by Dave Eggers
—Maybe three, four.
—And that was enough?
—Yes. And from the three or four, I might get closer with one.
—One like Don.
—Right.
—And when did you start babysitting for them?
—A few months later. Don’s mom was going back to Vietnam to visit her family, and she asked me to stay with the kids.
—Lucky you.
—Yes.
—And I was on your list, too.
—I assume so.
—But somehow I didn’t get to the next level.
—Well, presumably your parents …
—It was just my mom.
—Either your mom sensed something weird about the sleepovers or you did. You said you came over just once?
—Yes.
—That usually meant that there was a sense from someone that it was not right.
—Were you ever scolded? Any dad who would have found out about this would have murdered you.
—No, not always. Some dads cooperated fully.
—God.
—But yes, it was easier when there were no dads in the picture.
—But so someone would question the sleepovers, and that kid would be removed from the rotation?
—Yes. Maybe in your case your mom …
—Not my mom. She was completely out of it.
—Well, then maybe it was you.
—I don’t know. I wish I could remember.
—See? The fact that you can’t remember proves that the harm to you was minimal.
—You’re in no position to make assumptions like that.
—
—So you think there was something wrong with my mom?
—Excuse me?
—You targeted me because of my mom?
—I have no idea. I’m only saying that typically there was something missing at home that allowed me some degree of access.
—Okay. Okay.
—I’ve told you all I can.
—Your candor was helpful to your situation here.
—So you’ll free me now?
—No.
BUILDING 55
—Do you know who I have next door?
—Where am I?
—You’re in a military barracks. Do you know who I have next door? You’ll never guess.
—Oh God.
—Shh. Guess.
—Thomas, what have you done to me?
—You’re locked to the post there, but it’s okay. It’s just to keep you safe.
—Oh Jesus lord Christ. Thomas, you have lost your mind.
—You know what’s so funny? I didn’t even need the chloroform with you. You never woke up. What the hell are you on? It couldn’t be just Paxil and wine. You must be mixing it with something else.
—Thomas, don’t do what I think you’re going to do.
—What do you think I’m going to do?
—I won’t say.
—You think I’m planning to kill you or something?
—I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m here. How did you get me here?
—You don’t remember?
—I don’t know if I do.
—Of course you don’t. You were passed out when I got to the house. It was the easiest thing. I put you in the van and then on the cart and that was that.
—Oh God.
—Stop. Don’t moan like that.
—Oh God oh God.
—Enough of that. Please.
—I can’t believe this.
—Believe it and let’s get started.
—Thomas, why would you do this?
—I know it seems extreme. I’m sorry. I really am.
—Jesus Christ.
—But you know I’m a principled person.
—Oh God.
—And this is the best way to get some things resolved.
—Oh Thomas. Please.
—Stop that. Don’t blubber.
—I’m chained here like a dog!
—I’ve chained everyone the same way.
—Thomas, this is how you treat your mother? Seriously, how did you get me here?
—I’m capable of lots of things you wouldn’t even know.
—Like kidnapping.
—Mom, I can do extraordinary things. I brought an astronaut here. He’s still here. I did that myself. You’re the fourth person I’ve brought. You know Mac Dickinson, the congressman? He’s here, too.
—Oh no. No.
—See, you can never give me any credit.
—Thomas, you’ve really lost it. They’ll catch you and put you in prison for life. Is this why you were at the house? I heard you skulking around and figured you were just taking something from the garage. I saw your car.
—Then what? You passed out? That is the best. That sums it up.
—Thomas, why did you do this?
—I had to. There was a vise around my head and now it’s easing.
—I blame myself.
—For once you do.
—What does that mean?
—It’s just amazing to hear you accept blame for anything.
—Like what?
—Like what? Like what? There you go. You’re back to denying the calamity all around. How do you do it?
—Ow. Damn it, Thomas.
—You shouldn’t pull on that.
—Thomas, see what this is doing?
—Then don’t move. It makes the shackle feel tighter. The whole setup works best if you just sit in one place. Especially at your age.
—Look at my ankle! It’s already purple.
—It’s not purple.
—Thomas, it would work best if you just unlocked this whole thing and we could really just sit and talk.
—Guess who I have next door.
—No, I won’t. I don’t want to know. An astronaut. A congressman. You told me.
—Yes, I have those guys. But guess who else?
—I don’t know, Thomas. The idea of you kidnapping all these people makes me want to vomit. I can’t believe my son would do this.
—You act like you had nothing to do with it.
—You’re saying there was something in my raising of you that would make you into a kidnapper? That is absurd.
—Absurd? Mom, everything you did brought me to this place.
—See, you were born ready to blame others for your mistakes.
—No, Mom. No.
—Thomas, it’s the truth. I’ve always felt the same way. I knew you were screwy. Always. You were screwy out of the womb. You were screwy as a child, screwy as an adolescent.
