by Cote Smith
The smoking lady finished her cigarette. She eyed us suspiciously and flicked the butt over the stairwell rail. She mumbled to herself. Something about no-good sons. Something like she’d be watching. She went into the apartment and slammed the door.
“She’s the worst,” my brother said.
I studied him for a moment. It was difficult to tell if he was still mad at me, if Chris was, too.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “for what I did.”
My brother frowned, as if he had forgotten about me pushing him into the pool until I reminded him. “Are you?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Then show me,” he said.
“How?”
“Don’t tell Mom. About where I went. Where I go.”
“Where did you go?”
“Just don’t tell her, OK? Keep your mouth shut and you won’t get hurt.”
He went into our apartment, leaving the door open behind him. Through the doorway I could see the length of the apartment, down the hall and into our mother’s room, and through her window. I could see the long streaks on the windowpane where, on the day we moved in, my brother and I wrote secret messages to each other, using fingers coated with spit. What the messages were I could no longer remember. But I remembered pressing our wet fingers together and making a promise. To not tell our mother. To let her find the words on her own. That, we agreed, would be much more fun.
eight
MY MOTHER GOT rides from Rick the next couple of weeks, and there was no talk of fixing the van. Every morning Rick honked for my mother, a sharp blast that always made my heart leap. I began to hate his horn, unpredictable as his leg pinch, and so I asked my mother why she had to get rides from Rick. Why not Sandy or Cornbread? My brother and I were lying on the bathroom floor, curled near our mother’s legs while she blow-dried her hair. This was something we did in the morning, if we were up early enough. We brought pillows from our room and put them at our mother’s feet. In the winter, she would pass the dryer over our bodies, cold from the tile floor.
“We have similar schedules,” my mother said. “It’s easy.”
But it didn’t seem easy. Our mother was looking more and more tired after each shift, as if each ride with Rick drained her face. She continually smelled like she did the night of her party, though not quite as strong. And if that wasn’t enough, on the days she didn’t work late, I would hear her take the cordless phone into her bedroom and shut the door. I would hear her talk, to Rick I guessed, and say things like Oh stop and What a world. In the morning she would emerge a cranky zombie who didn’t want brains. Only silence. And coffee. She needs a day off, I thought, a day with her boys at the pool. Though I knew she wouldn’t get one. If I asked, she would say if she didn’t work, there wouldn’t be any money. And if I asked couldn’t Dad help out, she would say he certainly could, then let the dead air speak for itself.
So we went to the pool. We rarely saw the smoking lady, and when we did, she barely tried to stop us. She just stood in the hall, her cigarette fidgeting in her trembling hand, calling us no good and saying we’d be back.
The water was so warm we could jump in right away. Chris came most days, though he didn’t talk to me much. In his eyes I went from pesky stableboy to traitor to the throne. Without a word I had been tried for treason, found guilty, and kicked out of the kingdom. I became mad at my brother for letting this happen, and each night I pictured myself in my mother’s room, standing over her bed. I’ve got something to tell you, I would say. We’ve been keeping a secret. Or I pictured myself at the police station, in a gray room with my dad. He’s at the pool, I would confess. The stranger you want.
But I couldn’t make myself rat my brother out. Even though it increasingly felt like I was supposed to, like in the end it would be the right thing to do. Instead, we went to the pool, and when they told me to fetch them popsicle strips, I did. When they told me to go home and leave them alone, I did that, too. It’s fine, my brother would say, if I paused too long at the gate, I’ll be home in a bit. And every day I was worried. And every day he stayed out longer. But he always came home, though what he did with Chris he would no longer say.
One morning we exited the apartment building and a police cruiser was parked in the spot reserved for our van. I though it was my dad at first, but the car light’s bar was lit up, flashing bursts of red and blue. The officer stepped out of the car and I immediately saw that it was Alan, not my dad. He did a double take when he saw us. He must have not known we lived here, with our mother. Our dad must have never told him.
