Breaking Glass Page 6

  Patrick Morgan shrugs. “He thinks he does. I know you boys have had your differences lately. But—well. Ryan would really like to see you.”

  Differences. What’s one missing girl between friends?

  I look down at my ex-leg on the blanket. I can still feel its weight pressing into the mattress and wonder how long my nerve endings will take to understand it’s gone for good.

  “Soon,” I manage to choke out. “Real soon. Tell him thanks, okay?”

  Shortly after Patrick Morgan leaves, my dad hovers at the door, half in and half out. He looks perplexed, like a man who’s been sucker-punched looks right before he keels over.

  “Jeremy. Obviously the possibility of a track scholarship is off the table.”

  I nearly laugh. “Obviously.”

  So that’s what’s on his mind. Not that I’m going to have to hop through life as a half-man. That I will probably never have sex unless I pay for it, because who wants to date a circus freak? No. It’s the tragic realization that he will have to shell out extra cash for my education. Provided he still wants me to get one.

  “After you’re healed a bit more, we’ll discuss our options.”

  “Right, Dad. Let’s call a meeting. Maybe we can negotiate a better contract for my former leg. If the scale is generous enough, maybe it’ll agree to be reattached.”

  Dad’s eye twitches. “Good night, Jeremy. Sleep well.”

  It’s ten minutes before visiting hours end. I am nearly asleep when a flummoxed nurse enters and explains in a soft voice that I have a female visitor who is adamant about seeing me and refuses to leave. Would I mind? Just for a minute?

  It’s Trudy Durban, Susannah’s mother.

  “Okay,” I mutter, barely coherent.

  Trudy Durban has let her youthful beauty weather into a thing of the elements, her angular face like a wind-sculpted rock structure, hazel eyes wary as a hawk’s. Wiry blond hair laced with gray falls around her face like barbed wire.

  Then

  The first time I’d ever laid eyes on the mysterious Mrs. Durban was at the Morgans’ annual Christmas extravaganza, three years ago. I’m not sure what I expected, but the pale-as-milk white woman who stalked into the Morgans’ stadium-sized house sure wasn’t it. I’d always imagined Susannah’s mother as a dusky bronze beauty, an older version of her. I knew Susannah was mixed race, but I’d always imagined her father as the white half, a wayward Jewish guy who’d left her single mom to raise her alone, not the other way around.

  Miraculously, Susannah and Ryan had not actually hooked up at that point. There had just been the daily ritual of heavy flirting, batting eyelashes, and posturing I’d endured from behind my carefully constructed mask of I-don’t-give-a-crap. I could still keep my lame fantasy alive—that it was me Susannah really wanted.

  At least in art class, she was still mine—a completely different person from the airheaded, hair-flinging girl she became around Ryan. In class we talked politics, history, ethics, aesthetics, and spirituality while she made twisted masterpieces from string, wire, papier-mâché, and whatever else was lying around. Then she turned to paper and ink, creating her own universe of bizarre whimsy, totally at odds with the smiling face she presented to the world.

  But she didn’t seem to get it. And I died a little each day as I watched her eyes light up at the sight of Ryan. I was just there, a comfortable chair for her to flop into—reliable Jeremy Glass, everyone’s friend, steadfast and true.

  I hated myself for hating Ryan. It wasn’t his fault that he was the sun, and dark souls like us were drawn to his orbit.

  Yet we’d made it all the way to December without Ryan and Susannah becoming an official couple. By this time, though no one knew it, I was well on my way to becoming an official alcoholic, raiding Dad’s liquor cabinet in the sleepless hours when the nightmares stormed out from the shadows to swallow me.

  And Susannah, I told myself, was the only one who could make the nightmares go away.

  The Morgans’ annual Christmas party was the chance for the town’s elite to kiss the ring and show their loyalty to the dynasty that owned them. It was a formal dress affair, the men in black tie, the women in silk skirt-suits or sleek sequined gowns. At fourteen, I was a sapling whose branches had grown longer than its trunk. Dad had tried to stuff me into my bar mitzvah suit, but ended up having to spring for a new one since I’d grown about five inches and could now look him straight in the eye.

