by John Searles
A pretty typical motel room.
No one would ever have guessed what had happened on the floor beside the bed. The blood had all been cleaned up. The stained rug taken away, a flat beige rug put down in its place. I didn’t know why, but I found myself imagining a second accident that would replace that stain with more blood. I could almost see it there. Round, red, and horrifying. Even more permanent than the last. The image sent a shiver loose inside me.
I actually shook.
“You okay?” Leon asked.
“Yeah. It’s freezing in here. That’s all.”
“Got that right,” he said and found the register by the back window, cranked the dial so that the heat started to sputter through the vent.
“I met a girl on the bus today,” I told him, shutting out the image of another bloodstain. Jeanny was the one part of the story I had left out when I filled him in on my life during our cruise around town.
“Who is she?” he asked.
“Her name is Jeanny. I had this feeling about her. Like I knew her already. Or not that exactly, but just that I liked her more than most girls from around here.”
“Big tits?” he said.
“Shut up,” I told him, not wanting to rate Jeanny on his stupid scale. “Why do you and—” I stopped myself from saying “my father,” from saying every other guy out there who had always made me think that being a man meant sizing up a woman like she was a car. I was sick of it. And that wasn’t the type of man I wanted to be anymore. “Why do you always have to act like that?”
“I’m a red-blooded American male, that’s why.”
“So am I. But I don’t want to talk that way about this girl.”
“Sounds like love,” Leon said. “Did you get her number?”
I thought of her walking away, my tongue heavy with words I couldn’t muster. “No. But that’s okay. I don’t need to get her caught up in my bullshit.”
Leon was surveying the room, pushing open the bathroom door, flicking on the light. I could see the pink tiles from where I sat on the bed. He closed the door partway, and I could hear the splashing in the toilet as he took a piss. “You know,” Leon called out, “if this Edie chick is keeping company with dealers from New York, you could be in a lot of danger.”
I didn’t say anything to that. The last thing I needed was another worry. But Leon kept going. “I mean, they could come after you,” he said over what had to be the longest piss I’d ever had the honor of listening to. “They could find you here and kill you. Slit your throat or something.”
“All right already!” I called to him. “I get the point.”
“I’m just trying to warn you,” he said, finishing up in there.
I pulled Joshua’s folder out from under my sweatshirt and set it on the nightstand to read once Leon split. Then I looked at Sophie’s bottle, which was just about empty. I pulled that Enfamil container out of the bag and read the label. It was formula. Almost empty, too.
“Listen,” I said, raising my voice again so Leon could hear me. “I need another favor. Can you go out and get some baby formula and diapers? Plus some food for me.” I still wasn’t hungry but knew I would be sooner or later. There was a half-size refrigerator in the corner of the room, and I could put things on the window ledge to keep them cool as well.
Leon flushed and stepped out of the bathroom, still zipping himself. “What kind of formula?”
I held up the container for him to see. “Get some of this stuff. Enfamil. Just look in the aisle with the baby supplies, I guess.”
“I’ll hit the store and be right back,” Leon said, looking happy that he had an excuse to leave.
I tried to put Sophie down on the mattress, but she didn’t like the idea, so I picked her up again. “Let me give you some money.”
“Forget it,” Leon told me. “It’s on me.”
“Thanks,” I said, thinking I might as well take him up on his newfound generosity while it lasted. “But go to the grocery store over in Buford. I don’t want anyone around here to see you buying baby supplies. They might get suspicious.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, spinning his keys around his middle finger.
After Leon walked out the door, I turned the lock and slid the chain link in place. I pushed aside the curtain and blankets just enough to watch from the window as his car zipped out of the parking lot and onto the street. When he was gone, I went to the heat register, because the room still felt cold. Leon had set the thing on medium; I turned it up to high. Then I unplugged one of the lamps. With my free hand I picked it up off the nightstand and carried it to the corner of the room away from the front window. I plugged it in there and tilted the shade so the light was dim. Even though Leon had hung those blankets over the window, I didn’t want to take any chances that someone would spot the light from outside.
“Okay, little alien,” I said to Sophie. “Let’s get you settled in.”
I rearranged the four thin pillows on the bed in an attempt to make a border so she wouldn’t roll off when I placed her there. But was she too young to roll over? And did babies sleep on their stomachs or backs? There were so many things about this kid-care business that I didn’t know. And she was just so small. So breakable. Jeanny’s positive prognosis was already receding in my mind, and I felt afraid that if I even put Sophie down the wrong way, I might hurt her.
Just be careful, I kept saying to myself.
None of my efforts at making a bed for Sophie seemed to matter anyway, because the second I put her down, she started to whine. I had to keep rocking her in my arms, which was starting to feel like exercise. Unfortunately, I had to take a piss, too. But I figured I’d hold it until Leon got back, because I wasn’t sure how I’d manage that one. With Sophie gaining weight in my arms by the second, I made my way around the room, peeking out the window, looking in the bathroom and the closet. In one of the dresser drawers was a phone book and a black Bible like my uncle’s. I flipped the Bible open to a passage:
As the soldiers were about to take Paul into the barracks, he asked the commander, “May I say something to you?”