“Hey there,” he said, and swallowed a breath, gathering himself. “Boy, you startled me. I thought you’d be with your pop.” A lady came out of the building opposite ours, a small kid behind her. I didn’t recognize the lady at first, but when I saw the kid I realized it was the mother and son we’d seen the day Chris was waiting in the chair outside the pool. The boy with the chalk. He was crying, and the mother was hugging him with one arm, rubbing his shoulder.
“I’ll be with you in one second, ma’am,” Alan said to the lady. He came over and walked us to our door. “I need you boys to go inside, OK? Is your mother home?” We told him no. It was just us. “OK, well, everything is fine,” Alan said. “Just go inside, and I’ll come check on you in a bit. Can you do that for me?”
We told him yes, of course we could, though we wanted to stay outside and hear what had happened, find out why the kid was crying. Why Alan’s police lights were on, but not his siren.
Alan opened the door and pushed us in, like two baby ducks. “Go on,” he said. “You be good.”
My brother marched upstairs, touched our doorknob, then marched back down to the pea-green door window. I followed him, and we took turns spying on Alan, the lady, and her kid, describing to each other what we were seeing. The lady is talking. Alan is nodding. He is jotting things down. Now the lady is pointing to her building, at a window on the second floor. Now she is crying. She is looking at the ground and shaking her head. Now she is taking her boy inside. Alan is right behind her. Now the door is closed. Now there is nothing.
“What are they doing now?” I asked my brother.
“He’s probably checking out the crime scene. Taping it off.”
I thought of the time our dad brought home the last few feet of a roll of yellow police tape. How I went upstairs one evening and found my room taped off, my brother guarding the door. Sorry, he said, can’t let you in. Official crime scene. I pushed him out of the way and opened the door. Inside, Sparky, my favorite stuffed animal, was hanging from the ceiling fan, a suicide note taped to his chest. My condolences, my brother said. I’ll notify the family.
“Do you think it’s Chris?” I asked my brother.
“Do I think what’s Chris?”
“Why Alan is here.”
“What would he want with Chris? Chris hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
“Right,” I said. “Because you’re best friends.”
I shoved the pea-green door as hard as I could and went outside, stepping on every sidewalk crack and wishing it were my brother’s or Chris’s back.
“What’s wrong with you?” my brother said. He had followed me outside and was puzzling at the weird way I was walking. “Do you want to ask Alan? I’ll ask Alan.”
I stopped my back-breaking. “What if it’s the Stranger?”
“No,” my brother said. “He wouldn’t come here. I don’t think it’s anybody.”
“How do you know?”
“Listen, if you want me to ask, I’ll ask. I guess he could know something, probably more than Dad anyway. Not that that’s hard.”
He kicked a rock down the sidewalk, in the direction of the police cruiser.
“What are you so mad at Dad about?” I said. He shook his head, said isn’t it obvious? The dull look on my face must’ve told him no, I didn’t get it. So he ran through his list of grievances. It’
s Dad’s fault we’re here in the first place, and not in our big house. It’s Dad’s fault we have to see Rick every week. It’s not Dad’s fault the Stranger escaped, but Dad’s not doing anything about it. The Stranger could be coming to kill us all and yet Dad does nothing. Dad has no leads. No clues. He says he’s going to catch him, but then he goes out, leaves us alone. Dad doesn’t care.
“He does too care,” I said.
But when my words came out, they sounded shallow. They didn’t come close to convincing myself, let alone my brother. So we went inside, forgetting to ask Alan, and the cruiser’s lights flashed behind us, without a wail, warning the Frontiers in silence.
