by Peter Carey
The mother lowered her window and the storm rushed in like a tomcat, occupying the backseat and spraying the inside of the windshield.
Five dollars for the lot of youse, the man shouted. Room for all. I’ve got a nice clean Globe Trotter.
The boy began gathering the Uno cards but the mother dragged him out before he got done. Here, she told the man, here’s five.
Trevor and the Rabbitoh fled like cowards, suddenly reversing onto the highway, and the stinging gravel was cruel on his bare legs. The boy and his mother ran toward a trailer home shivering on its blocks.
Then the generator failed, so the boy would recall when he only lived inside the memory of a man.
Under hypnotism on East Seventy-sixth Street he would once more see the spooky-eyed proprietor lighting two propane lights which roared like jets at forty thousand feet. At that moment he was recognized, he was certain, and he stared straight back. Years later he understood—he had wanted to get caught. After the hypnosis he drank Armagnac in the Carlyle, flirting mildly with the waitress. You look familiar, she said.
In a minute the pair of them were up the ladder beneath the dented metal and the mother held him to her in the rocking bed.
It’s better here, Dial, he said. We’re doing fine.
I’m proud of you, she said. You spoke up for us.
His usual sleeping thoughts were of his mother coming to rescue him. Now he had her, he was safe and inside the heaving chest of storm; he went to sleep and when he was tipped out it was hours later and he was falling to the earth.
9
Throughout the night the trailer was punched and hammered so unpredictably, with such force, it seemed this thing might really kill them. There was nothing for Dail to do but hold the boy, listen to the adenoidal whispers of his sleep, while her legs ached with all the terror she had banned from her embrace.
There were some calmer stretches, but each return of violence seemed more drunken. The trailer began to lift and drop and the noise was soon so loud that the physical world lost all cohesion, and Dial found herself clinging to the axles of a ghost train. She could not let go, could not make it stop. She lay rigid in the bed, whispering to the boy—prayers, thoughts, wishes, things she hoped would worm their way like pretty threads into his sleeping brain.
There was no moon, no lightning that she could see. When she was tipped over it was into a sea of ink, her body wrapped around the sleeping child.
Her head cracked. She saw stars. She thought, Comic strip.
It’s OK, baby, it’s OK, babe. She was not knocked out but she could feel the ceiling with her backbone, sliding along the ground, grinding across stones as the trailer moved along the earth while she remained rigid, anticipating some horror, a stabbing blade, a hoe turned lethal in the night.
Baby. Che.
He did not answer and she thought, He’s dead.
What happened, Mom?
Shush, she said, feeling the terror of that word even in the middle of this other fear. Hush. It’s just the storm.
Are we OK?
Shush, she ordered.
Then came a noise without meaning, like a giant Mexican tin crow flapping its wings against the walls. She thought, What does it matter who his mother is? We are being torn apart.
We’re OK, baby, it’ll finish soon.
Then he was very quiet.
Che?
He was asleep.
Their blankets had fallen with them and she wrapped him tight, keeping her ear near his mouth so she could know he was alive. She tried to feel his pulse but he tugged his arm free in irritation and slept with his nose down and his bottom in the air.
Perhaps he was in a coma—Manslaughter, she thought. They were rocketed and buffeted, wheels in the air, soft belly offered to the sky until, finally, there came a time when the movement was not much worse than being in a dinghy moored too tightly for the chop. Her sleep was cut with something white and sharp, a knife of light went clear through her lids. She opened her eyes, saw the furry velvet shapes and then the lightning. Not lightning. She thought oxyacetylene. A rescue team. She carefully untangled herself from the boy, leaving him with his arms thrown wide, his lips gone violet-brown.
Sitting on the ceiling she could see through the top half of the door, showers of exploding sparks rising into the rain, a dancing snake of power line on a Kombi van. Figures dressed in trash bags stood before this wild machine while the water lapped at their feet, electric worms wriggling inside the river’s molten plastic-looking heart.
