Spy Mom
Page 41
What secrets? And who was “him”? He couldn’t have delivered the lines better if he were auditioning for Hamlet.
“Close your eyes,” I said. “Go back to sleep.” Simon nodded his head and did as he was told.
The next morning, I called for reinforcements and two burly men I didn’t know showed up to help me carry a moderately dead and severely bedraggled Simon out of the jungle and onto a plane to Germany, where they yelled at me for giving him so many unidentifiable pills. He never acknowledged our night in the Guinean jungle nor did he ever explain about all the secrets. And I, of course, never asked.
I dump my coffee down the sink and pour Theo a bowl of Cheerios. They smell pretty good so I fill another bowl for myself. I hear Theo kissing Will good-bye and extracting promises to build weapons of mass destruction out of LEGOS upon Daddy’s return from frolicking around an Idaho dairy farm.
We eat our Cheerios side by side. Most of Theo’s end up plastered to his pajama shirt.
“T-Y-R-A-N-N-O-S-A-U-R-U-S R-E-X,” I say. “Two words.”
Theo stops eating and grins. It’s the smile that makes my heart flutter no matter how many times I see it. His eyes crinkle and his face is radiant and I forgive him all the dawdling and temper tantrums and lost shoes and beads up the nose. I just hope, when the time comes, he will forgive me for all the secrets.
18
I stare into my closet, the only place on earth that would surely benefit from a weapon of mass destruction. On one shelf, there are several pairs of jeans with holes in the knees from crawling around on the floor when Theo was a baby. Underneath is another shelf with long-sleeved T-shirts. Hanging are fleece vests, fleece jackets, fleece scarves. I’d buy fleece underwear if I thought I could get away with it. San Francisco is roughly sixty-five degrees, damp and windy every day of the year. And it’s a cold wind, not happy until it works its way through to your bones. Occasionally, I find myself pining for the Sahara Desert but then I remember what it was like to be stuck there without a ride and the desire quickly passes.
When we moved into our house, Will set about hiring all sorts of people to expand things like our closets and bathrooms.
“Grown-ups don’t share a single closet, Lucy,” Will told me. I looked at my lone duffel bag of belongings and said nothing. In truth, I required little more than a cardboard box but I wasn’t raised as Will was. His expectations were different.
“My own closet would be nice,” I said, trying to project confidence that someday I might actually have something to put in it.
Of course, the closets are made of bamboo, sustainably farmed by a family in Southern Oregon. I suggested that Will go all the way and carry the wood down here on his back but he didn’t think that was funny.
Along the bottom of the closet is a shelf specifically designed for shoes, of which I own three pairs. Theo used to use the shelves as a ramp for Matchbox cars. Now it’s a cave for LEGO men and plastic dinosaurs.
It’s not that I don’t want to wear beautiful clothes and shoes. I’m hopeful my destiny includes wearing something other than a fleece jacket every single day for the rest of my life. But the truth is I haven’t figured out how to make it work. Avery once defined my sense of style as “survivalist” and I don’t think she meant it as a compliment.
Right now, I need an outfit that can do double duty for a ball game and a breaking-and-entering. Good thing I don’t have a dinner date to follow or I’d be facing a serious fashion dilemma. I pull on a pair of jeans but they feel too tight. I leave the top unbuttoned until they have time to stretch out. I refuse to consider the idea that the pants are fine but my body is getting bigger. No. Not today. If I need to go on a diet, it will just have to stand in line with all the other unpleasant things I need to do and wait its turn.
Near the top of the unpleasant things list is chaperoning a preschool class trip to a Giants baseball game. A few weeks ago, Teacher Wendy announced that a Happy Times family had donated enough tickets for the entire class plus chaperones to attend today’s game. Did I mention it’s a play-off game and this is the point in the season when riots tend to break out over a single available ticket? No? Well, don’t be too surprised because this is San Francisco, where money apparently grows on trees.
