Jeanny and I made a plan. She would take a taxi from the bus station, get dropped off at Cumby’s, and walk to the motel so no one would suspect where she was going. Twenty minutes and she’d be here. Thirty, tops. After we hung up, I worked at calming Sophie. She didn’t want her bottle, so I pulled a pacifier from the bag. She didn’t want that either. I walked her around the room. From the front window with the blankets draped over it to the back window where I’d hung two towels over the curtains to block the light. From the closet to the tiny bathroom. But that didn’t make her happy. All she wanted to do was cry. Since I didn’t know how else to help her, I took out one of those children’s books I’d bought at the bus station and read it out loud as she shrieked and I moved her in my arms.
“‘Hansel and Gretel walked deep into the forest. . . ’” I read, remembering those nights I had flipped through those storybooks in Edie’s bed, marveling over the happy endings. Even though Sophie couldn’t understand the words, something about the sound of my tired voice finally quieted her down. When I reached the end of the story, I turned back to the beginning and started again. On the second go-through, when Gretel suggests they toss bread crumbs behind them so they can find their way home, I decided to switch to the articles about my mother. I read each and every one of them aloud as I lulled Sophie to sleep. I read that Peter had taken a job on a lobster boat and slipped from the deck and drowned. I read that the Burdan family had paid my mother’s doctor—a Dr. Horvath—twenty thousand dollars to get them a baby. I read that my mother had broken down in court when the judge announced the verdict. She had to be carried out of the room. Finally I stopped reading and lost myself in the pictures. None of my brother except a distant shot of him bundled in a blanket as Mrs. Burdan carried him down the steps of a fancy New York building. I stared at that image awhile, my mind oddly blank, then dug out the photo of my mother being interviewed in front of a courthouse. She looked hopelessly tired, anxious, and angry all at once. If I were a stranger opening the paper and seeing that photo, I might think she was a woman capable of snapping and going at you with her teeth, her bare hands, her words. But I knew that alarmed, lost expression on her face all too well, and it made me tear up even as I tried to bury my feelings.
Dominick, I’m just so tired, she had told me before I went into the bath that last night in our apartment. Things have got to get easier for me.
And then she died.
Jeanny will be here any minute, I reminded myself before I completely lost footing on my huge mountain of emotions and went tumbling to the bottom. I had to stay strong. Stay on top of all that was happening. I tucked the news clippings into the drawer of the nightstand and gently put Sophie on the bed so I could run into the bathroom and take a piss. The second I let go of her, she popped open her eyes and looked at me. “Just give me one second, little girl,” I said, pleading with her not to cry. If she started up again, I felt like I’d begin wailing, too.
For once she didn’t, and I went into the bathroom, where the pink rectangular tiles and lime-green sink gave the room a false cheer, like Marnie wearing her too-bright colors in the middle of winter. The floor smelled of Ajax over mildew. Sterile and public. The shower curtain was covered with schools of goldfish, and I was beginning to realize that Fowler must’ve had a thing for them. Above the toilet a painting of a log cabin in the woods was screwed to the wall. Smoky blue mountains in the background, a bed of rooster-red leaves up front. I found myself staring at the scene as I took a leak, wondering if I should talk to Leon about Ed’s grandparents’ cabin after all. Get Sophie out of here and find someplace like that to hide out.
After I finished, I turned on the water and stood in front of the mirror, wondering if my mother had washed her hands in this sink when she arrived at the motel.
That’s when my breath stopped.
There, on the other side of the mirror, I imagined—or not so much as imagined but envisioned, saw—my mother staring back at me. She looked as if she had been dragged along the damp floor of the forest in that painting. Twigs and dead leaves in her snarled hair. Her skin gone gray, scraped, and bloody. Her breasts bruised blue and running with milk down her deflated stomach. Her eyes hollow and full of sadness. I wanted to look away from her but felt as suspended as one of those red cardinal’s hats above the altar in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a balloon tied tight to a child’s wrist so it couldn’t escape. My mother’s chapped lips began to whisper something I couldn’t make sense out of.
Baby.
Maybe.
Manger.
Too.
Baby.
Maybe.
Manger.
Too.
“What?” I said out loud.
And that’s when there was a knock at the door. I heard Jeanny’s voice say “Dominick?” and my mother disappeared.
