“You can’t promise to not get sick,” she said.
The fair was full of people. The papers said that more than three hundred thousand visited the first week. The lines for the rides stretched out over fifty yards.
“By the time it’s my turn,” he said, “I’ll be fine. Look at the line.”
She glanced up to the line and then back to him.
“Please,” he said.
“What if your sister wants to ride?”
“She’s too short,” he said.
A man was measuring children with a long wooden stick, and it was clear he was right; Pam would be too small.
“Okay,” she relented. “But you meet us back here as soon as you get off the ride.”
He walked to the back of the line, and she kept watch as he moved forward every step of the way. Pam wanted to walk around, but Maggie refused to move. Then the line began to quicken, and Bobby snaked around a corner into the weave of bars that corralled each person to the waiting cars.
She stood up then, taking hold of Pam’s hand and moving toward the coaster. Bobby never looked back. He disappeared behind a partition with the fair logo painted on it—a flame-tipped red sun on a white background. She scanned the cars moving out of the bay and didn’t see Bobby. And when the ride ended and everyone got off, she didn’t see him on the next coaster going up the ramp, either. She suspected she had simply missed him, but when that coaster came back and she still didn’t see him coming out the exit area with everyone else, she panicked. She squeezed Pam’s hand, feeling the girl’s fingers buckle under the pressure and her small hand jerk away in pain.
Maggie lifted Pam on her shoulders once again. “Look for him,” Maggie said and heard the pleading in her voice. “Can you see him?” She walked back and forth, the girl bouncing on her shoulders, and moved to the ride’s exit and then back to where the line began. Her steps were short and quick, and Pam’s feet seemed to kick at her lungs with each movement.
“I don’t see your brother. Do you?”
“No,” Pam said.
Maggie turned and then turned again, holding Pam’s ankles close to her chest. “Hold on, baby,” she said. “We have to find your brother.”
Maggie swung toward the roller coaster. She saw boys of all kinds. Dark-haired and light-haired. Fat and skinny. Some with ball caps on and others with burr haircuts. She saw sunburned faces and high white socks pulled to the knees, but she didn’t see Bobby.
She walked, again, to the exit of the ride and continued to scan the crowd, but everything was a blur of half-faces and torsos. She sought something familiar: Bobby’s brown shorts, his red tee shirt, the sound of his laugh or crying. Anything. It was a sea of strangers and strange voices. Then without even knowing she would do it, she began calling out his name.
“Bobby. Bobby Murphy,” she said as she walked through and past people. She bumped a man, spilling his drink, and quickly apologized, but there was a terror in her throat and an emptying in her stomach. Her whole body heightened to a sense of numbness as her blood was thinning out. A windstorm of terrible thoughts took her over, and she was held in place by the thought of him being snatched up by some man, led away by his hand into a corner of the fair or some dark-colored sedan in the parking lot. She called his name louder and Pam did too, but still he did not show. A man wearing a blue polo shirt and white visor came up to her.
“Ma’am,” he said, trying to get her attention as Maggie stared past him. “Ma’am, are you okay? Ma’am,” he said louder.
Maggie looked at him. “My son,” she said but offered nothing else.
“What about your son? Is he lost? Where did you see him last?”
Maggie was pulling Pam off her shoulders but holding the girl’s forearm, clinging to it almost. “He was just here,” she said. “He was just going to ride the coaster,” she said and pointed. “I have to find my son.”
“Calm down, ma’am. I’m sure he’s okay. What does he look like?”
Maggie was still searching. Her eyes had little focus, and she was only vaguely aware of the man’s questions and what the right answers to give him were.
“Stay here,” the man said. “Don’t move. I’m going to find some security.”
Maggie wasn’t looking at him.
“Ma’am,” he said again. “It’s important you don’t move so I can find you. Don’t move.” He grabbed her shoulders and looked her in the eyes. Sweat ran down his cheeks. He had a mustache that hung too far over his lip. “Do you understand?”
She nodded and then swung around again. “There!” she screamed. “There.” By the picnic tables where they had eaten lunch she saw him, sitting down, his hands in his lap. He appeared scared, his own head turning left and right. She pulled Pam along as she ran toward him, the man following behind. Maggie grabbed Bobby up in her arms and pulled him into her, the boy’s arms hanging by his side. She pulled Pam into her as well and held both of her children and kissed the tops of their heads and felt the holes in her throat and stomach closing now, the terror lessening but still running through her veins.
“Thank God,” she said. Then, seeing the man, she said, “He’s safe. Thank you.” The man nodded and walked away.
“You told me to meet you here,” Bobby said. “Where were you?” He pulled away from her.
She laughed, arching her neck backward, then pulled him close again. “You’re right,” she said. “You’re right.”
MAGGIE WAS EIGHTEEN and a senior in high school when she became pregnant with Bobby. When she told Jake, he never faltered and said almost immediately he would marry her. Twelve years had gone by and on the way to the fair that morning she felt it had simply become too much for either person to pretend the fire and love they held for each other when they were kids was still there, but she had always had a feeling they both felt stripped of something. By the rest of the world’s standards, perhaps thirty wasn’t that old. In their hometown, though, almost everyone they knew, old and young, had been married with kids by the time they were twenty-five, if not sooner. The hard responsibilities of life seemed to find them before they were even aware, or might have the chance to find out, what waited for them along the corridors of I-75 and beyond.