After her joyous announcement, Teacher Wendy put on her sad face and said we couldn’t go without parent volunteers. My hand, apparently embarking on a solo career and no longer taking orders from my brain, popped right up and I was rewarded with a big Teacher Wendy smile. I’m a reliable volunteer. I have visited fire stations, zoos, museums, and aquariums. I can find a clean public restroom in any San Francisco neighborhood. Honestly, the idea of Theo and twenty of his closest friends wandering around the city with nothing more than a bunch of overtired parents for protection is a bit more than I can handle.
“You are so involved,” Teacher Wendy will say to me as I sign up for yet another chaperoning gig. “It’s super and so are you.”
There’s no point in explaining that I’m motivated by fear rather than an overdeveloped sense of altruism. It seems harmless to let Teacher Wendy continue to believe in my overall superness. And there are benefits, such as one less day I have to hang out with Leonard at the Java Luv and watch him lose IQ points. However, when I raised my hand last week, the day was empty. How was I supposed to know I’d need it free to continue my rogue agent crime spree?
Theo wanders into my room with his Giants baseball hat and T-shirt on. Theo’s wardrobe, in contrast to my own, is worth a small fortune. His grandparents don’t see why a child, particularly their only grandchild, should wear a pair of jeans from Target when he can just as easily wear a pair of jeans from Ralph Lauren. When I bring Theo’s hand-me-downs to the consignment shop, they treat me like royalty.
“When are we going?” Theo asks, shaking his head back and forth so fast his cheeks go slack. “I’m getting so bored.”
“There are kids who never have a chance to be bored,” I say, “because they’re out scavenging for food all day long.”
“Why would I do that?” he asks. “I have the refrigerator.”
This is the perfect opportunity for a lesson on world hunger and excessive consumption but I’m not up for it. Besides, Will provides a far more dramatic delivery of this one than I do.
“We’ll leave soon. We need to pick up Henry at his house, run a quick errand, and then we’ll go meet your class at the ball park. Sound good?”
He sighs as if this plan causes him great emotional stress.
“How long?” he asks, dragging the words out for emphasis.
“Seven and a half minutes,” I say.
He’s happy with that. This kid deals in absolutes. No gray areas for Theo.
Henry Coen lives two incredibly steep hills away. We pull up to the curb in front of his house and he springs from the front door, a small brown-headed jack-in-the-box.
Judy Coen follows her son out, shouting about jackets and hats. Judy Coen’s life project is maintaining herself to such a degree that she never seems to age. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit to discover she sleeps in a jar of formaldehyde. I’ve known her now for close to three years and the expression on her face hasn’t altered in the slightest during this time. She always looks surprised. Me, I’m waiting for a team of archeologists to show up and begin excavating the wrinkle developing between my eyebrows. I’m not saying my way is better, but it certainly takes less time.
“Hi, Judy,” I wave. Judy scans the Prius. I think she would like to arch her eyebrows in a rather wry way but the eyebrows don’t do that anymore. They are frozen in place.
“You’re so good, Lucy,” she says. “Making up for the rest of us and our naughty habits.” She laughs, a wineglass dropped on a tile floor.
“Well, you know, someone has to save the planet,” I say.
“Better you than me,” she says. “I have no time for anything. I am so stressed out about the kindergarten decision I can barely sleep. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to look at some public and some private and then make some decisions,” I say, which is more or less true.
“You seem so calm,” she says. “How can you be so calm about something this enormous?”
I think Sam is right about everybody in this city being crazy. Choosing a school is big, yes, but not enormous. Nuclear war is enormous.
“Drugs,” I say with a perfectly straight face. “They work wonders.”
“Oh, I know,” she says with a wink. “My doc will do almost anything to get me out of his office. It’s great.” She laughs again although I consider what she just said to be rather alarming. Mental note: Monitor all playdates at Henry’s house with more than the usual level of paranoia.
“Do you mind if I take Henry out to the Sunset with me before the game?” I ask through the open window. “I have to pick something up.”
“Sure,” Judy says, strapping Henry into the booster seat next to Theo. “The Sunset is so ethnic. I love it.” I’m confident that Judy could not find the Sunset neighborhood on a map if someone held a gun to her head. It’s too “over there” for her. She leans in and tries to give Henry a kiss. He, in turn, leans as far toward Theo and away from her as he can with a seat belt on.
