The Cradle (11 page)

Matt kept watching him.

“But let’s go have a looky, shall we?”

Darren led him through the kitchen and then down a thin flight of stairs. He pulled a string at the bottom and a lightbulb
came on; Matt saw shadows and a small concrete room, musty, with piles of boxes and furniture against all the walls. Darren
moved aside part of a table and went farther in, then pulled another lightbulb on. Darren the Dog trotted down the stairs,
wagging his tail. “Now let me see here,” said Darren, hands on hips. “Aha.”

He stepped into a corner and started pulling on a mound.

Matt took a step forward, but there wasn’t enough room. He could only watch as Darren threw aside a pile of old clothes, moved
a box, and cleared a path. Then he dragged the mound out into the center of the small room.

He peeled off an old mattress cover from the top of the mound and threw it aside, and there was the cradle.

The stain was dark but so old now it had no gloss. There was an old tape player inside, and Darren leaned down and took it
out, then stepped back to let Matt see the whole thing. It was solid and sturdy-looking, low to the ground on two sleigh feet.
Matt knelt before it. He put his hand on the top of the cradle and rocked it once. About thirty thin tube slats made up the
two sides, and on the headboard there was an elaborate engraving, stained darker, almost black. It was a floral design, with
leaves and thin vines wrapping like the arms of an octopus. There was no mattress in the bottom—only a wicker weave. Matt
ran his hand along one smooth sideboard and then stood up.

“Okay,” he said.

“Indeed, there it is,” said Darren. “And I will sell it to you for the low, low price of one thousand dollars cash.”

Matt looked at him with sleepy eyes. He looked down at the cradle, then back at Darren. “It’s not worth a tenth of that.”

“Worth?” said Darren. “What is
worth?
”

Matt looked back down at the cradle. “Five hundred,” he said.

“Ah,” said Darren. “A bargaining man. Okay. Yes. I change my price to nine hundred seventy.”

“Six hundred.”

“Let’s say we meet in the middle,” said Darren, “at seven fifty.”

Matt squatted down beside the cradle once more. He imagined his son inside it. He reached a hand out and started rocking it,
and now the dog came up and sat beside him, its tail wagging across the dirty concrete floor. The pleasure. That was what
the cost was. That was the definition of
worth
.
Matter
was somewhere in there, too. Worth and matter. Darren had meant something more cynical about the marketplace. What he didn’t
understand was that five hundred dollars was nothing when it came to the invisible mass of life. Seven hundred dollars was
nothing. Eight hundred was nothing. These were memories of being a living thing. Being able to drive home with it, give it
to Marissa, and then for everything to suddenly be over, and for him to be able to sleep, was much better than anything this
small man could imagine. Then time would start going forward again.

Matt stood up.

“This town have a bank?” he asked.

Matt withdrew the cash from an ATM back on Main Street, then walked back down toward Ferris Street. On the way there, he’d
stopped thinking about what good might come from the cradle’s return and had begun to think about Darren again, and something
he’d said back at the house.

Pregnant women. Am I right?

So now it seemed obvious. The marketplace.

Caroline hadn’t made Darren steal the cradle because it had any particular cash value or sentimental value to her—she’d sent
him into the house to take it because of its utilitarian value. She’d sent him in to take it because she had been pregnant
or planned to be pregnant again.

With Darren. She’d left Marissa and Glen because she was going to start again somewhere else. Her version of escape was to
begin.

It was simple, but it left damage behind that she had to keep moving away from. What kind of woman, Matt wondered, would do
this? What kind of person? It was the opposite of Marissa, whose world had become one singular laser beam of attention. If
he were to suggest it to her, she would not be able to mentally process the concept. Begin but never stay? Also, if this story
was true, where was the child?

If there was a child.

It wasn’t dusk yet, but dusk was coming. Matt saw a pay phone. Leaning against a light pole, he deposited the quarters and
dialed home. Marissa answered after one ring.

“Hi, baby,” she said. “Is this a you-got-it call?”

“No,” Matt said. “Not yet. But I might soon.”

“Really?” He could hear her eyes go wide.

