Russell Blake - Silver Justice

I will not launch into another ‘beat up on Silver for being so stupid as to marry Eric’ session. Silver thrust the mental images away, preferring to focus on Kennedy in the here and now. The only good thing to come out of the union.

“Are you done with your homework?” Silver asked as Kennedy packed her books into her bag.

“Half an hour ago. Miriam and I were just going over the next chapter so I’d be prepped.”

When had Kennedy switched to calling her Miriam instead of Miss Miriam?

“All right, then. Let’s make tracks for home, shall we?” Silver suggested, her voice adopting more of a commanding, no-arguments approach than her usual light demeanor. Kennedy better not start trying to call her Silver instead of Mom any time soon, though, or there would be one more child sold to the circus this year.

“’Bout time,” Kennedy muttered, but Silver let it go. She was at an age where she was starting to test boundaries — so Silver chose her battles carefully. Token disgruntled ennui didn’t really qualify.

“You’re welcome,” Silver replied, pretending to mishear her angelic offspring’s comment. She exchanged a glance with Miriam, who barely concealed her smile.

“Okay, you two. Stay out of trouble. Enjoy the ballet,” Miriam enthused.

“Again. Sorry for being late. Monster day,” Silver explained.

“Don’t sweat it. See you manana .”

Mother and daughter trudged down the sidewalk, part of the swarm that was the New York rush hour. Silver always felt the desire to hold Kennedy’s hand, but she had rejected that as suitable only for babies a few years back. It seemed like only yesterday she’d been a toddler, wobbling around on unsteady legs, a drunken sailor on a pitching deck. Now, she was all energy and attitude and independence, having modeled her mother’s self-dependent view of the world.

They crossed the street and weaved their way through the rushing humanity, and made it to the flat in twelve minutes, Silver glancing nervously at her watch. They wouldn’t have much time.

“Go clean up, and don’t dawdle. You need to eat before you go. No excuses,” Silver ordered as she unlocked the two deadbolts, to be greeted by the heady stagnant air from the hall as it wafted past her.

“What’s on the menu?” Kennedy asked as she pushed into the tiny entry foyer and dumped her backpack by the walnut side table.

“Leftover spaghetti. Your favorite.”

“I don’t want any. It’s fattening,” Kennedy said on her way to her room.

Silver considered Kennedy’s frame: three percent body fat, all petulant arms and legs and winsome grace.

“If you eat two pounds of it. But that’s what’s for dinner, so while your health and fitness concerns are noted, you either eat it or someone else will be going to the performance tonight.”

Kennedy greeted the ultimatum with the closing of her bedroom door. Dinner was a purely token, increasingly obligatory battle that she didn’t even expect to win. She was merely signaling yet another veiled criticism of Silver’s parenting. Par for the course as kids went through their snotty phase. Silver only hoped she would grow out of it by twenty-five or so.

While Silver was microwaving and setting the table, Kennedy emerged from the shared bathroom, decked in head-to-toe black — black jeans, a black T-shirt with black sequins on it, and a black jacket she’d insisted on for her tenth birthday. Silver bit her tongue and decided against commenting. Kennedy had taken a decidedly gloomy turn over the last six months, but on balance it was the least of her problems — at least she’d stopped pulling her eyelashes out; what the therapist had diagnosed as Trichotillomania — a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder caused by anxiety.

That had started when she was eight and had developed into a real problem over the course of a year. Kennedy had seemed completely unaware she was doing it, and it had driven Silver nutty on the occasions she had picked her up from daycare and found her to be missing half her upper lashes. They had tried everything — wearing gloves at night, putting petroleum jelly on her lashes, cognitive behavioral techniques — but the problem had continued until Silver had sought a second opinion from a doctor who had been recommended by the school. Dr. Thelma, as she liked to be called, was a large, friendly, cheery woman who specialized in treating children. She had quickly gotten to the root problem — Kennedy felt unbalanced and uncertain about the future since the marriage had ended, and internalized a lot of her worry, ultimately taking it out on herself.

They had worked together as a team on modifying the urge to pull, and Kennedy had been doing well for almost nine months — she’d channeled her dissatisfaction into more traditional forms of protest, like the adoption of the ghoulish styling she and some of her school friends now favored. If it was a choice of a kid who wanted to look like a pallbearer in a vampire film or one that was mutilating herself, that was an easy one.

Silver glanced at her as she walked around the small dining table. “Is that makeup? Eyeliner?” Silver asked, trying to keep her voice neutral.

“Just a little. It’s a special occasion. Big production. The theater.”

“Off. Now. No arguments. We’ve discussed this, and not a chance in hell do you wear makeup before you’re in high school, at the earliest. Go. Don’t start down this road tonight, Kennedy, or I will end it here and now, and you will not be going anywhere. Understood?”

Kennedy pushed back her chair, noisily scraping it against the hardwood floor. “Lots of the other girls are wearing it,” she protested.

“No, they aren’t. Not at ten. And by the way, if lots of the other girls were taking drugs, or jumping in front of busses, would that make it a good idea?”

“This sucks. I feel like I’m in some kind of nightmare prison,” she said, stomping her black hiking boots as she retreated to the bathroom.

“Yes. Poor you. A nightmare where you go to the ballet and have a private chef preparing your meals. It’s a kind of hell on earth, I can see already. How do you manage?”

The bathroom door slammed.

Silver wasn’t even going to get into the issue of Kennedy touching her makeup. That was the least of the offenses, and one better left for another day.

She put the plates of steaming spaghetti on the table and waited patiently. Three, four, five minutes crawled by before Kennedy emerged, sans eyeliner, and truculently took her seat. Silver chanced a surreptitious peek at Kennedy’s eyelashes — thank God, all there.

“Don’t worry. I’m not pulling them out,” Kennedy said as she lifted a forkful of pasta and blew on it, watching the steam rise from the plate as she gauged how hot it was.

“That’s good, sweetheart. You’ve made incredible progress.”

“Yeah. I guess being a nutcase is a lot of trouble for everyone,” she tossed out, then stuffed the noodles in her mouth.

Silver put her fork down, considering this new wrinkle. What was bringing it on?

“You’re not a nutcase, and you’re not a lot of trouble. Kennedy. Look at me. What is going on in your head? Why are you being this way? Why start a fight with me when you’re not even going to see me for the next three hours? Talk. Come on.”

“Never mind.”

Silver refused to rise to the dismissive bait. “That isn’t much of an explanation.”

“Whatever.”

Silver counted slowly to three, fighting the urge to react. Kennedy, for whatever reason, was playing let’s make Mommy miserable, and she wasn’t going to give her daughter the power to trigger an explosion.

“When this case is over, I was thinking about us going away for a week, whenever school has a break. Maybe to Florida,” she tried, changing the subject to something more upbeat.