—Well, that’s a nice coincidence, because I have a remnant of that period in the barracks next door.
—Who?
—Think of sixth grade.
—I have no idea. Not Mr. Hansen.
—I knew you knew.
—You kidnapped Mr. Hansen.
—He was a lot easier than the astronaut. Almost easier than the congressman. He was so pliant. Weak.
—Son, I hope you didn’t harm that man. They’ll kill you if you did anything to Dickinson.
—Of course I didn’t. He’s an honorable man. Like me, like Kev. You don’t get the point of all this at all.
—That’s right, Thomas. I don’t.
—So do you remember sending me to Mr. Hansen’s house?
—I know you went there. I don’t remember sending you there. Now Thomas, let me out of this.
—Of course you sent me there.
—All your friends were going. Thomas, please take these handcuffs off.
—All my friends? Hardly. Don Banh went. He’s the only normal kid I remember ever going there, and he went because his mom spoke no English and thought it was the way to get Don better grades. You know Mr. Hansen targeted kids whose parents were absent or incompetent in some way?
—I don’t know where you get this anger.
—You don’t think I have anything to be angry about? Mom, what kind of parent lets their son go to “
math overnights”? Doesn’t that seem irresponsible?
—It didn’t seem irresponsible at the time. You begged me to go. You begged me.
—No. No. No. No. No. You came home one day and you’d heard about this “opportunity” to go to Mr. Hansen’s house for enrichment. You thought it would help me, would get him to like me. You remember what you said? You said, “You could use a friend on the faculty at your school.”
—I didn’t say that.
—Then how the hell would I remember it after all these years?
—Your memory has always been given to opportunistic revision.
—You’re such a monster. Just the way you can say things like that. You know the statements like that I have in my head? Opportunistic revision! Jesus, that’s the one talent you have—saying nasty, nasty, unforgettable things.
—If I say I’m sorry will you let me go?
—No.
—Thomas, I’m worried about you. How long have you had the astronaut and the congressman?
—So you believe me.
—Of course I do. That’s what’s so scary.
—Well that’s a start at least. I didn’t think you’d believe I was capable of it.
—I know you are. I knew it when you burned the hospital.
—See, why would you say that? I didn’t burn any hospital.
—Thomas, please.
—Please? Please what? Who said I burned that hospital? I was never accused of that.
—Thomas.
—What?
—It adds up. You’ve kidnapped me. You’re capable of radical acts. Now it all connects.
—I can’t believe you’d make an accusation like that in your position.
—I’m your mother.
—But you’re shackled to a post.
—I’m still your mother and I know things. Children are utterly transparent to their mothers. I knew every time you did something. When the playground down the street was graffitied, I knew it was you. Your handwriting was obvious.
—See, you lie. If you’d thought that was me, you would have said something.
—I wasn’t in the best of shape those years.
—But you are now?
—You know I’m better.
—I don’t know that. You’re never better. You know how many times I wanted to do something like this with you, get you and lock you somewhere so you couldn’t do anything stupid? So you couldn’t mix meds and drive around, running into telephone poles? I dreamed of it since I was twelve. Just to have you locked up till you were clean.
—Well, I’m glad you didn’t. You would have been locked up yourself. As you will be when this is all over.
—Don’t threaten me.
—I’m not threatening, Thomas. I’m just stating the obvious. This one goes beyond any of the other petty crimes. This one means you’ll never be outside again. How many people did you take altogether?
—Including you, four so far. And I have one or two left.
—You’ll get twenty years for each crime. I won’t visit you in prison. I can’t handle it.
—I’m not going to prison.
—Don’t you dare kill yourself.
—That’s not what I mean. I’ll be gone.
—Thomas, you won’t survive wherever you plan to go. You don’t stand a chance.
—I don’t stand a chance? You’re telling me this? You can’t tell me about survival. I barely survived you.
—You did fine. You’re tall, you’re healthy.
—I’m tall? I’m healthy? That’s your defense? You did a good job with me because I’m tall and don’t have leprosy? You are phenomenal.
—Thomas. My point is that you turned out all right. Outside of this and the hospital, you’ve been fine. You’re functional.
—I’m functional? That was your goal, to raise a son who was functional? A tall and functional son? Your ambition is incredible. Do you remember what you did with our family photos?
—Excuse me?
—The family albums. Do you remember that?
—Of course I do. You bring it up every few years.
—I’ve brought it up once, and you were probably high when I last did. One of your boyfriends, whose name was actually Jimmy, stole them when he cleaned out our house. Do you remember this?
—Of course I remember.
—I have no idea why he needed to clean out the whole house. He took everything. He took my bed, my stuff, my clothes. He took my backpack. He took my homework.
—Well, first of all, he didn’t do it himself. He hired someone, Thomas, and they didn’t know what to take or not to take.
