I’m in the middle of an algebra test when the intercom blares: “Nicholas Tyler to the office.” I freak. Not because everyone’s looking at me. No one gets called to the office unless it’s an emergency. I’m rattled. Should I leave my stuff? There’s only ten minutes left in class. Mr. Wagner, the teacher, says from his desk in back, “Bring your test to me.”
I was on the last problem anyway. I gather my papers, my scratch sheet, and backpack. Wagner looks pissed. “Leave quietly.” He hates disruptions. Hustling down the hall, I’m thinking, They found the body. That’s why she didn’t call, because she rolled Beatrice in a ditch and she’s been dead for a week, and nobody knew. Nobody cared.
I care. I should’ve called the cops and reported a missing person. Mom should’ve called. She should’ve cared.
Then Jo’s standing there, loitering in the front hall, jingling her keys. When she sees me, a smile streaks across her face.
I don’t smile. I stop dead in my tracks. I want to run to her, throw my arms around her, cry for happiness. I want to run from her, leave her, abandon her the way she did me.
I will them to, but my feet can’t stay planted. One moves, then the other. They slog ahead. Forward. In front of her, they stop.
Jo’s smile disappears. She twirls her key ring on her index finger. “Go ahead and say it.”
“I hate you.”
Her eyes fill with tears. “Yeah. I don’t blame you. I messed up.” She sniffs. “Story of my life.”
This makes me so mad I explode. “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you or something? Am I supposed to forgive you? Pretend nothing ever happened and we’re all buddy-buddy again?” My eyes sting, and my face is burning hot. Fists ball at my sides.
Jo smirks. “Pretty much.”
“Well, fuck you!” My voice reverberates off the walls. The urge to hit her is strong. But she’ll beat the crap out of me. Instinctively, I fling my backpack at her, narrowly missing her thick skull.
“Hey!” she yells, dodging the missile, then grabbing my wrist. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“What is going on out here?” Mrs. Mendoza, the vice principal, barrels out of her office. She nearly trips on my backpack.
Jo lets go of me and spins around. “Sorry. Uh, minor family squabble.” She retrieves my pack and, shrugging at Mrs. Mendoza, says, “Can you believe the foul mouths on kids these days? I don’t know where he gets it. Must be at school because we don’t allow that kind of language at home.”
“Bullshit,” I hiss under my breath. “What home?”
Jo flinches. To Mrs. Mendoza she says, “Can you believe a kid would talk to his mother that way?”
“You’re not my mother.”
Jo fixes on me and holds my eyes. I have to look away.
Mrs. M looks baffled. She’s speechless, for once. Jo loops an arm around my shoulders and clamps down on my upper arm. “We’ll just continue this discussion outside.” She smacks me in the chest with my backpack and steers me toward the door.
“Hold on.” Mrs. M quick-steps in front of us. She blocks the door with her massive bulk. “Could I see some identification? I’ll need proof you’re his mother.” She scans Jo up and down.
“Proof?” Jo clicks her tongue. “What do you mean? Like, stretch marks?” She chuckles, sort of nervously, and rolls her eyes at me.
“I’m required to check our files in the office before you leave with him.” Mrs. M studies Jo. She orders us, “Follow me, please,” and reaches for my arm.
I lurch away. “She’s my mother,” I tell her. I huff for effect.
The bell rings, and instantly we’re swallowed in a tsunami of students, all shrieking and rushing for the doors. We lose ourselves in the squall. Out on the front walk, Jo says in my ear, “Who stuck a burr up her butt?”
I don’t answer. I grind my teeth. I’m still mad enough to beat her bloody, but she’s here, at least. At last. My anger morphs into relief. As we head for the parking lot, I say, “What are you doing, kidnapping me?”
“Yeah, sure.” She unlocks the passenger door on Beatrice and swings it open for me. “Kidnapping includes ransom. Who’d pay a friggin’ dime to get you back?”
I show her my tongue. She slams the door behind me and climbs in on her side.
“Where have you been?” I ask.
She acts like she doesn’t hear.
“Where!” I shout.
Jo turns and looks at me. “Away,” she says finally. “Dealing.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“Well, it’ll have to be,” she snaps. “It’s not always about you, okay? I had some shit to work through. You think this is easy for me? Give me a break, will you?” She looks ready to cry. Beatrice splutters to life, and Jo backs out of her space. We pull out of the parking lot, and I drag my eyes away from her. For a moment.
I ask, “Where are we going?” Home, I hope. This was all a bad dream. A sitcom episode. In the side view mirror, I watch Morey Middle School diminish in the distance.
Jo answers, “To our new place.”
She must feel my spike of joy because she adds, “Don’t get excited. It’s no movie star mansion.”
The understatement of the century, I discover, when we pull into a crappy apartment complex twenty minutes later. Jo drives under a dilapidated carport.
There are garbage bags piled to the roof between buildings, and it stinks. I plug my nose as I get out. Jo’s suddenly at my side, guiding me toward the stairwell. “Your grandparents always figured me for white trash,” she says. “I guess they got that right.”
