The Boy (8 page)

“Yeah,” Anna said, her eyes on the dance of an aspen’s leaves. “Just one night.”

“One night doesn’t count. Santiago Archuleta, my neighbor, no, he got caught for drugs and he’s still down in Albuquerque! And his wife can’t see him!”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know and, with these boxes, you and me, we end up in jail and where’s the money for bail? The kid’s broke, the kid’s got no money, no?”

Money or no money, the kid had taken over in a flash, an instant. She had imagined his possessions to be in proportion to his age, so she had tried to hide her dismay when he’d pulled up in a U-Haul. It was astonishing to her, never mind to Esperanza, how quickly she’d accepted the clutter, how soon she’d held it up daily against the sparseness of her previous life, wondering how she could have ever inhabited such hollow spaces without grief.

Days passed. The boy came and went, shifting the magnetic field of the house in his direction with every move, every breath, every smile. Determined to reclaim some territory, restore some balance, Anna bought the ingredients to make lasagna. Milk, flour, and butter for the béchamel; onions, carrots, celery, ground beef, veal, and pork for the sauce. She was cubing an onion when the phone rang.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Hey, the tiny one! Hey, the little one! Hey, my love! How are you?”

“I’m very well, thank you. How are you?”

“Eva, you can’t talk like that.”

“Mom.”

“Do you have any idea what they’re going to do to you in school? The minute you open your mouth?”

“Mom.”

“You’re not coming home like that. Rent some videos. Watch some American movies. In fact, let me speak to your father.”

“Daddy, Mamma wants to speak with you.”

“Oh hello, Anna. Are you incarcerated? Do you need money for bail?”

“God, how funny. You’re going to send her back sounding like that?”

“Sounding vaguely civil, you mean?”

“You’ve clearly forgotten, because such minutiae are vastly beneath you, but your daughter is no longer in private school. She’s in public school. Public as in public, not private. Yeah? They’re going to crucify her.”

“Eva, your mother seems to think speaking proper English will get you crucified in school. Small price to pay, I should think, for the privilege of speaking proper English.”

“Let me talk to her.”

“Always a pleasure, Anna. Always a pleasure.”

“Mom?” Eva’s voice was uncharacteristically shrill.

“Yes my love.”

“Can we please not talk about this?”

“We can, my love. What do you want to talk about?”

“Has Paco been fed?”

“He has.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m cooking.”

“Cooking? You never cook!”

“That’s because you’ve usurped my position. Two more weeks, Eva.”

“I know. Have you registered me for soccer?”

“I have,” Anna said, laying down the knife, wiping her hands, and writing on a board by the fridge, EVA SOCCER!

“Did you get me a new lunch box?”

“A new lunch box? What’s wrong with the old one?”

“The handle broke. Remember?”

“Yeah,” lied Anna, scrawling LUNCH BOX! “I want you home, Eva.”

“I am. I’m coming home,” her little girl said.

“We’re going to have tons of Mamma-and-me time. I’m going to teach you how to play chess.”

“Can we play Wig Out?”

“We’re definitively playing Wig Out.”

“Daddy says you cheat at cards.”

“Your father lies. As a practice, as a principle. Darling, come home.”

In her younger days, Anna had often thought that death would come for her quickly, that it would grab her by the neck and shove her under. There would be no time to square her soul to the stars, no time to locate the exit onto the other side. There would be the sudden, irreparable opacity of things, a single unforgiving instant in which every borrowed day would be weighed against not the purity of her soul but against the work of her hands. After Eva’s imperial entrance, Anna’s beliefs had changed. She would be judged not by the work of her hands but by the quality of sap running up and down her lengthening weed well after she was gone.

“Let me speak to your father again.”

“Oh hello, Anna. Still unshackled?”

“Get her
Little House on the Prairie
.”

“Which one is that? The one with a whole load of Yanks dressed like Heidi?”

“That’s the one.”

“Eva, your mother wants you to watch people jumping rope and picking apples. Do you want to watch people jumping rope and picking apples?”

Had the man ever been serious? Had he taken anything remotely seriously in his life? He had come into effortless being with few of the weaknesses, the standard failings of the human heart. Untainted by fear, unconstrained by circumstance, he moved through life as if through a game of something on green grass. While she stood mutely at the foot of her own inadequacies, he soared above the world’s open wounds without a single thought of God. There was no stealing his lunch, no getting his goat. She’d seen him cry only once in their history together, at the airport, right before her flight, and even those tears had seemed calculated, manufactured for the occasion.

“Anna, I beg you, don’t leave me.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’ll do anything.”

“Let go of my arm.”

“Anna.”

“Eva, it’s time to go.”

“Daddy.”

“Please don’t take her away.”

“Eva, give me your hand.”

“Please.”

“Let’s go.”

“Bye, Daddy.”

