The Borrower

by Rebecca Makkai

  “Why did you say my name was Joey?” he asked. He was touching every single piece of clothing we passed. I was happy that he thought to bring his backpack inside with him rather than leave it with Glenn, and I was happy that the lethargic, teenaged salespeople didn’t seem to mind his trudging through their store with an overloaded pack, knocking into all the displays.

  “Because I think I’ve talked about you before.”

  “Really?” He looked amazed and ecstatic. He stuck his hand up the wrong end of a sweater sleeve. “What did you say?”

  I was about to make up something silly, something about how the library was going to start charging him rent, when I realized this might be an opportunity. I said, “I told him you have very good instincts about who you are and what you like, and that I hope you won’t let other people ever change your mind.”

  “It sounds like you were giving one of those really boring speeches from assembly. You should have told him I was good at computer solitaire, which is true, because I’m the absolute master.”

  “Help me find some warm shirts,” I said.

  I’d found four of them and a puffy orange coat when Ian came skipping back up to me holding a red cotton dress, the scoop-necked, short-sleeved variety of awkward length that belongs on a third grade teacher. Or a librarian. It was probably the only dress they sold here. “You should get this, in case we go to a fancy restaurant.”

  “Like McDonald’s?” I said, but I took the hanger anyway. He threw his backpack onto the floor of my dressing room, and I told him I’d meet him back out there in ten minutes.

  I tried on the shirts, long-sleeved and almost identical in red and blue and black and green. I noticed in the mirror that my rash was clearing up. I felt the backs of my legs, and they were a lot better too, less crusty and hot. So it had been the desk chair all along, and if I got back to Hannibal in one piece, I’d tell Dr. Chen. I’d buy a new chair myself, or one of those huge yoga balls.

  My face, on the other hand, was a mess now—stress acne and dark circles and dry, peeling lips—and perhaps that’s why the orange coat made me look like such a convict. I stared at myself in the mirror and tried to get used to it. I imagined handcuffs and ankle weights. By the time I took the coat off it felt like my own, so I decided I’d buy it even though I didn’t particularly care for it. This was my usual approach to purchasing clothes. If something felt right, like I’d owned it all along, I had to get it. I realized this was also my approach to kidnapping.

  I felt dizzy suddenly, from the fluorescent lights and the cramped dressing room, and I sat down with my head between my knees. Ian’s backpack was there on the floor, crammed impossibly full with his runaway gear. The twig from his now disassembled knapsack was sticking out, preventing the zipper from closing all the way. As I waited for the blood to return to my head, I unzipped it and poked around the top layer. A flannel shirt, three pairs of folded socks, his retainer case. With his phone number on both sides, in purple marker.

  I think I took action so quickly right then in part because I wanted to prove to myself that I always would have, if only I’d had the Drakes’ number. It had been part of the story I’d been telling myself in order to sleep at night. I stuck my head out the door to make sure Ian wasn’t standing right there, then whipped out my phone and dialed as fast as I could. But before I even heard a ring, I had managed to think through the fact that this was my own cell phone, traceable and registered, and that I had absolutely no idea what I’d say to the Drakes that wouldn’t make things worse or upset them tremendously or lead to our being swarmed by police on the highway within the next fifteen minutes. I pushed the hang-up button so hard I hurt my thumb.

  I found a pen in my purse and copied the number onto the back of my checkbook. I knew that if I had a few hours to think, and if there were any pay phones left in America, I could work something out.

  I stuffed the retainer case back in the backpack and stood to look at the red dress in the mirror. I slowed my breathing, and tried to slow my pulse. I pivoted my hips, and the skirt flew out around me.

  I bought it, along with the other things. Maybe I was feeling rich. Walking to the register, I almost joked aloud to Ian that the dress was useful in case I needed to prostitute myself. Then I remembered he was ten.

  When we got back to the car, there was Glenn, smoking what was probably his third cigarette.

  “Isn’t that illegal?” Ian asked me.

  “What, smoking? No.”

  He waved one hand rapidly in front of his face as he approached the car. He was holding his breath.

