A Measure of Blood (29 page)

Christie sits down by wheeling the adjacent chair over to her. “Any thoughts?”

“I'm just making guesses. A troubled person, a loner, a person who doesn't connect … gets ideas, fantasies. Could he have felt there was something between him and Maggie because they had the same last name? It might be the way his mind works. Your wife profiled him pretty well when we looked at the video. The way he leads with his head. I'm not ready to say schizophrenic, but it's a troubled person's posture. He might be given to creating his own realities.”

“And what makes him violent?”

Colleen is often asked such questions, having been a therapist in her former life. “No fixed answers, but I'd say if he's crossed, that would do it. If he's stepping delicately through his fantasies and if he's … thwarted, crossed.”

“Go home. Rest,” he says abruptly. “Potocki, too.”

Potocki looks up from his work.

“Go home. Call me tomorrow morning if you don't hear from me.”

Christie walks away so unsteadily he looks as if he's had a few bourbons. He hardly ever takes a drink, so it's surely fatigue knocking him off his pins.

“Your house? Mine?” Potocki asks.

“Your son is gone?”

“Long gone to his mom's. I failed him this weekend. At least he watched the news and knows the reason is good.”

“My place then. I need to be in my place.”

They don't argue about his shirts. A calm settles over them. Food, shower, bed. Together.

“TELL ME,” KATE
SAYS,
speaking of the time he was an undergraduate, living with seven roommates in New York. She is taking dishes out of the dishwasher, and he is putting them away. “This was when you were broken up with your sophomore girlfriend?”

“Junior/senior.” He sighs. “I had no money. My father wanted me to come home to Lebanon.” He tries to explain bit by bit. “I didn't want a fixed marriage. I wasn't sure I had enough talent to keep studying music. I was … yes, I'd say I was sad. Confused. Having those blues that people get in senior year on top of everything else. What's next, what do I want, all that. Half the time not enough money for food.”

She settles a pot on the counter, too hard. “Again, I don't like your father. How could he not send you money? Was he trying to starve you out?”

“He forgot. He was simply not thinking about me.”

Her arms drop. “God help us from ever being like that. I don't think it's possible. Do you?”

“My mother had died. He was … dating. He was very self-involved.”

“Damn.”

“And I thought he didn't like me very much. What I was doing. Music. It seemed frivolous. He didn't understand. So he closed off.”

She begins to stack plates again, waiting for him to find the way to tell her about that time in his life.

“One of my roommates brought home groceries one day, and he said, ‘Compliments of the fertility bank.' I didn't let myself think much about it. The language is … about the people you are helping. And it
does
help people. But it also divorces you … me, the donor … from your own body. It's just this thing you do. You can't think about the consequences. They don't
want
you to think about them. They tell you you are anonymous. Nobody will ever know. And that was that. I went three times.”

“Only three.”

He thinks. “Yes. Underneath I felt worried but I didn't let myself think why.”

She begins unloading glasses and cups. For a while they are silent, but she isn't so much angry as thoughtful. She's just begun to show, just the smallest swelling of her belly. Tuesday he will have what Americans call a “shotgun wedding.” The good news is that Kate still wants him. The bad is that he comes to her ragged, unknown even to himself.

There's a barrier between them now, something that wasn't there before. Will it dissolve?

MARINA TOYS WIT
H
THE ENVELOPE
that contains the letter that tells her she is accepted into the academy. Now is not the time to break it to her husband. But soon she has to answer, sign papers, send a check. When a stage role comes to her, fine, she will take it if possible. When it doesn't, which she assumes is most of the time, she will do this other thing she's good at.

THE MAN BEHIND
THE COUNTER
looks up, hopeful. “Room?”

“Yes.”

It's chancy, but when he got off the back roads a while back, thinking he needed to see something, anything, what he saw was the
vacancy
sign outside of this place and under it the
wi-fi
sign and then he drove around the lot, checking it out. There weren't many cars in the lot, maybe five in front but only two on the side and, driving around the lot that outlines the place, he saw no cars at all in back, only scrubby woods bordering the lot.