  That year, the Morgans were honoring some noble cause in a wildly tasteless way no one had the nerve to criticize. The party was a benefit for a local AIDS foundation and the massive Christmas tree was strung with syringes and condoms. Liquor flowed like water from a tap. It goes without saying that I made the most of these parties.

  The Morgans’ cavernous living room echoed with laughter and clinking glasses, but everything quieted the second Susannah, looking like a golden goddess in a ruby taffeta gown, entered with her mother, Trudy. I could barely scrape my eyes off Susannah, but I caught Dad’s sneer.

  “Why the hell is everyone gawking at them?” I asked.

  Dad continued to pile caviar on a cracker, but his hand was shaking. “The mother used to live in Riverton.”

  I was totally piss drunk, but was already a master at hiding it. “Duh. I already know that. Why is everyone hating on them?”

  “Trudy Durban left some loose ends, Jeremy.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” My gaze tracked Susannah as she glided across the room while her mother stood frozen in the foyer.

  “She left a lot of bad blood behind. To be honest, I have no idea why she would move back here. It’s not like she has any friends.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Made trouble.”

  If Dad elaborated further, I didn’t hear it over the ringing in my ears. Susannah had made her way to where Ryan waited under the mistletoe. While the other partygoers slowly recovered from the shock of Trudy Durban’s unwelcome appearance, Susannah and Ryan made out like their lives depended on it.

  And I ran to the bathroom to puke up my guts.

  Now

  Susannah had once pointed out that her mother’s wardrobe palette was beige, cream, mauve, and gray, always in monochrome. Today it’s tasteful beige, suitable for visiting the infirm, but the illusion of professionalism is warped slightly by the tangled bramble of folk art crosses, chains, and charms she wears around her neck. It’s like she’d been given ten minutes to grab all she could carry in a flea market shopping spree. The bouquet of flowers she carries contrasts riotously with her neutral backdrop.

  “Hello, Jeremy,” she says in her deep rasp.

  I squirm. Pat Morgan is supposed to be greeted like family, at his own insistence. I opt for formal with Susannah’s mother. “Hi, Mrs. Durban.”

  “I’m not going to ask how you’re feeling. It’s obvious you’re in your own private hell,” she says. From the haggard lines around her eyes, it’s apparent the last few weeks haven’t been a picnic for her, either.

  “Pretty much, I guess.”

  “Patrick Morgan denies it, but I heard you got hurt trying to save Susannah from that bastard Ryan. Was he there or wasn’t he?”

  “I—well. Not really. I—they were fighting and I just wanted to—” I stop talking because Mrs. Durban’s gaze has drifted. She’s still talking, but not to anyone in the room.

  “I warned her not to take up with the son of that devil. I begged her. But Susannah is an obstinate girl. She always does the exact opposite of what I tell her. She did it to defy me.”

  She pulls a crumpled tissue from her pocket and noisily blows her nose.

  I watch her, uncomfortable, wanting to sleep. I want her to leave and take her mean eyes and jangly necklaces with her. But curiosity keeps me awake. I doubt her reason for visiting me is to check up on the healing progress of my stump.

  Her gaze snaps back into focus. “The police aren’t helping any more. No evidence of wrongdoing, they say. The press
has moved on to more interesting stories. But I shouldn’t be surprised. No one will touch the Morgans.”

  I prop myself up on my pillow, completely awake now. “What do you mean, Mrs. Durban?”

  She stares straight into my eyes, her mouth set in a firm line. “Someone in this town killed her.”

  My palms are sweaty. “Why would anyone want to kill Susannah?”

  “Lots of reasons.”

  “Such as, Mrs. Durban?” I lean forward. “Susannah is my friend, and I want to know where she is, too.”

  “Of course you do.” She stares absently down at me, then snaps out of it again, her gaze burning with renewed intensity. “Maybe you can tell me what was in the package Marisa gave you. Little bitch admitted she brought it to you before I could unwrap it.”

  I knead the blankets, cornered, wanting to run, wanting to fly. Anything to escape this woman’s incinerating stare. “It was just some art.”

