The Best American Short Stories 2014 (13 page)

The boy's name is Jonah, but her husband calls him The Boy. He calls his affair with the boy's mother The Mistake. For five years the boy was no more than a dollar amount paid in child support each month. Then last week his mother was convicted of drug possession, and Child Protective Services showed up on Lauren's doorstep. Mr. Lyle had been contacted, the caseworker said, and he'd provided this address. Was Lauren not Mrs. Lyle, the boy's stepmother and legal guardian? Lauren answered with a hesitant yes, and the caseworker explained in no uncertain terms that Jonah would be otherwise placed in foster care. He had nowhere else to go.

Now Lauren and the boy are in Idaho, and her husband Keller is on a skimming vessel on the Gulf of Mexico. He left Galveston six months ago to work on a commercial fishing boat out of New Orleans. In the midst of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill he's since gone to work for British Petroleum, laying oil booms off the coast of Louisiana. Lauren hasn't heard from him in weeks. She imagines Keller adrift in a rainbow of oil-slick waters, separated from his paternal responsibility by nautical miles, and she thinks, Fucking perfect: we're both cleaning up someone else's mess.

The last few days on the road have been an experiment in cause and effect—the boy's inability to communicate, his self-destructive behavior, his obsession with maps. In Kansas, when Lauren pried the road atlas from the boy's hands, he banged his head against the passenger window. That's when she bought him the bicycle helmet. When he wet himself in the tumult of a Colorado hailstorm, she put him in Pull-Ups and he's worn them every day since. She's ashamed to admit that for three days the boy has eaten only french fries, that for the past three hundred miles he's been doped up on NyQuil.

Wind buffets the truck, and the boy stirs in his sleep. Through the dark, through her own ragged reflection, Lauren can picture the barren, windswept rangeland of eastern Idaho. She can picture her younger self too, stooping to pass through the barbed wires of a fence. Years ago, Lauren's father brought Lauren and her sister, Desiree, to hike the route of the Gilmore-Pittsburgh Railroad—the ghost of a railroad, once connecting Idaho and Montana—and she thinks back to the rare find of a buried railroad tie, the smell of wet sagebrush, her father bending to touch the pink of a bitterroot flower.

That day feels so long ago she wonders if it ever happened. Nine years have passed and now she's back with sixty-four dollars in cash, a truck in her husband's name, and a boy that isn't hers. Yesterday she called her mother from a pay phone in Denver—their first conversation in six years—and for once her mother had the decency not to ask any questions. Lauren studies the boy in the wake of the interior lights. He doesn't look like her husband but then people change. Lord, do they ever change.

 

The Beaverheads are backlit by dawn when Lauren arrives in the town of Salmon. She drives down Main Street, the only road with a stoplight, taking in the changes. Savage Circle, the hamburger joint, is now a used-car lot. The old used-car lot is now a real estate office. The hospital is new, complete with a helicopter landing pad for Life Flights over the mountain to Missoula. She passes a Wonder Bread truck, then a flatbed hauling hay bales, and two barking dogs. On the hillside above town, houses begin to wake.

Lauren's sister calls twice a year—on Lauren's birthday and Christmas Eve—and only now does Lauren understand Desiree's concern. Their mother has become a recluse, and the property has gone steadily downhill: warped cedar shingles, rusted wrought-iron fence, flowerbeds usurped by star thistle. The front windows are covered in plastic from last winter. Two signs hang from the front door:
FRESH EGGS
$3 and
NO SOLICITORS
.

The boy is awake. He has sleep in his eyes, a ketchup stain on his shirt. Lauren positions the letterman jacket over his shoulders and he wears it like a cape. She nearly closes his hand in the door when he reaches back for the road atlas.

Her mother stands in the side yard, dressed in a mud-hemmed housecoat and muck boots, throwing feed to the chickens. Lauren waves, and her mother goes through the backdoor and reappears at the front. Through the grain of the screen Lauren sees a woman impossible to please—dirt-caked knuckles and a gray braid. Glasses hang from a gold chain around her neck. She raises the glasses and studies Lauren and the boy as if they're a pair of Democrat campaigners, or worse: Mormon missionaries.

“Well now,” she says at last, “this must be the child.”

