Black Maps

Jimmy hadn’t planned to break the windows; he hadn’t thought about it at all. He’d just been walking around the neighborhood, as he always did on the Saturdays his mother’s boyfriend came to town. He’d left the apartment so quickly that he’d forgotten his mittens, and he walked with his hands balled in his jacket pockets. He thought about going back to get his mittens, but once when he’d gone home before he was supposed to, his mother and her boyfriend were in her bedroom with the door closed, making noises. He knew what those noises meant because one day at recess a third-grader named Evan was talking about what grown-ups do in bedrooms. “It’s the same as dogs,” he’d said. Jimmy couldn’t imagine his mother doing such a thing with anybody, especially that vacuum salesman from St. Paul with his thick glasses and hairy ears. And maybe she didn’t do it after all. Maybe they were in her bedroom because she was too tired to sit up in the living room and talk. She was always tired, even though she didn’t work at the cafe anymore, and she spent most days in bed anyway. But what were the noises then?

He tried to think of something else. He thought about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the frog his friend Greg brought to school in a jar once and let loose in the lunchroom. Michael Jackson kept a brain in a jar in his bedroom, and Greg said that proved he was crazy. But Jimmy thought he probably just wished he could put that person’s brain in his head, and that didn’t seem crazy to him. But maybe that was because he was crazy, too. If he had Greg’s brain, he’d know if he was or not. He imagined lying in bed, with Greg’s brain in his head and his own brain in a jar on the dresser, and wondered what he’d think. But he couldn’t guess. If his brain was normal, shouldn’t he be able to guess what someone else would think?

His mother’s brain definitely wasn’t normal. Ever since his father left them, she’d had to take pills for her mind. Jimmy used to blame the way she was on his father, but maybe she wasn’t much different before he left. His father used to call her a crazy bitch, so maybe that was why he left, because she was crazy even then. Jimmy didn’t know. He couldn’t remember much about that time, because he was so little. He barely even remembered his father. He just remembered that he was tall and had a mustache and smoked brown cigarettes. And he remembered how his big hands would hurt him when he picked him up under his arms, and how he liked him to pick him up anyway. Jimmy wondered where his father was now and what he was doing. His mother said he lived in Nebraska with his new family, and Jimmy wondered if Nebraska was a town or a state and how far away it was. And did his father ever pick up his new son the way he used to pick him up?

He was tired of walking around, so he decided to go over to the school playground. Kids were always there on weekends, playing on the swings and monkey bars or tossing a football back and forth. But when he got to the playground, no one was there. Even the houses across the street seemed deserted. Everywhere he looked, there was nothing. Not even a stray dog. And suddenly he felt all alone. A long shiver snaked up his spine, and he wanted to go home and sit on the edge of his mother’s bed and talk to her. But it wasn’t six o’clock yet. Her boyfriend would still be there.

He started walking slowly toward home anyway, kicking rocks as he crossed the gravel playground. But when he’d rounded the south wing of the school, he stopped. The sun was setting in the long row of windows, making them glow with a beautiful, cold fire. He’d seen those windows many times before, but only today did he realize how easy it would be to break one. All you had to do was pick up a rock and throw it. Anybody could do it, but nobody ever did. Maybe you had to be crazy to do it. He picked up a rock, to see if he would throw it. What would Greg think if he saw him now? Would he try to talk him out of it? And what about his mother and his father? What would they say? Jimmy imagined his father walking down the sidewalk and seeing him with the rock in his hand. “Hey, Jimmy,” he’d say. “Is that you?”

Then one of the windows exploded, and Jimmy jumped back, startled, and looked at his empty hand. He couldn’t remember throwing the rock, but he had. And now that he’d done it, he felt so good, so suddenly happy, that he kept on picking up rocks and throwing them, breaking window after window, until he heard a car coming down the street and had to run away.

By Monday morning, when Jimmy went back to school, the janitors had swept up the glass and taped cardboard over the eighteen broken windows. After the bell rang, all the kids in his class were still standing by the windows, talking excitedly about who could have done it, and they didn’t take their seats until Mrs. Anthony threatened to keep them inside during recess. And even before the class could recite the Pledge of Allegiance, the principal’s voice came over the loudspeaker and said the guilty party would eventually be caught so he might as well turn himself in now. The guilty party—that was Jimmy. He tried not to look guilty, but the more he tried, the more he felt everyone knew he had done it. Ever since he’d broken the windows, he’d felt like a stranger in his own life, someone just pretending to be who he was, and he was sure everyone would see the change in his face if they looked. He stared at his desk intently, as if merely to look up would be a confession.

Later that morning, as the class was on its way out for recess, Mrs. Anthony stopped him at the door and asked if she could talk to him for a minute. He was sure, then, that she had found out, but when the others were gone, she only asked if he was feeling all right. He nodded. Her forehead furrowed then, and he looked away. “Jimmy,” she said. “You can tell me. Have things been bad at home again?” Her husky voice was soft, like his mother’s when she was trying to make up for something she’d said. Somehow it made him angry. “Yes,” he lied, and the word seemed to take his breath away. “My mother was mean to me.” And then he ran outside and sat under a maple tree near the swings, trying to get his breath back. Greg came over then and challenged him to a game of tetherball, but Jimmy said he didn’t want to play. “Why not?” Greg said. “You chicken?” And even though Greg started to flap his arms and cluck like a chicken, Jimmy did not get up and chase him.

