Motherless Child

by Glen Hirshberg

Natalie felt herself smile, gratefully. “What?” she barked.

  “Your dad.”

  Natalie stopped smiling. “What are you talking about?”

  “Remember your dad, when he told you he was dying? When we were like, nine?”

  Lowering to her haunches helped Natalie keep from lunging. And also got her in position to do so more effectively. “Strangely enough, I do.”

  “How you walked into his hospital room like two hours after they’d told him he had however many months to live, and he was sitting up in bed eating an entire pineapple upside-down cake?”

  Abruptly Natalie understood. The coiling in her legs loosened, and her shoulders relaxed.

  “You always said he looked so happy,” Sophie said.

  It was true. And had stayed true for weeks. He’d eaten half a cake a day, bought himself a twenty-five-foot headphone extension cord, and spent the entire night, while his wife and daughter slept, rocking around their little rented house, blasting “Paralyzed” and “Time Has Come Today” into his brain. “Audio morphine,” he’d said over bowls of Super Sugar Crisp every morning, grinning. That had continued until the cake and the Crisp stopped tasting good, started coming back up. Until the music itself sickened him with longing for things he wasn’t going to be around to hear or feel, things he’d never help his daughter learn to hear or feel.

  Was that what these past two weeks had been? Hers and Sophie’s pineapple upside-down days?

  “You know what he said he was happiest about?” Natalie murmured, putting her cold hand to the warm earth, which would never be warm enough.

  “Seeing my grinning, gorgeous face at your side every day?”

  Natalie closed her eyes. “He said he’d lived his whole life scared of what was going to get him. Ever since he was a little kid. He wasn’t ever afraid of being dead, just how he was going to get there.”

  When she opened her eyes, Sophie was crouching over her scrawled name, staring down into it as though reading tea leaves. “Know what’s going to get us, Nat?” Her sudden grin dazzled in that dim place, as though she’d dragged the moon right down into the clearing with them. “Nothing! Ever!” Then she leapt to her feet and whooped.

  She waited until they were back in the car, with the engine running, before she said—for the thousandth time since they’d left Charlotte but the first this night—“Let’s call home. Let’s call the kids.”

  Until that second, for the first time in days, Natalie had started to feel pretty good. Like she really had had a past. A mom and dad and home and memory. Like she really was still someone, even if she wasn’t who she’d been. But now the feeling fell away, like a fallen leaf she’d tried tacking to a dead branch. “No,” she said.

  “Come on.” Sophie turned in her seat, started to touch Natalie’s hand but decided not to. “Come on. I miss my Roo. You know we’re going to. Sooner or later.”

  “No.”

  “Natalie, don’t you want to hear Eddie’s—”

  “No,” Natalie growled, and felt something, all right, a needle prick where her heart had been. Or still was. And there it came again.

  “Natalie, I can’t stand it.”

  “Me either.”

  “Let’s call. I didn’t say go there. Just call.”

  “No.”

  “Natalie—”

  Her hand hit the horn so hard that she left a dent in the steering wheel. The blare shredded the forest silence and even overwhelmed the whistling in her ears, just for a moment. When she finally let up, both she and Sophie stared at the dent. Then they glanced at each other.

  “So…” Sophie said after a while. “You’re saying no. Have I got that right?”

  Out of habit, Natalie pushed air out of her mouth. It was more like blowing bubbles in a pool than breathing, but still sort of satisfying. “We couldn’t, anyway. Remember? They’re gone.” At least, she thought, they’d better be. If you listened, Mom. If you saw.

  They sat some more. In Natalie’s ears, the whistling settled back into its permanent groove in her skull, a cricket hum that accompanied her everywhere, now. The only way she knew she was awake.

  “So no calling,” Sophie said. “Again.” And then, when Natalie looked up, “How about bowling?”

  Which was what they did, and that felt fine, for a while. They found lanes on the outskirts of suburban Savannah open for midnight bowling, which proved crowded and dark and loud and buzzing. The snack bar served mustardy barbecue instead of microwave pizza, and the meat smelled marvelous, wet and sweet, though neither Sophie nor Natalie could quite get a piece in their mouths. The stereo blasted mostly dirty-south hiphop, Outkast and the Goodie Mob, but the throb felt great, juddering up through the floorboards and vibrating everybody, providing a pretty fair simulation of circulation, of actual feeling. And that, Natalie realized now, staring down the rows of trapped teenagers, bored and drunk sorority girls, was what this music—maybe all music—was always meant to do. Rattle bone-cages. Wake the dead.

