Lisa Unger - Fragile

Inside was a violin case and an old book bag. Maggie had never played the violin and had never owned a backpack like that one, simple navy with no flourish whatsoever. She felt a dryness in her mouth as she opened the lid on the violin case and looked at the instrument inside. The wood gleamed as if it had been recently polished. She plucked the strings; they were badly out of tune. A little pocket at the tip of the case contained a few rectangles of bow rosin. In the red velvet that lined the case, there was a name embroidered with black thread. She willed herself not to look at it, blurred her eyes so that she couldn’t read it. Her hands wanted to slam down the lid of the case, shove everything back into that gray bag and forget that she ever saw it. But, of course, she couldn’t do that. She made herself read the name Sarah.

“Mom, what’s wrong? You look sick.”

Maggie had rushed from his grandmother’s house and into the car as if she were trying not to get wet in the rain-except it wasn’t raining. In the driver’s seat, she looked pale, shaky.

“What happened? Did you see another raccoon?”

“I’m just tired,” she said. Her voice sounded hoarse. “It’s catching up with me.”

Everyone always talks about how well mothers know their children. No one ever seems to notice how well children know their mothers. He always knew when she was lying. She didn’t do it very often, and she wasn’t very good at it. He decided not to press her; they were both under stress. But this was the first quiet moment they’d had together, and Rick had something on his mind.

“Grandma said a lot of crazy things when I found her,” he said. His mother had started the car and was backing out of the drive.

“Like what?” Maggie was absent, her mind elsewhere.

“Weird stuff. Like, ‘She was already dead when he found her.’” His mother stopped the car and turned to look at him. Her always fair skin was a ghostly white, her blue eyes looked stormy gray, like they always did when she was sad or angry.

“I thought she was talking about Charlene,” he said. “But that wasn’t it. I asked her about it today when you went to get the car. She said she doesn’t remember.”

His mother still hadn’t said anything, was staring at him but clearly not seeing him. She had a glazed and distant look in her eyes.

“I didn’t believe her-that she didn’t remember,” he said. “She wouldn’t look at me. Told me to forget the ‘deranged ramblings of an old woman.’” He did his best Elizabeth impersonation on the last words, but Maggie didn’t crack a smile, just continued looking at him with that blank expression. He went on, even though he was starting to feel uncomfortable. “She said she was embarrassed by how I’d found her and not to make it worse.”

Maggie put the car into park and rested her head on the wheel.

“Mom?”

He put his hand on her shoulder; it scared him to feel her shoulders start to shake. He’d rarely seen her cry-once or twice after a fight with his father, maybe. Once when a patient of hers had died. The other night, when they were fighting about the tattoo, he’d seen tears spring to her eyes. But he’d never seen her break down.

“Mom? What is it? Why are you crying?”

Listening to her cry, he felt like crying now, too. Everything-his grandmother, his father, and Charlene, all of them broken and hurt-the stress and pain of it was an expanding pressure behind his eyes, a ratcheting ache in his neck and shoulders. He felt like opening the car door and running and running until he was too exhausted to feel anything at all. But he didn’t; he stayed in his seat, stayed with his mom.

“I’m sorry. I’m okay,” she said, lifting her head suddenly and looking at him. She wiped the tears from her eyes and then reached out and put her hand on his face. Her palm felt damp and warm. “I’m so sorry.”

“Mom,” he said, leaning in to hug her. “I’m not three. You’re allowed to cry.”

She held his eyes for a second, then gave a quick nod and started digging into her purse. She pulled out a little rectangular package of tissues, blew her nose and wiped her eyes. She handed him a clean one, and he took it even though he didn’t need it.

“Mom. What do you think she meant?”

“You know what, kiddo? I really have no idea. I’ll talk to her.”

She put the car in reverse and started backing out of the driveway. He felt a release, then. He’d told his mother; he’d felt an urgency to do that. And now that he had, some of the tension he’d been holding left him.

“When you see Charlene, will you tell her I want to see her? Just as a friend. Will you tell her that? That I just want to be her friend.”

“Is that true?” she asked. She turned onto the main road that would lead them home. “That you just want to be her friend?”

His mother seemed more solid but still not herself. Her voice was distant and strained.

“I don’t know,” he said, blowing out a breath. “I don’t know what I want.”

The sound of the blinker seemed unusually loud, and he realized that he’d turned the radio off. He leaned forward and turned it on; he’d been looking for music his mother would like on the XM radio. He’d picked the eighties station. He didn’t recognize the song that was playing.

“You’re right, you know?” she said. “You’re not three anymore. You’re old enough to understand that Charlene has been through something awful, something that will take time, a lot of time, to move past. Are you prepared to be her friend through that, to be what she needs when she needs it and put your own desires aside?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess.” He hated the way his own voice sounded-boyish and petulant.

“Good,” she said. “That’s good.”

She started driving again. They didn’t exchange another word until they got home.

“Are you hungry?” his mother asked.

“Maybe I’ll order some Chinese?” he said. He was hungry, ravenously hungry.

“That sounds good,” Maggie said. She reached into her bag and handed him her wallet. “I just want some soup.”

She went up to her bedroom and closed the door. He stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched after her, feeling like he should apologize or comfort her-or something. But instead he just grabbed the cordless phone and ordered enough food with his mother’s credit card to feed the neighborhood; then he turned on the television and zoned out for a while.

Worse than the violin were the contents of the book bag-textbooks Maggie remembered well, notebooks filled with scribbles and doodles, Sarah’s name and address written neatly on the inside covers. A red one for math, a blue one for English, a green one for science. A biology quiz on which she’d earned a B plus. There was a note obviously passed back and forth between her and Melody for days: “Don’t you think Jones Cooper is the cutest boy in school? No doubt! Let’s watch MTV after school today.”

She hated that she’d seen those things, hated that she’d touched them. She could barely stand to ask herself how they’d gotten in her mother’s attic. Who had put them there?

In the master bath, she ran the shower, stripped off her clothes, and got beneath the scalding hot stream. She let it soak her hair and beat on her shoulders. She took the shower gel on the ledge, squeezed it onto a loofah, and started scrubbing her body, hard, hard enough to hurt. She wanted to clean it all off her, to shed the skin she was in. She couldn’t name everything she felt-anger, fear, the siren song of denial luring her from instinctive dread. It could be some bizarre coincidence that had led those missing pieces of evidence to come to rest in her mother’s attic-Elizabeth and Jones both ignorant of their presence. Couldn’t it?