Chapter 6: What Two Years of Silence Looks Like
Gerald Grunwald arrived at 3:47.
I know because Ariel and I were still there.
I hadn't planned to stay.
After we left the principal's office, I told myself we were going home.
I told Ariel to get her backpack.
I walked her to her classroom, waited while she gathered her things, and then somehow ended up back in the front hallway, sitting on the bench outside the main office, not entirely sure why I hadn't left.
Ariel sat beside me eating the granola bar I'd found at the bottom of my bag.
She didn't ask why we were still there.
She seemed to know.
Gerald was taller than I expected.
He had his mother's eyes — dark and steady — and he walked fast, the way people do when they've been worried for hours and are trying not to show it.
He went straight to the front desk.
"Dorothy Grunwald," he said.
"She works here.
Can someone tell me where she is?"
The receptionist pointed down the hall.
He turned and saw us.
He stopped.
"Are you—" He looked at Ariel.
"Is this her?
The little girl?"
"I'm Ariel," she said.
She still had granola bar in her hand.
Something moved across Gerald's face that he didn't try to hide.
He crouched down to her level, right there in the middle of the hallway.
"I'm Gerald," he said.
"Dorothy's son."
"I know," Ariel said.
"She talks about you."
He blinked.
"She does?"
"She says you work very hard."
He was quiet for a moment.
"She said that?"
"She says it like she's proud," Ariel said.
"But also like she misses you."
Gerald stood up slowly.
He looked at me over Ariel's head, and I saw it — the particular expression of a person who has just been told something true by someone too young to know how much it cost.
"She never told me she missed me," he said.
"She probably didn't want to bother you," I said.
He closed his eyes briefly.
"That sounds exactly like her."
We found Mrs.
Grunwald in the custodian's supply room at the end of the east corridor — the small one near the gymnasium, where she kept her cart and her extra supplies and, apparently, a folding chair she sat in during her breaks.
The room smelled like floor cleaner and old cardboard.
She was sitting in the chair when Gerald pushed open the door.
She looked up.
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
Then Gerald said, "Hi, Mom."
And Mrs.
Grunwald said, "You didn't have to come all this way."
"I know."
"It's a forty-minute drive."
"I know."
"I told you I was fine."
"I know." He crossed the room and put his arms around her, and she let him, and for a moment she just sat there in the folding chair with her son holding on and her hands at her sides like she'd forgotten what to do with them.
Then, slowly, she raised one hand and patted his arm.
Ariel leaned against the doorframe beside me and watched.
"Mom," Gerald said, pulling back.
He looked at her glasses.
"Let me see."
She turned her face up slightly.
He looked at the new frames for a long moment.
Then he looked at Ariel.
"Thank you," he said.
It came out rough.
Ariel shrugged one shoulder.
"She said good morning to me every day."
Gerald looked back at his mother.
"Every day?"
"Every day," Mrs.
Grunwald said.
"Even the hard ones."
He sat down on a supply crate across from her.
"Mom.
I need to ask you something and I need you to actually answer me."
She folded her hands in her lap.
"All right."
"What else have you not told me?"
The supply room was very quiet.
Mrs.
Grunwald looked at her hands.
Then she looked at her son.
"Gerald," she said.
"I think we need more than five minutes for that conversation."
He nodded slowly.
"Then come home with me tonight."
She opened her mouth.
"Not to visit," he said.
"To talk.
Really talk.
The way we haven't in—" He stopped.
"A long time."
She was quiet for a moment.
"I have work tomorrow morning," she said finally.
"I'll drive you back by seven."
Another silence.
Longer.
"All right," she said.
"Let me get my coat."
Gerald stood.
He looked at me one more time.
"I don't know how to thank you," he said.
"Either of you."
"Don't thank us," I said.
"Just don't wait another two years."
He flinched slightly.
Just once.
Then he nodded.
Ariel and I walked out into the afternoon.
The school parking lot was almost empty.
The buses were long gone.
"Mom," Ariel said, as we reached the car.
"Yeah?"
"Do you think they'll be okay?"
I looked back at the school building.
Somewhere inside, a woman was getting her coat.
Her son was waiting.
"I think they're going to try," I said.
"And I think that's the part that matters."
Ariel considered this.
"Because trying is the start of okay?"
I unlocked the car.
"Get in, sweetheart."
She got in.
I sat in the driver's seat and didn't start the engine right away.
My phone buzzed.
A text from an unknown number — Gerald's, I realized.
He must have gotten mine from the school the same way he'd called earlier.
*She's smiling.
First time I've seen that in a long time.
Thank you.*
May you like
I set the phone down on the passenger seat.
Then I started the car and drove us home.
