Boy Still Missing
Page 13
“How you doing?” he asked me.
I shrugged. “Okay,” I told him. My voice cracked, but I didn’t feel that fishhook in my throat any longer.
“Come here,” he said and wrapped his bear arms around me.
Caught off guard by his hug, I felt myself begin to slip. The tears started even as I tried to hold them back. My mouth opened and let out a shapeless sound I had never heard myself make before. I don’t know why it took him to break the dam inside me, but it did. I cried, and I couldn’t stop. Everyone was probably staring at me, thinking what a pathetic mess I was or feeling sorry for me without realizing that it was all my fault. But I couldn’t help it. I missed my mother and wanted her back. I was never going to see her again.
“It’s going to be okay, kid,” Donald said. “Let it out. You loved her and it hurts, I know. Just let yourself cry.”
The more he said those things, the more I bawled. My nose was running all over the place, and whenever I tried to gulp in more air, I let out that shapeless sound that embarrassed me. I must have carried on like that for five minutes. Ten. Finally I loosened my grip on Donald and caught my breath. The funeral line was backed up like a traffic jam on Route 67. The crowd must have taken my cue, because most of the room had their waterworks going full blast. Even the priest was shedding a few tears, and he probably did a funeral or two a week.
I looked at my uncle, opened my mouth, and said, “Truman.”
His face was expressionless. He blinked, took a breath, blinked again.
“My brother should be at our mother’s funeral,” I said.
My uncle was quiet a moment. He rested his hand on mine. “I’m sorry.”
I started to say something else, but Marnie stood and pulled Donald away. She led him over to the priest and made the introductions. The father launched into his spiel about God’s great plan, and I resumed my staring contest with the rug.
Where was my brother?
If this event didn’t drag him out of the woodwork, nothing would. I decided that maybe he was dead, too. He had drowned that day at Laguna del Perro in 1955 after the picture was taken. My mother had been one of those women who couldn’t accept the loss of her child, so she still fantasized that her son was alive, simply living with her brother in Manhattan.
“Dominick,” a woman said, “it’s me, Mrs. Tanenbaum. I’m so sorry.”
It was the woman with the too-big glasses who had been listening to my father’s sob story a few minutes ago. I shook her hand and nodded, letting the name Tanenbaum bounce around my brain in hopes of recognition. I came up empty until she finished what she was saying and walked away. From behind I recognized her squat body and chunky rear from seeing her up at the chalkboard. Mrs. T. My kindergarten art teacher. Something about the sight of her—remembering the pasty smell of her skin as she had helped me make macaroni montages and cut scraps of construction paper into refrigerator art for my mother—caused my stomach to bend and coil. An invisible hand pushed on my chest and made it hard for me to breathe. I bolted for the glowing red EXIT sign, left the I’m-so-sorry parade behind.
Outside, I retched by the Dumpster. I’m not sure what my body was churning up, because I hadn’t really eaten since the bus ride two days before. But out it came, all soft and yellow whatever it was. When I couldn’t heave anymore, I stood there leaning against the cold blue metal of the Dumpster, wondering why a funeral home needed such a big garbage-disposal system. What could they possibly have to throw away? Dead flowers. Body parts.
When I turned around, I noticed Leon and Special Ed standing across the lot. They were dragging on cigarettes and flipping pages of The Discount Car News, circling ads. Leon raised his chin up at me as a way of saying hello. He had seen me puke my guts out plenty of times on our Holedo Hell-Raiser drinking nights, but this was different. “Sorry,” I said, feeling pathetic.
“It’s cool,” Leon said. “Do what you need to do.”
Special Ed nodded, and something about that nod—like he knew what the fuck I was feeling, like he knew what it was like to be responsible for your mother’s death—made me want to rail him. But I just turned and walked away. Special fucking Ed. What the hell did he know?
I stayed numb for the rest of the service and for the whole trip out to the cemetery, where Thumbless gave a speech about death being the beginning or some such line of bull. In my head I listened to the entire Tommy album to block it all out.