“Maybe. I’m not sure yet.” He cleared his throat, looked down at the ground. He was not used to lying to his wife. “I’ve gotta
go a few more places. The truck’s getting some miles.”

“Should I ask you where you are right now?”

“Probably not,” Matt said, looking at the house.

“Okay,” she said. “Dad and I are going to see a movie later on. That’s all.”

“Did you go to work today?”

“No. I just hurt all over. Every place I go is uncomfortable. I was lying on top of a bed of pillows on the couch and I couldn’t
even stay there.”

Matt imagined her there, splayed out like a queen, with every pillow in the house beneath her.

“So you’re not going to be back tonight.”

“I might be,” he said. “I still don’t know.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’m glad that it’s working.”

“All right,” he said. “I love you. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Okay. Be careful.”

He hung up the phone and walked back to Darren’s house.

He knocked at the front door and heard the dog barking. No one came, though. After a few more knocks, he went around the house
and found it had a small backyard. Darren was sitting on a patio chair with another beer. When Matt came around the corner,
Darren looked up and said, “I thought you may have reneged.”

“No,” said Matt. “Here.” He handed him the fat pile of money. For a moment the number of hours of work it constituted surfaced
in his mind like a submarine and startled him. He beat back the feeling.

Darren took the money, looked at it, looked at Matt, and stuffed it all into his back pocket.

“I’ll help you carry it up.”

The two men carried the cradle up the stairs carefully—Matt went backward. The dog was moving around behind him, and he had
to stop a couple of times and kick backward lightly to get him to move. Darren yelled at Darren a few times and told him he
was a sonofabitch. Out on the street, they could just get the cradle inside the truck’s door. Matt angled it and had it sitting
in the seat. He reached over and pulled the seat belt across it, and Darren laughed and shook his head when he saw that happening.

“How about another beer before you go, then?” he asked, hands on his hips. “Now that we’re close friends and all.”

“Okay,” Matt said. “I could do that.”

They went back around the house.

Evening was coming finally, and it was cooling off. Matt was tired and took the beer gladly from the man who not an hour ago
vaguely threatened him with a gun. He just couldn’t tell about Darren. He was clean when he was supposed to be a slob and
smarter than he was supposed to be, too. And yet in him Matt sensed something deeply selfish. It was something in the way
he joked, something in the way his eyes went up when he thought, or how he shook his head or scratched at his little beard
or wore his sunglasses on his head. Something in the way he’d received him. Matt didn’t know. Had the man been hurt by Caroline
in the same way Glen had been? He didn’t seem like the kind of person you could hurt. He just seemed like the kind of person
who hurt other people. You could get hurt only if your heart ever pointed outward.

Matt said, “So what do you do?”

“Not a lot,” he said. “I went to an interview today about fifty miles from here. I’ve been painting houses in town, but there’s
better work in Rochester. What do you do?”

“Factory work. Chemical plant.”

“Steady?”

“I’ve been there eight years.”

“Sounds just delightful,” said Darren. Then he burped loudly, and the noise brought Darren the Dog to the back door to check
things out through the screen, ears up.

“How often do voices in your head talk to you?” Darren asked.

“Never.”

“Not even your own voice?”

“I do think, if that’s what you mean.”

“But how can that voice be you, if you’re the one who’s listening? Do you see my point here, Matt?”

“I’ve never thought about it.”

Darren scrunched up his lips, nodded, took a long pull from his beer. “People speak to me,” he said. “They do. I thought for
some time it was only one using different voices, as in ventriloquism, et cetera. But now I’m not so sure.”

Matt looked at the fence and worked on his beer.

“Want another one?”

“Okay.”

Darren got up, went inside, and came back with more beers.

“Interesting story,” Darren said, “along those same lines. I once tried to become a shaman. There are whole courses for it,
you know.”

“What does one do to be a shaman?”

“Had to go all the way to India,” said Darren. “Yes,” he said, nodding. “You don’t see it if you look at me. I bet you’re
wondering what I’m talking about. Voices, shamanism. Let me tell you. Everything with being a shaman didn’t exactly fucking
work out, granted, but beyond that I like to think of myself as a self-educated philosopher.”

