Spy Mom

by Beth McMullen

  But this is different. I’m not doing this for national security or because the safety of the free world depends on it. My motives are entirely selfish. Charles Gray is the only person who can answer the questions of my past and because of this, I have deemed his life to be more important than the life of Richard Yoder.

  And that kind of moral authority fits me about as well as a fluorescent pink mini and platform heels.

  19

  As we drive toward the ballpark, Yoder mutters verse about the end of time. Or maybe it’s a Springsteen song, it’s hard to tell. He appears to be in a self-induced trance and I sincerely hope he doesn’t collapse in convulsions or something. That would really set the boys off and “convulsion” is a difficult word to spell

  “Mom, can we have juice boxes?” Theo asks. “We can do the straws.”

  “Yes,” I say, “but don’t tell Daddy, okay?” Daddy hates juice boxes. They’re not a good use of resources. I reach between Yoder’s legs for my bag. He stops chanting long enough to recoil like I’m about to pass him a raging case of the cooties. I pull my hand back.

  “Fine, then you do it,” I say. “There are two juice boxes in my bag. Pass them into the backseat. And there’s nothing in there to bludgeon me to death with, so don’t get your hopes up.”

  Yoder digs out the juice boxes and spins them around slowly, examining them.

  “You don’t have children, do you?” I ask.

  “No,” he says. “No, I don’t.” And he looks sad all of a sudden, as if he forgot to do something important.

  “Well, don’t worry,” I say. “You’re young. You have time.”

  “Let’s not kid ourselves,” he says. I want to tape his mouth shut. He’s too young to say things like that. Somehow, if he were an old man, wrinkled, with a shock of white hair and bifocals, this would be easier. But he’s a kid. I want to button up his coat and give him a plastic bag full of Cheerios to munch on. Okay, maybe not a plastic bag. Maybe a reusable glass container. But either way, he could use a megadose of calories and a good night’s sleep, neither of which I’m prepared to provide.

  We park in a lot that costs forty-five dollars an hour and guarantees it will return to me a car that’s both dirtier and dented, but it’s not like I have a lot of choice down here by the stadium. The parking-lot attendant pockets my cash and gives me a smile full of gold teeth. I envy him because, even if he’s a bank robber by night, I’m 100 percent sure his life is less complicated than mine right now.

  We pile out of the car. Yoder’s eyes are restless, darting every which way, looking for an escape route. Theo and Henry hold hands and start singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” I think it’s cute. Yoder looks ill.

  “Don’t run,” I say.

  “Okay,” the boys say.

  “I was talking to you, Richard,” I say, pulling him along with us, struggling not to lose Henry and Theo in the swelling crowd of fans. “Your friends aren’t your friends anymore. You’ve become a liability and you know what happens to liabilities, right?”

  He shakes his head.

  “They disappear,” I say, patting him on the shoulder. “But for now, let’s try and have fun. And please don’t say or do anything too weird if you can help it.”

  Most of Theo’s class is already assembled in the stands. They climb over the stadium seats like the place is the world’s biggest jungle gym. I’m profoundly sorry for anyone sitting within a ten-row radius of us. Half of the kids are eating popcorn. The other half are eating tasty whole-wheat, low-sugar snacks lovingly prepared at home by overinvolved moms and snuck into the stadium in concealed inner pockets. Those kids don’t look as happy as the kids eating popcorn. Within seconds, Theo rolls his baseball program up in a tube and uses it as a makeshift light saber to attack Henry who, in turn, does the same. It could be a long day.

  Plopping down in a seat next to Avery, I announce, “This is Richie. He’s the younger brother of a friend of mine in town for a few days. You know, job-hunting and things.” There are lots of nodding heads and hellos.

  “I prefer Richard,” he says as Avery leans across me and shakes his hand.

  “I don’t care,” I whisper, a big fake smile plastered on my face. Finally, Yoder has the decency to appear surprised by his new reality. I hand him an extra baseball program.

