Spy Mom

by Beth McMullen

  Simon makes note of my silence. “What shocks you more, Sally?” he asks, his voice in neutral. “The fact that someone got to Gray or that they want you, too?”

  “It’s not possible,” I say, immediately aware of how ridiculous I sound. Gray had a small army following him everywhere he went. He wasn’t even allowed to take a pee by himself. “How could this happen?”

  “The Director is gone.”

  I feel sick. Whoever these people are, if they can get to Director Gray, they can get to anyone. And they’re asking for me. My tongue is dry and thick in my mouth and my heart continues to smash up against my rib cage. Theo wanders back into the kitchen, holding a sword and a light saber.

  “Mom, you look weird,” he says. “Like a funny color. Can I have some orange juice? How do you spell ‘juice’?”

  “Mommy’s on the phone, Theo. Get it yourself. J-U-I-C-E.”

  “Is that all you have to say, Sally?” Simon asks.

  “S-H-I-T,” I say. “Is that better?”

  As I’m still sitting on the floor, an unexpected thought pops into my head and that is, I wish they had taken me and not Gray. This particular wish has always been reserved for when Theo is sick or unhappy and I think life would be so much easier if I could just take the pain from him onto myself. But this wish has no place with Director Gray.

  “It’s the photograph,” I say to myself, thinking about the faded Polaroid hidden in my underwear drawer. “Director Gray is in the photograph.”

  “Sally, can you stop muttering and spelling and being strange, and focus?” Simon says, annoyed.

  “Yes,” I say, wondering when I lost the ability to have a thought and not say it out loud.

  “You will drop Theo off early and meet me at your favorite coffee shop,” he says with an authority befitting his station.

  “Forget it,” I say. “I have a parent-teacher conference at Theo’s preschool this morning.”

  There is a heavy pause. “Your priorities are a bit skewed,” Simon says slowly.

  I don’t expect him to understand how some chitchat with Theo’s teacher could take precedence over national security. Simon has never so much as owned a goldfish, let alone a creature of more substantial needs.

  “Parenting is not something you do just when you feel like it,” I say. I think I read that in a magazine last month and I’m horrified to have repeated it out loud. I want to kick myself. But there’s no need because Simon will take care of that for me.

  “Neither is saving the world,” he says. “A responsible parent might consider that, Sally.”

  His being right does not help things at all.

  “Can you please stop calling me ‘Sally’?” I grumble.

  “Sally, Lucy, Agent 26,” Simon says. “Does it matter?”

  Yes. Because my name is not Sally Sin. Sally Sin was a silly joke that, in the long run, turned out to be on me. But my name is not really Lucy Hamilton, either. Of course, I have a real name, the one the second-grade teacher barked at me when I was passing notes or pulling hair. But only a handful of people know this name and it’s been so long that if I hear it called out in a crowd, I no longer turn in its direction.

  “Things are bad, Sally,” Simon says and something in his tone halts any further protests from me. A lump the size of a tennis ball forms in my throat. In another minute, I will choke on it.

  “Okay,” I say, defeated. In the end, there is no getting around that Theo lives in this world, good, bad, or ugly, and so do I. “I’ll meet you.”

  Having nothing more to add and no use for the niceties of civilized society, Simon hangs up on me without saying good-bye.

  4

  Happy Times Preschool is a small school with a sunny yellow front door. There are many things to recommend it but the most important is that there’s only one way in and one way out and that’s through the perky yellow door that I just mentioned. Theo attends four days a week for three hours, during which time I sit at the corner table in the Java Luv coffee shop across the street. I sit and I watch that yellow front door and I make sure no one goes in who is not meant to be there.

  When Theo went to preschool only twice a week my door vigil wasn’t so bad but now that he is up to four mornings, even I will admit it’s getting a little ridiculous. I have tried reading magazines and even knitting but with one eye always glued to the door, the scarves were coming out lopsided. Leonard, the tattooed dreadlocked barista, is convinced I’m flat out crazy and he’s now comfortable enough with my presence to voice his opinions on the subject.

