Suffer the Children Page 3

  The cab filled with dry heat and cigarette smoke, oddly comforting smells. He soon recognized the houses flanking the street, each drenched in Christmas lights and decorations. Lansdowne was a midsized city comprised of sprawling cookie-cutter housing communities surrounding an old industrial core. After the latest revitalization effort had failed, housing became its major industry for a while, which had struck Doug as a starving man eating his own foot to sustain himself a little longer. When that failed, the city suffered waves of foreclosures and discovered it had an even bigger homeless problem. Most people here worked low-end jobs at gas stations, supermarkets, big box stores, fast food joints, and the like. They still believed in America, even though they’d been betrayed by its failure to live up to its promises.

  Like Doug, all they wanted was to give their kids a chance at a good life.

  He pulled into his driveway and parked in the garage. Major, the Cooper family dog, sensed Doug’s arrival and launched into his welcome-home barking ritual in the backyard.

  Shucking his jacket in the entry, Doug felt warm for the first time all day. Hank Williams was belting out an old song from the kitchen. He heard zany cartoon voices on the TV in the living room. The smells of Joan’s homemade spaghetti sauce made him feel human again.

  After washing up, he found her in the kitchen wearing an apron with her hair done up in a ponytail. He watched her dance as she stirred a pan of frying meat on the stove. Doug remembered the night they first met at Cody’s Bar. AC/DC had roared from the speakers while Joan stood in front of the jukebox picking the next song, slim and curvy, her hips swaying to the beat and driving every man in the place crazy. Including, of course, Doug.

  He blinked, and the memory passed.

  He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her. She melted into him with a smile.

  “What’s for dinner?” he said.

  “Spaghetti and meatballs. How was your day?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Join the club.”

  “I’m going to shower and change. All right?”

  “Try to make it a quick one. Supper’s ready in fifteen.”

  Doug entered the living room, which looked perfect. Joan constantly fussed after the kids, snatching up books, toys, and cups. Keeping things nice and neat. Nate hung off the edge of the easy chair with his head resting on the carpet, watching the TV upside down. Megan sat cross-legged about two feet from the screen.

  “Anything good on?” he said.

  “Hey, Dad,” Nate said vacantly, his eyes glued to the TV.

  Megan jumped to her feet and ran at him, screaming, “Daddy!”

  He caught her and twirled her laughing through the air.

  “Hey, princess.”

  “I missed you today, Daddy.”

  His heart warmed to hear that. It always did.

  It was always good to come home after a long day. He swallowed his anger and his worries. Swallowed them hard. Everything he did in his life, this was the reason.

  Sometimes it was too easy to lose sight of that.

  Joan

  11 hours before Herod Event

  Joan awoke during the night. Her heart pounded. She stared into the dark.

  The clock read 3:02.

  She’d been here before. A random creak, and she’d wake up glaring fiercely at the hazy outline of the bedroom door, ready for battle.

  Next to her, Doug snored softly on his stomach. Joan took comfort in his presence. The man could sleep through the Rapture, but if she managed to wake him up, he’d get the baseball bat he kept under the bed and lumber downstairs to check things out.

  There was never anybody there, but Doug always went anyway. Sometimes she thought he wanted to find a burglar on his property, just so he’d have the legal justification to beat somebody to a pulp. Whatever his motives, she was glad for it.

  Joan considered herself a practical woman with her head screwed on straight. Doug periodically obsessed about things like avian flu and global warming, but she had no use for such worries. Nonetheless, she sometimes wondered if she’d left the stove on while out shopping, worried over whether the doors were securely locked, and thought she heard her children crying for her when she was in the shower or drying her hair. And once she heard something go bump in the night, she couldn’t return to sleep until Doug pronounced the house secure.

  Was it a bad dream that had woken her? Maybe she was still worked up about Ramona and Josh, and she’d had a nightmare. If she had, she couldn’t remember it now. The other night, Joan dreamed she held Nate’s head in her hands. It was absurd—his body was at the shop being fixed, but the technician had lost it—yet it had seemed so real to her, holding his lifeless head in her hands and wondering if they’d ever find his missing clockwork body. As the horror mounted with the realization that Nate was gone forever, she’d woken covered in sweat.

