Page 52 of Cockpit
“No.”
“Mr. Malone, there’s been an incident here at school. You need to come and get Luke.”
“What’s wrong?”
“He’s been in a fight.”
My laugh filled the line. “You’re kidding, right? My Luke?”
“I’m sad to say I’m not kidding. We have a zero-tolerance policy for fights.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Luke, buddy, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what happened. You’ve sat here for the past two hours, now it’s time to talk.”
“Nothing happened.” He spits the words out at me, but his bottom lip quivers.
“Hi. What’s up?” Sidney’s voice filled the line and aggravated every single part of me—good and bad. “Where are you?”
“I can’t make it.”
“What?” The superior tone in her voice sliced open my temper, the intonation implying no one ever cancels on her and she didn’t quite know how to handle it.
“I can’t make it.” Deal with it.
I think back to what a day it’s been so far, and hell if I’m not sitting here at seven o’clock at night, trying to coax my eight-year-old to explain what happened. All I got out of the principal was that it had to do with that goddamn photo in the paper, some teasing, and then Luke threw the first punch.
I try again.
“Something happened, or you wouldn’t have hit him.”
“I told you, nothing happened.”
Christ. I shove a hand through my hair and walk to one end of the room and back. This is something Grant should be doing. He’s the cop. Skilled at interrogations. I should call him to come do the dirty work for me—play bad cop so I can be good cop—because this parenting shit is for the birds.
“Fine. Then nothing is going to happen for you, either. No baseball this weekend. No sleepover at George’s house. No—”
“He asked me if the lady you were kissing in the paper was my mom.” His voice is so quiet I can barely hear him.
“What?” I ask, even though I heard him perfectly well.
“I told him no. I didn’t know what picture he was talking about. He laughed and said you weren’t going to get married, and it was because of me. How could she want to be my mom when my own didn’t love me enough to stick around? Is that what you wanted to know?” He shoves the chair back so hard it falls to the floor, making a sickening thud.
Angry tears well in his eyes. His little body shakes with anger, and his fists are clenched so tightly his fingers are turning bloodless. All I can do is stare at him—my heart broken, my head more than fucked up.
“That’s a lie.” No parenting award for that one, but it’s all I can muster as I sit and watch my little man.
“Then where is she?” he screams at me as the first tear slips down his cheek. “If she loves me like you say she does, then how come she never comes home? How come she never calls me? How come all the other kids’ moms love them and do things with them and mine doesn’t? How come she doesn’t want me?”
I catch him as he tries to run past me. I take a hit to my shoulder and kick to my thigh as I pick him up and hold him to me as tightly as I can. The agony I feel as a parent is a hundred times more painful than any hit or kick of his ever
could be, so I squeeze him with every ounce of love I have until his struggles turn to sobs and his hands fist in my shirt. His tears are hot through the fabric.
I was warned this phase would come, by the psychologist I talked to after Claire left. By the friends I’ve met whose husbands stepped out of their children’s lives during their infancy. The rage and the hurt and the sense of unworthiness. No amount of warning could have prepared me for hitting this head-on.
All the hate, all the hurt, all the everything Claire made me feel when she left . . . it’s like someone took a truckload of dynamite and detonated it, with all of the debris falling and landing on Luke.
There’s no way in hell I can protect him from it.
