The Absence of Mercy (34 page)

She observed him from the bed. Here was the boy for whom she had sacrificed everything to protect—whose secret she had locked away in her heart as if it were her own.
And at what cost?
she asked herself.
At what cost to all of us?
The life they had once known was over now, and days that lay ahead were as shapeless and lonesome as the room around her. During those first desperate weeks after crossing the border, escape and concealment had been the only strategies she'd allowed herself to contemplate.
But what now? What comes next? What purpose will define the course of our lives from here?
The silence of her reply was loud and stifling in her ears, the sound of the stone slab of a tomb closing above her.

The scratching stopped, and her oldest son's body sat rigid and motionless for a moment, as if caught in a trance. She maintained her breathing as before, slow and steady, as if she were still asleep. She wondered if he could make out her open eyes from across the room, and she allowed her lids to slide halfway shut, a compromise between seeing and being seen. She could hear the ceaseless rhythm of her heart drumming along in her ears, could feel the mounting tension in her body, and she wondered to herself:
When did I begin to fear him?
For that was what this was, wasn't it? That was the manner in which she'd come to perceive him. She feared him, and resented him, and hated him for having placed them in this position—she and Joel, both. He had forced her to choose, and Susan realized on some level that she had chosen wrong. She had failed him as a mother, and had certainly failed Joel. In trying to protect them, she had done her children more harm than good, and now they were all paying for that transgression—each in their own way.

Thomas stood up from the chair and walked to the bed, standing over Susan and her youngest son as they lay defenseless beneath the covers. She closed her eyelids to mere slits, watching him through her lashes. She could have reached out with a tentative hand and touched his leg.

He stood there for what seemed like a very long time. The sun was beginning to crest above the horizon, the room becoming faintly brighter with every passing minute. A rooster crowed in the distance, and then fell abruptly silent in mid-intonation, as if quieted by a farmer's axe. Thomas leaned over and placed a hand on Joel's shoulder. Susan's muscles bunched beneath her skin, the adrenaline flowing freely as she readied herself to act. She could no longer control her respirations, which slid in and out of her with increasing rapidity.

Thomas withdrew his hand from his brother's shoulder, returning to a full upright position. He studied Joel for a moment longer, then turned and crossed the room to the door, flipping back the dead bolt and opening the door just wide enough to allow himself to pass through to the exterior walkway beyond. There was a soft click as the door swung shut behind him.

Susan slipped out from beneath the covers, stood, and crossed the floor to the window, pulling back the curtain several inches so that she could peer outside at the second-story exterior walkway and through the rails at the parking lot below. She could see the top of Thomas's head as he descended the stairs. She turned her attention back to the room—to her sleeping son, to the suitcases standing at attention in the corner, to the plastic cups and napkins on the table beside her. She drew the curtain back farther, letting in some additional light. There was something else lying on the table, the thing on which Thomas had been scribbling, and she picked it up now for a closer look.

It was a photograph she had taken of Joel and a young Mexican girl of roughly his same age. There had been times over the past few months when their lives had fallen into transient normality—brief moments and unexpected encounters when the suffocating reality of their situation was temporarily lifted. This picture had captured such a moment, a fleeting friendship Joel had made with a young girl in the time it had taken Susan and Thomas to acquire gas and a few groceries. She'd allowed Joel to stay with the car while they shopped, and when she returned she'd been surprised to find them playing on the withered, sun-beaten grass, the two of them laughing and giggling as if they were the closest of friends rather than strangers who became acquaintances for the space of fifteen minutes at a roadside convenience store in rural Mexico. It had saddened Susan's heart to see the way her youngest son interacted with the girl, for it made her realize how starved he must be for social relationships like this one. She had put the groceries in the car, and had sat there watching them for another twenty minutes, wishing there was more she could offer him. When it was time for them to go, she'd gone back inside and purchased a disposable camera to take their picture.

She looked down at that photograph now, clasped in her hands, and the only face smiling back at her was the girl's. Above the neckline, Joel's face had been scratched away by the dark lines of Thomas's pen.

She stood there breathing deeply, the hurt and rage coursing through her body in alternating currents. Did he care so little for them that he would destroy even the few small tokens that brought them joy? He'd done it out of pure maliciousness, she decided, to spite them regardless of the sacrifices they had made to protect him. It was . . .

No,
she corrected herself.
This was something else she was seeing here
.

She thought of Thomas sitting there at the table, watching them as the pen in his hand scratched back and forth across the face of her youngest child. There had been no spite or maliciousness in his expression, only a detached, calculating manner she had seen several times before. She recalled the way he had stood over them, one hand resting lightly on Joel's shoulder as if . . . as if to say . . . good-bye.

Outside, a car trunk slammed, and she turned to look out the window. Thomas was heading back across the parking lot. In his left hand he held a lug wrench from the spare wheel compartment, the prying tip at its distal end catching the early morning sunlight along its black metallic surface.

“
Joel. Joel, wake up,
” she hissed, going quickly to the bed and shaking him roughly, casting aside the covers.

“What . . . ,” he replied, his voice still thick and muddled with sleep.

“
Get up,
” she urged, dragging him from the bed. “We've got to go. We've got to go
right now
.”

“Where's Thomas?” Joel asked, looking around the room.

“He's coming,” she replied, snatching the extra set of keys from the pocket of her jeans. She went into the bathroom, turned on the shower, pushed the doorknob's button lock, stepped out of the bathroom, and closed the door behind her. “Thomas is coming, but I don't want him to hear us leave. We're leaving without him. Do you understand?”

“Why did you lock the bathroo—?”

“Don't worry about that. I don't have time to explain.” She glanced at her clothes in the corner of the room. She would have to leave them here, remaining in her T-shirt and pajama bottoms. There was no time to get dressed. There was no time for anything.

