Marry or Burn (20 page)

Quickly, somebody had been found who knew the best place to take him. Even though the place was in Chicago, his mother
had taken him. She was so pregnant she had had to lie to get on the flight.

All he remembered of the trip was her getting up to go to the bathroom five or six times, and taking his hands back into her own cold, washed, half-dried ones every time she sat down, and saying, because he was whispering on and on, he couldn't shut up, “Shh, shh. You don't have to worry, it's all right.”

She thought flipping out had made him afraid, but that wasn't it. He liked planes. It was said that as a baby in a stroller he had shouted and pointed them out in the sky, and he could remember himself in a certain grassless spot in the playground near the slide, in what must have been kindergarten because his father was already dead, staggering backward to look at a plane going over.

It wouldn't have been all that crazy for a little kid to get the idea that catching sight of a plane in the sky brought him luck. And then he had had the ability to dispense the luck. That was his game, to bring them luck, to offer safety to passengers who could not be seen, who were so far off and miniaturized they were turning into nothing. But if he saw their plane in time, they returned to existence.

Was anyone looking up at the plane he was in now, coming home by himself? He shook out his shoulders, rocked his head. Relax yourself. Relax your body. Relax your mind. If you could relax “your” body and “your” mind, where and what was “you?” You, you were not there. You were not on the plane. But of course he was there, in the seatbelt. What had etched the glass of the window in just that way, thousands of silver hairs trapped on it? Every once in a while his gaze went through the glass, like a finger breaking the surface of water, to the banks of cloud just below the wing. As the plane veered downward into them they streamed sideways, bathed the windows, and pulled apart
suddenly into dark, wooded land, where you could see roads, huge lots full of tiny cars, even horses in fields.

The noise snapped into a higher register, the wing fiercely dropped its angle, and quite suddenly they were down. Until he had the floor of the gangway under his feet, he didn't think of being home. He didn't think of his mother or the baby until he saw them.

His mother did not hold the baby up to display him. She had him in a corduroy contraption on her chest. She put her arms around Gabe with the baby between them and said just his name; she didn't say how he looked—his skin had broken out—and he didn't say how she looked, which wasn't very good, with gray hair in her bangs and her eyes set among creases.

She kept her arms around him, resting him. He was tired, but in a normal way, without the tinny commentary. His drug had gotten rid of it, the quiet racket too fast and just too far away to be unscrambled. “So, is this Lars we have here?” he said.

“That's him,” she said. “Sixteen pounds of lead, when he's asleep.”

A baby. And she its mother. But in fact she had left it once to come and see him, and barely spoken of it, the result being that Gabe could not say he had firmly understood its existence. He studied the wad of cheek against the sling, the large ear, bigger than his own. He said, “He's pretty cute.”

“You can't really get the full picture. You'll see him at home. And we'll see you. Oh, Gabe. I'm so happy, I'm so happy you're home.”

“This is all my stuff,” he said. “I didn't bring anybody a present.”

“A present!” She stopped walking and he thought she might hug him again but she didn't. Roughly she pulled down her jacket under the sling and set off again, walking fast, as she always did. Nothing woke the big, jouncing baby. Gabe said, “How's everything at school?”

“All right.”

“All settled down?”

“Oh, they'll get used to anything. They haven't but they will. I can't go into my office because it's locked. The district is worried I'll sue. They've got me in the back transferring test scores, won't let me see my kids.” She glanced at him. “I mean particular ones, who need me. They have to come in and lurk at the counter and get sent away and leave notes on my car to ask me if they should report their uncle for raping them.”

A lot of people knew it was Mr. Lofgren's baby. The principal knew. Still, his mother had been written up in the newspaper for her work as a counselor in the school—it was his own school—and she had gone to Washington, D.C., to get an award, and in that way she was more important than the principal. And Mr. Lofgren was important, of course, because of basketball.

In the parking garage the wet tire tracks were like attempts to draw something very large on the floor. “Well, so. Did he move in?”

