A Mother Would Know (19)
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On Wednesday morning I find Hudson’s car still parked in the driveway, even after I return from walking Bowie. He should be gone by now.
Worried he’s slept through his work alarm, I rap on his bedroom door. “Hudson?”
No response.
I try again, knocking louder this time.
Through the door, I hear rustling, a muffled moan. I step back, hand suspended in the air. Is someone in there with him?
Biting my lip, I whirl away from the door, having no desire to walk in on him and a girl. I’d done my share of that when he was younger.
That’s actually how I’d found out his and Heather’s relationship had changed. She practically lived at our house back then. Hudson and Heather had become fast friends within a month of her family moving into the neighborhood. She was the only other child on the street who was Hudson’s age. I wasn’t sure whether their being a boy and a girl would matter at that point, whether they’d have already grown awkward or self-conscious around the opposite sex—but I needn’t have worried.
Daily, they were running back and forth between our two houses. They spent hours on Hudson’s Nintendo, elbowing each other over Mario Kart, taking turns coaching one another through Zelda. The summer they were twelve, they made movie after movie on Leslie’s digital camera, mostly slapstick murder mysteries in which Heather played a detective and Hudson every other character including the victims. Hudson loved baseball and, with the right needling, could usually coax Heather into throwing a ball around the backyard, unless her friend Katie O’Connell was over—it used to irritate Hudson to no end when she’d show up and Heather chose “girl time.”
One afternoon when the kids were fifteen, Leslie called and asked me to send Heather home to help with dinner. I knew they were upstairs in Hudson’s room—I could hear music filtering down through the floor—and I didn’t even consider knocking before barging inside.
Their mouths were fused, their hands locked around each other’s bodies.
Immediately, they shoved off of one another, looking stricken. Heather didn’t even need to be told that her mother had called—she’d just grabbed her backpack and fled, mumbling, “Bye, Valerie.”
“Are you really that shocked?” Mac had asked me when I told him at our band’s practice later, and I guess I wasn’t. “Their hormones are raging. Their brains are under scaffolding.”
“Thanks for that analogy,” I’d responded sourly, but I knew he was right.
Now, hesitating at Hudson’s door, I hear him call out in a weak tone, “Mom?”
I push the door open, and he rolls over in his bed, his bloodshot eyes connecting with mine. His face is sweaty and pale.
“Oh, god, it got you, too, huh?” Cringing, I back away, keeping my distance.
“Seems like it,” he mumbles. “Thanks a lot.”
I laugh lightly. “Well, the good news is it’s only a twenty-four-hour bug. You should be better by tomorrow. I know I felt terrible on Monday, but by Tuesday morning I was right as rain.” Oh, god, did I really just use that phrase? My mom used to say that.
He groans.
“Can I get you anything?”
He shakes his head.
“Did you call into work?”
He nods, eyes closed.
“Okay, get some rest.”
He grunts in response as I close the door.
The hallway is quiet, the clock ticking downstairs.
Hickory, dickory, dock,
The mouse ran up the clock...
Something was inside the wall. It scratched late at night when I lay in my bed, long after being tucked in. The first night I heard it, I got down on my hands and knees and crawled under my bed, trying to figure out what it was. For a few panicked seconds, I got stuck there, the rust-colored carpet choking me, but I never did find it.
Afterward, I ran into my parents’ room, and headed straight for their bed.
I padded across the carpet to reach them. Dad faced the wall, arm tucked under his pillow. I almost giggled. We slept the same. Mom was closest to me, her face staring up at the ceiling, her arms down by her sides. She looked like the pictures I’d seen of mummies in their tombs. I reached out and poked her shoulder.
She jolted, gasped.
“Oh, my god. You scared me to death,” she said.
I wished I could hide then. Slip into a cubby in the shelving built into the wall behind my parents’ bed. Or better yet, disappear like the Invisible Woman.
“I’m scared,” I said, admitting I wasn’t a superhero at all.
“Of what?” she asked, sitting up.
“There’s something in my wall. I can hear it scratching.”
Mom sighed. “There is nothing in your wall. You’re just imagining it.”
“But there is,” I insisted, tugging on her arm. “Come see.”
“I’m too tired for this.” Drawing her arm out of my grasp, she ran a hand down her face, pushed back her hair. “You need to go back to bed. You’re fine.”
I glanced at Dad, wishing I’d woken him instead.
“I mean it. Go to bed.” Mom was already lying back down. There was no changing her mind.
Reluctantly, I slunk into the hallway, huffing and puffing the whole way. But Mom was not swayed. I could hear her even breathing as if she’d already fallen asleep again.