The Weird Part 146

'What in Christ's name is going on in here?' Ian demanded.

'Sh...she hit me,' Kit began, her voice rising as the tears began. 'I didn't do anything and she just hit me.'

'Diane?'

His daughter blinked and her gaze flickered at her friend, as if looking for support. And then her own eyes filled.

'It was my turn,' Diane said, defensively.

'So you hit her?'

'I was mad.'

'I'm going home!' Kit howled and bolted for the bathroom. Ian paused for a half second, then scowled and went after the girl leaving Diane behind. Kit was in the bathroom, trying to staunch the blood with her hand. Ian helped her, sitting her on the toilet with her head tipped back, a wad of tissue pressed to her lip. The bleeding wasn't bad; it stopped quickly. There was no blood on the girl's clothes. When he was sure it wouldn't start again, he wetted a washcloth and wiped Kit's face gently, the blood pinking the terrycloth.

Diane haunted the doorway, her dark eyes profound with confusion and regret.

'I want to go home,' Kit said when he had finished. Her small mouth was pressed thin. Ian felt his heart bind. If Diane lost Kit, he'd loose Tohiro and Anna. It was a fleeting thought, and he was ashamed of it the moment it struck him.

'Of course,' he said. 'I'll take you there. But first I think Diane owes you an apology.'

Diane was weeping openly, the tears gathering on her chin. Kit turned to her, and Ian crossed his arms.

'I didn't mean to,' Diane said. 'It's just that when people get mad, they hit each other sometimes.'

'Diane, what are you thinking? Where did you get an idea like that?'

'Uncle Bobby does, when he's mad. He hits Aunt Harriet all the time.'

Ian felt his lips press thin.

'Really. And have you seen him hit her? Diane, have you seen Bobby hit anyone, ever?'

Diane frowned, thinking, trying to remember something. The failure emptied her.

'No.'

'Did anyone tell you a story about Bobby hitting Harriet?'

Again the pause, and confusion deep as stone.

'No.'

'And?'

Diane stared at him, her mouth half open, her eyes lost.

'I think the words we're looking for are "I'm sorry,"' Ian said. It was the way his father would have said it.

'I'm sorry, Kitty. I'm sorry. I thought...' and Diane shook her head, held out her hands, palms up in a shrug that broke his heart. 'I'm sorry, Kitty. I won't do it again ever, I swear. Don't go home, okay?'

Kit, sullen, scowled at the white and blue tile at her feet.

'Please?' Diane said. He could hear in the softness of her voice how much the word had cost. He paused, hoping that Kit would relent, that she would simply take the blow and accept it, that she would believe that Diane would never do it again.

''Kay,' Kit said. Ian's relief was palpable, and he saw it in Diane. His daughter ran over grabbed her friend's hand, pulled her out, back to the room. Ian looked in on them. Diane was showering Kit with affection, flattering her shamelessly, letting her play as many times as she cared to. Diane was showing her belly. And it worked. Kit came back from the edge, and they were best friends again.

He put them both to bed, making them promise unconvincingly not to stay up talking, then went through the house, checking that the doors and windows were all locked, turning off the lights. He ended in the living room, in the overstuffed chair he'd brought from his home when he and Candice first became lovers. The cushions knew the shape of his back. Sitting under a single lamp that was the only light in the house, he closed his eyes for a moment and drank in silence. The book he was reading a police procedural set in New Orleans lay closed on his knee. His body was too tired to rest yet, his mind spun too fast by Diane and his isolation and the endless stretch of working at his desk. When he finally did open his book, the story of grotesque murder and alluring voodoo queens was a relief.

Diane walked in on bare feet just as he was preparing to dog-ear the page, check the girls, and crawl into bed. She crossed the room, walking past the pool of light and receding for a moment into the darkness before coming back to him. In her hand was the sc.r.a.pbook he'd set aside for Flat Diane. Without speaking, she crawled onto his lap, opened the book with a creak of plastic and cheap glued spine, and took out the page they'd just gotten. His sister, her husband. The meaty hand and sausage-thick thumb. His sister's pinched smile. The filthy light.

'I don't want this one in here,' Diane said, handing it to him. Her voice was small, frightened. 'I don't like Uncle Bobby.'

'Okay, sweetie,' he said, taking it from her.

She leaned against him now, her arms pressed into her chest, her knees drawn up. He put his arms around her and rocked gently until they were both near to sleep.

It was the moment, looking back, that he would say he understood what Flat Diane had become.

There are over a dozen photographs in the book now, but this latest addition commands its own page. In it, Candice is sitting at a simple wooden table. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail that even where it is bound is thick as her forearm. Her eyes slant down at the corners, but her skin is the same tone as Diane's, the oval face clearly the product of the same blood. There is a spider fern hanging above her. The impression is of melancholy and calm and tremendous intimacy. It is not clear who operated the camera.

Flat Diane is in the chair beside her, folded as if she were sitting with her mother. A small, cartoon heart has been added to the paper, though it is not clear by whom.