Dial found her backpack, then realized it was directly beneath a leak. So what, she thought. They were both alive. Her scarf was dripping wet, but the passports were OK inside their plastic sleeves. In the bottom she found some papers, a soggy mess of railway timetables and directions to Vassar, also her letter of appointment. It was nothing. Easily get another, but she sat cross-legged in the intermittent gloom and extracted the envelope and very carefully peeled the four tips apart so that the letter itself was exposed, sodden and vulnerable but blessedly whole. It meant nothing, but she held it in two hands, as if fearful she would burst its secret yolk. Carefully she placed it flat on the aluminum ceiling that was now her floor. Then, using her wet scarf, she began to smooth it flat, and as she squeezed out the final bubble the paper tore in half. Fuck it. She balled it in her fist and squeezed it, wringing the water into her lap. Fuck it fuck it fuck it fuck it. The fucking professor gave her Susan’s number, but no one made her call it. She did not even like the Selkirks. Vassar should take her back, fuck them, fuck it. She did not even know that she was crying. But he did, the boy.
Are you OK? he whispered.
She had no choice. She had to be OK. She came back to bed and held him.
Are you crying, Dial?
I’m fine, baby. I didn’t sleep much, that’s all.
Why are you crying?
It’s nothing, baby, something that happened a long time ago.
10
What had happened long ago was she had been a total fool. That was a long time ago and very recent. She believed people, always had—for instance, the handwriting on the ticket. Change of plan. Mrs. Selkirk expects you back tonight. The worst was—she believed it because the hand was so dogged, so dull, so lacking in imagination. She was such a snob she did not see the lie. And so she had let herself be their instrument, be used to steal the child.
He was a sweet boy, in many ways, but he was not hers. And this was definitely not her life.
The Philly Greyhound station had been a scuzzy place and it was with serious reluctance that she had left him in the waiting room alone. The telephone was just outside the door, by the restrooms, by the back door to the pizza parlor. She did not yet know she had been manipulated. She was still being a good girl and a snob all at once. She phoned the Philadelphia number written on her ticket. The line was busy. As the coin returned a strung-out woman, very white with scared blond hair and puffy eyes, came through from the pizza parlor. They locked eyes before Dial turned away.
Here you are, honey.
The woman was holding up a string of pearls. One of her nails was missing. Make me an offer, baby. I’ll give you a good price.
The number was busy. She shook her head at the pearls. The woman had a red line running up her leg from her sneaker to her knee. She hunched over her purse and removed four quarters and realized she was being misunderstood.
She deposited the quarters and listened to the phone ringing on Park Avenue. The woman was close behind her. She could smell stale bread and antiseptic.
The phone was picked up.
Hello.
There was a noise, like ice cubes rattling. Hello. It was a man. In the background there was an interfering woman.
Who is it? the man asked, perhaps obediently. Dial heard a three-martini lunch traveling through the dusk from Park.
Anna Xenos.
Anna Zeno, the man said. Idiot, she thought, as he placed his hand across the phone.
Ther
e was some kind of shuffling, a fast fierce expletive. She noted with relief that the pearl woman had retreated to the bathroom door where she appeared to be wrapping the necklace in newspaper.
Where are you? Phoebe Selkirk exploded in her ear.
In Philadelphia, of course.
There was a long silence.
You have my boy.
Of course.
Another long silence and when she spoke again her voice had hit another register. What do you want? asked Mrs. Selkirk.
What do I want? said Dial. She should have said, They gave me a ticket and a phone number. The number does not answer. What should I do? But she was watching a very strange sick woman slide past, her eyes on Dial, her nylon jacket brushing noisily against the wall.
What do you want, damn you.
Mrs. Selkirk, do not speak to me like that. I’m not your servant anymore.
You were not to leave New York. You were to have him back here. Where are you? Tell me now.
I am trying to dial the damn number I was given. That’s what I am trying to do. I have some drug addict pestering me and your grandson is by himself, all right. Here I am. Now you tell me what I am to do.
