The Cradle (13 page)

In the low light Matt couldn’t quite see the color of her hair, but it was big, whatever it was. She had a massive purse,
too, hanging down underneath her armpit. She kept her hand up by her throat. “Can I help you?” she said. Her voice was deep.

“I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am,” Matt said. “I’ve just been to see your son. My name is Matt Bishop. I’m married to Marissa,
the sister of that little boy in your house.”

Now a long, quiet stare. The hand slowly fell from the throat and went back, awkwardly, to the woman’s side. It then passed
over her belt and went to the purse, and she started digging around. The hand came out with what looked like a box of cigarettes.
The woman took a step forward without pulling one out. She said, “And.”

“That’s all,” Matt said. “Up until last night I didn’t know he existed.”

“And Darren sent you here?”

“No. I came without him saying.”

“How did you know where to find me?”

Matt looked back over his shoulder, at the truck. He sighed, turned back. “I found your address on a birthday card after he
passed out.”

The woman laughed once, like a bark, then chuckled lowly.

Matt watched her shoulders move up and down as she did. Then the cigarette came out of the pack and went up to her mouth,
and she lit it.

“So you want him.”

“Excuse me?”

“If you want him,” she said, “you can have him. I don’t want him anymore.”

“Who?” Matt said.

“Who do you think I mean? Darren?”

Matt wished he could see the woman’s face better. Now it was only a dark spot, whereas the boy’s had been lit preternaturally
in the window. All he could see well was the glow of the cigarette’s tip.

“I can’t take him,” Matt said. “That’s not—”

“And here I was, thinking you were a dark angel come to rescue me from my son’s idiocy.”

“I thought at the very least,” Matt said, “my wife, Marissa, should know that he exists. That’s what this is about.”

“Okay, then,” the woman said. She swung her head and her big hair and looked at her front door, then turned back. “Let’s go
make sure he exists, even though you saw him through the window.”

There was something in her movement and her voice, in that last sentence, that made Matt realize just how drunk she was. The
way she’d been able to cover it up through the beginning of the conversation made him think, too, that this was not amateur
drinking. This was a lifetime’s work.

He followed her. At the door she messed around with her keys for quite some time, and he was close enough to smell the strong
perfume coming off of her. With hair, she was taller than he. Without hair, she wasn’t.

Inside, the air-conditioning was on high, so strong it was chilly. She flipped on the light and continued walking, and Matt
stood. The living room was neat and tidy, although it didn’t have the same sterility that Darren’s did. There were two cats
lying together on the sofa, in each other’s arms. One, a tabby, looked up at them, and the other didn’t move. The woman disappeared
through a doorway, and Matt followed her. He found her in the kitchen, leaning down and looking into the refrigerator. When
he came around the corner, she twisted her head and said, “I’m Susan, by the way. You want something? Dinner? You’d think
I would have eaten something by now.”

“I’m fine,” Matt said.

She pulled out a cucumber, brought it to the countertop, and started cutting it. She was well over sixty, but Matt could see
she’d once been astoundingly beautiful. A part of it remained. She was wearing a long, loose dress and sandals. She’d gotten
a new cigarette for herself at some point, and now she leaned over the cucumber and started slicing it. She’d lost the glasses
somewhere. “You have a certain look to you, you know,” she said. When Matt didn’t respond, the woman took in a lungful of
air, leaned her head up toward the ceiling, and yelled, “Joseph! Come down here!”

There was a bang like he jumped off of something, and then Matt listened as the footsteps moved across a room above, then
came to the stairs, then trundled down the stairs. The woman pointed with the knife. “You see?” she said. “QED. Existence.”

Matt turned. The little boy was standing in the doorway, wearing a pair of white briefs and a white T-shirt. He also had on
a pair of Strawberry Shortcake socks. His hair was black and messy, and he stood still, looking up at Matt, arms down at his
sides.

“He doesn’t talk,” Susan said.

