Not even if what I’ve done is save the world. Not even that is enough.
"Thank you," says Mike the Future Man, getting to his feet. "We’ll take good care of him."
"It’s...his birthday," I say, my voice so hoarse it doesn’t sound like me anymore.
"I know," says Mike.
"Tell Sean...I love him," I say.
Mike takes a last look at me and turns toward the shimmering window. "That I won’t do," he says, and then he leaps through the window and is gone.
And so is the window.
And so am I, through a different window...one that opens in my mind, giving way to silence and darkness and emptiness.
*****
My boy disappeared while I was stoned on crack, passed out in the bed of some woman whose name I don’t even remember.
I left Sean alone in our apartment, if you want to call it that. I didn’t think anything of it, even though he was just five years old...or I guess it’d be more accurate to say I didn’t give a damn. I had more important things on my mind, like getting stoned out of my mind.
I never did find out exactly how he got taken. Maybe he let the guy in, or maybe he just wandered off. All I know is, when I stumbled in the next morning, the door was wide open and Sean was gone.
This didn’t make much of an impression on me, believe it or not. I figured he’d turn up sooner or later. Maybe he was at the neighbor lady’s or running around with the other kids in the building. Whatever.
The truth is, Sean didn’t make much of an impression on me at all back then, whether I was stoned or not. I tuned him out like the noise from a neighbor’s TV set or the traffic outside my window. Fed him candy bars and cereal and beat his ass when he wouldn’t shut up. Locked him in a closet when I had company.
Raised him the only way I knew how.
I’d told his crackhead mother I didn’t want him, and she’d dumped him off on me anyway. The way I saw it, he was lucky not to be out on the streets with her.
Lucky.
Later, after I changed, I thought back on how I was and how I’d treated him, and it was enough to make me sick to my stomach. I even asked Mike the Future Man if he could send me back in time to knock some sense into my sorry ass before it was too late.
Mike told me even if he could have sent me back, the old me was such a dumbass it wouldn’t have made any difference...and I know he was right.
*****
I wish I could say I got my act together before long and started hunting my boy, but that’d be a lie. It took old Mrs. Pendleton from next-door to get my ass in gear, and that not even till the next day. The day after the day after Sean went away.
Like I said, I wasn’t worried. The thought that he might never come back didn’t occur to me. The main thing on my mind was hitting the street and scoring some more crack.
Finding happiness, in other words.
So my first day without Sean went pretty much like all the days with him. I pawned a watch from a guy I’d mugged and used the cash to buy my high. I smoked my pipe in an alley and spent the rest of the day making the rounds. Sat in the park with the rest of the crackheads and drunks and retards, talking nonsense. Got another buzz thanks to a ladyfriend who shared her crack with me. Watched another day go by like a boring movie I wasn’t paying much attention to.
And when I got home...
Well, the truth is, when I got home, I didn’t notice that Sean still wasn’t there. I fell asleep in front of the TV eating dry cereal, and the boy didn’t cross my mind for a minute.
Even though it was his favorite cereal I was eating.
*****
The next morning, I woke up to someone pounding on my apartment door. I tried to ignore it, but it just got louder.
Then, I heard Mrs. Pendleton yelling in the hallway, telling me to get out there or she’d go get the super to open the door. I knew she’d do it, too, so I dragged my ass out of bed.
"Where’s that boy of yours?" she said. "Where’s Sean? He missed his readin’ lesson yesterday and now today, too."
The only thing that sunk in at first was that I didn’t know she was even giving him reading lessons. "What’re you talkin’ about?" I said, rubbing my eyes so hard they squeaked.
Mrs. Pendleton smacked my hand away from my eyes. "Wake up, dumbskull!" she said, her own eyes looking about ten times normal size from behind her thick glasses. "Don’t you even know where your own boy is?"
Mrs. Pendleton was like a hundred years old and weighed about twenty-five pounds. She’d probably snap like a wishbone if I hit her like I wanted to...but the real reason I didn’t pop her one was that she intimidated me, believe it or not. Other people put me down and beat me down, but she was the only one who could make me feel small.
I shrugged. "I thought he was with you," I said, thinking I’d make her feel bad by shifting the blame onto her.
"How long has he been gone?" she said, her voice getting louder and angrier with every word.
"About a day," I said, trying to downplay it.
"And you don’t know where he is?"
"Maybe he’s down at Mrs. Dugan’s," I said, "or out with those Valozzi kids."
Mrs. Pendleton’s voice grew quiet all of a sudden. "I already checked," she said, "because I knew your crackhead fool self would be too lazy to do it. No one in the building’s seen Sean for two days."
"Wow," I said, shaking my head, trying to act like this news was making an impact on me...which it should have, but it wasn’t.
"Have you called the police?" said Mrs. Pendleton.
"I was just getting ready to," I lied, looking over my shoulder in the direction of the phone.
