Under the Skin (31 page)

G
loria looked at her the bedside clock. Ten-thirty
P.M
. It was too late to call Aunt Dodie, who, like others of her generation, made and expected phone calls only between nine
A.M
. and nine
P.M
. Any call this late would be construed as an emergency and would surely send the old lady into palpitations. But it had been hard to get a moment alone within the prescribed time frame. Joss was so … was
attentive
the right word? It was wonderful how eagerly he had claimed her as his mother. And surely, his eager affection was just what any mother would wish for on being reunited with a long-lost child …

But still … she wanted to have it out with Dodie. Sweet little Aunt Dodie, who’d always seemed so
good
. Mama’s best friend from school days and a constant sender of birthday and Christmas gifts—this little porcelain doll of a woman had taken in the pregnant embarrassment that was Gloria without a word of reproof, had cheerfully put up with her storms of emotion and her moments of despair, had alternately bullied her into walking for exercise and coddled her with delicious food, all for the health of the baby. And then, that smiling, sweet little southern magnolia snake-in-the-grass had lied through her teeth, saying that the child was
stillborn. The old bitch had
colluded
in keeping Gloria from her child all these years.

Maybe Dodie
deserved
to be awakened by a phone call. Gloria frowned, her mood growing blacker. It would be small payment for the years of her child’s life she’d missed. So what if a phone call late at night startled the old woman? She deserved to be shaken out of her smug complacency.

Reaching over, Gloria turned down the exuberant strains of “I Dreamed a Dream.” At home she would have turned it up full volume but Elizabeth and Phillip’s room was just across the hall and they went to bed so unbelievably early—

What was that?

Gloria stabbed the pause button and sat up straight, listening hard. There were so many night sounds here, one reason she’d gotten the CD player in the first place. Elizabeth’s darling dogs invariably had to go out at some point, or points, in the night, and James often broke into the weirdest peal of barking on stepping out the door. Then, of course, the creatures had to come back in. And there were always anonymous creakings and rustlings outside—the forest came down the mountain almost to the door of the guest room and god knew there were undoubtedly wild animals of every sort roaming around all night long. But this sound … was it in the hall … or outside?

And had she locked the door to the little porch? It was one of the few doors in the house that actually had a working lock and she’d made a habit of keeping it locked. But she’d stepped outside before supper to call Turo—had she locked it after that?

The sound that had caught her attention—she was sure now that it had been outside and close by—had not been repeated. Still …

What was she afraid of? Phillip had assured her that
the Eyebrow was in jail. It couldn’t be him again. Nonetheless, it was a struggle to fight back the temptation to call for Phillip, so conveniently just across the hall but undoubtedly sound asleep. At last, winning the battle with herself, Gloria slipped out of bed, careful to make no noise, and approached the French door.

It took all the nerve she had, indeed, more than she’d known she possessed, to glide her hand under the curtain and feel for the little nubbin on the lever door handle. A quick twist established that it was already locked.

Fortified with this knowledge, Gloria flipped the light switch to the left of the door to turn on the outside light. She drew back the curtain, ready to take a look at whatever creature was poking around out there. In the morning she’d mention it—oh, so casually—to Lizzy. Let her see that her little sister wasn’t the complete scaredy-cat she—

Gloria gasped. A huddled shape sat on the edge of the tiny porch, rocking back and forth.

“Joss?” She opened the door and stepped out. Her satin pajamas were perfectly modest—and anyway, this was her son, after all. Leaning down, she put a hand on his shoulder. “What are you doing out here? I thought you took some pills for your headache and went to bed.”

His face was buried in the crook of his arm and she couldn’t make out his muttered reply. As he continued to rock, she looked across the branch to the cabin where Ben and Amanda lived. No light showed; they’d taken themselves off for the weekend with some story about friends in another county. Provoking—but in time Ben would get used to this new family member. A shame that her two boys were so different.