School ended that day without anyone accusing him of breaking the windows, but he was still certain he’d be caught. Maybe somebody already knew, but they hadn’t said anything because they were testing him, trying to see if he would confess on his own. He didn’t know what to think. It was like he had to learn a whole new way of thinking, now that he’d broken the windows. As he walked home, he tried out different things to say when he was accused. He could say it was all an accident—he’d been trying to hit some blackbirds that were flying past or something—or maybe there was a robber, somebody breaking into the school, and he’d chased him away by throwing rocks at him and some of them hit the windows. But nothing he thought of sounded good enough, and after a while he gave up and tried to think of something else.

Though the afternoon was bright and sunny, the temperature had dropped below freezing. He hunched his shoulders against the cold and started down the street to the rundown clapboard house where he and his mother rented an apartment on the second floor. He was hoping his mother wasn’t too tired to make hot chocolate for him. But then he saw the social worker’s yellow Subaru parked in front of the house again and knew he wouldn’t get any hot chocolate—or even any supper. After Mrs. McClure’s visits, his mother was always so exhausted she’d have to go to bed for the rest of the day, and he’d have to make his own supper, and hers too. And that meant he’d have to eat hot dogs or toast again because they were the only things he could cook. And he’d have to watch TV by himself all night, too, and every now and then he’d probably hear her crying in her room. He knew better than to go in and try to comfort her, though; that only made her cry harder or, sometimes, yell at him.

He didn’t want to go inside while Mrs. McClure was there, but it was so cold he went in the dark, musty entryway of the old house and climbed the steps up to the second-floor landing. Outside their apartment he hesitated a moment, then opened the door quietly. He hoped he could sneak through the kitchen and down the hall to his room without Mrs. McClure seeing him. Carefully he set his book bag on the rug and hung his jacket on the coat rack. Then he heard his mother’s voice coming from the living room.

“So I had a glass with lunch. I don’t know what’s the big hairy deal. Who appointed you my savior anyway?”

“Look, why don’t you just get the hell out of here. I’m sick to death of your stupid face. Just get out and leave me alone.”

During the silence that followed, Jimmy’s jacket suddenly slipped off the coat rack and landed with a muffled thud on the floor. “Jimmy?” his mother said. “Is that you?”

Jimmy sighed. “Yes,” he said, and stepped to the doorway of the living room. Mrs. McClure turned in her chair. “Why, hello, Jimmy! Aren’t you getting to be a big boy?” She said things like that every time she saw him, as if she hadn’t seen him just the week before. He hated that, and hated even more the times she tried to act like she was his mother. Last month, when it was time for parent-teacher conferences, she’d gone to his school and talked to Mrs. Anthony about the Unsatisfactory he got in Conduct. She had no right to do that; that was his mother’s job, not hers.

“Hi,” Jimmy answered. But that didn’t satisfy her; she kept looking at him, as if she were waiting for him to say something else, and he thought again how her long nose and chin made her look like a witch.

“Come on in and sit down,” she said then, as if it were her apartment, but Jimmy stayed in the doorway. Finally, she turned back to his mother, who was lying on the couch in her flannel nightgown and blue terrycloth bathrobe, an arm crooked over her eyes to block out the light slanting through the tall windows. Mrs. McClure always opened the drapes when she came. “No wonder you’re down in the dumps,” she’d say. “You keep this place too dark.” Now she said, “I suppose I should be going. But don’t forget what I said about a new hairdo. I think you’d be surprised how much better you’d feel about yourself.” She nodded her bangs at his mother’s greasy brown hair to emphasize her point. “And the Rosary Society at St. Jacob’s is sponsoring a clothing drive. Perhaps you’d like me to bring around a few things in your size?” Jimmy looked at Mrs. McClure and tried to imagine his mother wearing her pink dress and nylons, her hoop earrings and silver and turquoise bracelets. But he couldn’t and he started to giggle. He didn’t think it was funny, but he started to giggle anyway.

“Shush,” his mother said, without removing her arm from her eyes. Some days, that was the only thing she said to him. She got headaches easily, so he had to be quiet around her. Sometimes he even watched TV with the sound off, guessing at what people were saying. It was kind of fun, watching the mouths move and no sounds come out, and sometimes in school he’d pretend he was deaf and dumb until Mrs. Anthony threatened to send him to the principal’s office. Just thinking about how red Mrs. Anthony’s face got when she was mad made him giggle more. He wished he could have seen her face when she first saw all the broken windows. He imagined it getting so red that steam blew out her ears, just like in the cartoons, and he started laughing. His mother gritted her teeth. “I said, Stop it.” But he couldn’t stop.

Mrs. McClure turned to look at him, her head tilted a little, like a bird listening for worms underground, and he began laughing hard. But then—he didn’t know how it happened—he was crying. His mother didn’t get up, but she pointed at him. “Now look what you’ve done,” she said to Mrs. McClure.

“Look what I’ve done?” Mrs. McClure said. “Can’t you see why he’s crying? He’s just come home from school and you haven’t even said hello to him. All you’ve done is snap at him.”

“I have a job to do, Marjorie, and I intend to do it. But if you’re not interested in helping yourself, how can I possibly help you?”

His mother sat up slowly and leaned toward Mrs. McClure. “You can help me by getting the hell out of my apartment.”

Mrs. McClure sighed and shook her head, then she turned to Jimmy. “Don’t cry, honey,” she said. “Everything’s going to work out in the end.” She held out her arms. “Come here, sweetie.”

For a second, he saw himself sitting in her lap, her arms around him, and he almost started toward her. That fact surprised him so much he stopped crying.

Mrs. McClure dropped her arms and sat there a moment, looking at him, then she slowly stood up. “Maybe I’ve done all I can do here,” she said to his mother. “Maybe it’s time to take your case to another level.”