  Joan lay back and closed her eyes. She was home. Nothing could harm her here. Her family slept around her in the dark. She sensed the children breathing in their beds down the hall. She felt herself lulled back toward sleep. The morning and its routines would dispel her night fears.

  The world was a dangerous place, but not here. Children were suffering in other parts of the world—everywhere there was poverty and famine and war—but not in this house. She returned to sleep with the knowledge her children were safe and sound, and nothing would ever harm them.

  TWO

  Ramona

  2 hours before Herod Event

  The food court was bustling.

  After fighting crowds of Christmas shoppers and carrying Josh halfway across the mall, Ramona was already worn out, but she perked up when she saw her friend.

  Bethany looked perfect as usual. She had a boyfriend and a profitable career in real estate sales. Her five-year-old, Trent, was thriving in private school. She made it all look so easy.

  Nothing was easy for Ramona. It was unfair.

  They hugged, and each told the other how great she looked. They bought their lunches and found a table next to the indoor playground, which swarmed with screaming children. Trent wolfed down his food, grabbed Josh’s hand, and pulled him toward the jungle gyms.

  Stabbing at her salad with a plastic fork, Bethany complained about the number of people she had to shop for this Christmas. It was a drawback of dating Brian; he had a large family to impress.

  I wish I had your problems, Ramona thought, but forced a sympathetic expression.

  She didn’t actually want what Bethany had. It wasn’t that kind of envy. She held no illusions that Bethany’s life was as effortlessly perfect as portrayed. But she wanted that perfection anyway, romanticizing a life in which her career wasn’t so demanding, Josh wasn’t sickly, she dated a man who was worth it, and there were enough hours in the day.

  Ramona’s inner clock told her it was time to check on Josh. She scanned the playground and spotted Trent laboring up the plastic rock-climbing wall. Her eyes darted across the faces, searching for her son.

  Where is he?

  “Josh!” she called.

  “I’m right here, Mommy,” said Josh, trotting over. “I was drawing on the floor.”

  Ramona still felt rattled. It had never happened before. Just like that, he’d disappeared.

  Like losing your car keys. Way to go. You’re mom of the year.

  “Josh, why aren’t you playing with Trent?”

  He showed her his pad. “I still can’t make a straight line!”

  “Go play with the other kids, Van Gogh,” she commanded.

  “I’m not Van Gogh. I’m Josh.”

  She made him surrender the pad. “Go. Fun. Now.”

  Josh sighed, stood, and ran toward the playground.

  “Everything okay with him?” said Bethany. “How’s his health?”

  “He doesn’t eat enough. He picks at his food. He’s been drawing monsters.”

  “Monsters,” Bethany echoed with concern.

  “Monsters eating people. Tha
t kind of thing.”

  Ramona didn’t add that she thought she recognized herself in one of the drawings, a tall stick figure with long red hair.

  And you still don’t know if you were being depicted as a victim or monster.

  She’d been afraid to ask.

  “It sounds to me like he’s processing something,” Bethany said. “Has he had any big changes or traumatic experiences lately?”

  “For the past few weeks, he’s been in a new day care.”

  “Right. You told me about the woman who runs it. Her name is Joan?”

  “Yes. She’s good people. Although I just chewed her out for something stupid.” She recounted the story of her rushed firing of Ross, Josh’s getting sick, and his confession he’d eaten the homemade play dough.

  “No, you were right to be angry,” said Bethany. “She shouldn’t have made anything with flour in it that he might eat, even if it was meant to be a toy.”

  “It’s understandable, though.” Ramona glanced at the playground and located Josh. “She has four kids in her home every day. She can’t watch Josh every second.”

  “Even more reason not to have made the play dough. She should have connected the dots and understood the risks.”

  “You’re smarter than her. Tougher than me.”

  “Nonsense,” Bethany said, though she smiled at the compliment. “Our kids have no one but us. No one is going to fight for them but us.”

