by Gorman, Ed
• • •
Winner of the 2010 Edgar Award for short fiction for “Amapola,” LUIS A L B E R TO U R R E A is a prolific and acclaimed writer who uses his dual-culture life experiences to explore greater themes of love, loss, and triumph. Born in Tijuana, Mexico, to a Mexican father and an American mother, he is the critically acclaimed author of eleven books, as well as an award-winning poet and essayist. The Devil’s Highway, his 2004 non-fiction account of a group of Mexican immigrants lost in the Arizona desert, was a national bestseller, and named a best book of the year by the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald, the Chicago Tribune, the Kansas City Star, and many other publications. It has been optioned for a film by CDI Producciones. His most recent book, The Hummingbird’s Daughter (Little, Brown, 2005), is the culmination of twenty years of research and writing. The historical novel tells the story of Teresa Urrea, sometimes known as The Saint of Cabora and the Mexican Joan of Arc. Urrea’s other titles include By the Lake of Sleeping Children, In Search of Snow, Ghost Sickness, and Wandering Time. His writing has won an American Book Award, Western States Book Award, Colorado Center for the Book Award, and Christopher Award. Urrea lives with his family in Naperville, Illinois, where he is a professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
COUGAR
By Laura Lippman
“Sorry,” said the young man who bumped into her, although he didn’t sound particularly sorry. Almost the opposite, as if he were muffling a laugh at her expense. At least it was water, and she could change into her other blouse, the one she had worn on the walk here, assuming Mr. Lee didn’t object. Surely, Mr. Lee wouldn’t make her work the rest of the shift in a soaked white blouse that was now allbut-transparent.
“Sean!” his girlfriend chided without conviction.
“Hey,” said he-who-must-be-Sean. “It was an accident. I didn’t even see her.”
Of course, Lenore thought, going to the back to change. A fivefootten blonde in a sushi bar is hard to spot. Yet she knew he wasn’t lying. He hadn’t seen her. No one ever saw her. She was here every Friday and Saturday night — seating them at their tables, bringing them their drink orders when the wait staff got backed up. But even the regulars didn’t seem to recognize her from week to week. For young people who came here, the sushi dinner they gulped down was just preamble, preparation for the long night of bar-hopping ahead. If she wasn’t their mother’s age, she was close enough, fortytwo. And, fact was, she had her own twenty-one-year-old son at home, living in the basement with his nineteen-year-old girlfriend, and she was invisible to them, too.
Still, at least one young man seemed to register her presence as she walked to the back room to get her shirt. Well, he noticed her tits, given that the thin white blouse was now plastered to her front. “Nice,” he said to his friend, not even bothering to lower his voice. “Check out the cougar.”
So now she was presumed to be deaf as well as invisible. Deaf, or in some strange category where she was expected to tolerate whatever others said about her. Was it the job? Her age? But then, it was the same at home. Worse, actually.
• • •
“A kid at work called me a cougar last night,” she said over breakfast the next morning, a Sunday. Not hers. Lenore had eaten breakfast at 10:00 AM, a respectable time for a woman whose shift ended at midnight. Now it was almost 1:00 PM, but her son and the girlfriend had just roused themselves a few minutes ago and were nodding over bowls of cereal, their heads hanging so low that their chins almost grazed the milky ponds of Trix.
“Was he nearsighted? I can’t imagine anyone thinking you was hot.” That was Marie, the girlfriend, and the insult was so automatic that it carried no sting. As far as she could tell, it was the reason that Frankie kept Marie around, to insult Lenore. Otherwise, he would have to do it himself and that was too much effort.
“I think it’s because my shirt was soaked through. Another kid bammed into me when I was carrying a tray of water glasses.”
“Big thrill,” Marie said.
“Well,” Lenore said, “pretty big.” She had a showgirl’s figure and she didn’t care what the magazines deemed fashionable — an hourglass figure would always be in style. Marie, meanwhile, was flat-chested and soft with baby fat. Which made sense, because Marie was still a baby — lolling in bed all day, watching cartoons, eating all the sugar she could find.