His mother glared at her. “Just what is that supposed to mean?” she asked. But Mrs. McClure only shook her head, then gathered up her manila folder and purse and started toward the door.

“You and your damned threats,” his mother said to her back. “You can just go to hell.”

Mrs. McClure didn’t answer. She merely stopped for a second to tousle Jimmy’s curly black hair and say, “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.” Then she went out the door and down the steps.

“‘A new hairdo,’” his mother said then. “She can just go fuck herself.” Jimmy looked at her. Normally her round face was pale and her eyes looked wet, as if she had just finished crying or was about to start, but now her skin was splotchy and her eyes looked fierce. “What are you staring at?” she said.

Jimmy wanted to ask what Mrs. McClure meant by “another level,” but he didn’t dare. “Do you want me to make you supper tonight?” Jimmy asked. “I can make hot dogs if we got some.”

“Just shut the damned drapes,” she said. “Shut all the goddamned drapes and leave me alone. I’m tired and I want to sleep.” She lay back on the sagging couch and hugged herself. “And get me a blanket. It’s cold in here.”

“Okay,” Jimmy said, and went around the room, closing the drapes. Then he got a spare blanket from the linen closet and started to cover his mother with it. Her eyes were closed and he thought she was already asleep, but she opened them and said, “You’re a good boy, Jimmy. I’m not mad at you. You know that, don’t you?” When he nodded, she gave him the smile he loved so, the one that made her eyes crinkle up. “It’s you and me, kid,” she said. “You and me against the world.” And then she closed her eyes again and turned toward the back of the couch.

For the next two weeks, no one mentioned the windows, and Jimmy began to believe that he wouldn’t be caught after all. Then one day he came home from school and heard his mother talking on the phone in the kitchen. “Think about Jimmy,” she was saying, her voice wavering. “He doesn’t deserve this.” Then she was silent a long time before she said, “I’ll be there. Just give me a chance to explain.” When she hung up, he went into the kitchen. His legs felt funny, as if his knees had turned to water. He was sure she’d been talking to the principal, or maybe a policeman.

He was about to tell her it wasn’t true, someone else broke the windows, when she suddenly said, “Look at this mess!” She gestured at the dirty dishes piled on the table and counters. “We’ve got to clean up everything right away.” Then she began to fill the sink with water, but before it was even half full, she abruptly turned off the faucet. “We’d better do the bedrooms first,” she said, and hurried to her room, where she started picking up clothes and newspapers and empty wine jugs from the floor. “Just look at all of this!” she said. She carried the load out into the living room and dumped it on the sofa. Then she straightened the sofa pillows and wiped dust off the coffee table with her palm. “Don’t just stand there,” she said then. “Help me clean up this mess!”

“You can do the dishes while I do the laundry.” She led him back into the kitchen. “First,” she said. But then she closed her eyes and shook her head slowly back and forth. “Oh, God, why did they have to come today? Just a half gallon of milk and a jar of jelly in the fridge. And me still in bed…” Then she looked at Jimmy. Her eyes were red and swollen, and he could smell the wine on her breath. “Damn it,” she said. “Who the hell do they think they are?”

Jimmy realized then that the principal and the policeman must have come to the apartment looking for him. That frightened him, but he was relieved his mother seemed madder at them than at him. She must not believe that he broke the windows. Maybe she thought he was too normal to do it, and maybe that meant he really was normal. She was his mother and she would know, wouldn’t she? “What’s wrong?” he finally dared to say.

“Nothing,” she answered. “Nothing for you to worry about.” Then she said, “To hell with the dishes. We’ll do them tomorrow.” And she went to bed and stayed there the rest of the night. Every now and then, Jimmy heard her crying, and then she’d begin cursing. Finally, she fell asleep, and Jimmy lay in his bed across the hall, listening to her peaceful breathing and wishing he could dream whatever she was dreaming, so he’d know what could make her happy.

The next morning, his mother surprised him by coming into the kitchen in a lacy lavender dress with puffy sleeves. Her hair was combed, and she had put on lipstick and rouge. She frowned and said, “Do I look all right?”

“But do I look like a good mommy?” she asked. “Do I look like I clean my house and go to church and love you more than anything in the world?”

He started to smile, thinking she was teasing him, but the frightened look on her face made him stop. He looked down at his plate.

All that week and most of the next, his mother dressed up each morning and left the apartment. She was looking for a new job, she told him, but every afternoon, when he came home from school and asked her if she’d found one, she said no. “But I’ll keep trying,” she said one day, then knelt down and hugged him tightly. “I won’t give up. No matter how hard I have to fight, I won’t give up.”

But eventually she stopped dressing in the morning and started staying in bed all day, drinking wine, just as she had before. When Jimmy asked her why she wasn’t looking for jobs anymore, she said, “What are you talking about?” Then she said, “Oh, that. Forget about that. There aren’t any jobs for bad mommies, not a single one.”

Then one morning Mrs. McClure came to the apartment for the first time in weeks. It took Jimmy a few minutes to realize she had come to take him away. “You’re going to live somewhere else for just a little while,” his mother said, her voice quivering. “It’s all for your own good.” Then she took his small face in her hands and kissed him goodbye. “Remember I love you,” she said, and her mouth twisted as if the words made it hurt. “Now go.” Then Mrs. McClure took his hand and led him outside to her car.