  “Here,” I say. “Brush up on your baseball stats.”

  “Do you think I should be looking at the public schools?” Avery says, twisting and untwisting her baseball program like makeshift worry beads.

  I’m pretty good at changing lanes, at thinking about one thing while talking about another. But today, I can barely keep up.

  “No,” I tell her. “You’re fine. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Are you ready for your interview at Country Day tomorrow?” she asks.

  Well, that sounds like something I should remember. I bet Avery has a very tidy calendar that she checks each morning while eating a freshly made croissant and drinking a homemade latte. I’m not bitter, just jealous. Of course, my jealousy is tempered by my knowledge that she’s married to a closeted college professor. And while I feel for my friend, I sympathize, in a strange way, with her husband. Marriage isn’t easy in the best of circumstances; and it’s not made any easier when one partner is pretending to be something he is not.

  “Sure,” I say. “I’m ready. It’s going to be fine.” By using the word “fine” over and over again, I’m more or less guaranteeing that nothing will even be close.

  “They’re going to love Theo,” Avery says. I agree although I’m less confident about them loving me. “We take Sophie for her interview next week. I’m already nervous.”

  “It’s all going to be fine,” I say again, craning my neck around, looking for Sam. He seems to be the only person in San Francisco who has not drunk the Kool-Aid. “Superfine,” I add.

  “You’re probably right,” Avery says quietly. “Is your friend okay? He’s awfully quiet.”

  “Pathologically shy,” I say.

  Next to me, looking resigned to his fate in hell, which is sure to last longer than nine innings, Yoder pulls his coat collar up practically to his forehead. He will not be good for my reputation as a normal, everyday mom unless his attitude improves, and we may not have enough time together for that to happen. I accept that it was incredibly stupid of me to take him from his driveway, but the alternative was handing him directly over to Simon and never seeing him again. And that also seemed incredibly stupid.

  “It’s a play-off game,” I whisper to him. “Do you know what certain people would do for these tickets? As far as kidnappings go, I think you’re doing pretty well.”

  Yoder turtles down further into his collar. “I know nothing of this game,” he says, “this great American pastime.”

  Well, that makes two of us but at least I’m making an effort.

  The game is excruciatingly slow but the kids love it. I have a really hard time sitting and watching guys with beer bellies in tight pants do absolutely nothing. Instead, I try and pretend that Director Gray is not my father and that none of this is actually happening. My attempts at total denial fall flat, as usual.

  “Mom,” Theo says, tugging on my sleeve, “can we have popcorn? Can we have a corn dog? Can we have … soda?” Normally, I’m one of the overinvolved moms with the snacks that taste like cardboard. But today I’m distracted.

  “Sure.”

  “Really? We can?” Theo says with surprise. “You just said yes, right?”

  “Yes. I said yes.” True, I’m processing a few seconds slower than normal but I’m not totally dead yet. “To the popcorn. Not the corn dog or the soda.”

  “Okay,” says Theo. “We’ll take that deal.”

  “Is your mom okay?” Henry asks.

  “I don’t know,” Theo whispers, staring at me with big blue eyes. “But we’re getting the popcorn.”

  I lean over and whisper in Yoder’s ear. “I’m going to get popcorn. Don’t move. If you do,
bad things will happen to you.”

  “Like what?” Yoder asks,

  “I don’t know. Bad things.”

  “Whatever,” he says, waving me off. He deserves a time-out for being unpleasant, in addition to the unnamed bad things I haven’t thought of yet, but I remind myself I’m his captor, not his mother, even if the two roles kind of overlap in certain circumstances. I go in search of the popcorn guy.

  In exchange for all the money in my wallet, the popcorn guy hands me three overflowing bags. Yoder probably doesn’t deserve one but I know what happens when young men become calorie deficient and that is something I don’t need right now. To hedge my bets, I get a corn dog for him, too.

