Chapter 49: The Argument
The parent conference finally let out.
Most of the parents were already gathering their coats and calling for their kids, steering them toward the hallways and the front gate with the relieved impatience of people who had done their duty for the day. A few lingered by Mr. Whitaker's desk, talking over one another as they asked about grades, habits, college chances, attitude problems, all the usual things adults suddenly cared deeply about once they were sitting in a classroom chair. Their voices piled up in the room, busy and anxious and full of concern.
Margaret went back to her seat and sat there for a while without moving.
The chair was cold under her, and she did not seem to notice. When she turned her eyes sideways, she found Isabella still standing beside Julian's desk, speaking to him in the easy, familiar tone she always used, her hand on his head as though the gesture belonged to her.
"You've really been working hard, Jules," Isabella said, smiling as if praise came as naturally to her as breathing. "Your grades look good. Should your sister take you out for something nice tonight as a reward?"
Julian looked embarrassed. "That's not necessary. My grades aren't even that great. I'm doing okay, that's all."
"How is that just okay?" she asked, her voice warm and lightly scolding. "Don't talk yourself down like that."
Her eyes moved past him then, toward the front of the room.
The last of the parents around Mr. Whitaker had finally stepped away. Isabella took Julian by the hand and led him over before he could object, smiling all the while in that pleasant, unhurried way of hers.
"Mr. Whitaker," she said, "could I ask how Jules has been doing in school? I'd like to know what he's like in class."
Mr. Whitaker looked up at her, then at Julian, and paused just long enough to make it obvious he was sorting out the relationship in his own head. He opened the grade sheet in his hand.
"You're his older sister, right?" he said.
Julian's shoulders tightened.
"Julian only transferred into our class this semester. His grades are solid. Fairly steady. He behaves well, too. Quiet kid, though. Doesn't say much."
"I see." Isabella nodded, still smiling. Then, with the same mild tone, she asked, "Has he shown any signs of dating?"
Julian turned so fast he nearly pulled his hand free. "Isabella."
He stared at her profile, at the soft curve of her mouth and the calm expression she had not let slip for even a second, and something cold went through him.
She already knew he liked Margaret. That was what made the question worse. He had never wanted her looking too closely at the way he and Margaret acted around each other, never wanted her to be able to line up all the little signs and call them by name. The feeling was childish and immediate, the same sick dread as a kid waiting for a parent to notice the broken rule he had failed to hide.
Isabella's hand came to rest on his shoulder. Her touch looked gentle enough that anyone watching would have taken it for reassurance, but it held him where he was, quiet and upright, like she meant for him to stay and hear whatever came next.
It gave him the strange, awful feeling of standing beside her while someone else decided his sentence.
Mr. Whitaker shook his head. "No, nothing like that. I haven't heard anything. He talks to his desk mate, of course, and to Hannah Reeves now and then, but other than that, I don't really see him spending much time with girls."
The pressure on Julian's shoulder eased.
He let out a breath so carefully that no one else would have noticed it.
"I understand," Isabella said. "Thank you, Mr. Whitaker."
"No problem." Mr. Whitaker offered Julian a glance before gathering the papers in his hand. "He's a bit withdrawn, honestly. If you have the time, keep him company more. Kids like him do better when someone's around."
"I will," Isabella said at once, nodding as though the matter had already been settled. "Thank you for telling me."
Mr. Whitaker moved off to deal with something else. Students on cleaning duty were beginning to straighten chairs and wipe down the front board. Julian went back to his desk, shoved his books into his bag, and looked up.
Margaret was already outside the classroom door with her own bag over one shoulder, waiting for him.
He swung his backpack on and turned to Isabella. "You should head home," he said. "Margaret and I still have work."
She looked at him with exaggerated injury. "Your sister took the whole afternoon off to come to your parent conference, and now you're sending me away the second it's over?"
"That's not what I'm doing. I really have to go." He adjusted the strap on his shoulder. "If you already took time off, you might as well do something you actually want to do."
"Oh, I see." Her voice turned theatrical at once. "Use me and throw me out. You're cruel, Jules."
He could not help laughing a little. "I'm leaving."
"Go on, then." She stepped back with a smile that looked almost indulgent. "I'll see you tonight."
"Yeah. Tonight."
He hurried out to Margaret.
Isabella stayed where she was.
She watched Julian reach Margaret, watched the two of them fall into step beside each other, watched them disappear down the corridor and out of sight. The pleasant look she had worn all afternoon drained off her face so quickly it was almost startling. What settled there in its place was cold and hard enough to make her seem older, not in years but in something less kind.
She stood alone in the half-empty classroom until one of the cleaning girls nervously asked if she needed anything else.
Then she smiled again, and it was gone.
————
The cold came down harder after dark.
