All Good Children Page 21

  Jeremy doesn’t say much about his brother, and like his brother, he won’t divulge much about the camp program. We avoid talking about his prospects. He asks how we are, and the farm, and Jay steers around my recent transgressions and talks about the weather and the new part he had to buy for the baler and how much the price of corn has gone up since May. I sit with my hands folded into my lap and try desperately not to look at Jeremy as if I no longer know him, and not to look at him as if I hold this desperate hope inside of me that at least his father will know him, will continue to know him once my deal goes through and Jeremy comes home and I have taken his stain and made it mine.

  Our time passes quickly. It’s impossible to remember what we say to each other to fill the space between us. I try to tell Jeremy about a book I think he will like, but he casts his eyes to the table and scratches his shoulder in a way that makes me trail off. I don’t mean to make him envious, I just want something to give him. The only sound Omalis makes to indicate our time is up is a polite clearing of her throat, the sound I imagine must escape tiny hummingbirds in the throes of mid-flight passion.

  “I love you guys,” Jeremy says. In that instant I can see the thing that has stained him is not anything these camps have directly done to him, but the cumulative consequence of having gone through them at all: he has already said goodbye to us, to himself. He’s accepted it, and rather than asking us to accept it—either because he knows we won’t or can’t, or because he’s afraid we will or have—he’s decided not to ask us for anything at all.

  “Jeremy—” But Jay’s embrace silences whatever vow I was about to break. He pulls us both into his encompassing chest and breathes us in. I feel Jeremy squirming next to us, anxious to remove himself from what has become so unfamiliar. Before we part, I whisper to him, “You’ll make it out. You’re coming home.”

  In the helicopter on the way back to the airport, before Omalis ties the blindfolds back over our eyes, Jay scowls at me. “Why did you say that, June? We agreed not to make them promises.”

  I search for something dim to say. “I was only trying to be comforting.”

  “False hope isn’t comforting.”

  I’m grateful for the blindfold when it comes, and for the sedative that follows.

  Jordan’s camp looks the same as the boys’, what little we see of it. We’re ushered, still blindfolded, from the helipad down a winding path or two, Omalis’s gentle hands pressed into our respective backs. Jay wants to talk about hope, or rather he doesn’t want to talk about it, because it’s easier without hope, to live without hope. My reassuring words to our son are false hope, and so are Omalis’s hands touching me, touching Jay. She thinks she is giving us something here, they all do, all the Powers That Be who’ve coordinated these brief parent-child visitations. They are the peddlers of hope, and we’re spooning it up because all we have left are spoons. Omalis’s touch—light as a feather, stiff as a drink—reminds me of how much she has peddled and how little she has promised and how much I have clung to both of these things.

  Omalis lifts our blindfolds in the hallway. She studies us carefully. “Are you both all right?”

  I look at my husband, the glaze in his eyes crusted over. He wipes at his forehead with his fingers and slaps his chin. “I’m good, yeah.”

  When I don’t put forth a response, Omalis measures her sympathy at me and offers, “It can be a trial, I know. We can put you up for the night in a hotel, reschedule the visit for tomorrow—”

  A small, mirthless laugh escapes me. “Has any mother actually ever gone in for that?”

  Omalis nods briskly. “Not to my knowledge.” She opens the door to the visiting room.

  Jordan is sitting when we move into the room, Omalis stepping aside to allow Jay and I access. She stands quickly when she sees us, and then her eyes flick behind us. For a moment, I am afraid that she is eying the space between myself and the door, the space into the hallway, and thinking of a way to run. She’ll make things worse for herself, if she hasn’t already. My veins begin to burn as my thoughts race to form pictures, snapshots of Jordan’s previous attempts at subterfuge: spiking a mentor’s morning coffee with rat poison, acquired, naturally, from the seething black-market underbelly of any self-respecting prison; burying herself under a pile of laundry to be carted out to the cleaners; digging a hole behind her cabin with her sharpened fingernails; talking her bunkmates into starting a diversionary riot in the lunchroom while she steals into a canoe and paddles for her life. I think about these things while I watch Jordan’s eyes sweep past the distant beyond and settle on something solid: Omalis. I breathe easier; the unfortunate event in that Tokyo camp could have easily happened here, or at my boys’ camp, or anywhere. But here, now, that is not the thing to worry about; it is not the thing Jordan worries about.

