Motherless Child Read online

  But not anymore. Not after last night. Not once his Destiny had found him at last …

  By the tilt of the earth beneath his feet and the shade of black overhead, he knew he had only an hour or two left. Soon, he’d have to call Mother so she could pick him up. She wouldn’t be happy. Would upbraid him mercilessly, because she didn’t understand, yet. Didn’t know that their time together was ending. That he’d found his Destiny, after all these years. The thought that she didn’t know somehow made the whole night even more exciting. An hour ago, as he’d realized what was occurring, he wouldn’t have considered that possible.

  His Destiny. He’d seen her first two nights ago, through the Waffle House window, juggling syrup bottles and plates as she danced between tables, not even knowing she was dancing. He’d slipped away from Mother and spent hours and hours watching. Listening to her sing her way, slump shouldered and exhausted, to her car in the wee hours. Watching her settle on the stoop of her trailer in the early-summer dawn, her hair coming loose and her tired chin down on her chest and her child, whom she’d gone into the trailer to fetch, in her arms.

  Abruptly the trembles hit him again, viciously. Usually, after a Feed, he got weeks, sometimes months, before he felt so much as a prickle of hunger. But of course, he hadn’t actually fed, this time. Not completely. Not yet. Despite the trembles. Despite the Need. For his Destiny’s sake. Because that’s how strong his love was.

  That’s how strong his love was.

  And now a change was gonna come.

  He caught the melody, clung to it, swayed to it right there on the double yellow line. If a truck came, he’d throw his arms open to it, embrace it like a lover. Because he would love it. Did, in fact, love it all. That’s what Mother had forgotten. How to love it all. That’s why he could not stay with her. Not anymore.

  He felt tears of gratitude in his eyes, a swelling in his chest—for his Destiny, he knew, not for Mother—and he threw back his head, sucked the night in and in and in, pursed his lips, let the shivers and the long, empty, lonely years roll up him. And then he let them out, like steam screaming through a kettle.

  When he did call, Mother answered immediately. “Just stay right there,” she snapped.

  “Don’t be mad,” he said, careful to disguise his laughter, moving to the curb to hunker down with his arms around himself so the shudders didn’t shake him apart. “I’m so cold.”

  “You don’t know what you’ve done. Hell, I don’t know what you’ve done.”

  “Did you see her? Mother?” the Whistler said. Shuddering. Holding himself together.

  “I saw her.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Coming. Close. What’d you do with the other one?”

  “Left her. Of course.” Which was true, though now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure why. Or how. He could have fed on her. Had started to, caught sight of his Destiny, her glorious, tear-filled, rolled-back eyes …

  Silence. Over the chattering of his teeth and the rattle in his bones, the Whistler thought he could hear Mother’s truck. Then, “You must be freezing.”

  The Whistler could see her headlights, like giant, judging eyes. “I’ll be warm soon,” he whispered.

  If she heard, she didn’t answer. And if she understood …

  If she understood, he thought—and he couldn’t fight the smile now—she’d just keep going. Never look back.

  Instead, just as he knew she would, she pulled up beside him, climbed out, and helped him hoist his shivering, teary-eyed, smiling self into the cab of the truck.

  3

  When did Natalie know?

  Not at first, waking up with her bones sore and her eyes itching but her head surprisingly clear, reaching for the digital clock by the bed and seeing it was after ten and then catching a shard of moonlight across the back of her palm and hearing the Orioles broadcast from the stoop in front of the trailer. That flat, familiar voice chanting, “Out at the plate.” So, ten at night?

  She shot upright, calling, “Eddie? Eddie?”

  “You want to wake him, shut up,” her mother snapped, reentering through the trailer’s open screen door, resting her radio and the Burger King glass containing her nightly mint lemonade on the square of countertop next to the sink.

  Natalie’s eyes swung to the folding bassinet that served as Eddie’s crib. There he was, her little caterpillar boy, curled in his blue blanket with his amazing hair every which way, a thousand little antennas pulling in the world, even in his sleep. She stood, winced, stretched, leaned over the bassinet.