“Do you speak Greek?” he replied.
“Aren’t you the Egyptian who started a revolt and led four thousand terrorists out into the desert some time ago?”
Paul answered, “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no ordinary city. Please let me speak to the people.”
I didn’t know how that PBS priest and the rest of the holy-rollers found all their opinions about the world in the Bible, because every time I cracked open the good book, I came upon some yawn of a passage like the one I just read. It seemed more like a history book than a set of rules. I tossed the thing back into the drawer, sat on the edge of the bed, and picked up the phone. The long, steady hum of the dial tone made me think of my mother’s last call to Marnie. I imagined her frightened and alone in this room. I imagined her moments before, unlocking the door, nervously collecting the towels from the bathroom and laying them around her. Roget carrying the equipment his doctor friend had given him.
A long, sleek piece of metal he would use to make her bleed.
It killed me that he had gotten away with leaving her here, and I wished more than anything I could do something to nail him for my mother’s sake. Someday, I promised myself.
I put down the phone and tried to think of something else. Anything else. When I closed my eyes, I pictured Jeanny. That snowflake landing on her nose, that guitar case clunking against her back as she walked away from me. I opened the drawer and pulled out the phone book. Thought of Leon asking me if I’d gotten Jeanny’s number. I flipped to the G page. Only one Garvey listed in Holedo. On Little Street, which was just that, a little street, a few blocks from the bus station behind Peaceful Pizza. One of those downtown houses smooshed together like crowded teeth on a narrow street that no one ever drove down. My father used to call it Hippie Street, though I’d never seen any hippies the times I’d been there, so I didn’t know why.
; Sophie started to cry for no reason at all, and I picked up the phone again. Dialed the Garveys’ number. This time I wasn’t following any signs or voices. I was calling Jeanny because I wanted to. And despite Sophie’s crying as I cradled her close to me in one arm, and despite the uneasiness I felt about my surroundings, there was a sliver of me that felt like any other guy my age dialing up the number of a girl he liked.
“Hello,” her mother’s sleepy voice answered. I could hear a television in the background. Kids playing.
Hang up, I thought.
Don’t hang up.
“Is Jeanny there?” I said before I could back out. Sophie’s crying was getting louder, and I was beginning to wonder about her timing.
The phone clicked, and someone answered on another extension. I heard, “Hello.”
Jeanny.
“Hi, it’s Dominick. I—”
“Hold on,” she said to me. Then to her mother, “I got it.” After the other extension clicked off, Jeanny said, “How the hell are you? It’s been ages.”
Sophie was out-and-out screaming again. My head pounded. This baby stuff was harder than I ever would have imagined. I told Jeanny to hold on, then I rocked Sophie, tried without much success to shush her one more time. “I’ve been better,” I said when I came back to the phone.
“Baby trouble?”
“Well, yes.” Tell her why you called, I thought. Here goes. “I was wondering if maybe—” I paused. What was it I was wondering exactly? I saw Jeanny as a narrow opportunity, a road as little as her Little Street that I could pass by and keep going. But I imagined myself stepping on the brake, signaling, turning the wheel, shining my lights on her house even though I knew it was selfish of me to be there. “I was wondering if you’d like to go on a date?” I blurted. That wasn’t exactly what I imagined myself asking her, but it was close. And at least the words were out of my mouth.
“I’d like that a lot,” Jeanny said. “When do you want to get together? I have a very busy social calendar.”
“How about—” I knew I should back away, pull out of her driveway and down her Little Street. But I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted her with me. My voice was a horn calling her closer. “How about now?”
The line was silent, and I waited for Jeanny to turn me down. I just got back from New York. I have to practice my singing. I’ve got a protest to plan. Instead she said, “Now? I happen to have an opening on my calendar, so now sounds good to me. Where do you want to meet?”
I lowered my voice and said, “Promise not tell a single soul where you’re going?”
Jeanny paused. “I promise.”
I gripped the hard black handle of the phone, the same phone my mother had used to call Marnie for help. “I’m staying at the Holedo Motel,” I whispered. “How quickly can you come?”
EIGHT
Jeanny and I made a plan. She would take a taxi from the bus station, get dropped off at Cumby’s, and walk to the motel so no one would suspect where she was going. Twenty minutes and she’d be here. Thirty, tops. After we hung up, I worked at calming Sophie. She didn’t want her bottle, so I pulled a pacifier from the bag. She didn’t want that either. I walked her around the room. From the front window with the blankets draped over it to the back window where I’d hung two towels over the curtains to block the light. From the closet to the tiny bathroom. But that didn’t make her happy. All she wanted to do was cry. Since I didn’t know how else to help her, I took out one of those children’s books I’d bought at the bus station and read it out loud as she shrieked and I moved her in my arms.
