Lisa Unger - Fragile

“Why does everyone buy into her drama all the time?”

“Britney,” Denise said. “This is a serious situation. Charlene is only seventeen.”

“But she wants to go to New York.”

Denise released a little laugh. “She’s too young to know what she wants, and she’s certainly too young to know what she needs. New York City is a dangerous place, in more ways than you even know.”

Maggie didn’t hear the rest of the conversation as the two climbed into their vehicle, a gleaming black Infiniti now covered in a light dusting of snow. But even if they hadn’t moved out of earshot, Maggie would not have been able to hear over Elizabeth complaining about Chief Crosby. “Can you believe that old coot, just sitting there all fat and smug? I never could stand him.”

“Mom.”

Ricky had parked beside them, his green GTO looking more blue under the yellow parking lot light. Maggie didn’t like the car, though the old steering column had been replaced with one of the safer, new ones and the glass was new as well. So it wasn’t as unsafe as an old car could be. But it was still too powerful, encouraged her son to drive too fast, and burned too much gasoline. It was loud, too, always woke Jones when Ricky came in late. Naturally, that wasn’t a problem for Maggie, since she always dozed on the couch until her son came home.

“I mean, really.” Elizabeth was still talking. “What did he think he added to that meeting with all his rambling?”

“Maybe he was just showing his support.”

Her mother just grunted as Maggie helped the old woman into the car. “And where was that girl’s mother? And her useless stepfather?”

“I don’t know, Mom.”

Maggie shut the door, glad for a brief moment of silence as she walked around to the driver’s side. She started the car and turned on the heat, waiting for Ricky to show up at his car, which he did a few minutes later. She rolled down the window and he leaned in.

“That was a huge waste of time,” he said.

“It helped establish a time line at least,” said Maggie. “It might be useful in ways that aren’t clear now.”

Why did she always feel the need to do that-to bring up the positive, to look for the silver lining? And why was she surrounded with people who had the opposite tendency? Sometimes it could be truly exhausting.

“What happened to Dad?” asked Ricky. She saw the same hurt and disappointment on his face that she’d felt when she noticed Jones gone.

“He got a call,” she said, though this was just an assumption. “He said they were working on a lead. He’ll get in touch when he knows something. Don’t worry.”

“Yeah,” Ricky said with a nod. He looked down and moved a rock with his boot.

“I have to bring your grandmother back to her house,” Maggie said. “What are you going to do?”

“Go home, I guess. What else can I do? Maybe Britney’s right. Maybe Char wants to be gone from here. Maybe she did write that status update and I’m just kidding myself. Denial, you know?”

She put a hand on her son’s arm. “I’ll come home after I drop off your grandma,” she said. “We’ll talk some more. Brainstorm.”

“Okay,” he said, moving toward his car. “Bye, Grandma.”

“See you, kid. Hang in there.”

“Rick,” Maggie called. He turned to look at her. “It’s going to be okay.”

Her assurance sounded hollow, even to her own ears. She couldn’t-shouldn’t-offer that guarantee, of course. What she was trying to say was, “I’ll take care of you, no matter what happens.” But the truth was she couldn’t really take care of him any longer. She couldn’t bandage his knee and give him an ice cream; she couldn’t even hold him when he cried. Because he didn’t bring his wounds to her anymore, and he didn’t cry, either. And there wasn’t enough ice cream in the world to soothe the pain of love lost.

“I know.” He climbed into his car. She watched him drive away before she did the same.

Maggie always entered her mother’s house with some combination of nostalgia and claustrophobia. The very scent as she walked through the door brought a melee of memories, not of events, necessarily, but of feelings. She wondered if there was any human emotion she had not experienced within these walls-from love to rage, from joy to grief.

“Want some tea?” her mother asked, shedding her coat on the bench by the door and moving into the kitchen. Jones had taken to calling her the three-legged tyrant, claiming that the cane had made her bossier than ever.

“Sure.” Maggie didn’t want tea; she wanted to go back to Ricky. But Elizabeth needed her, too. She hadn’t spent any real time with her mother in a while and thought a cup of tea wouldn’t take long. Ricky had probably holed himself up his room, music blasting.

“Do you think something’s happened to that girl?” Elizabeth asked when Maggie entered the kitchen. She noticed that there were dishes in the sink and that crumbs had gathered at the baseboards around the cabinets. The sight gave her pause. Her mother was a meticulous housekeeper, always had been.

“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

“When she ran off before, how long was she gone?”

“Not overnight. Usually she was just with a friend. A few hours maybe.”

Rather than say anything about the dishes, Maggie moved over to the sink. They’d bought Elizabeth a new dishwasher, but she seemed disinclined to use it; Maggie always noticed the drying rack on the counter. She got the soap and sponge from under the sink and started washing.

“Why don’t you use the dishwasher?”

Elizabeth didn’t answer, taking cups from the cupboard beside Maggie.

“We made mistakes, you know, with Sarah. The police didn’t act for over twenty-four hours. There were a lot of wrong assumptions, bad information.”

“Jones isn’t making that mistake. He’s being thorough. Following up leads, checking stories.” Jones had asked Maggie not to say anything about Graham, and she wouldn’t. Not even to Elizabeth, especially not to Elizabeth .

“You know something.”

“No,” Maggie lied, scraping something hard and dry off a plate. “He promised to keep us posted, and I’ll keep you posted. I promise.”

The kettle started to whistle, and Maggie thought about how she usually made tea in the microwave and it never tasted right. She made a mental note to get a kettle with a whistle when things settled down. A red one.

While her mother poured the hot (not boiling) water into the flowered porcelain pot and stared at it as if she could will the tea to steep faster with the power of her gaze, Maggie finished the dishes, got the broom from the pantry, and swept the floor.

“We could get someone in to clean, Mom.”

“No,” Elizabeth said sharply. Maggie could see that she was embarrassed. “I can’t have that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s… frivolous.” She spat the word, as if she couldn’t stand the taste of it on her tongue.

“Oh, heaven forbid,” Maggie said, raising her palms in a gesture of mock horror.

“Maggie, please.”

“Sit down. I’ll pour the tea.”

For once, Elizabeth obeyed without a wisecrack or protest. As Elizabeth moved into the dining room, Maggie noticed for the first time that evening how stiff her mother’s movements were, how carefully she lowered herself into the chair.

“Mom, did you fall again?”

“No,” Elizabeth said too quickly.

Maggie poured the tea and carried the cups over. They both drank it without cream or sugar. She sat across from her mother at the table where she’d shared dinner with her parents most evenings of her growing up. The old oak piece, which nearly spanned the length of the long dining room and comfortably sat ten, had belonged to her grandmother. It had been stripped and refinished only twice in its life, had been so lovingly cared for that its surface still gleamed in the light. It felt as solid and permanent as a mountain, as if it could never be moved from the place where it stood, where it had stood as long as Maggie could remember.