  She squints. “She seemed to be on a big art giveaway kick.”

  Mrs. Durban withdraws a large envelope from the shopping bag on her arm and slips out a sheet of thick paper. My heart almost stops, then resumes its rickety thumping. She places it in front of me on my one half of a lap.

  I recognize one of Susannah’s lavishly detailed ink and watercolor masterpieces, white ink on black paper. A huge pile of finely crosshatched skeletons, bones, half-eaten apples, dead babies, bottles, and sneakers crowds almost the entire page. At the top of the pile is a small gnarled tree with roots that sink into the debris. The tree sprouts a single green leaf, but the leaf is not an actual image, but a tiny word printed in green ink. “TRUTH”, it says. At the bottom of the page, scrawled in white across the delicate inkwork, a message is written in script:

  This is for you, Jeremy Glass.

  Trudy Durban removes one of the beaded crosses from around her neck and rests it on top of the drawing.

  “Your mother was Episcopalian,” she says, “but I thought you might need this.” She fingers her jumble of necklaces and stares down at me, her mouth a hard line.

  “Were you and my mother friends?”

  “For a time.” Her eyes glaze over and she stares past me. Then her gaze snaps back into focus. “But there are dark forces at work in this town.”

  C H A P T E R

  e i g h t

  Now (December 10th)

  I’m sent home after five days with detailed directions for proper care of the stump and lots of good wishes. From the way the miserable nub is fussed over and swaddled, you’d think I was bringing home a newborn baby.

  It’s Monday, December 10th. Over three weeks since Susannah went missing.

  A light film of snow coats the winding roads of Riverton. Holiday lights twinkle from the houses we pass. I imagine happy intact families composed of happy intact people, enjoying the season and each other inside their cozy homes.

  We pass the Morgans’ massive house, ablaze with lights, a cross between a circus and a stadium. The circular drive is populated with more reindeer than they have in Alaska. Shrouded in snow, it’s Riverton’s very own winter wonderland.

  I try to envision the Morgans inside, Ryan and a bunch of our track buddies watching Monday Night Football in the den. They’re all talking about what a shame it is about their star runner. Or, maybe they’re laughing about it. There’s something ironic about a one-legged track star. Even I have to admit that.

  The Morgans’ house is always full of people, as if cramming the cavernous thing with bodies makes up for the fact that three people have an obscene amount of living space all to themselves. Susannah always insisted that Celia and Patrick Morgan were like the ideal parents she’d never had. I could see it with Celia Morgan. Her motherliness had a way of softening Patrick Morgan’s imperious presence. There are always cookies baking in their vast, stainless steel kitchen.

  But Patrick Morgan? I guess with a mother like Trudy, just about anyone would seem like an improvement.

  We pull up the steep driveway and I see Dad has made the feeble attempt to string some colored lights on the house. It’s almost laughable compared to the Morgans’. But it’s clear he tried, so I keep a lid on the sarcasm for once.

  “Nice, Dad. Is this for me?”

  He turns to me. “I thought you’d like it. You always complain I’m lousy at Christmas.”

  “You’re a Jew. You’re not supposed to be good at it.”

  Dad chuckles and flashes me a rare full-cornered smile. “Well—you’re only half a Jew. I thought the other half would enjoy the lights.”

  His smile drops away as it slowly dawns on Dad that he’s fed me my next line.

  “So which is the half that’s left?” I say with a sideways smile. “The Jewish half or the Christian one?”

  Dad reaches over and places a hand on my shoulder. “Feeling sorry for yourself is understandable, but it’s not going to solve anything, Jeremy. You still have to think of your future.”

  “That pesky thing again.”

  Dad turns off the ignition. “Let’s go inside. I’ve ordered an Indian takeout feast in your honor. After all that lousy hospital food, I thought you’d be famished.”

  It’s not just my loss. It’s his, too, I realize. Which makes me feel even worse.

  “Thanks, Dad,” I say. “Indian food sounds great.”

  The trip from the car to the house is a heroic 3-D action-adventure movie. The snow is coming down hard. Dad decides that it’s too risky for me to navigate on crutches, and the wheelchair can’t roll on snow, so he slings my arm tightly over his shoulder. Clutching his waist, I hop in small, mincing leaps, a human pogo stick, until, wet and exhausted, we finally make it inside.