She had told her mother first about the pregnancy. Then, trying to act as if it were any other day, she had gone to school. All that morning, while in class, she doodled in her notebook and tried to feel the life inside her, to understand how it might grow and become a baby. During lunch, her father showed up, walking right into the cafeteria where all the other teenagers were. His eyes were wild and his rough hands still looked dirty, the nails filled with grease along the cuticles. He had on his gray work shirt, only the front of it untucked from his black pants. She swore she heard his steel-toe boots actually kicking holes into the floor with each step he took toward her. She pushed away her tray and waited with nowhere to hide.
“Get your ass up,” he said.
“Daddy?” she said. “What’s wrong?”
“You know goddamn well what’s wrong.”
She rose from her chair, slightly aware of everyone watching them. A few teachers were trying to shuffle down the set of steps from where they watched the students.
“Just a minute,” she said.
“I said now,” he boomed and slammed his fist down, rattling the silverware and trays. The other kids scooted their chairs away from the two of them, and then Maggie was up, being dragged by the right biceps outside to his car. His breaths were short and heavy, and she’d never believed he was capable of such anger. As soon as they were outside, through gritted teeth, he said, “Who the hell do you think you are?” He still held onto her, and she felt his nails dig deeper into her skin. “You’re a goddamn embarrassment is what you are.” He let go of her arm, almost flinging it. Rain fell in a drizzle that glazed the sidewalk by the bus drop-off. His truck was parked there. “What do you have to say for yourself?” he said.
“Daddy,” she pleaded, rubbing her arm, feeling
the beginnings of a sob come on but trying hard to keep it inside her chest.
“Don’t,” he hissed. “There’s no good explanation for it. You get out of my house tonight,” he said.
“Daddy,” she said again, hearing the weakness and pity of it in her own ears. “Please,” she said.
But he had already opened the door to the truck and slammed it shut. She stood in the light-falling rain, holding her arm. She walked toward him and tapped on the window, but he refused to look at her and put the vehicle in gear. She saw he was crying, his hand still on the shifter, but he would not turn to her. “Daddy,” she tried again, and this time the sobs and cries flew out, and when she called for him a last time the word was a broken thing split apart by her emotion.
She had come out of that day hardened and sometimes bitter, she knew, but she had loved Jake and he her. As the first few years in their marriage passed, that was what had allowed her to not be completely stung by her father’s words. She and Jake had always known they would be married. The pregnancy only a formality of sorts. Thinking of Jake and the long record of their history together, and the ease with which it seemed to be erased, made her shudder. Jake was a good father, and even with their troubles she didn’t think she would have to raise these children alone.
Holding on to Bobby and Pam, she walked with them toward the China exhibit, which everyone was buzzing about. She kept the children close the rest of the day, buying them cotton candy and allowing them to drink too much pop. By day’s end, with the sun setting behind the mountains, the children were tired and ready for sleep, but Pam asked to ride the Ferris wheel.
Still reluctant and nervous from earlier, Maggie agreed when the operator allowed the three of them to squeeze into the ride together. They rose above the mountains and the Tennessee River. A faint blue haze hung over the Smokies, and the river was a reflection of swimming lights from the downtown buildings. Up and down they went. The world coming closer and then moving away, and when they were stopped at the top with a chance to look out over the entire fair, Maggie took note of the patterns of people below. The lines for the exhibits and rides like large wooly worms in the shadows, bent and swaying. She saw the neon strings hanging around children’s necks and thought of how soon they would fade away to nothing more than colored plastic, all the shine gone.
High in the air the new fears of what she would do with her two children rushed to her, how she could care for them without Jake around every day. She hugged them close as if to make sure they were still beside her. She turned to Bobby. His little-boy looks were as strong as ever, and she touched her stomach, where the fear had been earlier in the day and where she had touched herself when her father pulled away from her thirteen years before. Of course, then she had touched herself because of the life placed inside her and the pain it had caused, and how hard it had been to believe such different feelings could rest in the same spot. After her father had left the school that day, she had gone back inside to finish out the day, refusing to let any of her classmates believe she was different or less than them, pushing as best she could from her mind what the future might bring. That night she packed only the clothes in her room, leaving behind nearly everything else, and went to Jake’s.
He held her that night, and for so many after, keeping her close and telling her it would all be okay. She had always believed him, but now, stopped at the very top of the Ferris wheel, she watched the World’s Fair. Those thousands of lives blending into one another and the carnival lights, so distant from where they were, and she was faced with knowing she had to make her children believe the same thing.
PASSING SHADOWS
WHEN COLE’S MOTHER died there had been no indication she was ill. She simply went to bed early one evening while he and his father stayed up to watch Monday Night Football. In the morning, when he came down for breakfast, Cole saw his father sitting on the couch, holding a cup of coffee in the still-dark living room.