“Shut up,” Frankie said tonelessly. They did as he said. They always did what he said.
If Marie was a baby, then Frankie was a six-foot-two toddler, perpetually on the edge of a tantrum. He had returned home quite unexpectedly six months ago, with no explanation for where he had been or what he had been doing in the two years since Lenore had last seen him. She had offered him his childhood room, but he sneered at that, claiming the basement that she had just renovated into a television room. She had planned the room as a retreat, a place to watch television late at night, maybe work on her various craft projects. But now it belonged to Frankie and she had to knock if she wanted to enter, even if it was to do his laundry in the utility room in the back. Once, just once, she had walked in without knocking and she wasn’t sure what scared her more — the drugs on the coffee table or the look on Frankie’s face.
I could lose my house, she thought as she backed out of the room, laundry basket clutched to her middle. Until that moment, she had — what was it called? — plausible deniability. She had suspected but not known what went on in her basement. But now she knew and if Frankie got caught, the government could take her house. That very thing had happened to Mrs. Bitterman up on Jackson, and there were rumors that it was why the house on Byrd Street was going to auction at the end of the month. Lenore lived every day torn between wishing her son would get busted, and knowing that his arrest would probably destroy her life instead of saving it.
Kicking him out wasn’t an option. She was scared of Frankie. She was scared of her son. It was such an awful thought, she hadn’t dared to let it form, not for a long time. She had even daydreamed that the man in her basement wasn’t Frankie at all, just some audacious imposter. Certainly, he bore no resemblance to the boy she remembered, a serious but sweet child, who never quite stopped puzzling over his father’s disappearance when he was still such a little thing. And he was so much bigger than the fourteen-year-old they had taken away from her, put in the Hickey school, then that weird place out in western Maryland, where they taught them to cut down trees or something. He didn’t even resemble the nineteen-year-old who had moved out in disgust two years ago, when she had said he had to live by her rules if he wanted to stay under her roof. She had been shocked when he actually went because she had no idea how to make him do anything — pick up his clothes, rinse a plate. If he had refused to leave, she would have been powerless.
In the two years since then, Frankie must have figured out that out. And now he was in her basement, dealing drugs, running up her electricity bills, leaving crusty bowls strewn about, eating everything in sight and contributing nothing. Once, she had steeled herself to ask him if he might kick in for food or utilities. “Marie don’t eat much,” was all he said. His meaning was clear. She owed him room and board for the rest of his life, however long that might be. She owed him everything he wanted to take from her. She owed him for the big mistakes — not being able to hold onto his father — and the small ones, such as not getting him the right kind of sneakers when he was at Thomas Heath Elementary. Sometimes, late at night, when she heard police cars hurtling down Fort Avenue, she wondered where Frankie was, if he was dead, and she wouldn’t have minded too much if that were so.
And then she thought how unnatural she was, how a mother should always love her child no matter what.
• • •
Frankie had come home in March and now it was August, the end of a miserable, fretful summer. Working two jobs — the sushi place on weekends, Sparkle-and-Shine cleaning service on Monday through Thursdays — she should have been able to save on her AC bill, but Fran
kie and Marie ran it full force, forgetting to turn it down when they headed out, which was usually about four in the afternoon. Every day, Lenore came home to a chilled catastrophe of a house. She tried to remind herself how lonely she had been, over the past two years, how empty her free evenings had seemed. That’s when she had taken up various crafts, in the first place teaching herself crocheting and knitting, figuring out what her computer could do, where it could take her. But the computer was in the basement, along with the television, and it made her heart sore to see what that once-pretty room had become since Frankie took it over. She was stuck in the kitchen, listening to the Orioles on the radio, or sitting out in the living room with the newspaper, which she never had time to read in the mornings.