  Her skin pulls tight around her mouth and her fingers white-knuckle the edge of the table she stands partially behind. “I don’t want you here.”

  This is the first time I notice the change in her. So much louder than Jeremy’s stain, so much darker, how did it take me even ten seconds to see it? The morning she left—so willing, defiantly jubilant, sickeningly cavalier—she was just a little girl. Maybe not my little girl anymore, in that way, when she was still small, that she used to let me possess her—clothe her, bathe her, feed her, hold her—that way she gave up about the same time the training bra snapped on. But she was still so much a little girl, look, look at her that awful day: scuffed knees hiding under torn jeans, rough sneakers she’s quickly out-growing, hair to her neck uncombed and tangled, and her hands fidgeting with the bottom of her shirt, trying to make sure it doesn’t hike up in the wind, to make sure I don’t see her rebellion until she reveals it, until she says, “Mom, I pierced my navel.” “Navel.” Such a grown-up word. A small hole in her skin, a pin-prick in her stomach and she is gone, gone, gone, lost from my possession forever, into the open and tenderless arms of the world. But she was still, even then, behind her mask of fortitude, her self-indulgent defeatism masquerading as maturity, even then she was still a little girl. That little girl has vanished.

  Now she is a study in assured rigidity; this place, if it has taught her anything beyond hopelessness, has taught her to be hard. I can see that she is bruised, her skin a faded shade of purple at its softest points, and her clothes—identical sweatpants get-up as her brothers wore—drape loosely over the sharp edges of her body. She’s lost weight but she’s gained muscle; she’s barely a girl anymore and something more than a woman. A survivor; my baby is a survivor.

  She’s also angry, and her entire body tenses with it. She takes a step back from us and directs her hardness at Omalis; I turn to look, to see if Omalis is hurt by this. The Liaison appears unfazed. She tries to speak, “Jordan—” but my daughter cuts her off.

  “Get out, or let me out.”

  Jay holds a hand out to Jordan, who ignores us both, her eyes, her loathing, locked on Omalis. “What’s going on?” Jay says, swiveling his questioning gaze between them both. “Did something happen?”

  “No, Mr. Fontaine, I don’t—”

  “Stop talking.” Jordan does not raise her voice but the force of it rocks me. Her words inhale the oxygen in this closed-off room and I am left gasping inside the sudden vacuum of it. I’ve been on the receiving end of a losing argument with Jordan but not like this; she is usually erratic in her protestations, hysterical in her excuses, maddening in her stubbornness. But she is controlled now, funneling all of her anger, her hardness, in through her eyes and out through her mouth. “Leave.”

  Omalis closes her mouth, smoothes an unwrinkled pleat in her skirt. Along the hairline of her unblemished forehead I think I see a droplet of sweat appear. Then she swallows, hard, the sound of it seeming to echo off the bare walls, and I know Jordan’s behavior has rocked her, too.

  “All right,” she says, crisp and sure as ever, but her eyes drop to the floor for a fraction of a second. She backs up, her heel catching the corner o
f the open door so that she stumbles before turning around and closing it behind her.

  “Well,” I sigh deeply, exaggerating for the sake of levity. “If I’d known it was that easy to get rid of her…”

  A sound from Jordan interrupts me. It seems to start in her chest, in the deepest part of her, and push up through her throat where she strains to keep it down but it forces its way out. It’s animalistic, raw and scary. She screams and loses her grip on her body, and goes down heavy on her knees. The air slams out of her and back into the room, and although I want to look away, to back away and give her space, I can’t. She needs me.