  They bowled three full games, the conversation and laughter and come-on all around them sweeping them up, carrying them with it like driftwood in a river current. Between turns, they kept to the shadowed benches, away from the light, and kept their eyes away from people’s faces, and, mostly, no one seemed to notice them. At least, that’s what Natalie thought, and it felt right, wonderfully meaningless, eventless, endless, ordinary, until she went to the bathroom to wash her face.

  She didn’t even hear the kid come in. She stood at the mirror awhile, staring into the blackness in her own eyes, trying to decide if she was relieved that she could still see them. That was one myth dispensed, anyway. But are those really my eyes? Those black, blank pools? Was it worse if they had changed or if they hadn’t?

  She turned around, and there he was. Fourteen years old, maybe? Twelve? Little blond Calvin spikes, Korn T-shirt, blue eyes wide, mouth agape. Front of his shorts so distended he looked like he was about to be lifted away, Lorax-style, only from the front. Lower lip quivering. And—good God—tears in his eyes. He was blocking the door.

  “You’re so…” he gurgled.

  “I know,” Natalie sighed. “Could you move?”

  “… beautiful,” he finished. And then he fell to his knees.

  In the end, she had to shake him off her leg like a dog, bang him a little harder than she intended—or, at least, than she seemed able to control—against the doorframe. His arms slackened and he slid down the wall, whimpering. Not in pain. Not yet. But because she was leaving. She grabbed Sophie off her bench, and they fled.

  Some indeterminate, silent stretch of hours later, another hundred miles down the forested, unlit back roads along the Georgia coast, Natalie stopped at a gas station. Her GTO, purring with use, thrummed as she shut it down. She didn’t get out right away, just sat behind the wheel. Over the tops of the pine trees, the first little knick of pink appeared. Red and dripping little paper cut in the dark.

  “It’ll be light soon,” Sophie murmured, sounding less content than usual. She’d also stayed quiet longer than usual.

  “I know,” said Natalie. “Next hotel we see.” She propped her door open. “I’m going inside for a sec. Want anything?”

  “Like who?”

  Half out of the car, Natalie turned. “That’s not funny.”

  But Sophie wasn’t grinning, this time. Not all the way. Her voice stayed small and scared them both. “I wasn’t entirely kidding, I don’t think.”

  “Then shut up.”

  Slamming the door, Natalie jammed the nearest pump into the gas tank and stalked off toward the station. She hadn’t really thought of what she’d do in there. She just wanted … one more sight of someone, maybe. Anyone, really. And not like Sophie had meant. Surely, not. Not yet. Please.

  The mini-mart was lit up but locked, and Natalie had turned to go back to the car when she heard the voice from around the corner of the building. It was pleading, too.

  “I’m sorry,” it was saying. Slurring.
“Baby. Come on. I’m so tired. Just … the lawn. Let me sleep on the lawn. Baby.” Then came the wet, gargling, throat-clearing. “Love ya. You know. Baby.”

  Like a moth—no, dragonfly—drawn to the vibration, Natalie felt herself turn, start around the corner. There he was, splayed against the side of the building like a felled bowling pin. He wore a rumpled three-piece suit, black shoes that still shone, and had gristly stubble along his neck, at which Natalie just kept staring. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down like bait on the surface of a river.

  “I know I’ve promised before,” he was whining, starting to sob into the cell phone at his ear, in a way that suggested that the person on the other end had already hung up. Might have done so long ago. “Come on, you know you’re the only—”

  He looked up and saw Natalie. Apologies continued to spill from him, as if from a vein he’d opened. But the cell phone slipped out of his hands.

  “Oh, come on, really?” Natalie snapped, hands on her hips, as the guy on the ground started to blubber, just like the kid in the bowling-alley bathroom. “You’re all going to cry now?”

