The wheel of his rolling duffel caught on the aluminum step of the escalator, and Galen almost let go. It contained only possessions. But a missing bag would be one more problem for Mom. He tugged it free.
The line of people behind him all wore traveling faces: trapped in transit, happiness checked along with their luggage. There was a poem in that thought, if words could break through the brume in his brain. Words had become empty vessels no longer infused with affect.
A jerk, and the escalator spat him out on the main level. Regurgitated him back into the world. The prodigal failure had come home.
Thump, thump, thump went the wheel secured with duct tape. The duffel had been a present from Dad. Galen had never liked it.
Eyes on the floor, he shuffled down the walkway.
Such a hike to the greeting area. Dead man walking.
He raised his head. As expected, Mom was standing off to the side, surrounded by silence, her battered messenger bag slung across her torso. Galen tried to smile. Counterfeit emotions he could do, but gestures involved effort. Hard to send messages of movement to a body weighted down by invisible, wet sandbags.
Mom’s voice—comforting, reassuring. The voice from his childhood. “That’s all you brought, sweetheart?”
He wavered and fell into her. Make it go away, Mom. Make it go away.
People hurried past, but he clung to his mother. With just the two of them, there would be no one to say, Perk up, as if depression were a jacket he could slip off and stow in the overhead bin of an airplane. Dad didn’t understand that he couldn’t perk up, he couldn’t aim that high. Galen just wanted one day when he didn’t wake up crying.
Mom pulled back and tucked his hair behind his ear. “Have you eaten?”
“Not hungry. I just want to get to the cottage and sleep.”
She fiddled with the strap of her bag.
“Something wrong?” he said.
“Come on—” She grabbed the duffel. “Let’s get you home.”
“You didn’t answer me.”
“I’ll tell you in the car.”
He reclaimed his bag. Did she think he was an invalid? “Tell me now, Mom. I don’t have the stamina for guessing games.”
“It’s the cottage. I’ve—”
“Please don’t tell me you’ve rented it to some destitute client.” That would be so like her, taking on someone else’s hard-luck story when she should be worrying about her own.
“Poppy found us a temporary tenant.” Mom smiled but her lips quavered. “A six-month lease with the rent money going into a special bank account for you. But please don’t share that information with your brother.”
For years the cottage stood empty, and now she rented it out.
“I’m not a charity case, Mom.”
“You need money, sweetheart. For food if nothing else.”
“I don’t eat much these days.”
“I can tell.”
The automatic doors slid open and they stepped from the vacuum of the terminal into air too warm for late October. Cars pulled to and away from the curb, and a plane roared overhead. The sky was steel blue. Behind the barricades and across the labyrinth of runways, the forest. The first poem he wrote was about the magic of fall on Saponi Mountain. Today the forest was just a stand of trees on the other side of the tarmac. The colors were unimpressive.
“Besides—” Mom was already in the crosswalk. She turned and waited for him. “Our tenant’s a writer. You two have something in common.”
“I’m not a writer. Not anymore.”
“Don’t say that.” She sounded tired. “You have a gift for poetry. Nothing can take that away from you.”
Not even heavy-duty meds that make me feel as if I’m crawling across the ocean floor?
“I’m being honest, Mom.”
“No, you’re not. You’re letting depression speak for you. You’re a poet, you’re a brother, you’re a wonderful human being and you’re my son. I love you. And before you attempt another apology, I forgive you. For everything.”
Galen stared at the rows of parked cars. All waiting, all empty.
Don’t make it easier, Mom.
* * *
Will sat on the porch pretending to type, much as Freddie used to do when he exclaimed, “Look, Daddy! I’m working, too!” He hit keys randomly, and gibberish leaped from his fingertips. At least he wasn’t hunched over his keyboard like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, typing “all work and no play.”
His mom had raised him on R-rated horror. People in her twisted fairy tales didn’t die easy deaths. They were sliced and diced, disemboweled or dragged behind stampeding bulls. Keep your audience scared, she’d always told him. Great lesson for a five-year-old. Even then, she’d been plotting his life-path. He couldn’t stomach violence, and yet his storytelling mind circled psychopathic behavior like a hummingbird hovering over a red hibiscus flower. Most mothers showed their kids how to fold laundry. His mom schooled him in the darkness of the human psyche.
Terror had always infused his writing, and yet real fear hadn’t found him until he was a dad. Fatherhood had filled every day with paralyzing anxiety: the fear of his son falling off the climbing frame; the fear of a stranger snatching Freddie away while Cass was distracted; the fear that Freddie died in agony.