* * *
By the time Alan came to check on us, our mother was home for what she called her mid-morning break. Really, she had stayed at Sandy’s again and had come home to change clothes before heading back to work. She didn’t ask what we’d done the night before. She didn’t check to see if we had any food left, which we didn’t. When Alan knocked on the door and my mother answered, my brother and I crept out of the room and spied. We heard Alan tell our mother about the break-in, how someone had entered a neighbor’s (the chalk family’s) apartment while they were gone. We learned what the burglar had taken: food, toiletries, nothing really valuable. They got in through the patio door, Alan said. Smashed the glass and walked right in. Actually, there had been a couple other break-ins around this area, our street and the street over. So make sure you lock up at night. Neither said what I was thinking, as I’m sure my brother was as well: What good is a lock if they throw a rock through the window?
After Alan left, our mother breezed past us into her room and changed into her work clothes. When she came back out, she had a bag like the ones we took with us to our dad’s on the weekend. She seemed surprised to see us sitting in the hall, surprised we existed at all.
“I’m assuming you heard all that,” she said. “Well.” She looked at us and scratched her big hair, like we were two strays she’d found on the street. She put her bag down. “Well, so what. This is the city we live in. If it wasn’t safe, your dad would say something.” She picked her bag back up and stood straight, as if by doing so she would prove the matter was settled. “I have plans,” she said. “With Sandy. OK? I’ve already made plans and why is it every time I want—”
“Mom,” my brother said. “No one is stopping you.”
Our mother turned from the open door, the hallway light blanketing her in a faded halo. She frowned. She nodded. Then she left.
* * *
My brother went to visit Chris at the pool. It was sprinkling and he didn’t invite me. I asked if he was going to ask Chris if he knew anything about the burglary, but he ignored me. After he left I locked the door and made a list. A list of things I didn’t want anyone to take. Not the burglar, not Chris, not the Stranger. Not anyone. Sparky, I wrote. The G.I. Joes my brother didn’t have and always wanted to borrow. I put my pencil down. I debated if I should add people to the list. I decided I should. At the top of the list, I wrote my brother’s name, without thinking why I did this, why I picked him over everyone else.
* * *
That it wasn’t Sandy my mother was staying with would have never occurred to me if not for my brother. Besides forgiving too easily, my other flaw, according to my brother, was that I believed whatever anyone said. So I believed it when my mother said she was sleeping at Sandy’s, that she did so only because the van was broken and that she sure did miss us. I would have never guessed she was spending the night with Rick, re-creating, I guessed, my mother’s birthday, their magical night on the couch.
My brother revealed this to me a few days later, one evening when I wanted to call our mom and complain that we were hungry, that we were tired of eating watered-down flakes and heels of bread that had recently celebrated the one-month anniversary of their expiration date.
“Go ahead,” my brother said, dangling a Joe from the fridge. “But she’s not at Sandy’s. She’s with Rick.”
I told him he was wrong. I asked him why Mom would leave Sandy’s number for emergencies if she was with Rick.
“Try the number,” my brother said. “You’ll see.”
I grabbed the new phone and dialed, and when Sandy answered after the first purr I turned to my brother to gloat. To say, In your stupid face. But then I thought of how Sandy had answered, what she had said: Fort Leavenworth Country Club, may I help you?
I pulled the phone away from my ear like it was a burning iron. I stared at it. On some faraway planet, Sandy said, Hello? Is there anybody there? Hello? Finally my brother took the phone out of my hands, smiled, and spoke into the receiver. “Help us,” he said, his voice slowing to an agonized groan. “We’re dying … The Stranger … He broke in … Please, somebody, help…” He hung up and returned the phone to the wall. “See,” he said. “It’s one big lie.”
Behind him, across the living/dining room, a late sun poured through the glass door. I thought about how easy it would be to climb up to our patio and break in. A lot of times the Stranger wouldn’t even need a rock. A lot of times we forgot to lock the door, wedge the stick so the door couldn’t slide.
“Why would she do that? What if something did happen?”
“You need to stop asking why,” my brother said. “Especially when it’s obvious. She’s a liar. Don’t you get that? Just like Dad.”