“It was the dream.” Joss lifted his pale face to her, his eyes huge and imploring. “I’ve had this dream over and over, as long as I can remember. My mother is getting on
a bus and going away and I’m standing in the middle of an empty street and crying for her. When I was little I tried to tell Mom—the woman I thought was my mother—about it … I couldn’t understand why the one in the dream didn’t look like her … but Mom would just tell me to go back to sleep.”

“Oh, Joss, I’m so sorry! I wish …” Gloria started to caress the young man’s head then pulled back, remembering his recent injury. Instantly, his hand caught hers.

“Could you stay with me … just for a little while? Mom never would. When I was really little, I used to try to get in bed with her and Dad but they’d make me go back to my room. I just wanted her to hold me and help me forget the bad dream. I just wanted—”

Once again he buried his face in the crook of his arm. A brief sob escaped him.

Gloria tugged at the hand that was squeezing hers. “Joss, I wish I could have been there for you. You know I’d give anything to undo all that happened back then. Please talk to me.”

He made no reply but held her hand uncomfortably tight. Gloria started as a giant moth tangled in her hair then escaped to continue its mindless fluttering around the porch light. With a shudder, she realized that the light was a beacon for night-flying bugs of all kinds and she made up her mind. She gave another tug on Joss’s hand. “Please, Joss, I don’t like standing out here. Get up and come in my room. We can talk there—but quietly, okay?”

She had turned the CD player back on to cover up the low murmur of their voices. Now, propped up on pillows beside her on the bed, Joss had whispered out more and more of his past—the feeling of not belonging to the family he lived with, confirmed by his overhearing a
conversation between the woman he called Mom and a friend of hers.

“I heard her say they’d really wanted a little girl but they took me because they were afraid they might not get another chance since they were already considered borderline too old. And she told the friend that I’d never really bonded with them and that I scared her sometimes, with my strange dreams. She said I was just too
needy
.”

He looked at Gloria again with those huge dark eyes and her heart overflowed. She put her arm around him, this big sad man, and pulled him closer till his head was on her shoulder.

“There, there, Jossie, Mama’s here. It’s all right; I’ve got you now.”

He closed his eyes, let out a sigh, and lay still. “Mama,” he whispered. “My mama. Let me just stay here for a while …”

Gloria shifted, trying to ease his weight off her arm and onto the pillow. This was uncomfortable, in more ways than one, but if it could make up to this newfound son of hers even a small bit of his lost childhood …

Closing her eyes she felt her breathing slip into alignment with Joss’s. His head slipped a little lower to lie over her heart and his breathing grew slower and more regular. Gloria tightened her arm around her baby and began silently to weep for all the lost past, the might-have-beens that never were. She wept till there were no more tears, only a quiet acceptance and profound thankfulness. And then she too slept.

It was a familiar dream that she fell into—the dream of nursing her lost baby. As before, the infant pulled at her nipple with a ferocity that was at once deeply satisfying, surprisingly sensual, and at the same time, a bit frightening. In past dreams, the infant had always been
a generic Everybaby—a pink blanket-wrapped bundle with dark wisps of hair, rosebud lips, and eyes that were long-lashed but closed.

In
this
dream—and somehow, she knew that it was a dream, even in the midst of it—the baby was a miniature adult Joss, baby-sized but fully clothed in the khakis and blue oxford cloth shirt she had bought for him on their last shopping expedition. And as he sucked, he regarded her with those great dark eyes.

It was disconcerting to have the old familiar dream change and she fought her way up from the depths of sleep to awaken.

To awaken to the realization that the real Joss was suckling at her breast, his great eyes on her face, just as in the dream.

Gloria shivered in spite of the heat of the morning sun. From her vantage point on the front porch she could see Joss setting off on his daily walk, down to the mailbox and back. She and Lizzy were alone in the house. This was her chance.

