The Night Visitors(6)

“Let me know if I can help,” Atefeh says, squeezing my hand. “And . . . thank you.”

“Just don’t tell Doreen,” I say, hugging her. “I didn’t exactly follow protocol.”

It’s only when I get out into the parking lot that I start to shake. It’s not throwing the coffee that scares me—although if it had been hot I could have scarred Jason for life. It’s the keys. I’d been ready to punch Jason in the face with a fistful of keys. I would have happily gouged his eyes out.





Chapter Three


Alice


THE WOMAN STANDING in front of the convenience store, bareheaded in the icy rain, looks like one of those do-gooder old hippie types. Spiky gray hair, fuzzy shapeless poncho, heavy work boots. The poncho may well be purple but it’s hard to tell in the weak fluorescent light of the store windows. She’s holding a cup and a shopping bag.

“Is that her?” Oren asks, woken from his sleep by the shifting gears of the bus as it turned into the parking lot.

“Must be,” I say. “She looks . . . okay.”

“She looks like a social worker,” Oren says, making it clear what he thinks of the profession.

“They’re not all bad,” I say. “Scott was nice, right?”

“Yeah,” Oren says without much conviction. Scott, his last caseworker, was nice, but he hadn’t been much help in the end. None of them are, really.

I get up to grab my pack from the overhead. Oren’s already got his Star Wars backpack shouldered. He’d slept with it crammed between his head and the window, one strap on his shoulder, his arms wrapped around it. When we left I’d given him five minutes to go back to his room and take only what he absolutely needed. I saw the library book sticking out the top when he met me at the door, but now I wonder what else he took—money?—that he’s holding on to so tightly.

We’re the only ones getting off the bus. I glance at the other passengers as we walk up the aisle—the college kid plugged into his earbuds, eyes closed, head nodding to tinny rap; a Latina woman with a baby whose eyes move over me without making contact; an old woman wrapped up in a scarf reading a book. No one who will remember a boy and his mother getting off in a nowhere town in the Catskills. Not even the driver turns to watch us make our way down the steps to the door. I have the creepy feeling that we are invisible. That once we step off this bus we will vanish from the known world, that the purple-shawled woman has been sent to lead us to the underworld like those snake-haired crones in Oren’s book.

Sensing my hesitation, Oren stops at the steps down to the door and turns to look up at me, eyes wide and solemn. I open my mouth to tell him it’s all right but he beats me to it. “It’s okay,” he says. “This is the right stop.” The driver turns his head to us. He’s wondering what’s wrong with me that my son has to lead me off the bus—and he’ll remember us now. I curse myself for hesitating.

“Of course it is. Thanks . . . honey.” I remember at the last moment not to use Oren’s name. I smile at the bus driver. “He’s been studying the bus map since we planned this trip to Aunt Jean’s.”

“Good man,” the driver says. “You take care of your mom, now.”

Asshole, I think, giving Oren a little push to move him along and keep him from answering. He does anyway. “We take care of each other,” he says.

The icy rain makes my eyes sting as we step off the bus onto the pavement, and I have to stop and wipe them. Oren takes my hand like I’m a goddamned invalid and leads me forward, out of the exhaust fumes. The woman is approaching, holding out a white paper bag. “You must be Alice and Oren,” she says, looking first at me and then down at Oren. “I’m Mattie. I’d shake hands but I seem to have a bag full of bear claws. Do you think you could help me with those?” She holds the bag toward Oren.

“Are they real bear claws?”

The woman—Mattie—throws back her head and laughs. “Oh my, do I look like a bear hunter? Even if they do get in my garbage cans and make a stink, I consider the bears my friends.”

“There are bears here?” Oren asks, eyes narrowing with suspicion.

“Why yes,” Mattie says, “and coyotes and bobcats too. But the only kind of bear claws I eat are of the pastry variety. Here, why don’t you try one?” She’s still holding the bag out to him. Oren looks to me, as if I am the kind of mother who restricts his sweets intake. What a clever touch. I smile to show how much I appreciate it and he takes the bag from Mattie. He digs his hand in and takes out a glazed pastry as big as a man’s fist. He holds it up to me.

“You take it,” I say.

Oren takes an enormous bite, and Mattie looks up from him to me like she’s waiting for me to say something, like I’m supposed to slaver all over her for some cheap pastries from Stewart’s. That’s what these do-gooders get off on. Still, I’d better keep on her good side until we’re safely out of here. “Thanks,” I say. “We had to leave too fast to pack any food.”

“There will be something more substantial where you’re going,” she says.

“And where’s that?” I ask. “It has to be someplace no one can find out where we are. Oren’s father—”