I don’t know how to respond. Am I supposed to feel sorry for her? I can’t when I’m feeling sorry for myself.
“I can see you’re so stoked over this deal you’re wetting your pants,” Jo says. “The exterior’s just a front. Wait’ll you see the inside. Think Trump Towers.”
I follow Jo up the rickety steps. Her apartment’s on the second floor, halfway down a concrete walkway. She inserts a key in a door and screaks it open. An enormous dog leaps out at us, barking and drooling. I grab the doorknob to keep from being leveled.
“Down, boy,” Jo orders the dog. It obeys, and sniffs my crotch. Jo rolls her eyes. “Men.”
The dog takes an emergency leak off the landing. I hope there’s no one underneath. With a sweep of her arm, Jo motions me inside.
“What’s his name?” I ask. As I venture one step over the threshold, the dog bears down my back to beat me inside.
Jo cocks her head at me. “Well, he was first in line for death row at the pound, so take a guess.”
I laugh. It feels good to laugh.
Jo says, “Okay, so this is the skybox.”
The apartment is cramped. Dingy. The one curtain on the window is falling off the rod. Boxes and trash bags climb to the popcorn ceiling. It’s been more than a week and she hasn’t unpacked anything. This feeling comes over me; it overwhelms me. It’s . . . ease. Comfort. Even safety.
Jo swings open a door at one end of the room. “Oh my God!” she gasps. “We have a bathroom.” She slams the door. “Don’t tell the landlord. He’ll raise the rent.”
I slug her as she passes by. She slugs me back, then punches on the CD player. Metallica bursts my eardrums.
“What?” Jo yells.
“What what?” I yell back.
“That sappy smile on your face.”
I try to wipe it off, but it’s stuck. For the first time all week my stomach doesn’t hurt and I’m not on the verge of tears. A bass riff claws at my cortex and slithers down my trachea.
Jo crosses to the banged-up refrigerator and wrenches it open. “Let’s see. We’ve got leftover Chinese,” she hollers, “and rock-hard pizza. Or your favorite, chicken wings.”
My stomach grumbles. “That’s it?”
“Hey, my gourmet chef bailed on me.” She shuts the fridge.
“No, I didn’t!” I scream. “You left me. You deserted me.” Our eyes meet.
“I didn’t want to,” she yells back. “I —” Trudging over, she twists down the volume on the CD player. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“Yes, you did. You could’ve stayed.”
She shakes her head. “No, Nick. I couldn’t.”
I know it, but I don’t want to believe.
“I stayed as long as I could. You knew what was going on,” she says. “I don’t need that shit. I don’t stay where I’m not wanted.”
“You were wanted.” I glare at her; soften the look.
She looks away. Her face sags.
I don’t want her to cry. I add, “You could’ve taken me with you, at least. Are you kidding, leaving me alone with the Ice Queen?”
Jo shakes her head at the floor. “You weren’t mine to take. And don’t disrespect your mother.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s your mother.”
“But why couldn’t you —”
“Because I never adopted you.” A plastic bag rustles, and Lucky 3 launches up. He leaps on Jo’s front and about knocks her off her feet. Jo scruffs his ears. “You goof,” she says.
“What do you mean?” I say again, louder. “Why didn’t you adopt me?”
“Because I was trusting, okay? And stupid.” Jo pushes Lucky 3 down. “Can we talk about this later?” She heads for the bathroom.
Why would she have to adopt me? She’s my mom.
“No, we can’t.” Now I’m mad. I’m enraged. All the times she made me fight, made me decide what was worth fighting for. I charge her. “Did you even want to take me?” I shove her from behind. “Did you?”
“Nah.” She swings around. “You didn’t mean anything to me.” She clenches the tendon on my shoulder and squeezes.
I club her off. I’m not joking. “Why didn’t you fight for me?”
She opens her mouth, but no words come out.
“Did you even ask?” Because that’s what’s been bugging me. Killing me. I never once heard Jo ask for me. I never heard her argue with Mom, yell, scream my name, insist, “Nick is my kid. He’s going with me.” Aren’t I worth fighting for?
Off a TV tray, she picks up an empty McD carton and opens it. A shred of shriveled lettuce inside. She gazes into the depths of the cardboard for seven, eight seconds. I whack it out of her hand. “Answer me.”
She lifts her eyes. Her lips part. “I can’t fight her for you.” Jo’s eyes go dead. “I won’t.”
A rising panic lodges in my chest. “Why? Don’t you want me?”
Without warning, Jo crushes me to her. She holds me so hard my spine cracks. “Of course I want you. You know I do.”
“Then why?” Why? I choke back tears.
Jo doesn’t answer; just holds me and rocks me. We stay that way for a long time. I hang on to her. I never want to let her go.
She wants it too. I know she does. She wants me.
