A Fatal Stain (5 page)

I hoped the “kaboom” wasn’t part of his plan, as I took hold of the handle on the gate and pulled. It wouldn’t budge. What kind of suspicious people locked their back gates in one of the safest suburbs in Goldport? What were they trying to hide? Who would try to break in? Other than myself, of course.

Well, whatever it was, clearly my son was not asleep. In fact, if he were any less asleep, the neighbors would have sent for the fire department.

You’d think that would make me feel better—at least, you’d think that if you didn’t know me at all. But the fact is that I hate to be lied to, and knowing that All-ex had lied to me—Okay, Michelle did the actual lying but I knew who put her up to it. This was nothing new—made me wonder why, what he was trying to hide, and what I could do to frustrate whatever his plans might be. Because, frankly, he thought that was my ambition, and I saw no reason not to oblige him.

So I walked around the side of the house, looking for something to climb. And I found the trash enclosure. Most houses in Colorado have little paddocks for their trash cans. They can look like anything at all, really, ranging from a custom-made wooden box to a little fence all around the garbage. Anything, that is, that would keep bears out.

You see, bears are not all that rare, even in extreme urban environments like, say, downtown Denver. In fact, growing up in Colorado, I’d long ago decided that bears were like college boys. They woke up, they wanted beer and a snack, and they lumbered downtown to look for both…At least judging by all the news stories of bears hanging out in downtown areas and doing the bar circuit. I noted there were never pictures of these ursine miscreants posted. This was probably because, by the time they were caught, they were wearing baseball caps with the bill to the back, T-shirts that read
I’d rather be boozing
, and they were carrying countless napkins with numbers pushed at them by hopeful would-be dates. Also never mentioned—but I didn’t doubt it for a moment—was the fact that the bears were probably pulling an A in Composition 101.

I’d once told Ben this, and he’d laughed so hard he almost needed oxygen. To this day, I had no idea why,
but the man was at best odd. So it must be one of those Ben things.

All-ex’s trash enclosure—this being such an expensive suburb that they had probably brought in a designer to design the size of squares on the sidewalk—was made of white brick and guarded from hopeful bears by an elaborate wrought-iron gate that would have been at home on a Mediterranean estate. At least a Mediterranean estate blessed with Coloradan bears.

The advantages of a wrought-iron gate, for me, at least, if not for the bears, were the footholds it gave me. It made climbing so much easier.

Most of the trash structures I climbed, normally, were the more conventional Dumpsters around town. Those, smooth metal on the sides, gave me far fewer holds. Which meant I’d taken a few spills and, once, discovered a corpse while Dumpster diving for discarded furniture. And although Cas had made me swear never to do that again, I wouldn’t really promise to remember that when students moved out at the end of the school year and the Dumpsters hid good used furniture going to waste. I mean, after all, rescuing it was the environmentally responsible thing to do, right? And besides, I was cheap.

So, listening to E yell, “It’s a massive chicken attack!” on the other side of the fence, I climbed up the gate.

As it shook and rattled under me, proving that although these things might be very pretty, they weren’t exactly sturdy, I hoped that All-ex hadn’t taken to keeping chickens, though the idea of the exceedingly decorative Mrs. All-ex Mahr mucking out the chicken house was amusing enough.

Lamenting the shoddiness of modern construction, I
finally got to the level where I could peek over the fence. Just barely. Just enough to see the backyard.

You know what I said about my successor, Mrs. Mahr? How her stereotypical prettiness and just-so behavior brought out the worst in me and made me want to put a tarantula down her back as I, uh, definitely hadn’t done to the female head of the Leaders of Tomorrow club back in high school?

Their lawn, too, brought out all the worst in me. It was dark green, a color that shouldn’t have been possible outside a crayon box and certainly not near Christmas in Colorado. Deep green and perfectly even, spreading under the pale Colorado winter sun from the fence to the house. It was a lawn that was crying out for a bottle of gasoline and a fired-up grill, but I was no longer twelve and I could no longer engage in wanton destruction of property just because I happened to find it fun.

As I looked more closely, I saw that the lawn was crisscrossed by lines about as wide as the wheels on E’s electrical toy motorcycle. Which meant I was destroying it—slowly and painfully—by proxy.

