Motherless Child

by Glen Hirshberg

  “Shit,” Natalie hissed.

  “Shit,” Sophie agreed. Blankly.

  “Oh, no,” said Natalie. Then she was out of the car, leaving it in the middle of the road, darting into the kudzu-choked untended trees that ringed the rows of trailers. Behind her, she heard Sophie moving the car to the shoulder, which was probably smart, but her attention remained riveted on the rows of silent, pathetic temp-homes parked in their berths. Like house-souls that missed the boat from heaven, Wanda had announced once, through her eighth or ninth gin and tonic of a long-ago spring evening. Houses that were meant to be homes but lost their way somehow, got shunted here. And became something else. Colorform homes. Homes pasted in easily removable places by little-kid angels. Practice homes.

  Home enough for her mom, though. And for her. And for her son. Almost.

  She could see her trailer, now. Door hanging open, so that the night washed in and out of it. Windows open, but no audible baseball chatter. Not her home anymore, or her mom’s, either. No one’s home.

  And anyway, the Caution tape wasn’t around that trailer. It was around Wanda’s.

  Sophie joined her, and they crouched together near a stubby pine completely consumed by kudzu. “What the fuck?” she said.

  For answer, Natalie stepped out of the shadows into the trailer park. She expected cops to appear from everywhere. Or the Whistler to drop on her like a bobcat. Nothing happened. No one moved, anywhere. In that new family’s trailer, the Walshes’, just down the row, she heard the usual thudding garbage-rock, but turned low. So low that the walls of their double-wide didn’t even bulge. A new knife-edge of fear trailed down Natalie’s back, nudged her straight across the dirt toward her mother’s trailer. She took the front steps in one jump, stuck her head in the door.

  A pot she recognized on the stove. A stupid, saggy white blouse of her mom’s, with an old coffee stain on the front, discarded across the bed. The sweet feelings Natalie had had back in the GTO were gone, now. There was nothing here. Or rather, the only thing left on this earth worth finding wasn’t here. Thank God.

  She whirled, left the trailer, moved to Wanda’s with Sophie in tow. She could smell the dried blood from fifteen feet away, had just spotted the brown, crusted splotch of it that had seeped under Wanda’s door from inside, when the older Walsh boy stepped out of his own weed-cloud into the moonlight. Natalie grabbed him by the frayed collar of his Megadeth shirt and banged him to the dirt so hard that half of whatever he’d just smoked burst from his lungs like dust off a beaten rug. Then she straddled his chest.

  “Natalie?” he coughed. “Right? You’re Natalie?”

  “What happened?”

  “Natalie?” His red, dumb eyes widened in their bony sockets while his greasy hair soaked up the dirt and his surprisingly gentle mouth curved into a smile somehow younger and wiser than his sixteen or whatever years. Natalie remembered noticing that mouth once, not too long ago, when the family first moved in. Christ, probably less than two months ago. Earlier this summer. That mouth, she had thought, would get this kid more of what he wanted than he expected to get. Would get him in trouble, not all of it bad.

  Assuming he lived that long. And stopped looking at her the way he was looking at her now.

  “You look—” the kid started, and Natalie lifted him by the collar and slammed him down again. His jaws jumped in their sockets, and his eyes rolled back.

  “What. Happened?”

  Whether from the weed, the Natalie-effect, or the pounding she’d given his head, the Walsh kid seemed unable to respond. Kept trying to wet that pretty mouth with his little-boy tongue.

  “Did my mom say anything?” Natalie growled, knowing it was hopeless. Knowing Jess wouldn’t have. Certainly not to this kid.

  “Your mom’s gone? Where’d she go?”

  To keep from screaming—and also from plunging her teeth straight through this kid’s throat—Natalie bent forward fast, kissed him on the forehead, and stood up.

  “Whoa, tiger,” she heard Sophie call, in that infuriating, inflection-less tone, as she half-ran down the row of trailers toward the trees. By the time she reached them, she’d started to retch, and her muscles clenched, partly from panic, partly from the desperate need to turn around, go back. Get someone. And eat him.