“No, no. No, he's still at his place.”

“I bet he still has
his
job.”

She chewed her lip sadly, unlocking the car. “He . . . yeah.”

He helped her disentangle the baby's legs from the carrier. He was surprised at the baby's weight. Once she had it in the car seat in the back he got a look at the lolling face. Evidently it had a cold; the big cheeks were chapped and smeared and the pouting lips had a crayon red outline. Huge ears, flimsy looking.

Soft ears. Familiar. He had just read in a magazine, while he waited for his haircut before coming home, about a study showing that criminals were likely to have large, extra-soft ears. Certain kinds of criminals. Serial killers.

“Lars,” he said. “Isn't that sort of a weird name?”

“It was Carl's brother's name. He died in Vietnam.”

“Uh-oh. But old Carl was a hippie, like you.”

“He was in Vietnam too.”

“So how old were they?”

“Eighteen and twenty. Carl was eighteen.”

“Ha. I could join the army.”

“You're fifteen. And don't pretend you want to join the army at any age.”

“I couldn't get in the army. I'm crazy.”

“That's good, if it will keep you out of the army.” She wrenched the car into the freeway traffic. This was the way she drove; he'd be better at it. He'd be a little behind when he got his license but he would have it by '93. She said, “I got mad while they had you. Mad at the clinic. They had you and I didn't. I missed you so much.”

“Anyway the whole thing now is what drug you're on,” he offered. “That's all they do. I could get admitted any place for that. Did they tell you that?”

“Yes, they were pleasantly modest about themselves, they told me that.”

“When?”

“Towards the beginning. But that was the best place.”

On their block, a hand went down the middle of the street. Though it was only a leaf, it moved so formally, as if along a keyboard, that he stared after it. He felt a sudden energy of longing. “You know what I always liked? When I was like three? See that?”

“What, the Toyota?”

“The window. See how the tree branches like slide off? In the back window? Every once in a while a plane goes across. I used to think the plane was there in the window,
in
the glass. I had to make sure it got across. Man I used to watch for those little guys.”

In a voice almost of tears she said, “You always looked at things.”
That made him seem to have been gone longer than he had been. She went on dreamily, “You must have been five. That's when I let you in the front seat with me. Now they say not to. They probably did then. I was so out of it that year, who knows what else I did.”

“It was lucky. Luckier than seeing a real plane. I used to wait . . . I used to almost pray to see one, for a while there.”

In the driveway she said, “Can you pray at that age?”

 

HE GOT UP early and went down the block in the near dark to shoot baskets at Chris's old house. While he was gone Chris had moved. His mother blamed it on Chris's dad. “He got a raise. So right away you
know
Katie had to have a
horse
.” Katie was Chris's little sister and nobody could stand her attitude. “So now they have one and they board it next door. Couldn't be more convenient for Katie.”

In front of Chris's old house the hollow bashing of the ball was a shock, in the quiet. He saw lights come on next door, and he tucked the ball and left. He saw his mother through the fogged front window—she was keeping the house hot—sitting very still on the couch in the T-shirt she slept in, with the baby on her lap. She was looking through the window at him, her face puffy and blank. Suddenly she snapped to and waved.

He took off his coat. “Look what I found in my pocket.”

It was a pacifier. She smiled her old smile. “I snuck that jacket while you were gone. Do you mind? I won't wear it anymore. It's too big for me anyway.”

Holding the ball, he flopped down at the other end of the couch in the steamy room. Across from them was the broad, high-riding armchair he had noticed last night, brown leather or something that looked like leather, with a bulging headrest and sleeves on the arms, and a handle like a gearshift on the side of it. “Where'd you get
that
?”

“I bought it. It's a recliner. Do you think it's ugly? It
is
ugly. I just wanted something . . . substantial in here. Bad, huh?”

“It's OK.”

The baby was awake on her lap, staring at him with its blue protruding eyes, like Mr. Lofgren's. And the ears. It screwed up its face to cry, but instead of crying jerked the big head several times in a kind of pitcher's windup.

