City of Boys (18 page)

The only problem with the new car seems to be its color, a light bluish-green that he thinks is somehow too feminine; it’s a color his ex-wife would have loved, but since we have all been so careful to say nothing about her, it’s hard to tell if he bought the car because of the color or in spite of it. It is almost the exact color of the sweater he gave her for Christmas last year, and when she opened the box, even I could tell she couldn’t stop a look of surprise from flashing across her face. —It’s lovely, she said, looking around, bewildered that he had gotten her something she liked so well. We all watched her fold the sweater carefully back into its tissue paper and replace the lid of the box; all but David, who was gazing intently at the tree, in order to avoid meeting the eyes of my mother, who had told him the sweater was all wrong for his wife’s coloring. Now he puts his fork down, a piece of broccoli speared to the end.

—I don’t know how I got along with that Pinto all these years, he says, and my mother nods, rattling the ice to the bottom of her drink.

—That’s right, she says. —You shouldn’t have had to keep that Pinto to begin with.

The Pinto was all that was left my brother from his marriage —that and a vase I gave them for Christmas. He mentioned it when he called from Ohio to tell me about the divorce.

—That vase you gave me, he said. —I kept it. I have it right here.

The vase was tall and thin, made of light green glass, and as he spoke, I was imagining him in a room perfectly empty but for the phone and the vase, casting green shadows over his face in the late-summer evening light.

—Yep, he said a little later,—that vase and the Pinto, that’s it. —And the kids, he added after a moment, —for two weeks in the summer. He was quiet then, and I could hear the ring of emptiness in the room around him. —I’m not sure what I’ll do with them, he said finally. —Maybe take them to Disneyland or something. I guess I could take them there.

He tells me now that he’d like to rent a little house somewhere, something like mine, but for the time being, he is living with my mother–a temporary arrangement, he says, until he gets back on his feet. It has been only six or seven months since his divorce, and he and my mother are taking a vacation, driving out west in David’s new car–it’s a good opportunity to break it in, he says, to work out the bugs. I am only a hundred miles or so out of their way, and this is the first of the two nights they’ll be spending here. They are really the first people to have been here any length of time since Alan left, which was a month ago, or two months. He left almost nothing behind him, only an old desk in the corner, a few articles of clothing, and his cat. Every now and then, I expect to run across something of his, in the back of a drawer, or the corner of a closet, but there’s nothing, not even a comb, or a postcard; all there really is to remind me of him are big empty stretches of space that rolled in to take up the places he once stood, or sat, or slept in. They lurk around the house like ghosts, waiting to surprise me, and I am always taken aback when I run into one of them. It is like hitting a pocket of air on a plane: my stomach dips and I have to sit down and wonder what it was like to have him here, and then I have to wonder what it means that I hardly
remember him–what he looked like, how he walked, the smell of his breath. All that really comes back to me, from time to time, is his voice, a tremulous reedy string of questions that I hear sometimes at night, right before I fall asleep.

I was more shocked that he left his cat than that he left, and so, it seems, is his cat, which spends most of the time outdoors; when it comes in, it sits at the window and stares out at the street. It hardly notices me, but its ears twitch at the sound of any male voice on the television. My own cat sits on the couch and stares at Alan’s, then follows when it goes outside.

My mother didn’t mention Alan when she and David called about their visit. She only met him once and didn’t like him, but when I told her that he was gone, she was quiet a moment and I could hear her breathe.

—Now, she said finally, —which one was Alan?

Later she said that she hated to think of me out here all alone, but she said it vaguely, as though she was watching television at the same time, and trying to keep track of a complicated plot line.

There have been others before Alan, and though I like to think otherwise, I know others will follow. They come and go like summer storms, hard to remember in the bright afternoons that follow. I never think of them, really, and they leave behind only tiny tears in the fabric of things-nothing enough to ever really notice. I suppose one day they’ll all add up and I will be left with a life full of holes, but for now I have a cat, and a desk, and–for two nights–David and my mother.