E—traced by his babbling about dangerous chickens and an army of dinosaurs—raced along the fence, too close to it to be visible, then swerved away and suddenly into view, zooming along at top speed and yelling, “It’s all
T. rex
toenails!”

I’d long ago given up on figuring out my son’s imaginary life. Other mothers—in the few times I could be coerced into talking to any of them—told me their children had cartoon characters or even nonexistent children as their playmates. Not E. Oh, no.

Three months ago, E had acquired an imaginary llama
whom he called Ccelly—pronounced Cecily—to whom I had to feed imaginary oats before E ate his breakfast. And who had to be invisibly tied with his invisible rope before we could go anywhere.

I had often wondered if he did this to All-ex and his wife also, but perhaps they just stared at him with that total incomprehension that even E’s determination couldn’t pierce.

One thing was sure, though. This was no sick little boy. As he turned to come within feet of the wall where I was perched, I said, “Pssssssssst,” sounding much like a gasbag that had suddenly developed a leak.

He shouldn’t have heard me above his yells and the sounds of the electric motorcycle, but he did. He had ridden back to where he was hidden by the wall once more, but I heard the motorcycle come to an abrupt stop and then a sound that seemed to indicate my son had jumped with both feet atop the seat. He said, “Mom?” in a tentative voice.

I dragged myself the rest of the way up the gate, and then, balancing on top of the side brick wall of the enclosure, I looked up, praying that Michelle Mahr wasn’t watching me from inside the house. But since there was no sign of intelligent life from in there—not that this was exactly a surprise—I thought I was safe for now. Of course, it was very irresponsible of her to leave E out here, playing, and not to keep an eye on him. I’d have had words with her about it if I could have explained how I knew. I wondered if he’d never escaped from someplace where she’d put him and what magic she used to do this. If I turned my back for a moment, back home, E would be gone and terrorizing the neighborhood. I wondered
if they bored E so much that he couldn’t think of anything naughty to do, but this didn’t seem likely. Then cold terror hit me:
perhaps E just got away with things while he was at his father’s
. Perhaps they had no idea how much trouble he got into, much less how they could attempt to curb it. The idea was enough to make my blood run cold. His mischievous creativity left unchecked, the only thing that would prevent E from taking over the world was his preference for taking over an alternate Earth, where
T. rexes
were at war with giant chickens.

I crept along the side brick wall, toward the fence, which formed the back of the trash enclosure. I crawled on my hands and knees, which was probably stupid, because I’d be as noticeable like that as if I’d been standing and balancing on top of the wall. Brick walls don’t routinely sprout fully grown women in white pullovers and jeans. It’s not like Mrs. All-ex had to call cleaners to remove the women from atop her brick walls so often that she didn’t even notice it anymore. And walls are not any less likely to grow standing women than kneeling ones. I don’t have an explanation, okay? It’s just that kneeling and creeping felt safer.

I poked my head over the edge of the fence, looked down at my three-year-old son, and said, “E!”

He looked up at me with equal rapture, and said, “Mom!”

People who didn’t know him very well might be deceived into thinking E was an angel. He had curly blond hair, blue eyes, and the sort of face that wouldn’t have been out of place surrounded by a pair of fluffy wings, like those cherubs the Victorians loved.

In fact, maybe those cherubs had been based on boys
like E. In which case it was only sane to give them wings but no hands, no feet, and no body. I’m sure E could still have thought of some trouble to get into without any of those, but it would have circumscribed his capacity for mischief somewhat. I mean, what could you do with wings but no hands? Careen into things? Seemed relatively harmless when compared to the things that E could do with hands and feet.

Right then, he was wearing little blue coveralls covered in chubby yellow cartoon elephants, a puffy yellow jacket—unzipped—and standing on the seat of his bike, smiling up at me. If I were young and innocent, I’d probably think he was, too.

“Do you have Peesgrass?” he asked.