It was my face in the mirror. My hair grown past my ears and wispy in front of my forehead. My eyes wide and frightened by what I’d just seen, or thought I’d seen. I turned off the water, and the thought hit me hard that something in my mind was slipping. Perhaps all that had happened had broken my brain somehow, left me with haunted visions in the bathroom mirror and images of blood on the floor beside the bed. Or maybe what I had seen was another message, a sign from my mother that I should be following, if only I had understood.
Jeanny knocked again. “Dominick?”
I wiped my hands on a scratchy white washcloth and made my way to the door. When I opened up, Jeanny was standing there with her guitar case and a pizza. “If I’m not home by midnight, I’ll turn into a pumpkin,” she said.
“Midnight,” I repeated, not really listening because I was still seeing that image in the mirror, hearing that strange message echoing in my mind.
Baby.
Maybe.
Manger.
Too.
What good was a sign if you didn’t know what it meant?
“Are you okay?” Jeanny said. “You look horrible.”
“Yeah,” I told her, rubbing my eyes and trying to anchor myself in the conversation. “I’m just hungry. That’s all. The pizza smells good. Come inside.”
She stepped into the room and set the pizza box on the dresser, took off her coat and that poncho. Beneath all her layers she was wearing dark corduroys that flared at the legs, a crimson sweater with three snowflakes across her chest, a flurry of white dots on her flat stomach. Even though her breasts were small, I could tell by the way they filled her sweater—loose and low—that she wasn’t wearing a bra. My mouth went dry when I glanced down at them. The word “liberated” swam to the surface of my mind, and I pictured Jeanny burning a lacy white something on a fire, holding it out on a stick like you would a marshmallow. I knew what my father would say about bra-burners, but I didn’t let myself think about it.
“I have to admit,” Jeanny said, looking around the room, “I’ve never had a date quite like this one.”
Distracted by her breasts and that image of my mother, I said, “I have.”
Jeanny looked at me a little funny, and I realized my mistake.
“I mean, I haven’t. Either.” I shook my head and gave myself a mental kick. It had been so easy to talk with her on the bus, but now I felt tongue-tied, which left me thinking that this get-together had been a bad idea. Maybe we had clicked on the bus, but I should have left it at that. Having Jeanny in the motel room filled me with nervousness. She kept glancing around in a way that left me unsettled. It occurred to me once more that she must have known about what had happened to my mother in this room. But if that was true, would she have come?
“So how is our little angel?” Jeanny asked, looking down at the baby.
“I think she’s happy to see you,” I said, trying to smooth things out again, get rid of all that tension. “Almost as happy as me.”
Jeanny was about to say something, but Sophie interrupted. She must have been bored on the bed alone, because she started making a commotion. Jeanny wasted no time scooping her up in her arms. “It’s okay, little pea,” she said. “You’re having a bad day. I know.”
I carried the pizza over to the bed where she had plopped down with the baby in her arms. As she coddled Sophie, I tried to think of something to talk about. But my brain felt muddled. I couldn’t come up with a single thing to say. The room grew unnaturally quiet, and my mind drifted back to my mother in the mirror. I pushed the image away again and remembered Jeanny resting her head on my shoulder that afternoon. I found myself wishing we could just curl up together and go to sleep. But that wasn’t exactly an option. I glanced down at a fat-faced cartoon chef who kissed the tips of his fingers on the lid of the pizza box. Over his puffy white hat were the words “You’ve tried the rest. Now try the best.” How original, I thought and flipped the top open. The pizza: half plain, half covered with thick slices of pepperoni, lumpy sausages and meatballs, fatty bacon. I looked at Jeanny, wondering about her vegetarian diet and all the farm animals we were about to devour.
“That side’s for you,” she said, smirking. “Carnivore.”
“I said I eat meat. I didn’t say I was a caveman.”
Jeanny laughed, and I felt like maybe things were beginning to ease up again. “Okay. I guess I got a little carried away. But I was thinking that I’d have one or two of those slices myself. I just don’t think I can do the vegetarian thing anymore.”
“Really?” I said.
“Really.”
“Welcome back to the barbaric world of meat eaters,” I told her, and that’s when I did something to get rid of any stiffness once and for all. I leaned forward and kissed her. It was a short, simple kiss.
One. Two. Three.
Her lips were tender and the slightest bit moist. In my head I heard Edie’s voice saying, Let me give you a real kiss. It will be my thank-you present to you.
Thank you for helping me rob your mother.
Thank you for letting me ruin your life.
