You Think It, I'll Say It(54)

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry—I’m—by the way, are you under twenty-four? Because I read about this program where if you are, you can take a class to prepare for the GED and it’s subsidized. Maybe that would be a good thing for you and Derek?”

She lifted her head and looked at me, appearing bewildered. In that moment, from inside the dining room, Karen rapped on a closed windowpane and made a thumbs-up gesture. “Oh!” I said. “I think they found him!”

Back inside, the entry hall was still dense with mothers and children, and Derek, before she passed him off to his mother, was in Alaina’s arms. On his left cheek was the imprint of a pillow or a wrinkled sheet, and he was yawning without covering his mouth. I heard Alaina say, “And then I just thought, Could that little lump on the top bunk be him? I was on my way out, but something made me check one more time….”

The combination of the accumulated people, the relieved energy, and the storm outside made it seem almost like we were having a party; at any moment, a cake would appear. “You gotta watch your babies like a hawk,” someone beside me said, and when I glanced over, I saw that it was Meshaun’s mother. Her voice was not disapproving but happy. “Like. A. Hawk,” she repeated, nodding her head once for each word.



* * *



—

When we finally took the children down to the playroom, I couldn’t shake a feeling of agitation. Alaina held hands in a circle with Na’Shell and Marcella while, in an English accent, singing the My Fair Lady song “I Could Have Danced All Night,” and if I’d ever hated anyone more, I didn’t recall when.

At the end of the hour, I did, for once, let Alaina stay behind and turn off the lights, and as Karen and I climbed the steps with the children, I murmured, “Do you think Alaina could have had something to do with Derek’s disappearance? She’s kind of obsessed with him.”

In a normal-volumed voice, Karen said, “No, she found Derek.”

“Yeah, supposedly,” I said. “But she came here once in the middle of the week just to give him a present. And she showed up late tonight, which she never does.” As the children joined their waiting mothers in the entry hall, Karen and I said our goodbyes to them. Then, still speaking under my breath and just to Karen, I said, “Has it ever occurred to you that Alaina might be a little—I don’t know—unhinged?”

Karen laughed. “She just marches to the beat of a different drummer.”

“She has really bad judgment, like with the parade. She didn’t even realize how the mothers reacted.”

“I thought the parade was cute.”

I tried not to show my surprise. “I don’t trust her,” I said. “I wouldn’t put it past Alaina to have hidden Derek in some closet so she could be the one to find him.”

For several seconds, Karen looked at me. But all she said was “I don’t think she’d do that.”

Then Alaina herself was at the top of the stairs, and as the three of us walked out the front door, she said, “Whew—what a night, huh? I think we all need a drink, and tonight I’m not taking no for an answer, Miss Frances.”

“I’m not going out for a drink with you,” I said. I looked at Karen as I added, “Bye.”

“Frances,” Alaina said. “Hold on.” We’d reached the bottom of the steps. “If I offended you when I asked about your OCD, I want to apologize.”

I stared at her. “Excuse me?”

“I have a cousin who has it, and it doesn’t have to be this debilitating thing,” Alaina said. “My cousin’s on medication, and she’s doing real well.”

“I’m not obsessive-compulsive,” I said. “And it’s none of your business.”

“Frances, it’s okay. I’m not—”

“It’s okay?” I said. I could hear my voice growing louder.

“Frances, relax,” Karen said.

“You’re telling me it’s okay when you’re the one who has no grip on reality?” I said to Alaina. “It’s obvious that you live in this imaginary world where you believe—you believe—” I paused. Our faces were only a few feet apart, and in the dusk I saw a tiny dot of my spit land on Alaina’s jaw. She didn’t rub it away; she seemed paralyzed, staring at me with curiosity and confusion. “You believe that people are watching you go through your life,” I said. “That if you use a big vocabulary word, someone will be impressed, or if you make a joke, someone will laugh, or that you’re scoring points by buying glitter for underprivileged children. But no one cares. Do you understand that? No one gives a shit what you do. And everyone can see how desperate and pathetic you are, so you might as well just stop pretending that you—”

“Whoa there, Frances,” Karen said. “Let’s all take a deep breath.”

“Next time she’ll probably kidnap Derek for good,” I said. “Then you can tell me to take a deep breath.”

I had always respected Karen, but in this moment she seemed dismissive of me because I was young; she seemed fundamentally oblivious. I turned to leave, and Alaina said, “We just want to help you, Frances.”

I whirled around. Though this was when I lunged toward Alaina, though I placed my hands on either side of her throat, though I pressed them inward and felt the delicate bones of her neck beneath her warm and grotesque skin, I really didn’t mean to hurt her; it’s not that I was trying to strangle her. Her eyes widened and she was blinking a lot, her eyelids flapping as she brought her own hands up to my wrists to pry my hands away. But that gave me something to resist. I squeezed more tightly, and she made a retching noise.