  “Thanks, Mom,” she said. Eddie’s cheeks felt warm, not feverish but so warm, and she held her fingers to them as though over a fire. When she glanced up, her mother was sipping her drink, leaning against the doorframe.

  “Strike three called, right down the middle,” said the radio.

  “Crap,” Jess said, folding her arms and somehow settling even deeper into the floppy blue cardigan she put on every single evening, the second she got home. Her ankle-scraper of a skirt draped her like a lampshade and made her look even shorter. “Eight–nothing, bottom of the eighth.” She looked up at Natalie, and just for a moment, behind her big, round glasses, her eyes flashed. Tiny, blue, and deadly. Little switchblades.

  Natalie sang her the Mr. Rogers song anyway, as she always did at the sight of that cardigan.

  “Shut up,” her mother said.

  “I’ll be your neighbor.”

  “Yeah, well, what should I sing you? ‘Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee’?”

  “You can sing it,” Natalie mumbled. “You’d be wrong, though.”

  “You look…” Jess started, then stopped. The switchblades flashed again. On the radio David Ortiz hit another shot out of Camden Yards, and her mother shut off the game.

  Natalie’s gaze kept wandering from her sleeping son to her mom to the window. She swayed on her feet, feeling strange. Too light. Sort of sick. And like she wanted to throw her mother aside, bolt out the door, and run. Not to get away, not to go anywhere. Just to move.

  “Go on,” she said. “Tell me.”

  Jess shrugged, lowered her eyes, went back to looking like a lawn gnome. “Less awful than you should. What happened to you last night?”

  Natalie started toward the counter to brew coffee before realizing she didn’t want any. Pulling off the T-shirt she suspected her mother had somehow slipped on her while she slept—over the shreds of her dress—she edged into the bathroom to change into her work uniform, and to hide her embarrassment. Eventually, she said, “I’m on at eleven.”

  When she emerged, her mother was sitting in a folding chair at the square folding table. She’d poured Natalie some cereal. Natalie shook her head, ran a brush through her hair.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go in tonight, hon.”

  Natalie nodded. “You might be right. Or I might be fine. I actually can’t tell.”

  “Have something to eat.”

  “I don’t want anything.”

  Instead of arguing, Jess watched her finish dressing. The moonlight seemed to etch her there, by herself. For almost fifteen years, ever since Natalie’s father’s death, her mother had been alone. Because she’d never gotten over it. Because she dressed like Mr. Rogers. Or because her clothes could soften but never disguise her. Not many men in the trailer park know how to ride a mustang when they spot one, as her mother liked to put it.

  She was holding her Burger King glass to her lips, now, and she looked, incongruously, like a little girl playing Mr. Microphone. A little girl who’d given up her whole life to raising her daughter. “You seriously do look good, Nat. Kind of lit up.”

  Was that what she was? Just the thought seemed to set off that sound in her ears. Like a steam train coming closer, or moving away; she couldn’t tell which. But it was whistling. “Actually, you do, too, Mom.”

  “Yeah, well. Nice moon.”

  “It’s not the moon.” Natalie meant it but was still surprised when her mother nodded. />
  “It’s the babies. Yours. Sophe’s. Being alone with them all last night and most of today, since Sophe didn’t come by, either, until maybe an hour ago, and I had to call in sick to work.”

  “Sorry. Don’t snark.”

  “Did that sound snarky?”

  “Don’t be sad. We’re okay. We’re all—”

  “Do I look sad?”

  Natalie looked. “Not tonight, actually.”

  Jess nodded. “See?”

  Shaking her head, still dazed, Natalie started out the door. The early-summer air swirled around her, heavy and warm.

  “At least take the car,” her mother called when she was already across the square of dirt that constituted their yard.

  “I’d rather walk,” Natalie said.

  “Cars are for driving. For getting you places.”

  “Not to Waffle House. Not that car.”

  “Oh, brother.”

  “Night, Mr. Rogers.”

  When Natalie heard no laughter, she glanced back. Jess leaned in the doorway of the trailer, arms folded, head against the frame. Natalie had the disconcerting impression that the trailer was moving slowly away, like a boxcar hitched to an invisible engine. Then the feeling passed. Neither she nor her mother was going anywhere. Except to work. Ever.