She may have been a liar, but thirty minutes later our mother did show up, bursting through the door in a sweaty panic. I was on the couch, trying to think of things to add to my most valuable items list.
“What the hell are you doing?” my mother said. “Are you all right?”
My brother came out of the kitchen, gnawing on the last stale cracker. “What are you doing? Shouldn’t you be at work?”
My mother slapped the cracker out of his hand. “I mean it. Which one of you did it?”
“Did what?”
“It’s not funny,” my mother said. “I want an answer.”
My brother picked up Sparky, who I had left in the living room after sleeping on the floor the night before, and held him up. “I’m sorry. On the advice of my lawyer here, I plead the fifth.”
My mother grabbed my brother by the shoulders and shook him, slammed him against the back of the couch. “Stop it! This is serious! What if—”
“What if what?” my brother said. He shoved my mother off him and stood up. “What if something had happened? You wouldn’t have been here. Or at Sandy’s. Don’t try and make us feel bad.”
“For your information—”
“And we are dying here,” my brother said. “We’re starving and you won’t even fix the van. You’re off with Rick like an idiot.”
“Hey!” my mother said. “You do not call me that.” She put her hands on her hips and started tapping her foot to some fast but silent rhythm, some angry rock song only she could hear. “Fine, you want the van back? Fine. I will get the van back. I will get the van back right now, if that’s what you want. Is that what you want, or do you want to just keep annoying the hell out of me?” I want the van back, my brother said, trying to look defiant. But his face seemed unsure. “Good,” my mother said, and she snatched Sparky from my brother’s hand. “Then we’ll start with this.”
Holding Sparky by the neck, she left the living room and we heard her stomp down the hall and kick open her bedroom door. My brother and I glanced at each other, guessing. A minute later our mother returned carrying a pile of random things: a small box of jewelry, a hair straightener, an old radio that belonged to her dad. She dropped them all on the floor like they were junk.
“What’s all that?” my brother said.
“This,” my mother said. “This is what it’s going to take. You think you’re big enough to solve adult problems. Well, here’s your chance. Go into your room and bring me your three most expensive toys.”
“What? Why?”
My mother lowered her gaze. “Adults don’t ask dumb questions. Now do it.” We
knew she was past the point of arguing, so we did as we were told. My brother brought back the action-figure fortress he rarely used, and never let me touch. I returned with a robotic dog I played with when I felt like I was forgetting Baron. The dog came with a two-button remote. The first button made the dog speak. The second, shake. It belonged on the list.
“What are you doing?” my brother said.
She took the toys from my brother and threw them in a bag. “Just what I said. I’m going to get the van back.”
“Hey, you can’t do that.”
“This is what you wanted,” my mother said. “Remember? Besides, aren’t you getting too old for toys? You should be outside, exploring the world.”
We followed her into the living room as she searched for her keys. “You won’t let us,” my brother said.
“Well, what do you need toys for? You have the pool.”
“You won’t take us. You only let us go once by ourselves.” Even now my brother wouldn’t reveal that we had been sneaking out to the pool against our mother’s orders.
“Look, do you want to eat or what?” our mother said. “There they are.” She threw her keys in her purse and grabbed her big sunglasses. She put them on inside, so we couldn’t look her in the eye when she said goodbye, or maybe so she wouldn’t have to look at us.
“This isn’t fair,” my brother said. “We didn’t do anything.”
“Well, sorry, but that’s the way of the world. This is what has to be done. Now stay put. When I get back, we’ll go for ice cream or something.”
My brother tried to protest. “I don’t want—”
“Be quiet!” my mother yelled. “OK? Stop being a brat! Nobody cares what you want. Not right now. Just wait here and shut up.”
She stared at him hard, until my brother folded his arms and went to the couch, kicking it before he sat down. Yes, our mother said, kick the couch. Be like your dad. That’ll help. Then she left, the bag of valuables thrown over her shoulder like she’d got her wish and was leaving our city for good.