"Then it’s a good thing I’m here," said Mrs. Pendleton, pushing past me into my apartment. "I’ll make sure you don’t dial the wrong number and end up talkin’ to one of your crackhead buddies instead."
I sighed and followed her in. The sad part was, she was right about me wanting to call someone about crack instead of calling the cops about my son.
*****
By the time the NYPD was done with me, I thought I would’ve been better off calling my crackhead buddies.
No surprise there.
They didn’t seem to be real sympathetic. They took down what I told them, but I knew their minds were made up. From the questions they asked and the looks on their faces, I could tell they thought that I’d done something to Sean.
Sold him for drugs, maybe. Killed him on purpose or accidentally and got rid of the body.
Same old same old.
If Mrs. Pendleton hadn’t been in the apartment with us, I doubt they’d even have pretended to be interested in doing anything to find Sean other than beating a confession out of me. Mrs. Pendleton, though...she pushed like a boozehound demanding one more drink after last call. She said she was going to check in with their boss every hour on the hour until they found Sean. She gave them photos from her own scrapbook, because I didn’t have a single picture of him. She said that she might be an old woman, but by God if they didn’t give this baby as much attention as some rich child from the suburbs, she had ways of making them wish they were dead with a capital "P" as in "pain."
They treated her respectfully after that, but I saw them give each other funny looks on their way out like they could barely hold back the laughter. They almost forgot to take Sean’s photos with them, and Mrs. Pendleton had to hobble out and call them back to get them.
So I didn’t expect much help from the cops. If anything, I figured they’d haul me in and convict me of child killing before the week was out.
And frankly, even in the hazy frame of mind I was in back then, I couldn’t blame them for treating me that way. I hated them...but I understood their point of view.
If I was in their shoes, I would’ve thought I’d done it, too.
*****
Mrs. Pendleton wasn’t stupid, I’ll give her that. I don’t think she had much more confidence in the cops than I did.
As soon as they lef
t, she started talking about getting the neighborhood to band together and search for Sean. She wanted to take pictures door to door and ask everyone if they’d seen him. She wanted to put up photos on every lamppost and bus bench and phone booth and in every business and playground and park. She was going to call the ministers and priests and rabbis and gangbangers and newspapers and TV stations. Whatever it took.
And she expected me to do my part. I think she thought my being afraid of her would outweigh my selfishness and stupidity.
Maybe it would have, if I hadn’t been jonesing at the time.
Mrs. Pendleton barked at me for like a half hour about how it was time for me to step up and how my baby’s life depended on it. How even though I’d been good for nothing, I still had it in me like all God’s creatures to be good for something, even if it was just one thing...and that something was saving the life of a precious child.
When the lecture was over, she told me she was going next-door to get her purse and her sweater, and then the two of us were going to get the ball rolling. Time was running out for my little boy, she said.
Time was running out for me, too. The I-need-crack alarm clock in the pit of my stomach was going off like crazy, bringing on the sweats and the shakes.
I was gone before she got back to my apartment. I may have said something about Sean to my buddies on the street while I was getting high, but that was all I did to search for my son that day.
*****
Early the next morning, I woke to the sound of more pounding...this time from the wall behind my bed. I rolled over, pulling the pillow over my head to block out the noise, but it did no good. More than anything, I wanted to fall back asleep, but the pounding pounding pounding wouldn’t let me rest...and then I heard Mrs. Pendleton’s voice hollering from the other side of the wall, from inside her apartment.
Answer your damn door Sonny, get up and answer your damn door you miserable lowlife moron it’s about your boy it’s news about Sean not that you give a damn answer your door answer your door.
"Shut up!" I said, pounding my fist on the wall. "Shut up!"
There was a pause, and then her voice came through clearer than ever, as if she’d gotten right up to the wall and cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted as loud as she could.
"The police are here!" she said. "It’s about Sean!"
I really wanted to stay in bed after hearing that. I would have, if I hadn’t been stupid enough to let Mrs. Pendleton know I was there. If I didn’t go out and face them, they’d get in sooner or later and get me.
As I pulled on a pair of jeans, I thought about ducking out the window and down the fire escape. This was the time I’d known was coming, the time when the cops show up to bring me in and squeeze that murder confession out of me. It was the only reason I could think that they were there.
But going out the window would just put off the inevitable. Either I paid up now or paid up later...and running would just make it worse for me later.
So I went to the door.
And what happened after that was terrible, but not in the way I’d expected.
*****
Even as they walked me down the hallway toward the morgue, it didn’t hit me. Step step step like a dream like a blurry memory step step
Step.
But something buzzing deep inside me something wrong.
Buzzing louder later, after they let me go and I wrapped my hands around the crack pipe and burned my thumb on the lighter and breathed deep.
Step.
At the door of my apartment: We need you to come down and identify.
Getting closer to the double doors and everything was too loud but faraway at the same time. I walked between the two cops but they kept their distance, and I didn’t think about my son I thought about someone else.
Later, my brain was fried and the sun was down and I thought of him again, I thought of my father.