  Sophie didn’t say anything once she reached Natalie’s side, just put her hand on her friend’s bent back. The touch so cold, like an ice pack, without the therapeutic properties.

  “Get off,” Natalie said when she could.

  “Sweetie,” said Sophie, “you should eat something. You’ll feel better.”

  That annoyed Natalie enough to drag her upright. She stared into Sophie’s eyes. “Is that supposed to be cute? Funny?”

  “What would be funny about it?”

  They got back in the car, started the engine, and Natalie realized she had no idea where to go or what to try. She watched her arms jiggling with the vibrations, which came simultaneously from the car and inside her. Along with everything else—rage, frustration, heartbreak—she realized that most of what she felt was relief.

  He’s gone, she thought. He’s safe. Not mine, not ever. But safe.

  “Oh, Mom,” she whispered. “Thank you.” A smell filtered into her nostrils. Blood smell. From the Walsh kid. From Wanda’s trailer. Whether this was memory of smell or super-heightened sensory overload she had no idea. But she realized, finally, what the smell from Wanda’s trailer had to mean. What it suggested had happened here. And she found herself whispering again. “I’m so sorry, Wanda. I’m so sorry.” Then she jammed the car into gear and drove.

  They went nowhere, rode the wide streets in and out of empty, useless downtown Charlotte, back and forth, and wound up parked just off Providence, at the edge of the glowing, green expanse of Queens University. All that perfect grass and scrubbed, red brick. All those moss-less trees, fat with leaves. The whole campus a near-perfect replica of the Ivies it so desperately emulated and yet so Charlotte. Devoid of personality. Blank. When Natalie abruptly left the car and wandered into the quad, she saw no one. Felt no wind. Felt as if she were walking on a stage set of a college quad, even though this place really was a hundred fifty years old. I come, she thought, from a giant suburb with no urb. A city with quadrants named for its malls. A sprawling, beautifully maintained hollow. A vampire city, constantly devouring itself, and so staying new. Which turns out to be such a different thing from staying alive.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Sophie by the car, half-watching. Looking bored. If anyone had come by just then, what would Sophie have done? Fucked them? Staggered them with a lust so pure it would poison love forever? Eaten them, out of gluttony? Killed them, for sport? Given them just enough of a glimpse of what they could have had, what could have come for them, that they’d stay haunted and lonely and grateful for the rest of their lives?

  Was that what Natalie would do, when Eddie was safe? When she’d eaten? When there were just years of nights ahead and nothing with which to fill them?

  She did scream, then. Long. Loud.

  No one came. No lights in any windows. Even Sophie barely looked up. As though Natalie hadn’t screamed at all. Wasn’t even there.

  And then, finally, Natalie knew where to go. What to try next. On unsteady legs, she returned to the car.

  “Where are we headed?” said Sophie, but not as though she cared.

  “To see Benny. And Hewitt.”

  For the first time all night, Sophie seemed surprised. “Hewitt?”

  “If my mom told anybody, she’d have told one of them.”

  “Hewitt,” Sophie said. Natalie still couldn’t read her voice. But it had lost its blankness. And Natalie had a realization, one she should have come to long ago. Of course, Hewitt had been Sophie’s camp counselor, too. Of course, she and Natalie had stayed up late at sleepovers for years afterward, concocting Hewitt-fantasies in the dark. And of course, she knew, Sophie loved her so desperately—really had imagined that their lives wo
uld never take them more than a street or two apart, ever, long before the night the Whistler found them—that she’d have done almost anything to ensure that.

  Or maybe anything.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said as she wound the GTO through the brightly lit, empty neighborhoods back toward Sardis Road. “You crazy, fucked-up bitch.”

  “Excuse you?”

  “I can’t believe … no, I can; that’s the incredible part.”

  “Oh, honey. We really need to get some food in you.”

  “You must have done it, what, days after I did? You didn’t just have to go get pregnant, too; you had to—”

  Sophie made a siren sound. Kept making it. “You, the brooding hottie in the GTO. Pull over. Wreckless thinking.”

