Only Son (31 page)

“I suppose this is my cue to say, ‘It was nice knowing you, Barry Horton.'” Her voice cracked a little. “But you know, it was hell most of the time. All the guilt and worry and shame. Still, I wouldn't take back a single minute. I loved you, Barry.”

“Oh, Amy, I'm so sorry…for everything. I hate losing you. I think this is the worst—the saddest day of my life.”

Past the tears, she let out a weak laugh. “Honey, you haven't lived.” She gazed at his picture—beside the one of Eddie. She would never see either of them again. They each belonged to someone else. Somehow, she missed her baby boy more than ever right now. “I've got to go,” she managed to say.

He was crying, too. “I still love you…”

Amy hung up the phone, then whispered, “Good-bye, Barry.”

Sam had recovered from the flu, but recurring doubts about his mother lingered like a bad cough. He still didn't know who A.M. was; and despite everything his dad had told him, he didn't feel any connection to that woman in the wedding picture. It had been two weeks since he'd talked to his dad, and he'd yet to see his birth certificate. He tried not to think about it. Like the fainting spells he'd chosen to ignore back in June, he could go on as if nothing was wrong for long stretches of time. But there were other times—alone on the bus from school; in bed at night; or now, bored to smithereens in Mrs. Hull's algebra class, last period—and the worries came back.

He had no idea what Mrs. Hull was talking about and prayed to God that she wouldn't call on him for anything.

He never found his father's new hiding place for the diary. But then, he hadn't looked very hard for it in the last two weeks. Plenty of other things occupied him: football play-offs; exams; and Christmas vacation, which began the day after tomorrow. His Christmas list grew longer each day: a skateboard, a Bruce Springsteen book, several videos, and a basketball. Sam figured he could go piss up a rope for the skateboard. His dad considered them dangerous, and often complained about having to dodge “the little creeps racing down the sidewalk on those things.” Sam's only sure bet was the basketball: a sole, square gift-wrapped box which had been sitting on the bedroom floor beside his father's desk for the last few days.

“Sam Jorgenson?”

He sat up and looked at Mrs. Hull. “Yes?”

The bell rang, and she smiled at him. “Saved by the bell. Class dismissed.”

Sam thanked God, grabbed his books, and hurried out of the classroom.

“So who are you Secret Santa for?” Craig asked. He leaned against the lockers while Sam worked his padlock combination.

“Mitzi Bateman,” Sam answered.

“Gag me. What are you gonna get her? A personality?”

Shrugging, Sam opened his locker and pulled out his jacket. “I'll trade ya. You take Mitzi, and I'll take Beth Hadwell.”

“Huh, you wish.”

Sam had a crush on Beth Hadwell, the prettiest, shapeliest, most popular girl in the seventh grade. Naturally, she was going with the most popular guy, Jim Collier. But rumor had it that they'd split up during Thanksgiving. Sam had no idea what his chances were with Beth. She seemed to
like
him enough. If only he were her Secret Santa, he'd go over the five-dollar limit and buy something that would really knock her out. “So what are you going to get Beth anyway?” Sam asked, throwing on his jacket.

“Perfume, I think,” Craig said.

Perfume for under five bucks. Beth's family was loaded. She'd never wear perfume that cheap. Didn't Craig know anything?

“I'm gonna have my mom help me pick it out.”

Then Beth definitely wouldn't use the perfume. Craig's mom wore some stuff that smelled like Raid bug repellant. It stank up their whole house. Sam nodded. “Good idea.” He grabbed his schoolbooks and shut the locker.

“We're going to Northgate Mall tonight. I figure I'll get Beth's present there. Want to come with us?”

“Thanks, but my dad and I are buying a tree tonight.”

“God, you're so lucky. A real tree. We've had our fake one for practically like forever, and it looks like shit.”

On the bus, Sam continued to listen to his friend talk about how lucky he was. In Craig's opinion, Sam's dad pissed perfume (probably better smelling than the stuff Craig would buy for Beth). Craig pointed out that every Christmas, Sam received a ton of great presents. “I know it sounds creepy, but if you had a mother, she'd make sure eighty percent of your Christmas presents were clothes. And if you had any brothers or sisters, you'd have to share the other twenty percent of good stuff with them. You don't know how lucky you are.”

