Motherless Child Read online

  And come to rest in my lap? Still blinking at me? Would she still be Sophie then? Assuming she still is now?

  Again, somehow, Natalie stopped thinking. She pulled her hand away, and Sophie’s head stayed put, roughly where it belonged, staring down the empty road into the dark. Natalie slammed the door and returned to the driver’s seat, checking the tires for deer-bits. She saw lots of spatter but nothing protruding.

  “Okay,” she said, settling, keying the ignition. “Come on. Let’s get clean. Find somewhere to rest.” She put the car in Drive and drove.

  For a while, she couldn’t even make herself glance at the passenger seat. She was afraid that when she did she’d discover that she was alone after all. That what had risen off the road was not monster-Sophie, not even ghost- or zombie-Sophie, but the dying remnants of her. The last Sophie there would ever be. The thought of losing her again was more than Natalie could bear.

  But when she did look—in the rearview mirror, first, then directly—she saw Sophie still sitting up. One of her hands lay turned upward in her lap, the fingers twitching. She had a strand of what Natalie first thought was bloody hair and then realized was neck-tendon in her mouth, so that she could suck on it.

  Given the grue she’d practically bathed in this night, the sight proved more pathetic than disgusting. Gently, Natalie reached over and tugged the tendon free. “Honey, don’t do that,” she murmured, and stroked Sophie’s cold, red-streaked cheek.

  Overhead, the sky showed a first hint of pink, like an eye just coming open. There were woods to either side, probably dense enough to keep the harshest light off them. But wherever they were, it wasn’t Cumberland Island. Someone would stumble across them. And today, in her current state and with Sophie in her current condition—whatever it was—that would be fatal. Quite possibly for everyone involved. They passed a billboard for some hotel. Red Backer, Red Cracker, Natalie didn’t quite catch the name. But it had to be ahead, and not too far.

  “See, Sophe?” Her voice had an ugly buzz despite the various fluids she’d sucked down tonight. A frantic, fly-on-windscreen rasp. “It’s all right. We’re close.” She reached out to pat Sophie’s thigh and caught sight of the blood caked all the way up her own arm. Even she had no idea whether her laugh was hysterical. “Only, maybe … gas station first, huh? One with restrooms around back and one of those nice, rusty sinks and that stink you always loved so well? I mean love.”

  When Sophie didn’t so much as turn, Natalie reached under her seat and came up with Sophie’s pink backpack. Same one she’d had since high school, with little Sophie-slogans inked in black and purple all over it. RC Girl. Slurp Me Up, Scotty. And down at the bottom along the pink stitching, NatQueenCold. Forever.

  From eleventh grade, that one. From the night Natalie had lured the DJ at one of their lame-o high-school dances into the hallway, then locked him out of the gym, hijacked his sound system, and played “Stardust” and “Autumn Leaves” until her baffled schoolmates booed her offstage.

  Not even ten years ago. Hardly any time at all.

  Trembling, she shoved her free hand into the pack, rooted around, came up with a Dixie Chicks tape, threw that in the back. On the second try, she found what she was looking for. Fumbling the cassette out of its case, Natalie started to push it into the dashboard deck, then stopped, staring at the J-card in her other hand.

  “Jesus Christ, Sophie. How many versions of this do you have on here?”

  All the way down both columns of the card, Sophie had written the same words, over and over. Sugar, Sugar. Sugar, Sugar. Sugar, Sugar.

  “Is this all Archies? Or are there really that many different people who’ve sung this?” Amazingly, despite everything, despite the dried-blood coating on her lips that cracked as it happened, Natalie grinned. “Maybe it really is a great song.” And as she pushed the tape into the deck and her smile slipped, she wondered just how many times this would have to happen before she learned. All their lives, Natalie had believed—known—she had better taste than Sophie. In boys. Food. Life and work choices. Baby clothes. Music, most of all. How many moments like this would it take before she understood, once and for all, that she was wrong?