“Fill it out.” The man turns a piece of paper around so that Nadal can read it. Name, address, phone, automobile, credit card.

He puts a hundred dollars in twenties on the counter and begins to write.

“One night?”

“Yeah.”

The man behind the counter eyes the money. “Seventy-nine, that'll be. Plus tax. We don't do breakfast here, just coffee. But there's a breakfast place down the road. It's good.”

“Okay.”

Where the form asks for the number of occupants, Nadal leaves it blank. He also leaves blank the credit card. He uses Stanton Adams' address.

The man turns the pad around. “You're from State College?”

“At one point.”

The man continues to read. “I saw your truck through the window. I've been wanting a two fifty forever.”

Nadal has to think what to say. “I've had it for a long time.” What the registration shows is that it's a 1979 Ford F-250. He hopes he doesn't have to talk about trucks because he doesn't know a thing about trucks.

“You aren't selling by any chance?”

Nadal shakes his head.

“So I need some ID.”

Nadal hands over the truck registration and the hunting license.

“Driver's license?”

“It got stolen, along with my credit cards.”

“I could look up the credit card if you want.”

He turns and studies the coffee machine with the stack of Styrofoam cups and powdered creamer beside it. He hopes the Wi-Fi works. He says, after a while, “The card was maxed out.”

The man hesitates, takes his money, and makes change, then chooses a key from the many hanging behind him, all of them chained to burgundy plastic ovals.

“Could I have a room around back? I like looking at woods.”

The man puts the key back and chooses another. “Knock yourself out, as they say.”

He can hardly believe it. He did it. A room.

Rest, regroup, then more back roads.

He drives the truck around back. All the other drapes are closed; all the other people are in their rooms or out to dinner. He does everything slowly. Parking, going to the door, trying the key, propping it open. He carries in the bits of food first. Then his backpack and his plastic bag of clothing. Nobody is around. He tucks the gray blanket around his son and carries the boy in. Until this morning, he didn't know how heavy a boy could be. His son smells like sweat, like fear, and like some kind of food, maybe sugar from the cereal. He carries the boy, staggering.

The room has two double beds. He puts his son on one of them and leans over, and yes, he's breathing.

Nadal sits on the edge of the other bed, thinking, noticing everything around him. There is no refrigerator. Okay. TV, good. Alcove to hang clothes. He doesn't need that. Phone. He mustn't leave his son alone in the room with the phone.

Around the corner is a bathroom. Shower. Good.

This is the moment to find out what's happening. Dragging his backpack toward him, he wonders when he will ever feel calm again. He opens the computer and boots up. He finds the Amber Alert. Nadal Brown. Red VW Bug. Good. They still want the Bug. And nobody is looking for Stanton Adams.

The Pittsburgh news shows no updates except a plea from those two people who tried to adopt Matt.

His jaw tightens, watching them. Professors. Probably like his father, they think they know it all, they think
brains
are everything. But they'll never guess where he is.

He's gotten away.

He digs out his power cord and plugs the laptop in. This way it will be good for six hours tomorrow.

He uses both MapQuest and Google Maps to check out where he is and where he's going. There are more woods on the way, and he likes the idea of being in deep woods, but the kid wants things like the TV and the computer. He's going to have to chance it soon and get onto 95 where there are endless connections with the world. So long as he's got the truck and can be Stanton Adams, he ought to be able to get them to Florida.

Next, googling Benadryl he learns that some people have slept for eighteen hours after taking it. Wow. Eighteen hours for Matt would take it to … tomorrow at six in the morning. He misses the company of his son, but he needs sleep, too, so maybe now is the best time. It's only seven thirty in the evening, but his eyes are closing.