This produced the most extraordinary outburst of crying which Dial was not prepared for. Again the man and Mrs. Selkirk argued. Again the hand went across the receiver.
Hello, he said.
Will you please kindly tell me what I am to do.
You may as well know, young missy, we know who you are and this call has been traced.
The woman with the pearls was standing now, at the entrance to the waiting room. Dial thought, Don’t go in there, but she did, sliding, not perfectly in control.
Do you have any idea who you are dealing with, the man said, made stupid by his slur.
I’ll call you back, Dial said.
She rushed back to the waiting room door where she could see the boy had taken out his papers and was laying them out beside him on the seat. Above his head a silent television displayed a picture of Susan Selkirk: PHILLY BOMB BLAST. 2 DEAD.
The woman with the pearls was at her shoulder, her eyes also on the set.
What happened? Dial whispered.
Crazy bitch blew herself up.
Here?
Up near Temple. Fool.
When?
She shook her head, meaning Who could say. She held out her newspaper parcel as if a deal had been concluded. Caught in the weird focus of her baleful gaze, Dial opened her change purse and gave her three singles.
God bless you, said the woman, and thrust the paper into Dial’s hand.
You’ve got blood poisoning, Dial said.
The woman started, then raised her upper lip to laugh.
Your leg, Dial said.
The woman shook her head and began to laugh uncontrollably, staggering a little as she made her way out to the street.
Dial untangled the newspaper and was not at all surprised to find it empty.
Who was that, the boy asked when she returned.
Susan Selkirk was making bombs! She wanted me to bring her child to a bomb factory.
I’ve got to call New York, she said.
She balled up the newspaper and thrust it in the trash. When she looked up her yearbook picture was on television. She thought, They think I’m blown to pieces. The boy was still sorting out his papers. She snatched one of his papers up. What’s that? she asked, forcing him to look.
D-i-l-e, he said, holding up her card.
The boy’s picture was on the screen right now.
I know, she said. I really dig your papers. Her heart was pounding. Her eyes were everywhere, on the card, the screen, the woman in the street who was now walking toward a man with a suitcase.
The news finished. She said, I won’t be a moment, baby. Are you OK?
He looked up. What a strange contained creature he was, folding up his papers so they were mostly the size of a cigarette pack, stacking them carefully on top of one another. I’m fine. He smiled at her, holding up his left hand to show his splayed fingers and his rubber bands. I’m cool, he said.
At the Belvedere, they had seen the news, or not. They knew Susan Selkirk was dead, perhaps. The phone was answered by a new man, colder, clearer, with a Brooklyn accent. Could it have been the cops so fast?
Hi ya, Anna. What’s up?
She had not even said her name.
I was instructed to come here to Philadelphia, she told whoever it was. I was just doing what I was asked to do by the family.
Anna, Mrs. Selkirk put the child in your care for two hours.
Would a cop say that? Wouldn’t he know it would scare her? In her mind’s eye she could see the bus ticket, the handwriting. She understood: Susan Selkirk had used her to steal her child.
So, the man said, and of course he was a cop. So, what are your plans now, Anna?
I’m coming back on the bus, she said, thinking she had a Massachusetts state bursary check—two thousand dollars—in her purse.
Uh-huh. Back to the city. What time, Anna?
Oh, I’ll be on the next one, she said. Up the road there was a snaky red neon: CHECKS CASHED.
So you’re near the bus station now, the man said.
She could see the wash of police light on the shining hallway floor.
See you then, she said. She hung up.
What next? the boy asked when she returned to him. He was already binding his rubber bands around his papers as she crouched in front of him. Was it weird for one so young to be so neat? She could see the street over his shoulder. The woman with the pearls was sitting on the hood of a police car.
We’ll stay in a hotel, she said. How about that?
You said we were going to a scuzzy house, he said, but he smiled at her again, his eyes so wide and trusting she wanted to tell him not to be like that.
Plans have changed, she said. She did not say, Your mommy screwed us both.
