Nothing to See Here (68)

“Hi,” Roland said.

“Mm-hmm,” my mother said. Even though she had given up smoking ten years earlier, she always looked like she was just about to take a long drag on a cigarette and blow the smoke right in your face.

“Hey, Mom,” I said.

“You’re bleeding,” she said, gesturing to some blood on the sleeve of my shirt, from one of the cuts I’d received falling onto that glass table.

“I know,” I said. “Can we come in?”

“It’s your house, too,” she said, which made me want to cry, but it wasn’t clear exactly why.

“This is Bessie, and this is Roland,” I said, tapping each kid softly on the head.

“You’re their governess, right?” she replied.

“I don’t know what I am to them, Mom,” I said. “It’s kind of jumbled up at the moment. I’m taking care of them, though. We need a place to stay, to keep them safe.”

“Are you in trouble?” she asked me, still looking at the kids.

“Kind of,” I said. “Kind of yes and kind of no.”

“Well, your room is still there,” she said. “Haven’t been in it since you left.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said, but she waved me away with a flick of her wrist.

I hustled the kids upstairs, up to the attic, which was sweltering because none of the fans were on. I cursed and started plugging them in and getting them going. I set the kids in front of the two biggest ones, cranked up to high, which just blew all this dust around the room, little particles hovering in the air. There was an old piece of pizza sitting in an opened box, petrified. It was so embarrassing, to show these kids what my life had been like before them. It must have vaporized any confidence they had that I knew what I was doing. I kind of shuffle-kicked the pizza box under the bed, but they’d both seen it.

“We’re hungry,” Bessie told me. I realized that over the course of this summer they had become used to a lifestyle where someone simply reached into a refrigerator or cabinet and food immediately appeared. The pizza place delivered, but I was paranoid about the cops.

“My stomach,” Roland said. “Listen to it growl.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I get the picture. Just sit tight, and I’ll bring something up.”

“Can’t we come down there?” they asked. “It’s hot up here.”

“We kind of need to give my mom her space,” I told them. “She’s not good with kids.”

I ran down the stairs, huffing. I reached behind me and touched a spot just above the waist of my jeans, and I felt a little piece of glass stuck in there. I tried to pull it out, but it was in there pretty good. It didn’t hurt, but now that I knew it was there, it was all I could think about. It could not be good to have open wounds and hang out in that musty attic. I was losing my focus. I went into the kitchen and my mom was there, reading a magazine, listening to soft rock on the radio.

“Um,” I said, so embarrassed. I hated needing things, and I hated it even more when I needed things from my mom. “The kids are hungry.”

“That makes three of us,” she replied, still looking at the magazine, which was about houses on the beach or some such nonsense.

“I’ve got money,” I said. “Could you order all of us a pizza?”

She looked up at the ceiling, thinking about it. “I’m not really in the mood for pizza,” she said.

“Anything,” I replied. “McDonald’s? Subway?”

She sighed, stood up from the table, and started going through the cabinets, snatching them open and then slamming them closed.

“I’ve got macaroni and cheese,” she said. Then she looked in the fridge. “And hot dogs.”

“That’s great,” I said. I reached for a pot and filled it with water. She threw the hot dogs on the counter next to the stove and went back to the table. While I waited for the water to boil, I stared at her. When I was a kid, there had been so many nights like this, usually my mother and one of her boyfriends watching TV on this little model they kept in the kitchen, while I made butter noodles or a wilted, soggy salad with Thousand Island dressing, cutting up cucumbers and green peppers like we were the healthiest people in the world because of me.

I walked over to the stairs, called out to see if the kids were okay, and they shouted that they were. When I stepped back into the kitchen, my mom said, “I knew you were coming.”

“Is that right?” I said, feeling my skin getting itchy, my heartbeat picking up.

“A man called a while ago. Cal or Carl or . . . something like that. Asked if I’d heard from you.”

“What did you tell him?” I asked her.

“I said I hadn’t seen you all summer, that I hadn’t even talked to you,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, because I knew there was more.

“He said that I should call him if you turned up with two kids,” she continued, now finally looking at me. “Said he’d pay me for my trouble.”

“So did you call him back?” I asked.

She shook her head. “He was so stiff, so formal. I didn’t like his tone. So, no, I didn’t call him back.”

The water was finally boiling, and I poured in the macaroni.