I was fairly sure in the months since we’d acquired Pythagoras E’s speech had improved enough that he could pronounce the cat’s name. But either because he thought the name Peesgrass made him sound adorable and might lull adults into the necessary complacence for E’s schemes to succeed, or because his pronunciation drove his stepmother insane, he always referred to the cat as Peesgrass. And why did he expect me to have Peesgrass, anyway? Where did he expect me to put him? In my pocket? Although Pythagoras was neurotic enough to—maybe—stay put in the pocket of my jeans, how could I possibly fit a sixteen-pound cat in my pocket? And if I managed to bring him with me, what would E do with him? All-ex claimed to be allergic to cats—which was probably All-ex-speak for not wishing to put up with Pythagoras’s shedding and occasional nervous piddling. All the same, he wouldn’t allow cats in his house, and E knew that. He wasn’t stupid, only a great actor.

But the minute I said no, E’s face fell with what looked like genuine disappointment. He looked up at me, his angelic brow furrowed. “Oh,” he said. Then pouted. “I told ’chelle to tell you to bring him. I told her I wouldn’t stay here without him.” He shoved both little hands deep into the pockets of his adorable coveralls and managed to look like Tom Sawyer, aged three and working hard on the charm that whitewashed a thousand fences.

It was no use at all to point out that I had, after all, been his mother for three years, and Pythagoras had only been his cat for six months, and that he should be happy to see me, even if I hadn’t brought the stupid cat. It’s never any use to tell this sort of thing to kids. For one, they tend not to believe you. I figure it’s because, day in and day out, hour by hour, they are subjected to so much guilt and “You should like this” nonsense that most of them develop an unerring eye for BS by the time they are two. The other part was that although Pythagoras was small and furry and neurotic and—as far as we could tell—afraid of his own tail, unable to support E and certainly unable to clean up after him, at least he’d never made E eat pancakes or pick up his bedroom.

“You have to get him,” he said. “I’m not staying here without Peesgrass.”

“Uh,” I said. And then, “Are you sick?”

Now his eyes rounded. “What?” he said, as if I’d accused him of something despicable. “No.”

I realized I’d phrased the thing entirely wrong. Whether E considered himself to be sick or not was, unfortunately, no true measure of his state of health. “Okay,” I said. “I mean does the doctor think you’re sick? The doctor All…Daddy and Michelle took you to?”

He didn’t ask me if I’d taken leave of my senses. He didn’t need to. It was written all over his expression as he said, speaking slowly and calmly, in the way of someone addressing a child or a mentally disturbed person, “They didn’t take me to any doctor!” Pause. “Well, not since Christmas, when ’chelle thought I’d eaten her cold cream and took me to the doctor. And then Dad found out I’d put the cold cream on his leather chair. ’Cause it was looking dry,” he added, cautiously. “An’ you always put cream on old leather, to restore it.”

I wasn’t going to touch that one with a ten-foot pole. It might be a matter of great interest how much of E’s astonishing adventures were the earnest errors of a very young child trying to do good and how much were his attempts to drive the adults in his life completely and totally insane—which is where I had the advantage over him, because I didn’t need to be driven. According to all the important people in my life, Cas included, I was so near insanity that I could take a short stroll there, down a scenic road.

The fact was I was a wuss. I didn’t want to know if my son was a good kid, just inexperienced, or an agent of evil trying to subvert the world. I had looked all over him without finding any suspicious birthmarks, but maybe this was a stealthy kind of evil. I would bet Mrs. Torquemada had been equally content not to think much about the true nature of her son.

“I want you to come home with me,” I told E. Which, again, proved everyone’s surmise about the state of my mind.

He said, “Yeah?” and smiled his best angelic smile, and started to climb down from the bike seat. “I’ll go pack,” he said.

“No,” I said in my best conspirator voice. “No. Don’t go in the house.” Since the divorce, holding on to joint custody, I’d tried to keep my disagreements with All-ex from hurting his relationship with E. “Daddy and Michelle were the ones who wanted to keep you,” I said. “They won’t let me take you. Probably.”

E was quicker than I expected, though I’m not sure how much he understood. He blinked at me, and I saw a sly look come to his eyes, the same look I’d seen before, when he was trying to figure out how to do something he thought was forbidden. Then he looked around the fence.

“The gate is padlocked. There’s nothing to climb,” he said. “On this side.”

“No,” I said. And I wasn’t even slightly startled, since that was exactly the way I would have thought. No. That was the way I still thought. I looked at the trash enclosure for something that might be used to climb and found nothing. Then I looked at those gates.