  “I’m sorry.” His voice was high, thin as a midge’s whine. “I can’t help … I’ll stay. I’ll … do anything.…” And he reached out his arms. As though he wanted to be tucked in.

  In two long strides, Natalie was over him, dropping down on top of him. She was thinking—hoping, maybe—he’d be too drunk too respond, but he wasn’t. Or she was just too much. Under her skirt, through his pants, she felt him stiffen. Felt the warm asphalt on her bare, cold legs. The moonlight on her back. The night, her ocean, swirling around her. His eyes overflowed as he stared up at her. In gratitude, she thought with amazement, and also disgust, and something else she didn’t even want to think about. At least the sight kept her own gaze away from his throat.

  And the longer she looked at him, the more he relaxed. Stiffened and relaxed. Opening himself to her. Practically begging. Ridiculous silver stud in one of his ears. And—even more ridiculous—a pencil behind the other ear.

  She felt herself bend forward. Toward his mouth, not his neck. Staring at him the whole time. Holding him fast. It was just so easy. Which made her so sad. Her lips like ice cubes, melting against his. Turning liquid once more. Almost human. So soft. She hardly pressed. He pressed, but only to keep the contact, to extend it. Because he could sense that’s what she wanted. Because she could communicate that, now, without even trying, the way she never had been able to when it had mattered. The way no one apparently could. Not really. Not while they were living. Not to anyone else living.

  He was flat-out weeping, now, still kissing her. So warm. She lifted herself up, just an inch. Stared into him. Saw him in there, scared little liar, though not scared enough. Chuck Berry in her ears, over the whistling. Calling his little Marie, in Memphis, Tennessee. Little Eddie in her heart, the ghost of his weight in her arms. Never to rest there again.

  Her grip tightened on the arms underneath hers. She stared at the Adam’s apple, at this pathetic guy’s furiously blinking eyes, willing them to stillness. They stilled. She kissed him once more.

  “There,” she said. “You’ve had what you were looking for, now. There’s nothing else. I promise. And I should know. Go home.”

  She stood up. He lay frozen. On impulse, without any clear reason, she bent again and took his cell phone. Then she started back toward her car.

  She’d been around more than enough guns in her life to recognize the click of a safety catch when she heard it. But all she thought, as she stopped in her tracks, was, Asshole. If what he’d really wanted was sympathy, someone to beg him not to end his pitiful, cheating, wastrel life … well, that was almost funny, come to think of it.

  She’d turned to say so, and to suggest another option if dying was what he really wanted, when he shot her.

  8

  For a while, Jess did what she’d always done, got up and got at it. And that was all right.

  The second Natalie had left, she stood, threw on her skirt and sweater, fixed her only suitable blanket over both babies in the bassinet, and sang them the “Pony Man” verse about the midnight meadow and the cats in the shed. They were already sleeping, but those lines were a spell, had charmed even her buzzing beehive of a daughter into the deepest dream all those years ago, and Jess needed these babies dreaming now. When they were all the way still, she hurried next door and got Wanda to sit watch in the trailer while she went for supplies.

  “If Natalie shows up, don’t let her in,” Jess told the old woman when she’d gotten herself and her quilt and her crocheting wedged in the folding chair next to the trailer’s tiny sink. “Tell her to wait right out there.” On impulse, she started to pull a butcher knife out of the block to give to Wanda, then reconsidered. If Natalie had wanted the babies tonight, she could have taken them. Or not even come home.

  “Aw, Jess, honey, what’s she gone and done?”

  “Nothing she’s going to finish.” For one moment, as the snarl left her mouth, the enormity of that statement dropped on her. She saw her daughter’s face, the way it had looked less than an hour before, hovering over her. Get out of Charlotte, she’d said. Don’t let me find you. Hands holding Jess down in the sheets as though drowning her, eyes black and panicked and lost and hard.

  The hardness had made Jess just a little bit proud. That was perverse, of course. But it helped her shove everything else she thought she’d seen out of her mind, at least for the moment.

  “It can’t be that bad.” Wanda yawned, sagging against the back of the chair, wrinkly eyelids drooping. “You of all people know that.”