  “Talk about helicopter parenting,” he’ll say, cleaning the glass on the front of the pastry display. “You’re so obsessed you’re going to chop the little guy’s head right off his body if you get any closer.”

  I don’t answer. I can’t explain to Leonard how it looks when someone has actually had his head chopped off, about how the blood pulses out of the severed arteries and sometimes the eyes still move, searching for some explanation in those final seconds. The people I used to spend all my time with didn’t think much about decapitation. Or, for that matter, any of the other unpleasant ways you can kill someone. And that’s why I sit at Java Luv every day and watch the yellow door. I know that sometimes the boogeyman does show up. And when that happens, I want to be sure I’m here to kick his teeth in.

  I’m thinking about the actual kicking-in of teeth and how you need to be really limber to pull it off with any grace as we climb the steps to school. Claire, who used to be an investment banker and brings the same intensity to parenting, stands to the side of the front door, thumbs flying furiously over her smartphone. My feelings about smartphones are unambiguous. If the phone is so smart, why can’t it fold the socks? When I ask this of people, they give me the blank look, the one that says I obviously don’t get it. But I do. Don’t call something smart unless it is.

  Claire is part of the mommy posse, my lady friends with children roughly Theo’s age. We met at the playground one dreary afternoon, all of us armed with baby wipes, enormous Starbucks cups, and expressions of dull desperation. By afternoon snack time, the five of us were fast friends.

  And Sam, too. I shouldn’t forget Sam even though he’s not a mom, exactly. He’s a grandfather who acts as primary caregiver for his grandson Carter, because his own son and daughter-in-law cannot afford San Francisco living and a nanny. Something had to give and that ended up being Sam. Now he gives every day for ten hours straight, thus earning himself honorary mom status from us and sad pats on the back from his retiree friends.

  Claire mutters to herself and doesn’t notice me until I’m standing directly in front of her. Then she jumps.

  “Oh, Lucy,” she says. “I didn’t see you there. Why are you here so early?”

  Because the federal government told me to hurry up?

  Claire is always here early. Her son, Owen, will sit quietly on the steps while Claire diligently stretches her hamstrings in preparation for a spin class that she swears brings her right to the edge of puking. And she says this like it’s a good thing. She has invited each of us to join her but I think she needs to work on her marketing campaign if she ever expects any takers. Puking, in my book, is only a good thing if someone has just tried to poison you. If not, it is to be avoided at all costs. As soon as the clock spins to 8:45, Owen is in class and Claire is in the car racing off to her gym.

  “We have our kindergarten meeting this morning,” I say. Claire jogs in place for a few seconds.

  “Aren’t you excited to just put this whole kindergarten thing to bed already?” she asks.

  Which leads me to a point about these mommy friendships of mine. I went through a lot of years during which time I did not have any friends, mommy or otherwise. Friendships were frowned upon by the USAWMD. In fact, any sort of a life was frowned upon by the USAWMD and if you didn’t heed the frown and went off and got yourself all tangled up in a real life, they would be sure to make it go away. And they would not ask your permission to do so.


  My current friends exist because we are experiencing the same life. I’m not sure if I met Claire under different circumstances we would have any interest in each other. But having the same schedule generally trumps the fact that both Owen and I find her a little bit scary.

  It doesn’t surprise me in the least that Claire is excited to sink her teeth into the kindergarten process. As for me, I have been actively dreading it since the day Theo was born. It used to be that you grew up in a particular neighborhood and that is where you went to school. Simple. But in present-day San Francisco, school placement is based on complicated algorithms that only a Ph.D. in computer science could have any hope of understanding. There is nothing natural about algorithms, in my opinion. I’d like to put the whole mess off for another forty years but, at some point, Theo would object.