  When I turn to head back to our seats, I bump smack into a woman in a long black cashmere sweater. The hood elegantly conceals her features. The sun glints off the black wool, making it iridescent and I’m struck with an urge to reach out and pet her like a cat.

  “Excuse me,” I say, in a feeble attempt to juggle my popcorn bags and corn dog and not fall down the steep stadium stairs.

  She stops and turns to face me. Her silver hair is striking against the black and hangs loosely to her shoulders. Her deep blue eyes scan my face with a sense of urgency, almost of longing. I suddenly feel as if I’ve lost my balance. She steadies me with a delicate hand.

  “Do we know each other?” I ask, feeling oddly out of sync with my own voice.

  Her smile is not one of joy or resignation but rather of acute pain. She leans in close to me, holding my shoulders tightly. The position is awkward and panic floods my central nervous system.

  “It’s a trap,” she whispers. “Don’t fall into it.”

  “Mom,” Theo yells from his seat. “Hurry up!” My head turns immediately toward the sound of my impatient son’s voice and by the time I swing back toward the woman it’s too late. I catch a glimpse of black cashmere disappearing from the stands.

  Every impulse tells me to drop the popcorn and run after her, but I can’t do that. Mothers come back with the popcorn and sit nicely and chaperone and things. They don’t abandon their children so they can chase down mysterious, well-dressed women who mutter incomprehensibly in passing.

  “She probably was singing to herself,” I say to the popcorn. “Or talking on the phone. Yes. Probably she was on the phone talking to her broker and commenting that the latest silicon valley IPO is nothing more than a money trap.”

  Right. And now I’m going to head out onto the field, smack a homerun into the bay, and win the game.

  “Theo’s mom!” Henry yells. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” I say, trying to gather my wits about me because clearly they’ve scattered on the wind.

  I hand out the popcorn. Yoder peers into his bag with suspicion but the boys convince him ballpark popcorn is nothing short of awesome. However, the corn dog is another story.

  “Just eat it,” I tell Yoder. “It’ll make you less grumpy.”

  “What is it?” he asks, his brow furrowed in confusion.

  “It’s a hotdog,” I say, “with stuff on it. On a stick.”

  If I were him, there’s no way I would eat it, but to his credit, he takes a tentative bite. As the corn dog fills his mouth, his eyes light up in the same way Theo’s did when he first tasted ice cream. I turn back toward the field, not wanting to watch any more of the simple pleasure in Yoder’s eyes. There’s a player on second base. He’s itching to steal third but at the last second loses his nerve.

  “Don’t you want to know why you’re here?” I ask Yoder, quietly so the people around me don’t stand a chance of hearing. Yoder shovels a fistful of popcorn into his mouth and squints in my direction.

  “Probably not because you had an extra ticket,” he says, little bits of popcorn spraying every which way.

  “If I hadn’t shown up when I did, you’d be en route to D.C. right now with a black sack over your head and no chance of an in-flight meal. I kind of did you a favor.”

  “That’s your interpretation.”

  “Righteous Liberty wants to trade Charles Gray for you,” I say. “Does that surprise you?”

  Yoder gazes out at the bay. “What does it matter?” he says without emotion.

  How come in the movies rogue agents are always sexy and always right, no matter the methods they employ to see justice done? In real life, being a rogue agent isn’t turning out to be all that much fun.

  We watch a few more swings. Nobody seems to be able to hit the ball. If I were making forty million dollars a year, I would try harder to hit the ball.

  “This guy stinks,” I say as the batter swings wildly at a terrible pitch.

  “Well, not according to the numbers,” Yoder says, his popcorn bag resting on the closed baseball program in his lap, his half-eaten corn dog poised in midair. “In 470 at bats this season, he has 148 hits, of which 32 were doubles, 3 were triples, and 27 were home runs. In fact, he has a batting average of .315 and an on-base percentage of .381. He’s actually had quite a regular season. The opposing pitcher, on the other hand, is quite formidable. Over 33 games and a total of 212 innings pitched, he has thrown 231 strikeouts—more than 1 per inning—and permitted only 81 earned runs for an earned run average of 3.43. Although he has given up 92 walks. Perhaps the batter should stop swinging and hope for the best.”