I gave Jeanny one more softer, longer kiss and remembered the way Edie had pressed her mouth hard to mine. The way my fingers had brushed against her belly, feeling her baby—Sophie—inside her. It all seemed so strange and off-color; thinking back, I wondered how I hadn’t known Edie was up to no good the entire time.
When our lips parted, I said, “Let me get something to wash down the feast.” Instantly I realized that getting water for us entailed going into the bathroom and standing in front of that mirror. Since I had already opened my mouth, I forced my legs to move. I went into the bathroom and pulled the sanitary paper off the two glasses on the small sink. Instead of filling them up right away, I stared at the picture of that cabin, putting off the moment of facing the mirror. Whoever had painted the thing played with the soft color that came from the cabin windows. Instead of yellow like you might expect, the light from inside cast a purple glow. It seemed warm in there. Safe. I pictured the dark windows of this room from outside, all covered up so they didn’t cast any light at all.
“Hurry up,” Jeanny called. “The pizza’s going from cold to colder fast.”
I cranked on the water and slowly turned my eyes up toward the mirror. Once again my breath stopped. I felt my heart thud. She was there, my mother, looking back at me again from the other side. This time her neck seemed loose, wobbly, like Sophie’s. Her hair hung down in front of her face as brittle as dried seaweed. And her message had changed. Or maybe I had misunderstood earlier. She whispered,
Baby.
Maybe.
Stranger.
Too.
Baby.
Maybe.
Stranger.
Too.
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“I said the pizza is getting cold,” Jeanny called to me.
And with that the image of my mother vanished once again.
It was me in the mirror. The water poured over the edge of the second glass, and I turned off the faucet.
Get a grip, I said to myself. Get a fucking grip.
Jeanny was with me, and I didn’t want to scare her away.
“Did you drown in the toilet?” she called.
I took a breath and dipped the tips of my fingers in one of the water glasses and splashed my face. Baptism.
“Two glasses of our best champagne,” I said, carrying the water back to the bed and trying to shake the image of my mother’s mouth whispering that strange message. The horror of her harmed and helpless body.
“Why, thank you, sir,” Jeanny said, taking a glass with her free hand and setting it on the nightstand. Sophie was fast asleep in the crook of her arm.
What little appetite I had finally worked up had been stolen by that vision in the mirror, but I forced myself to eat anyway. I picked off the bacon because it was overkill even for me, pushed my mother’s gum behind one of my back teeth, and ate.
“You’re done already?” Jeanny said when I called it quits halfway through my second piece.
“I feel bad for the farm animals,” I said, kidding her.
Jeanny finished eating, too—one plain slice, one meat—and looked down at Sophie. “Hello, little cutie,” she whispered in a baby voice.
“When can she start eating real food?” I asked, still trying to forget my mother in the mirror, to land myself in the reality of this room with Jeanny and Sophie.
“Don’t hold your breath,” she said. “It’ll be a while.”
I touched Sophie’s shrunken hand, which she kept permanently closed in a loose fist. I wished she could say something, wished she could tell me what she thought about our adventure. If she liked being with her big brother and his new friend. . . girlfriend. “How long till she can talk?” I asked.
“She’ll have ‘mama’ and ‘dada’ nailed down by the time she’s one,” Jeanny said. “But it’ll be a bit before she’s discussing politics.”
“Is she going to do anything in the near future?”
“Probably dirty her diaper. Other than that, she’ll cry a lot.”
“You mean all she does is shit and cry?”
“And sleep. She’s still an infant. It’s in the job description.”
Jeanny gave Sophie a peck on the forehead, then told me that I’d miss this stage once the baby started walking and talking. She said that her brothers were sweet when they were infants. She could always tell what they wanted when they cried. Bottle. Diaper. Crib. That was about the extent of their needs.
I thought of my mother—not the woman in the mirror but the young woman who had given birth to Truman after her first husband had died. She must have felt so hopeless and dazed to agree to hand over her baby like that. I thought of how blinded by happiness she must have been that day on the plane. Happy but scared, like I was now.
“Can I tell you something?” Jeanny said.
I nodded yes, lost in thought about my mother and brother. I still wanted to find Truman—Rand—just for her. Even though he was older now, I pictured him again as one of those flawless rich kids streaming out of that school on the Upper East Side. I wanted him to know how much our mother regretted what she had done, whether he wanted to hear it or not. How much she thought of him, right up until her death.
“I know about your mom,” Jeanny said.