  I hadn’t smoked since college, but right then, the smoke smelled sweet and light and a little like oranges, and I had the urge to put my mouth right onto the other end of Glenn’s cigarette and inhale the flame and leaves and everything.

  Instead, I got into the car with Ian and waited for Glenn to finish. How responsible of me, I thought. It occurred to me that if I never got rid of Ian, this would be my life for the next eight years, that of the responsible single mother sacrificing so her boy could have a decent life. I wanted a cigarette now even more.

  In the car, Glenn told me a story about the guest conductor he’d worked with in Chicago, how he was ninety years old and they had the defibrillator kit ready backstage just in case, how Glenn had been terrified that every time he hit the bass drum the man was going to keel over. “I mean, it was fucking terrifying,” he said.

  I gave him a look.

  “Oh, the kid’s heard the word before, right, Joey? What are you, seven? Eight?”

  “Seven,” Ian said. I checked the rearview. He had the best poker face I’d ever seen on a child.

  “No kidding. You’re a big guy. When I was seven I liked cheeseburgers. You like cheeseburgers?”

  “Yummy!”

  “So anyway, I’m hitting this drum, and I look up, and the guy is covered in flop sweat, and so I look over at the timpanist, and he starts mouthing something to me.”

  I tuned Glenn out and listened to Ian’s singing instead. He had left off the Australian anthem and begun “Hava Nagila,” which he probably had learned in school. At this rate, at least Glenn’s testimony might ultimately confuse a jury. “I swear, your honor, he was a Jewish kid, no more than seven years old. His uncle was from Venezuela.”

  We stopped for gas near the Ohio border, and although there was a pay phone, it was right out there in front, and I couldn’t use it without Ian knowing. Instead, in a fit of immaturity, I decided to buy a pack of Camels, just to have on hand. It felt good to stick them, with a new green plastic lighter, into the pocket of my purse, right next to my passport—like a little nicotine lifejacket. Ian was in the bathroom, and Glenn was filling three cups with Slushees.

  Ian drank most of his just on the walk back to the car. He was skipping ahead of us. “I dig your little friend,” Glenn said.

  “He’s a riot, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I hope we can grab some alone time in Cleveland. Have you been to the art museum?”

  I had spent much of our time in the car frantically thinking of ways to ditch Glenn before we got that far. If this were a movie, I’d have to kill him. This would lead, inevitably, to a series of three more murders of escalating desperation, and finally it would be some stupid detail—the lights I’d left on in the library, for instance—that would do me in. But I hadn’t come up with a real plan yet. The breakup seemed wisest, and even better would be getting him to break up with me, leaving of his own volition. Kick him out, and I’d make him suspicious or vindictive.

  “Yeah, I’m not really into art museums,” I lied. I was going to hell for that one. Among other things. “I don’t really see the point.”

  “Something else, then.”

  I stopped walking in the middle of the parking lot. “Listen, I’ve been meaning to say. Your premiere. That I went to. Which was great.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, it’s funny—do you know those Mr. Clean ads? That they’ve
had forever?”

  “What?”

  “Okay, it’s ‘Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean, da da DA da, da da DA da . . .’ You know what I’m talking about, right?”

  “No.” He laughed and shook his head, as if this were something cute and not me telling him his career was a travesty.

  “Yeah, it’s the same tune as your song. Your piece, I mean. The same melody.”

  “Okay.”

  “No, you don’t get it.”

  “I get it. Same tune.” He was trying to kiss me.

  “No, listen: ‘da da DA da, da da DA da . . .’ Don’t you recognize that?”

  He stared into space like he was trying to remember something. “Shit,” he said.

  I’d given Ian the keys, so he was already waiting for us in the backseat, holding up the shoebox and shaking it around. He put it down when we got in.

  “So, Dude,” Ian said as we merged back on the highway. “Tell us about your new movie, Dude.” He shoved a fistful of invisible microphone between the two front seats. “I hear you’re in love with Julia Roberts.”

  Glenn wasn’t amused. He looked like he was still lost in his head, reaching back through time to the commercials of his youth, thinking through his piece. He stretched his neck and rubbed his chin. He hadn’t shaved, and the stubble was coming in whitish gray, like the hair just above his temples and brow.

