When Marcus reported that there was no computer at the house where he was staying, no fax machine, not even a phone,-That’s right, Marcus had said, I guess these people I’m staying with are old-fashioned or something-Zachary Celtic had grudgingly written down the address, saying he would send telegrams.
So here was a telegram, delivered by a person so angry with him that she couldn’t even knock on the door and hand it to him. Marcus slit the envelope with his pinky nail.
21 July
Dear Marcus,
How is the book coming along? No pressure, man, just checking in. September will be here before you know it! Call if you need guidance-that’s what editors are for! (And to rip the shit out of your first three drafts, of course-only kidding, man!)
Best regards,
Z
Marcus winced. Zachary Celtic wasn’t used to writing to black people if he thought the only name they related to was “man.”
The telegram reignited the panic that lay in the bottom of his stomach like cold kindling. With trembling hands, Marcus took the legal pad from his bureau drawer. My mother is a murderer. Even that was more than Marcus wanted to say. He tossed the legal pad onto his bed and opened the louvered folding door of his closet. His beautiful white shirt was the only thing hanging. Marcus’s black leather duffel lay across the closet floor, as hideous as a body bag. The only thing that made Marcus feel worse than the duffel was the pair of dock shoes, the left shoe stuffed with Constance’s unread letters. Those three things-the shirt, the duffel, and the shoes-were physical proof of the five hundred dollars he would never be able to pay back and thirty thousand dollars he would never see unless he could figure out how he wanted to tell his story.
Marcus lay back on his white bed. The dead bodies in your own apartment… your mother, pretty woman, too, strapped to the gurney, facing the long needle… the blood-splattered sheet… You get to tell the story in your own words, kid. I’ll bet that’s something you’ve been itching to do… Your mother as, like, an educated woman, a teacher and everything, and one day she just… snaps.
Yes, Marcus thought, she just snapped.
He didn’t know why his mother had killed Angela and Candy; he didn’t have an explanation and it wasn’t fair-to his readers or to his mother-to make one up.
Winnie and Marcus didn’t sit together at the beach anymore. Instead, Winnie sat on the deck with Garrett and sometimes Piper, and Marcus went to the beach alone. He swam the butterfly, some of his strongest swimming, because he knew Winnie was watching. He thought about how he could have won first place in every meet last season. He’d held himself back on purpose. Now that took skill, because nobody suspected he was throwing his races. Or maybe his coach did suspect and decided to keep quiet because he didn’t want Marcus to win. He didn’t want to face the headlines any more than Marcus did. MURDERER’S SON WINS ALL-QUEENS INVITATIONAL.
Marcus grew lonely, especially in the hours after dinner when he and Winnie normally played games. Now he stayed in his room, listening to his portable CD player, reading about spies, thinking about his mother.
For the first time all summer, he missed TV. And with utter dismay, Marcus realized that he wouldn’t be able to write a word while he was so agitated about Winnie.
He considered going home. It was nearly the end of July; he’d had six good weeks. The atmosphere in his white room wasn’t conducive to writing, that was a big problem, so the best thing was to get home-away from so much whiteness. Away from the Newtons.
He called home on a Tuesday night, enjoying the unconcealed intrigue on Winnie’s face when he stood up from the dinner table and announced that he was riding one of the mountain bikes into town. She didn’t say anything, but her eyebrows moved a fraction of an inch, belying her thoughts: What is he doing in town at night? It was likely she also had questions about the telegram-Marcus had checked the envelope and was relieved to discover there was no return address to give him away. Let her wonder. Let her wonder, too, when he disappeared for good.
It cost two dollars and fifty cents in quarters to get a line to Queens on the pay phone, and at first the answering machine picked up. Marcus listened for a few seconds to his father’s melancholy intonation, “We’re not in at the moment, please-”
Then, the voice was cut off, replaced by the breathless alto of Marcus’s sister, LaTisha. “Yeah? What?”
“Or ‘hello,’ ” Marcus said, thinking despite himself that even if the Newtons had a phone they would never answer by saying “Yeah? What?” “You could say hello.”
“Marcus?” LaTisha said, her voice interested, if not apologetic. “Is this Marcus?”
“Yes.”
“How are you?” LaTisha asked. “How’s Nantucket? Is it incredible? Dad says you never describe it.”
Marcus looked out at the darkened street. The shops were lit up and people strolled by eating ice cream cones. A Lincoln Navigator rumbled down the cobblestones and stopped in front of Twenty-one Federal. Two women climbed out wearing brightly colored sundresses, followed by a man wearing a navy blazer over what Marcus guessed was a Paul Stuart shirt. The man escorted both women up the steps of the restaurant while the driver of the Navigator-whom Marcus could only identify as a madras-clad elbow-called out, “Order my drink while I park this beast! Mount Gay and tonic!” How to describe such a place to his father or LaTisha? All Marcus could think was that this was the life Constance had visualized for herself-a life of glamour and privilege and ease.
“It’s fine,” he said.
“Fine?” LaTisha repeated. “That doesn’t help me any. What’s the beach like? And the house. Is it really, really huge? Is it a mansion?”
“It’s not a mansion,” Marcus said. “It’s just a house.”
“On the beach, right?”
“On a bluff overlooking the beach.”
“A bluff? That sounds cool. And the family-is the family okay, or are they, you know, snotty?”
“Snotty” was the wrong word, though Marcus understood why it was the word that came to LaTisha’s mind. Because that was what Marcus had feared, too, before he got here-that the New-tons would be snotty, snobby, that they would look down on him. That was the reason for buying the props-the shirt, the deck shoes, the leather bag. He had thought, before he spent any time with these people, that it would be about money. But it was ten times as complicated as that. The Newtons were just so very sad-as sad as Marcus was-and they kept getting sadder. Marcus cleared his throat and shook his head. He didn’t want to start feeling sorry for them now.
“The family is fine,” Marcus said. A blatant lie. “Listen, is Dad there?”
“It’s Tuesday,” LaTisha said. “He’s at support group until nine-thirty.”
“Oh,” Marcus said. He’d forgotten about the support group. The details of his life in Queens had all but vanished from his mind. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” LaTisha said. “Watching TV with Ernestine.”
Ernestine was a girl with learning disabilities from down the hall who had remained LaTisha’s steadfast friend through everything. Marcus suspected Ernestine lacked a full understanding of what had happened with their mother, but he was glad LaTisha had her for company, even if all they ever did together was watch TV.