finally Mrs. Rollins looks at Lewis. “No, I didn’t. There were two parents on playground duty yesterday.”

“Which parents?”

She hesitates, and I sense she’s nervous, even afraid. “I’m not sure…” she hedges.

“Bullshit,” Lewis snaps, and the crows outside whisper furiously. It sounds like hissing.

“You’d have to ask Tanya,” she says, and she shoots Josh a look that seems full of apology. “She has the schedule.”

Without another word Lewis marches out the doors and past the whispering mothers, his hand still on Josh’s shoulder. I follow alone. My face burns with both anger and shame.

On the corner of Fifty-Fourth and Sixth Avenue Lewis hails a cab. Thankfully one screeches to a halt in front of us within seconds; I can feel the stares of all the Burgdorf mothers boring holes into my back from halfway down the block. We all climb into the cab in silence.

Josh sits between us, his arms and legs folded up as if he’s trying to make himself smaller. I wrestle the seatbelt over his inert form as Lewis stares out the window, his jaw clenched, and the taxi inches through the midtown traffic.

I put my arm around Josh, but he remains rigid and unyielding. “We’re going to have an amazing week, doing all sorts of cool stuff,” I say firmly, and no one answers.

When we get back to our apartment, Josh disappears into his bedroom. I want to go after him, but I decide he could use a little time alone. I’ll try talking to him later. Lewis shrugs off his jacket and strides to the living room window overlooking the park, bracing one hand against its frame.

“This whole thing is bullshit,” he says. “That school is crazy.”

“They seem to have taken against Josh,” I admit quietly. The last thing I want is for our son to hear us talking like this.

“They don’t even know for sure that he pushed Ben, and if he did push him, it was obviously an accident. He and Ben were just messing around. You know how Ben is.”

Not really, actually. Ben is boisterous; I know that. When he came over one Saturday when I happened to be home—often I’m at work on a Saturday—he was zinging around our apartment like a pinball in a machine. Lewis finally took the boys out to the park. I offered to come, but they didn’t take me up on it and I was relieved. I didn’t think I could handle Ben’s energy, which was a whole other ball game from Josh’s quiet intensity.

“Why would Josh push Ben?” I ask. “He’s not a pusher.”

Lewis shrugs. “They’re nine-year-old boys. Even Josh roughhouses a little bit. When we’re all out together.”

“But then why wouldn’t Josh tell us about Ben’s fall?”

“Because he was upset, and he doesn’t talk about his feelings,” Lewis snaps. “What do you think, Jo?” He sounds accusing and I recoil at his tone. “I’m sorry,” he mutters. “I’m sorry. It’s just…” He blows out a breath, raking his hand through his hair. “This is so unfair.”

“I know it is. But I do think it’s a bit odd,” I answer. “And I want to get to the bottom of this, for Josh’s sake as much as anything else. Something doesn’t feel right.”

“What doesn’t feel right is that stupid headmistress,” Lewis retorts. “There has to be a reason why she’s coming down so hard on Josh.”

“Do you think Maddie Reese is pressuring her into it?” I don’t know Maddie at all. I’ve only met her a few times, all of them hurried occasions. My impression was of a petite, put-together woman who seemed reserved, a bit cool.

“Maddie wouldn’t do that,” Lewis says definitively, and I remember him saying I know Maddie. How well does he know Maddie? And how come? Just through Ben, through the play dates he and Josh have had, the pick ups and drop offs?

I sink slowly into the sofa. I don’t want to pursue that line of thought. Not now, not on top of everything else. “Why, then?” I ask and Lewis doesn’t answer for a long moment.

“I don’t know,” he finally says. “I feel like there’s something Mrs. James is not telling us. Something she’s hiding.”

“What could she be hiding?”

“I don’t know,” Lewis says again.

I sigh as weariness crashes over me. I’ve missed an entire afternoon of scheduled appointments. “And now Josh is off school for a week.”

Lewis shakes his head. “He’s not going back to Burgdorf.”

“What?” I stare at him. “Lewis, where else is he going to go?”

Lewis clamps his jaw. “Anywhere else.”

“You think we can get him into another private school in October?” I ask in disbelief. “You think he’ll thrive in some kind of cutthroat academic environment?”

“Public school, then.”

“We’re zoned for PS 84. You remember what we learned about that?”

