His mother took it in both her own, ignoring the blood. Her hands were large and soft, and they seemed to swallow Joan’s.
“My goodness, you’re as cold as a Popsicle. Come inside, honey. Let’s make you a cup of tea and get you cleaned up.”
Maria led Joan away, and Max sighed, relieved.
Herman stopped in front of Max, glancing toward the woman as she passed. He said nothing, waiting for Max to explain.
Max rubbed his jaw and took a deep breath, still trying to make sense of all that had happened.
“She’s the mother of one of the missing kids,” Max told his dad. “I went to her apartment in Mesick to ask her some questions. Her husband was in the process of giving her a severe beating. I interrupted them.”
Herman’s eyes had gone wide behind his spectacles. He folded his newspaper and tucked it into the back pocket of his trousers.
“What happened to her husband?”
“I kicked the shit out of him.”
Herman briefly closed his eyes, his mouth pursing into a tiny little bud. It wasn’t anger that flashed across Herman’s face, but fear.
“And now what will you do with the wife? Hmmm… I’d imagine her husband is looking for her at this moment. Growing angrier with every second that has passed since he watched her climb onto the back of a strange man’s motorcycle.”
Max frowned. He hadn’t thought about that part. He was good looking, young, drove a bike. He intimidated regular men, but jealous psychopaths? He’d never pissed one of those off before.
“What was I supposed to do, Dad? Leave here there to get beaten to a pulp? Did you see her? She can’t weigh more than a hundred and ten pounds. Her husband is two-fifty. If I hadn’t shown up, she’d probably be dead right now.”
Herman sighed and touched the dark splotches on Max’s shirt.
“His blood, not mine,” Max explained.
“Good. You’re a good boy, Max. This was not a good idea, but… well, we’re not always given many choices, are we? Come on. Let’s call Frank.”
“Frank Bellman?”
Herman nodded. “He’s not with the force anymore, but he’ll know what to do.”
When they walked inside, Max spotted Joan in the living room. Maria had wrapped an afghan around her shoulders and she held a mug of tea in both hands.
“What a day,” Joan sighed.
She’d showered and changed into a pair of Max’s pants that his mother had saved in that strange way that mothers would hoard their children’s clothes, as if they wouldn’t be out of style by the time their grandchildren came along to claim them. He hadn’t fit into them since he was fifteen. She’d also put on one of Maria’s heavy crocheted sweaters. Her auburn hair lay in a thick wet sheath down her back.
“Has he always done that?” Max pointed at her face.
She picked at her apple cake and looked away, tilting her head in an almost imperceptible nod.
“I shouldn’t talk about him. He’ll be angry.”
Max’s mouth dropped open. She intended to go back to him. “I’m a stranger to you,” he said, thinking of a therapist he’d dated briefly.
She had told Max it wasn’t her personality or her academic training that made people open up to her. It was her detachment. They didn’t know her. They didn’t have to fear they were isolating their community by revealing their secrets. “Nothing you say to me will get back to your husband,” he promised.
She nodded, glanced at him, and pushed her dessert around the plate.
“Appfoocooking,” Joan said, slicing a forkful of the cake. “That’s what your mom called this.”
“Apfelkuchen,” he corrected her. “It’s German, but it’s probably easier just to say apple cake.”
“Apple cake,” she sighed. “It’s very good, but…”
“But you’re not hungry?”
Joan nodded.
While Herman had called Frank, Max had eaten two roast beef sandwiches, inhaling them while standing at the open refrigerator. His appetite only mildly satiated, Max followed the sandwiches with a slice of cake and a glass of milk. Now he had the drowsy fullness of overconsumption.
Joan set her cake aside and lifted her mug of tea.
“It started before we got married,” she said, gazing into her cup as if afraid to see Max’s expression as she told her story. “I was already pregnant then. Seventeen years old and stupid in love with Denny Watts.”
She blushed with the memory.
“He was the quarterback.” She laughed. “I wasn’t a cheerleader. I never played sports because my family never had the money for the uniforms and shoes.” And well,” she opened her arms. “I’ve always been scrawny. I couldn’t believe he liked me. Maybe I would have waited…” She set her cup down and pulled at the curled corners of the doily beneath her plate. “Anyway, I didn’t wait. And I got pregnant just like my mom said I would. I was four months along the first time he slapped me. I had gone to his house to watch a movie, and he wanted to… make love. I was so tired during the first trimester. I threw up a lot. I told him I wasn't in the mood, and he backhanded me. He cried after, apologized, and swore he’d never do it again.”
Joan spoke in an off-handed way, as if she were telling someone else’s story, not her own.
“But he did,” Max said.
“Yeah, a lot.”
“Why did you stay with him?”
Joan frowned, the tiny crease between her brows giving the first hint of her true age. Otherwise she looked young, far too young to have a twelve-year-old child, and too young to have spent more than a decade getting beaten by an angry husband.
“That’s always the question, isn’t it? And people ask it with all this judgement. Why do you stay? I have answers. I have a thousand reasons. Our son, money, because for many years I loved him, for the good times, out of fear. I’m not sure if anyone who hasn’t been there can understand. I’ve met other women who live with angry men and they understand. I’ve left him a couple times.”
“And he makes you come back?”
She laughed and touched a thin gold necklace resting in the hollow beneath her throat.
He saw three gold hearts intertwined.
“Just the opposite. He becomes the man I fell in love with again. He quits drinking, buys me flowers, sends me notes at work. He asks me out on dates. He buys presents for Nicholas. Last time he bought us a car.”
Her face contorted bitterly.
“He wrapped it around a tree six months ago, a few nights after Nicholas went missing. He’d been at the bar all night. He told the policeman he was searching for our missing child, but…” she shook her head. “He’d been at the bar. There was a woman in the car too. She had a concussion. Denny wasn’t hurt, but our car was totaled. Now I take the bus again.”
Joan scooped up a tiny forkful of cake and put it in her mouth.
“This is very sweet,” she said. “It’s delicious.”
“Maria Wolfenstein believes sugar and tea can cure anything that ails us.”
“My mom didn’t cook,” Joan said, still gazing at the strudel. “She worked two jobs. One in the factory and the other at the laundromat. My father stayed home with us kids, but… well he didn’t cook either. Like Denny, he preferred to drink.”
Max watched her, the vacant look in her eyes as she shared some of the most intimate aspects of her life, a life so foreign to his own, he struggled to imagine it.
“What happened the day Nicholas disappeared, Joan?”
She looked up and the distance in her eyes faded. He saw pain course in. Her shoulders turned inward, and she slumped forward slightly.
“Nicholas is the only thing I’ve done right. He’s the only thing I… live for, maybe even the only thing I love anymore.”