Sam got off the bus at Broadway, the main shopping drag of his neighborhood. He wanted to buy something nice for Mitzi Bateman. While Mitzi suffered from a mild case of acne, she wasn't ugly. She wasn't particularly dumb, nor obnoxiously smart. In fact, there seemed no real explanation for why tall, quiet, plain-faced Mitzi Bateman was considered a major loser by most of her classmates. But she was. And Sam felt sorry for her.

He spent a half hour in an expensive knickknack shop until he finally bought her a large, glass angel ornament. It cost seven bucks—two over the limit; but the ornament was the kind of thing girls got all mushy about. Mitzi would like it. Last year, Earl Gleason had been her Secret Santa, and he'd given her a gift-wrapped box of Milk-Bone. Mitzi had laughed louder than anyone else over it.

At least this year she wouldn't need to laugh.

Sam got home at four-fifteen, opened a Coke and a bag of barbecue potato chips, then switched on a “Gilligan's Island” rerun. It was the one in which Ginger's look-alike showed up on the island; he'd already seen the episode about a kijillion times.

They were getting the tree tonight, so Sam decided to pull out the ornaments, lights, and other Christmas junk. He needed a screwdriver to pry open the crawl space door in the front closet. It had always been uncharted territory to Sam; there wasn't anything in the crawl space he'd ever wanted. When he was little, he'd been afraid of it, thinking that monsters lived in there amid the moldy boxes and cans of old paint.

It smelled musty and dank. His hands got dirty just taking out the first box. He opened it up in the living room, and found the nonbreakable ornaments—a lot of hideous Styrofoam and papier-mâché figures he'd created back in kindergarten. Only God knew why his dad was still saving them. Another carton, from Nordstrom, held the breakable ornaments.

Toward the back of the crawl space, a box slightly larger than the others lay askew on top of some paint cans, varnish, and bags of steel wool. The other boxes had been covered with dust, but this one wasn't—although the top flaps were marked with drops and rings of wood stain. Unlike the other cartons, which bore the names of Seattle department stores, Sam had never heard of the store advertised on this box. “
Meier & Frank
,” it said in fancy script. He figured it was some store in Santa Rosa. The box was heavier than all the rest. He found the tree stand underneath it and carried them both into the living room.

He heard the front door opening. “Sam?” his father called.

“Hi, Dad,” he called back. Sam sat down on the floor.

His dad stepped into the living room and dropped his briefcase. “
My God, what are you doing?
”

Sam looked up, startled. Then he gave him a dazed smile. “I'm just getting the Christmas junk out, that's all. Aren't we buying the tree tonight?” He reached for the Meier & Frank box. “I thought I'd—”

“Leave that alone!”

Sam drew back. “Geez, what's the matter?”

“Don't open that.” He grabbed the box out from under Sam's hands. “There's nothing in here you want. You have no business prying into these things. You shouldn't…” Frowning, his father shook his head. He hoisted the box up to his chest.

Dumbfounded, Sam stared up at him.

“There aren't any ornaments in here,” his father said. “Just work papers…important documents. I don't want you to get them out of order, that's all. I—I'm sorry to snap at you.”

“Why do you have work stuff in the store space?” Sam asked. “If it's so important, what's it doing in that dirty old box?”

“They're old records, that's all. Nothing that concerns you.” His father started to carry the box toward his bedroom.

Sam knew he was lying. The contents of that box concerned him very much. “I think I know what's really inside there,” he said loudly. “You were hiding it from me, weren't you?”

His father turned around. His face was red. “There's
nothing
in here…”

“Then why don't you let me take a look?” Sam was grinning. He got to his feet. “You've got a Christmas present in there for me, don't you, Dad? Maybe even a couple? You can't fool me…”

A tiny smile flickered across his father's mouth. “Listen, wise guy,” he said. “From now until Christmas, my bedroom is off-limits. Understand?”

His dad gave him a look—like he meant business—then he carried the Meier & Frank box into his bedroom.