“He's too sleepy to nurse. Did you hear him in the night? He doesn't get up much compared to most, do you, buddy, do you?” She picked something off the faded yellow sleeper, which looked as if the baby had already worn it out in his crib life. Now the crib was at the foot of her bed, but Gabe had the feeling she had had it in his room. Everything was where it was supposed to be in his room but there was a sticky smell when you stepped inside the door.

“He's cute.”

“Honey, you don't have to keep saying that. He's funny-looking at the moment, if the truth be told. Well, I'm going to get him ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“He's going when I go.”

“But I'll be here. I could keep him.”

“Honey, I'll just take him to Mattie. His sitter.” For a second Gabe thought, his
sister
?

“He has a sitter who takes just two others, two babies. He's used to her; he does this every day.” She dropped the blanket on the rug and swung the baby above it, causing him to kick and stub his feet on each other, rasping the cracked vinyl heels. Why didn't she dress him in something newer than that?

The baby didn't want to be on his back; he thrashed, grunted, and rolled his eyeballs at her in a ridiculous, threatening way, like a fish scowling in a bowl.

Even serial killers had their diapers changed at one time. No one changing them knew what was to come. No one had any idea what was cramped up in a little shrimp body waiting to unfold. A baby did not know it was not innocent.

“They were going to give me a leave but it never materialized. Then they were going to let me take him to school with me because I don't have anything to do, but no, dammit. Bad example.” She unzipped the suit and peeled it down, releasing a rich, sour smell that seemed to excite the baby, who flailed his arms and made a trilling noise. His tongue was another limb, so active it made his chin slick, as well as the creased area that would have been a neck if he had had a neck.

“Hand me those.” She wiped the yellow paste off the baby's tapered buttocks, which were remarkably smooth and clean-looking under it. “I know you could watch him. But it's hard to take care of a baby this age. They're irritating. They tire you.”

“Hey, whatever.” He bounced the ball off the new chair.

“Gabe, I haven't explained anything to you. About Lars.”

“You don't have to explain to me.”

“I feel as if I do need to. Give me a chance to do it. Look at me. Listen. One child was all I ever needed. One. You. I was . . . it was . . . I said to myself, that was stupid, you got pregnant, but you're thirty-nine, you can either do this or forget that whole side of life. Babies. The part of life that ends. I mean it
ends
. I know it's hard to see that, at your age.”

“Hey, I think you should do what you want. So when do I go back to school? I might as well get started.”

She had her chin on the baby's head. “Let's wait awhile. A few days. I called to see if Chris could come over this weekend and his mom wants you to come down there instead. Tomorrow. See the new place. He's out of school for parent conferences. She's taking off work to see his teacher.”

“How come?”

“Conferences. Just the routine thing where they tell you your kid is distracting everybody, or everybody is distracting him, that stuff. But she's worried about him. You know how she is. The music worries her, the swearing, the drugs, she thought the suburbs would be safe, blah, blah.”

“His crazy friends.”

“If you say that all the time, you'll convince yourself, honey.”

He moved closer. She saw he was going to touch the baby and she smiled at him. He said, “I just want to feel his ears.”

 

HE WAS COLD, waiting in the shadow of the garage across the street, behind a recycling bin. The ground was yellow with wet leaves. Mr. Lofgren lived in an old neighborhood; all up and down the block the old trees with fat, knotted trunks had burst the sidewalk and pried up the street with their roots. Right at that moment he was up on one of the roots, balancing himself.

The windows of the Lofgrens' house were steamed up just like the windows at his own house. Two or three of them had sheets of plastic nailed up around them in preparation for winter, and there was a ladder propped against the house. There was no garage, or he could have turned on the ignition in Mr. Lofgren's car—though he would have needed the car key—and locked the car and, when Lofgren came to investigate, shut him in with the exhaust. He had seen this done on TV. Though what had prevented the victim from leaving the garage the way he had come, through the house? Or just opening the garage door from inside?