Lucky 3 starts barking. Barking and lunging at us, snagging Jo’s sleeve in his teeth. Jo and I separate a little. Stupid dog. I think, Go away. She doesn’t need a dog. She needs me.
Later, we’re sitting on the floor, sorting through CDs. “Some of these are mine, you know,” I tell Jo.
“So take them,” she says.
“I don’t want them. I’m just saying . . .” I scan around the apartment; check it out. “Where do I sleep?” I ask.
She doesn’t hear.
“Where —”
“You’re not staying.”
I start to blow. “But —”
“Your mom doesn’t even know you’re here. If she did . . .” Jo slices a finger across her neck and makes a slitting sound in her mouth like paper ripping. “I’ve got to get you home soon.”
Home, I think. Where is that now? Here? There? I know where I want it to be. For no reason Lucky 3 scrabbles to his feet and romps through the garbage bags. This dog is mental. He drops a slimy tennis ball into my lap.
Jo says, “I haven’t talked to your mom yet about . . . you know, visitation rights. All that crap.”
“So call her.” I lob the tennis ball toward the kitchen, and Lucky 3 bounds after it. He slides across the linoleum and crashes into the stove, then gets his paw stuck in a pizza box and drags it across the room. It makes us both laugh. Dumb dog, I think. Retard. Okay, I already love this dog.
“I can’t talk to her yet,” Jo says. She pries open a CD case to check if there’s a disc inside. Most of them are empty. The ones that aren’t contain mismatched CDs. “Besides, I don’t have a phone. I’m getting one. It’s scheduled for installation on Monday, supposedly.”
“I’ll talk to Mom and call you. Then you can come and get me.” Summer vacation starts in ten days. I hadn’t been looking forward to it until now. I’ll stay here with Jo. We’ll do all the stuff we used to do, like fish and spar at the gym and go target practice. My marker’s propped in the corner, I see. It’s globbed with paint. We’ll rent movies and slum at the mall. “Do you have a pool?” I ask.
“Does Trump Towers have a pool?” She clicks her tongue. “A cesspool.” She continues to open and close the CD case. Her knuckles are raw and her hands are chapped. I wonder if she’s still working at FedEx. I’m afraid to ask. The look on her face is the same one she had when she told me about Mom’s cancer.
“What?” I ask. Nobody died. No one’s dying. My Barbour’s sea horses have parasites or something, but I can treat them. “You don’t want me here, is that it?”
Jo casts me a withering look. “You know that’s not it. It’s just . . .” She shuts the CD case and pitches it across the room. “If you’re here, you’re not there.”
I widen eyes at her. “Brilliant, Einstein.”
She reaches over and smacks me upside the head. “Don’t be a smartass.”
I catch her wrist and yank. The force topples her over frontward. She throws a headlock on me and we wrestle in the trash. Lucky 3 barks his brains out. Jo and I noogie each other and roll. I pin her to the floor. “Onetwothree.” I slap the mat. I leap up and dance around like Rocky, my arms in the air. I come at Jo again.
“Time,” she calls, grinding her back into the wall. I slide down beside her. We’re both winded. I pick up a magazine from a stack by the TV tray. It’s the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Jo and I always fight over it.
She says out of nowhere, “What’s your philosophy of life, Nick?”
“What? What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. What do you tell yourself at a time like this? How do you make it through?”
You do what you need to do. Right? It sounds lame, particularly in this situation. Mom’s philosophy, ignore it and it’ll go away, is even weaker.
Jo goes, “You handle this shit better than me. I need to know what you tell yourself. What’s your pick-me-up line?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“Come on. I need a little inspiration here. My well’s run dry. I’d fill it with beer if I hadn’t made this regrettable promise to this sorry-ass person who doesn’t even have a philosophy of life.”
My philosophy? “Life sucks and then you die,” I say.
Jo blinks at me. She crunches her head against the wall and starts to shake. She’s laughing. Uncontrollably. Except it isn’t the kind of laughter that billows up from your belly and disperses in balloons of happiness and joy. The kind that makes you forget how bad things really are and that you’re hurting, maybe bleeding, afraid of dying or going away. This laughter is harsh, strident. It hurts to hear.
I squinch my ears and will her to stop. Stop! She goes, “Hoo boy, Nicky.” She slaps my bent knees and pushes to her feet. “Let’s go rustle up some grub.”
She waits for me at the door, but I don’t move. I can’t. I can’t tear my eyes away from the object in Lucky 3’s mouth. It’s one of Jo’s grizzly bear slippers, all ratty and ripped. I didn’t know she kept those.
Out of this river inside me a tear sluices down my cheek. Then another. I’m bawling, and Jo’s cradling my head in her chest and shielding me with her body, and she’s crying too. Tears are gushing from my eyes and I’m sobbing so hard I’m hiccuping. Jo’s wailing. Jo’s leaking more than me.
After we soak each other in tears, we sit for a while, recovering.
Jo speaks aloud the words I can’t form: “God. I never knew anything could hurt this much.”