  “I’m sure it will be fine,” I say, which is my way of not actually answering Claire’s question. She stops jogging in place and lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

  “Did you hear about what happened yesterday?” she asks. Nothing happened yesterday. I know this because I was watching the school.

  “No,” I say.

  “A student jumped from the play structure to the school roof,” she says. “Can you believe it?”

  Behind Happy Times Preschool is a small, enclosed playground stocked with the usual play equipment such as slides, swings, climbing structures, and sand pits. From one of the old wooden play structures that Happy Times has been relentlessly fund-raising to replace, a motivated and fearless child could conceivably take a leap of faith and make it to the roof of the school building. But the pitch of the roof is rather extreme so, once there, the child would have to hold on for dear life or risk falling to the ground.

  Before I can even express the level of shock Claire expects from her revelation, Teacher Wendy, wearing a gingham shirt under a teddy-bear sweater vest, bursts through the door and beckons us inside for our meeting. Teacher Wendy is tall and blond and she oozes tenderness, warmth, and sincerity from every one of her pores. There are times when I myself want to curl up in her lap and have her read me Knuffle Bunny or Olivia Joins the Circus while she gently strokes my hair.

  “Hi, Theo,” she says, immediately dropping down on one knee to his level. “Can you go and play with Teacher Susan while your mommy and I talk? When all the other kids arrive we’ll start circle time with a song you pick!”

  “I pick ‘The Ninjas,’” Theo says immediately.

  “I’m not sure I know that one,” Teacher Wendy says with a big grin. I brace myself.

  “The Ninjas are deadly and silent,” Theo sings off key. “They are also unspeakably violent. They speak Japanese; they do whatever they please and sometimes they vacation in Ireland.”

  Teacher Wendy’s eyes open wide.

  “Why, Theo,” she says, “that is a very interesting song. Now, maybe keep thinking about another one you want for circle time, okay?”

  Theo smiles. He does not realize he has just been expertly shut down.

  “The Barenaked Ladies,” I say, in my defense. “A friend loaned it to us.” I have no idea why I say that because it’s not true. I bought the album myself when I realized I was at high risk for suicide if I had to hear “Baby Beluga” one more time. Apparently there is no low to which I will not sink to save face in front of the preschool teacher.

  “I’m sure it’s lovely,” Teacher Wendy says. “Now Theo, run along and find Teacher Susan.”

  Theo nods, his eyes glued to her face. If she asked him to walk on hot coals, he would solemnly get right to it, no questions asked. Frankly, it makes me a little jealous. It can take me the better part of a perfectly good hour to get the kid to put on his shoes.

  Teacher Wendy and I park ourselves in tiny purple chairs at a tiny purple table decorated with little green flowers and pink butterflies. I’m of average height and my knees are almost up my nose. It is hard to look dignified in this position but somehow Teacher Wendy appears completely at ease. She pulls out a folder and flips to a page covered with happy teacher handwriting. Under the page of notes are some kid drawings in bold colors.

  “There’s something I want to talk about before we get to the kindergarten discussion,” she says. I shift in my little chair, hoping it doesn’t collapse under me. I have a pretty good idea of what is coming.

  “We are concerned about Theo’s threshold for risk-taking,” Teacher Wendy says in a slow voice, the same voice used to reinforce the gravity of a very bad situation with the children. “He seems to believe the laws of gravity do not apply to him.”

  How does a parent respond to such a statement? “Duh” seems inappropriate.

  “Yesterday, Theo convinced Benjamin to launch himself from the play structure to the roof and it’s only by the grace of God that Benjamin did not become seriously injured.”

  “He did what?” I say. “My Theo?” As if there are fourteen other Theos in this preschool. Of course she means my Theo. I’m not often caught off guard when it comes to my child. Am I reeling from what Theo actually did, or the fact that he managed to keep it from me for close to twenty-four hours? I’m not sure.

  “Theo doesn’t show much fear,” Teacher Wendy continues, “but he also has high empathy and great leadership skills. It’s a sophisticated combination for a five-year-old.”

