Every Last Cuckoo (29 page)

She stood, catching Lorraine's eye, and said, “I would like to propose a toast, if there's any wine left and if somebody could find Lorraine a glass.”

Tentative conversations died around her, and only Mordechai caught on. He provided a glass, and shared out a half bottle of merlot that still sat on the table.

With Lorraine eyeing her skeptically, Sarah hastily said, “I
would like to thank Lorraine for Jordan. It's as simple as that. It can't be easy raising three children on your own, and Jordan is proof of Lorraine's courage and success.”

“Hear, hear!”

“To Lorraine and Jordan!”

They all drank.

Lorraine was the last to take a sip, and she put her glass down after barely a taste. “Well. Right. Jordan's dad left just about the time Jordan started to . . . just when Jordan turned twelve. Not that he ever did a lick. I pretty much supported us all. He's one less to feed. And he was mean.” She downed the rest of her wine and jerked her head toward Jordan. “I guess she turned out okay. I'd best be going, see to the kids.”

Jordan and Lottie saw her out and came back looking dazed.

Sarah met Mordechai's smiling eyes, then glanced around at everyone else, pleased with herself. It was the job of the old to help the young.

“F
INALLY
!” J
OSIE SIGHED
, coming into the great room with an exaggerated stagger. “The little bugger's out cold.” Tyler had been asleep for over an hour, since eight o'clock. Andrew, however, had decided to revive his talent for squalling, which they all thought he had forgotten. Something had set him off at dinner, and he'd screamed for a solid hour, then fussed for two more, through his warm bath, between swallows of Josie's milk, in Sarah's lap and Sandy's and even Tyler's. Nothing soothed him. Sarah remembered her annoyance on the day of his arrival. Tonight his crying had brought tears to her eyes.

“Thank God,” she breathed into the blessed silence. “I wonder what got into him. He's been on such an even keel.”

“Wish I knew,” said Josie, plumping herself down onto the big couch between Jordan and Sandy. Sarah sat in a wing chair close by. The dogs lay at her feet, dead asleep, not even twitching in their dreams. Popcorn, fruit, and a pot of tea sat on the coffee table, next to a video.

“Are we ready?” Jordan asked. Sarah glanced at Josie for confirmation, then gave a thumbs-up signal. She grinned at Jordan, pleased to see how comfortable she was in this small group. Angelo was running the projector at the art theater in town, a new job since school started. Lottie and Tony were out with friends. Mordechai was in the cabin. Not long ago, Jordan would have hidden in her room with Lottie gone. But since the night Lorraine had backed down before winding up, Jordan had come further into her own.

She slipped the tape into the player while Sandy poured tea. Then they sat back to watch the movie, which Sarah had chosen. She had already seen
Strangers in Good Company
at least four times, but she never tired of it. She wanted these younger women to watch with her, to see how funny and brave a clutch of old women could be, stranded in the remote Canadian countryside with only their wits, each other, and the stories of their lives.

One of the women in the movie, a large, laconic Mohawk named Alice, was sitting by a stream fashioning a fish trap from her enormous, wide-stretched pantyhose, when Andrew began to wail through the intercom. Sarah paused the player as the other three women groaned in unison. “No!” cried Josie, yanking at her hair.

“Never mind,” said Sarah, over the static and the baby's hollering. “I've seen this movie plenty of times. I'll go see to Andrew.
Bad
Andrew,” she laughed, handing the remote to Jordan.

When she reached the stairs, her laughter died. The baby was shrieking fit to rattle the windows.
Night terrors?
she wondered. He was beside himself. Sarah hurried.

She had only the light from the hallway as she entered the
room in which Andrew howled. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, and as they did, she saw a shadow moving toward her.

R
OGER WAS BARELY VISIBLE
, but Sarah understood absolutely that it was he who inhabited the darkness, holding the hysterical child over his shoulder, patting him awkwardly and dancing in place. His dance was jerky, his movements abrupt. Andrew twisted in his father's arms, screaming more urgently than ever.

Rapidly Sarah gathered impressions. Roger was much taller than she, and muscular. He smelled unwashed. He smelled of fear.