Lauren says, “Say hello, Jonah,” and the boy says, “Say hello, Jonah.”

The house smells of onions and overcooked eggs. It appears in order, but Lauren knows it's merely clutter in a clever arrangement—stacks of old magazines, baskets of yarn and crochet needles, crystal bowls filled with bank pens and buttons and pennies. Lauren prods the boy and he steps inside but stops at the entry rug, and for the first time she and the boy share a moment: neither wants to go any farther.

Her mother turns on the television, and the boy's head snaps forward. Cartoon voices cut the silence of the old house. She places a box of Cheerios on a pillow in front of the television, and the boy goes to it, sits, and digs his hand into the box.

“Dry cereal,” Lauren says. “Why didn't I think of that?”

Her mother says, “When was the last time you ate something?” She measures Lauren's waist with the eyes of a seamstress. “You're skinny.”

It isn't a compliment, but Lauren says thank you. It takes everything she has, but she says what her mother wants to hear: “Thanks for having us on short notice.” And then, because it isn't just Lauren but also the boy, she adds, “I really appreciate it.”

After breakfast they drink tea, Lauren watching her mother and her mother watching the boy. “I know what you're thinking,” Lauren says.

“Oh? And what am I thinking?”

“That I should have left him a long time ago.”

Her mother takes a drink. The teacup rattles in the saucer. She's aged in her voice and hands and both are shaky. “And now you've left Keller but taken his son?”

The paradox is not lost on Lauren. What she doesn't tell her mother is that Keller was the one who did the leaving. He called the move to New Orleans a temporary separation, but as the months passed their relationship didn't tip toward reconciliation or divorce but evaporated into a state of apathy. Keller claimed he was living with his parents, but Lauren knew it was a lie even before she arrived in New Orleans. His mother took one look at the boy, balanced on Lauren's hip, and apologized. She said she hadn't heard from Keller since the oil spill and handed Lauren his forwarding address.

Lauren drove across the Mississippi River to St. Bernard Parish, to a white house with sun-faded toys in the yard, Christmas lights still hung from the gutters. A mailbox shaped like a catfish—its mouth on a hinge—stood at the curb. Keller's truck was parked in the driveway, a new F-150 they couldn't afford. A woman came to the door.

“No, Keller isn't home,” she said. “He'll be on the Gulf for another few weeks.”

It was the way the woman said
home
, the way she answered the door in an oversized T-shirt and a pair of men's boxers. A phone rang somewhere in the house, and the woman excused herself. By the time she returned, Lauren had unwired the key from behind the license plate of Keller's truck and loaded the boy and their bags inside. She hadn't intended to steal the truck, or the boy, but she wanted to take something away from Keller. It wasn't until she reached the Texas border—a moment of clarity after the boy dropped her cell phone in a truck-stop toilet—that she realized she was truly alone. There was nothing, and no one, waiting for her in Galveston.

“I had to bring Jonah,” Lauren says. “It was this or foster care.”

The cuckoo clock chimes seven times on the hour. Lauren rubs both fists against her eyes. Her mother says, “And now what are you going to do?”

“Stay and work through the summer, if it's all right with you. I thought I'd start by calling Daniel Walker. Is he still working for the Forest?”

“He's married, Lauren. He has a family.”

“Good, because I need a job, not a date for the prom.”

“And I suppose you expect me to watch Jonah while you work?”

“Just until Keller gets off the Gulf. Then he can come get his son.”

They both look at the boy. The cereal box sits upended, crushed Cheerios dusting the carpet. He's pulled the paperbacks from the bookshelf and stacked them on the floor, and now pencils across the cover of a Larry McMurtry novel. Lauren says the boy's name, and her mother says, “He's fine, Lauren. They're only books.”

“They're Dad's books.”

“Your father isn't alive to read them.”

“Yes, Mom, I know.”

“Mom,” the boy repeats. “Mom.”

Lauren gets up from the table and sits cross-legged on the floor. She opens the boy's road atlas and turns the page to Texas. “Here,” she says, pointing to Houston. “Your mother is here.” She points to herself.
“Lauren.”