It was several months before Jimmy learned he had not been taken away from his mother because of the windows. That morning, though, he believed they had finally proved he’d done it and, because he was too young to go to jail, they were punishing him by sending him to some strangers’ house, where they would watch him to make sure he didn’t break any more windows. As he rode away from his home, he thought of telling Mrs. McClure he was innocent, but he was sure a teacher or janitor had seen him. And he knew that none of the excuses he had made up would work. So he didn’t say anything; he just sat there, looking straight ahead while Mrs. McClure went on and on about Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom and how they had fixed up their spare room just for him. “They’ve painted the walls sea blue and they’ve put a huge toy box at the foot of the bed and filled it with Transformers and Lincoln Logs and everything else you can think of,” she said. “How does that sound?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “You don’t have anything to worry about, Jimmy. Everything’s going to be just fine. You know that, don’t you?” Jimmy nodded, so she’d leave him alone. “That’s good,” she said then. “I’m glad you’re being such a big brave boy.”

But at the Kahlstroms’ house, he wasn’t brave for long. Standing in the entryway, Mrs. McClure cheerfully introduced him to the strangers who would be his temporary parents. Mrs. Kahlstrom was a small, bird-boned woman, and even though the house was warm and she was wearing a bulky turtleneck sweater, she kept hugging herself as if she were cold. She said, “Hello, Jimmy,” and smiled so big he could see her gums. Mr. Kahlstrom shook his hand when he said hello. He was tall and thin and had an Adam’s apple like Ichabod Crane in the story Mrs. Anthony had read to Jimmy’s class. Jimmy was so scared he wanted to turn and run out the door, but his legs were trembling too much. He didn’t know what to do, and he surprised himself as much as the others when he suddenly lay down on the rug and curled up like a dog going to sleep. The three adults hovered over him, startled looks on their faces. From the floor they looked so different it was almost as if they weren’t people at all but some strange creatures from another world. Mrs. McClure took his elbow and asked him to please stand up like a good boy, but he jerked his arm away. They all tried to talk him into getting up, but he stayed on the floor, even when Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom tried to tempt him into the house by showing him some of the toys they’d bought. Finally Mrs. McClure said it might be best just to let him lie there until he was ready to get up. “I don’t know what to say,” she told the Kahlstroms. “I’ve never seen a reaction like this.” Mrs. Kahlstrom offered him a sofa pillow then, but he shook his head, so she just set it on the linoleum beside him. Then Mrs. McClure shook their hands and said goodbye, and Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom went into the living room to wait for Jimmy to get up and join them.

For a time after Mrs. McClure left, Jimmy could hear them whispering. Then he heard a sudden sharp sob, and Mr. Kahlstrom saying, “There, there, dear. Just give him time.” Then they went into another room, farther away, and he couldn’t hear them anymore. After a while, a phone rang somewhere, and Jimmy heard Mr. Kahlstrom answer it, then say, “No, not yet” and “We’ll let you know as soon as anything happens” and “Thanks for calling.” A long time later, Mr. Kahlstrom came, squatted down on his haunches, and set a plate beside the rug. “It’s lunchtime, Jimmy,” he said. “Mrs. McClure told us you liked Sloppy Joes and potato chips. I hope that’s right.” When Jimmy didn’t say anything, he let out a long sigh, then stood up and went away. Jimmy was hungry, but he wasn’t going to eat anything until they took him back home. He’d starve himself, and if that didn’t work, he’d just break all the windows in the house. And if Mrs. McClure took him somewhere else, he’d break all the windows there, too; he’d break all the windows everywhere, until she’d finally have to take him back to his mother again.

A half-hour later, when Mr. Kahlstrom returned, Jimmy still hadn’t eaten anything, but he was sitting up now and crying. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I won’t break any of your windows, I promise. Just let me go home, please. Please let me go home.”

Mr. Kahlstrom knelt down beside Jimmy. “Sorry? You don’t have anything to be sorry about. And you don’t have to worry about breaking any of our windows, or anything else either. Just feel free to play and do everything you do in your own house. And if something does break, don’t worry about it—we can get it fixed. All right?”

Jimmy looked at him. Maybe he didn’t know about the windows, maybe Mrs. McClure didn’t tell either of them. “All right,” he said.

“Say,” Mr. Kahlstrom said then, “I bet your Sloppy Joe is cold. What do you say we head into the kitchen and make you another one?”

For the next two months, whenever Mrs. McClure asked, Jimmy told her that he liked living with the Kahlstroms. And mostly, he did. Mr. Kahlstrom taught music at the high school, and he played songs for Jimmy on the big upright piano in the living room. Jimmy’s favorite was one called “Down at Papa Joe’s.” Mr. Kahlstrom showed Jimmy how to play the melody—he took his small hand with his big one and helped him poke out the notes with one finger—and Jimmy liked that. But he didn’t like it when Mrs. Kahlstrom sat down on the corner of the piano bench beside them. She had scared him his third night there, when she tucked him into bed, by telling him that she and Roger—that was what she called Mr. Kahlstrom—had once had a little boy very much like him but that he had swallowed some gasoline and died when he was only three. It had been eleven years since he died and they still missed him, and that was why they had decided to become foster parents. She reached out her bony hand when she said that and brushed the hair away from his forehead. “He had curly hair too,” she said, “only his was blond.”