  “Hewitt is Roo’s father, too, isn’t he?”

  Sophie stopped making the siren sound. Turned full in her seat and stared at Natalie. After a long moment, she said, “What? Ewww.…” She started laughing. “Why would I do that? Especially after your description of the … festivities.” Her laugh became a full-blown giggle fit. And Natalie—despite the Hunger, panic, everything—found herself laughing with her. Just for one moment.

  Then they were in the Waffle House parking lot, under the stupid yellow sign, and there he was through the window. The father of her child. Tall and clean and bushy headed, leaning over to refill the syrup canister on someone’s table. Permanent, clueless half smile right where it always was.

  “Natalie,” Sophie said. Still blank, but low. “I want my Roo.”

  Hewitt saw them the second they walked in the door. “Where have you guys been?” he shouted all the way across the restaurant, swinging every eye in the place toward them. That was fine with Natalie. It would shut them all up quicker. She walked straight between the booths, ignoring the stares from all sides. Something in her shoulders released, just a little, as she realized what she’d very much feared she’d find here, too. Believed she would find: More Caution tape. More blood, already drying. Dried.

  But he hadn’t come here.

  Because he’d somehow found out what he needed to know at Honeycomb Corner? Or because coming here hadn’t occurred to him?

  “Where’s Benny?” she snapped, and to her own surprise stepped into the hug Hewitt had instinctively opened his arms to offer. At her touch, he quivered. But not that much. Because he is the father of my child and somehow resistant?

  No. Because he was Hewitt. And almost miraculously oblivious to everyone else.

  Except here he was pushing her back, even. Holding her at arm’s length. Though having to glance down at his knees, which had gone to jelly on him, in order to do so.

  “Hey, Nat, I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I’ve been kind of freaky needing to.”

  There was something new under his half smile. Or maybe it had always been there. Whatever it was, it wasn’t anything the sight of new-Natalie had drawn from him. She waited, wondering.

  “I want to see Eddie,” he said. “I want to see my son.”

  Natalie’s mouth opened—either to answer that with the scorn it deserved or just to eat him and get it over with—and then the muscles in her face went slack. As though this pathetic guy had somehow sucked out some of the poison. Not enough, but a little. Out of nowhere, she missed her own father. Air-guitaring and duckwalking through his pineapple upside-down days. Throwing his daughter in the air. Kissing his wife repeatedly on the mouth, though she’d already frozen up too much with grief to kiss him back. Just like Jess, Natalie had known he was going. Had been unable to keep him proper company or even comfort him, much. But he’d gone out singing.

  “Me, too,” Natalie whispered.

  “What? What are you talking about? Where have you been? You just disappear, and I know I’ve been a jackass and kinda lost, but I want to see him. I want to be part of my son’s—”

  Sophie flipped him so hard off his feet onto the nearest tabletop that Natalie thought she’d broken his back. The multiple crack noises could have been wood, ribs, or both. The Egyptian-looking guy who’d been sitting at the table just sat with his mouth agape, syrup oozing down his unknotted purple tie, eyes misty with lust.

  “Where are they?” Sophie hissed in Hewitt’s face.

  Still strangely dazed, Natalie shook her own head, touched Sophie’s arm. “She means Benny, Hewitt. Where’s Benny?”

  Sophie lifted Hewitt by the shoulders and banged him down again. “Where’s Benny?” Then she glanced back at Natalie. “We’re asking about Benny? I thought we were looking for–”

  “What are you talking about?” Hewitt was babbling. Panicking.

  Natalie nudged Sophie aside and leaned over. He stared back up, wide-eyed. Not in love with her. Which almost made her love him. This guy she’d had a fling and a child with. It made the same stupid sense as everything else about living.

  “Hewitt. Right now. I need to talk to Benny.”

  “Well, talk to him.”

  “He’s here?”

  If possible, Hewitt’s eyes went even more bewildered. “What do you mean? He went off with your mom.”

