The Boy (12 page)

Of course in the end Anna would have no choice but to tolerate the chickens. Of course she’d be the one cleaning the coop and turning the hard ground behind it with a shovel, monitoring the growth of things she’d then feel compelled to eat, but what a small price to pay—what a paltry sum, what a trifle—for the reconstituted dream.

“Time’s up,” the nurse said.

Anna straightened. She said, “I don’t know how to thank you—” but the giant had a finger to his lips, the door open already. She slipped past him on her bare feet.

Dr. Roemer was there in the morning, surveying the damage with unmoving eyes.

“I know I used the words ‘fuck you up real good,’ but I didn’t mean it literally.”

“Where did you get that mask, Doctor Roemer? It’s like you’ve got a mask on. It’s like you put it on in the morning and take it off at night.”

“I don’t remember where I got it. All I remember is it wasn’t cheap. How are you?”

“Fine.”

“How’s the kid?”

“She’s in a coma.”

“I mean the other one.”

Anna shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“He must be hurting.”

Anna’s hand flew to her eye.

“Call him.”

“No.”

“Call him.  Let him go.”

He came into her dreams for the first time that afternoon. He had shaved parts of his head and he had a patch over one eye. “I’m the one who nearly lost one eye,” Anna told him. The boy slid the patch down his cheek. The eyeball was gone. In its place, a hole.

She couldn’t remember his number, so she called Richard Strand.

“He’s gone fishing in Alaska.”

“Can you give me his number?”

“My son’s number.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t remember my son’s number.”

“No.”

“But you remember mine.”

She pressed the phone against her ear, unable to think of anything to say.

“Go fuck yourself, Anna. And leave my son alone.”

She crossed the room and parted the curtains. The Earth was stretched out before her, bearing no greater weight at any latitude than that of a sleeping child.

T
he moment Anna laid eyes on Eva’s father, she remembered they’d been cruel to each other many times before. It was only a matter of time before she came to a second understanding. They would be as cruel, as unloving, as uncaring this time around, with one big difference. They now had a child together, a child they both loved.

She was at the window when he walked in, a creature from another planet: stiff-collared, clean-shaven, not a granule of dirt under his fingernails. They looked at each other for the first time in years, Anna in her hospital wear, her throbbing eye, her aching soul, Eva’s father in a suit cut on Savile Row. His shoes had a strange gleam, as if oxidized, his teeth a vague fluorescence.

“What toothpaste are you using these days? Or have you progressed to dentures already?”

“You look smashing, Anna, just smashing. I’m taking her away, you know.”

“Go for it.”

“If it’s the last thing I do.”

“Go for it. See how far you get.”

Eva’s father smiled the tightest smile.

“Only you,” he said. “Only you could be standing barefoot in the most extraordinary piece of clothing, having just put your own daughter in a coma, and delude yourself that nothing other than ruin, perfect ruin, perfect desolation, perfect bankruptcy on all possible levels, could visit you between now and the time your daughter wakes up and refuses to have anything to do with you. Only you, Anna. I should stand and applaud.”

“You’re already standing, you fucking idiot. You want to sit down and try that again?”

“Always a pleasure, Anna, always an absolute delight. We’ll be seeing you in front of the judge. Hopefully without a nappy on.”

Late that evening the news came. The sun had been swallowed, a whole load of land bruised in the process. A white-coated trinity floated soundlessly into Anna’s room—a doctor, a nurse, and an ancillary figure with no discernible title or purpose.

The doctor said, “Your daughter wants to see you. She wants to make sure you’re still alive.”

Anna covered her face with her hands.

“We know that there is a restraining order in place. We are here to escort you downstairs.”

Heads kept turning, murmurs kept chasing her as Anna advanced, flanked on either side by crisp white coats. Doctors stopped and discreetly stared, nurses cupped their mouths and exchanged low whispers, orderlies wheeled things out of her way as, all around her, something seemed to build, a momentum meant to propel her forward, past whatever resistance the air might offer. They stopped just outside Eva’s room. Anna’s face was bone white, she had both hands clasped around the doctor’s arm.

“Are you ready?” he asked. She nodded.

The door was held open for her, and she walked to the bed and looked down into the vast blue promise in her daughter’s eyes. Two small arms reached up. Anna leaned in, cupping Eva’s face with both hands.

“Mamma,” Eva whispered fiercely, as if parting with a secret. “I dreamed we were getting chickens.”

“I’ve always wondered,” Anna whispered back, “why do you want chickens?”

“So I can chase them. They’re fun to chase, Mamma. Can we get chickens?”

T
he courtroom was empty when she got there, fifteen minutes before the hearing. Anna lowered herself slowly into a seat and opened her file.