Step.
Inside the morgue, they rolled out the drawer and peeled back the sheet and I dove into that face with a panic I’d never expected
Before they pulled the sheet away, time stopped. The outline of a nose, a chin, a shoulder. Someone was saying, are you ready?
Dove into that face with a panic but it blurred at first and I wondered if something had wiped away the features.
Step.
At my apartment in the morning, it should have meant something right away something big but it didn’t. We need you to come down and identify a body.
Hands cupped around the crack pipe, sun beating down, I tried to remember his face my father’s face but all I saw was a blur
And then the child’s face cleared. It came into focus.
People beating me in the street that night laughing calling me baby killer and I curled up in a ball and these people these people were my friends. Thinking about my father but not because he beat me he never beat me but because he was my friend too I thought but he wasn’t.
The outline of a nose under the sheet. Are you ready? The cop reaching for the sheet. I’m jonesing and I wonder how long it will be until I can go get high again.
The cop rolling out the drawer. Would he give me twenty bucks if I asked him?
We walked into the morgue and I thought to myself I swear to God I thought to myself this could be a good thing, the weight of him gone and me being free and not having to throw money away on that damn kid it would be a relief.
But when the sheet peeled away, I dove into that face.
When it came into focus, the buzzing got louder.
Step step step down the hallway.
The face looked just like Sean’s and I stood there and stared at it and someone said, is that him? Is that him? Is that him?
Is that your son?
Later, in the street, I thought they were done with me but then they all pissed on me at once laughing.
Yes, that’s him, I said, reaching out my hand to touch his face and I didn’t feel that relief I thought I’d feel and my hand was shaking and just as my fingers brushed his cheek
Deep deep breath on the crack pipe in the sunlight
Like magic, just as my fingers brushed his cheek
Twenty, thirty, a hundred years ago the blurry face I still can’t see the smell of cigarettes the roughness of his cheek my father’s cheek and it’s as if
It’s as if when he disappeared he took my memory of him with him.
Like magic, just as my fingers brushed the dead boy’s cheek, his face became someone else’s. It’s not him I say it’s not Sean.
Step.
But it could have been. It still could be. Same room same drawer same sheet same is that him? same outline of a nose same cops same me.
And then for a moment I wondered if I was standing there at all or if I was looking into the future somehow having a vision of what was to come it felt like a dream.
Buzzing deep inside. I got high but the buzzing wouldn’t stop. Got my ass kicked but the buzzing wouldn’t stop.
And when they were done with me in the street when my crackhead buddies were done with me I threw up and it felt like I was throwing up everything, everything I was everything I wanted everything except the outline of the nose under the sheet.
And in that one clear moment the first in a hundred million years I finally realized that there wasn’t enough crack in the world to make things better and not only that but there never had been.
*****
When you watch the moon on a clear night, the only way you can tell it’s moving is when you look away and then look back and see it’s in a new place in the sky. It doesn’t seem to be going anywhere when you stare at it, but it’s moving all the time.
If someone had been watching me crawl home after getting beat by my onetime buddies, I bet I would’ve looked like that, like I was hardly moving at all. Likewise, in the days to come, I’m sure I didn’t look like I was changing much inside.
But I was.
I laid around the apartment and watched TV and
drank, and that’s what I mean when I say I didn’t look like I was changing. Didn’t lift a finger to look for my son. Waited for my I-need-crack alarm to go off, which it did pretty much right on schedule.
But what was different was that I didn’t answer the alarm. I didn’t jump up and run out and buy my high or run out and find money to buy my high or try to find someone to sweet talk into letting me share their high.
The first day like that was easy, because I was too beat-up and sick to leave the bed, let alone the apartment. The next day was a little less easy, because now I wasn’t hurting quite so bad, but the jones was like a thousand times worse.
But I didn’t go out for a taste or a second hand whiff or a contact high. I thought about it a lot, even went for the door a bunch of times, but I never made it out.
It was that dead boy in the morgue that did it, the one I’d thought at first was Sean. The nose poking up the sheet. It kept coming back to me.
The way I’d felt before I’d realized it wasn’t Sean. Like someone had ripped me off, cheated me out of something that was worth more than I’d thought. A piece of junk that had always been in the way had turned out to be valuable.
Even though the boy in the morgue hadn’t been Sean, I felt like when I first saw him I was seeing my son for the first time, too. Seeing him as a human being instead of a noise or a pain or an obstacle.
Remembering he had a face.
It was like my boy had been walking around his whole life with a sheet over him, walking around like that for so long that I’d thought he was nothing but sheet...and by the time I finally remembered someone was under there and pulled off the sheet, he really was gone.
But here’s what really got me. People thought I’d sold him for crack...and the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was true. I’d sold off everyone and everything a long time ago, sold it all for crack.
And now I was empty-handed, and everyone and everything that truly could have made me happy was scattered around the world or broken or dead or fading away with each passing moment like a dying high.
Scifi Motherlode Page 21