What about the boy?
What about the boy?
What about the boy?
He saw it all.
When the priest finished, Marnie promptly collapsed by the pile of flowers that covered the ground where my mother would be buried come spring. Jeanette, Ruth, Lois, and Carol fussed over her like a stew they were taste-testing.
“She needs air.”
“She needs water.”
“She needs to walk around.”
More salt, I thought. Less pepper. Let her boil down.
“Let’s walk her to the car,” they all concurred and escorted her to the Dart. Her meltdown would give me an excuse to keep riding with her instead of my father, who was side-saddling with the priest. As people plucked roses from the pile for keepsakes, I ran those Who lyrics in my head to keep from crying again. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I switched to those lines from my mother’s sad songs. “I looked at my life today. I wish I was happy living this way.” That brought me closer to the brink, so I turned off the DJ in my head and started thinking about those fairy tales. That mother who gave her son the last of her money and he blew it on some beans. A giant stalk.
When it was all over, I got back into Marnie’s car and let out a sigh. My plan: to head straight home, lock my bedroom door, and cry alone. After that my life was as black as a blank chalkboard to me.
Once we were on the road I realized the whole gang was following us to the apartment for a reception. “Is this a bon voyage party?” I asked Marnie. “Enough is enough.”
“Dominick,” she said, her voice still shaky, on the edge of tears, “there are always receptions after funerals. It gives people a chance to reminisce about the person who’s left us. Besides, everyone needs to eat.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Now that we’ve all worked up an appetite standing around my mother’s grave, let’s go back and rustle up some grub. I bet my kindergarten art teacher and Mrs. Diesel will have a grand old time discussing their millions of memories of my mother. We can all talk about her affair with the sheriff. Or about her plans for an abortion. Or about her son who didn’t show at his mother’s funeral!”
Without realizing it, I had seriously raised the volume and was out-and-out screaming. Marnie looked at me with an open-mouthed, Halloween-horror expression on her face. She seemed to me like someone with no bones inside her anymore. Flimsy. Collapsible. We pulled to the side of the road, and she stretched her wobbly arms toward me to give me a hug. I knew that would only lead to one of her crying jags, and I’d end up having to console her, straighten her back up.
No thank you.
“I don’t want a hug!” I screamed, pushing her weak arms away.
“I’m sorry,” she said, recoiling. “It’s all my fault. I should have talked your mother out of it. Should have gone with her or something. I understand why you’re blaming me.”
If I traced back the blame, it landed on one person: yours truly. Sure, I could hang some of it on my father for meeting Edie in the first place, my mother for carrying on with Roget and getting pregnant, and Edie for fucking me over. But the biggest onus fell on me. If that money had been there, none of this would have happened.
“I’m not blaming you, Marnie,” I said, calmer than before. “You were the only real friend she had. Believe me, it wasn’t your fault.” I saw myself as a black-robed judge, slamming down his gavel. Marnie Garboni is found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Marnie pulled that same clump of stiff blue tissues from her pocket and blew her nose. “I was?”
“Thank you for saying that, Dominick. It means so much to me.”
Even without the hug, I had wound up consoling her again. But there didn’t seem to be any other way out of this. I wanted to get back on the road, get through the dog-and-pony show at my house, then get rid of the whole clan so I could be alone. “She loved you so much,” I said.
A moment later we were moving again. We stayed quiet the rest of the ride home, where the party was already hopping. Jeanette, Ruth, Lois, and Carol were carrying on like they entertained here all the time. They had pulled back the sheer curtains my mother always kept over the closed windows, and the sun poured into our apartment, sprinkling shafts of light in unfamiliar places. Someone had clicked on the radio, and a flute was tittering in the background. On the kitchen table they had set out platters of food. Eggs with yolks whipped fluffy, sprinkled with a blood-colored spice. Lunch meats curled into finger-size slices, fleshy and damp. Hard squares of cheese, orange as the sun. Mrs. Ramillo brewed a vat of coffee, and everyone was getting tanked up on caffeine. She shoved a foam cup in my hand, filled to the rim. Holding that cup made me think of sitting in the back of Roget’s car, sipping from his thermos.