Her words were a pitcher of cold water poured over my head, snapping me to attention. She knew. Just as I suspected. I wanted to say so many things, explain why I was here, but the only thing I could manage was “How?”
“The paper.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling awkward once again. For the first time I noticed a thin slit of a scar beneath Jeanny’s chin. It made me see her as a pigtailed little girl falling off a bike, jumping too high from a swing and crashing to the ground. Bleeding and crying. “And you still came? I mean, it didn’t freak you out?”
Jeanny put her hand on her chin, covering that scar, that image of her as a girl. She told me that after her father died, her mother used to load her and her brothers in the car and drive to the train tracks. “We’d sit there for hours. Crying or staring or thinking. I don’t know. It was a way to be near him. I guessed that maybe it’s the same for you.”
The way she said it made it all sound so normal, uncomplicated.
“Does it feel weird for you to be here?” she asked.
I glanced around the room at the matching nightstands on each side of the bed, the long dresser along the far wall. All of it made from pressed board. Wood that was real but not real at the same time. “Mostly it seems like any other motel room. But I know what happened here.” I kept quiet about my mother in the mirror, because I knew she would think I was crazy.
Then Jeanny asked, “Is Sophie really your sister?”
Another pitcher of water. More startling and cold this time.
I didn’t say anything for a moment. I wanted to fess up to her about the whole story but was afraid of what she might say. In the silence I wondered if it would simply be better to tell her yes and leave it at that.
“It’s just that they didn’t mention her in any of the articles,” Jeanny said. “It seems like they would have. And the way you acted on the bus, it was like you’d never seen the baby before. Plus the way your mom died. . . ” She paused, must have gauged by the look on my face that this line of questioning was making me uncomfortable.
I took a drink and wiped my mouth with my sleeve. If she was going to be here, she had a right to know the truth. I was about to explain everything when there was a knock at the door. The sound made Jeanny jump; the jump made Sophie cry.
“Milkman,” Leon said from outside.
“It’s okay,” I told Jeanny. “I’m expecting a delivery.”
When I opened the door, Leon was standing there with a lifetime supply of Pampers in his arms. Behind him, Special Ed was carrying four bags of groceries.
“What’s he doing here?” I said to Leon. “I told you not to let anyone know about this.”
Leon ignored me. He and Ed made their way through the door and set down the boxes and bags. “Leon Diesel,” he said, sticking his hand out to Jeanny. “I bet you’re the girl from the bus. Dominick told me all about you.”
I cringed. Jeanny shook his hand and said hello, but I got the feeling she was leery of them both. I probably should have warned her that Leon was going to come by. One of the many warnings on my list. “Nice to meet you,” she said halfheartedly.
“I could ask you the same question about her,” Leon said to me when he let go of her hand.
“But it’s my room. I decide who comes and goes.”
“Relax,” Leon said. “Don’t blow a gasket. I saw Ed hoofing it down the road, so I picked him up. He’s just helping with the supplies. We bought out the baby aisle for you.”
“As if that’s not suspicious, too. You and Ed buying enough diapers to supply the Griffith Hospital nursery for the next decade.”
“You know, Pindle, you’re not sounding very grateful.”
I didn’t say a word to that, because there was no use arguing. Just reached into my pocket and pulled out some money to give him.
“I told you, it’s on the house,” Leon said, holding up his hands.
“Just take it.”
“It’s a gift. Keep the cash and buy yourself a few joints so you can relax.”
I stuck the money in my pocket and walked to the window, peered out from behind the curtain and blankets to make sure he had parked around back. The front lot was empty, so at least he had done something right.
“Would you guys like a slice of pizza?” Jeanny asked.
“No thanks,” Leon said. “We’ve got errands to run.”
“I’ll take one for the road,” Ed said, reaching into the box and grabbing a slice. He picked around for the loose bacon I had pulled off and shoved that in his fat face, too.
“What’s rule number one in my new car?” Leon asked him.
Ed took a bite of the pizza and thought about the question. “No eating?” he said, mouth full.
“Wrong. Rule number one is no farting. Rule number two is no eating.”
I glanced at Jeanny, who seemed to be ignoring their circus act. Busy opening a box of Pampers. Diaper duty. If Leon’s and Ed’s idiot zoo personalities didn’t send her running, nothing would.
“I’ll suck it down before we’re even outside,” Ed said. True to his word, the thing was gone in four bites.
“I’ll swing by tomorrow to see if you need anything,” Leon said.
