Her Boy
by Susan Taylor Chehak

Winter is deep, and your mother, she’s all alone except for the old dog that sleeps near the door because he likes the cold. Frost decorates the windows. She’ll lick a fingertip then press it to the glass, leaving a small hole to let the darkness in.

She’s a widow, poor thing. Your father is only recently deceased and now you, her son, have left her too. To go your own way, you explained. Off on a quest to who knows where, doing who knows what, with who knows who.

She rocks and sings, “My boy, my boy,” just as she’s done since the day that you were born.

The wind blows and knocks the trees around, then whistles faintly in the crannies and the cracks to harmonize with the incessant ringing in her ears. She’s not well, we get that. She’s tender in places you don’t want to know about. She aches in places you can’t see.

There’s a blanket over her shoulders and a wool cap on her head. Her thin hair is a spray of cirrus around the plump features of that familiar face that identifies her to you as your mom. Your father used to pinch her cheek and put a finger to her lips, just before he kissed her.

That wind is rattling the walls now, so you could almost come to believe in the presence of someone else upstairs, except the dog doesn’t stir. She pulls the blanket tighter. She sits back, closes her eyes. She’s waiting for a vision of your father, whole again the way he was when she saw him last. He’s in the bedroom, walking around, about to come down to be with her. He’s tying his tie. His shoes are polished. There’s a badge on his chest and a gun on his hip, along with all the other trappings he was proud to call the tools of his trade. Flashlight. Gloves, pen, keys. Handcuffs. Radio. Baton.

That intoxicating fog of smoke and whiskey and vetiver soap that followed him around still makes her swoon. He pinches her cheek. He kisses her on the lips. His fingers fiddle with her hair. She smiles and ducks and shrugs him off. “Go on now,” she whispers. “No time for any of that. There’s work to be done here. And out there, they’re counting on you to save the world.”

The dog wheezes and rolls over onto its back. The fire dies, the wind calms, and the sun begins to work itself back into its daily radiance again.

* * *

As for you, you’re supposed to be in class. Your mother thinks you’re still in school, but you’re not in, you’re only at, so maybe that’s close enough?

“Where’s your boy?” we ask, and she answers, “Oh, he’s off at school. He’s at college now. He’s studying…” What?

She’s complained to you, “I don’t know what to tell my friends.”

You say, “Just tell them I haven’t decided yet. I’m only a freshman. I don’t have to declare a major until next year.”

So that’s how she’s put it to us. That’s how she’s reasoned through the conflict between how she wants it to be for you and how it is, and how it is now is this: you’re away at college and that’s enough. Though not so very far away. Half an hour is all but, still, it is away. Half an hour driving, that is. It takes much longer on your bike. This is Iowa. It’s supposed to be flat, that’s what everybody thinks, but it isn’t flat. There are plenty of hills, large and small, and since you went away to college, you’re not your old fit self anymore, so riding your bike isn’t really an option. She’s saving up to buy you a car, she says, but you’re not especially hopeful about that, and you’re not holding your breath. She wants to see you, she says. You tell her, “Not now, Ma. I’ve got stuff to do.”

You’re away at college, though you don’t go to classes anymore. You’re away at college and you’re living in a house with four other guys who do go to classes, but they don’t care what you do or don’t do with yourself and with your time here, as long as you pay your share of the rent and chip in on the utilities and don’t eat their food and don’t make too much of a mess of things. You have a bed. You have a room. You’re fed and you’re sheltered and you’re warm. These are the basic needs down there at the bottom of the hierarchy, and your mother is the one who sees to all of that and always has.

You call yourself a visionary. You think you could become someone important—a philosopher, a guru, a savior, a sage—but that’s a secret you won’t tell anyone because you know what your friends, if you can even call them friends, would say. How vain. How foolish. What rubbish. Because these are practical young men, working to learn things that will take them places, that will get them jobs, good jobs, money and houses and cars and wives and kids. The whole shebang. You watch this and think about it and hole up in your room, studying the mysteries. You don’t need classes for that, do you?

