Mother May I(77)

I nodded, moved to near tears by his implication. Taking the car-seat base was an act of such deliberate hope that it made me think of Kelly Wilkerson, with her past-tense verbs, her bare walls, her empty, indented carpet. Her son’s small life was over, and he was already wiped entirely away. She seemed almost wiped away as well. Trey was saying I would not become like her, just a body, too full of rage and drugs and grief to hold anything else. Trey was saying we were going to bring our son home.

Marshall got in the backseat, and I put a stack of dark blankets, gray and navy, in beside him. Trey drove. Once we were on the highway, I reached over the gap between the seats to hold his hand. He gripped mine so tight it almost hurt. We didn’t talk much on the drive. No need. We all knew the plan. It was crazy and thin and the only thing we had.

There was little traffic leaving Atlanta this early on a Sunday morning. People were either still in bed or at church. My mother had skipped her own service to let the girls sleep in. She’d forgotten to tell them to put their phones away when she went to bed, and she thought they’d stayed up late. I texted with her a little bit, sending cheery missives about my recovery. She was hoping to keep them long enough for pancake brunch before I came to take them back. I told her that sounded perfect. Both girls slept until eleven, sometimes noon, on weekends. This would all be over before they had so much as stirred.

Thinking of them, tucked up safe together in Mom’s guest room, sleeping in the boneless way of young and growing things, made me long for them, so fierce. I wanted to wake them myself and offer pancakes, smell their warm, sleepy skin and pet their tousled hair back. Their absence felt both normal and insane. They often spent weekends with my mom or with Trey’s parents, getting spoiled while Trey and I ducked out to the Biltmore or up to New York. Now, though, I felt as if a month had passed since I’d seen them, as if I’d abandoned them while focused solely on their brother. I wanted to make it up to them, though they had no idea that there was something to make up.

It would be better to keep it that way. If we could. If we got Robert back. If, if, if. I was so tired of that word.

We made excellent time, getting so ahead of schedule that as we pulled off the interstate, I worried we’d arrive too early. I wanted to do everything exactly right. There was a cluster of stores and gas stations at this exit: Krystal, Chick-fil-A, Dollar General. I asked Trey to pull in at a gas station to use the bathroom and get coffee, but mostly to kill time.

Trey didn’t need the restroom. He stayed by the pumps, topping off my car. Marshall and I headed in. There was a young woman outside by the door. She leaned against the ice machine smoking, though she looked way too young to buy cigarettes legally. She had lank brown hair and a rash of pimples on her forehead that her straggly bangs failed to hide. She straightened as we drew close.

“Hey, ma’am?” she said, to me, only me, and her eyes twitched nervously toward Marshall. I understood why. He looked like a cop. And yet she was desperate enough to talk to me, and so I stopped. “Could you maybe get me something to eat?”

“Sure,” I said. She smiled, and I saw a large black cavity, oval shaped, growing between her two front teeth. “What would you like?”

Marshall cleared his throat, a neutral sound. I ignored it.

She licked her chapped lips. “If you gave me a little money, I could pick. They’ll let me come inside if I can show them I have money.”

“We’ll get you a sandwich,” Marshall said, and instantly her eyes dropped and she stepped back. He took my arm, and I let him tote me inside. When the swinging glass door had swished closed behind us, he told me, “If you give her money, she’ll just buy drugs.”

“Oh, you think?” I said, tart. I took my arm back and went to the bathroom.

When I got out, Marshall was already paying for our coffee by the register. I went to the refrigerated case, looking for soft things, because of her teeth. I didn’t see anything I’d want to feed my girls. Not for a meal. In the end I picked out two different kinds of Lunchables, a carton of milk, and a bottle of orange juice. I headed for the register, passing through the snack aisle to add a plain Hershey’s chocolate bar and a four-pack of Dole fruit cups, so old they had a fine layer of dust on the cardboard shell. The date stamp said they were still good, though.

When I handed her the bag, she smiled at the weight of it, showing me again the oval of rot between her front teeth. It was striated like an agate, a darkness that deepened in concentric circles, telling me there was a lack of money or a lack of love or both in this child’s life.

“Thank you!” she said.

Marshall started forward, but I didn’t. Trey was back in the driver’s seat, the engine running, but we were still ahead of schedule. This girl, she could have been Lexie thirty years ago. She was only three or four years older than Anna-Claire.

“Do you have someplace to sleep tonight?” I asked, and Marshall stopped, waiting for me.

She shook her head. “I could get a bed at this shelter I know, if I had twelve dollars.” She looked at me, hopeful and guarded, pressing her lips together.

I opened my wallet and pulled out all the cash I had, seven or eight bills. I had no idea how much. I handed it to her, and it felt like some kind of offering. She was an altar. I wished I had more.

I could feel all the things that Marshall wasn’t saying, but he held his peace.