  And yet …

  All the way up Sardis Road, she had to resist the urge to cover her ears. The cicadas were deafening, their sawing seeming to emanate not just out of the ground but from the trees, the power lines, her own eyes and ears, as though she herself were producing it. To escape, she forewent her traditional pause-and-whimper in the drainage ditch across the street from the Waffle House and just stalked straight across the parking lot, gave the finger to the Wheel of Fortune letters that made up the sign, and pushed inside.

  “Damn, Nat,” her boss, Benny, said when she was halfway around the counter, her waitress apron already off its peg and settling on her shoulders. She turned, met his stare, dropped a hand to her hip.

  “What? I’m three seconds late and you’re going to complain? Seriously?”

  Instead of answering, he stared some more. If anything, he looked even more bristly than usual, wiry white-gray hair sticking straight up off his scalp, out from his lip, seemingly poking holes in the collar of his apron. He stood maybe five-three, a couple inches taller than Natalie’s mother. He’d been in love with Natalie’s mother since the first time Jess had brought them both in here, at least a decade ago, and done nothing about it. Or, possibly, had no luck, though neither he nor Jess had ever said anything about that to Natalie. World’s friendliest walking toilet brush, Sophie called him. Affectionately. Natalie felt a stab of something in her chest, for no good reason, and swayed on her feet.

  “You do something with your hair?” Hewitt asked, moving past Benny out of the kitchen with five plates of French fries on his arms and that smile on his lips that had cost her so dearly. Blessed her forever.

  Natalie rolled her eyes. “Like you’d notice.”

  “Just did.” He bumped her with his hip as he rolled by.

  And there he goes, Natalie thought. The father of my child. Dealing out French fry plates, refilling ketchup canisters with a graceful sweep of his arm.

  Tall and tan and gristle bearded and grinning, as ever. The grin never overbearing, always hungry to find its reflection on another’s face. It had looked so welcoming, so impossibly sexy and bright, at camp that summer, when Natalie was twelve and he was nineteen. It had looked even sexier four years later, the night she came across him and his laughing, goofball friends bowling backward and between their legs at the basement alley on Independence and surprised him by flouncing down and demanding that he remember her. Then she’d lunged in and kissed him before grabbing Sophie’s hand and racing away, screaming and laughing. It had still looked sexy, if a little pathetic, last summer, three weeks after Natalie had started at Waffle House and found him waiting tables there. After which she’d finally lured him out for a night and fulfilled a silly, decade-old fantasy and started paying the price for it.

  It even looked a little sexy now, she thought, on the face of an exhausted thirty-one-year-old Waffle House waiter with little ambition except to avoid as much of what came next as possible, little or nothing of interest to say, and no ill will toward anyone he’d ever met. Which made that smile seem … not forced, exactly. But connected to nothing. Stitched in place. A scarecrow’s grin. Which hadn’t scared her enough.

  “Hey, seriously,” Benny said behind her. “Is it your hair?”

  “Um. Did I wash it, you mean?” For Benny, though, Natalie mustered a tired smile of her own. Because he actually would have noticed if she’d done anything different, did seem to care. And because he had Rose Maddox on his jukebox, going honky tonkin’. The whole room seemed to bob under Natalie’s feet.

  Benny stopped staring at her face long enough to eye the rest of her. His gaze was usually father-like, not lecherous, but tonight it disturbed her, for some reason, and the fact that it did made her heart ache.

  “My mom’s fine, thanks for asking,” she snapped, and Benny blinked as if she’d slapped him.

  He rubbed a hand across his bristly mouth. “Good. Great. Tell her she should—”

  “Why don’t you tell her?”

  “I have, Natalie. I did. I…” His voice trailed off. And he was staring at her again. With tears in his eyes, now?

  “Can I get some syrup that’s actually warm here?” called the trucker at the end of the counter, and Natalie, relieved, moved off. Only when she brought the syrup did she realize that this guy was staring at her, too. The syrup he already had felt plenty warm when Natalie collected the bottle from his table.