“I beg you.”

“Bye, Daddy.”

Anna slid the knife into an onion’s flank and dropped it on the board with a sharp intake of breath, blood pooling fast and hard around her fingernail and falling—thick, red, ruby-red—onto the counter.

“Fuck,” she said.

“For God’s sake, Anna, will you please stop this truck driver business? Eva says you swear all the time.”

Anna closed her hand into a fist.

“Will I stop this truck driver business? Will you stop behaving like a fucking two-year-old all the time? Your daughter is coming back to a classroom full of poor, angry kids with crew cuts and a million axes to grind. They will dismember her on arrival.”

“Anna, you really must watch the way—”

“I must watch nothing. You get her
Little House on the Prairie
.”

And she hung up.

Silence lapped at her in slow, low waves. She walked into the pantry. Putting out her bloodied hand, she let her fingertips describe the curve of an apple first, an onion next. She lifted an egg. She had forgotten the existence of eggs, the implausible humility of eggs. She had forgotten so much since the boy, let go of so much.

“Hey.”

She turned and there was the boy, motorcycle jacket still on despite the heat.

“You’re bleeding,” he said.

She shrugged.

He didn’t provide first aid. He didn’t take her by the hand and lead her into the bathroom, search the cabinet, seal the wound. He pressed his thumbs lightly against her lips and brought his mouth to hers.

S
ummer has its own music. It’s slow and soft and, more often than not, slightly swollen between notes. Even Esperanza, whose scrubbing had the adrenaline-pumped edge of a full cardiovascular routine, mellowed her game. The boy procured a device through which movies and television shows could be plucked out of the ether and watched online. Anna and Esperanza stood staring at the small black box.

“It’s messed up,” Anna said.

“It’s like witchcraft,” Esperanza said. “Where did he get it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who paid for it?”

“Who do you
think
paid for it.”

“Eee,” said Esperanza. “This is starting to be too much.”

“You can watch them, too.”

“But no, it’s not what I’m saying.”

“I know what you’re saying.”

Esperanza shook her head, plunged her hands into her pockets.

“This isn’t right. It’s just not right. I wash your dishes, I mop your floors, I do your laundry. What does he do?”

“Nothing.”

“He eats your food, he lives in your house, he drives your car.”

“He does.”

“So he owes you money, no?”

“He does.”

“Like I owe you money.”

“Like you owe me money.”

“So he can do the dishes, no? He can do the laundry, no? He can get down on his knees and scrub your toilet, no?”

“Esperanza.”

But Esperanza shook her head, dug her hands deeper into her pockets. “This isn’t right. It’s just not right.”

“He’s leaving, Espi. He’ll be out of here in two weeks.”

Esperanza took her hands out of her pockets.

“Don’t call me Espi,” she said.

Anna took Paco down by the river and sat on a rock watching the golden thing run smiling in and out of the water with a stick in his mouth.

“You’ve got it easy,” she said, and the dog agreed with a sharp bark, a delirious wag of the tail.

“It’s messed up.”

Again, the dog agreed.

“Go fetch!” she said, throwing the dog the stick.

Esperanza was gone when she got home, the boy was stretched on the couch, occupying every angle of the couch,
coating
the piece of furniture like a finish, a veneer, a beer in one hand, the remote in the other.

“Where’s Espi?”

He barely looked up.

“I don’t know. She left.”

“Did she say where she was going?”

The boy hit pause.

“No, she didn’t. Why, what happened?”

“You have to start washing some dishes.”

The boy put the remote down.

“I have to start washing some dishes?”

“You have to start washing some dishes.”

He looked at her with great, almost lofty neutrality, as if the message she had just delivered didn’t involve him somehow.

“I have no problem washing dishes.”

“No? You have no problem? How come you haven’t washed a single one? How has this strange, this honestly puzzling occurrence come to pass? Go ahead. Enlighten me.”

“Nobody asked me.”

“Nobody asked you. Can’t you see? Are you blind? There are dishes in the sink all the fucking time.
All the fucking time.
”

The boy got up.

“All right,” he said, “this is where we start calming down. This is where we take a deep breath and start calming down.”

And standing there, pushed up against the foulest quarters of her soul, wrapped in rage as in barbed wire, certain of what would come next—the fission, the cleave at nuclear level, the implausible, the unimaginable blast—she looked at him, at his smooth skin, at his clear eyes, at all the things he had yet to live through, all the pain he had yet to feel, and felt herself grow still, and quiet, and afraid.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He took his time, looking at her. Then he put out a hand.

“You maniac,” he said.

The phone rang early the next day, and it was Richard Strand.

“I hear my son lives next door.”