I squinted my eyes and glared at him, which was my way of saying, Not with Ed, you won’t.
“Don’t worry,” he said, getting my drift. “I’ll come alone.” He waved to Jeanny and told her he’d catch her later. And with that they were out the door.
“Is that guy a dealer?” Jeanny asked the moment the door closed.
“Car dealer?” I said, watching them from the window and playing dumb, though I wasn’t quite sure why.
“Drugs,” she said.
Sophie started to cry again, and I glanced at Jeanny. She had laid the baby down on the bed and was unsnapping her yellow outfit at the legs, getting ready to change her. “I know, little darling,” she cooed to Sophie. “The world isn’t fair. This will all be over in a minute, and you can go back to sleep.”
I turned to the window again and watched Leon’s car drive around front. “What makes you say he’s a drug dealer?” I asked, figuring she was probably right.
“The car. The clothes. The groceries on the house. It doesn’t take a detective to spot the clues.”
As Jeanny spoke, I kept watching Leon’s ’Cuda. Instead of pulling onto the street, he stopped out front and flicked on the inside light. I saw him reach over to the glove compartment and hand something to his new sidekick. Ed took whatever it was and got out of the car, walked back up the stairs toward our room.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Jeanny was saying to Sophie, who was giving one of her big bad cries. “We’re almost done.”
I decided she had to be right. Leon was dealing drugs. I guess it wasn’t so surprising. Still, it seemed funny to me, because I remembered how nervous he’d been the first time he scored a dime bag of pot. Now he was a dealer. Knowing him, he was sending Ed back upstairs with a joint.
I opened the door before he could knock.
“One more thing,” Ed said, taking the package out of his coat and shoving it into my hand. Not drugs at all. But a slim, silver pistol wrapped in a McDonald’s napkin. A box of bullets, too, tucked beneath the Golden Arches. In my head I heard Leon say,
They could come after you.
They could find you here and kill you.
Slit your throat or something.
“Protection,” Ed told me. “Leon said you should have it just in case.”
I had held a gun only once before. And the weight of it in my hand brought back the memory of when my father had come home with a Smith & Wesson he’d won in a card game. I was only nine or ten at the time, but he took me to the junkyard so I could fire it. Just like then, I felt nervous holding the thing. I worried that the piece of metal was something uncontrollable and wild that might fire unexpectedly at any moment. Or that perhaps I was something uncontrollable and wild and would have the impulse to pull the trigger at any moment. Just hold her steady and aim, my father kept saying that day. I did as he said, but all my targets—a beat-up dresser with missing drawers, a bent bed frame, a clump of dirt with an unidentifiable silver glint—went unscathed. I missed every time. Because you’re afraid of it, my father had said. It’s okay. You’ll learn. Only he didn’t take the gun out much after that, because my mom hated having it around. And I never learned.
“What is Leon doing with this?” I asked Ed.
“Confiscated it from his mother’s new boyfriend. We’ve been shooting it down at the quarry. Oh, and he asked me to leave you one more bit of protection.” Ed reached into his pocket and pulled out another package, put it in my free hand. Trojans. Ribbed. Lubricated. “Leon wanted me to tell you that we’ve got enough children in the family.”
Behind me, Jeanny was busy with Sophie. I shoved the box into the pocket of my sweatshirt and prayed she hadn’t seen it. The gun I held in my stiff hand along with the bullets. “Tell Leon that I appreciate his concern,” I said and practically slammed the door in Ed’s grinning face.
“Catch you later,” Ed said from outside before clomping down the stairs.
“I hate guns,” Jeanny said when I turned around. “I just want you to know that. I hate them.”
“Me, too,” I told her, wondering if she’d seen the condoms, since she didn’t mention them. “Don’t worry. I’m getting rid of it.”
I looked around the room, holding the dead weight of it and feeling my body tense. I wanted to flush it down the toilet like a deceased pet fish. Toss it out the window. But what if it went off? I walked to the closet, where I planned to stick the pistol on the top shelf until tomorrow, when I would hand it back to Leon or get rid of it for good. That’s when I noticed a door at the back of the closet. I turned the knob and gave it a push. It opened, and I stepped through the closet into another closet, pushed open that door and stepped into the dark of the neighboring motel room. Even in the dim light that came through the closets with me, I could see that the place looked almost identical to 5B, except that the cabin picture was above the bed in here and the paint job and rug weren’t as new.