Only on this particular August afternoon, there was a man on her sofa. A young man, Frankie’s age, dressed like Frankie — T-shirt, baseball cap, jogging pants as Lenore still thought of them, although Frankie insisted that she say track suit. Dozing, he looked harmless, but Frankie probably looked smooth and sweet, too, when he was sleeping.
She cleared her throat. The stranger jumped, and his feet — huge, puppy-ish feet, as if he hadn’t gotten his full growth yet, although he was already pretty big — just missed the porcelain lamp on the end table. As it was, he had already left vague scuff marks on the peach leather.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Frankie’s mother,” she said. It took her a second to remember that she had a right to know who he was.
“Aaron,” he said. “Frankie said I could crash here for a while.”
Beaten down as she was, she had to ask: “Here, as in the house? Or here, as on my sofa? Because that’s a nice piece, and your shoes have already — ”
Aaron jumped to his feet and Lenore thought, This is it, this is where I get hit for standing up for myself in my own home. Until that moment, she had never allowed that thought to form, had never admitted to herself what it was that made her fear Frankie. Not just the drugs and the consequences of his business being discovered. And not just the physicality of a slap or a punch, but the meaning of such a blow. She hadn’t been a good mother, or a good-enough mother, and Frankie, ruined as he was, had returned home to remind her of that fact for every day of the rest of her life and maybe his, depending on how things worked.
But this boy, this Aaron, actually felt bad. He kneeled to examine the mark. “That was stupid of me,” he said. “But I know a trick my aunt taught me. She had six boys, so believe you me, she knew how to get any kind of stain out of anything. You got any talcum powder?”
She did, a rose-scented talc that she hadn’t thought to use for months, years. He sprinkled it on the arm of the sofa, his fingers light and gentle as the priest who had baptized Frankie, then said: “Now we let it sit overnight. The powder will draw out the grease.”
“Like salt on a red wine stain,” she said.
“Exactly. The main thing is you don’t want to use water, this being leather and all. It’s an awfully nice sofa. I feel bad about not taking my shoes off. But Frankie and Marie were downstairs and wanted to be alone — ” he actually blushed, as if Frankie’s mother might not know why her son and his girlfriend preferred to be alone in the basement. “He told me to come up here, and I got so sleepy. I coulda gone upstairs, I guess, but that seemed forward.”
He looked at her strangely and then Lenore realized the only thing strange about the look was that it was direct. He felt bad, he cared what she thought of him, at least for this moment. If he hung around, he would soon absorb Frankie’s attitude toward her. But, for now, he was the kind of boy that she always wished Frankie would bring home. She cast around in her memory. What did you do with your son’s friends when they came to visit?
“Hey,” she said. “You want a snack? Or a beer?”
• • •
Unlike Marie, Aaron didn’t move in, but he was there more nights than not and Frankie offered him the guest room on the second floor. “Is that okay?” Aaron asked Lenore. Frankie didn’t give her a chance to answer. “Of course it’s okay.”
She was the one who offered Aaron a key, however. It was over breakfast. Although he came in at 3:00 or 4:00 AM with Frankie and Marie, he would get up when she rose at seven for her cleaning job and share a cup of coffee with her. He said he couldn’t sleep once he heard her moving about and she believed him because she had found she couldn’t really fall asleep until she heard the trio come home.
“You don’t have to — ” he began.
“It’s no big deal,” she said. “And this way, if you want to come home earlier than the others, you don’t have to wait around with them.” Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she asked what she had never dared to ask Frankie. “Where do you go? I mean, all the places close down at two, don’t they?”
“Most of them. But there are some. And — well, the corner, there’s usually some late-night business. Although...” Now it was his turn to hesitate. He got up, rinsed his coffee cup out in the sink, placed it in the dishwasher. He was considerate that way. Sometimes, he even brought Frankie and Marie’s dirty dishes up from the basement and rinsed them.
“What, Aaron? Is he taking chances? You can tell me. You know I don’t judge.”