This is the first time they have been to visit me here, so I waited all day at the window to watch for them; when my brother’s new car, which he had described to me in great
detail over the phone, came down the street, I watched them slow at each house, checking the address. When they crept past mine and my mother peered out at my door, I was sure that our eyes met, but she shook her head and they drove on, only to edge reluctantly back into sight a few minutes later, pulling to a stop at the curb. As they got out of the car, I tried to imagine what they would look like if I didn’t know them, and what they looked like was a couple in need of exact directions. They stood on the sidewalk and looked longingly up and down the street at all the other houses–all larger than mine, surrounded by neat lawns full of children and flowers; then they finally started up my cracked walk, my mother stepping carefully, glancing around at the overgrown lawn, my brother’s arm hovering at her elbow. They seemed startled to see me when I opened the door, but after a moment my mother spread her arms and I entered them cautiously, smelling her powder and a new perfume. My brother stood by uneasily, patted me clumsily on the shoulder.

—You look good, Theresa, he said. —Maybe a little thin. He was dressed all in pastels, which turned his skin a kind of light orange, but I told him he looked good too, and he stared down at himself. —Oh, he said. —Well. I guess I’ve put on a few pounds. I could probably stand to lose a little weight.

My mother patted him on the arm. —You can carry it, honey, she said. —You have big bones.

He smiled unhappily off toward the road and placed his hand gently against his chest.

Now, in the restaurant, when he is not stopping to discuss his car, he eats steadily, bent over his food, without talking, and his eyes focus dreamily on the white stretch of tablecloth in front of him. Over the rim of her glass my mother
watches the steady motion of his fork, and when he is finished eating, he looks with dismay at his empty plate and lays his fork down next to it.

—I can’t wait for you to take a drive in the Toyota, he says. We drove to the restaurant in my car because he wanted to give his own a rest after the long day’s driving from Ohio, but he has promised me a test ride tomorrow, so he can point out the car’s features, all of which he has already listed for me. This is what we have talked about since their arrival: David’s new car, the weather, and the face-lift my mother is considering when they return from their trip.

—A face-lift? I say. —Why would you want to get a face-lift?

—Oh, she says, her fingers fluttering to her face. —Just here, where it’s puffy, and here–she strokes the soft skin at her jaw–where it’s starting to sag.

She drops her hand to the table and looks from one of us to the other. —You think it’s a bad idea, she says to David. —Don’t you? He spreads his hands out against the tablecloth.

—It’s fine, he says. —I think it’s fine.

He stares down at his hands and my mother picks up her glass. I can tell they have discussed this at least once a day since it occurred to my mother to do it.

—No, David says, though she has said nothing. —Really. It’s fine. Why not? He smiles and she leans sideways to get the attention of our waiter; when he sees her, she holds up her glass.

—I mean, she says, settling back into her chair, —it’s my money.

I saw once, in a waiting-room magazine somewhere, pictures of a face-lift operation. I turned past them quickly, then went back. I could hardly bear to look at them, but there was something compelling about seeing this woman’s
face cut neatly away from itself, the skin pulled back to show the muscle and blood and bone beneath. When her skin was trimmed and sewed back up, the stitches cleverly hidden in the curve of the jaw, the woman did look younger, I suppose, but her eyes were lit by a fear that seemed huger than in the picture taken before. My mind balks at the image of my mother there, staked down like that, but I smile at her.

—It’s great, I say. —I think it’s a great idea.

—Your father, she says, —thinks it’s a waste of money.

My father lives with his second wife in the same city as my mother and my brother. They are not friends, but it’s a small town and they run into each other often, always by accident.

—Well, she says, —I think it’s a great idea.

David pushes his plate away and glances at my mother; her food is picked over, pushed around the plate, little clumps of peas and potatoes mixed in with the veal she has hardly touched.

When the waiter brings the check, he hesitates a moment, clearly uncertain as to our relationship to each other, though I imagine we look like any other young couple having dinner with the mother of one of us. Finally the waiter lays the check down in the space between David and my mother, though it is slightly closer to David. My mother smiles and waits until the waiter is gone to reach for it.