“Dad?” he said.
“Yeah,” his father said, soft and staring at the floor.
“You okay?”
But his father didn’t move. He kept his head down, and only when Cole walked toward him and stood by his shoulder did he look up to his son.
“Your mother’s gone,” he said.
Cole searched the room, looking to the windows at the front of the house and into the woods that ran beside the road. “Where? It’s so early,” he said, scanning the trees he saw taking shape with the first traces of light.
His father rose then, standing so close Cole smelled the coffee mixed with his stale breath. Then his father’s hand pressed firmly on his shoulder.
“No, son. I mean, she’s gone. She passed away last night in her sleep.”
Cole’s stomach went queasy, his legs trembled beneath him, but he never stopped looking at his father’s eyes—his own eyes—as his father’s grip on his shoulder tightened.
“I’ve not called anyone yet. I wanted to wait until you could go in and see her yourself.”
Light broke through a cloudy gray sky and began burning off the haze. A wind blew against the house, the beeping of a garbage truck could be heard up the road, and birds pecked at the grass in the yard.
“Go on,” his father said, nodding toward the bedroom over Cole’s shoulder.
His mother appeared peaceful, as if she were still asleep, and for a moment Cole wanted to believe his father was playing some cruel, cruel joke on him. But when he took her hand in his and felt its cool rigidness, he knew it was true. He knelt beside the bed. Her face seemed softer to him than it had in years, and the crescent-shaped scar under her eye was nearly invisible. He touched it with his finger as he’d done when he was a very small child and remembered all the times she had touched his scrapes with love and care.
He bowed his head, closed his eyes. He thought of how she had made him get up from the couch the night before to give her a hug and kiss good night. In the dark room he breathed in the smell of her perfume, the lotion she used. He took his finger off the scar and rose from the floor, never letting go of her hand. He stood, unsure of what to do, of how he could make some sort of peace.
HE’D RETURNED HOME three months ago after he was downsized from a job he’d never liked anyway. He was unsure of what he wanted to do, of who he even wanted to be, and Boston was a city he could no longer afford. So he packed up everything he could fit in his car and came back home to live with his parents and work for his father’s company. The transition had not been an easy one, and in the nights, while he was sleeping, his dreams were still set in Boston. The dark murky water of the Charles flowed through each one, as if leading him out of the light and deeper into an unknown territory. Though he had slept in the room until he was eighteen, he found himself disoriented in the mornings, unfamiliar with his surroundings.
Living with his parents and back in Fordyce had been harder than he expected. He never expected to come back, but leaving had always weighed on him, as if he could never put enough distance between himself and home. It called out to him like some far-off bird’s song, rattling in his head, and he’d remember the mountains and the curves of the roads and the smell of dew-heavy air in spring and summer. Before finally coming home he had begun to feel that old pull and thought the move—a reset—was going to be just the thing to get himself back on track. Enjoyable, even.
There had been lots of missteps and starts in his life and at one point—his lowest—he was living in Cambridge where he worked at a bookstore and washed dishes at a diner off Harvard Square. When he woke up in the bone-cold mornings before his shift, he’d look out on the snow-dusted streets, the tiny houses packed so tightly together they appeared to be huddled for warmth, and ask himself if he had missed some sign of what it was he should have done.
His father never asked him what it was he searched for, why he took so many jobs that he was overqualified for. In fact, he had never questioned Cole outright about any of the choices he made, but he always felt he was letting the o
ld man down by not pinning himself to a job and embarking on a career. So when he landed the position at Suffolk in development, coordinating alumni affairs, he was finally doing something he thought his father would find respectable, and it wasn’t until then he had the courage to ask his parents to come for a visit. Only his mother came to Cambridge and the small apartment on Bay Street.
“He wanted to come, but you know Dad. He can’t stand to miss work,” she said to him over coffee.
“He loves work,” Cole said. “He helped build that company.”
“It’s all he knows,” she said. “I worry over him. I worry over both of you.”
“Don’t worry about me, Mom. I’m okay.” He saw the wind outside swirling snow off the roofs of cars.
“That’s a mother’s job. That’s what me and your father both do.”
“He’s not happy about this,” he said, raising his eyes around the apartment.
“He thinks you’re capable of more.”
“I have a good job now. I thought he’d be happy about that.”
“He wants you to go back to school.”
“For what?”
“For whatever you want. You used to think you wanted to be a biologist.”
“When I was eight.”
“That’s not true. You can do whatever you want. People say that all the time, Cole, but for you it really is true.”
He turned from the window when she said this and took in her eyes. She smiled at him, warmly, with encouragement, and then drank her coffee.
USUALLY, THIS WAS the part of the morning where Cole, a week shy of thirty-two but feeling much older, readied for work by standing up from his bed and ironing out the knots in his back that had come with working in the freezer, loading and unloading pallets of food off trucks. The coroner was in the house, and Cole was getting dressed to go back downstairs. His bones cracked when he bent over to pull his socks on. Looking in the mirror at his haggard face, the scrawl of a beard on his cheeks, he wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do now, and his eyes seemed lifeless, lamps gone dark.
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