“What kind of—”

“Now I went all the way and I’m a nihilist,” Darren said, “which basically makes me the be-all of philosophers. I believe
in nothing. After a long and arduous path of studying, I’ve come upon that. What I realized was that actually I’ve always
been that, and it just took me reading about seven hundred books at about one word per hour to finally figure out what it
was called.”

“Okay,” Matt said. “Wonderful.”

“You see, it’s about the human condition,” Darren said. “I never judge anyone. That makes me special; most people do. My mother,
for example. That woman just hates everyone. She’s stuck in that, she’ll never get out of that. I don’t think shit about anything.
All I ever do is watch people operate.”

“You mind if I ask you a question?” Matt said.

“No, I am not a multimillionaire.”

“What happened?” Matt said, ignoring him. “Back then? With Caroline?”

Darren raised one corner of his upper lip, then closed one eye.

“Oh yes,” he said. “Caroline. Isn’t it obvious to you? I don’t know. Maybe I don’t know what
obvious
is. Definitions are suspicious things. It’s not obvious?”

“Some,” Matt said. “You met her down in Milwaukee and you left together. Somehow. And then she put you up to robbing Glen’s
house for her.”

“Glen.” Darren nodded. “That was his name, wasn’t it? Quiet little pushover mouse-person?”

“He’s a good man and also my father-in-law.”

“Good. What’s
good?
”

“Good is good.”

“Yeah, well, I guess that fits,” said Darren, “as Caroline is not a good woman and I am not a particularly good man. According
to the way you’re meaning it, at least.”

“She left you?”

“She left me. But not for about five years. Then she just took off one night and left me with the kid.”

Matt breathed in slowly, then exhaled through his nose, looking down at his boots.

“There’s a kid.”

“There’s a kid,” said Darren, “rocked in that very cradle. You’re shitting me. You’re telling me you didn’t know that? What
am I, like, the only person who can tell what’s going on?”

“How old is he?”

“I think he should be five now.”

“Should be?”

“I do some proactive blocking out of some of these things, you’ve gotta understand.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s at my mother’s now.”

“And where is that?”

Darren turned and looked at him.

“You’re talking about a person who is basically my wife’s brother,” said Matt, “if you’re wondering why I care.”

Darren nodded, breathed in and out once, thinking. “Well, okay. Fine. But it might be the kind of thing better left undisturbed,”
Darren said. “Just to give you some advice on that. I know you’re going to be a father soon. Why don’t you worry about that?
I usually advocate thinking of history as cement. You know. It gets hard. That’s it. That’s what I suggest to my clients.”

“Why did you give him up?”

“Because I had a life of my own,” he said. “Because I don’t want no kid wandering around my house. I already have Darren.
But beyond that, from an abstract point of view, if you will. This one Caroline had, he gave me the willies. Never talked.
And once Caroline was gone, do you think I had the faintest idea what to do with him? No. Absolutely not. I just told you
I didn’t care. We sat here together and watched TV. I’m no father. It doesn’t fit.”

“But you are his father.”

“Maybe. That’s in doubt. She had a few flings. I’m not convinced one way or the other.”

“You were here, he was here. He thinks you’re his father.”

“He doesn’t remember me.”

“You couldn’t have—”

“Here is the essential truth of this, Matt,” Darren said loudly, much more agitated than he’d been. “It doesn’t matter. Not
in the long run. Let me make manifest my point of view for you. If we were to sit down and tally up every single person in
this town, then state, let alone this country, let alone the world, it wouldn’t make a difference what happens to him. If
you hold anything up alongside that, you come down with exactly zero. And so I said to myself, Hell, if it doesn’t matter
one way or another, in the same way nothing does, not really, then if I want to live this way, then I’m gonna live this way.
Ain’t no goddamned little kid going to alter the path that I’m on. I am a motherfucking thinker and I am on a motherfucking
path. And I don’t give a shit if my path is all alone and terrible, at the very least it’s my terrible, and I’m going to walk
along on my terrible path all by myself and piss when I want, et cetera. That’s how it was done to me and that’s how I’m doing
it.”