“Dominick?” Jeanny called, sounding farther away than she really was.
“There’s a door,” I shouted. “It opens to the next room. I’m in here.”
I walked to the back window and looked outside. Directly below me, in the rear parking lot, was a Dumpster. From where I stood I could have pretty easily opened the window and dropped the pistol and bullets down inside of it. And that would be that. But as uncomfortable as I felt holding the gun, something told me I should keep it after all. Not a voice or a sign from my mother. Just my own instinct. After all, who knew what could happen or when I might need it? Just in case, as Leon had said.
I walked to the dresser and pulled open the top drawer. Inside was another phone book and a Bible, too. I opened the Bible to a random page and stuck the pistol and bullets inside.
“Just in case,” I said out loud.
The Bible didn’t close all the way, but I shoved it in the drawer, then walked back through the closets to my room, closing the doors behind me.
“Did you get rid of it?” Jeanny asked. She had finished changing Sophie and was holding her again.
“It’s all gone,” I told her because I didn’t want her to worry. “I opened the window in the next room and dropped it in the Dumpster.”
“Good riddance,” she said.
I glanced at my watch. Ten-thirty already. I thought of Jeanny’s words when I answered the door: If I’m not home by midnight, I’ll turn into a pumpkin. The thought of her leaving made me feel lonely. I hated the idea of sleeping here tonight with just me and Sophie, that haunted vision of my mother calling to me.
When Jeanny turned to open her guitar case, I shoved the condoms under the bed. It wasn’t that some part of me didn’t dream of making it with her, because I did feel that way. I mean, she seemed prettier to me by the second. And those small, loose breasts of hers kept catching my eyes. Just being with her made me forget—if only a little—what had become of my life. But it seemed weird to think about sex in the room where my mother had died. And if I was going to be with Jeanny, I wanted it to be perfect. Not like that night with Edie when I had let go in my pants, felt my stomach twist and turn. Besides—not that it made a difference to guys like Leon and my father—but we had only really met that afternoon. As liberated as she was, I doubted Jeanny wanted to go all the way, or even part of the way, with me already.
“Do you take that thing with you everywhere you go?” I asked when Jeanny lifted her guitar out of the case. Beneath the strings the belly of the instrument was a gaping dark hole that opened in my direction. Ooooooo, I imagined it endlessly mewling. Oooooooooooo.
“As a matter of fact I do,” she said. “It’s like my best friend.”
I asked her if she was going to play for me, and she said she already performed once for me on the bus that day. “Check with me another time. But I thought I could put a pillow in here and use my case as a little crib for Sophie. We’ll keep it by the heater so she stays warm.”
This is what I thought: If Sophie falls asleep, Jeanny might leave her guitar case behind and come back for it tomorrow. Or maybe she would just have to stay.
“You’re the expert. Whatever you think is best.” I waited for her to pick up the line of questioning she had begun before Leon and Ed arrived, but she kept quiet about it. We made the miniature crib for Sophie with towels from the room next door for blankets, then put her down to sleep. When Sophie stopped fussing, Jeanny went into the bathroom. I thought of her looking into that mirror and wondered how she would react if she saw what I had seen in there, heard that strange message.
A moment later she emerged holding her hair behind her head in a way that made me want to kiss her again, to touch her skin. She sat next to me on the bed, both our heads propped on pillows against the headboard. I stared at the whiteness of the ceiling and counted the smudges up there in an effort to keep my mind calm.
“So are you ready to tell me about Sophie?” Jeanny asked finally.
Ready as I’d ever be. I took a breath and began at the beginning. “Last summer my mother and I were out looking for my father. When we couldn’t find him in any of the usual bars where he drinks on Hanover Street, I convinced my mother to drive to his girlfriend’s house on Barn Hill. . . ”
Jeanny listened quietly as I spoke. Unlike Leon, she stopped me from time to time to ask questions. “Did you have any clue that your mother was pregnant?. . . Did Edie ever mention moving to New York?. . . Do you think your father really hit her?”
No.
No.
I don’t know.
I answered each question as best I could. And when I was done with the story, I found myself crying. Cursing Roget, who was out there walking around without any blame for leaving my mother to die. I wanted to get him, I told Jeanny, but I didn’t know how. And the harder I tried to bury my feelings, the way I promised myself, the more it all came gushing out. It killed me to break down in front of her like that. To let her see me so messed up and weak.
