The afternoon after Rex’s arrest, three police officers showed up at the apartment with a search warrant. I called Luke’s public defender, who said they had probable cause because not only did they have depositions claiming Luke was a dealer, they found the drugs in his gym bag in a car that he drove regularly. He told me I didn’t have a choice but to let them search the place. So I let them in, and as if they’d been given a map in advance they went straight to Luke’s bedroom and in less than a few minutes found two more bags of cocaine stuffed in a coffee can under his bed. It was like being in a nightmare. Luke, who had been watching from the hallway with me, went crazy. Yelling that he’d been framed, that Rex must have planted the drugs there in case he was caught. He yelled at me, too. Told me I had ruined his life by bringing Rex into our lives. I don’t think I really understood how right he was until the police officers wrestled him to the kitchen floor and handcuffed him while one of them read his rights. And still, I didn’t protect him. I should have thrown myself on that car and screamed and yelled until the cops and the judges and the lawyers all believed that I was the one responsible for the drugs. I should have been the one to go to prison. My life was nothing and Luke’s was just beginning. But I did not move. I did not yell. I did nothing as I watched the police drive my son away.
Lydia lowers the phone to her chest. Her face is a mix of agony and disbelief, and when she returns the receiver to her ear, her voice is softer than before, less hurried.
I know you think I’m a stupid woman, Winton, but even you won’t believe the next part. The next part is possible only when you have a weak woman who is afraid to be alone. Whose son has a scholarship to a school on the other side of the country and is leaving without looking back. It’s only possible when you are an idiot like me who will listen to a guy like you hour after hour, for months, listening to lies like songs on the radio.
The next part is when I stopped being a mother. I agreed to give a deposition about where Rex had been the days before the arrest, which was actually nowhere I knew. The truth was that he’d taken off without explanation or phone calls for three days, which was normal for Rex. He turned up that Saturday afternoon, without his Corvette, dropped off by a friend he’d been helping set up a restaurant in the city, he said. This was when he asked to borrow our car the next morning. His lawyer said that this little deposition from me was the last thing Rex needed to make sure he didn’t take part of the fall for Luke. It was, Carol said, the least I could do given the circumstances. So despite the fact that I had on the same day found out that Rex had a police record that included fraud and multiple drug charges, I gave the deposition. And when the lawyers and the DA and Rex then told me that I needed to convince Luke to plead guilty and get a reduced sentence, I did that, too. They told me that even though Luke was eighteen and not a minor, he would only get a slap on the wrist because it was his first offense, that it wouldn’t affect his scholarship or his life in any way. Do you think I bothered to check with anyone — Stanford, his coach, another lawyer — to see if they knew what they were talking about? Of course I didn’t. I listened to Rex. And instead of hiring a decent lawyer and letting a jury decide, I convinced Luke to go along with the plea that they all wanted from him. He was terrified by this point, in jail for days, and the DA spooked him with threats of spending all of his twenties behind bars. The public defender told Luke it was his best shot at a normal life, and in the end he pled guilty. He pleaded guilty and spent eleven months in prison.
What happened next won’t surprise you. Rex got off scot-free and in three weeks was gone. No good-bye, no phone call, no note, no thank-you. Nothing. I never saw or heard from him again. I’ll bet you saw that part coming, Winton. That part in the story when the dumb woman does or gives the guy who can make her laugh the thing he wants and then he disappears. You’ve heard that part of the story before. You’ve heard it and seen it and done it a thousand times.
Did I tell you a woman came to my door tonight and hit me in the face? She did. You probably know her father. Another dumb sucker like me sending money to strangers. At least he’s lucky enough to have a daughter to step in. Which she did. She let me have it. And thank God. She knocked some sense into me. Finally, someone knocked some goddamned sense into me! You know what she said? She said I destroyed people’s lives and she was right. She told me I had to stop, Winton. She told me to stop, and right now, even though it’s too late to do anyone any good, I’m stopping.
Before Winton speaks, Lydia stands up from the kitchen table. She drops the receiver from her ear and hugs it to her chest for a few seconds before carefully returning it to its cradle. Upstairs, the television has been turned off, and for the first time all evening her apartment is silent.
Silas
It has been nine months since he ditched his bike here and snuck down the driveway and across the lawn to the house. Like on that night, there is now a bright moon, not quite full, but nearly so. It lights the road and, opposite the chained driveway entrance, acres of apple and pear orchards where Silas and his friends spent many hours as kids. In the bluish light he pictures Ethan and Charlie whipping apples from long sticks into the stone walls and watching them explode. How many afternoons had they spent there smashing fruit and laughing their heads off? He remembers the Mexican workers who would wave at them and let them be. No one ever seemed to miss those apples or care that they were trespassing. When was the last time they came here? Silas wonders. Two summers ago? Three? It seems like another lifetime. Something shines in the dark across the road, and at first he can’t tell what it is, but as he steps closer, he sees it’s June Reid’s old mailbox, dented and silver and still standing. It leans to the left, and the red metal flag points toward the ground. He turns back toward the top of the driveway and descends slowly.
There is no house now, just a dark rectangle of dirt and rock. He sees no sign of anything burned or charred, no sign of what had been here. Its size surprises Silas. It does not look large enough to have once held rooms and furniture and all the complicated systems that keep a house operating. He approaches where the kitchen window would have been and stares into the air above the strange patch of earth. It looks like a garden, he thinks, waiting to be planted, or an enormous grave, freshly dug and filled. He hears a twig snap, and when he jumps to look behind him he sees what is left of the small stone shed, half-lit in moonlight like a ragged ghost. The small cedar shingle roof is mostly burned off but the walls and door remain. Impossibly, two of the boxes of Ball jars are still stacked there. He steps inside, sits down on the dirt floor, and leans back on the cold stone.
Nine months ago, he’d come back here because he had no choice. He tries to remember how late exactly it was, but that part is fuzzy. He knows he got home from work by eight o’clock, because he ate dinner with his parents and sisters. He remembers them needling him about the wedding preparations and the rehearsal dinner at the house. What he’d seen, what he’d heard, who was there. He couldn’t understand why all the interest, especially from his mother, who kept asking if he’d seen Luke’s mom, Lydia. She’d always had a problem with her. Did she wear one of her little, low-cut dresses like she used to turn up in at the Tap? His sister Gwen yelled, Mom! That’s not nice! His father laughed and it went on from there.