The Kahlstroms were nice to him. Mr. Kahlstrom took him up to the high school on weekends and let him play with all the different drums in the band room, and he bought him a Nerf football so they could play Goal Line Stand in the living room. Mrs. Kahlstrom worried about the furniture and lamps, but she let them play anyway, and when Jimmy tackled Mr. Kahlstrom she’d clap and say, “Way to go, Jimmy!” Mrs. Kahlstrom made him bacon and eggs for breakfast nearly every day and helped him with his homework and took him to the matinee on Saturdays, but she was so nervous all the time that she made him nervous too. And she was always talking about love. She had loved him even before she met him, she said. And at night, after she read him a story, she’d kiss him on his nose just like he was a little kid still and say she loved, loved, loved him so much she could eat him up. Then she’d sit there a moment, as if she were waiting for him to say “I love you” back, before she’d finally get up and turn out the lights. And the stories she read bothered him too. They were stupid stories, little kid stories. Once she read one about a dog that was on the ark with Noah. The dog seemed to think the flood came along just so he could have a good time, sailing around and playing games with the other animals. He never even thought about all the dogs that got drowned. His own parents had probably drowned in the flood, and his brothers and sisters too. But he didn’t seem to care. And when the flood was over and Noah picked him for his pet, he jumped up and down like he was the luckiest dog in history.

Each Friday, Mrs. McClure came to visit for a few minutes. She never mentioned the windows, but Jimmy knew she hadn’t forgotten about them, because she always told him he couldn’t go home just yet. He wished she’d tell him how long he was going to be punished, but all she’d ever say was, “It won’t be much longer now, sweetheart.” At first he thought he’d have to stay at the Kahlstroms’ for eighteen days—one for each window—but when the eighteenth day came and went without her coming to take him home, he began to worry it’d be eighteen weeks. But then, a few days before Christmas, she called and told him to pack his things because she was coming to take him home. At the door, Mr. Kahlstrom shook his hand and hugged him. “Be good, Jimmy,” he said, patting his back. Mrs. Kahlstrom wasn’t there; she was upstairs in her room, and although he couldn’t hear her, Jimmy knew she was crying. “Tell Mrs. Kahlstrom…” he said, but he didn’t know what he wanted him to tell her, so he stopped. Then Mrs. McClure took his hand and led him down the sidewalk to her car. He wanted to turn around and see if Mrs. Kahlstrom was watching from her window upstairs, but he didn’t.

On the way home, Mrs. McClure mentioned that his mother had been at a hospital in St. Paul. “What was she doing there?” he asked.

“Getting better,” Mrs. McClure answered. “Wait till you see her. She’s a new person now.”

And she was, too, at least for a while. His first day back, she told him he was the best Christmas present she had ever gotten, and she baked a turkey and made mashed potatoes and gravy. And afterward, she gave him a present—“Just one, for now,” she said, “You’ll have to wait till Christmas Eve for the rest.” It was a Nerf football, just like the one Mr. Kahlstrom had bought for him. He looked at her. Her chin was trembling. “Mrs. McClure told me you liked playing football,” she said. “I thought maybe we could play a little sometime.”

They only played a couple of times, though, before she started getting tired again. The first Saturday after Christmas she went to bed right after breakfast. Jimmy watched cartoons in the living room all morning, then made himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. After he finished it, he went into her room to ask her if she wanted something to eat, too. She was standing in front of her bureau mirror. She was still in her nightgown, but she was wearing a strange white hat with a pink ribbon around its brim. Jimmy wasn’t sure, but he thought he’d seen that hat before. Then he remembered: it was her Easter hat, and she’d worn it back when his father lived with them and they still went to church. “Are you going to church, Mom?” he asked. She turned around, and he saw that she’d been crying. For a moment, he was worried that she was going to say something about the windows. But then she said, “While I was in the hospital, I got a letter from Mr. Gilchrist. You remember Mr. Gilchrist, don’t you?” Jimmy nodded. Mr. Gilchrist was the vacuum salesman who made the noises with her in the bedroom. “Well, he said he wouldn’t be coming to town anymore. He said his company changed his route.” She laughed abruptly, then frowned. “Men,” she said. She looked at him. “I wish you weren’t a boy, Jimmy. You’ll grow up to be just like the rest of them, and you’ll leave me too.”

“Goddamn it, you will,” she said, and tore the hat off her head and flung it against the wall. Jimmy flinched and took a step backward. “I’m sorry,” she said then. “I didn’t mean it.” She reached out for him. “Come here, honey. I’m sorry.”

“All right then,” she said, and dropped her hands to her sides. “Do whatever the hell you want. You will anyway.” She got back into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. Jimmy stood there, watching her. “What are you waiting for?” she said. “Go.” And he left.

The next day she was better—she even helped him build a snow fort in the yard until she got too tired—and Jimmy thought everything was going to be all right again. But by mid-January, she was so tired all the time that she had to go back to the hospital. Mrs. McClure said she was a lot better than she had been, but she still wasn’t quite well. When Jimmy asked what was wrong with her, she said, “It’s nothing to worry about. She just needs a rest.” Jimmy tried to convince her that his mother could rest at home—he could clean the house for her and do the laundry and cook—but she only sighed. “It’s not just for a rest, Jimmy. Your mother’s not very happy right now. At the hospital they’ll help her be happy again.”

Jimmy didn’t say anything then. He knew why she was unhappy; it was all his fault. Why had he thrown those rocks? If he had just put that first rock down and walked away, she wouldn’t have to go back to the hospital and he wouldn’t have to go back to the Kahlstroms’. He didn’t want to live there anymore. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the Kahlstroms—he did—but he missed his mother when he was there. Most people didn’t know how nice she was; they only saw her when she was too tired to be nice. But sometimes when he’d tell her something funny that happened at school she’d laugh so hard she’d have to hold her sides and she’d smile so big there’d be wrinkles around her eyes. He loved that smile, and in the weeks that followed, he often stood in front of the Kahlstroms’ bathroom mirror and tried to imitate it. He’d stand there for a long time, smiling at himself with her smile, until Mrs. Kahlstrom would get worried and come looking for him.