“There’ve been some ... disputes. Guys moving in. But meth isn’t as territorial as crack, so you don’t have to worry.”
Meth. Right, she had nothing to worry about. If Frankie didn’t get her arrested, he would blow her sky high. “So he is — ?”
“Yeah,” Aaron admitted.
So not only selling it and storing it, but making it in her house. “I don’t like it,” she said, catching Aaron’s eye. “I wish I could make him stop.”
“It’s hard for anyone to tell Frankie anything.”
“Yeah. I’m scared of him, you know.” She had never said that out loud to anyone. It didn’t sound so bad.
“He wouldn’t hurt you.”
“He might.”
“No, I wouldn’t let him.”
And that was as far as she let it go, that time. Lenore resolved not to discuss Frankie again with Aaron, not unless Aaron brought the subject up.
• • •
She started taking a little more care with her appearance. Small things, like lipstick in the morning, before she came downstairs to put the coffee on. A new peach robe, modest in cut, but silkier and more close-fitting than the old terry cloth one, and with a matching nightie. She got a pedicure, although now fall was coming on and the kitchen floor was cool beneath her feet as she padded about. Marie asked Lenore why she had bothered. “Pink toenails on an old lady like you? Who cares? Who sees your feet?”
“I’m only forty-two,” Lenore said. “I’m not on the shelf. Some women have babies at my age.”
“Gross,” Marie said, and Frankie nodded. Aaron didn’t say anything. Lenore poured him a glass of juice and passed him the plate of muffins — from a box mix, but still fresh and hot. “What about me?” Frankie asked and she slid the plate across the table to him — but only after Aaron had made his choice.
• • •
And this was how the days went by, fall fading into winter, Aaron sleeping in the spare bedrooms more often than not, Lenore taking ever more care with her appearance — looking younger day by day, even as she behaved far more maternally than she ever had. She cut back on drinking and joined the local Curves. She splurged on lotions and moisturizers, choosing those with the most luxurious smells. Alone with Aaron, she confided in him, but always in a maternal way. How she worried about Frankie, how she wished he would just say no to drugs, how she was nervous about him getting busted. How she wished she could save him from himself, but wasn’t sure that anything would work for Frankie, even the forced sobriety of prison.
The only problem was Marie, who was turning out to have sharp eyes in that pudgy little face.
“Flirting with a boy your son’s age,” she said one night, peeved because Lenore had forgotten to buy Lucky Charms, Marie and Frankie
’s new favorite, although she had remembered Aaron’s Mueslix. “You’re pathetic.”
“I’m just being nice,” Lenore said. “Besides, a young kid like that could never be interested in an old broad like me.”
“Got that right,” Marie said, stomping downstairs to the basement. Soon, Lenore heard her laughing with Frankie, and their laughter was as ugly and acrid as the smells that rose from the floor below. Aaron was down there, too, but he wasn’t laughing with them. Lenore was sure of that much. She was also sure that she was going to have to sleep with him, eventually. The only question in her mind was whether it would be before or after.
• • •
It turned out to be after, and it was Frankie, in his way, who made it happen. The four of them had been sharing another late breakfast — this one with cinnamon rolls, the kind that you baked at home, then coated with sticky white frosting. There were eight in a carton, two apiece, but Lenore had decided she wanted only one and passed her extra to Aaron.
“I wanted that,” Frankie objected.
“I’m sorry,” Lenore said, not the least bit sorry.
“You act as if he were your son,” Frankie said. “Or your boyfriend. Just like when I was younger.”
“I never had boyfriends when you were a boy,” Lenore said, upset at the unfairness of it all. She might not have been a good mother to Frankie, but she had never been a slutty one. “I was strict about that.”
“Oh, you didn’t let guys move in or have breakfast with us, but you still brought them home sometimes, did them up in your room and sent them on their way before I woke up. If I didn’t have a step-daddy, it wasn’t for the lack of free samples. You just never could seal the deal.”