The laptop slides out of his hands. He catches it and places it on the floor. With the last bit of strength and will he has, he opens the covers, takes the phone off the nightstand, and tucks the phone into bed with him. In seconds he is asleep.

THE OUTLINES OF
THINGS. A TV.
Two beds, not bunks or cots. Drapes closed. They are somewhere else. Another place.

His head feels funny, like when he has a cold and a fever and has to stay in bed. It's so dark. Everything is dark, but he can see more and more, so light is coming from somewhere, a crack in the drapes, yes, and from the tiny green power light on the computer, which he spies on the floor. And also from a clock radio turned around to face the man. Soon Matt can see the shape of the man asleep in the other bed. Or pretending. He listens for breathing.

Matt moves his leg, his arms. No, he is not tied up. He peels the wool blanket off him and realizes only then that he's sweating. But he doesn't get up. He has a kind of tiredness—muscles don't want to move. He tests his body by trying to lift a leg up in the air. He can do it, but it feels heavy.

Is he sick? Is he going to die?

His stomach lets out a large growl, so loud he is sure the man will sit up in bed, but it doesn't happen. He presses on his stomach to keep it quiet. It works for a few minutes, but then there's rumbling and growling again.

And he has to pee.

By now he can take in most of the room. The backpack, two grocery bags. Is he allowed to eat?

If he takes one step at a time … He sits in bed, aware now of how much he wants a bathroom. It must be around the corner. First it's one leg out of the bed and nothing bad happens, then the other leg. He is sitting facing the man, who is under the covers. The room is warm.

Feeling brave, Matt leans forward to turn the clock around. 11:37. Nighttime. Often in summer his mother let him stay up to watch TV. He would keep an eye on the clock, wanting to make it to midnight. With the clock turned around he can see the other wire—that would be the phone—and he can see that it goes under the covers. The man is holding on to something, both arms together. He's holding the phone.

Matt thinks about this. He must not make the man angry.

If he's really my father …

He's not my father. The names don't match.

Then another voice, his mother's voice, so clear to him it's as if she's here.
He's not your father. I swear to you. He thinks he is. Your father is far away finishing school. He's a good person.

Why can't I see him?

Some things you can't do even if you wish. Lives are complicated. There are all kinds of circumstances. We're okay, just the two of us. We don't need anybody else.

But you always say,“Like father, like son. When Grady hits me.”

Right.

So, who am I like?

A man. He's smart. Very smart. And kind. A good man. That's the important part. He's good.

But he's not here. He ran away.

You scamp.
She laughs.
He didn't run. He has a different life.

What's a scamp?

Somebody who tries to get me bothered. Somebody who wants to scare me when he gets angry. You!

Somehow every time he asked about his father she would talk about other things. And hug him and kiss him. It wasn't so bad being with just her, better than this.

He stands. Nothing happens. He waits in one position for what feels like a long time. Then he walks to the bathroom. It has a shower. A sink. A door he can close. And a light switch. He turns on the light, not knowing if it will get him into trouble and quickly closes the door. He has a nice long pee. Flush? He thinks no, too noisy. Wash hands? He turns on the tap—slowly, carefully.

He doesn't want to sleep again. He's determined not to take any more of the pills. To make him calm, the man said. And safe from allergies.

Once the water is running—and it's noisy so he expects trouble—he hurries to tear plastic off the plastic cup at the sink. Impatient, he fills it to the brim, drinks, fills it again, drinks most of it. Nothing happens. Maybe the man is standing just outside the door.

But when he opens the door, even with light illuminating the room, the man doesn't move. So, closing the bathroom door partway, he tiptoes over to the dresser. Cards and papers from the hotel are propped in a plastic tray. On the floor, there is food in the two bags. A burrito in a package. A package, like it, empty. Crackers. Cereal. Milk. He grabs the bag of food and the papers and goes back into the bathroom, where he closes the door and puts down the toilet lid and eats the cold burrito and reads.