 

The next morning Lauren drives to the Forest Service office to see Daniel Walker. She brings the boy along to prove a point to her mother. He's sleepy and soft-limbed, and Lauren, wearing a pencil skirt and wedge sandals, struggles to carry him. Her fake snakeskin purse is weighted with baby wipes and Ziplocs of dry cereal, a juice box, Pull-Ups, and the boy's road atlas. The boy wears footed pajamas, a milk mustache, and the bicycle helmet. What he lacks in normalcy, Lauren hopes to gain in Daniel's sympathy.

When she asks for Daniel, the receptionist looks her over and says, “You'll have to wait right here while I call him.” Lauren's silver bangles clank as she lowers the boy and raises her sunglasses. She pretends not to notice when the boy scatters a stack of pine beetle brochures, studies her fingernails as he pushes over a cardboard Smokey the Bear.

The receptionist hangs up and gives Lauren a look, and Lauren says, “Isn't he cute? He wants to be a wildlife biologist when he grows up.”

Daniel meets her in the lobby dressed in khaki pants, a collared shirt, and a ball cap with a red fly hooked to the bill. He's the wildland fire dispatcher for the Salmon-Challis National Forest. Lauren knows from their brief phone conversation that he's responsible for organizing supplies and personnel for wildland fire efforts. He's filled out through the chest and shoulders but retained the same boyish face, the same crooked gait he's had since being thrown from a horse when they were sixteen.

They hug, and the weight of his arms feels good on her shoulders. “You'll have to excuse Gina for the high security,” he says. “She's new around here.”

Lauren looks behind her for the boy. He's halfway down the hall, trying to open a locked door. “Jonah,” she says, “come and meet my old friend.” When the boy doesn't respond, Lauren picks him up in a bear hug and carries him to Daniel's office.

The room is small and cramped with boxes and filing cabinets. The walls are covered in maps. Daniel says, “This is more of a closet. I work out of dispatch most of the time.” He taps the boy's helmet. “Hey, kiddo. You going for a bike ride?”

Lauren picks up a framed photo from the desk. A woman, small girl, and twin boys are dressed in matching Christmas sweaters. “Is this your family?”

“That's Carol, my wife. Anna's six. Evan and Oliver are eight.”

“They're beautiful.”

“They get that from my wife. How old is your son?”

Lauren thinks back to the year of Keller's affair, the same year as Hurricane Katrina. She considers telling Daniel that her husband fathered a child with another woman and named his trawler after Lauren as consolation. That subsequently, the
Lauren Marie
sank them into bankruptcy. She looks at the boy, standing at the wall tracing the contour lines of a topographic map with his finger. Lauren has never wanted children, but now she wants desperately to show something for the years of her marriage. “Jonah's five,” she says. “We've just been so busy since he was born. You know how it is with kids.”

“And your husband? Is he here with you?”

“He's working on the oil spill. That's why we're here. I thought it would be nice to spend the summer in the mountains while Keller's away. But”—Lauren brings her hand to her brow—“nobody's seen any money from BP yet, and our funds are a little tight. I was wondering if you knew of any, well, any summer jobs.”

Daniel takes off his ball cap and rubs his head. “I'm afraid the application period for seasonal jobs was back in February. As far as I know everything's taken.”

Lauren waves away the disappointment. “Of course, of course. I don't know what I was thinking, bothering you at work like this.” From the corner of her eye she catches the boy reaching across Daniel's desk. She snaps his name—“Jonah, no!”—and the boy startles, knocking over a ceramic mug. Coffee bleeds through a stack of papers, spills over the desk and onto the carpet. Lauren apologizes while digging through her purse. She kneels awkwardly in her skirt, trying to absorb the coffee with a Pull-Up.

“It's OK,” Daniel says. “Leave it.” He takes her hand to help her up, and she feels the slightest jolt at his touch, a feeling she remembers from the summer they spent together before Daniel broke his back, the summer before her father passed. A time before she understood the power of a place to bring you down and keep you there.

Daniel pulls his hand away. Lauren says, “We should go. I'm sorry for the mess.”

She herds the boy toward the door and is halfway down the hall when Daniel calls her name. “Wait. Don't leave yet.” He hitches up one pant leg and limps toward her, his chest heaving, Lauren senses, more from anxiety than physical strain.

“You know the lookout tower on Long Tom Mountain?” he says.