  “I like to think of Josh’s caregiver as a second parent. I think Joan would fight for him. God, I don’t want to be the working mom who goes psycho on her nanny for loving her kids a little too much. The whole thing was an innocent mistake.”

  “Ramona. Listen. I don’t want to upset you, but you have to at least consider the possibility this Joan is abusing Josh in some way, which might explain the changes in his behavior.”

  “What? Oh, Bethany, come on. That’s insane. No, I honestly don’t see it.”

  Joan shined with children and loved them in a selfless way that was genuine, if a bit intimidating to other moms. Ramona often wondered if Joan was what nature intended. Yet the woman seemed to exist only for her kids. Didn’t she want anything for herself?

  Meanwhile, Ramona was stuck feeling guilty because she worked. But what choice was there as a single mom?

  Either way, she’d learned, no matter what choices you made as a mother, somebody always looked down on you, or at least you imagined they did.

  “A four-year-old doesn’t just go from drawing angels to monsters without a reason.”

  “He probably saw a video or had a nightmare— Oh. My. God.”

  Bethany watched Ramona duck in her seat. “What? What?”

  “I can’t believe it. It’s Ross. The guy I fired yesterday.”

  Ross stood near the Chinese food place with a tray in his hands, scanning for an empty table.

  “ ‘Oh my God’ is right,” Bethany said. “He’s cute.”

  Ramona shielded her face with her hand. “It was kind of hard for me to see him that way, to be honest,” she lied.

  “But now you don’t work together. I can see why you fired the guy. Now there’s nothing to stop you from sleeping with him.”

  Ramona burst out laughing. She shook her head. “Look at you. Drooling over the vicarious thrill.”

  “I’m a normal woman with normal urges.”

  “Normal, huh? To quote Inigo Montoya, I do not think that word means what you think it means.”

  Ross spotted an empty table and headed toward it. He disappeared from view.

  “And there he goes.”

  “Show’s over.”

  “So why did you fire him?”

  “Because I couldn’t trust myself to keep my hands off him.”

  The women laughed at their silliness. An elderly couple at a nearby table turned and glared at them, which made them laugh even harder. This was one of the reasons Ramona looked forward to these lunches. She could let her hair down with another grown-up.

  “So you’re sure it’s not the day care lady,” Bethany prompted, renewing their previous conversation.

  Ramona barely heard her. Her eyes scanned the playground. The children swarmed over the monkey bars and slides and rock-climbing wall.

  Josh was gone.

  She stood. “I’ll be right back.”

  “He’s right there,” Bethany told her, pointing him out.

  Ramona took a deep breath. Her heart pounded. “Oh. Right.”

  Bethany eyed her with obvious concern. “Are you okay?”

  That’s a big question, Ramona thought.

  “I’m fine,” she said, wearing a crooked smile. She remained standing.

  For her, lunch was over.

  Joan

  2 hours before Herod Event

  Saturday morning.

  Nate played outside with his friends, and Doug was sleeping late. Joan enjoyed the opportunity to have some special Mommy and Megan time before her movie date with Coral.

  They’d mixed more play dough out of salt, flour, water, cream of tartar, and food coloring, and shaped it into Megan’s favorite animals. After that, Joan helped her with a craft project while they listened to a kids’ disco CD. Megan enjoyed working with scissors. The hair on the left side of her head was still ragged from an attempt to give herself a haircut last week.

  Now she sat on the floor wearing a ragged purple princess costume and plastic tiara, cutting out heart shapes from a piece of paper.

  “I can’t wait, I can’t wait, I can’t wait.” Megan grinned at Joan. “Santa’s coming.”

  Joan laughed. “That’s right, sweetie.”

  She tried to remember what it was like to be so young and waiting for Christmas to come. The sheer glee and wonder. The nearest adult equivalent was winning the lottery. Still smiling, she started an early lunch for the kids: bologna, cheese, and mustard on toast.

  The front door opened. Joan poked her head out of the kitchen in time to see Nate huff into the house. He shucked his coat and kicked off his boots.

  “Home again, home again, jiggety-jig,” he said. “The projectile son returns.”