“Test scores aren’t everything, Jo.”

I’m sure there are plenty of people who would say PS 84 is a very good school. It probably is a very good school, at least for Manhattan. But only a third of their students were proficient or better in both math and reading when tested in third grade. There are thirty-four kids in a class with one teacher.

That is not the place for Josh.

“Lewis,” I say and he gives a twitchy kind of shrug.

“We can figure something out. Homeschool him if we have to.”

“Homeschool? And how on earth are we going to do that when we both work? Besides, homeschooling is the last thing Josh needs. He needs to be around people, to be drawn out—”

“Do you really think he was drawn out at Burgdorf?”

“Yes. He’s been happy there, Lewis. Look at the way he’s opened up. He did a research project on Legos and he loved it. He gets fact books out of their library and memorizes them—”

“He can get fact books out of a local library, Jo.”

“Burgdorf is good for him,” I say firmly. “Do you remember what preschool was like?” We are both silent, recalling the year-long hell of Josh’s selective mutism. “This will blow over,” I say and Lewis lets out a hard laugh.

“You really think so? And what about Ben? If he really does have a serious brain injury…” He sinks into a chair, raking both his hands through his hair. “Poor Ben. I should call Maddie.”

Again I feel that shivery apprehension. “Yes,” I say, and rise from the sofa. “You should call Maddie.”

I go to Josh’s room, knocking softly on the door behind I open it and come inside. Josh is sitting by the window, at the little table and chairs set we got him when he was a toddler. He’s far too big for them now, and his knees are practically up by his chin. He’s studying one of his many Lego books; as I come to stand behind him I see he’s looking at an intricate design of a spaceship. It needs over a thousand pieces to be completed.

Inadvertently I glance at the many bins of Legos we’ve bought for Josh over the years, in every color, shape, and size. He’s never played with them. He just looks at the books and memorizes facts, but he won’t actually build anything. I think it frustrated Lewis the most; construction was something he could share with his son. But both of us have long ago stopped suggesting Josh use the Legos. He’s seemed happy with his facts and his books.

“Hey, Josh,” I say, and I cram myself into one of the little chairs. “How are you doing?” He shrugs. “I’m sorry about all this. I know it doesn’t feel fair. It isn’t fair.” He simply stares at the spaceship design and I take a deep breath. “Will you tell me what happened? Between you and Ben? You say you weren’t fighting, and I believe you. But did you push him?” No answer. “Whatever happened, Josh,” I tell him steadily, “we love you. Dad and I will always love you, no matter what. Nothing will ever change that.” I take another deep breath and rest my hand on his shoulder. He feels so small and vulnerable beneath my hand. “We want to help you. And to help you, we need to understand.” I pause. “Did you push Ben?” I ask in a slow, clear voice.

Slowly, so slowly, Josh nods. His eyes fill with tears and he lowers his head, his chin jutting his chest as he gives a loud sniff. “Oh, Josh.” Tears prick my eyes as I pull him into a hug; he doesn’t resist and I rest my chin on his head, his body melting into mine. “I’m sorry. So sorry. I know you didn’t mean to. I know it was an accident.” My heart aches as I think how he has been trying to bear this alone. “I know you must be worried about Ben,” I tell him, my arms still snugly around him. “Maybe we can visit him in the hospital. We can call his mom, at least, and see how he’s doing. I’ll ask Dad—”

Josh wriggles out of my grasp. “No,” he says, and his voice is firm, startling me with its tone of finality. “No,” he says again, and then he turns back to his Lego book.


7 MADDIE (#ulink_2c2fb197-4930-5818-a4b0-0f095a8d2266)

That night I get another text from Lewis: I heard about Ben. I’m so sorry.

I stare at the words, torn between feeling pathetically grateful that he’s finally reached out to me, and angry that it’s just a text. After all the time we’ve spent together, the four of us, after what has happened to Ben, the hugeness of it, he sends one measly text?

Then another comes through: What can I do?

And I have no idea how to answer that question. I know what I want him to do, what I wish he wanted to do, and I know none of it is possible. But I can’t text him back, telling him things are fine, that he’s not needed. Because he is. He is. So I slip the toss phone aside without texting anything.