Your mother’s got a lot on her plate right now, so I want you to go easy on her.
I drank the coffee down despite the bad taste, then bumped around the kitchen with the empty cup in my hand. I thought of Ed Dreary, who used to eat a whole Styrofoam cup in the cafeteria if you gave him a quarter.
Some party trick.
My father was in the living room pinballing from person to person, sucking up more of their condolences, reminiscing about his “beloved wife.” I heard him say, “It’s just me and Dominick now. The two of us.”
Yeah, I thought. Until you disappear. Then it will be just the one of us.
I wandered out of the kitchen and ended up in my parents’ bedroom, where the bed was perfectly made, my mother’s nubby cardigan folded neatly on top of her dresser, her hairbrush full of black strands nearby. It looked as if she had only stepped out of the room for a moment. A piece of Juicy Fruit gum was folded in its foil wrapper on the nightstand. I picked it up and put it in my pocket, saving that weird habit of hers, though I wasn’t sure why.
“Knock, knock,” my uncle said, even though the door was wide open. “Anybody home?”
I had flipped open my mother’s music box, and that plastic ballerina was twirling away. He looked around her room at the threadbare white curtains, the oversize bedroom set she had picked up at a tag sale, the oak dented and nicked. “So this is where my sister was living,” he said, emphasizing the word “this” in a way that sounded condescending.
What the hell was he acting so self-righteous about? I’d seen his pad, and it wasn’t exactly the Taj Mahal. But I kept my mouth shut on that subject. I reached under the bed and pulled out the picture of the man I believed was Truman’s father. I held it in front of Donald’s face without saying a word.
He let out a sigh, took the photo from my hands, and stared at it. “This is your mother’s first husband,” he told me. “His name was Peter, and he drowned in a boating accident.”
Laguna del Perro, I thought. 1955. Had my brother drowned, too? I wanted to whip out that picture of my uncle and Truman but held back because I didn’t want him to know I had taken it from his apartment. My guess was he still hadn’t run into Rosaleen, so he had no clue I had even been there. “Did my brother drown, too?” I asked.
Donald handed the picture back to me, reached over and closed the music box. “You are dealing with a lot right now. I don’t think it’s a good idea to fill your head with more worries.” He picked up one of my mother’s pillows, then put it down, sat on the edge of the bed. “Listen. I have to leave tonight for a conference in Germany. It’s a series of presentations and a research seminar that I can’t get out of. Even for this. I’m sorry. But I’m going to give you my number at the hotel and some money in case you need anything. When I get back next month, we’ll figure things out together. I promise. Okay, kid?”
No, it wasn’t okay, but he didn’t seem to be giving me a choice. He pulled a yellow envelope out of the pocket of his blazer. Just a few days before, I had been counting on him to bail me out with some cash, and here he was forking it over. A little too late, I thought as he shoved the envelope into my suit pocket. He told me I should take a few days off from school, then force myself to go back. It would take my mind off things, he said. He gave me another hug, told me again that we would work it out when he got home.
After he left the room, I walked down the hall to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. I stood there staring in the mirror and trying to imagine sitting in a classroom as if nothing had changed. Could anyone tell by looking at me what a mess I had made out of my life? I imagined people gawking at me, whispering that I was the kid whose mother died from an abortion in the Holedo Motel.
Outside the door I heard snippets of chitchat from my mother’s farewell bash.
“I think Dominick is still in shock,” my father said. “It hasn’t really hit him yet that she’s gone.”
“He’s just a boy,” a woman’s voice said in response. “The poor thing.”
“Roget hasn’t heard the last from me,” Marnie said in a stage whisper right outside in the hallway. I didn’t know who she was talking to. Lois? Jeanette? “I’m not going to drop this. For Dominick’s sake.”