Last night’s strange awakening had aroused in her a welter of conflicting emotions. Her immediate reaction had been to push Joss away and leap from the bed, hurriedly rebuttoning her pajama top and hoping that Elizabeth and Phillip hadn’t heard her startled cry. But then Joss—so troubled and so deeply odd, yes, she could admit that to herself now—had curled into a fetal position, jamming his thumb in his mouth and refusing to budge. It had taken almost an hour of soothing him, of listening to more of what he called his “separation issues” and his ideas for their resolution, before he agreed to slip quietly out and return to his room.

And then she had spent the sleepless remainder of the night, worrying that her reaction would be seen as yet another rejection. Worrying—and wondering if she had
made a very big mistake in bringing Joss here before verifying his identity. But that would have been another rejection, wouldn’t it?

She watched Joss pass the chicken coop. He had seemed as usual this morning, as if last night hadn’t happened. But she couldn’t forget it and when he had said
I’m going for my walk now, Mama
—that same word that had sounded so sweet coming from him a few days ago now brought a feeling to the pit of her stomach that told her something was very, very wrong.

His walk—he’d be gone almost an hour. It was now or never. She saw Joss disappear around the corner of the barn and drew a shaky breath.

“Lizzy,” she said, walking into the kitchen where her sister was kneading bread. “I have to talk to you.”

L
izzy, I don’t know what to do about Joss.”

Gloria had finally spoken. It had been obvious that something was on her mind and even more obvious that she didn’t want to talk about it. Especially with me.

Almost as if she’d read my thoughts, she went on. “Well, I have to talk to
someone
.”

I’d been expecting it. It was the reason I’d decided to stay at the house and make bread rather than go down and set out those new lavender cuttings. I’d babied them along, hoping to expand my production and make more of those pretty ribbon-woven lavender wands that folks went crazy over. Now the unpromising sprigs had turned into healthy bushy little gray-green balls on the verge of being root-bound.

But they could wait one more day. At breakfast, Gloria had looked wretched, with dark smudges under her eyes as if she’d slept badly, and I’d noticed that she had tried to avoid Joss’s good morning kiss. Something was profoundly wrong in this idyll of refound motherhood.

She drew up her knees and wrapped her thin arms around them, looking like a wistful little girl with a raddled matron’s face. “Joss has all these ideas, about reclaiming his identity as my child. Weird ideas that he
probably got from all those strange people in Asheville. Of course, I want to help him but …”

I gave the dough a final thump and plopped it into a greased bowl, covered it with a dish towel, and set it in the pantry to rise.

“Exactly what sort of ideas, Glory?” I washed the flour from my hands and took a seat beside her.

She was struggling with telling me this stuff, I could see. I could also see that she was desperately unhappy. But I knew from past experience that she would have to find her way out of this situation on her own. Much as I’d like to, I couldn’t just reach in with a big-sisterly hand and set things to rights—this had to play itself out.

“He wants us to do this thing … well, it’s called a rebirthing ceremony,” she explained with an unusual for Glory reluctance. “It’s a kind of therapy for people with attachment issues caused by trauma at birth.”

“Ahhh,” I said, drawing the word out while I tried to think of something useful to say. “Is this a thing they do in Asheville? I know there’s all kinds of New—” Just in time I managed not to say
New Age shit
and came out instead with “… new alternative healing techniques available there. Is this one?”

“I’m not sure.” Gloria looked more haggard still and she was picking at her nail polish—something I hadn’t seen her do since adolescence. “I guess there’s a facilitator or something to guide the experience. I think this was something Joss heard about from Nigel …”

She looked even unhappier, which surprised me. Glory’s usually big into these little quickie workshop fixes for broken chakras or misguided chi or whatever will promise instant enlightenment without all that bother of fasting and meditating for years. She adores a spiritual experience that will leave her with time to go out for lunch and shopping after.

Oh, shut up, Elizabeth. Stop being such a smug bitch and find out what’s wrong here
.

“So, how does this rebirthing thing work?” I was working hard at keeping my voice in the neutral zone: interested, not snarky. Gloria continued her assault on the dark red lacquer on her thumbnail as she explained.