Drowning Instinct

Page 12

Hello? I‘d been so preoccupied I hadn‘t heard the front doors open. To my left, Mr. Anderson stood in a spray of light beneath the breezeway. Who‘s . . . My God, Ms.
Lord, what are you still doing here?
It was David-déjà vu all over again but, this time, all I felt was this sudden surge of relief. I should‘ve thought of Mr. Anderson, but I hadn‘t seen his car and figured he‘d gone home sometime when I hadn‘t been looking. Probably when I was busy alienating David.
He listened as I explained and then reached into his pocket. Call her now, he said, offering his phone.
This time, I didn‘t argue. He had to show me how to use the thing; his was an iPhone and all I‘d had any experience with was Mom‘s old Blackberry, but I was getting a little too freaked to be embarrassed now.
Mom wasn‘t answering her cell. I called three times and kept getting rolled to voice mail. So I tried the store next. Evan picked up. More bad news: Mom had left before closing. She should‘ve been there by now, Evan said. I‘ll try her, too, and tell her you called, okay? Give me the number.
Ah . . . I looked at Mr. Anderson. What‘s your phone number?
Here, Mr. Anderson said, and then took the phone. He rattled off the number, listened, said, Anderson, listened some more, and then handed back the phone.
Who is that? Evan said. His tone was sharper now, a little suspicious. Are you all right?
Of course, I‘m fine. It‘s my chemistry teacher, I said, mortified.
Mmm-hmm. Pause. Do you want me to come get you, honey?
No, I‘m fine, Evan. Really. Just . . . if you hear from Mom?
Will do. You call me if you can‘t track her down, all right? Worst-case scenario, you stay with me and Brad.
I‘ll be fine, I said again. Just, you know, call me if.
He said he would, and I thumbed off. Sorry, I said to Mr. Anderson. About Evan, I mean.
It‘s all right. It‘s good that people are worried about you. Who‘s next?
My dad. But his cell was off, too, and when I called the hospital, the page operator said he‘d left for the day and was off pager.
Mr. Anderson said, Is there anyone else you can call? A relative, brother, sister?
When I shook my head, he added, Then maybe you should call Evan back.
No, I‘ll be okay. She‘s just late. It‘s probably nothing.
If you think I‘m going to drive off and leave you here . . . Mr. Anderson ran a hand through his hair, looked down the empty approach road, blew out. Come on. Let‘s go over to your mom‘s store. Maybe Evan‘s mistaken. If she‘s not there, then I‘ll take you home, okay? You can keep trying her from the truck.
I protested, pointing out that if my mom showed and I wasn‘t here, she‘d have a heart attack. But Mr. Anderson wasn‘t having any of that. No way I‘m leaving you here.
We don‘t live that far from each other anyway. I‘m sure your parents will understand.
Come on.
I‘ll be honest. I was so freaked out he really didn‘t have to try all that hard. The one thing I didn‘t want was to stand there, by myself, in the dark. God, why hadn‘t I taken David up on his offer? I could‘ve been having a cup of coffee with a nice guy who was just trying to be friendly. Okay, fine, he was having girlfriend problems, but it wasn‘t like Danielle was my favorite person.
I followed Mr. Anderson to a red Toyota pickup. Prius is in the shop, he said. The truck was neat as a pin and smelled like him: clean and green. There was a shoe box of CDs he‘d mixed himself and he told me to pick whatever I wanted. The mixes were all classical and jazz, so I just slid in a random CD. A snappy blast of jazzy brass, piano, and drums, which he said was Duke Ellington, filled the car. I stuck my pinkie in one ear and kept trying on Mr. Anderson‘s cell, but all I got was Robo-Mom who always told me to leave a message and have a nice day.
b
At the store:
Hey, sweetheart. Evan kissed me on the cheek. He shook Mr. Anderson‘s hand, and I could tell from the way Evan‘s eyes narrowed that he was trying to decide if Mr.
Anderson was okay.
You hear from Mom? I asked.
No, Evan said. She‘s not picking up. I don‘t have any idea where she could‘ve gone, unless . . .
What? I asked.
Well, Nate Bartholomew‘s in town. You know, the guy who wrote Sandlot Blues?
He hooked a thumb at a display. On the cover, a dejected-looking pitcher, who looked suspiciously like Kevin Costner, was kicking a spray of red dirt from the mound. Nate‘s in town for a few days and she said something about going out to dinner, he said, then added to Mr. Anderson, She does that, sometimes. She and Nate have always been friendly.
Actually, no, she never did that. Mom liked books, not writers. Except for Meryl, she said all writers were prima donnas, drunks, social misfits, pompous, or depressed.