Putting down his pen, Carl glanced at the Meier & Frank carton on the floor beside his desk. The bedroom door was closed and locked—as it always was when Carl wrote in his journal. He'd found a new place to hide the blue spiral notebook back around Thanksgiving, when Sam had been acting so peculiar. There was a loose corner in the bedroom carpet—behind the rocking chair he never sat in. The notebook left a small, square bump in the carpet that was practically unnoticeable. Now Carl wished he could find a similarly ideal hiding place for this box.

He should have gotten rid of the damn thing a couple of Saturdays ago, when he'd had the chance. Sam, over his flu, had been spending the night at Craig's house. Carl was alone. He dragged the Meier & Frank box from the crawl space and sorted through the old letters, photographs, diplomas, and documents. There was a fire going in the fireplace, and when he unearthed the news clipping about a baby boy abducted in Portland, Carl thought about burning it. The box contained so many incriminating things: pictures of Eve; their marriage license; the divorce papers, and another news clipping about the disappearance of Eddie McMurray. Although everything was hidden under a layer of old bills, it was risky to hold on to these souvenirs of his unspoken past. Yet Carl burned only three not-so-flattering pictures of Eve, nothing else. He couldn't part with the rest of those memories—just as he couldn't part with his journal. It would have been like destroying his past—everything that led up to his life with Sam.

He found his birth certificate amid the keepsakes; it was what he'd been looking for that Saturday night. He wanted to take the certificate to work, where he could forge one for Sam. But Sam hadn't mentioned the birth certificate since that day he'd been sick. Carl wasn't about to open that can of worms again—not until Sam said something.

He picked up his pen again.

Mitzi Bateman started to open the beautifully wrapped present with visible apprehension. Sam hadn't quite yet dissociated himself from her previous Secret Santa, Earl Gleason, and she must have figured the gift was another cruel joke. But when she saw the crystal angel and held it up to the light, her plain face became beautiful for a moment. She smiled with relief, gratitude, and genuine delight. Sam felt good.

All the other girls made a fuss over it, too. While Mitzi gushed her thank-you to Sam, he heard Earl remark that the glass angel was “pretty faggy.”

But it was Sam's crush, Beth Hadwell, who had the last word. He trembled inside when—after the bell—Beth approached him at his locker. She wore a tiny spray of fake holly in her blond hair. Beth was so popular she could get away with corny stuff like that. “Hi, Sam,” she said.

“Hey, Beth,” he said. Very cool.

“Y'know, all the girls think that was really neat, what you did for Mitzi. You're like super-nice, you really are.”

Blushing, he could only shrug and smile back at her.

“I mean it,” she said. “I wish you'd been
my
Secret Santa.”

They stood in the hallway talking for ten whole minutes, and Sam was elated. One moment, he wished everyone in the school saw them there together; and the next, he wanted to be all alone with her. He missed his bus home, and had to wait twenty-five minutes for another. He didn't mind a bit.

That morning in school, he'd been eager to get back home for something; but Beth made him forget what it was. Sam didn't remember until he opened the front door at four-fifteen.

“
My bedroom is off-limits
,” his dad had said, carrying the mysterious box in there. He may as well have told him about a nude beach nearby and said “I don't want you going around there.” How could he resist? The box had been too shallow for a skateboard. But it could have held several videos, compact discs, books, and other treasures.

They'd gotten the tree last night and decorated it while eating Arby's. Sam had kept hoping his dad would need to go out for something—so he could check the box in the bedroom. But just his luck, an unprecedented tree-trimming: they hadn't run out of ornament hooks and all the Christmas lights worked.

So Sam had to wait until now—with only an hour until his dad came home—to peek inside that box. He hung up his coat, plugged in the tree lights, and headed “off-limits” into his father's bedroom.

The box sat there in the open, by his father's desk—with the gift-wrapped basketball. His dad hadn't even bothered to hide it or tape up the top flaps. That was how much he trusted him. Sam felt a pang of conscience. Maybe he shouldn't be in here, sneaking around like this. Maybe he should wait until Christmas morning—eight days from now—to see his presents.