What would your dad say? Who cares? Dad’s gone. It’s been more than a year now since his car was found overturned in the river. Was it an accident? Suicide? Murder? Who knows? Just, he left you and your mother, he left the world, he left all his troubles behind. He was restless, he got reckless, and he died. Anyway, that’s the story that we tell.

And in the middle of the night now, you get restless too. Your thoughts turn reckless. Like father like son, but you, you’re smarter than him. You’re lying on your back, on your bed. You’re staring at the ceiling, following the crack to its star-shaped stain, and listening to the thumping of a bass upstairs and laughter in the hallway, and your leg is twitching and your eyes are watering and your heart is pounding. You would never drive off a fucking cliff, you think. You could do better than that. You could do worse. You’d take some assholes with you, at least, like those two boys in their long black coats, gunning down a school full of kids. That would be you. Your teeth gritting. Hands clenching.

You’re thinking: If only the world would just come to an end on its own, then you wouldn’t have to bring it to an end yourself. If only it would happen now, whatever it is: the great catastrophe, the world cataclysm, the cosmic disaster. Zombies or hurricanes, plagues or fires, asteroids or bombs. A war to end all wars. You’d tear it all down if you could, with your own two hands.

* * *

Then it was spring. And now it’s summer. Snow melt first. Tree bloom next. Green grass and dandelions and lawnmowers and sprinklers. Around and around it goes. The river rose, then fell again to its usual languid flow below the limestone palisades. Fish jumping. Corn in the fields. Butterflies and lightning bugs and bats. Long days. Short nights. ’Twas ever thus, she thinks. She’s sitting on her front porch, fanning her face with a folded newspaper chock-full of chaos and complaint.

* * *

Where are you now? She doesn’t know. Just, you didn’t come home at the end of the semester. She doesn’t know that you’ve moved into Grampa’s old cabin on the river. That you’ve gone off into a wild of your own. Growing vegetables. Trapping rabbits. Fishing. Smoking. Shooting up. Whatever. Somehow the hooks and the needles seem the same to you. You’re hooked. You’re strung out. You’re on a line and something you can’t see is reeling you in. But who cares, really? Not you. If it weren’t this, it would be something else, and the pure emptiness of the cabin, the monotony in every moment, one to the next and the next and the next and on and on and on, it carries you along and it’s all you need. A clock ticking. A bomb ticking. It’s all the same to you. You’re fine. You swear it. You call out into the quiet of the night, even though you know there’s no one there to hear, “Hey, Ma, look at me! I’m fine!”

* * *

She goes to the grocery store and leaves her car parked out front with the windows cracked, for the sake of the dog who’s asleep in the back seat when she returns. She puts the AC on high, but the dog just lies there; he doesn’t sit up and he doesn’t poke his head out the window, tongue flapping in the wind, and when she gets home he doesn’t want to get out of the car, and when she gets him out of the car, he doesn’t want to go inside, so she leaves him out there under the willow and forgets about him until it’s late in the day, past time for dinner, but when she calls to him, he doesn’t come. So she goes out to get him, and there he is, lying on his side, the blip of fireflies dancing over him like signals of distress.

After that it starts to seem to her like everything’s all wrong. There are thunderstorms at night and mosquitoes in the afternoon and shadows in the woods beyond the fence and a fire in a house only a block away and a gunshot one morning, just before the sun comes up. Or maybe it was a harmless firecracker, how would she know? It doesn’t matter, because whatever it was, it’s still one thing after another as the days go by deep into the hottest swamp of summer, going bad and getting worse, though she has a feeling it’s only just begun and the worst is yet to come.

* * *

Maybe you’re happy, for once. Maybe you love the way the moonlight hits the trees and the way the dew at dawn twinkles in the grass. It’s magic and it’s everywhere, isn’t it? You can go from day to day, stay in the moment, take care of yourself. It’s so simple to be on your own, responsible to nothing and to no one. Unless maybe the ghost of your dad nudges you once in a while, like ashes in a can, like voices from beyond, like cemetery spirits, but they’re friendly enough, soft whisperings, no need for alarm.