Matt found himself squatting down. He stayed there, looking at the boy across the room. He thought of holding out a hand to
shake, but of course that would be ridiculous. “Hi,” he said instead.

The boy turned and left the room.

Matt heard him go back upstairs.

“He doesn’t talk,” the woman said, “and I for one find it quite eerie.”

Matt stood and turned back to her. “Doesn’t talk at all?”

“He said hello once,” said Susan. “Other than that, no.” She was starting to cut again.

“Are you his guardian?” Matt said.

“No.”

“Who is?”

“I’d imagine Darren is still,” she said. “I haven’t checked.”

“You haven’t checked?”

“No, I haven’t checked.”

“What about school? You have to know.”

“He’s not in school.”

“How old is he?”

“He’s five.”

“So is he starting school, then?” Matt asked. “In the fall?”

Now the woman was leaning forward on the countertop, holding a sliced cucumber in front of her mouth like it was a potato
chip. “You seem to be understanding the problem.”

“I’m not,” Matt said.

“Let me add the last piece of the equation,” she said. “I am getting married in four weeks. I have a honeymoon to go to in
Costa Rica. After that I would not mind taking a trip to California, to visit my sister. From there, I don’t know. James and
I may move. We like it better in Florida. None of these things fit properly with him.”

“Those sound like lovely plans.”

“I am not going to do this,” she said. “Any of this. I am done. Officially.”

“You can’t just be done,” Matt said.

“I raised my child,” she said. “This one’s not mine. I am done.”

“What, then?” Matt said. “You’ll throw him away on garbage day?”

The woman smiled a little and came around the corner of the countertop, a new cucumber slice in her hand. She took a drag
from the cigarette, then took a bite, then sat down at the kitchen table. “I knew you were coming,” she said. She nodded at
another chair.

“How exactly did you know I was coming?”

“My psychic,” she said. “I heard about you last week.”

“What did you hear?”

“That somebody was going to come and take him away and be his father.”

Now she turned and started rooting around in a low cupboard behind the table. Matt didn’t move to sit with her. After a moment
she turned and had a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. She set them down and filled them both and put the bottle on the table.

“No, thank you,” Matt said.

The woman took his cup and poured his whiskey into her own.

“I knew you were coming,” said the woman. “You’re just in time. Good for you. Congratulations.” She sipped.

“You haven’t the faintest idea who I am,” Matt said, “and now you’re trying to give me a child.”

“I
do
know who you are,” she said to her glass. “You’re his brother.”

“I’m his brother like I’m your brother.”

“No,” she said, looking up, shaking her head. “Not quite.” She tipped the glass back and drank half the whiskey. She set the
glass down with a thunk. “It’s a little more than that, isn’t it?”

He was back in his room by ten o’clock. He lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, television on, sounds of a telephone
conversation coming through the wall. It was a man’s voice. He wasn’t yelling, but it had a persistent strength to it. When
the noise got filtered by the wall, it turned into a trumpet with a mute being played sixty feet away—the same note, over
and over again.

Come back in the morning. That’s what the woman had said. Come back in the morning, and you can take him with you.

She’d almost said it with a smile on her face; like a test, like a tease. All he felt was rage, the same as he’d felt the
day before while driving. That anyone could do this, that people could be this. Better for this boy, Joe, to have never been
born. It would have saved him the trouble of having to realize so soon people’s indifference to their situations. Or to anyone
else’s.

