been, particularly for Lana, a year of living dangerously, indeed.
“We were very naive to have brought Maddox to live with us,” Janice said. “To think that we could take a little girl away from her mother, her neighborhood, her school, and that she’d simply adjust to all that.” Her gaze drifted over toward the Hudson. “How could we have expected her just to be grateful?”
This was true, as I well knew. During the first nine years of her life, Maddox had known nothing but hardship, uncertainty, disruption. How could we have expected her not to bring all that dreadful disequilibrium with her?
“You’re right, of course,” I said softly, draining my glass. And with that simple gesture, I tried to dismiss the notion that she’d come to New York with some psychopathic dream of striking at me from behind a curtain, smiling maniacally as she raised a long, sharp knife.
And so, yes, I tried to dismiss my own quavering dread as a paranoid response to a young woman who’d no doubt come to New York because she was at the end of her tether, and the city offered itself as some sort of deranged answer to a life that had obviously become increasingly disordered. I tried to position my memory of her as simply a distressing episode in all of our lives, with repeated visits to Falcon Academy, always followed by stern warnings to Maddox that if she didn’t “clean up her act,” she would almost certainly be expelled. “Do you want that?” I’d asked after one of these lectures. She’d only shrugged. “I just cause trouble,” she said. And God knows she had, and would no doubt have caused more, a fact I remained quite certain about.
And so, yes, I might well have put her out of my mind at the end of that short yet disquieting conversation with Janice that evening as the sun set over the Hudson, my memory of Maddox destined to become increasingly distant until she was but one of that great body of unpleasant memories each of us accumulates as we move through life.
Then, out of the blue, a little envelope arrived. It had come from the Bronx, and inside I found a note that read:
Maddox wanted you to have something.
It was signed by someone named Theo, who offered to deliver whatever Maddox had left me. If I wanted to “know more,” I was to call this Theo and arrange a meeting.
I met him in a neighborhood wine bar three days later, and I have to admit that I’d expected one of those guys who muscled up in prison gyms, cut his initials in his hair, or had enough studs in his lips and tongue and eyebrows to set off airport metal detectors. Such had been my vision of the criminal sort toward which Maddox would have gravitated, she forever the Bonnie of some misbegotten Clyde. Instead, I found myself talking to a well-spoken young man whose tone was quietly informative.
“Maddox was a tenant in my building,” he told me after I’d identified myself.
“You’re the super who found her?”
“No, I own the building,” Theo said.
For a moment, I wondered if I was about to be hit up for Maddox’s unpaid rent.
“Sometimes Maddox and I talked,” he said. “She usually didn’t have much to say, but a few times, when she was in the hallway or walking through the courtyard, I’d stop to chat.” He paused before adding: “She’d paid her rent a few months in advance and told the super that she was going away for a while. He assumed she’d done exactly that, just gone away for a while, so he didn’t think anything of it when he stopped seeing her around.”
“She planned it, you mean,” I said. “Her death.”
“It seems that way,” Theo answered.
So,
I thought,
she’d murdered someone at last.
Theo placed a refrigerator magnet on the table and slid it over to me. “This is what she wanted you to have.”
“
Beauty and the Beast,
” I said quietly, surprised that Maddox had held on to such a relic—and certainly surprised that, for some bizarre reason, she’d wanted me to have it. “I took
“We were very naive to have brought Maddox to live with us,” Janice said. “To think that we could take a little girl away from her mother, her neighborhood, her school, and that she’d simply adjust to all that.” Her gaze drifted over toward the Hudson. “How could we have expected her just to be grateful?”
This was true, as I well knew. During the first nine years of her life, Maddox had known nothing but hardship, uncertainty, disruption. How could we have expected her not to bring all that dreadful disequilibrium with her?
“You’re right, of course,” I said softly, draining my glass. And with that simple gesture, I tried to dismiss the notion that she’d come to New York with some psychopathic dream of striking at me from behind a curtain, smiling maniacally as she raised a long, sharp knife.
And so, yes, I tried to dismiss my own quavering dread as a paranoid response to a young woman who’d no doubt come to New York because she was at the end of her tether, and the city offered itself as some sort of deranged answer to a life that had obviously become increasingly disordered. I tried to position my memory of her as simply a distressing episode in all of our lives, with repeated visits to Falcon Academy, always followed by stern warnings to Maddox that if she didn’t “clean up her act,” she would almost certainly be expelled. “Do you want that?” I’d asked after one of these lectures. She’d only shrugged. “I just cause trouble,” she said. And God knows she had, and would no doubt have caused more, a fact I remained quite certain about.
And so, yes, I might well have put her out of my mind at the end of that short yet disquieting conversation with Janice that evening as the sun set over the Hudson, my memory of Maddox destined to become increasingly distant until she was but one of that great body of unpleasant memories each of us accumulates as we move through life.
Then, out of the blue, a little envelope arrived. It had come from the Bronx, and inside I found a note that read:
Maddox wanted you to have something.
It was signed by someone named Theo, who offered to deliver whatever Maddox had left me. If I wanted to “know more,” I was to call this Theo and arrange a meeting.
I met him in a neighborhood wine bar three days later, and I have to admit that I’d expected one of those guys who muscled up in prison gyms, cut his initials in his hair, or had enough studs in his lips and tongue and eyebrows to set off airport metal detectors. Such had been my vision of the criminal sort toward which Maddox would have gravitated, she forever the Bonnie of some misbegotten Clyde. Instead, I found myself talking to a well-spoken young man whose tone was quietly informative.
“Maddox was a tenant in my building,” he told me after I’d identified myself.
“You’re the super who found her?”
“No, I own the building,” Theo said.
For a moment, I wondered if I was about to be hit up for Maddox’s unpaid rent.
“Sometimes Maddox and I talked,” he said. “She usually didn’t have much to say, but a few times, when she was in the hallway or walking through the courtyard, I’d stop to chat.” He paused before adding: “She’d paid her rent a few months in advance and told the super that she was going away for a while. He assumed she’d done exactly that, just gone away for a while, so he didn’t think anything of it when he stopped seeing her around.”
“She planned it, you mean,” I said. “Her death.”
“It seems that way,” Theo answered.
So,
I thought,
she’d murdered someone at last.
Theo placed a refrigerator magnet on the table and slid it over to me. “This is what she wanted you to have.”
“
Beauty and the Beast,
” I said quietly, surprised that Maddox had held on to such a relic—and certainly surprised that, for some bizarre reason, she’d wanted me to have it. “I took
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