His eyes were wild; he was tense with roiling energy. He looked angry, dangerous in his confusion over some plan gone awry. Had it never occurred to him that babies cry and people come to comfort them? Sarah wondered desperately why he was there, whether he meant to take Andrew and leave, or whether he was after Josie through Andrew. Perhaps all along he had meant for Andrew to cry and for Josie to come—not Sarah. If so, Sarah was an obstacle.

Roger loomed over her while Andrew sobbed and struggled, and only then did she sense that Roger was struggling, too—trying to assess his situation, trying to gain control, but also trying to comfort his baby. That was futile. Andrew absorbed his father's emotional chaos from his scent, his stiffness, his tight grip. The baby was terrified.

Roger motioned for Sarah to come close, and that was when she saw the gun in his hand. He used it not as a threat but as if it were his fingers or wrist. He made come-here circles in the air
with its barrel, and Sarah wanted to comply, but her eyes were frozen on the weapon. She felt faint and feared she would fall, until Roger whispered plaintively, “What does he want?” Roger was panicked, too.

Quickly Sarah reached for the intercom and snapped it off. The last thing she needed was for Josie to rush upstairs. She hoped the others had not heard Roger's voice over the sounds of the movie.

She gestured shakily and said to Roger, “Give him to me, I can calm him down.” Keeping her eyes on this frightened and furious man, she saw every emotion in the welter that had claimed him, but she was helpless to tell which outweighed the others. Her thoughts jumped and she remembered the teenage car thieves, then the Palestinian boy who escaped death when Mordechai's hatred suddenly ebbed.

Sarah could barely stop herself from grabbing Andrew and screaming for help, but her mind played this scene in fast-forward and showed her how panic could push Roger to violence. She couldn't afford fear. Andrew must be her whole world just now, the very center of it; all else must turn somehow toward the fixed goal of keeping him safe, here in this house.

Slowly she extended her arms, and Roger hesitantly settled his son into them. The baby's cries diminished as he clutched onto Sarah. They did not subside altogether, but they began to take on a rhythm, a decelerating tempo.

Sarah moved to the rocking chair with the baby and crooned to him through his sobs. Something cold took hold of her then and spread like frost on a window pane.

Roger had drawn close enough to touch, now that Andrew was growing steadily quieter. He caressed his son's head with
a tough, broad hand. Sarah reached out slowly, past Andrew's hot, damp little body, to finger Roger's sweater. “Josie made this for you.”

Roger glanced down as if to check what he was wearing, and Sarah thought it was too bad this lovely piece of work was infused with the odors that he exuded.

She continued speaking in a clear and rhythmic voice, “I gave her that yarn myself, after the night she got stranded in the cold. Andrew could have frozen to death, inside her.” She kept her eyes on Roger's face. “You must have been mad with worry, and so relieved when Josie and the baby survived. You came close to losing them both that night.”

Roger drew back from her, raising his gun hand. Was this reflex, or intention? He was so unsteady, she didn't know what he would do next.

He strode away from her, then spun back. “I've lost them anyway!” His voice cracked with rage or grief, Sarah couldn't tell which.

“Not Andrew, Roger. You haven't lost Andrew. You're in danger of losing him, but you still have a chance.”

Roger shook himself like a dog. He squeezed his eyes closed and then opened them wide and stared into Sarah's face. “What do you know? Who the hell do you think you are?”

Sarah shrugged lightly and let one corner of her mouth turn up. She was benign, she was no threat. “Just an old woman with a houseful of other people's children. I know how to take care of people, Roger. I can help you take care of yourself, and Andrew.”

Sarah kept her eyes from the gun with difficulty. She was never unaware of it. In only a few glimpses, in this dim room,
she had memorized its every detail. It was dull gray, not a revolver but one of those pistols that held a clip. The grip was crosshatched and rough. The hole at the end of the barrel was alarmingly large. Sarah couldn't put the gun from her mind, but she could keep her mind in a place where the gun became just an object. She had found the motionless center of her self. Her mind was clear.