The restraining order had been lifted, both passports handed in. After three weeks of rehabilitation in the hospital, Eva had moved with her father into a house with open views on Dolores Road. A request, filed by her father, to take Eva out of the country had been unhesitatingly denied. A motion to deprive her of visitation rights in the absence of a definitive custody arrangement had also been rejected, so every other day at noon Anna had gone around, to the hospital at first, to Eva’s new home later, with progress reports on the chicken coop, whose proportions might have fallen slightly short of Eva’s expectations but whose twelve tenants showed clear appreciation by refusing to strike out for loftier spaces.

Today the judge—a rotund woman with three sets of spectacles, none of which she could ever find—would rule on Eva’s request, submitted by Anna, to visit her mother regularly for the undeclared purpose of rousting a dozen oblivious chickens out of their tranquility.

Anna’s lawyer came, hurried as usual, and sat puffing next to her.

“Slow down. You’re always out of breath.”

“Slow down? How am I going to slow down when I’m always in this courtroom arguing shit on your behalf?”

Anna smiled. They’d started out badly, she and the lawyer, but over time a genuine alliance had formed, largely thanks to the plaintiff’s lawyer, who wore cologne and a Cartier tank watch, and drove up from Santa Fe in a Ferrari.

It had been vicious from the start. Eva’s father had come prepared. Anna’s journals—stark testimonials of drug addiction during her previous life on the equator, six volumes in total, all stolen from her study years before—had been submitted. A signed affidavit from a former nanny describing a predawn drive during which Anna, drunk on vodka, had fallen asleep at the wheel had also been presented. Another affidavit, this from one of Anna’s “friends,” detailing a pattern of physical neglect during Eva’s infancy, had been produced in triplicate. Photographs of Anna visibly intoxicated, with or without Eva, had been numbered and catalogued in fastidious order, along with a black-and-white picture of a child blowing out two candles on a cake—one of them for good luck.

They smelled the plaintiff’s lawyer before they saw him, but when Anna turned around to witness the grand entry, she found, to her surprise, that he wasn’t alone. Eva’s father was advancing next to him down the middle aisle, nodding in agreement while tightening his tie. Anna covered her eyes and sank lower in her seat despite the pain.

“What’s he doing here?” whispered the lawyer.

Anna sank lower still. “He doesn’t want her near the chickens.”

“What chickens?”

“My chickens.”

“You’ve got chickens?”

“Twelve. I’ve got twelve.”

“You? Twelve chickens?”

“I know,” Anna said. “I know.”

When the moment came, the argument was made that unsupervised visits could result in abduction. Mexico had a notoriously porous border, and children had a way of fitting nicely in car trunks.

“Car trunks?” whispered Anna.

“Silence,” said the judge. “Motion denied. The child can, and will, visit her mother in her own home. No need to rise.”

He was waiting for her by the door. “I’m warning you,” he said.

“Do me the fucking favor,” she said.

“Anna.”

She turned. He had the eyes of a drowning man, nothing she’d ever seen before. Still, her voice was like a whip.

“What?”

“Do you have any idea of what I’m going through? Do you have the slightest idea of what your gross irresponsibility has forced upon me?”

She closed the distance between them in two long strides.

“What, precisely, have I forced upon you? Taking care of a child? Taking care of
something
for the first time in your life?”

He did not pull back. He put a finger against her breastbone and said, “I took care of
you
. For seven years I took care of you, and you were worse than a child. You were crazy. Coming home drunk, disappearing for days, doing cocaine in the bathroom, destroying every single vehicle I placed in your possession. For seven years. And now I’m in your country, at the mercy of your judicial system, trying to keep a child from being hurt again. A child who keeps telling me, day after day, that she does not want to be with me. Do you have any idea of what you’re putting me through? After
everything
you’ve put me through?”

“You gave me
nothing
. The whole time you were with me, you gave me nothing.”

“I gave you everything.”

“You gave me nothing. The day I got fired, where were you? The day I miscarried, where were you? The day I gave birth to your child, where the fuck were you?”

“I’ll tell you where I was: away from you.”

Their eyes locked. “Away from me?”

“Away from you. You destroy everything.”

“I cooked for you. I kept your house in order for you. I carried your child for you. I was there when you needed me, and you never were. Never. Not once.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I bought you a horse. Every car you ever drove was mine.”

“Keep your horse. Keep your cars. Leave my daughter alone.”

“She’s my daughter, too, Anna. And now answer me. In good conscience, answer me. How could I possibly leave her in your care?”

“Because it’s what
she wants
.”

“You’re completely irresponsible! In fact, allow me to rephrase that: you’ve set the new gold standard for parental irresponsibility west of the Mississippi.”

“I’m not irresponsible!” shouted Anna. “I made a mistake! A mistake! It was a mistake!”

“Well,” said Eva’s father, “it’s not the sort of mistake you get to make again.”