  “Miss Hull, how did you first meet Dude, and why doesn’t he ever say anything?”

  Glenn snapped out of his trance and looked at me. “Did he just call you ‘Miss Hull’?” he said.

  Before Ian could make something up, I said, “His mother is big on respect for adults.”

  Glenn laughed and looked back at Ian. “I see,” he said. “Very respectful, dude.”

  Ian said, “I only respect ladies.” That was the end of it, and even when we stopped for dinner at a sit-down chain just outside Cleveland, Glenn didn’t say anything except to order his turkey burger and curly fries.

  The relish with which Ian guzzled his chocolate milk suggested he wasn’t normally allowed to have it. “So, Mr. Dude, did you know that Miss Hull’s dad ran a chocolate factory?” Glenn didn’t even seem aware that Ian was talking to him. “But Miss Hull, that wasn’t a true story, was it? It didn’t make any sense. I think he was kidding.”

  “I think you might be right.” I’d put it out of my mind, but really, some of the dizziness and fuzzy-headedness I’d been feeling all day had to do with that realization, the idea that the rug of my family history might have just been yanked out from under me.

  “But he really is Russian, right? Because he had a really good accent.”

  In my state of mind, it actually took me a second while I made sure I could recall him speaking fluent Russian on many specific occasions to other, legitimate Russians before I could answer confidently.

  As soon as the food came and Ian started in on his BLT, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. As I’d hoped, there was a pay phone in the back hallway. I stuffed in a bunch of coins and took out my checkbook and punched in the number. I knew it was a huge risk to call from the place where we were stopping, but we would drive a few miles farther after dinner, and they couldn’t comb the whole area by eight in the morning. Regardless of whether it was Mr. or Mrs. Drake who answered, or even the police themselves, I would say the same thing I’d practiced.

  In the car that afternoon, I had considered calling to tell them that Ian was at the Cleveland Museum of Art, then leaving him there on the steps and speeding off to the airport with Glenn, getting the first flight to Puerto Rico, or the farthest point for which Glenn wouldn’t need a passport. I’d tell Glenn I was being spontaneous. And then I’d either run away even farther or sit tight and wait to be arrested. But to be honest, it wasn’t a serious scenario. I wasn’t ready to face jail, I wasn’t ready to leave behind my entire country, and I didn’t want Glenn to be blamed for anything. And if I were just going to toss Ian back, without his being ready, without his gaining some kind of magical strength to face the next eight years of his life, then what had all this been for? As accidental as it all had been, surely there must have been some kind of point.

  And so I’d settled on two carefully worded sentences of reassurance. I was prepared even for Pastor Bob himself to answer the phone. What I wasn’t prepared for was Ian answering. There was his voice, distinctive and adenoidal, after four rings. “Hello?” I almost slammed the phone down but managed to hold onto it. “Hello, this is the Drakes? Please leave a message for the Drakes.” I did hang up the phone then, but softly, and my arm was actually shaking, all the way up to the shoulder. I had logical reasons for hanging up—top among them, not wanting my voice to be played back and analyzed, broadcast on the news—but more than that, I felt that leaving a message with Ian himself (which is somehow what it felt like) would be a worse betrayal than simply saying quickly to Mr. Drake, “I’ve seen your son. He’s in good hands, and he’ll be home soon.” And it was a betrayal I hadn’t prepared myself for.

  Walking back to the table, I felt irrationally angry at the Drakes for not being home. Had they gone out to dinner? They were probably at a prayer meeting. A candlelight vigil. But still. What if that had been Ian himself calling, and they’d missed their chance? Or maybe they were screening their calls, tired of well-wishers and people offering casseroles. But it helped to have a reason to be angry with them. (Another one, on top of the Pastor Bob issue.) I was looking for all the justification I could find.

  Ian had stuck all four frilly toothpicks into one quarter of his BLT, and he was telling Glenn about his Ultimate Symphony. Glenn looked like he was in pain. “And then what would be even cooler, would be that you rent out this huge room, or like a stadium or something, and you have a hundred Big Ben clocks all the way around, and then they all play it at once. Only it would have to be computerized, right? Because otherwise if just one guy messed up, it would sound very awkward. Would that be illegal, to use the Big Ben theme song? Do you think they would sue me?”