She said, “Let me tell you two stories, Roger. Both are about you and how you can leave this house. You have two ways out. You choose. You can take Andrew—but of course you will have to do that over my dead body. A gun makes a lot of noise, as you know, so that will reduce your odds of an easy exit.”

Roger stood before her. She had his attention.

“If you do escape with Andrew,” she continued, “you will naturally have to run and keep running and still take care of him—feed him, change him, keep him on a reasonable schedule. You will have to live with him underground—hoard him, hide him, and raise him without his mother or any of the other people who love him. Maybe that will seem like an adventure to a growing boy. Maybe it will toughen him. But you can be sure the police will not stop looking for you. Running and hiding will make it very difficult for you to give Andrew a normal life.”

Roger leaned down and glared into Sarah's face. “I'll figure it out,” he whispered harshly. “Nobody is going to keep me from my son. Not you, not his
mother
.” He spat out this last word.

Sarah held up a hand and silenced him. “You broke Josie's arm, but maybe that wasn't enough for you. Maybe you want total revenge—for what, I don't know. It's not like Josie laid you off or forced you to hurt her.”

He started to speak, but Sarah waved his words away before he could form them. “Whatever,” she said, just like Lottie. “You could still kill her, if that would make you feel better. Or you could make her watch as you take her only child away screaming. She would see that forever. She would never have peace again.”

“Good!” he muttered savagely. The barrel of the gun scribbled the air, and Sarah watched it with distant curiosity.

“Not so good, Roger. You
will
get caught, sooner or later. And then you will lose the last of everything you love. You will lose your son.”

“I've already lost him! She took him away from me.”

“That's because you showed yourself to be a threat. But you can change that. Leave here. Leave Andrew with me, and leave the gun, too.” Sarah gestured with the hand that was not supporting the baby's bottom. Andrew had stopped crying altogether, and Sarah spoke softly, still rocking so as not to startle him. “Roger, the gun will only bring you trouble.”

He said scornfully, “You're just gonna let me walk out of here and take off.”

“Yes,” Sarah said. “I am. I'll help you get out of the house and on your way. I will not call the police.”

“
Shit,
” he cried, raking his hand roughly through his dirty thick hair.

Sarah felt like the witch whose intentions were challenged by Angelo's dragon. She felt like the dragon, too, as she followed the plan that formed just ahead of each move she made.

“You'll have to trust me, Roger. I will not call the police. You will do that yourself. Actually, you'll go and turn yourself in. Not for this, tonight, but for Josie's arm, and jumping bail.”

“Why the hell would I do that?”

“Because of Andrew. Because you want to be part of his life. You can't do that, you can't do what's good for either of you, if you're on the run.”

He paced the room, back and forth, his big shoulders swaying at every turn. Keeping his head low, he held tightly to the gun, but Sarah could see that his fingers wrapped only the grip, not the trigger.

She went on. “I'll vouch for you, Roger. I'll tell the police you came here to see your son, you couldn't stand being away from him. I'll say you asked me what to do and took my advice. You had no intention of hurting anyone or doing anything wrong, and you are sorry for hurting Josie and want to make amends. I won't say a word about the gun, provided you give it to me right now.”

She gestured for the weapon and Roger hesitated, casting his eyes about as if for assurances strewn on the floor or the furniture.

“Roger. You can have allies or enemies. Choose.”

He stopped pacing and stood in the middle of the room. In the light from the hall, Sarah could see him decide, saw relief enter his eyes. He placed the gun in her lap, beneath the feet of his child, who now slept against her breast. He dropped his hands to his sides and said, “Are you sure I can get out?”

Sarah rose from the rocking chair, careful not to disturb Andrew. She slid the gun into the pocket of her loose pants.

“Go downstairs as quietly as you can. You'll still be this side of the great room once you're at the bottom. Slide out the screen door onto the porch. The hinges don't squeak, you can get out
without a sound. I'll be right behind you to make sure you leave safely.”

So they exited the bedroom together. On the way out, behind Roger's back, she took the gun from her pocket and placed it under the mattress of the big bed. In the hall they squinted at the brighter light, and Andrew cried softly in his sleep. Roger turned at the sound, his eyes full of longing.