Brilliant, maybe, but completely crazy. (Really, Bob, this comes under the category of it takes one to know one.) She‘d rather stick pins in her eyes than voluntarily eat a meal with any author, no matter how famous.
Do you know Mr. Bartholomew‘s number? asked Mr. Anderson. When Evan shook his head, Mr. Anderson looked at me. That‘s it, he said. I‘m taking you home.
I followed him out to his truck. To be honest, Bob, I was so panicked by then, I couldn‘t have argued even if I‘d wanted to.
We left the lights first of Milwaukee and then Mequon and darkness closed like a curtain. There were fields and farms to my left, and the invisible lake unspooling on my right, and us, driving north, following the truck‘s headlights on a knife edge of interstate.
Mr. Anderson had me pop in a mix of Cyrus Chestnut and talked about the similarities between jazz and classical. I knew he was trying to keep my mind off what might be going on with my mom, but I only listened with half an ear and grunted monosyllabic replies and after a while, he went quiet, too.
I stewed. Dad being MIA was standard. Probably screwing a nurse or something.
But Mom.... Why would she make an exception for this guy, Bartholomew? Unless . . .
Oh my God. Was she sleeping with him? No, no, that wasn‘t my mom. Was it?
Maybe she‘d been in an accident. Should I call the police? A hospital? What if she‘d just disappeared?
Or...
Or...
Oh ... shit.
What is it? Mr. Anderson asked. Are you all right?
I must‘ve gasped out loud. Uh . . . no . . . yes . . . I‘m okay. But what I thought: Oh shit, shit; please not that, please.
You know, Mr. Anderson said, if no one‘s at your house, I‘m not really comfortable leaving you alone there.
What? I stomped on the hyperactive hamster that was my brain. No, I‘ll be okay.
I‘ve been alone before.
Under more controlled circumstances. This is definitely not that. If your parents aren‘t there, or their cells are still off, I‘m staying until somebody gets there.
No, then added: I mean, I can‘t let you do that. I don‘t have anyone to call, but I‘ll be okay. I‘ll lock the door and in the morning, I‘ll just . . . And then I stumbled to a halt. Just what?
Mr. Anderson said what I‘d suddenly realized. If no one shows up, how will you get to school?
I didn‘t know. This was all suddenly too overwhelming. My eyes burned, and I bit down on my lower lip, worrying a piece of loose skin. My mouth filled with a taste of dirty pennies. God, why couldn‘t I be back at the hospital? Someone got in your face, you called a psych tech. Your meals came on little trays with plastic utensils. They did your laundry.
Things were under control. Yeah, the ward was a little like a prison; mouth off and they locked you up or slapped you in restraints, but still.
Mr. Anderson said, Let‘s just get you home and take it from there, okay?
I don‘t want to put you out. But my heart wasn‘t in it. I didn‘t want to be alone either. I wasn‘t sure how I would handle it if something horrible had happened. What about Mrs. Anderson? Won‘t she be, I don‘t know, kind of mad? You not coming home?
It‘s so late.
No. Pause. My wife is away.
Oh. I didn‘t know what to say. Then I thought about Mr. Anderson always at school so early and there so late.
She‘s visiting family. Her dad‘s been sick, so I‘m baching it. So it‘s no problem.
We drove. Chestnut became Coltrane became Armstrong became Judy Garland singing Somewhere over the Rainbow. I could tell the recording had been made when she was older. Her voice was throatier and sadder somehow, and when she tried for the high note at the end, her voice faltered. It was so, so sad.
Mr. Anderson must‘ve been thinking the same thing because he said, You can hear how broken she was by the end. You know she got hepatitis in the ‘50s? When they told her she might always be an invalid and never sing again, you know what she said? That she was relieved.
Why?
Because she was off the hook. She finally had a legitimate reason to stop performing. She could just be.
I knew what that was like. After Matt was gone, I‘d always felt such pressure to be perfect, to make up for all the things Matt hadn‘t accomplished for Mom and Dad.
But I said nothing. The CD turned out to be a bunch of 50s songs, not just Garland but Sinatra and Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. As Sammy was beginning the beguine, Mr. Anderson said, You know, I‘ve never asked. What do you do in that library every afternoon to keep busy?
God, shades of David. Homework, mostly. I read. I don‘t know why, but I added,
I write to my brother.
Oh? A beat passed, then two. Where is he?
This, I would never have told David or anyone else at Turing. Iraq.
Another beat-pause. Still? Even with the drawdown?
Yes. I swallowed. Fallujah. Camp Baharia.