  We eat our Indian feast in the dining room. Dad’s got a pathetic little tree and an electric menorah set up. I slap on a smile as he tries to distract me with a story about a flaky client, but the heaviness bears down on me so hard I can barely taste the lamb korma, my favorite. I feel Mom watching from the shadows.

  “Are you even listening to me, Jeremy?” Dad asks.

  “Actually I was thinking about this Civil War general, Dan Sickles. His leg got shot off in battle. He had the bones of the ruined leg wired together so it could be put on display at the Army Medical Museum. Maybe I could have mine put on display in the school trophy case next to last year’s State Championship Cup.”

  Dad stares at me a beat, then lays down his fork. “Look, Jeremy. We can either tiptoe around each other and act like everything’s fine, or we can be realistic about things.”

  “Tiptoeing may be difficult.”

  Dad slams down his glass of water. “Jeremy!”

  “Okay. Sorry. I didn’t mean that. It’s just a reflex.”

  Dad shakes his head. “No more jokes.”

  “Okay.”

  “Jeremy, your grades matter more than ever if you still want to get into Cornell. Do you? You can, if you want.”

  “I haven’t thought that far ahead. Right now, I’m kind of wondering who we should donate all my left running shoes to.”

  Dad stands up and slams his fist on the table. The water glasses jiggle. “Damn it, Jeremy! It’s not funny. None of this is funny. I’ve tried to help you, tried to steer you down the right path, and yet, you—you did this.” Dad’s voice rises to the point where veins are popping in his neck and he is yelling. “How could you drink, with your mother’s history? How could you? You’ve done this to yourself,” he finishes quietly, tossing his napkin onto the table and striding out.

  I close my eyes and hang my head. “Because I’m an asshole,” I say to the empty room.

  A few minutes later, as I pull myself up on my crutches, Dad returns. His eyes are puffy and red, his hair damp, like he’s splashed his head with water.

  “I’ve arranged for Marisa Santiago to help you with your schoolwork. She’s a senior and has finished most of her requirements, so she has some free time to work with you. She aced her SATs, by the way.”

  “Her?”

  Dad
slants his head. “Are you implying because she’s an immigrant that she couldn’t have anything to offer?”

  “No,” I say softly. “I was just surprised, that’s all.”

  “She’s extremely bright. And she needs the money. Without her help, you’re up the creek. You’ve got to ace that AP Calculus if you want a shot at Cornell, and there’s very little time to finish your college applications. You’ve already missed more than three weeks of school.”

  I’m so tired, and I don’t want to tell Dad that I’d much rather drink myself into a stupor as I zone out on history books. That I don’t care about calculus, or Cornell. That I want to drink until I’m numb. But I just nod my head so I don’t set him off again. “I know.”

  He looks at me warily. “Get some rest. And don’t forget that stump massage regimen. It’s important if you want to get fitted for a prosthetic leg. You have the physical therapist coming to work with you in a few days.”

  “Sounds like fun,” I mutter, too low for him to hear.

  Dad stays home with me for the next two days. We don’t talk much. Mostly, I sleep, trying to forget, trying not to think of what they’ve done with my leg. A nurse comes by to review the changing of dressings and the proper wrapping of the stump.

  By the time he goes back to work on the third day, my eyeballs are nearly popping out of my head from thirst.

  I stagger clumsily on my crutches to visit the stash in the pantry. I don’t want to hurt Dad, but the panic is swirling in like the black waters of the Gorge. I imagine my lost leg sinking and vanishing into the murky depths. I open the pantry door, heave the giant bag of charcoal out of the way, and cry out.

  Gone. The bottles are all gone.

  I stand, leaning on my crutches so that with my one leg they form a tripod, and wait for things to quiet. My heart is racing. Since the painkiller dosage has been gradually decreased, panic has started to announce itself at the edges of my drug-induced equilibrium like an ominous organ chord in a cheesy old movie. Soon, the chords will be loud enough to drown out all other sound.