—You know this? You know he hired someone?
—Yes. He told me.
—He told you afterward that he hired someone?
—Yes. I called him because I knew it was him, and I asked him why the hell he had to take everything from that house, instead of just the TV and the stereo.
—I can’t believe this. You spoke to him afterward?
—I was trying to get our belongings back.
—Why the hell would he have taken that stuff in the first place?
—We owed him money. I’ve told you that.
—We owed him money? I was thirteen.
—You were old enough to contribute if you’d wanted to.
—Holy shit. Holy shit.
—Stop jumping around. You look like an idiot.
—You’re the one chained to a post. You look like an idiot.
—Please free me, Thomas. I’m sixty-two. You have a sixty-two-year-old woman chained up. Are you proud of that?
—And never insult me again. You get that? Never again. You’ve called me an idiot a thousand times and that was the last.
—You’re about to hit me.
—No. Even touching you would make me sick. You owed money to someone named Jimmy. You sold our belongings to pay him back. You sold my belongings. And now you say it was my fault.
—I didn’t say that. I am not saying that at all. His taking our belongings was not your fault. And when I came home and saw he’d done that, I called him immediately and told him it was out of line.
—Out of line. Holy God.
—He hadn’t done it himself. He hired some men.
—This is so much sicker than I ever would have thought. How much did you owe him?
—Three months’ rent.
—And that was what? A thousand dollars?
—Twelve hundred.
—And you had no one to borrow it from. No way to work for it. Were you employed at the time?
—I was on disability. You know I had my injury.
—Your injury. Your injury, holy shit.
—You want to look at my arm? It’s still healed wrong.
—And I should have contributed to the household income.
—I didn’t say that. All I’m saying is that some young men do work. In many parts of the world, you would have been considered the man of the house and expected to contribute.
—You are so great. One in a billion. You know, the reason I was bringing up all this was to note that in all my life I’ve seen no more than ten pictures of my childhood, but you’re making it all so much more fascinating. I give you a chance to explain one thing, and you remind me about a hundred other examples of your insanity. Your crimes multiply every time we talk.
—We had plenty of pictures of you.
—Do you know what kinds of pictures we have of me?
—I do know, because I broke my back reassembling those photo albums.
—Stop. Stop there. I knew the rest of the story, but now I can fill in the beginning. What you did was this. First you date a man named Jimmy, who I believe was a former taxi dispatcher from Salinas and was unemployed when you met him. A man on the way up in society. Then you bring Jimmy into our home and he pretends he’s my dad and mentor. He takes me for drives where the windows are closed and he smokes and tells me about how hot his sister is. He says he’ll set me up with her
even though I was thirteen and she was twenty-eight. Then somehow you and Jimmy have a falling out. Next thing I know I come home and you’re making phone calls on the floor of an empty house. The kitchen plates are gone. The clothes in the closets are gone. My schoolbooks are gone. I go into my room and there’s nothing left, nothing but an empty aquarium. You tell me that we were robbed, but somehow I don’t believe you. Something seems wrong about that. All our photo albums are gone, so you call up your friends and my friends’ parents, and your sisters and cousins and ask everyone to send any pictures they have of me or us.
—I spent weeks on that. Why was that a bad thing to do?
—The result was an album with exactly ten pictures in it. And in every picture, I’m on the side, I’m in the background. These are pictures of my cousins or my friends and I’m incidental. I’m blurry and half my head is cut out.
—I thought I was doing something nice.
—That was my birthday present that year!
—You liked it.
—Oh shit.
—Thomas, I was there when you went to bed and when you woke up. I got you to school. I fed you. Beyond that, you’re quibbling.
—Quibbling? See, I guess the one thing I never gave you credit for was how entertaining you are. The things you say are just unprecedented. No one talks like you. Do you remember bringing me to your boyfriend’s apartment in New Mexico?
—Of course. He got you a bike.
—He gave me the bike his son left when his wife and kid fled him.
—It was a fine bike, and he bought it for you.
—No he didn’t. It had this kid’s name on it. Robin.
—Well, we can disagree about that.
—And why take me to Albuquerque in the first place? Why not just leave me with someone?
—You had fun on that trip.
—Your boyfriend hit me.
—Well, you two didn’t always see eye to eye.
—I was fifteen. Seeing eye to eye?
—How many times do I need to say sorry for that? It was twenty-five years ago.
—It was less than that.
—So what, Thomas? So what?
—So Mr. Hansen targeted me, knowing I had an addict for a mom. That’s how he could get away with it. He needed kids who had some kind of inadequate parental situation. Me, Don.
—Did he touch you, Thomas?
—Who?
—Mr. Hansen.
—He says he didn’t.
—Well then.
—“Well then”? “Well then”? You push me onto a highway, or off a bridge, and then if I come back alive, you say, Well then.