By the time Margaret turned into the narrower streets near home, the wind had sharpened into something mean, driving straight through coat sleeves and pant legs, finding every place the body failed to protect itself. Streetlights threw weak circles onto the pavement. Bare branches scratched against one another overhead. The last few leaves clinging to them trembled like thin scraps of paper.
Margaret walked through it without hunching her shoulders once.
She took the alley because it cut several minutes off the route, and because darkness did not bother her the way it did other people. Halfway through, she heard a cat cry out.
The sound carried clearly in the stillness.
She followed it with her eyes and found a small black cat tucked against the wall at the corner of a building, its body pulled in tight, its eyes bright in the dark. If someone more timid had seen it there, with that thin voice and those shining eyes, they might have been startled enough to turn around.
Margaret kept walking until she stood in front of it.
Up close, it looked pitiful rather than frightening. Its fur was dirty and rough. Its frame was all angles, so thin it seemed to have shrunk in on itself. When it cried again, the sound was weak with hunger.
It wanted help.
People would still run from it if it scared them first.
For a moment the resemblance struck her so cleanly that she could not look away. There was something ugly and familiar in it, something desperate hidden under the wrong shape. If Julian ever saw what she was really like, if he saw the part of her that clung too tightly and thought too wildly and could never be satisfied with a little, would he turn from her too? Would he step back with that frightened look people got when they understood too late that kindness had become need, and need had become something harder to live with?
She could not bear the thought long enough to finish it.
A world without Julian in it was not something she could imagine without feeling physically ill. Losing him was not one of those pains people survived neatly. It was the kind that would hollow her out and leave nothing worth carrying forward.
She crouched, opened the takeout container in her hand, and set it on the ground.
Then she nudged it closer to the cat and stood back up.
The cat did not move right away. It just stared.
Margaret turned and left without looking again.
By the time she reached her building, her feet were numb inside her shoes. The motion-sensor light in the stairwell blinked on one level at a time as she climbed, throwing weak yellow across the chipped walls and concrete steps. On the third floor she took out her key, unlocked the door, and stepped inside.
The apartment lights were on.
That stopped her for half a second.
The room was dim in the dull, tired way of a place where nobody had bothered with the brighter bulbs. Her mother was sitting at the table with her head tipped back and her eyes closed, as though she had meant to rest for a minute and had drifted there instead. She looked wrung out. When the door shut behind Margaret, she opened her eyes slowly and looked over.
Margaret came in with her schoolbag still on her shoulder and no intention of speaking first.
Her mother wet her cracked lips, hesitated, and asked, "Your school had a parent conference today?"
"Yes."
Margaret did not look at her. She started toward her room.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Her hand was already on the doorknob. She stopped there and turned her head slightly, not enough to face her mother fully.
"Because you weren't going to come," she said. Her voice was flat and cold. "You don't care about that kind of thing. As long as you're doing whatever you want, that's enough for you."
Her mother's face tightened. "You…"
The anger rose fast, but even that could not quite hide the fact that she had no real answer. What came out instead was smaller, weaker, something grabbed in a hurry because it was all she had.
"I'm your mother. Watch how you talk to me."
Margaret opened the door. She did not go in.
"That would mean more if you actually knew anything about me." She turned a little farther, enough now that her mother had to see her expression. "I'm guessing you don't even know what grade I'm in."
Her mother shoved back her chair and stood. "You chose to come with me back then," she snapped. "I gave birth to you, and now you think you can talk to me like this?"
Margaret sat down on the side of her bed and bent to pull off her shoes and socks. "I think I can talk to you according to what you've done."
That landed.
Her mother came over with anger all over her face, one hand already raised. For a moment it really looked as though she might strike her.
Margaret lifted her chin and looked right at her.
She did not move to block it. She did not flinch. The anger in her mother's face showed clearly in her eyes, but Margaret's own expression stayed blank, almost bored. If the slap came, it came. That was all.
Several long seconds passed.
Her mother's hand did not fall.
She lowered it instead, jaw tight, the fire in her expression collapsing into something smaller and uglier. Guilt, maybe. Or just the knowledge that she was losing an argument she had not earned the right to win.
Margaret peeled off the second sock and said, in the same cool voice, "I'm grateful you let me stay here. That's why I've tried not to cause you trouble. Whatever you've spent on me, I'll pay it back when I can. But if I matter so little to you, why did today bother you at all? Did you suddenly want to show up and enjoy having a daughter with good grades? Then again, you probably don't even know what my grades are."
She slipped her feet into a pair of cold plastic house slippers. Her toes were so numb they hardly seemed part of her body. The rest of her was cold too, but none of it showed on her face.
Her mother scoffed, though without much force left in it. "Do whatever you want. You think I'm dying to manage you? You're just a kid."
Margaret did not answer.
She stood, walked past her, and went into the bathroom with her things. A moment later the sink turned on. She started brushing her teeth under the weak light, calm again on the surface, as though the fight outside the door had already been stripped down, folded away, and put somewhere nobody else could reach.