This time, his mother got out of the hospital after only a month, but Mrs. McClure said he couldn’t go home just yet. He cried so hard then that the Kahlstroms agreed to let his mother come once a week for a visit. That Sunday, Mrs. McClure dropped her off in her Subaru. Jimmy was upstairs in his room when the doorbell rang. “Your mother’s here,” Mr. Kahlstrom called, and Jimmy came running downstairs just as he opened the door for her. It was snowing lightly and her hair and the shoulders of her coat were dusted with snow. “Come on in, Mrs. Holloway,” he said, and helped her out of her coat. “Welcome to our home.”

She didn’t look at him. She just cleared her throat and said, “Thank you,” then looked at Jimmy, who was standing beside the potted fern in the hall. “Jimmy,” she said, and knelt on one knee for him to come to her. He had been looking forward to her coming, but now that she was here, he felt strangely shy, and he walked toward her slowly, with his eyes down. Then her arms were around him and she was kissing his cheek. She didn’t smell like herself, though; she was wearing perfume that smelled like the potpourri Mrs. Kahlstrom kept in an Oriental dish in the bathroom. He stepped back and looked at her. Her eyebrows looked darker and there were red smudges on her cheekbones. As she stood up, her silver earrings swung back and forth. She was smiling, but it wasn’t her real smile, the one she gave him when they were alone.

“If you’d like, you can sit in the living room,” Mr. Kahlstrom said. “I’ve just built a fire in the fireplace.” He led them to the living room. “I’ll leave you two alone,” he said then, and went upstairs to join Mrs. Kahlstrom, who had told Jimmy at breakfast that she hoped he’d understand but she just couldn’t be there when his mother came.

Jimmy sat in the wingback chair beside the white brick fireplace and swung his legs back and forth. His mother stood in front of the fire a moment, warming herself and looking at Mrs. Kahlstrom’s collection of Hummel figurines on the mantel, then sat down on the end of the sofa next to the chair. He knew he should go sit with her, but he didn’t. Then she touched the cushion beside her and said, “Won’t you come sit with me?” He nodded and slid out of the chair and climbed up next to her. It felt strange to be alone with his mother in someone else’s house—it was like they were actors in a movie or something and not real people. He didn’t know what to say to her. He wasn’t at all tired, but he stretched and yawned. He didn’t know why he’d done that, and he suddenly wanted to be upstairs in his room, playing with his toys, the visit over and his mother on her way back home.

“Mr. Kahlstrom made a fire,” he finally said, though she already knew that. Then he added, “He showed me how to do it. First you crumple up newspaper, then you stack up little sticks like a teepee over it and—”

“Jimmy,” his mother interrupted. “I wish I could bring you home with me right now. You know that, don’t you?”

“It may be a little longer, but I’m going to bring you home with me soon. Okay?”

“And things’ll be a lot better than they were last time, I promise. I still had a lot of anger in me then, a lot of hurt. But I don’t feel like that anymore. I’ve got a new outlook, and I’m going to make a better life for us. You’ll see.”

“No,” she said, and Jimmy smiled. But then she added, “At least not like before. I’m learning to deal with it. It was hard at first, but it’s getting easier.”

“At any rate,” his mother continued, “Mrs. McClure says it won’t be long before I can bring you back home.”

Then she was silent. She was looking at the flames in the fireplace. One of the logs popped and some sparks struck the black mesh screen.

Jimmy knew he should say something, but he thought if he opened his mouth, he’d start to cry.

“The Kahlstroms have such a nice house,” his mother said then. “I’ve always loved fireplaces. When I was a girl, I used to imagine the house I’d live in when I got married, and it always had a fireplace in it. And after dinner on cold winter nights my husband would build a big, roaring fire and we’d all sit around it and talk, the firelight flickering over our faces.” She shook her head and laughed. It didn’t sound like her laugh. And the things she was saying didn’t sound like anything she’d ever said before. “I had it all figured out,” she said. “I was going to have five children. I even had their names picked out—Joseph, Kevin, Abigail, Christine, and John, in that order. No James—that was your father’s idea.” She laughed again. “I had everything figured out. Every blessed thing.” Then she turned her face toward him. There were tears in her eyes. “Don’t you ever have everything figured out, you hear? Don’t you—”

“I’d better go,” she said, and stood up. She took a crumpled Kleenex from her purse and wiped her eyes with it. “This was a mistake. I shouldn’t be here.” She looked around the room at the large-screen TV, the piano, the watercolor landscapes on the walls, the philodendron in the corner, and added, “I don’t belong here.”

“Tell Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom thank you for letting me come see you,” she said as she put on her coat.

She leaned over and took his face in her hands and kissed him. “My baby,” she said.

And then she was out the door, and he was standing at the window, watching her walk carefully down the icy sidewalk through the falling snow, not even a scarf on her head, and Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom were coming down the stairs asking why she had left so soon. When he tried to answer, a sob rose into his throat and stuck. He shook his head, unable to speak.

Mrs. Kahlstrom put her hands on his shoulders. “Don’t worry, honey. You’ll see her again next week,” she said, but he wrenched himself out of her hands and ran upstairs and locked himself in the bathroom. And although Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom stood outside the door and tried to comfort him, it was nearly an hour before he came out.

Mrs. Kahlstrom hugged him hard then and said they’d stay downstairs with him next time, if he wanted, so they could make sure his mother wouldn’t upset him again. Jimmy didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then he took a deep breath and said something he’d been wanting to say for the past four months. “If I get a job delivering papers, and save all my money, and pay for the windows, will Mrs. McClure let me go back home?”