Anna rolled over and gave the boy the phone. In the kitchen, grinding coffee beans, trying to drown out the sounds from the bedroom, she saw a magpie land fatly on her fence and turn its head sideways with a mechanical jerk. The colors were deafening—cobalt blue, brilliant white, black like a killer whale coming up from the deep—the head tender and fragile beyond what, in Anna’s sudden fury, seemed right.

Nothing is right, she thought. Nothing.

The boy came into the kitchen, slapped one hand against the wall.

“Fuck,” he said.

“Okay. Let’s hear it.”

“He started crying.”

Anna turned. “Crying?”

“Crying.”

“Jesus.”

“It’s all I need. A grown man crying on the phone.”

Anna threw the sponge into the sink. “He’s your
father
. Show some fucking respect.”

The boy brought his face within an inch of hers. “I show respect to those who
deserve
respect,” and barely a minute later she heard the roar of his motorcycle, a nearly audible rising of dust, and then silence.

She took the dog down to the river but kept him close to her this time, hearing, as the wind moved through the canyon, the distant sound of deranged weeping, the legendary keening of
La Llorona
, whose madness it had been to kill her children by drowning them and whose fate, sealed beyond the recall of time, was to walk the water’s edge forever calling out their names.

The dog put his head on Anna’s lap and closed his eyes. “I know you think she’s gone for good,” Anna whispered in his ear, “but she’s not, she’s coming back soon.” The dog let out a sigh but seemed much more buoyant on his way home, running in circles around her, barking loudly for his stick, running so fast he went tumbling over it each time. “Let’s go,” she told him later that afternoon, and together they walked over to Richard Strand’s house and stood waiting at the door.

“Where’s my son?” Richard Strand said.

“Out for a ride.”

He looked at her, his pupils cold and clear against the back of his eyes.

“Why isn’t he here?”

“I don’t know. Ask him.”

He pulled the door open. She followed him to the kitchen, where he turned and spread his arms wide.

“What the fuck,” he said.

“I know.”

“He’s my son.”

“I know.”

“What are you doing with my son? I’ve asked you once before, I’m asking you again. What are you doing with my son?”

“It’s beyond anything, Richard.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I have no control. Zero. I wish I could explain it.”

Richard Strand stood in his kitchen, by his pots and pans, by the warped, blackened things that spoke of his love for his children and asked, “Do you love him?”

“Do I love him?”

“Do you love my son?”

Anna looked away.

“I can’t be without him,” she said. “I tried. I can’t.”

“Will you hurt him?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“He’s my son.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Let’s not forget how well I know you, Anna, let’s not forget what I did for you.”

Middle of winter, the ground solid ice, birds huddled in Siberian solidarity on power lines. She’d woken up with Eva somehow by her side and—tongue stuck to her palate—she’d reached for a glass of water on the bedside table.

“Why are your hands shaking, Mamma?”

She’d called Richard Strand, and he’d pulled a thousand strings, called in a million favors. He’d taken in Eva and checked Anna into detox at noon the same day, ahead of a waiting list so long there were people camped out with plumbing around the damn place.

“How do you think I feel?” Richard Strand said. “Go ahead. Ask yourself the question.”

Anna shook her head. “I’m not drinking,” she said.

“You were drinking at the
mojito
party. You were drinking at the Croquet Party.”

“Not like that.”

“Every time I turned around you had a glass of wine in your hand.”

She stood up. “Wine is not the problem here, Richard. I’m sorry to inform you, but wine is not the problem. You’re the problem.”

Richard Strand slammed his hand down on the kitchen counter. “I’m the problem? My son is at the mercy of a notoriously volatile serial alcoholic and I’m the problem?”

Anna felt herself split down the middle: she lost vision, she lost touch, she came undone along some jagged line from her breastbone to her gut. She shot forward like a snake.

“What have you done for your son? What the fuck have you, as a father, done for your son?”

Richard Strand’s mouth fell open. He stood like Lot’s wife just out of Sodom, salt right down to the bone.

“Everything I could, I did for my son.”

“Everything you could? Does that include the chick who stole his savings from under his bed? Does it include the cunt that gave him a blow job when he was twelve?”

Richard Strand grew totally still. “You’re out of control,” he said.

“I’m out of control? Fuck you, Richard Strand. You’ve done
nothing
for your son. He’s a mess, a beautiful mess, but he’s a mess, so don’t start telling
me
.”

We have children. We have children, and they’re nothing we’re prepared for. They come to us from the softest corners of the universe, from the breath, from the hands of God, and we raise them any which way we can. They sit in grocery store carts, eyes big as leaves, skin clear as water, prey to the great offense, the unending sin—trampled underfoot, slighted, ignored, forgotten, sometimes, only sometimes, taken with extreme precaution down the silver throat of the world in winter, the wide barge of life in summer, by men who have become men, and women who have learned to calculate the weight of a single instant before it all goes dark. We have children, and we don’t know how.