Spy Mom (33 page)

“Come on, Sally. You know it's business, nothing personal.” I stare into my coffee cup and refuse to speak another word to Simon Still. After a while, the van pulls up in front of my house. The windows glow with warm light. There is still no sign of the sun. I stumble out of the van, barely able to support my own weight. The van pulls away from the curb. I look up at my house and, for the first time that I can remember, I want to cry. But there are no tears running down my cheeks. They stay dry as a bone.

The end of my childhood as I knew it was more complicated than it may have sounded at first. I didn't have any siblings, so I was the little princess of the family, with my parents doting on my every action, no matter how mundane or downright stupid it was. It was an isolated existence, Luke from the next farm basically my only friend. I had to get up before the sun to go to school and the bus ride was well over an hour. I had a posse of girlfriends at school with names like Gwen and Patty and Tracy, but I never saw them outside of the red brick building. My mother was not the kind to arrange a sleepover and tell us ghost stories while we snuggled into thin sleeping bags on the living room floor and ate popcorn.

My parents kept to themselves. They were perfectly friendly, but in a way that did not invite a closer look. The only person I remember them ever inviting into our house was the man in the blue overcoat. And after our first meeting, when, much to my mother's horror, I answered his knock at the door, he always arrived in the dead of night, long after I had gone to bed, as if to avoid any further contact with me. But there was something about his voice, its depth and cadence, that would float up the stairs to my room and yank me from sleep, no matter the time. I would fold back my blankets and creep a little closer to the conversation. My parents and the stranger, huddled around the wood stove, would whisper in hushed tones. The conversation I remember most vividly went something like this.

“We are concerned about reports coming in over the wires,” the man said.

My parents looked at each other. Even from upstairs I could see stress on my mother's face. “How concerned?” they asked together.

“I'm afraid this might be real, that you've been compromised. The Group is considering a move.”

My father rubbed his eyes, and my mother leaned back in her chair, weary from a long day and this news.

“What about her?” my father asked, casting his eyes in my direction. I shrunk back against the wall, hoping he wouldn't catch the bright red of my flannel pajamas.

“The Group is considering a move,” he said again. “For her own safety, she will have to be relocated. We cannot protect her otherwise. We have a family waiting to receive her in Vermont. She will be cared for.”

My mother buried her face in her hands, a quick sob sneaking out. My father patted her gently on the back.

“We always knew it could come to this,” he said softly. She nodded her head, but kept her face hidden behind her rough hands. “We didn't expect to get this much time with her. Every minute has been a blessing.”

With that, my mother stood up. “I will never forgive you for this,” she said to the man. “Never.” Then she stomped up the stairs, causing me to flee back to the warmth of my bed.

At the time, I thought they must have been talking about one of the farm animals. Maybe Pepper, the horse that everyone was always trying to buy, or the fat pig that would soon be sent off for slaughter.

The man and my father talked deep into the night. When I woke up to pee, hours later, they were still at it, heads close, whispering. I heard a few words like
Mexico, New York City, accident
. But I was sleepy and less interested in what was going on down there than I'd been earlier in the night.

When the crash happened and the state police came to tell me that my parents were dead, I didn't think once about the man who only visited in winter. I was too devastated. The aunt and uncle who took me in were no more my relations than the frogs in the stream I used to play in. But it never occurred to me to question what was happening. Life suddenly seemed like something to be endured rather than enjoyed.

The teachers and the counselors and my new relatives tried to help me. They wanted me to grieve and move on. But how could I move on if I could never get myself to cry? Try as I might, the tears wouldn't come. And before too long, it all began to recede into the background like a bad dream.

Other than going to see the truck driver that one time, I only made one other enquiry into what had really happened. I visited the Old Timers.

“Do I have to drink the coffee this time?” I asked, desperate to avoid the sludge. “I'll buy you extra doughnuts.”

“Ha,” said Baldy. “Miss Sin thinks she can tap the oracle without drinking the magic brew. Forget it.”