When he had his papers in their proper place she led him down toward the washrooms, out through the pizza parlor, out into another street. She had no idea where she was, or where they were going, but when they came to a hotel she knew this had to be the one. The stairs smelled like the woman with blood poisoning, of disinfectant and the thing the disinfectant was there to hide. She paid out her own money. She took the key which was wired to a huge link of chain and she led him along the hallway past numbered doors each one of which she expected contained someone vile or sad.
There were no shadows in their room.
Where are you going now? he asked and she hugged him too hard, and then acted casual, checking her purse for the Massachusetts money. All she knew was she was in trouble. She had been tricked. The only witness who could save her had just killed herself with her messy habits. Crumbelina, Dial had called her, secretly of course. Crumbelina had smeared butter across the countertops in Somerville. She could not make a bed, let alone a revolution.
She was sorry she had to abandon this boy. She kissed him and locked herself out. She was the Alice May Twitchell Fellow. She was an assistant professor at Vassar College. So this could not be true, that she was apparently a fugitive, fleeing down a creepy hallway in Philadelphia.
11
The mother and the boy were adrift, together in a trailer, with her Harvard book bag hugged between them, and the boy pretended that the prowling storm was just boat spray on Kenoza Lake, in his face and on his feet, and the mother was warm and foggy and he held her tight, his lips against her arm no matter what. He slept and when he woke the light was gray as East River mist and the trailer was fluttering but no longer rocking. Water dripped beside him, pooling in the bright green lake of rug.
How could he have been happy? It was in almost every sense impossible. He had been torn from his soil, thrown through the sky. In spite of which he remembered, vividly, years later—a brief period of deep tranquillity.
The door was in the ceiling, opening to a pale gray sky. He was washed clean of worry, restored.
&
nbsp; Then a rooster crowed. Then someone tried to start a chain saw. And then the kitten came, and the kitten was in no way calm.
At first the boy did not even recognize it as a creature with a heart, but something sprung and needled, metal, plastic, a scratchy noise that had to bring itself to him to be identified, a tiny rib cage with drowned rat fur and wild green eyes and it came along the top of the kitchen drawers on which he and Dial were lying and the boy saw all its fright and made a purring noise himself and opened his mouth, O.
Poor kitty. How did you get here?
He took off his T-shirt and wrapped it around the kitty—pink mouth asking, green eyes blaming, sharp teeth threatening revenge.
Dial gave over her cardigan for the cat to travel in, gray with blue stripes, one pocket big enough for a book, the other for a kitten. Thus the boy carried him to the upside-down door with the glass in its bottom panel. See that? Wild trees had been stripped bare, a power line had fallen, showers of yellow sparklers in the rain. The straights not really doing anything but standing with their arms folded against the roaring brown river which was now lapping around the edge of the toilets.
He’s lucky he found us, Dial.
Who?
Buck.
Buck?
Dial never knew this, but the boy nearly named the cat Kipling, for the Cat That Walked by Himself, for Grandma, for the red-and-gold book upstairs, for the smell of paper one hundred years of age. Instead he named him Buck, for the dog in Jack London’s book—He had been suddenly jerked from the heart of civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial.
What’s primordial, Dial.
She bit her lip. You crazy little thing, she said. Primordial.
What is it.
Wild things, she had said, the law of the wild.
It’s a good name for him, he said.
12
All her life Anna Xenos would think of that moment, on the phone in the Greyhound station, when she might have explained herself to whomever she was speaking to. Yet each of the thousands of times she walked that particular road she arrived at the same point where there was no road at all—she crashed and burned before Philly, at Vassar, in the chair’s office, when she had gotten high on knowing Susan Selkirk, when she took the phone number, when she looked down at the groundsmen and the fall leaves and thought she belonged there. That was her fatal flaw and it was deep as a septic crack in the heel of her foot, a dirty little crevice that went right down to her bone. When she telephoned Susan Selkirk she was her mother’s daughter, bringing home her employer’s silver, relishing her connection with the famous.