—People can’t always tell we’re mother and son, she tells me. —At least not now that it’s just the two of us. She lays her credit card on top of the bill and slides it back across the table, leaving it next to David’s elbow.

David is quiet on the way home, sitting by himself in the back seat, and my mother sketches out their itinerary for me. Their eventual destination is the Grand Canyon.

—Remember, she says, looking around at David, —how you kids always wanted to go there?

In the rearview mirror I see him nod without looking at her, and I try to remember wanting to go to the Grand Canyon, but all I can really recall of any of our family vacations is the back of my father’s head in front of me and in front of him a dismal stretch of road dotted with cars just like ours, filled with families just like ours: a mother with her head bent over a book in front and a few bored children in the back.

—I don’t remember wanting to go there, I say.

—Oh, Jesus, she says. —You kids were always nagging to go, every summer.

—Well, then why didn’t you take us?

—I don’t know, she says, patting at the side of the door, looking for an automatic window switch, which my car does not have. —Probably something to do with your father. Finally she rolls the window down by hand. —But we’re going now.

I try to catch my brother’s eye in the mirror, but he is gazing into the eyes of his own reflection in the window beside him. His reflected face looks paler and puffier than his real face. When we pull into the driveway, there is a sudden quick flash of cat eyes caught in the headlights as they swing across the yard; they’re gone too soon to tell which cat it is, but it’s all I’ll see of either until morning. Now that it’s spring, they stay out all night, prowling around after nests of newborn animals. They kill whatever they find, apparently–voles, field mice, baby chipmunks. Sometimes the animals are partly eaten, but mostly they look almost untouched, perfectly intact but for a smear of red at the mouth or a tiny rip in the back of the neck. My own cat was never much of a killer before, and I would like to blame all of this on Alan, but I know there are too many dead to be the work of only one cat. The vet tells me that it’s not their fault, it’s
in their nature to kill; in fact, he says, they think they’re bringing me something I will like. I try to look at it from that perspective, but even so, there seems something willful about the sheer numbers. There’s nothing I can do about it, the vet told me, except leave them inside all the time, which I tried, but they scrabbled at the door and raced around the house all night, howling miserably; when I let them out in the morning, they were gone for two days, for fear, I suppose, that once I got them back in, they’d have to stay there forever. So I let them out at night, counting the months until winter, and in the morning my neighbors sit at their windows watching me as I walk around the yard collecting the bodies.

—You know, my neighbor to the right said a few weeks ago, —it’s not good to just let animals roam around and kill whatever they want. I remember, she went on wistfully, —when there were seven kinds of birds that came to my feeder alone.

I didn’t believe this, but I nodded, and together we glared at my cat, who lay innocently in a strip of sunlight on the driveway.

—That was before you came, she added unnecessarily. Now her bird feeder creaks emptily from the rain gutter of her house, and the cats’ ears flick back and forth at the noise it makes in the wind.

The miserable little deaths go on, and I try to tell myself that they don’t matter, they are so small, only minor casualties, really, but as I walk around my yard, I want to apologize to each stiff little sad body I retrieve. I remind myself now to get up early, before David and my mother, to spare them the sight of the evening’s death toll.

Before we go to bed, my mother has a nightcap and David walks around the kitchen opening and closing cabinets. —Don’t you have any cookies? he asks. He pats his stomach and smiles. —I’ve developed kind of a sweet tooth.

He finds a box of crackers, and takes them into the living room, where he sits and eats them while I make up the couch for his bed. My mother sits at the kitchen table watching us, and I wonder for a moment what it must be like for her to have us as her children. Perhaps it’s something like winning a prize for which you have no use–a minor, fleeting disappointment, forgotten until provoked by the sight of the useless object.

By the time I have brushed my teeth and gotten into bed with her, she is asleep, drawn stiffly up on her side, taking up only a tiny corner of the available space, her nightgown buttoned tight up to her neck.