  She gives me a window in which to respond, to explain the reasons for my child’s behavior. There are a few directions I can go. One involves a full confession, but that would require sitting around for eighteen months waiting for a Top Secret security clearance and I doubt even Teacher Wendy has that sort of patience. Another involves a complicated set of lies that run the risk of collapsing under their own weight. And finally, there is the human sacrifice. I, of course, choose the last. I prepare to throw Will under the bus with barely a pause to consider my actions.

  “Theo’s father was a drama major in college,” I say. “He does a lot of role-playing with Theo.” Interesting. The human sacrifice doesn’t feel so bad. Maybe I’d feel worse about it if Will were the one covered in snot and magic marker all the time. “The stories can be fairly elaborate.” I keep eye contact, willing her to overlook the bad kid and the bad parents and buy my story.

  And after a moment, she does.

  “In that case, I’d ask Mr. Hamilton to tone it down a bit,” Teacher Wendy says. “These young minds are so malleable at this stage.”

  She flips open the folder in front of her, flashing me a bright smile meant to indicate that we have concluded with the serious business and will now move on to something more fun. From the folder she pulls a drawing done in crayon and slides it in front of me.

  “I really had to take a second and show you this,” she says. “Theo’s turning out to be a wonderful artist. His use of color and landscape is exceptional, not to mention his rendering of the human figure. All very advanced. The weapons and bombs and things you see here are age appropriate for boys at this stage so we really try to see beyond them to the ideas I just mentioned.”

  But I’m no longer listening to her speech because while Theo convincing his friends it’s fun to leap tall buildings in a single bound is indeed problematic what I’m now looking at is much more so.

  A rudimentary bridge is strung between two uprights. There is a yellow sun and clouds and down below what looks to be a duck bobbing on the blue ocean. On the bridge are several men with guns.

  Time begins to do that thing it does sometimes, to slow down to the point of almost stopping completely. Because even as a stick figure, even with an oversized purple head and skinny, oddly proportioned arms and legs, the very sight of Ian Blackford makes me tremble. I try to keep my face as neutral as possible knowing I can’t very well tell Teacher Wendy about Blackford. But now is probably a good time to tell you.

  5

  There are very few things I am afraid of. I’ll admit I got a little claustrophobic in those caves in Afghanistan and once I had a panic attack after jumping out of an
airplane, when I discovered my parachute was sort of tangled up, but those were isolated incidents. Ian Blackford, international illegal arms dealer and the bane of my existence, inspired real fear in me, the first time I saw him and every time that followed.

  It was my privilege to meet a whole slew of demented characters during my nine years serving the USAWMD and very few of them actually scared me. So what made Blackford different? Why was it that the mere mention of him was enough to make my heart race, my armpits sweat, and my skin turn all clammy?

  The answer is simple. It was all in the eyes. Those icy blues told you that Blackford played by his own rules and they changed to suit the situation. What you knew to be true yesterday might have no bearing on today. Most criminals are easy to understand. Find their motivation, whether it be financial, ideological, or psychological, and you have the key to bringing them down. But Blackford did not fit neatly into any of those categories. The money was nice but secondary; he was not a religious fanatic or a kook living in a hut, writing anthrax-laced letters to the IRS. Sometimes he played the revenge angle but that was usually reserved for special circumstances, like when he discovered the identity of his father, who had abandoned him as a child. That was complicated for everyone involved, including me.

  No. For the most part, Blackford seemed to do it for fun. And that terrified me.

  What made Blackford unique in the fraternity of international illegal arms dealers was that he was once a superstar agent of the USAWMD. He was the guy you sent when the situation seemed hopeless or impossible or downright suicidal. No one ever agreed on anything at the Agency but all concurred Blackford was the best. There was nothing he could not do.

  Except resist the lure of the dark side, I suppose. One day he went from being with us, the so-called good guys depending on the day of the week and your particular political leanings, to being one of the bad guys.