  The first sounds out of the speakers weren’t the Archies. Natalie was so startled that a full minute of grinding guitar-piano crunch pounded by before she recognized it. “That’s not ‘Sugar, Sugar,’” she said, starting to laugh again. “That’s my Velvets. That’s ‘Waiting for My—”

  Voices exploded in a candy-colored fireworks dazzle. The Archies, all right. “Sugar, Sugar,” laid on top of “Waiting for My Man.” A mash-up from hell. A stroke of serious genius. Sweetness and glee pasted over the grimiest, grungiest riff of the sixties. Natalie threw her head back, floored the accelerator, laughed outright, screamed that two-word hook as it repeated and repeated and repeated, swiveled in her seat to throw an arm around Sophie and pull her close.

  Then her voice left her completely. The music, too, seemed to evaporate as it hit the air, the color gone out of it. Just noise and smoke.

  Sophie had slumped in her seat. Eyes still open, staring straight ahead. Head tilting too far to the right. Only the twitch in her upturned fingers confirmed that any part of her was still there.

  Natalie punched the tape out of the deck, slammed the radio off. “Right,” she said. “Hang on, Sophe. Please, please, please.”

  On and on the road ran, through trees and more trees. Past old sheds sinking into themselves like rotting gingerbread houses, farm fields with their ridged rows of dirt rising twisted and blue in the pre-dawn gray like varicose veins. No Waffle House, no gas station. How could there possibly be this much road through this much nowhere and no fucking gas stations, even in Georgia?

  Just as the light began to burn Natalie’s eyes—or, really, eyelids—and she was seriously considering turning the GTO straight off the road, through the yellow wildflowers that had lined their way for the last fifty miles or so, and as deep into the woods as it would go, buildings appeared in front of them. Three, side by side. A McDonald’s, a Red Whatever-the-Hell hotel, a nameless gas station with the light on inside its pitiful little market and not so much as a pickup parked out front. The roadside flowers rolled right up to the paving. Their own private yellow brick road, leading them to Oz. Now all they needed to do was not see the Wizard, or anyone else. And never get home.

  “Look,” she said in her new rasp, taking Sophie’s freezing upturned hand in her slightly warmer one. “Bathrooms around back, even. We’re safe, Sophe. I’ll get you safe.”

  She parked the GTO on the far right-hand edge of the lot, well out of the dim glow from the fluorescents that buzzed over the gas pumps. When she got out, she could see the guy working the counter inside the mini-mart, green corduroy cap worn backward on his head and stringy hair the color of road gravel. Whatever he had on the stereo, he was air-guitaring to it. She couldn’t see his eyes because he was too deep into his solo to look up, or else he hadn’t even heard them drive in. So much the better.

  Hurrying around the car, she opened the passenger-side door, tried to wedge Sophie’s head against her hip so it wouldn’t come loose as Natalie eased her out of the car. But the second Natalie shifted her, whole sections of Sophie seemed to slip, jostle sideways, as though she were a Sophie-shaped potato sack.

  “Damn it,” Natalie whispered, using every inch of her body to hold her friend in the car seat. “Just … stay there. Shit.” She got Sophie upright again, leaned against the top of the car, and put her forehead down on the metal, which was somehow already slick with dew.

  Or, more likely, blood, Natalie realized. Hers. Sophie’s. The deer’s. Enough to paint the whole GTO red, if she ever felt Georgia enough to do that. In her shoulders, exhaustion settled, heavier than any she remembered feeling back when she’d actually needed sleep. It spread down her arms into her hips. For just a second, she panicked, thought maybe it was the sun affecting her, that she was turning to stone or something.

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sp; Then she straightened, glanced toward air-guitar guy, and shook her head hard. “Okay. Sophe. Stay right there, okay? Don’t move. I’m too tired to drag you.” Also, you’re doing this pulling-apart thing that’s making me a little nervous. “I’m going to wash off so I can get us into that hotel over there. Then I’ll see to you. Okay? Two minutes. Do you want the music back on?”

  How Sophie had managed to get the frayed neck-tendon back between her lips Natalie had no idea. “You know,” Natalie said, “that’s really kind of…”

  But in a way, she supposed it was a good sign. Not as good as breaking into full-throated Archies harmony, but a start. A sign of life. Or hunger, anyway. She drummed once on the car hood. “Right. You enjoy that. I’ll just … Two minutes. I love you, Sophie.”