“Yuck,” Henry says.
“Kissing is so gross,” Theo concurs.
“Forget it,” Judy says, retreating. “Have fun at the game. Thanks for driving and everything, Lucy. I have an appointment with my dermatologist today that I can’t miss or I’d have gone myself.”
Botox, apparently, waits for no one.
There are those who say the sun never shines in the Sunset. The fog rolls in off the nearby ocean and just stays, settling in like melted butter on an English muffin. We drive through the mist over a couple of hills and head down Judah, a wide avenue cluttered with Muni tracks and bad parallel parking that runs clear to the Pacific Ocean. In front of the house I’m looking for, just outside the green garage door, sits a sparkling clean Chevy Malibu.
And much to my surprise, Richard Yoder is climbing out of it. He holds a new Adidas duffel bag in one hand and a big plastic cup with a logo for the Luxor Las Vegas on it in the other. Under his worn leather jacket he sports a Luxor Las Vegas T-shirt that matches the cup.
There are times when I consider myself unlucky, when I feel as if there’s a worldwide conspiracy meant to keep me down. This is not one of those times. This is a time when I realize that if I wasn’t sprinkled with just a little fairy dust, I would have been dead long ago. Richard Yoder was in Las Vegas for the weekend and Simon Still had no idea. Simon’s crew has been patiently watching the house for three days, waiting for the missing Yoder to turn up, and as soon as he does, there I am. I can’t help but smile. This is really going to make Simon mad. I place a quick phone call as I pull up in front of Yoder’s driveway.
Yoder stretches and yawns, popping off his sunglasses and rubbing his eyes. He probably drove all night to get home after losing his last penny. But that’s not my problem. My plan has changed. It now includes kidnapping Yoder and arranging the trade with Chemical Claude, making sure I take time out to shoot the aforementioned Claude in the head at the first opportunity. Now my plan has three steps. I feel much better.
“You boys stay here, okay?” In the backseat, Theo and Henry argue about what happened after Darth Vader cut off Luke Skywalker’s arm in the seventh Star Wars movie, which is really the second movie, but that point is lost on these two.
“Hey,” I say, vying for their attention, “neither of you have even seen the movie so why the big debate?”
“Well, we will someday,” Theo says.
“Probably true but for right now I need you to stay put for a minute, okay?”
They nod and immediately return to arguing about Luke’s missing arm. Yoder is too tired to have noticed me yet, focused entirely on finding his house key on an overloaded key chain. He’s about my height with thick, dark hair that sticks up in the back in the same way Theo’s does when he rolls out of bed. Theo’s teacher calls it “Good Morning Hair.” The fact that Yoder has Good Morning Hair makes me squirm. Whatever this turns out to be, Yoder is too young for it.
As I draw closer, I see the sharp bones of his clavicles sticking out from beneath his thin shirt as if his body has not yet finished filling in all the empty places. In five years’ time, age will make him thicker but right now he’s nothing more than an overgrown child. Which, of course, complicates things but doesn’t change them.
Finally, he looks up and sees me coming toward him from the curb. It takes a split second for fear to register in his eyes. He’s had the sort of life where the odds are against me being a random stranger asking for directions. The way I walk toward him, he knows.
“What do you want?” he asks, his voice hoarse from long smoky nights at the slots.
Without breaking stride I grab him. His upper arm is so thin I can almost close my thumb and forefinger around it.
“You,” I say. “I want you.”
“You can’t do this to me,” he says, clutching the big plastic cup to his chest. “I’m an American.”
Why do people always say that? Citizenship doesn’t come equipped with an invisible force field. Maybe it used to back when everybody liked us, but not anymore. In fact, these days you might consider holding your passport face down and pretending to be, say, Swedish. Nobody seems to want to kill the Swedes while everyone seems to want to kill the Americans.
“I don’t care,” I say. “Mr. Yoder.”
He hasn’t heard his real name in a while and it has the intended effect.
“I have friends, important friends,” he stammers. “They won’t allow this to happen.”