“No one gets past the coffee,” Fatty said. “It shows us you are sincere.”

I took a deep breath and threw it back, trying not to gag on the thick grounds swirling around in my mouth.

The Old Timers clapped at my performance. “Well done! Now we will take those doughnuts that you promised us.”

I went dutifully to the doughnut display in the cafeteria and selected six of the least offensive-looking ones. Once the doughnuts were on the table, I was given permission to ask my question. The whole thing was starting to remind me of the Magic 8-Ball I used to consult when I was a child.

“Okay. Have you ever heard of something called The Group? If I had to guess, I'd say they operated in the 1970s, probably in Soviet Bloc countries.”

Baldy sighed. Fatty cleared his throat. Shorty examined his pastry.

“We had hoped to avoid this day,” Baldy said finally.

“We never get that lucky,” Fatty added.

“The sprinkles on this doughnut resemble a Madonna and child, don't you think?” Shorty asked. The other two glared at him.

“The Group?” I prompted, hoping to bring them back to the topic at hand.

“There is no Group, Sally,” Shorty said. He bit off the Madonna's head with relish. “There is only the Agency. There was nothing that came before it and nothing that will come after.”

“How can you know that?” I asked. “I mean, the after part?”

“Ignore him,” Baldy said. “We know nothing of any organization called The Group. Even if we did, we would not be able to provide you with any details.”

“Does that mean you know something?”

“That means that if we did know something, we could not tell you. The Agency would not permit it.”

“The way you talk about this place, sounds kind of like it's alive. You know what I mean?”

“We do that sometimes. It is not our intention. We still cannot tell you anything of The Group.”

“Can't or won't?”

“Is there a difference?”

“You aren't going to help me, are you?”

“No,” they said. “We are not going to help you. It's for your own good. Trust us on this one.”

“Shit.”

“There is work to do, Sally. Move forward.”

So I did. Not because the old guys refused to help me, but because finding out if The Group even existed was not going to change my past. That was over. And the Old Timers were right. I had work to do.

There is one last thing to confess. When I was a child, still on the farm, I would dream with the dark intensity of an overactive imagination. There were many nights I'd wake up screaming in terror, the strong arms of my mother no match for the dream's grip. She'd rock me slowly, whispering, singing, stroking my hair until my trembling subsided and I could go back to sleep. What I never told her, what I never told anyone, was that those dreams were different from my regular ones in more than the obvious way. Those dreams spun their tales in a language at once strange yet completely familiar to me. When I entered my teens, the dreams disappeared, and I did not think about them again until my first mission to Moscow. As I exited the plane into the crowded airport, I suddenly understood something.

Those dreams, those terrifying nightmares, had unfolded in perfect Russian.

Bath time is a backbreaking experience. On my knees tubside, trying to soap up a small person who is more intent on pouring cupfuls of water onto the bathroom floor, I feel the nine years of relatively hard living I did at the Agency. My knees ache, my lower back is tight, my neck is knotted like a rope. I'm a wreck. But maybe it's not so much the tub as the partial drowning I experienced earlier. All I really want to do is lie down and sleep, but motherhood doesn't give evenings off for near-death experiences.

Theo, on the other hand, is happy as a clam. I am barely paying attention to him as I try to organize the day in my head. But like the rest of me, it hurts. I'm having trouble keeping all the balls up in the air. Theo yanks on my sleeve with a wet hand.

“Is Daddy back with dinner yet?” he asks.

“I don't think so, baby. Probably ten more minutes. Are you starved?”

“No. I hear the door.”

His words make me freeze. The door.

“Okay, honey. Probably time to come out now.”

“I'm still playing,” he whines. But my ears are tuned elsewhere. I don't hear footsteps on the stairs. Maybe Will forgot his wallet? I pull Theo out of the tub despite the increasingly loud protests. I wrap him in a towel and carry the whole damp bundle down the hallway to his bedroom. Still no unusual sounds.

“Mommy, who is that man?”