  The bathroom proved surprisingly spotless. Only the ammonia smell made her gag as she bent over the sink, turned the water on as hot as it would go, and shoved her arms underneath it. It felt even better than Natalie had imagined it would. She began to rake at the crusted blood on her arms with her nails, peeling it back, scratching all the way down under the first layer of skin. It hurt, but gloriously, sweetly. Like living did. Had. On impulse, she ducked her whole head, somehow wedged it sideways under the tap, and let the spurt of scalding water cascade through her hair, over her eyes, down her mouth, the heat like sunshine, almost. Like daylight. Like the memory of daylight.

  She didn’t fall asleep. Not really. But she did lose track, just for those wet, warm moments, of where she was. Sensation overwhelmed her, suffused and soothed her. When she remembered, she twisted off the tap with a long sigh, but without any panic, and stood up. There were no towels, just an air dryer. That would take too long, she reasoned. Although it wasn’t like Sophie was going anywhere.

  Whistling without even recognizing the tune, shaking her whole sopping self like a puppy, she stepped out of the bathroom, winced at the spreading sunrise overhead, and got within three steps of the car before she realized she’d been wrong about that.

  The GTO’s passenger door was open. And Sophie was gone.

  Had she ever even been there? Natalie stared, mouth open, all that heat already evaporating through her skin like steam because her skin could no longer hold it. Shivering, she took a step forward, made herself blink, tried to clear her head, and realized she could hear music.

  “Sugar, Sugar,” the original version, blaring out of the car stereo. So Sophie really had been here. And couldn’t have gone far. Couldn’t have. Couldn’t have. Natalie stumbled forward another few steps, looked frantically down the road in both directions, then across the street toward the trees. The light, she thought. She’s gotten herself out of the light. It probably hurts even more on open wounds. Then she glanced over her shoulder into the mini-mart.

  Sophie stood just inside the glass doors, legs apart, eyes straight ahead toward the cans of chewing tobacco on the wall behind the counter. Head tilting over. Bits of tendon and vein creeping out of her neck like weeds through cracked sidewalk. Blood-caked skirt hiked to her hips, so that air-guitar guy could get his head all the way up under. He was still wearing his corduroy cap.

  “Oh, God, Sophie,” Natalie moaned. She supposed she should be happy. But the protective shadows around her were lifting away and the light hurt all over. And she was so very, very tired. Lost and tired. And sad. “Come on, Sophe,” she called, not even sure Sophie could hear.

  Inside the mini-mart, as the man on his knees lapped and his backward cap bobbed like a duck bill against the bottom of Sophie’s skirt, Sophie stirred. She put a hand against the glass, slowly straightened her head on her neck with her other hand. Then she turned toward Natalie and opened her eyes.

  And Natalie saw. “Sophie, no,” she whispered.

  The tears she’d glimpsed, glinting unmistakably in the new daylight, slipped down Sophie’s cheeks. Just as Sophie reached down, took cap guy’s head in her hands and thighs, and gave a single savage twist.

  Before he’d even hit the floor, Sophie dropped down on him.

  13

  “I’m just getting some air,” Benny called from the condo’s tiny living room into the tinier bathroom, and stepped out the sliding screen door into the sea wind. For a while, he just stood there, blinking; Jess insisted on closing the curtains when they were indoors, though he remained unclear whether that was to stay hidden or just another Jess-privacy thing. Squinting into the sinking sun while his skin warmed from its air-conditioning coma and started to tingle, he slid a hand into his pocket to check for his cell phone. Then he glanced behind him to make sure Jess wasn’t watching, felt ridiculous, and started across the street toward the tilting pier terraced over the scatter of weeds and cracked, colorless shells that passed for beach in Ocean Town, Maryland.

  The sun still hung above the horizon and the pier’s splintery wooden railing retained the afternoon heat when Benny leaned on it, but already the beach had emptied. There was no sandbar along this stretch—the sandbar was for summer people—and no protective harbor, and waves pounded at the shore like fists on a door. People didn’t so much swim here as step in, get knocked down, struggle back up laughing less than they expected, and stagger out. In a few hours, the town teens would arrive with whatever beer they’d managed to scavenge and they’d huddle in whatever protection the weeds offered and get what they could from one another.