  “Prodigal son,” Joan said, correcting him. Nate often came home with mannerisms and phrases he picked up from Keith, his best friend.

  “Yup, that’s me. Can I watch some TV?”

  “Not right now, okay? We’re having lunch in a few minutes; then we’re going to the park.”

  “Oh. Excellent. I’m starving.”

  Joan turned on the radio and set the dial to Woodradio 1300 AM so she could check the weather as she finished making the sandwiches. Nate sat at the kitchen table, gazing at an open textbook while wearing his Giants hat.

  She glanced at the color pages displaying the world’s flags.

  “That’s an interesting one right there,” she said.

  “That’s Brazil,” Nate told her. “It’s a really big country in South America. The stars represent states, just like on our flag. They speak Portuguese.”

  “You’re very smart.”

  Joan wondered at Nate’s passion for some subjects in school and apparent rejection of others. Last winter, amid his ongoing enthusiasm for hockey, he’d announced he wanted to be a doctor. He hadn’t said it since, but Joan had engraved it in mental stone. She squinted at her apple-cheeked boy and tried to see the man he someday would be.

  Eight years old and steadily pulling away from her. While Joan readily empathized with Megan, Nate’s mind seemed alien. She knew he idolized Keith, whom she considered a bad influence, as he was a bigger risk taker than her son. Nate often came home with cuts and bruises from their escapades. She worried one day she’d get a call saying he’d broken a bone or worse.

  She set the sandwiches on the table with glasses of milk. Nate crammed his into his mouth while Megan climbed into her chair and took her first dainty bite.

  Joan heard creaking upstairs, signs Doug was awake and starting his day. About time, sleepyhead. She was already planning their exit.
Boots, hats, gloves, scarves, jackets, snacks. She put the kettle on for hot chocolate and pulled the thermos down from the cupboard.

  “Mommy, are monsters real?” Megan asked.

  Joan wiped crumbs from the counter into her cupped hand and dropped them into the sink. “Of course not, sweetie.”

  “Josh was drawing them. Sometimes I worry a little bit they’re going to get me while I’m sleeping.”

  “They’re probably not going to get you, Megan,” Nate said, his cheeks bulging as he chewed.

  Megan gulped. “Probably?”

  “Mom, they’re not going to get her, are they?”

  “No,” said Joan.

  “But are you sure?” Nate pressed.

  “Positive.”

  “Keith saw a monster once.”

  “Nate,” she warned him.

  “It was a thunderbird. It lives in the woods behind his house and eats raccoons.”

  Megan stared at him and whispered, “Is it going to eat me?”

  “Probably not,” Nate said. “Mom, it won’t eat Megan, will it?”

  “What?” Joan had been listening to the radio, which predicted cold with a high of thirty-four degrees for the day. “No!”

  He shrugged. “I was just wondering if thunderbirds eat people. Thought you knew.”

  “There’s no such thing,” Joan said with a sigh. “Monsters are just make-believe.”

  “Don’t worry, Megan,” Nate said. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

  “My fairy wand will protect me.”

  “Yeah, and Dad watches over us. Right, Mom?”

  Joan poured hot water into the thermos and screwed the cap on. “That’s right. Both of us do.”

  “But Dad keeps a baseball bat under the bed,” Nate enthused.

  She smiled. I don’t need a baseball bat. If anybody ever touched you, I’d rip him apart with my bare hands. “Finish up there, Nate. We’re not going anywhere until you feed Major.”

  “Okay, okay, okay,” he grumbled.

  “Mommy, is Josh going to be okay?” Megan asked.

  “I’m sure he’ll be fine, sweetie.”

  Joan, on the other hand, still felt a little shaken by how Ramona had treated her. Pissed off, actually, but also a little guilty. The truth was, she was going to miss Josh if Ramona pulled him out of her day care. She’d grown quite fond of the weird little kid. She even liked Ramona. Sure, the woman was a little full of herself, but she was so beautiful, always perfectly groomed and dressed, and lived an exciting life filled with choices. It wasn’t the life Joan had chosen for herself, but she could still admire it for what it was.