Jeanny didn’t seem to mind, though. She moved my head to her shoulder and stroked my hair. “It’s okay,” she said, the same way she had to Sophie. “It’s going to be okay.”
We stayed like that awhile. Her comforting me as I listened to the steady thump of her heart beneath her sweater. The room grew quiet, except for the occasional whiz of a car driving by outside. As tired and sad as I was, after a long time of lying close to her like that, I felt myself get hard in my pants. It wasn’t the usual quick surge. This was something that came more slowly, but stronger, as we lay there. It seemed funny to be turned on at the same time as all those other emotions. But with my head so near the softness of her breasts, it was impossible not to be. I told myself to hold back, though. It wasn’t right in this room. So I simply let myself float in the feeling of being next to her.
Her hand stroking my hair, touching my forehead.
My arm draped over her stomach, absently playing with the cuff of her sweater.
Slowly my mind began to drift off to sleep, until Jeanny said quietly into the dim light of the room, “Dominick, you have to give Sophie back.”
I jerked my head up and looked at her, suddenly awake again. “What are you talking about? I thought you’d be on my side.”
“I am,” she said, keeping quiet so as not to wake Sophie. “But, Dominick, that baby is barely a month old. She needs her mother. She needs to go to the doctor. She needs a lot of things you can’t give her.”
“So I’ll find a doctor. I’ll figure it all out.”
Jeanny sat up, crossed her arms in front of her, covering those snowflakes over her breasts.
“Didn’t you understand what I just said? Edie used me. She tricked me into stealing that money. My poor mother was conned into giving away her first kid. Then I betrayed her. And her third baby. . . well, we know what happened. Besides, Edie is living in some drug den. Sophie deserves better.”
“Like living in an abandoned motel. Now, there’s a privileged life. From here she’ll go off to boarding school, right?”
“This is just temporary,” I told her, imagining that same purple glow from the windows of Ed’s grandparents’ cabin in the woods, wondering for the first time if somehow I could get money from the Burdan family and use it to start a new life. “I have plans for us. We’re making a pit stop here, then splitting.”
Jeanny’s face changed. Flicker of surprise. Flicker of disappointment. She lowered her voice still more and asked, “Where are you going?”
“I can’t tell you. Because you can’t come.”
“So you’re going to ride off into the sunset with an infant in your arms,” she huffed. “That’s really going to solve your problems.”
“I’m not saying I have it all figured out. But I know what I have to do. And that’s make things up to my mother. Save this kid from Edie.”
Jeanny stared over at the little dark lump that was Sophie in the guitar case–turned–bassinet. A truck zoomed by on the street, and when it was quiet again, I could hear the baby softly breathing. Maybe I shouldn’t have told Jeanny everything. It was a lot for anyone to make sense of. What had I expected?
I looked at my watch. Quarter to twelve. Fifteen minutes and Jeanny would be a pumpkin. I thought of Hansel and Gretel again, dropping bread crumbs behind them. A dark, floppy-winged bird scooping that food up in its beak as they disappeared behind the trees. “Look, I’m sorry for involving you,” I told Jeanny as we both watched Sophie. I hated her for not taking my side, but the truth was I needed her. Just the thought of being in this room without her made me lonely. I swallowed and said, “If you want to leave now and just forget about me, I understand. And I probably shouldn’t be pulling you into this, but if you wanted to stay here with me tonight, I. . . I would like that.”
Jeanny seemed to actually be turning the possibility over in her mind, not taking her eyes off Sophie. I wondered if she saw this whole situation as another crusade, something for her to fight for. I imagined the picket signs taking shape in her mind: RETURN SOPHIE TO HER RIGHTFUL OWNER. . . . BRING THE BABY HOME. . . She watched Sophie for a long while, then looked at me finally and said, “I’ll stay only if you promise me this: that you’ll think about giving her back. Just think about it. That’s all.”
“What about your mother?” I asked.
Jeanny laughed the way she had on the bus when she told me about her mom. Like there was something funny in the sad things she said about her. Something I didn’t understand. “Maybe my absence will get her attention. She’ll realize I didn’t die when my father did. Besides, it’s winter break. I don’t have classes to go to. But will you think about what I said?”