  I practically push Jay out of the way to reach her. She’s rocking back and forth slightly, her hands clasped to the hair that hangs over her ears but when I touch her shoulder she latches onto me. She gropes blindly and finds some fleshy part of me—my thigh—and digs the stubs of her fingers in, pulls me closer. Her head buries itself in my lap and her back throbs beneath my hand as she cries. I grip her just as tightly as she’s gripped me.

  “Oh, Jordan.” I don’t know what else to say. I’m afraid to say anything else. The normal parental platitudes don’t apply. I can’t tell her everything is going to be okay because she knows better than me that it won’t be. I can’t ask her what specifically is wrong because I already know the answer is everything, and I don’t want specifics. So I hold her and wish for that to be enough.

  Jay kneels down beside me and places his hand on her neck, massaging it. “You gotta be strong, kiddo. You just have to be strong, okay? I know how strong you are.”

  I want to slap him. Images of Jay massaging Jordan’s shoulders before her gymnastic meets stream through my mind. “Your dismount is clumsy, kiddo.” Moving his hands down to wrap his fingers around her tiny biceps. “Don’t forget about these guns. Use ’em.” Then facing her, smiling at her, a smile she returns only after he says, “I know how strong you are.”

  “It’s not…” Jay struggles with his words. “It’s not very much longer.”

  “Stop it,” I rasp at him, as if I could mask our voices inches above Jordan’s ears. “You’re not helping.”

  “What?” Jay’s wet eyes blink at me. “I’m just—I just want to…”

  “It’s not a damn meet, Jay. She doesn’t need a pep talk.”

  Jay slaps the concrete floor with his open palm. “You don’t know what the hell she needs.”

  My no doubt clever retort is lost to the jerky movements of Jordan as she pushes herself up and away from me. She gets to her feet and looks at both of us, still kneeling on the floor, through glistening eyes and uncut bangs. She pushes her hair back and wipes snot from her nose with the wrist of her sweatshirt. Finally, her lips smack open and she says, “Should I leave you two alone?”

  Jay laughs and hangs his head, rubbing his eyebrows with his thumb and forefinger. I stand up, saying, “I’m sorry. We just want… I’m sorry.” I start to ask how she is but stop myself. Instead, I say something even more empty. “They’ve hurt you.”

  Jordan nods, sucks in her bottom lip and looks like she might cry again, but swallows it down. She shrugs. “Do you want to sit?”

  Instead of sitting at the table across from each other, Jay and I move our chairs to create a close triangle with Jordan’s chair. We sit with our knees touching, and I close my eyes for a second, trying hard to memorize the warmth and closeness of Jordan’s knee against mine. When I put out my hand to hold hers, she doesn’t resist. We sit like this in silence until Jordan finally says, “How’re Jason and Jeremy?”

  Jay nods vigorously. “Good, good. I mean, they’re fine. They’re holding up.”

  “Are they together?”

  “They’re in the same camp but it’s big. They don’t see each other often. They send their love.”

  Jordan rolls her eyes. “I’m sure.”

  Before I can stop myself, I say, “You’ll see them again.”

  “June—”

  “Mom—”

  “I just mean—”

  “You know what they did to us today?” Jordan changes the subject; her hand goes cold in mine. “They took us into the woods and made us stand in a circle, and they brought out this guy, this young guy I guess, like Jason’s age or a bit older, and they had him all tied up and this sack over his head and he was naked. They took the sack off and they made us stand there and look at him. He was crying, his face was dirty, he wouldn’t look at us. Once they were satisfied we’d all looked at him, another guy in a mask came out and shot him.”

  “—Jordan!” I can’t contain my gasp. Jay puts his hand on my thigh and squeezes.

  “Then the masked guy walked back through the woods, and everyone was crying and hysterical, and two of the counselors dragged his body away. His eyes were still open, they were green. They dragged him off, and the counselors said—yeah, we’re supposed to call them mentors, what is that? It’s stupid, even stupider than counselor. Anyway they said tomorrow we get to take him apart. That’s not what she said, she said we’ll dissect him, like fucking—like fucking science class. We’ll… I don’t know why. I don’t know why they do any of this to us. Why do the Over care if we suffer before they eat us?”