I hardly sleep that night. The silence stretches around me, worse than any noise Ben ever made. Lying there alone makes me realize how much noise Ben usually makes. Even at night, when he is sleeping, he is loud. He snores; he sighs; he tosses and turns. With only a few feet and one paper-thin wall between us, I hear everything.

Now I wish I could hear those noises that annoyed me so much. I wish I could hear Ben’s dirty clothes being tossed on the floor, cereal being scattered across the kitchen counter as he helps himself to a late night snack. I wish I could be hassling him to take a shower, to turn off the TV, to speak in an inside voice. Except I wouldn’t hassle him at all. I would hug him and tell him how much I loved him, how important he was to me. Because I know now I didn’t say that nearly enough.

A little after five I finally get up, having only dozed for an hour or two at most. My eyes are gritty, my body aching, and I feel light-headed with fatigue. I still haven’t answered Lewis’s text. I wish he hadn’t asked me; I wish he’d simply acted. I wish he’d dropped everything and come racing to the hospital for me, for Ben. But he didn’t, and I know he won’t. It was never like that between us, except in my head, in the forbidden fantasies I indulged in every so often, because that’s all I’ve ever had. Fantasies.

I shower and dress and am just locking the front door when the door to the apartment next to mine opens, and my neighbor steps out, bumping into my shoulder hard.

“Oh, sorry,” he exclaims. “No one’s usually out here at this time in the morning. Are you okay?”

I rub my shoulder and nod. “Yeah, I’m fine.” My neighbor is a runner. I’ve never learned his name in the five or so years he’s been in the building, but I’ve secretly nicknamed him Spandex Man for the impressive amount of Lycra running gear he wears when he goes out for a jog. He has the lean, kind of stringy build of the diehard runner, and his brown hair is cut short so it is bristly on top. We’ve never spoken beyond a few murmured pleasantries about the weather when we’ve shared the elevator.

Now he raises his eyebrows at me and nods towards my door. “You’re on your own?”

I nod, swallow hard. “Yes.”

“I just meant your son,” he clarifies as we walk toward the elevator. “He’s not with you.”

It shouldn’t surprise me that my neighbor knows I have a son; we’ve shared the elevator often enough, after all. He’s probably seen Ben and me go into our apartments dozens of times. It’s just that we’ve never really talked.

The elevator doors ping open and we both step inside. At a little after six in the morning it is empty except for the two of us.

“No, he’s not with me,” I say, and then to both my horror and shame, my mouth trembles and I can feel my expression wobbling as tears fill my eyes. Spandex Man’s face slackens in shock. I try to blink back the tears but it’s too late for that. They spill down my cheeks and I dash them away quickly.

“Sorry,” I mutter as I drag my sleeve across my face. “Sorry, it’s just that it’s been a really hard couple of days.”

I’m trying to get myself under control, but I feel like I’ve taken my finger out of the plughole in the dam of my emotions, and there’s no releasing the floodtide of feeling. The tears keep coming, and my shoulders start to shake. A raw, animal sound of pain escapes from my mouth. I am mortified.

The doors ping open again and an unsmiling woman in a severe brown trouser suit comes in. She takes one look at me and her whole body goes rigid. I am breaking so many unwritten New Yorker rules. You don’t fall apart in front of your neighbors, in an elevator. Definitely not in a building like mine. Elevators are for silence and staring straight ahead.

Spandex Man angles his body so I’m shielded from the woman, and I am grateful for his sensitivity even if I can tell he is almost as appalled as she is by my behavior. At least he is trying to hide it. He pats my shoulder once, awkwardly, and says, “Hey…hey.”

The doors open again and the woman hightails it out of the elevator. She’s out of the building before the doors have even closed again. I shuffle to the side of the lobby, all black granite and mirrors and shiny chrome, and wipe my face again. A few shuddering breaths later I’m starting to get myself under control. And Spandex Man is still there.

“Sorry,” I say again, and he frowns.

“Look, I know probably everyone is asking you this, but is there anything I can do?”

Just like Lewis asked. But I still don’t have an answer. “I don’t think so,” I say. “My son fell two days ago, on the playground at school. He’s in a coma.”

Spandex Man’s face slackens. “Oh shit, I’m so sorry—”

“It’s a medically induced coma,” I explain quickly, as if this makes it better. “To help his brain to heal. They might start waking him up today.”

“That’s really tough,” he says, and I can tell he means it.