The real Diane has outstripped her shadow taller, thinner, more awkward about the knees and elbows. This silhouette is already the artifact of a girl who has moved on, but this is not obvious from the picture. In the sc.r.a.pbook, the only sign of change is a bend on one corner of Flat Diane's wide paper, a design drawn in the white s.p.a.ce over the outlined left shoulder, and the lock of white hair across Candice's forehead.

The letter reads: Diane Flat Diane arrived yesterday. I have to tell you she makes me miss you. You can see she's here with me in my apartment.

I love you very much, Diane. I know that it can't seem like it right now, but please believe me when I say it's true. There is no one in the world more important to me than you are. And I hope that, when your father and I have worked out the paths our souls need to take, we can be together again. Whatever happens, I will always be your mother.

It is signed Candice Calvino, her maiden name.

The other letter is not in the sc.r.a.pbook. It reads: Ian Christ, Ian, I really don't know what to say. I thought that I could just sit down and write this to you rationally, but I am just so G.o.ddam p.i.s.sed off, I'm not sure that's possible.

This stunt is exactly the kind of emotional extortion that made it impossible for me to stay near you. What were you thinking? That you could hold her up, maybe wave her around like a flag, and make me come trotting back we could just stay together for the children's sake? Our daughter should be more than just the easiest tool for you to get in a dig at me. How could you do this to her?

If you wanted to make me feel guilty or shamed or selfish, well nice job, Ian. You did.

Never use her like this again. If it isn't beneath you, it G.o.ddam well should be.

C.

The hallway outside the school's administrative offices had white stucco walls, linoleum flooring worn by millions of footsteps from thousands of students, harsh fluorescent lighting. An old clock white face yellow with age reported twenty minutes before the noon bell would ring, the press of small bodies filling the halls like spring tadpoles. When Ian walked in, straightening his tie, swallowing his dread, his footsteps echoed.

The secretary smiled professionally when he gave her his name, and led him to a smaller room in the back. The placard on the door white letters on false woodgrain said that the princ.i.p.al's name was Claude Bruch.e.l.li. The secretary knocked once, opened the door, and stepped aside to let Ian pa.s.s through a cloud of her cloying perfume and into the office.

The princ.i.p.al rose, stretching out a hand, establishing for Diane that the grownups were together, that they had special rules of respect and courtesy. It was the sort of thing Ian remembered with resentment from when he'd been her age, but he shook the man's hand all the same.

'Thanks for coming, Mr. Bursen. I know it's hard to just leave work like this. But we have a problem.'

Diane, sitting on a hardbacked chair, stared at her feet. The way she drummed her heels lightly against the chair legs told him that this was not resentment, but remorse. Ian cleared his throat.

'All right,' he said. 'What's she done?'

'Mr. Bursen, we have some very strict guidelines from the city about fighting.'

'Another fight?'

The princ.i.p.al nodded gravely. It had been at morning recess. Her friend Kit had been adamant that the other girl had started it, but the teacher who had seen it all reported otherwise. No, there had been no injuries beyond a few scratches. This was, however the third time, which meant a mandatory three-day suspension.

Diane, stone-faced, seemed to be staring at a banner on the wall that blared 'We Aim For Excellence! We Expect The Best Of You!'

'All right,' Ian said. 'I can get her homework for her and she can do it at home.'

The princ.i.p.al nodded, but didn't speak. He looked at Ian from under furrowed brows.

'Mr. Bursen, I have to follow the guidelines. And they're good as far as they go, but Diane's anger problems aren't going to go away. I wish you'd reconsider letting Mrs. Birch...'

'No. I'm sorry, no. I've had a certain amount of counseling myself, one time and another. It doesn't do any good to force a child into it.'

'Perhaps Diane would choose to,' the princ.i.p.al said as if she wasn't there, as if her dark, hard eyes weren't fixed on his wall. Ian shrugged.

'Well, what of it, Diane? Care to see Mrs. Birch?' He'd meant to say it gently, but the tone when it left his mouth sounded more of sarcasm. Diane shook her head. Ian met the princ.i.p.al's gaze.

All the way back home, Diane pressed herself against the car door, keeping as far from Ian as she could. He didn't try to speak, not until he knew which words were in him. Instead, he ran through all the people he could think of who might be able or willing to look after Diane for the duration of her exile.

When, that night, he finally spoke, he did it poorly. They were eating dinner chicken soup and peanut b.u.t.ter sandwiches. He hadn't spoken, she had sulked. Between them the house had been a bent twig, tension ready to snap.

'I can't afford to take three days off work,' he said. 'They'll fire me.'

Diane shrugged, a movement she inherited from him. Her father, who shrugged a lot of feelings away.

'Di, can you at least tell me what this is all about? Fighting at school. It isn't like you, is it?'

'Lisa started it. She called me a nerd.'

'And so you hit her?'

Diane nodded and took a bite of her sandwich. Ian felt the blood rushing into his face.