“The same friends who put you down in that dungeon for twelve months?” I ask. “Those friends?”
He physically recoils at the thought. Whatever Simon did to this man in the name of peace, love, and the American way, it sure stuck with him.
“If you want to live, come with me,” I say. It’s the worst line ever. I’m embarrassed for myself.
“Why would I do that?” he asks.
“Because I’m armed,” I say, which is a complete lie but effective.
“Where are you taking me?” he asks. “Where are we going?”
This is a question I should have answered in my planning stage, perhaps under the heading of “contingencies.” The truth is, I’m far more afraid of what would happen to me if I were to blow off my chaperoning responsibilities than I am of what will happen if I bring a known terrorist along on a preschool field trip. I have four Giants tickets burning a hole in my pocket.
“We’re going to a Giants game with twenty five-year-olds,” I say. “It’s a play-off game but try to stay calm.”
Yoder smiles grimly.
“You people and your codes,” he says. “Why can’t you just say what you mean?”
“I’m not kidding about the baseball game,” I say. “Put your bag back in the car and let’s go.”
As I escort Yoder to the waiting Prius, I feel the eyes on us. They watch from the roofs, the sidewalks, the cars parked across the street. But they can’t do anything. Three San Francisco Police cruisers provide my cover and while I feel a little guilty for calling 9-1-1 about nonexistent gunshots at the bodega across the street, the alternative somehow seemed much worse.
I shove Yoder into the front passenger seat, taking a second to stick the stolen cell phone I used to call the police under the front wheel of the car. The boys stop trying to stab each other with light sabers long enough to register the scene unfolding around them.
“Mom,” Theo asks. “Who’s that? Look at all the police cars! Cool!”
“Hey, Theo’s mom,” Henry says, “how do you spell ‘police’?”
It’s an epidemic, this spelling thing. Someone should call the Centers for Disease Control.
“P-O-L-I-C-E. This is Richard, a friend of Mommy’s.” Yoder cringes at the reckless use of his name, as if it has the power to turn him into a toad.
“Hi, Theo’s mom’s friend,” says Henry. “Do you want a light saber?”
Yoder does not turn his head to acknowledge Henry’s offer. I give him a nudge.
“Henry offered you a light saber,” I say. “It’s a big deal when you’re a five-year-old boy. Be kind enough to answer him. Good manners are important.”
Glaring at me, Yoder turns to Henry. “No thank you,” he says.
“Okay,” says Henry cheerfully.
“It was nice of you to offer, Henry,” I say. “Good sharing.”
“Thanks, Theo’s mom.” I’ve tried to get Henry to call me Lucy or even Mrs. Hamilton but names seem to have a problem sticking to me. “Everybody strapped in? Richard, seat belt, please. Okay, who wants to go to a ball game?”
Yoder does as he’s told. His expression indicates that he believes he might be experiencing very realistic hallucinations, the result of driving all night without a break. For a second, I worry the Prius is not actually heavy enough to crush the cheap cell phone wedged under the front wheel, but after a satisfying crunch we begin to head east, back toward the bay, passing alongside Golden Gate Park and through Haight-Ashbury.
“Tomorrow, this will all be over,” I say, not taking my eyes from the road. Raffi sings “Willoughby Wallaby Woo” in the background and Richard Yoder sways to the music.
“But it will not end well,” he says, “not for you or me. Not for anyone.” His tone is unnervingly matter-of-fact. He seems ready to close his eyes, lie down on the yellow line, and get run over by whatever is coming down the pike.
In the driver’s seat, an unfamiliar unease settles over me. When I used to be a spy, I never considered the life of the bad guy. A folder, usually stamped top secret, would arrive on my desk with the bad guy’s name on the inside, sometimes accompanied by a blurry snapshot, sometimes not. I never thought about the guy’s mother or sister or who would pay his gardener after I deposited him stateside. To end up in a folder, you had to do something wrong and that was all there was to it. The void such a person would leave behind was not my problem. I never looked beyond the obvious because even if I did, there was no choice to be made. I had orders and I followed them.