“Thanks. I’m sorry I fell apart back there.” I nod toward the bank of elevators. “I’m running on zero sleep and I’m pretty strung out.”

“It’s understandable,” he says and I take a step backwards. Time to restore some normality. Some distance.

“So, thanks,” I say again and then with a little goodbye wave, I turn and walk out of the building.

At the hospital Dr. Velas is waiting for me, with a group of nurses and specialists. We all crowd into Dr. Velas’s office and she goes through the next phase of Ben’s care: they are going to slowly start taking him off the medications that have kept him in a coma, and monitor his responses. If he experiences any distress, they will return to the earlier dosage and wait until he is stable again.

“We have to take this slowly, Maddie,” she tells me. “This isn’t Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, where a single kiss wakes someone up. Coming out a coma is a long, slow process.”

“And when he comes out of it?” I ask. Slow or not, I need to know what happens next. I want to be prepared.

“We will start to assess his capabilities. And then we’ll begin rehabilitation.” She pauses. “But let’s take one thing at a time. If he opens his eyes in the next forty-eight hours, that would be great.”

Disappointment swamps me. If he opens his eyes? That’s a lot slower than I expected, despite Dr. Velas’s warnings. I knew this was going to be a long haul, but the realization overwhelms me anyway.

“Okay,” I say, and I try to smile.

I set up a mini-office in a corner of the waiting room; there are a couple of other people there who look as tired and careworn as I do. We share weary, sympathetic smiles but we don’t engage. I can’t handle someone else’s story right now. I can cope with only so much pain.

For the next couple of hours I answer work emails; Elena has appointed a junior associate, Evan, to cover my work and he’s been firing queries at me since he started. Clearly he doesn’t get the concept of compassionate leave.

I don’t like my job and haven’t for years, but I’ve never had the luxury to consider retraining. I have zero savings beyond what I put aside for Ben’s tuition and no safety net. And the thought of someone doing my job for me, taking my place, is yet another thing that scares me. They can’t lay me off, I tell myself. I’m allowed compassionate leave. They can’t just fire me.

In any case, I’m only on my third day of the ten vacation days I haven’t yet taken. I have a week left to think about my options. For Ben to get better.

Around ten o’clock I get a call on my cell from Burgdorf. Maybe Mrs. James finally has some answers.

Taking a deep breath, I answer the phone. “Hello?”

“Ms. Reese?”

“Yes.”

“I wanted to update you on what happened on the playground,” she says, and my hand tenses around my cell.

“Yes?”

“I spoke to Mrs. Rollins yesterday and discovered that she had talked to some of the children who were on the playground when Ben fell.” A pause, and I can tell she’s considering her words carefully. “It appears Ben might have been pushed by another student.”

“Pushed?”

“Apparently they were having an argument.”

That doesn’t really surprise me, because Ben is always annoying other kids, elbowing them out of the way, shouting in their face. But I don’t like the thought that she might be blaming Ben. “Where was he pushed?” I ask. “How did he fall? What did he hit his head on?”

“I don’t yet know the answers to those questions—”

“A report must have been filed,” I cut across her, my voice sharp. I feel like Mrs. James is keeping something back, and I want to know what it is.

“I’ve looked at the report,” she says. “It says Ben fell from the climbing structure.” Which was what I had expected, but why didn’t Mrs. James tell me this earlier? Why didn’t Juliet tell me? Mrs. James continues briskly, “I can assure you, we have dealt with the matter. The student in question is being suspended for a week. Any further acts of aggression will result in expulsion.”

“Okay.” I feel slightly heartened that they’re taking this seriously, even as I recognize the double standard in play. Ben has committed a few acts of aggression during his time at Burgdorf, and thankfully he’s never been suspended. But clearly this is a more serious matter. Accident or not, Ben’s life has been changed. So has mine. Someone needs to pay the price besides me and Ben, even if it’s just some nameless kid.

“Of course, if there is anything else we can do…” Mrs. James says, trailing off delicately. “How is Ben?” I hear a slight nervous note in her tone, and I think she realizes she should have asked this earlier.

“They’re going to attempt to bring him out of the coma soon,” I say. “So hopefully in a few days we’ll know how much damage his brain has sustained.” I manage to say this without my voice wobbling.

“That’s good news,” Mrs. James says with more warmth than I’ve ever heard in her voice before, and I wonder how that could be considered good news. We don’t actually know anything yet.