'Jesus Christ, Di. You can't do this! What...I don't know what you're thinking! I am holding on to this house by a thread. I am working every day for you, and you are being a little brat! I don't deserve this from you, you know that?'

The bowl sailed across the room, soup arcing out behind it. It shattered where it landed. Diane's bowl. Ian went silent. She stood on her chair, making small grunting noises as she tore the sandwich and squeezed the bread and b.u.t.ter into paste.

'You never listen to me! You always take everyone else's side!'

'Diane...'

'When?' she screamed. 'Exactly when in all this do I start to matter?'

It was her mother's voice, her mother's tone and vocabulary. Ian's chest ached suddenly, and the thought came unbidden What has Candice said in front of that drawing? Diane turned and bolted from the room.

When the shards of their dinner were disposed of, the salt of soup and sweet of sandwich buried alike in the disposal, Ian went to her. In the dark of her room, Diane was curled on her bed. He sat beside her and stroked her hair.

'I didn't do anything wrong,' she said, her voice thick with tears. She didn't mean fighting or throwing soup bowls. She meant that she had done nothing to deserve her mother's absence.

'I know, sweetie. I know you didn't.'

'I want to see Mrs. Birch.'

He felt his hand falter, forced it to keep touching her, keep rea.s.suring her that he was there, that they were a family, that all would be well.

'If you want, sweetie,' he said. 'We can do that if you want.'

He felt her nod. That night, trying to sleep, he thought of every mean-spirited thing he'd ever said to Diane, of every slight and disappointment and failure that he'd added to her burden. Candice's letter the private one she'd sent to him rang in his mind. Diane would be confessing all his sins to someone he'd never met, who would be taking confidences from his daughter that he might never know.

For all the weeks and months that he'd silently prayed for someone to help, someone to shoulder part of the burden of Diane's soul, the granting tasted bitter. His fears were unfounded.

The time came, and Mrs. Birch a thick woman with a pocked face and gentle voice became a character in Diane's tales of her days. He waited with a sense of dread, but no recriminations came back to him from the school, no letters condemning him as a man and a father. In fact, over the weeks, Diane seemed to become more herself. The routine of fight and reconciliation with Kit, the occasional missive from Flat Diane's latest hosts, the complaints about schoolwork and clothes and how little money he had to spend on her all came almost back to normal. Once, he saw what might have been anger when Diane saw a photograph of her mother. After that he noticed that she had stopped asking when Mommy was coming home. He couldn't have said, if asked, whether the sorrow, the sense of triumph, or the guilt over that sense was the strongest of his reactions.

Everything was fine until the night in February when she woke up screaming and didn't stop.

The picture is cheap the color balance is off, giving the man's face an unnatural yellow tint. He is in his later twenties, perhaps his early thirties, the presentiment of jowls already plucking the flesh of his jaws. His hair is short and pale. His eyes are blue.

In the picture, Flat Diane has been taped around a wide pillar, her arms and legs bending back out of sight. A long black cloth wraps across where the eyes might be, had Ian drawn them in; a blindfold.

The man who Ian doesn't know, has never met, is caressing a drawn-in breast. His tongue protrudes from his viciously grinning mouth, its tip flickering distance from the silhouette's thigh. He looks not like Satan, but like someone who wishes that he were, someone trying very hard to be.

The writing on the back of the photograph is block letters, written in blue felt-tip.

It reads: Flat Diane has gone astray.

A new photograph comes every week. Some might be amusing to another person, most make him want to retch.

The best trick h.e.l.l has to play against its inmates is to whisper to them that this this now is the bottom. Nothing can be worse than this. And then to pull the floor away.

'I'm sorry,' Ian said, refusing to understand. 'I didn't catch that.'

Mrs. Birch leaned back, her wide, pitted face tired and impa.s.sive. She laced her hands on her desk. The hiss of the heating system was the only sound while she brought herself to break the news again. This time, she took a less direct approach.

'Diane has always had an anger problem. There's no good time to lose your mother, but this stage of development is particularly bad. And I think that accounts for a lot of her long-term behaviors. The fighting, the acting out in cla.s.s, but these new issues...'

'Child protective services?' Ian said, able at last to repeat the counselor's statement and plumb the next depth of h.e.l.l. 'You called child protective services?'

'The kind of sudden change we've seen in her the nightmares, the anxiety attacks...She's in fifth grade, Mr. Bursen. No kid in fifth grade should be having anxiety attacks. When she went to the doctor, you and he and two nurses together couldn't get her to undress, and you say she never had a problem with it before. That kind of sudden change means trauma. Nothing does that but trauma.'

Ian closed his eyes, the heel of his palm pressed to brow, rubbing deeply. His body shook, but it seemed unconnected to his terrible clarity of mind, like the tremors were something being done to him.

'The Buspar seems to be helping,' he said. An idiot change of subject, and not at all to the point, but Mrs. Birch shifted in her chair and went there with him.