Will slammed the laptop closed and ran down the steps toward Hannah’s house. He yanked his hands through his hair. Her truck wasn’t here, but he hadn’t noticed her leave. Where was she, and why should he care? Before a nine-month-old baby upended his universe, he wouldn’t have cared. Sixteen years ago he left for college with a small bag and a short list of positive negatives—things he knew, with absolute certainty, he never wanted in his life: love, mental illness, a family. He needed to hit rewind, to rediscover that set of beliefs, because he could no longer live this way—emotionally raw. Stripped as bare as the trees would be in another month. Winter, he’d always hated winter. A forest should be impenetrable and overgrown. A place to hide, not a place to see through.
Hannah’s truck lumbered down the ridiculous driveway and stopped next to the Prius. Maybe the positioning of her truck was a subliminal message. Or maybe sleep deprivation was turning him into a demented romantic. No doubt she was as confused as he was about what had—or hadn’t—happened at the powwow. Why else would she have stayed out of his way for the past three days?
And who the hell was the bearded man in her passenger seat?
One of the dogs barked inside the house. Those mutts never barked.
Hannah climbed out and it was obvious, even to a guy accused—many times—of being insensitive to a woman’s needs, that she was upset. She also looked worn thin with exhaustion, which wasn’t surprising given that she’d returned home at 2:10 last night, or rather, this morning. Not that he’d been watching for her.
“You okay?” he asked.
Eyes locked on his, her head gave the slightest twitch. It was almost a nod.
A tall, emaciated guy appeared by her side. His skin was gray, his cheeks sunken—as if he’d been sick, really sick. Maybe even endured a little hospital living. There was no physical resemblance between the stranger and Hannah, and yet something spoke of family connection. A younger brother, maybe? He moved closer to Hannah. Too close.
“Galen, this is Will Shepard.” Hannah wrapped her arm around Galen’s waist. “Will, I’d like you to meet my son, Galen. He’s a writer, too. A poet, doing an MFA at UC Irvine.”
Her son? Hannah was a mother, and this bearded young man was her son?
Galen scowled at him. “Did you give a talk on campus this spring?”
Campus? Jesus, she had a son in grad school. Will shook his head. “UC Irvine? Yeah. Yeah, I was there. Favor for a friend during my west coast tour. Were you in the audience?” That would be too weird.
“No.” Galen’s upper lip quivered as if he’d just caught a whiff of raw sewage. “I don’t classify genre fiction as literature.”
Really.
“Galen!” Hannah removed her arm from her son.
“Sorry.” Galen didn’t sound like he meant it. He inhaled. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be a jerk.” Okay, so the second apology was genuine.
“It’s cool.” Will had never understood the whole commercial versus literary debate. He wrote stories, people liked them, the end. Although, truth be told, he had cranked out the last two. Possibly three.
“You’re Mom’s new tenant?”
“Afraid so, dude.” Will forced out a smile that made his cheek muscles ache. “But don’t worry, I won’t be around long enough to corrupt you with my evil genre ways. I have to get my dad settled in a retirement home, and then I’ll be heading back to New York. Hopefully sooner rather than later.”
Will glanced at Hannah; she ignored him.
“Stop by sometime and I’ll tell you how I sold my literary soul to the devil.”
Galen shrugged as if he didn’t much care whether he saw Will again or not. “Thanks.” And then he turned and walked toward the now-yipping dogs.
“You have a grown son?” Will watched Galen disappear.
“No.” Hannah heaved a duffel from inside the cab. “I have two, either side of twenty-one.”
Two? She was a mother twice over? And how could someone his age have a son in grad school? Had she been one of those kids-having-kids moms? Sure, a few girls in his high school had been pregnant in sophomore year, but she must have been—
“Here—” Will stepped forward and placed a hand on the bag. “Let me help.”
“It’s fine. I’ve got it.”
But it wasn’t fine, because they were as close as they’d been at the powwow. He had a bizarre urge to smell her hair. And feel up her butt.
Will shoved his hands in his pockets. “You totally don’t look old enough.”
“Haven’t we had this conversation in reverse?”
“But seriously. Did you start having babies when you were twelve?”
“I was married at nineteen. Pregnant by the time I was Galen’s age. Divorced before my fortieth birthday.” Hannah chewed on the corner of her lip. It was kind of cute, for an older woman.
“So you’re...”
“Forty-five,” Hannah said. “You can close your mouth, you know. It’s not as if you’re staring at a member of an endangered species.”
Will scratched his head. “No, it’s just—wow, you look great for your age. I mean, you don’t look old enough—for the grown-kid thing.”
Hannah sighed. “Technically I’m old enough to be your mother.”
Okay. That was the end of the conversation.
“Not even close,” Will said, and walked away.