Drugs aren’t a problem as long as you have enough of what you need, and your supply is good, so you’re feeling fine and you’re not thinking about what might come next or what you’ll do when summer’s over and on beyond, when winter comes and you’ll have to find someplace else to live.

You’re sitting in the yard with your back against a tree, and you’re feeling at one with the world, humming along high enough and even dozing, nodding off to birdsong and bee buzz, when all of a sudden there’s dust on the road and the grate of tires on gravel, and a car at the end of the drive is swelling to full size as it closes in on you.

A visitor. No one you know. It takes a minute to stand up. To find your voice, “What the fuck?” And, “Who are you?” And, “What do you want?” To see the smirk and begin to understand. You try again, fists clenched, “Get the fuck out of here.” And, “This is private property.” You’re pointing to the sign, crooked on its post: No Trespassing. No Solicitors. You’re wobbly on your feet. You can’t get the words out. “No solster… No trestle…” The man just smiles. He pulls at the brim of his cap. He spits and clenches his fists and steps in and starts pounding on you, just like that. He sends you to your knees, then kicks you good, so you topple over backward, gasping for breath.

He rolls you over with his foot and leans down close. His teeth glint in the sun. “I knew your dad, son,” he says. And, “He wouldn’t like this.” And, “He’d want me to take care of you. To set you straight.” He rubs his hands together. He pulls on his cap and then goes on, “So consider my fists his. And his punishment, yours.”

That’s all. He leaves you lying, bleeding and beaten, in the grass. He waits until he’s far enough off down the road and then he calls up 911 and he tells them, “There’s a boy in trouble here.” He gives the address. Says, “Send an ambulance.” Then laughs. “No, I will not stay on the line.”

* * *

Someone’s on the phone and they’re telling her you’ve been hurt. You’re in the hospital. You’ve been sedated. They’ve taken X-rays. You gave them her name as a responsible relative, and so they’re calling now to let her know. “You might want to come and get him,” they say. Or is it, “You might want to come and see him.”? Confused, she has to ask, “Wait, who?” Because she’s thinking of your dad, knowing he’s dead, but maybe not. Maybe he’s been in the hospital all this time. In a coma or something like that. The rest of it’s only been a misunderstanding. An administrative error of some kind.

She gets in the car and drives to the hospital without allowing herself to ponder any more than that. She stops at a train crossing and as the cars trundle past, she counts them, one by one, and only then does she realize it’s you they were talking about. Not your dad. You. And like that, the train is past and the bars are raised and the car behind her is honking. The veil lifts then and she’s awake and aware under a starry sky, where everything is crystal clear and dazzle bright even in the middle of the night. Her boy. It’s you, her boy. She can’t recall your name just now, but anyway, you are her boy.

She finds her way to the hospital all right, and she leaves the car somewhere and walks into the main entrance like she knows what she’s doing. It’s all familiar enough: the fluorescent lights, the smell of antiseptic and flowers, the tired faces of folks waiting in chairs, the elevator and the nurse’s station and the teenage candy striper smiling, friendly, pointing down the hall, to that room there.

When she gets to where she’s going, she takes a breath. Monitors beep and pulse. She peers into the room. An old man is snoring in one bed. She turns to the other, but there’s no one there. Her boy is gone.

* * *

It didn’t take much. They’re not so careful here. There was an emergency that had everybody scrambling. So you were into your pants and T-shirt and down the hall and down the stairs and through the lobby and out the door, and no one noticed. Even though you were barefoot and bandaged, you were invisible, your superpower being that you were so ordinary, we never really saw you. You crouch behind a bush and notice your mother’s car parked askew at the curb, and when you look up, there she is, up there in the window. She’s an angel, lit by the moon, and you know she’ll find you now. She’ll see you. She’s the only one who’s ever really seen you. She knows who you are, and she waves so you’ll understand before she turns away. She’s coming for you now, and you’ll be right here waiting for her. You’ll be right here.

* * *

She stands on the grassy berm. Moonlight gleams on chrome and glass. She throws her head back, she opens her arms, and her voice shakes the stars as she cries out, clear and clean as ice, “My boy, my boy.”