  Instead of answering, Glenn flagged down the waitress and ordered a martini.

  I made a valiant effort to change the subject. “There was a girl in my high school orchestra who fell asleep once in the middle of a concert. She was a flute player, and she just fell asleep with her head on the music stand.” She had been on drugs, of course, but I figured it made the story less interesting. Ian spent the rest of dinner pretending to be narcoleptic.

  On the way out, he grabbed two handfuls of red and white mints from the counter and shoved them into his pockets. I wondered if we could live on them in an emergency.

  Glenn was under the impression that we were dropping Ian at his grandmother’s that night, but I explained that he would stay with us in the hotel, because she wouldn’t be ready for him until the morning. At the front desk I asked for three separate rooms, and Glenn didn’t stop me. Presuming that I accomplished the break tonight, he’d need a place to sleep away from me. I went to my room to brush my teeth and plan the attack, but before I could even spit out my toothpaste Glenn was knocking on the door.

  “What?” I said.

  He walked right by me and sat down on the edge of the bed, on the peach-flowered bedspread, and said, “Lucy, what the hell is going on?”

  I turned the desk chair to face the room and sat down. “The mother is very sick,” I said. “What do you mean?”

  He shook his head like he was trying to get water out of his ears. “I was sitting there in my room thinking, and the more I think, the weirder it gets. For starters, you come to Chicago and don’t pack a single change of clothes? And the kid is going to live with his grandmother, right, but all he brings is one backpack.”

  “He’s just staying with her,” I said. “For a week or two.”

  “No schoolbooks? And why isn’t he calling his mom?”

  I stood up. “You think this is a detective novel? It’s really not all that fascinating. And I’m sure he’ll call from the room.”

  “T
hen,” he said, like a prosecuting attorney with a cornered witness, “at dinner, you say ‘this girl at my high school.’ I thought you said his mom went to Latin. So you’d say ‘our high school,’ or you’d just say ‘Latin.’”

  “Are you trying to make a citizen’s arrest? You’re being ridiculous.”

  He lay back on the bed like he owned it and looked up at the ceiling. “I mean, is he your kid or something?”

  I practically shouted, but more out of relief than anger. I was almost laughing. “You think he’s my son?”

  “It would make sense. Maybe he lives with your parents, you went to pick him up, you’re taking him to see his dad, I don’t know.”

  I really was laughing now. I was laughing so hard that I wanted to flop on the bed, but not beside Glenn, so I sat back on the chair. “You think my sixty-year-old parents are raising my son while I live in Hannibal, of all places? And then you think I dated you and kept him a secret. And he calls me Miss Hull.”

  He propped himself up on his elbows. His face was scrunched into an angry-little-boy expression. God, he was jealous. “Then what the hell is the deal?”

  I said, “You’re not in a thriller movie, Glenn. His mother is very sick, but that’s as far as the drama goes. Look, if you’re really this worked up, maybe we just need some breathing room. Maybe you should let us do our own thing tomorrow. You could go to the art museum by yourself while I drop him off.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, that’s probably best. I mean, I’ll ride with you into the city, and then I need some time to clear my head.” I’d still have to figure out how to ditch him for good tomorrow, but this was a decent start. He stood up and walked out of my room without saying good night. I wasn’t worried about him grilling Ian tomorrow, because I knew he’d just sit there sulking, more of a ten-year-old than the actual ten-year-old.

  I tried to open my window and couldn’t. It was a smoking room, though, so I lit the first cigarette of the pack and sat on the chair, as far from the flammable bedspread as I could get. I’d forgotten how the smoke can almost burn your throat, how you really are inhaling something hot. The room turned clear and smooth and vibrant, and my fingers and feet buzzed. I turned on the TV and found, of all things, the movie version of The Fugitive. I watched the second half and imagined what would have happened if Ian and I had decided not to take Glenn with us, if we had run instead all over Chicago, across the green-dyed river, hiding in skyscrapers. I fell asleep and dreamed the same thing.