I put my arm around her and pulled her close to me. Felt myself get hard again. She smelled like the motel soap she had used to wash her hands. Up close I could see that scar beneath her chin again. My mind filled one more time with the image of her as a little girl hurt on the playground. What she was saying made sense, the same way my uncle had made sense to my mother when he showed up in New Mexico. But I knew that the rational choice wasn’t always the right choice. Look at the way it had wrecked my mother. If I gave this baby back, I would regret it the way she did, for the rest of my life. So no, I wouldn’t think about it. “You have to understand. My mother’s death was all my fault,” I said, trying to make her see things my way.
“It’s not your fault,” Jeanny said.
“Then whose is it?” I asked her.
“Do you really want an answer to that?”
“Yes,” I told her. “I do.”
“I think it’s the world’s fault.”
“The world’s fault?” I said, feeling once more like she hadn’t understood what I’d just told her at all. “That makes a lot of sense.”
“Listen to me. It’s the world’s fault because of the way it’s set up for women. Your mother didn’t have any choices, so she got stuck in a lot of bad situations. If she could have just left your father and gotten a decent job, she might have had a chance. But it’s practically impossible for a woman with a kid to survive on her own. As much as my mother drives me crazy, I see how hard it is for her without my dad. Women aren’t paid the same. Women aren’t given the same chances. And if abortion was legal, then your mother could have just gone to a doctor or a clinic and gotten a safe one on demand.”
“But what about the baby?” I asked her, remembering that PBS priest.
“You mean, ‘What about the fetus?’ I’m not going to claim to know when life starts. But I know when it ends. It ends when a woman like your mother dies because she can’t decide for herself.”
I didn’t say anything, because Jeanny seemed pretty worked up. I thought of all her picket signs and bumper stickers. Her war on the world. I replayed that moment when my mother and I first laid eyes on Jeanny at the policemen’s auction. What was it my mother had said? I like a woman who fights for what she believes in. Something like that.
“Don’t get so quiet,” Jeanny said to me. “Guys always do when I talk about the world. I mean, don’t you read the papers? Don’t you think these things, too?”
I thought of the way I had started to read the paper when I got to know Edie. All those headlines about faraway places. The world seemed so immense and unpredictable. Too much to know. Too much to think about.
“I do think about it,” I told her. “I just don’t have all the answers.”
“Neither do I,” she said and turned to face me again.
“Just ninety-nine percent of them, right?”
“Ninety-nine point nine,” she said and laughed just enough to soften things between us.
I didn’t know what else to say, so I leaned over and put my lips to hers. We moved our mouths together for a long while. This time I thought of Edie telling me, I can spare one kiss. And it will make you feel in control the next time you’re test-driving a new girlfriend. I had thought the day would never come, that Edie was the only woman I would feel this way about. But Jeanny’s mouth was smaller, more tender, less pushy to kiss. My feelings for her were already the same but different.
When we separated, I felt around my mouth with my tongue for my mother’s gum. I had forgotten to push it aside the way I did when I ate.
“What’s wrong?” Jeanny said.
“My gum. It’s gone.”
She reached into her mouth and pulled out the piece, grinning. “Is this what you’re looking for?”
“Yes,” I told her. She had no idea what that stale, overchewed piece of gum meant to me.
“What flavor is this? Week-old rubber?”
“I’ve been chewing it for a while,” I said, because there was no way to explain.
“Well, let’s put it on the nightstand,” she said and stuck it to my empty water glass. “Maybe next time your dealer friend stops by, you can ask him to buy you some more.”
My mouth felt barren and empty without it, like I had lost a tooth or maybe my tongue. I wasn’t getting rid of it, I told myself. But I decided to leave the piece where Jeanny had put it for the time being. I wrapped my arms around her and held her close and tight to me. We were both so tired from the day that we stayed quiet and were well on our way to sleep, holding each other on top of the covers. I found myself imagining all the families who must have stayed in the rooms of this motel in the summertime. Children unable to sleep, too charged with excitement thinking of the next day at the racetrack, the bright blur of stock cars zooming round and round their minds.
“So you never gave me an answer,” Jeanny whispered in my ear as I drifted off to sleep thinking of those cars that I knew were made from junks. Gutted, then re-created into something stronger in their afterlife.
“About what?” I asked.
“About whether or not you’ll consider giving Sophie back. Will you at least promise that you’ll think about it?”
“Yes,” I told her, as my mind stepped down a dark path in the forest. Jeanny’s hand in mine as we made our way between the white birch trees that looked like bones. That dark, big-winged fairy-tale bird not far behind pecking away at our trail. “I will think about it.”
“Promise me?” she whispered.
“I promise you.” I meant it, then fell asleep.