It was still summer when Eva opened the gate to the chicken coop and stepped inside, but only barely. The season was losing its fiber, it was losing its voice. Anna and Esperanza sat on a bench built exclusively for an audience partial to the chickens. The two had never talked about it, never exchanged so much as a single word. Anna had come home from the hospital and found Esperanza asleep on the couch, the cleaning channel on.

“Eee,” Espi had said. “You scared me.”

Anna had stood over her, a wave of bile rising like poison in her throat but then almost instantly subsiding.

“Are you hungry?” she’d asked. Espi had shrugged. Anna had gone to the fridge and found it full of organic lettuce, full of spinach, carrots and beets, yogurt and tofu, and, upon closer inspection, three bars of dark organic chocolate.

“There’s quinoa in the pantry,” Espi had said. “And wild rice.”

Anna had gone to the hospital a week later with the chocolate and a dozen roses.

The nurse on the second floor had shaken her head.

“Sorry, ma’am.”

“How’s that possible? He’s tall. Giant kind of tall.”

“No, ma’am.”

“He’s black. Tall, black, very beautiful.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”

“Could it be that he only works at night?”

“No, ma’am. We rotate.”

“You rotate?”

“We sure do.”

“You’re telling me I’m crazy? You’re telling me I imagined a guy seven feet tall?”

“No, ma’am. I’m telling you we got nobody like that working here.”

Eva’s coop tactics were undeniably clever. She singled out an unsuspecting denizen and followed it stealthily, looking elsewhere—as if on a different errand, perfectly unsullied by thoughts of capture. She came up to the plumed thing at an angle, then swooped down. The chicken squawked—a hideous sound, a death-cry almost—but over time, as Eva crooned and cajoled, it developed something close to acquiescence, settled into something close to comfort in her arms.

“Did you ever chase chickens when you were little?”

“All the time,” Espi said.

“Why?”

“They’re fun to chase, no?”

They sat in silence until Espi said, “What happens if he gets her?”

Anna pulled her elbows in. “I get her back.”

“How?”

“The way mothers get their children back. They get their shit together.”

“You think he’ll let you?”

“He won’t have a choice. He’s stuck in New Mexico, and I will appeal and appeal and appeal until I get her back.”

Espi took a deep drag and raised her eyes to heaven. “I fucked things up pretty good, no?”

Anna shrugged.

“But you didn’t tell me he was all mean like that!”

“He’s not mean, he’s English. They have their hearts taken out at birth.”

Espi crushed her cigarette underfoot. “Like they do in New Mexico,” she said.

He came at five that afternoon. Eva was standing in the coop with a seemingly sedated chicken in her arms.

“Look, Daddy!” she yelled. Eva’s father waved.

“Nice house. Very Zen but for the chickens,” he said.

“I’d like to take her to the river.”

“That’s out of the question.”

“Summer is almost over. I’d like one last trip with her down to the river.”

“Out of the question,” he said.

She asked the judge and the judge said yes, so hope sank tender roots in Anna’s heart. She packed a picnic, put the dog in the back, picked up Eva, and together they drove down the canyon, into a narrowing world of blackened basalt, past walls of perfectly vertical rock, to the river, and there they sat on a boulder watching different currents shiver in the sun as Anna spread peanut butter on a slice of bread and Paco ran in and out of the water with a stick in his mouth. Then they surveyed the bank one square foot at a time, searching for minnows.

“Mamma.”

“What?”

“You’re moving too fast.”

“What are you talking about? I’m practically standing still.”

“You’re scaring them away.”

“Okay.”

“Slow down.”

“Okay.”

Eventually they got hold of two, Fred and Minnie, soon rechristened Mack and Cheese. They turned stones and scraped the bottom for minuscule insects the minnows would grow fat on. They sat on the rock, the girl in her mother’s lap, blinded by the river. Later they dragged the old tree trunk closer to the edge and set off, Eva in the front, Anna in the back, for the rings of Saturn, the shoulder of Orion. “‘O Captain! my Captain!’” yelled Anna. “Where to?”

Eva turned, folded herself into her mother’s frame. “Home with my Mamma,” she said.

Anna had heard it said that live water healed memories, so when it was time to go she sank her hands wrist-deep into the river and closed her eyes. Later she would realize that the opposite was true, that memories themselves—meticulously preserved, often revisited—are the key to redemption. This one in particular would become a constant companion, a fixed star in the months that followed. Not the crash beneath an umber sky. Not the sclerotic pulse of the hospital. Not Eva’s birdlike body under a white sheet. This. This light and tumult, this wild, wild hope.

Eva’s father was sitting in front of the coop when they got home. He stood, both hands in his pockets.

“Eva,” Anna said. “Go to your room.”

“But Mamma . . .”

“Please go to your room.”

They watched her disappear inside the house.

“The judge has just ruled,” he said. “She’s mine.”

The sun sank a little lower. The earth gave up all sound.

That was how fall came that year.