“Yes, well.” I clear my throat. “We’ll see.”

With a few more pleasantries Mrs. James ends the call, and I sit there, the phone in my lap, wondering why I feel like I am still missing information. Why didn’t Juliet tell me Ben fell from the climbing structure? She must have been involved in the accident report. Or did the paramedics just assume? Did someone else see Ben fall?

What don’t I know?

After lunch I sit with Ben for a while and study his face for signs that he is swimming towards consciousness. The machines beep and his breathing is faint but even. He still seems deeply asleep, with no movement, not even a flicker under his eyelids.

How can this man-boy of mine, who has so much irrepressible energy, who has driven me crazy because he is always bouncing and careening around, be so incredibly still? Sitting there I tell myself if Ben comes out of this, when Ben comes out of this, I will never begrudge him his hyperactivity, his endless energy. I will never scold him for knocking into furniture or kicking his ball in the apartment or shouting inside. Never.

But then maybe I won’t get the chance.

At six o’clock that evening I get a meal courtesy of Juliet, a Styrofoam carton of chicken Marsala with angel hair pasta. It smells delicious, and yet I can’t make myself eat it. She can send me meals, but she won’t call or visit, and I need a friend, not a meal service. She texted me once today: hope there’s good news. I didn’t text back.

I give the meal to the nurse on duty. The ward has started to quiet down. The night nurse switches off overhead lights and it almost feels peaceful. Peaceful but lonely. I ache with loneliness, with the need to share what I am going through with someone. For a second I imagine a husband, my husband, coming in the room and putting his hand on my shoulder, rubbing my neck. Letting me lean into his strength. I imagine someone being there who loves Ben like I do, who is as invested and frightened and emotionally exhausted as I am. But there is only emptiness around me.

I sit by Ben’s bedside until ten o’clock, when I decide to go home for the night. The nurse on duty promises she’ll call me if anything changes, good or bad.

Outside it is dark, this area of midtown shut down for the night. A few taxicabs cruise the near-empty streets, but I ignore them and start walking.

I am just turning into my street when I get another text, and my heart lurches to see it is from Lewis.

How are you doing?

Not great, I text back. Pretty awful, actually.

How’s Ben? he texts, and as I don’t want to launch into a lengthy explanation via text, I just type, Still in a coma.

Which hospital? Lewis texts back, and my heart lifts. Maybe he’ll visit. Finally.

But when I text back Mount Sinai Roosevelt, I get no response. I walk into my building and get in the elevator, and my phone remains dark and silent even as I stare at it, willing it to light up with an incoming text from Lewis.

It’s almost eleven by the time I reach my apartment. I dread its quiet solitude, even though I once would have reveled in a Ben-free evening. The thought makes tears sting my eyes. How could I have been so selfish? Because I recognize that now; I have not been a great mother to Ben. Perhaps I haven’t even been a good mother.

I’ve been tired and cranky and overwhelmed, struggling to figure out to handle this boy of mine who is so different from me in so many ways. He doesn’t even look like me, with his sandy brown hair and big, gangly frame. I am petite and dark-eyed, dark-haired. In another year or two, God willing, Ben will be taller than me.

I am just fitting the key into the lock when the door next to mine opens, and Spandex Man stands there. He’s not in spandex now, and I realize I’ve never seen him in casual clothes. Running clothes, yes, and the snazzy suits he wears to work. He has a slightly ostentatious gold and silver Rolex and in the confines of the elevator his aftershave, although not unpleasant, can seem overpowering at seven o’clock in the morning.

Now he just wears faded jeans and a gray t-shirt. His feet are bare.

“Hey.” He gives me an uncertain, lopsided smile. “How are things? Has your son started to wake up?”

It touches me, way more than it should, that he’s taken the time to come out of his apartment and ask. I shake my head. “No, not yet. But he’s not reacting badly to the reduced medication, so…” I shrug and spread my hands, unable to say any more, or offer some optimism I don’t really feel. I am so, so tired.

“Maybe tomorrow, then?” Spandex Man says hopefully, and I shrug again.

“I have no idea. The doctors don’t deal in promises.”

“If they did, they’d make a ton more money,” he says, and I manage a smile. He winces. “Sorry, that was a lame joke, especially considering…”

“I’m not made of glass,” I say, even though I feel like I am. Broken glass. “I can handle a joke.” At least I think I can. I want to be able to. I want to be normal again, even in just some small way.