I looked in the mirror and decided I had a choice: I could stand around being pitied by this pack of losers or I could find a way to make things up to my mother. I didn’t have a plan, but I knew I needed to get out of here and clear my head. I waited until Marnie’s voice floated back down the hall, then went into my parents’ bedroom, where Marnie’s pocketbook sat on the chair under the pile of people’s coats. I had learned my lesson about stealing money, but this time I was only borrowing something: her car. With the keys in my pocket, I made my way through the living room and told my father I was going for a walk.
“Want some company?” he asked, doing the concerned parent routine in front of his audience.
“No thanks,” I answered and headed out the door before anyone else snagged me.
When I reached Marnie’s Dart, I took a breath and climbed inside. I looked around to make sure no one was watching, then adjusted the seat, stuck my key in the ignition. The piece of shit started right away, and I put it in reverse, backed out of the lot. Without knowing exactly where to go, I headed slowly down Dwight Avenue. I had watched my mother drive enough to know when to gun it and when to brake. Marnie’s boat swayed back and forth on the road, and I felt like I was sailing. A cop car was stopped in the parking lot of the Doghouse. My heart lurched for a second, but the officer didn’t even look at me. Let him pull me over. I’d tell him to spend his energy nailing that no-good sheriff instead of picking on an orphan like me. The way Marnie had explained it, she told the police right away that Roget had been with my mother in the motel. They put out an APB, but when he turned up, their take on things suddenly changed. Roget had been with two other officers in a meeting at the new station, the police explained. He couldn’t have been there. It was impossible. Marnie was flabbergasted. She kept telling me she was going to find a way to nail Roget, but I couldn’t imagine the Bingo Lady taking on the Holedo Police Department and winning. And even though it tore me up to imagine him walking away from this whole thing, I didn’t know what I could do about it.
When I passed the motel, I slowed the car down. The place was still blocked off with DO NOT CROSS—POLICE INVESTIGATION yellow tape. No cars in the lot. A NO VACANCY sign out front. I glanced up at room 5B and a cold tingle moved through me like ice in my veins at the sight of tha
t door.
You will never see your mother again, a voice said.
I bit my lip.
Imagined her in a glass coffin instead of that heavy wooden one at the funeral parlor. Imagined that someone could kiss her and bring her back to life. But who would that be? Not Roget. Not my father. Maybe Peter, her first husband. I wondered if she loved him. I wondered if she was with him now.
To keep myself from crying, I stepped on the gas. Without planning it, I made the turn toward Edie’s. I wasn’t sure why I was going there, seeing as she was long gone. But I guess I didn’t know where else to go or what to do next. And when I came over the top of the hill, there it was in front of me. The slanted roof. The lemonade paint, peeling. The lion-faced knocker. I stopped the car dead in the street the way my mother had the night we came looking for my father. I had reamed out Leon just for mentioning Edie’s name, only to leave my mother’s reception and park in front of her house. Add the word “hypocrite” to my list of personality flaws.
As I sat there in the bright afternoon sunlight, staring at the place, the only sound was the whining of a chain saw, someone somewhere must have been doing away with a tree that had fallen in the storm. I listened to the revving and putt-putting of that hungry saw as it sliced and tore through wood. A breeze blew over the hill and sent Marnie’s antenna clacking back and forth.
“I hate you, Edie Kramer,” I whispered into the air. I said it once, twice, three times. Then again, louder, “I fucking hate you!”
I took my mother’s silver gum wrapper from my pocket and held it in my palm like some sort of magic charm. I felt myself tearing up, losing my grip the way I had when Donald hugged me. I snorted and sniffled. Hammered my hand against the dashboard until it hurt so much I had to stop. A lot of good it did me to talk to an empty house. I had really avenged my mother’s death, telling that Victorian how I felt. I needed to do something. I needed to show my mother that I loved her. I wiped my eyes and looked at the FOR SALE sign half covered with snow and knocked crooked from the plows. CONTACT VICKI SPRING.