Max’s clinical depression, suicidal ideations and volatility, we have to be realistic 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 impermanence—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