  “They’re trying to prepare you,” Jay says. He scratches the stubble on his chin. “It’s…not entirely designed by the Over. The government…they know what hell they’re sending you to, and they want to prepare you, desensitize you. If you can’t feel, if you’re numb to pain and violence and death, the rest is…even if you…even when you…if you come home, the rest is easier to take. To live through.”

  “But it’s also a test, Dad,” Jordan says. “Right? One big, meaningless test. To see if we’re worth killing.”

  “I don’t know, honey.” Jay shakes his head. “All I have are my theories. I don’t know. I…I wish I could do something for you, I…”

  “It’s not entirely bad.” Jordan taps Jay’s foot with the toe of her shoe. “I’ve made friends.”

  “They can’t do this to you,” I say. “How are they allowed to do this to you?”

  “It’s not just me,” Jordan says. She slips her hand out of my grip, crosses her arms, hugging herself. “How’s the farm?”

  Jay clears his throat to answer her and I can’t take it. “I won’t let them do this. This has to stop. We have to do something.” I’m not really talking to anyone, more to the wall behind Jordan’s head. I see faces in that wall, the many faces of all the hospital Liaisons I’ve had to hand lives over to, without hesitation, because hesitation was against the law. Fuck them, fuck this, fuck their laws, fuck it. They can’t take you. They can’t take any of you.

  “June, calm down.” Jay is on his feet because I am on my feet. I realize the moment Jay touches my arm that I’ve been speaking my thoughts out loud. Jordan still sits, looking up at me with eyes that have never seen me before. She’s almost smiling, but in a sad way.

  “Why should I calm down, Jay? Dammit, why? You can let them fuck you around, but I’m not going to do it anymore. How can you let them? She’s your daughter.”

  Jay’s voice explodes out of him. “What do you want me to do?” Then softer: “They’ll kill us.”

  “Not all of us.”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Jesus, June, you’re ruining…you’re ruining our visit…”

  “Mom,” Jordan says. I look at her and hold my breath. She leans forward in her chair, squints at me. She’s never been so beautiful. “Mom, what did you do?”

  Jay thinks, somehow, that she’s referring to my outburst at the hospital. He tries to smooth it over. “Nothing, nothing. It was…there wasn’t anything. Christ, did she…did Omalis say something? Everything’s okay, okay? You don’t have to worry.”

  “Mom?”

  My voice comes out a whisper. “I did it for you, baby. I did it for all of you.”

  In the suffocating silence, Jay finally catches on. “June?”

  I grab the sleeve of his shirt and pull him closer to me,
as much to steady myself as to hold onto him in case he tries to run from me, to run from what I tell him. “Jay, I made a decision. I had to. I had to do something.” I nod my head as I speak, assuring myself it was right, this is right. “I offered myself in their place. Omalis confirmed the trade, she—”

  “—Fucking Christ, June! You can’t—”

  “—She’s a liar, Mom—”

  “—said I might not get all of you, but even one, and I have hope—”

  “—Why are you doing this? You can’t do this. Nothing can change this, fuck, June, fuck—”

  “—whatever she tells you, I mean, are you stupid? She’s not here for you, nothing she does is for you, it’s for them—”

  “—and I just can’t sit here, not like you Jay, I just can’t sit and let it happen—”

  “—Have you ever heard of anyone saving their kids? They can’t! Fuck you, June, I want to save them, don’t you think I want to save them? How can you… I’ll lose all of you. I can’t lose all of you—”

  “—she’ll use it against you, Mom, take it back.”

  There’s a rapping on the door and then it slowly opens. Omalis’s blonde head peeks into the room, as if she’s shy, or trying to be polite. “You have two minutes,” she says, and ducks back out.

  “I’ve done it,” I tell them both. “I’m not taking it back. Jordan, you’re coming home. Okay? I’ll get you home.”

  “Jesus,” Jay breathes and slumps back down in the folding chair. I’m still gripping his shirt, stretching it out. He makes no move to pull away from me. He shields his eyes with his other hand and rubs his brow.