  I suddenly remember what source number two, in the USAWMD’s report on Yoder, claimed happened in the bathroom. Yoder alone with the little black book for four minutes. Four whole minutes. We stare at each other over Yoder’s half-empty popcorn bag. Yoder’s eyes shine. Finally, he shrugs.

  “Maybe he does stink. What do I know about baseball?”

  Without warning, a fly ball comes falling out of the sky right on top of us. Yoder sticks out a hand and the ball sails right into it as if attracted by a very powerful magnet. Immediately all the kids pile on top of Yoder, wanting to see the ball, to touch it, to beg to take it home. Underneath the mountain of little bodies, Yoder flashes a brief smile and for a moment he seems utterly regular. This kind of day is as American as apple pie for certain socioeconomic groups. However, to enjoy it you must embrace the illusion that we are all the same, heads down, striving for the dream. And that is just not the case.

  20

  It is a good thing your average citizen of the world goes around with blinders on. People are quite skilled at seeing what they want to see rather than what is right in front of them. Over the years, I’ve successfully masqueraded as a number of different people and I’m fully aware of the fact that if anyone had bothered to take a closer look, I would have been dead in a ditch long ago. Simon Still is the master of misdirection. He can look you in the eyes and lie with the greatest of ease. I was never as good as he is but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t get by.

  Take me being here chaperoning a ball game with a surly twenty-something sitting beside me, stuffing his face with everything on the concession menu. If you really examined the details, you would see it was off. Or better yet, take the burglar.

  We live in a relatively safe San Francisco neighborhood. It’s easy to believe that crime doesn’t exist here, that it only happens in other neighborhoods where there are fewer golden retrievers and thousand-dollar strollers cluttering up the sidewalk. Such belief creates a nice bubble of complacency that’s quite comfortable if you can manage not to pop it.

  It was winter and the rain pounded down on our roof with a vengeance. A few months into married life, I was in the peculiar position of trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. Will encouraged me to take as much time as I needed but it was turning out not to be such an easy question to answer. So, rather than waste valuable time focused on an unpleasant task, I took to reading magazines.

  Oh, what I had missed while racing around the world trying to catch bad guys. There were party dresses to consider and accessories and skirt lengths and the hair question, of course. There were quizzes to help determine if I was a nymphomaniac or a
wallflower or a Type-A bitch. There were diets and exercise regimens designed to make me sweat off ten pounds by summer! Eating whatever I want! Taking these pills the FDA swore would grow me a nice bushy tail in no time at all! There was decorating advice to help me achieve a successful living room, whatever that was. There were recipes with spices that could only be obtained in the jungles of Burma or from the mountaintops of Peru or, in a pinch, at the Whole Foods one neighborhood over.

  I devoured it all, the meaningless noise that helps us to ignore the chaos outside our collective window. If you can concentrate on the perfect golden highlights, the kind that make your blue eyes pop and enhance your not-quite-defined-enough cheekbones, well then, who gives a shit about bombs?

  I was most of the way through an issue of Cosmopolitan that promised the secret to a happy marriage was frequent blow jobs and nipple-exposing lingerie when I heard a sound coming from the front door that I was fairly certain wasn’t the rain.

  It’s important to note that our house, while utterly charming, had as many security holes as a wheel of Swiss cheese. I realized that to bring it up to what I considered a most basic standard would raise some eyebrows, so I was trying to be Zen about it and relax in my non-secure environment. I even thought the experience might help me grow into a better person, someone able to live in a house with a single deadbolt on the wooden front door. However, I was having a hard time getting over the glass panels in that same front door. Glass. In a door. With a lock. How did people live like this?

  Sitting at my kitchen table, I heard the distinct sound of wood splintering, followed by the creak of hinges. The front door was opened and then closed.