Mr. Kahlstrom wrinkled his forehead. “What windows, Jimmy? What are you talking about?”

Mr. Kahlstrom took Jimmy to see the high school counselor the next afternoon. His name was Mr. Sargent, but he told Jimmy to call him Ken. He was a skinny man with a ponytail, and he was wearing a corduroy sport coat but no tie. He leaned back in his chair and put his scuffed Hush Puppies up on the desk. Behind him, on the wall, was a poster of a strangely dressed black man kneeling in front of a burning guitar. “So, Jimbo,” he said, “what’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?”

Jimmy sat there, looking down at his lap. His hands were shaking and he couldn’t make them stop. He watched them tremble. Somehow, it seemed like it was happening a long way away, to somebody else maybe.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” Mr. Sargent said. “You can say anything in here. This is one place where you can say whatever you want. ‘Cause I won’t tell anyone anything you say. That’s what ‘confidential’ means—you can be confident that I won’t tell anyone your secrets.”

Jimmy sat on his hands to make them stop. Then he tried to look up, but he couldn’t. Finally, he said, “Did Mr. Kahlstrom tell you?”

“Tell me what?” Mr. Sargent asked again, more softly this time. “You can tell me.”

“Oh, the windows. Sure, he told me about the windows. But who cares about the lousy windows?”

Jimmy looked up, startled. Mr. Sargent smiled and went on. “It was wrong to break the windows, of course, but I don’t have to tell you that—you already know it. But once they’re broken, there’s nothing you can do about it, except admit it like a man and say you’re sorry and go on with your life. Everybody makes mistakes. That’s how we learn to be better people. If we didn’t make mistakes, we’d never learn anything. So think of it that way—as a mistake you made that you can learn from.” Here he took his feet down from the desk and leaned forward in his chair. “What have you learned from all of this, Jimbo? Is there anything it’s taught you that’ll help you on down the road?”

Jimmy didn’t think he’d learned anything, unless it was that he wasn’t who he’d always thought he was. He didn’t know who he was now, but he was someone else. Someone crazy, like his mother. And once Mr. Sargent found that out, he’d make him go to a hospital too.

“Let me guess, then,” Mr. Sargent said. “You tell me if I’m getting warm, okay?” When Jimmy didn’t respond, he repeated, “Okay?” Finally, Jimmy nodded. “All right, then. Did you learn that—hmm, let’s see—that it’s best to talk about your anger instead of breaking things??

“Good. That’s a good thing to learn. And did you also learn that secrets make you unhappy? That the longer you keep something inside, the more it hurts?”

Again Jimmy nodded, though he thought he hurt more now that people knew what he had done. And even though Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom told him he wasn’t taken away from his mother because he broke the windows, he didn’t know if he could believe them. They wanted him to like them, so maybe they would lie. And they wanted to adopt him, so maybe they would tell Mrs. McClure about the windows and Mrs. McClure would tell his mother, and then she’d say she couldn’t take him back because she couldn’t afford to pay for the windows like Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom could.

“That’s good. That’s very good. And did you maybe also learn how much people care about you? Because if they didn’t, I wouldn’t be here talking to you. I’m talking to you because I care, and because Mr. and Mrs. K care, and because everybody who knows you cares about you and wants you to be happy. Is that maybe something you learned from all of this, too?”

Jimmy looked at him, then at the floor. He didn’t see the floor, though; he was seeing his father, the morning of the day he left for work and never came back, trimming his mustache in front of the bathroom mirror.

The following Sunday, Mrs. McClure’s Subaru pulled up in front of the Kahlstroms’ house, but Jimmy’s mother was not in it. “What a terrible day,” Mrs. McClure said to the Kahlstroms, as she flicked the snow from her boots with her gloves. “We must have a foot of snow already.” Then she cocked her head toward Jimmy. “I’m sorry, sweetie, but your mother isn’t feeling well today. She said she’d try to come again next week. I hope you aren’t too disappointed.”

“Oh, that. No, I didn’t say anything. I told you I wouldn’t tell, and I won’t.” Then she frowned. “Is that why you think she didn’t come?”

“You can tell her if you want,” he said, sticking his chin out. “She won’t come anyway.”

“Of course she will. She’ll come tomorrow or the day after,” Mrs. McClure said. “It’s just that today—” But before she could finish, Jimmy turned and started to run up the stairs. “Jimmy!” she called after him. “Let me explain.”

At the top of the stairs, he stopped and shouted down, “Tell her I don’t care if she ever comes—not ever!” And then he ran into his room and slammed the door.

A few minutes later, he heard Mrs. McClure’s car drive away, and then Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom came up and tried to talk to him. “We know you were looking forward to seeing her, honey,” Mrs. Kahlstrom said, but he just dumped his entire canister of Legos onto the carpet and started putting them together.

“Well,” he said, “that shouldn’t take much time.” But Jimmy didn’t laugh. Mr. Kahlstrom cleared his throat and looked at his wife. “Maybe we ought to let Jimmy be alone for a while,” he said. Mrs. Kahlstrom nodded and said, “We’ll be right downstairs if you need us. Okay, Jimmy?”

Jimmy didn’t say anything. And when they left, he got up and closed the door again.