“It’s hard to know what to say in these situations,” he says. “When my mom died people avoided me rather than have to deal with the awkwardness.”

I think of Juliet. Is that what her staying away is about? Awkwardness? “When did your mom die?”

“I was seventeen. She had cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugs it off. “It was a long time ago.” He braces his shoulder against the frame of his front door. “But how are you doing? How are you coping?”

“Coping is the right word, I guess. It’s not easy. I don’t…I don’t have any backup.” I give him a quick, tense smile, because I’m sure he’s wondering why that is. “Ben’s dad isn’t in the picture.” And then I feel like I’ve said too much. I see a change on Spandex Man’s face, a discomfort, and I turn back to my door. “Anyway, thanks for asking.” I push open the door. “I appreciate it. But it’s late and I’m really tired. So…”

He nods and steps back into his apartment. “Let me know how it goes with Ben,” he says. “If you want to, that is.”

I nod, and then we both close our doors. My phone buzzes, but it’s just a reminder for a dentist appointment next week. And as I stand there alone in my darkened apartment, I realize that this is the most emotional support I’ve received from anyone since this happened, and I don’t even know his name.


8 JOANNA (#ulink_9ee0e53f-c6d2-5123-92fe-3c438bc793a1)

“Hey, buddy.” I smile at Josh as I sit across from him at the breakfast table. It’s nine o’clock on Thursday morning, and Josh finally wandered out of his room with a serious case of bedhead and sleep in his eyes. He smiles back at me, uncertainly, because this is new territory. Enforced vacation. At least, that’s how I’m determined to look at it, rather than an unfair punishment for an accident.

Lewis and I spoke about Ben’s fall last night. I told him what Josh told me, and he nodded grimly. “All right, fine, he pushed him. We already figured that’s what happened. But kids push, Jo. It was an accident.”

“I know that,” I said. “And I think Burgdorf knows it, too. But I guess they feel they need a scapegoat.” Lewis shook his head in derision. “Maybe they’re afraid of a lawsuit,” I suggested. “Maybe Maddie feels someone at school was negligent.”

“Maddie’s in the hospital with Ben,” Lewis said. “I don’t think she’s in a place to think about a lawsuit.”

“Maybe Burgdorf is just covering the bases.” I paused. “I asked Josh about visiting Ben.” Another pause. “He didn’t want to.”

Lewis shrugged this aside. “Hospitals are scary places, and he has to feel guilty, even though he shouldn’t. Let’s not push him to do anything he’s not comfortable with, Jo.” Lewis smiled, and then pulled me toward him. I went willingly, craving the comfort of his arms around me.

“Lewis, I’m worried,” I whispered and he tightened his embrace.

“I know.”

We left it at that; we always do. But I felt a little better.

“So waffles for breakfast,” I tell Josh chirpily, cringing at my slightly manic cheerfulness. I know I’m trying too hard, and yet I can’t keep myself from it. I so desperately want to make this okay for my son. “And whipped cream. Your favorite.”

Josh gives me a halfhearted smile, but at least it’s something. “Thanks, Mom,” he says softly, and I struggle not to cry. This isn’t fair. It’s the cry of a child, the petulant whine of a six-year-old who didn’t get as big a cookie as someone else. I know life isn’t fair. But the injustice of Mrs. James’s treatment of Josh burns with a holy fire; I do not want to accept it. I won’t. But I don’t know how to fight it, either. The last thing I want to do is jeopardize Josh’s place at Burgdorf, or make him feel even more uncomfortable when he returns to school.

“So I thought we could do something fun today,” I say. I pour myself a cup of coffee and sit across from him. The smile on my face feels too wide, but I can’t keep my reactions in check. I have always overcompensated, even as a child. It never worked, and deep down I knew it never would, but I still kept trying, in my own inept way. I still keep trying now.

“So where do you think you’d like to go? Anywhere in the city. Sky’s the limit.” I’ve put two waffles on Josh’s plate while I’m talking and topped them with strawberries and whipped cream. I’ve even cut up his waffles into neat, even pieces before I realize what I’m doing. I hand him his knife and fork and sit back. “So? What do you think? Any ideas of where you’d like to go, Josh?”




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