  “Get up,” Jess snapped. Her command shot through the old woman like a defibrillator charge and straightened her. “Watch those babies. Watch that door. Please. I’m going to the pharmacy.”

  Wanda didn’t answer, and her eyelids didn’t droop. She didn’t even lift the crocheting from her lap.

  “Thanks,” Jess said. The salute Wanda snapped off almost made her smile, just for one moment, as she grabbed her keys and hurried into the night.

  At the Walgreens, she bought a case of formula, all the Gerber jars on the shelf—except winterbeef and pears, because no matter how desperate the situation, no grandchild or friend of her grandchild would be eating that—diapers, DESITIN, Orajel, wipes, powder, and two car seats. The seats were bulky and cheap, barely fit, couldn’t be tethered properly, and seemed to tilt toward the back cushions like Ferris wheel wells. But they’d do. At home, she saw Wanda back to her own trailer, then packed the very little she’d need for herself: one suitcase of clothes, the four photo albums, the framed picture of her and Joe swinging nine-year-old Natalie between them, knee-deep in Lake Jocassee, the weekend before Joe found out just how sick he really was. The last thing she brought to the car was her satellite-radio boom box, which she’d have to figure out how to plug into the lighter, because she was good and goddamned if she was going on the lam without the Orioles.

  The second she heard Wanda stirring again, she stepped across the dirt between their trailers, knocked, and demanded Wanda’s daughter’s phone number. From Wanda’s daughter got the name of Wanda’s daughter’s husband’s cousin, who sold real estate in the area. Jess was almost certain she’d never mentioned him to Natalie, because why on earth would she have?

  He said he didn’t deal in trailers.

  “You’re dealing in this one,” Jess said, and there was just enough of a pause on the other end of the line to make her wonder if she’d lost her touch.

  Then the cousin cleared his throat. “I guess I am,” he said.

  “Thataboy.” Jess told him she’d be in contact sooner or later, hung up, and dumped her cell phone in the trash.

  She got the babies powdered, diapered, fed, and loaded in the car before they even seemed to realize they were awake, certainly before they started making any fuss. Not until she was pulling out of Honeycomb Corner did she glance in the rearview mirror at the metal box where she’d lived s
ince her husband’s death. The entire time she’d been a widow, every single day of her single motherhood, and the worst fourteen-year stretch in the history of the Baltimore Orioles.

  Home, in other words.

  How easily it comes away, she thought. A matter of hours, a handful of phone calls. Like uncoupling from a camper hookup, a quick tug and the will to do it and you’re gone, almost free, to the extent that anyone who’s been alive and taken a stake in others ever gets free.

  In the back, Eddie began to gurgle, not crying, just reacting to the light patterns changing on the cushion that constituted his view, and Jess almost lost the wheel. She felt Natalie’s face rising under her eyelids, so that every time she blinked she had to grind her teeth to keep from crying out. She ran the stop sign at the corner of Sardis Road, and a trombone barrage of car horns blasted her back into herself.

  Lowering her gaze to the road, she drove to the bank, hauled both babies inside with her—slings, that would be the next purchase—had her safe-deposit box brought, and withdrew the envelope with the life insurance check from Joe’s death. Everything else—her wedding ring with its cubic zirconia stone, the foul ball her father had caught at the Orioles’ second-ever home opener in April 1955, Natalie’s front baby teeth, and the friend bracelet she’d made on her first day of kindergarten and given to Jess—she left where it was. She’d never be back for it. But maybe someday, if Natalie ever came to her senses … if such a thing could still happen … if she was still Natalie … if what Jess had seen in her daughter’s face—not just then, but the night before, when she came home half-out of her dress, with her best friend’s blood caked on her chest and freezing arms—was somehow curable … was something other than whatever Jess found herself imagining, impossibly, that it might be …

  With a grunt, Jess shoved her chair back, slammed down the lid of the box, grabbed both babies off the floor where she’d laid them, cashed the check, and walked out of the bank. Against her right shoulder, Eddie began to squirm, then whimper. Against her left, Sophie’s Roo gummed her sleeve. Somehow wedging both kids against the car, she keyed the door open and loaded the babies in the back. Her daughter’s voice was sizzling around in her ears now like a downed power line. Saying, Don’t let me find you.