He tried to play with his Legos, but after a few minutes, he gave up and sat on the edge of his bed, looking out the window. It had been snowing all day, and now the snow was so thick he could barely see the houses across the street. He watched the evergreens sway in the yard and listened to the wind whistle in the eaves, then pressed his warm cheek against the windowpane. The window was cold and it vibrated a little with every gust of wind. It felt as if the glass were shivering, and for a second he thought it might even break. But he didn’t move his face away; he pressed his cheek against it harder, until he could feel the cold right through to his cheekbone. He wished he were outside, walking through the waist-high drifts, the wind making his cheeks burn and his eyes tear; he wanted to be so cold that nothing could ever warm him up. That didn’t make sense, but Jimmy didn’t care if it did or not. He had a lot of thoughts he didn’t understand, but he didn’t worry about them anymore. You couldn’t do anything about the brain that was in your head. Even if you were as rich as Michael Jackson, you still couldn’t buy a new brain. You could get a new mother, but you couldn’t get a new brain.

Later that night, Mr. Kahlstrom built a fire, and the three of them sat on the sofa eating popcorn and watching E.T. on videotape. The movie was sad, but Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom were smiling. It was so easy to make them happy, he thought; all he had to do was sit on the sofa with them. And that thought made him feel bad, because he had stayed in his room almost all day, making them worry.

Outside, the snow was still falling, a thick curtain of it, and every now and then the wind would rattle the windowpanes. “My, what a storm,” Mrs. Kahlstrom said when the picture on the television flickered and went dark for a second. “We’d better get the candles out.”

“It looks like we’ll be snowed in tomorrow,” Mr. Kahlstrom said. Then he tousled Jimmy’s hair. “No school for us, eh, buckaroo?”

Jimmy smiled and Mrs. Kahlstrom grinned. “I’d like that,” she said. “We could sit around the fire and tell stories and play games, the way people did in the olden days. It’d be just like that poem ‘Snow-Bound.’ I memorized part of it when I was in high school, for a talent show.” She lowered her head, as if it were immodest of her to say the word talent. But then she began to half speak, half sing the poem:

What matter how the night behaved?

What matter how…the north-wind raved?

Blow high, blow low, not all its snow

Could quench our hearth-fire’s ruddy glow.

O Time and Change!—with hair as gray

As was my father’s—no, my sire’s—that winter day,

How strange it seems to still …

“No, that’s not right,” she broke off. “I think I missed a line in there somewhere.”

“It sounded great to me,” Mr. Kahlstrom said. “Go on. Recite some more for us.” And he pressed the pause button on the remote control, freezing E.T. as he raised his glowing fingertip.

“All right,” she said, “I’ll see what else I can remember.” Then she looked toward the ceiling as if the words were above her, floating through the air, like snowflakes.

Ah, brother! only I and thou

Are left of all that circle now—

The dear…home faces whereupon

That fitful firelight paled and shone.

Henceforward, listen as we will,

The voices of that hearth are still;

Look where we may, the wide earth o’er,

Those lighted faces smile no more …

She stopped abruptly and looked down at her lap. Mr. Kahlstrom reached across Jimmy and patted her hand. “It’s all right, dear,” he said. “Don’t cry.”

Jimmy looked at their faces. He wasn’t sure what they were talking about. He hadn’t understood the poem either, but he’d liked the way it made him feel warm and cold all at once, as if he had just come out of a blizzard to stand by a fire. He liked the way she’d said it, too, pronouncing each word as if it were almost too beautiful to say. And she’d had such a strange look on her face while she said it, kind of sad but in a way happy, too. He didn’t know how you could be happy and sad at the same time. But now she only looked sad.

Just then the wind rose sharply and the television went black. The only light left was the firelight. It cast long shadows up the walls around them, making Jimmy feel as if they were in a cave.

“I knew I should have gotten the candles out,” Mrs. Kahlstrom said, and wiped her eyes.

“Don’t worry, dear. I’m sure the electricity will be back on in no time. Let’s just sit here and enjoy the fire.”

He got up and threw two more logs on, adjusted them with the poker until the flames caught, then sat back on the sofa. “There,” he said. “Isn’t this cozy?”

They sat together a long time, watching the fire and talking. At first, Jimmy talked too, but after a while he started to grow tired and only listened to their quiet voices and the crackling fire and the wind. The way the wind battered the windows made the fire seem even warmer, and before long, Jimmy felt so drowsy and peaceful that he couldn’t help but lean his head against Mrs. Kahlstrom’s shoulder. She brushed his hair from his forehead while he listened to them talk and watched the fire through half-open eyes. Finally he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore, and he laid his head down in her lap and fell asleep.

When Jimmy woke the next morning, he was confused. It seemed as if only a moment before he’d been lying in front of the fire, and now he was upstairs in his room. How had it happened? Mr. Kahlstrom must have carried him up the steps and put him in his bed, but Jimmy didn’t remember it. He felt as if a magician had made him disappear from one place, then reappear somewhere else. For a moment, he wasn’t even sure he was the same person. He wondered if his mother had ever felt like that, waking up in the hospital, or if his father had the same thoughts when he sat down for breakfast with his new family. He didn’t know, but he lay there awhile, thinking about it, before he got up and parted the curtains to look out the window. As far as he could see, everything was white—rooftops, the evergreens and yards, the street. The snow had drifted halfway up frosted picture windows and buried bushes and hedges and even the car parked in the neighbor’s driveway. Here and there thin swirls of snow blew into the air like risen ghosts, and sunlight sparked on the drifts, the snow glinting like splintered glass. He’d never seen so much snow, not ever, and he wanted to run to Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom’s room and tell them they were all snowbound, just like in the poem. But he stood there awhile longer, and imagined the huge fire they’d build, the yellow and orange flames rising up the chimney, and the three of them sitting beside it, unsure of what to say or even when to speak, but somehow strangely happy, their faces lit by a beautiful light.

FIRELIGHT