Saving Max. Antoinette Heugten van
about his needs. He requires intensive treatment by the best the profession has to offer. My recommendation is that we act immediately.”
She tries not to let him see that her breathing has become irregular. Like an animal trapped in another’s lair, she has to be extremely careful about her reaction. “I’m not certain what that means.”
“I mentioned this option earlier, and now I’m afraid we have no choice.” His usually kind eyes are obsidian. “Max needs a complete psychiatric assessment—including his medication protocol.”
Danielle stares at the floor, a prism of tears clouding her eyes. “You mean …”
His voice floats up to her very softly, very slowly. “Maitland.”
Danielle feels her stomach free-fall. There is that word.
It is as final as the closing of a coffin.
CHAPTER TWO
During the trip from Des Moines to Plano, Iowa, she drives as Max sleeps. Despite the chaos of suitcases, cabs, traffic and nightmarish arguments, they somehow caught the flight from New York. She had tried every form of plea and coercion to get Max’s agreement to go to Maitland. It was only after she broke down completely that Max relented—just barely. She didn’t wait for him to change his mind. She stayed up all night, constantly peeking into his bedroom to make sure he was … alive. The next day they were on that plane.
Her anxiety lessens as she settles into the thrum of the road. She lights a cigarette and lowers her window, hoping that Max won’t wake up. He hates it when she smokes. The landscape is a flat, weary brown. It is only after they reach Plano and turn off the highway that all around them explodes. Every broad leaf is a stroke of green, bursting with liquid sun. She smells the aftermath of swollen showers and imagines a flood of expiation that wipes the world clean, leaving one incorruptible—the black, secret earth. It is a sign of hope, she decides, a presentiment that all will be well.
As she drives on, she turns her face to the sun, relaxes in its warmth, and thinks of Max as a small boy. One afternoon in particular flashes in her mind. At her father’s farm in Wisconsin, shortly before he died, Danielle rocked gently in the porch swing and watched as the afternoon sun burnished gold into the summer air and turned her bones to butter.
As she sank deeper into the worn cushion, Max clambered up and sprawled across her lap. They had been swimming all morning and, exhausted, Max wrapped his arms tightly around her neck and fell into that syncopated stupor unique to young boys. She breathed deeply of the heady scent of magnolias that hung over them—voluptuous, cream-colored blossoms so heavy and full that their tenuous grip upon stem and branch threatened to drop them softly onto the lush green below. Their scent was interlaced with her son’s essence—a mixture of boy sweat, sunburned skin and dark spice. As she held him closer, she felt his heart echo the strong beat of her own. Eyes closed, she gave herself up to the languid moment of mother and child, perfect in its communion and im-permanence—so intense as to be indistinguishable from piercing sadness or exquisite joy. They would always be like this, she had thought. Nothing, she vowed, would ever tear them apart.
It is then that she looks up at the white, arched gate. It is then that she reads the weathered sign. Faded words hang in black, metal letters, pierced against the sky.
Maitland, it says, swinging in the breeze.
Maitland Psychiatric Asylum.
CHAPTER THREE
Danielle and Max sit in a bright orange room and watch the group leader arrange a circle of blue plastic chairs. The linoleum is a dizzying pattern of white-and-black squares and smells of disinfectant. Parents and awkward adolescents file reluctantly into the room. Danielle’s heart twists in her chest. How can she possibly be in this place with Max? The faces of the parents all reveal the same ugly mixture of hope and fear, resignation and denial—each with an unholy, tragic story to tell. They look like burn victims steeling themselves before another layer of skin is stripped away.
Max is by her side, angry and embarrassed because he’s old enough to know exactly where he is. He has not spoken since they arrived. He looks so—boy. An oversize polo shirt finishes off rumpled chinos and Top-Siders with no socks. The sports watch he wears is too big, as if he’s playing dress-up with his father’s watch. Unbidden, he shaved off the wispy moustache the night before they left New York. His mouth is a small line, the width of a piece of mechanical pencil lead. His one act of defiance remains—the cold, ugly piercing on his eyebrow.
Suddenly, the door swings open and a woman rushes in, pulling a teenaged boy by the hand. She stops and surveys the circle. Her blue eyes make direct contact with Danielle. She smiles. Danielle glances left and right, but no one looks up. The woman makes a beeline in her direction. She sits next to Danielle and pulls the boy down onto the chair next to her. “Marianne,” she whispers.
“Danielle.”
“Good morning!” A young woman with wild red hair and a name tag that says Just Joan! stands in the middle of the circle. Her voice batters the ear like hail on a tin roof. “This is our group session to welcome new patients and parents to Maitland and, well, to just share our feelings and concerns.”
Danielle hates group therapy. Anything she’s ever “shared” has come around to bite her on the ass. She casts about desperately for an exit sign. She needs a cigarette—badly. Just Joan! claps her hands. Too late.
“Let’s pick someone and go around the circle,” she says. “Introduce yourself and tell us why you’re here. Remember, all conversations are strictly confidential.”
The tales of heartache are overwhelming. There is Carla, the rickets-thin waitress from Colorado who gives her son, Chris, loving glances as she tells of how he snapped her wrist and purpled her eye. After her is Estelle, an elegant black grandmother who tenderly clasps the hand of her doll-like granddaughter, whose pink taffeta Sunday dress only partially veils the crazed, ropy scars that run up and down her coffee-colored legs.
“Self-inflictive,” whispers Marianne. “The mother ran off. Couldn’t take it.”
Just Joan’s sharp eyes troll the room for a victim and then rivet upon Danielle. She stiffens.
Marianne pats Danielle’s hand and quickly raises her own. “I’ll go.” Her voice is a honey-coated drawl. “My name is Marianne Morrison.”
Danielle’s sigh echoes around the circle. She leans back and tries to put her arm around Max, who shrugs it off. She studies the woman who has saved her.
Marianne looks like the bright center of a flower. The pleats of her claret skirt are Gillette sharp, forming a perfectly pointed circle around her knees. A shimmering blouse reflects the gleam of a single strand of pearls and draws the eye to the single gold band on her left hand. Her simple, blond pageboy frames her oval face. Her flawless makeup reflects a level of detail and attention seemingly innate in Southern women. In her case, it enhances her features, particularly a wide, generous mouth and intelligent blue eyes. Next to her, Danielle is aware of her own de rigueur black-on-black pantsuit, her severe dark hair and pale skin. She wears no jewelry, no watch, no makeup. In Manhattan, she is an obvious professional. Next to Marianne, she looks like a pallbearer. Danielle glances down. A bag next to Marianne’s chair overflows with all manner of crafty-looking things. Danielle’s depression deepens—like when she sees the pre-prison Martha Stewart on TV stenciling an entire room with a toothbrush or casually butchering a young suckling pig with an old nail file. Or when one of the mothers at Max’s grade school brought a homemade quilt that had the handprints of all the kids on it for the school auction and Danielle gave money instead.
“This is my son, Jonas.” Hearing his name, the boy shakes his head and blinks rapidly. His hands never stop moving. Fingernails scrape at scarred welts on his arms. Danielle instinctively pulls her own sleeves down. Jonas rocks back and forth, testing the chair’s rubber stoppers as they squeak against the floor. All the while, he makes soft, grunting noises, a perpetual-motion-and-sound machine.