Because of the feeling, he knew he was a long way away from sleep. He got out of the bed and went across the room to the cradle,
which he touched lightly, then rocked. He was standing right in front of the television; some pundit was talking into the
camera, holding a pencil, pointing it at someone else. The man said, “She is not and should not be this nation’s moral center,”
and the camera switched and showed another man, and he said, “No one ever asked her to be.” Matt looked into the man’s eyes
and remembered Don Kincaid and his wife, Lucille, the couple who’d taken him when he was nine years old and the couple with
whom he’d stayed for nearly two years. They were not particularly bad people and had treated him with a distanced fondness;
Lucille had never taken him into her arms and hugged him like he was her son, but she’d touched him on the shoulder when she
wanted him to clean up his messes and she’d even sung songs to him from time to time. Don worked at a bank somewhere. They
took him to church every Sunday. He hadn’t had many friends, but it was the first time in his life he’d felt a sense that
the world could be the same thing for a long period of time, that the ground didn’t necessarily always have to rumble and
shift underneath you. Once, they went to the beach; Matt didn’t remember where. Something told him it had been Lake Michigan,
but he thought now he might be inserting it after seeing the lake during this trip. More likely it had been somewhere like
Lake Geneva. He remembered many tourists, and he remembered Don, wearing goggles, standing on a dock in a pair of blue swimming
trunks that matched his own blue swimming trunks, the water trickling down through the silver hair on his chest. He remembered
Don telling him to wait where he was because he had a surprise, then disappearing down the dock, then coming back a minute
later with another pair of goggles. He said, “Are you ready?” and Matt nodded his head that he was. Don jumped into the water
feetfirst. When he came up, he fixed the goggles on his face and said, “Okay, you next,” and Matt hadn’t hesitated to jump
in just beside him, laughing because he knew Don had expected him to wait a long time and have to think it over and be tentative,
because that’s how he usually was. It had been his little trick. When he came up, Don was laughing, too, and he helped Matt
put the goggles on right, and together they swam around and looked at the rocks and mud and weeds in the shallows. At one
point Matt saw Don, through the green of his goggles, swim his awkward, overweight body down into a cluster of wavy plants
and come out holding a jelly sandal. He held it up and did a funny underwater smile. Later, Matt found a dime placed perfectly
on top of a rock. Don had a heart attack and died the next year, and Lucille sent him back, but at least Matt had the memory
and, along with that, the very slightest notion that the earth could have its safe pockets.

He went into the bathroom to take a shower. For a long time he let the water run down onto the top of his head and down his
back. Then, the other feeling strong, he looked at the white plastic showerhead and let the water spray him right in the eyes.
He twisted it so the water moved to his neck, then, as an afterthought, he took hold of the showerhead and ripped it out of
the wall with all his strength.

The tiles broke loose and clattered down to his feet as he continued ripping at the pipes. Water sprayed up onto the ceiling,
and the crumbles of grout got down between his toes. He pulled more, silently watching the metal bend and new beams of water
appear. At the edges of his vision, he saw a bright white. With one last yank, he pulled the pipes out all the way down to
the handles and to the bathtub spigot at calf-level. He dropped them. He stepped out of the tub. He leaned down and turned
the handles until the water was off, then reached to the wall for a towel and dried off.

O jungle

O jungle, are you anything but a provider

of contrast, of camouflage? The greens maddening

in the heat, the collective breath of frond

and orchid and spider. O jungle, are you anything

but a giver, a foe? Closely you gather your trees,

your species, and you eat them alive, you mark

their graves with flowers so terrible in their beauty,

the birds rattle in their hollow skeletons.

O jungle, you offer your regrets in your teeming

floor, your squawking quaking canopy; you tell us

it’s a trade, that for this, blood for blood. O jungle,

you are the great interpreter of flesh, lover-true

in your patience.

—R
ENEE
O
WEN

“Is it big? Small? I’m still not getting a good picture.”

“It’s right in the middle. I’ll send you a picture as soon as I find out how we can use email in this place.”

“You know what I was thinking the other day?” Renee said. “I was thinking how unlike you this is. This is more like me. I’m
supposed to be the klutz.”

“Yeah, well,” he said, “not this time.”

Adam was wounded. What did wounded mean? Wounded meant he had tripped and fallen down a flight of stairs as he left a bar
set up for soldiers in the Green Zone.

Why he was even allowed in and whether or not he had been drinking, Renee didn’t know. She didn’t care. He had broken his
ankle and was in Germany now. His cast, according to him, was medium.

“You know, in some other time,” she said, “this would be your ticket out of there.”