“I want to get my—”

“No, Joel.
We have to leave now.
” She opened the door and poked her head out of the room. She could hear Thomas's footsteps on the stairs, heading up toward them. He would be on their level in less than ten seconds. Halfway down the corridor in the direction of the stairs was a small alcove with a soda machine and an ice box. If they were quick about it, they could hide there until Thomas passed them along the walkway.

She pulled her head back inside the room and looked at Joel. “Very quiet,” she said. “Not a word.” Her son nodded, and she took his hand in hers. “Follow me.”

They slipped out into the hallway and closed the door gently behind them. The sound of Thomas's tennis shoes on the steps was getting louder. His head would clear the level of the floor and they would be in his line of sight at any moment. Susan sprinted down the corridor to the alcove, pulling Joel along. Their bare feet were nearly silent on the concrete flooring. She could see the top of Thomas's head come into view as she leapt into the alcove, dragging Joel with her. The large soda machine jutted out from the wall on her left, and they pressed their bodies against the space to the right of it, allowing it to shield them from view.

Susan wrapped her left arm around Joel's body, pulling him toward her. In her right hand she held the key to the car, the short tip protruding from between her index and middle fingers. She would punch with that hand, she told herself, if it came to that. It wasn't much of a weapon—and certainly didn't match what Thomas was carrying—but it was the only one she had. The element of surprise would afford her one good shot, and she thought quickly about where to place it.

Then the sound of his footsteps passed them along the walkway. A moment later, she heard him open the door, step inside, and close it once again.

“Let's go,” she whispered, and the two of them left the alcove and headed for the steps, taking them as rapidly as their bare soles could tolerate. They reached the bottom and hustled across the parking lot. Susan pressed the button on the remote to unlock the doors in anticipation of their arrival, and the car chirped responsively.

Shit,
she thought, and on the second story above them a door suddenly opened and Thomas appeared at the railing.

“Mom,” Joel said.

“Get in the car,” Susan ordered, running around to the driver's side of the vehicle.

“But Mom . . .”

“What?”

“He's coming.”

Susan looked up. The spot where Thomas had been standing a moment before was now empty. Her eyes shot to the stairwell.

“Get in, Joel,” she said, dropping into the driver's seat and fumbling to get the key into its slot in the ignition. The passenger door opened and Joel climbed inside. Through the open door Susan could see Thomas as he appeared at the foot of the stairwell, taking the last three steps in a single leap.

“
Close the door!
” she yelled, and Joel swung the passenger door shut. The fingers of her right hand felt numb and clumsy as she jammed the key home in the cylinder. Still, it wouldn't turn. In her peripheral vision, she could see her oldest son sprinting toward them across the parking lot.

She grabbed the steering wheel and yanked it counterclockwise, freeing the key to turn in the ignition. The engine sprang to life just as Thomas reached the car and the door on Joel's side began to open once again. “
No!
” she screamed, dropping the transmission into gear and mashing her right foot down on the accelerator. The vehicle lurched forward, wresting the door from Thomas's grasp, and when it shut this time Joel locked it. The engine raced, but the vehicle moved slowly, as if it were being held back by invisible wires. In the rearview mirror Susan could see him, still running, still coming for them. For a frantic moment, she realized that he was gaining on them.

“The emergency brake,” Joel reminded her. Her right hand grabbed the handle, and her thumb pushed the release button as she slammed it downward.

The car sped up, sending them flying out onto the street. She hooked a left, scraping the right front quarter panel on a parked vehicle as they negotiated the turn too widely. When they reached the next intersection, she went right, barely slowing as the right rear wheel jounced up over the curb. She straightened out the steering, then gunned the automobile in the direction of the closest highway.

“Slow down, Mom! You're gonna crash!” Joel yelled, reaching across himself to snap home the buckle of his seat belt.

Susan forced herself to back off on the gas. She was shaking uncontrollably, but she couldn't bring herself to stop the vehicle until they'd covered another twenty miles. Then she got off at the next exit and eased the car to the shoulder, placing it in park and killing the engine. She leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes, attempting to pull herself together. Joel was quiet beside her, looking out through his window.

“I . . . I know this is very confusing for you . . . ,” Susan said haltingly. She began shaking again, and willed herself to stop, reminding herself that her son needed her. “It's been . . . it's been confusing for me for a long time,” she said, and she took a deep breath and let it out. “I owe you an explanation, and an apology.”

A car passed on the otherwise vacant early-morning stretch of highway to their left, and Susan turned abruptly in her seat to watch until it disappeared from view. She looked back at the nine-year-old in the seat next to her, his light brown hair still tussled and wild from the night's sleep, a pillow mark fading on his face.

“I can't explain everything right now,” she said. “But I want you to know . . . I want you to know that I'm sorry.” She began to cry then, the tears large and shameful and naked on her face, and she refused to lift a hand to brush them away. She deserved each and every one of them. “I want you to know that I'm sorry for bringing you into this, Joel. You're a good kid, and I love you. You . . . you never deserved this.”

She tried to go on, but she couldn't. The grief and fear and regret were all muddled up inside of her, and the more she tried to talk the more she wept, until at last her son placed a hand on her forearm to quiet her.

“It's okay, Mom,” he said, and she looked at him and nodded, allowing herself to accept his forgiveness for the moment. Joel leaned over and gave her a hug, and she held him tightly against her, closing her eyes and mouthing a silent prayer of gratitude that he was safe—that they both were—for the first time in months.

A few minutes later, she started the car, readying them for the next leg of their journey. “Mom,” Joel said, and she smiled over at him, smoothing his hair with her hand.

“Yeah. What is it, honey?”

His freckled face was earnest but hopeful. “Can we go home now?”