  Even across the street and over the thud of the waves, he could hear both of the babies crying back in the condo. As soon as she had them swaddled, Jess would be calling for him, because he turned out to have a surprising knack for quieting them. Surprising to him, not her, as far as he could tell.

  Why do you think I brought you? she often asked when he had the babies curled on his chest like kittens, sleeping soundly.

  And he’d smile, as if he loved the question, instead of simply the sound of her voice aimed in his direction.

  He should make his call right now, he knew. While Jess still had her hands full. Clearly, there was something back in Charlotte Jess needed to forget. He’d never press her on it, had no desire to learn more unless she wanted him to. But that didn’t mean he had to forget. Did it?

  Still, he lingered against the railing, feeling the grit on the slats under his feet, letting the sunlight slip over and into him. He closed his eyes, and the wind kicked up and flung bits of sand against his arms and cheeks like rice. As if the wedding were still going on five weeks later. Not that there’d been a wedding. But there could be, he was almost sure, now. Pretty much any time he wanted. Why would she say no?

  Opening his eyes, Benny glanced sideways toward town. Every single night at just about this hour—the edge of evening, almost the exact moment the beach users and retirees and single moms with their strollers abandoned the pier, taking their pockets full of possible change with them—the homeless materialized under the awnings of just-closed sunglasses shops or in the alleys between the low wooden buildings. So many homeless, here. There was one skinny guy in particular whom Benny had seen night after night, leaning against the streetlamp that never lit down there past the end of the row of condos, in the empty stretch before the first coddie stand. Benny had never ventured close enough to get a good look at his face, and the guy mostly just stood or sat there, played a harmonica occasionally, accepted tossed quarters from rare passersby. But the last few nights, he’d taken to waiting until he was sure Benny was looking and then casually, slowly, lifting his fifty-cent straw hat just an inch or so off his head. From what he’d glimpsed, Benny suspected that guy wasn’t even eighteen years old. Was actually a kid.

  Should that have made Benny nervous? He supposed it should. Instead, he mostly wanted to make the kid a pancake.

  Returning his attention to the beach, Benny stared through the weeds, watched the ocean rise yet again and shatter itself on the shore. Should he have asked Jess to marry him by now? Probably, yep. It was what he’d wanted, for going on ten years. He just wished he knew what it would mean to her. And how could it mean
anything to her, in fairness? Her daughter—for whom Jess had jettisoned even grief, along with any ambitions she might ever have had for herself—had pawned off not just her own kid but someone else’s, then vanished, apparently for good. Benny was still having trouble believing that. He’d known Natalie had a wild streak—hence the child—but he’d also thought he’d seen more of her mother in her. More stay-and-fight-like-hell. He’d kind of loved her for it, truth be told, and very much hoped she was all right, wherever she was. At least, that’s what he hoped whenever he wasn’t furious at her.

  Whatever she’d done, it was bad enough to drive her mother from her home. Such as that had been. And now, from what Benny could tell, Jess had completely given up sleep. He’d never once caught her with her eyes closed. She didn’t twist around in the covers or get up to wander. But those eyes stayed open, like a corpse’s. Except for the flash in them, even in the dark.

  No wonder she mostly declined to come when he took the boys out for a stroll or to the sand. No wonder she could barely bring herself to speak, except to the children, most of the time.

  On the other hand, there’d been moments …

  In the five weeks they’d spent on the road, skipping from tiny town to nowhere-place to new tiny town until he’d finally convinced her to hole up here, just for a spell, they’d made love twice. The second time had been during their first night in the Ocean Town condo, a little less than a week ago, and it had surprised her, he knew. The first time, she’d maybe thought she was doing what she had to or what he expected. But last week, afterward, she had lain on her pillow for a long while, without her glasses, not so much staring at as studying him. Reading him, or something. He’d held still, sweating and spent and a little surprised himself, and let her. Watching the sweat on her tiny, strong shoulders, the knots of muscle under the smooth skin like the bottoms of bird wings. The surprising swell of her breasts under the sheet. The near smile she couldn’t quite get off her face, and the ghosts lurking behind her eyes, which she was actually letting him see.