“‘Hansel and Gretel walked deep into the forest. . . ’” I read, remembering those nights I had flipped through those storybooks in Edie’s bed, marveling over the happy endings. Even though Sophie couldn’t understand the words, something about the sound of my tired voice finally quieted her down. When I reached the end of the story, I turned back to the beginning and started again. On the second go-through, when Gretel suggests they toss bread crumbs behind them so they can find their way home, I decided to switch to the articles about my mother. I read each and every one of them aloud as I lulled Sophie to sleep. I read that Peter had taken a job on a lobster boat and slipped from the deck and drowned. I read that the Burdan family had paid my mother’s doctor—a Dr. Horvath—twenty thousand dollars to get them a baby. I read that my mother had broken down in court when the judge announced the verdict. She had to be carried out of the room. Finally I stopped reading and lost myself in the pictures. None of my brother except a distant shot of him bundled in a blanket as Mrs. Burdan carried him down the steps of a fancy New York building. I stared at that image awhile, my mind oddly blank, then dug out the photo of my mother being interviewed in front of a courthouse. She looked hopelessly tired, anxious, and angry all at once. If I were a stranger opening the paper and seeing that photo, I might think she was a woman capable of snapping and going at you with her teeth, her bare hands, her words. But I knew that alarmed, lost expression on her face all too well, and it made me tear up even as I tried to bury my feelings.
Dominick, I’m just so tired, she had told me before I went into the bath that last night in our apartment. Things have got to get easier for me.
And then she died.
Jeanny will be here any minute, I reminded myself before I completely lost footing on my huge mountain of emotions and went tumbling to the bottom. I had to stay strong. Stay on top of all that was happening. I tucked the news clippings into the drawer of the nightstand and gently put Sophie on the bed so I could run into the bathroom and take a piss. The second I let go of her, she popped open her eyes and looked at me. “Just give me one second, little girl,” I said, pleading with her not to cry. If she started up again, I felt like I’d begin wailing, too.
For once she didn’t, and I went into the bathroom, where the pink rectangular tiles and lime-green sink gave the room a false cheer, like Marnie wearing her too-bright colors in the middle of winter. The floor smelled of Ajax over mildew. Sterile and public. The shower curtain was covered with schools of goldfish, and I was beginning to realize that Fowler must’ve had a thing for them. Above the toilet a painting of a log cabin in the woods was screwed to the wall. Smoky blue mountains in the background, a bed of rooster-red leaves up front. I found myself staring at the scene as I took a leak, wondering if I should talk to Leon about Ed’s grandparents’ cabin after all. Get Sophie out of here and find someplace like that to hide out.
After I finished, I turned on the water and stood in front of the mirror, wondering if my mother had washed her hands in this sink when she arrived at the motel.
That’s when my breath stopped.
There, on the other side of the mirror, I imagined—or not so much as imagined but envisioned, saw—my mother staring back at me. She looked as if she had been dragged along the damp floor of the forest in that painting. Twigs and dead leaves in her snarled hair. Her skin gone gray, scraped, and bloody. Her breasts bruised blue and running with milk down her deflated stomach. Her eyes hollow and full of sadness. I wanted to look away from her but felt as suspended as one of those red cardinal’s hats above the altar in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a balloon tied tight to a child’s wrist so it couldn’t escape. My mother’s chapped lips began to whisper something I couldn’t make sense out of.
Baby.
Maybe.
Manger.
Too.
Baby.
Maybe.
Manger.
Too.
“What?” I said out loud.
And that’s when there was a knock at the door. I heard Jeanny’s voice say “Dominick?” and my mother disappeared.
It was my face in the mirror. My hair grown past my ears and wispy in front of my forehead. My eyes wide and frightened by what I’d just seen, or thought I’d seen. I turned off the water, and the thought hit me hard that something in my mind was slipping. Perhaps all that had happened had broken my brain somehow, left me with haunted visions in the bathro
om mirror and images of blood on the floor beside the bed. Or maybe what I had seen was another message, a sign from my mother that I should be following, if only I had understood.
Jeanny knocked again. “Dominick?”
I wiped my hands on a scratchy white washcloth and made my way to the door. When I opened up, Jeanny was standing there with her guitar case and a pizza. “If I’m not home by midnight, I’ll turn into a pumpkin,” she said.
“Midnight,” I repeated, not really listening because I was still seeing that image in the mirror, hearing that strange message echoing in my mind.
Baby.
Maybe.
Manger.
Too.
What good was a sign if you didn’t know what it meant?
“Are you okay?” Jeanny said. “You look horrible.”
“Yeah,” I told her, rubbing my eyes and trying to anchor myself in the conversation. “I’m just hungry. That’s all. The pizza smells good. Come inside.”
She stepped into the room and set the pizza box on the dresser, took off her coat and that poncho. Beneath all her layers she was wearing dark corduroys that flared at the legs, a crimson sweater with three snowflakes across her chest, a flurry of white dots on her flat stomach. Even though her breasts were small, I could tell by the way they filled her sweater—loose and low—that she wasn’t wearing a bra. My mouth went dry when I glanced down at them. The word “liberated” swam to the surface of my mind, and I pictured Jeanny burning a lacy white something on a fire, holding it out on a stick like you would a marshmallow. I knew what my father would say about bra-burners, but I didn’t let myself think about it.
“I have to admit,” Jeanny said, looking around the room, “I’ve never had a date quite like this one.”
Distracted by her breasts and that image of my mother, I said, “I have.”
Jeanny looked at me a little funny, and I realized my mistake.