Winter Loon(26)

My mother was wearing a black sweater and dark pants. Only her white face, hot with anger, was caught in the cold light when she opened the refrigerator door. She bent down and took out the rest of the beer. She stormed past me, snatching her car keys and the note from the table.

“And get Elizabeth,” she said to me.



WE SPENT THAT NIGHT BUNDLED up together in the car on a dirt road not far from town. I’d asked her why we couldn’t go home. Her hand was over her mouth, her head turned from me. She only shook her head. I ate Wonder Bread and let Elizabeth lick cat food off my finger so she wouldn’t cut herself on the jagged edges of the can I’d jimmied open. My mother drank the beers until she complained they were making her cold. She got out of the car, squatted to pee in the berm. We fell asleep propped up against each other. By morning we could see our breath. Frost had built up on the windshield. Elizabeth was mewing and fussy, needing a litter box.

The car started on the second try, and we drove to a playground so the cat could claw around and do her business in the sand.

“Am I going to school?” We were at a stop sign, and I could see that other kids were making their way in that direction. A car behind us honked. My mother gave the finger without turning around and waited to go, waited some more until the horn blared again.

“We’re playing hooky.”

We drove to the next town over—so no one would recognize us, she said, as if we were on the run, as if my father was in hot pursuit. She pulled into a grocery store parking lot. “Let’s go in and get warm,” she said. “I got no money for gas.” I made a towel nest for Elizabeth and followed my mother into the store. We took our time, going up and down each aisle, filling our cart full of wishful things—cereal boxes and bags of cookies, canned fruits and scarlet-colored jugs filled with juice. My mother pretended to be organized, and we made a game out of packing the cart like a moving box. “Get me something thin and about this size,” she said, measuring out dimensions with her hands. I searched the store for the item that would fit neatly into the empty space, eager to keep her happy enough to go home.

At the deli counter, she made up a story about her daughter, Daisy, who was at school—“this one’s sick,” she said of me. Daisy and I would need sandwiches the next day, she said, and how very much kids these days ate, she said. The clerk sliced off bits of ham and cheese for us, and we devoured it, though we tried not to behave like the animals we were. At the bakery, she said my birthday was in a few days and asked if I could taste some cake before we decided which one we would get for my big party. She went on about all my friends and how she and Daisy were planning the party, how we would have balloons and toys and a pi?ata shaped like a tiger. “We should name that tiger ‘Moss,’ shouldn’t we, Wes?” she asked me, smiling broadly, sickeningly, at the clerk. My mother promised she would be back the next day to pick up the cake.

We ate the deli ham in the aisles and stashed the white waxed paper behind the toilet tissue. After she crammed a few items into her coat pockets and purse—beef jerky, peanuts, bags of M&Ms, a bottle of Nyquil—we abandoned the cart in the frozen food aisle. When we got out to the car, she burst out laughing and I did, too. How funny it was to make them go through all that work when we had no money at all.

But that night we did have money enough for a motel room. Through the plate glass window, I watched her negotiate with the serpent of a man behind the counter. She leaned and popped her hip, pointed to me, the boy she’d told to look helpless. I put on the big sad eyes of late-night commercials—children with no food, dogs with no home. She nibbled her thumbnail, rubbing the rough of it against her lips, looked back at me. I tried to imagine the bargain she was driving, the wheedling. My father said she was an expert at “jewing people down,” a born dealmaker. The man behind the counter was long and slick. His wily neck jutted and collapsed back on itself. Finally, he nodded and she came back out to the car, spinning the key around on the plastic fob.

The room was small, mildewed. A painting hung cockeyed above the one sunken bed, a failing ship in a stormy sea. My mother switched on the television, which flickered to life. We both plunked down, bouncing on the end of the bed. She leaned over, switched the channel until she was satisfied, then sat back. I got up to go to the bathroom. I fought and lost the urge to check behind the torn blue plastic curtain that circled the tub. What or who I thought would be there, I don’t know, but I yanked it back, thinking at least the element of surprise would be on my side. My mother yelled to me through the closed door.

“I gotta go out,” she said. “I’ll bring back food. You stay here.”

I closed the blinds to keep bogeymen from spying on me through the plate glass window. There was a phone on the nightstand, and I rested my hand on it, thinking I could call the house, explain to my father she was mad at him, tell him he really ought to come get us. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be with both of them.



“C’MON, WES. WAKE UP,” SHE said, kissing me all over my face. Her breath was god-awful and I dove under the pillow.

“What took you so long?” I asked. I’d waited and waited, watching daylight turn from sundown to darkness, until I’d given in to sleep, curled up with Elizabeth for comfort. She hugged on me like I wasn’t a living thing, squeezing me until I had to cry uncle.

“There’s burgers in the bag,” she said, pointing to a greasy sack next to the television. “I have to take a shower.”