  Natalie had to grab the plastic booth cover and the Egyptian guy’s head to keep from falling. Get herself steady. She looked at Sophie. Thinking, Good for you, Mom.

  And then, You stupid idiot. Because Jess really could have dropped off the planet if she’d thought she had to. Would have left the planet, if she’d believed that was the only way to protect her child. Children.

  But Benny. Who loved so many people. Loved people, period …

  Her legs steady again, her spine a seam of diamond down her back, Natalie leaned over Hewitt and stared upside down right into his eyes. “Hewitt. I know you know. I know he calls here. Where is he?”

  20

  Even now, after countless repetitions, the moment brought Mother a sensation so acute it verged on delight. Stepping into the bedroom doorway, she’d come face-to-face with the frayed cotton ball of a guy with the dishrag on his arm, registered the astonishment on his face, and without even bothering to catch his eye said, “Bring me a towel, sugar? Bit of a mess in here.”

  And without so much as blinking, let alone asking who she was or how she’d gotten into his condo, the guy had spun on his heel and gone and done it. Not because Mother had turned on the charm, either (which she couldn’t exactly help but rarely bothered accentuating), but because he was a well-meaning—and therefore congenitally guilty—white guy, with a black woman asking.

  It had caught her completely by surprise, the first thousand times it had happened. Way back before the Whistler, even, when she was still close enough to before to remember what before felt like. She’d claimed the Whistler at least in part because of this very feeling. Along with the simple, impossible fact that she could. The notion that a boy–a white boy–from a family of people who wouldn’t have touched her with their spit would fall so deeply under her spell that he’d beg her to take him, to make him like her, had charged their whole first decade together. Had probably provided the charge that allowed her to change him in the first place.

  At least, that’s how Mother had always figured it. On the rare occasions when she bothered figuring it at all.

  Cotton-ball guy got almost all the way back across the living room before the penny dropped for him. Even then, he didn’t stop, just slowed, and his smile twitched but didn’t slip. He was still offering the towel on an outstretched arm, so Mother grabbed him around his wrist and broke it. Then she punched him full in the face, caught him as he collapsed, and tossed him on top of the little mama, who lay facedown on the rug behind her.

  Except that the little mama wasn’t facedown anymore. She’d rolled herself onto what had to be at least a few cracked ribs and was just looking at Mother through shattered glasses.

  Losing my touch, Mother thought, then thought of the Whistler and cursed aloud.

  “Oh my God,” said a voice over her shoulder, and Mother swiveled, coiling. What she saw c
onfused her still more and caused her to grunt in frustration. Who were all these idiots?

  Holding a hand to his head, staggering up from under the desk as though he’d just emerged through a trapdoor, came a reedy, ridiculous kid. Moles all over his muscle-less forearms and a cheap straw hat tumbling off his lap. “You’re her.”

  It had been so long since Mother had shivered that for a moment she literally couldn’t imagine what was happening. I can still shiver? Apparently, she could, if she got bewildered or alarmed or angry enough.

  Or—seriously?—lonely enough? Because that was definitely happening, now. And she knew why. This kid reminded her far too much of her man. Her man at the beginning, all white and thin and awestruck and new.

  “Who do you think I am?” she murmured, her voice positively hoarse.

  “Her! His manager. But how did you get here so quick? I just posted, what, twenty minutes ago?” His questions came faster as his thoughts apparently started to clear, though he kept wincing and pressing a fist to the purple bruise on his temple. Mother wasn’t really listening, but she caught enough of what he was saying—and had also noted, finally, the image on the computer monitor on the desk—to sort, at last, what must have happened. The realization made her laugh outright.

  “That stupid Web site? It actually worked for something? You posted to tell him where they are, didn’t you?”

  The kid went right on babbling, so Mother caught his eye and shut him up. His mouth sagged open, and his eyes rolled back, then locked in on her. Boy-crush on the Whistler forgotten, just like that. To her amazement, Mother almost felt guilty.

  “He’s not for you, hon,” she said. “I’m saving you a world of grief.”