the petty suburban abuses, a terrible marriage polluting the air you breathe, a stepfather’s inappropriate glances and crude offhand remarks making you feel small and dirty, a selfish, silly mother who couldn’t seem to decide between the roles of harsh disciplinarian and best girlfriend, leaving you wary and confused. Nobody tells you what to do about those things. Nobody rescues you with a big red truck, sirens blaring. You’re supposed to live with it. But it hurts, damages, like a toxin in the water you can’t smell or taste. It’s only later that its pathology takes hold. You wind up on some shrink’s couch for the rest of your life.
She was thinking this as she pushed the door open and walked down the hall toward the unfamiliar silence, wet nails forgotten now, leaving a smudge of green on the carpet with each step. At the top of the stairs, she stopped.
“Mom?” she called. There was no answer, but she heard something now. Something soft and shuddering, irregular in pitch and rhythm. Weeping. Someone was weeping. She moved slowly down the stairs.
“Mom?”
3
Marshall Crosby was sinking into depression again. Maggie could clearly see that. All the physical cues were there. His hair hung limp and unwashed over his thick glasses. It was one of the first things she’d noticed about him when he began his sessions with her, that he rarely bothered to brush the hair from his eyes. Instead he peered out from beneath it with a variety of expressions—disdain, defiance, shyness, or, like today, a kind of morose sadness. Something invested in itself. His bony shoulders slouched inside a threadbare navy hooded jacket; his knees were spread wide, hands dug deep into the pockets of his jeans. He had the purple shiners of fatigue under each eye.
“So how’s it going today, Marshall?” Maggie said. She sat in the leather chair across from the couch where he sat. She smoothed out her skirt and laid her notebook on her lap.
“Good, I guess.”
“You seem tired.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Up late with something? Or having trouble sleeping?”
A shrug. He turned to glance out the window as if he were expecting someone, then leaned back again.
“It matters,” she said, trying to catch his eyes. But he stared now at the low coffee table between them. “We might need to alter your meds if you’re having trouble falling or staying asleep.”
“I was up late.” Was there the slightest edge of impatience to his voice?
“Studying?” she said.
Marshall gave Maggie a sneer. “Studying is for pussies.”
“Who told you that?” As if she had to ask. She knew Marshall’s father well enough.
Marshall offered another shrug. She examined him for a moment, then let her eyes drop to the notebook on her lap. On the pad, she saw that she’d scribbled “Slipping away.” She didn’t remember writing it, but that was exactly how she felt about him.
Years ago, a frustrated teacher had pegged Marshall as learning disabled, and the label had followed him through grammar school, on into middle school and high school. For years, bored, miserable, abused at home, bullied at school, he’d floundered. Until Henry Ivy, Marshall’s history teacher and the school counselor, recognized what everyone else had missed. Marshall was an abused boy presenting as slow. Henry offered Marshall a hand—some tutoring, some amateur counseling. Recent aptitude tests had revealed, to everyone’s amazement, that Marshall possessed a near genius-level IQ.
Marshall’s father, coincidentally, was arrested around the same time for a DUI offense. So Marshall had been living with his aunt Leila, uncle Mark, and two older male cousins, Tim and Ryan. Leila took Mr. Ivy’s advice and brought Marshall to Maggie for evaluation and counseling. They’d all worked together to get him on track. The improvement had been nothing short of miraculous. Until six weeks ago, when Marshall’s father was released.
“So how is it living with your father again?”
“It’s okay, I guess. He’s not much of a cook.”
Marshall was given the choice to stay with Leila and Mark Lane; but he chose to return to his father. He’d been back at home just about three weeks, and now his grades were dropping, hygiene failing, blank expression returning. Maggie suspected that it was only a matter of time before Marshall went off his meds and started missing appointments. It made her angry, yes, but mostly it made her feel sad and powerless. After seeing Marshall last week, she’d been so overcome by those feelings that she’d called her own therapist.
“Therapy only works when the patient is a willing participant,”