I'd be lying if I told you I react calmly to this question. I don't. Not really. Standing next to Theo's crib is Ian Blackford, none the worse for wear. He has both hands deep in the pockets of his overcoat, which hides a navy pinstripe suit. It's strange. The suit, I mean. Yes, it is also strange that Blackford is in my house in Theo's room, but it is the suit that strikes me.

“If you try anything, I swear you will regret it,” I say, clutching Theo to my chest, hoping he didn't hear me. “And what's with the suit?”

He looks down as if he's forgotten he is wearing it.

“Oh. Right. Work thing.”

“That's weird. This whole thing is weird. Get out of my house.”

“I can't do that.”

“Then go downstairs and wait for me.” He nods his head and disappears down the stairs. I'm breathing hard. Blackford appears to have nine lives.

“Mommy, I'm cold,” Theo says. He seems unfazed by the stranger hanging out in his bedroom in the dark of night. Pretty secure kid. I dry him off and pull him into his dinosaur pajamas. I tuck him in front of the TV and he goes into that trance-like state of a child who doesn't get to watch very much. In my closet, behind the box of old maternity clothes, is a locked metal safe. In the safe is a shoebox. In the shoebox is my gun. It's dusty and I have just three bullets, but that's enough. I only need one. I load it, tuck it into the back of my pants, and go downstairs to see what the hell Blackford wants, because for the life of me, I can't figure it out.

He sits in my kitchen, munching on an open bag of pretzels, and drinking my leftover cold coffee.

“Make yourself at home.”

“Thanks. Mind if I put this in the microwave?” he asks, holding up the coffee mug.

“Would it matter if I said yes?” I ask. I lean back against the counter, watching him.

“Aren't you going to ask me how I am?” he says. And suddenly I'm mad, really mad, maybe the maddest I've ever been. I must be, because when Blackford turns back from the microwave with his coffee, I punch him square in the nose. The coffee goes flying, splashing dark brown stains on the cabinets and ceiling. Blackford feels his nose, the little trickle of blood. And he starts to laugh.

“Sally! You didn't think I was really going to drown you out there, did you?”

I am shaking with fury. “How dare you?” I hiss. “This is my life. How dare you show up here? I don't know what you want or why, but I will kill you if you force my hand.”

Blackford looks contemplative for a moment. “Okay, I'm getting that,” he says. “So why don't I state my case and go?” He wipes the blood from his face on one of my cloth napkins. “I need the dolls.”

“The what?” My adrenaline levels drop and I suddenly feel like one of Theo's stuffed animals, all weak and disjointed. I pull out a chair and sit down.

“The dolls. The ones I sent to Theo when he was born.”

Somewhere from the deep recesses of my mind comes the image of a delivery box, brown paper, lots of tape, a postage stamp from New York, but no return address, no note, no nothing.

“The nesting dolls?” I say confused. “They were from you? How did you know?”

“I remember telling you once, a long time ago, that the reason I am better than everyone else is because I know everything. That remains the truth.”

The idea that Blackford has been keeping tabs on me all along feels not unlike someone dumping a bucket of ice water on my head.

“The dolls?” Blackford asks.

“What's in the dolls?” I ask. “Theo plays with those dolls.”

“He plays with them?” For the first time, maybe ever, Blackford looks surprised. “Sally, that set is an antique. Quite valuable, in fact. And you let him play with them? They are meant to be admired. From a distance.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn't have given them as a baby present. Maybe you should have sent me some monogrammed washcloths or a hat or something.” Maybe you should have stayed dead.

“Do you still have them?” A flash of doubt in his eyes.

“I've taken those dolls to the playground, on picnics, to the zoo. Theo liked to chew on the middle one when he was a baby. You do know that babies eat things? Wood, plastic, keys, cell phones, sand, basically anything not nailed to the floor.” Blackford looks horrified when I say sand. He cannot fathom a baby in any context. “What is in the dolls?” I ask again.

“Doesn't matter. Do you still have them?” He is growing impatient.