  And so it went, all night long. Even the jukebox seemed under her spell. Not a single person hit the Metallica button or called up “We’re an American Band.” Instead, they all selected the songs she loved, wailin’ Roy and Howlin’ Wolf, the King, and Kitty, the whole column of tracks Bennie had threatened to replace with Mariah Carey singles until Natalie told him that if he did she’d quit and also key his Lincoln. Inevitably, some staggering teen in an I MADE IT ON MYRTLE BEACH T-shirt summoned “Sweet Home Alabama,” but even that sounded strangely perfect, primal, the way it sometimes did when no one slurred along to it—or everyone did—and that riff rolled the whole room onto its shoulders and lit out for the low country. Every time she passed the trucker who’d asked for warmer syrup and who couldn’t seem to get himself off his stool and leave, he’d order more coffee and then stare openly at Natalie’s ass as she walked away. But he made no grab for it, never once looked like he’d even thought of it, and somehow he just seemed hopeless there, like he’d forgotten where he was or what clocks or forks were for. Every time she passed the inevitable half-drunk teens in their booths, they’d get quiet, lean together, too many of them smiling at her, not a one puking into his or her fries. A whole family came in—a nighttime rarity for Waffle House—looking exhausted from driving too long. The father gave Natalie a too-friendly smile, but the mom did, too, and the kids leaned against their parents and the orange plastic backs of their booths and slept. Bertie tossed Natalie plates so fast and smoothly over the order counter that he seemed to be juggling. Every time the front door opened, Natalie could hear cicadas, even above the music, or she thought so, anyway, a siren call she couldn’t quite drown out but didn’t need to heed, not yet. Meanwhile, all night, the air flowed in, summer sweet and pear scented and warm.

  All of this was hers, Natalie thought at one point, moving in endless, automatic circles through the room. These smells and these people leaning together and quieting when she passed, because their conversations had inevitably circled way too close to things people couldn’t normally say to each other or had meant to say years ago, the way conversations tend to in diners under fluorescent light in the middle of the night.

  Sophie appeared around one-thirty, her baby sleeping in a sling against her breasts, her face scrubbed clean, cheeks br
ight, kinked blond hair wet and loose and cascading over her child like a bead curtain. The warm-syrup trucker twitched on his stool, glanced away from Natalie for once, and seemed to fold even deeper into himself with his eyes wide and his mouth turned down.

  “What’s with the bullfrog?” Sophie said upon approaching the counter, jerking her chin toward the trucker. Voice sparkling, arm supporting her child, smile wide. As if she were still just Sophie and last night had never happened.

  Natalie shrugged. “He appears to be a little lost.”

  “Or hungry. Those are some bulgy eyes he’s got. Watch out, passing flies.”

  For once—no, as usual, maybe even more than usual—Sophie’s chirping grated on Natalie, but in a good way. Somehow, she felt this whole night should have irritated her more than it had so far.

  “Shouldn’t you be asleep, Sophie? Or home watching your son sleep? You want eggs?”

  Sophie swung around, caught the eye of the father in the booth, sipping coffee while his kid slept in his lap. Then she turned back, looking surprised. “Um. Nah. I don’t know. Later. Not hungry.”

  Natalie realized she wasn’t, either. Despite having slept the entire day. And worked fast for hours. She hadn’t even had a sip of coffee.

  Or water? Was that right?

  Sophie drummed the countertop, bobbed up and down on the balls of her feet, did it again. “I feel like Kanga,” she said. Gazed down into the sling. “With my Roo.” Which was what she mostly called her son. She looked up. “Only sexier.”

  The tears ambushed Natalie so fast, just appeared on her face, she felt as though she’d walked through a spiderweb. What am I crying for? So many things: the trailer; her son’s bassinet wedged between the fold-down table and the sink; her mother the lawn gnome; Benny the Lonely; these people moored in this nowhere place on the outskirts of this two-hundred-year-old void of a city like lost boats at a buoy in the middle of the ocean; that sawing in her ears; her best and oldest friend’s face, so bright, so familiar, hovering over her son, smiling and aggravating and beautiful as ever. Natalie let the tears come, put a hand to her heart.