“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Out!”
“Oh no, you don’t. I know what you’re up to: You think you can just go cry to him, and the two of you can commiserate about what a horrible bitch I am, what a miserable, controlling harpy. Well, I’m through playing bad cop. Go ahead.” She released Todd, giving his head a shove. “You go! Go right ahead, buddy-boy. But don’t think you’re coming back here, uh-uh. If you leave now, you better plan on staying with him for good. It’s about time he got a turn being the parent. Go ahead. See how fast he takes you in. Go right ahead, fine by me.”
Todd hesitated, took a few steps toward the door, and wavered. “I can’t believe you’re doing this, Mom.”
“Join the club.”
Looking at his mother, so resolute and red-faced, Todd was unexpectedly alarmed. This was no bluff-she meant it. She was prepared to let him go and perhaps never return.
All at once, he knew he couldn’t take another step; things had gone too far already. Though he hated his mother for the ultimatum, the humiliation, he understood in his heart that the blame was not really hers but his father’s, for all the lies and empty promises. If Todd truly trusted his dad, he’d have been out that door without a backward glance. He’d be gone so fast, your head would spin. Much as he wished that could be so, the truth was that his old man remained an unknown quantity. And not really so unknown-the man was simply not trustworthy.
Todd shut himself in his room and threw himself facedown on the bed, sobbing curses and slamming his fists into the pillows.
Shaking her head, his mother finished dressing and went out.
All afternoon Todd stayed in bed, curled against the onslaught of grief like a rolled-up pangolin, his fevered stillness punctuated by fits of hysterical rage. He fantasized at great length about suicide, making specific, elaborate plans and composing various versions of his suicide note. It was hard to strike the right tone. Apologetic? Accusatory? Sad and profound? Snide and angry? Brief and pithy, or a detailed manifesto? He couldn’t decide. Eventually, with evening coming on and the apartment submerged in gloom, Todd fell asleep.
At midnight, he was awakened from a deep slumber by people running up and down the halls, yelling incoherently and slamming doors. A lot of stupid screaming and shouting. Down in the streets there was the crackle of fireworks and a crazy profusion of car horns and sirens. It sounded like the whole city was in an uproar.
It took him a second to gather his wits, then he realized, Oh yeah: New Year’s Eve. The thought that he was missing all the fun made him even more depressed, and Todd disgustedly covered his head with a couch cushion and fell instantly back asleep.
A few hours later, just after 4:00 A.M., he was awakened again.
At first he wasn’t sure what it was that had disturbed him. He was fully awake and clearheaded, staring up at patterns of light reflected on the ceiling. It was quiet now, the urgent sounds of the city muted to a faraway din.
Then he heard it again: a metallic rattling from the front door. It was the doorknob-someone out in the hallway was twisting it, trying to get in. Not just turning the knob, but jerking and yanking at it, as if stubbornly refusing to accept that the door was locked. Todd could see the shadow of the person’s feet through the crack underneath.
He sat up in alarm. Was someone trying to break in? His father maybe, come to sneak him out? He glanced across the room to his mom’s bed, intending to wake her, but the bed was still made up-she hadn’t even been home. This was perplexing, so unlike her, but Todd reminded himself it was New Year’s-perhaps she had been invited to a party after work. Again, very unlikely, but it gave him the fleeting hope that it must be her at the door, tired-surely not drunk-and fumbling for her keys.
Hesitantly, he called out, “Mom?”
In reply to his voice, something like a load of bricks slammed into the door, crunching the frame and shaking the whole apartment. Then came a frenzied, whinnying scream, a shrill eruption of nonsense syllables that made Todd shrivel inside his skin. Far worse than nails on a chalkboard, the weird voice made an arcing live wire out of Todd’s every hair follicle and nerve ending. He almost pissed his pants.
A pause.
Todd slowly got up, trembling hard. Listening. He could no longer see the foot-shadows under the door.
What was that?
He had never heard such a voice in his life; nor could he imagine what would cause a person to sound like that. He couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman. It terrified him to think it was someone who needed help, who was grievously injured, dying or bleeding to death on his doorstep. That’s what the voice evoked: catastrophic pain… or was it laughter? No, it was something more savage-demanding, not pleading-an animalistic keen that resonated in the most primitive part of Todd’s being and triggered a similarly primal response: to flee.
But he had nowhere to go. As the thing outside started jiggling and wrenching at the doorknob again, the confines of the tiny apartment took on the dimensions of a cage, a death trap. Todd picked up the phone and tapped 911. The line was busy-could they do that? He delicately hung up, trying not to clatter the phone with his shaking hand.
Okay… I’ll just wait for it to go away. Someone else in the building must have heard that jibbering outburst-any such disturbance usually caused their Filipino landlady to go ballistic. Never before had Todd so eagerly awaited one of Mrs. Mazola’s tirades. But she didn’t come. No one came. The building was dead silent.
Suddenly, there was a sound he did recognize: the familiar homely jingle of his mother’s key ring! Oh my God-was it her outside the door? But that scream…? The thought was too baffling to contemplate. Before he could stop himself, Todd crossed to the door and listened, heart pounding. Yes, those were definitely her keys… but why was it taking her so long? He started crying with terror and despair, unable to comprehend how it could be her who had made that noise. What was wrong with her? He wasn’t sure he could bear to know.
“Mom?” he whispered, his lips touching the cracked paint.
There was no answer except that idiot jingling. It was taking much longer than it should to unlock the door, as if the person outside was deeply, moronically engrossed in those keys. That was enough; he had to do something. Todd connected the security chain, gingerly turned the bolt, and opened the door a crack…
And slammed it shut again.
And screamed.
The thing out there-that demonic blue hag that somehow resembled his mother-lunged against the door, barely too late. It screeched furiously, and Todd could make out some of the garbled words this time:
“-Heeetoddeeohhtoddeemytod-deesweetbabyohbabeeeee-”
“Mom, no!” he cried, as the thing hit the door again, splitting the frame. Once more, and it would give.
Chest heaving, he ran for the bathroom and locked himself in. As he stood there listening, his gaze was fixed on his own reflection in the mirror: a wiry, wild-eyed boy, skin deathly pale and etched with runic black vines, whose blue eyes stared back at him under an overhanging shock of blond dreadlocks, as if awaiting some cue.
His eyes were drawn past the mirror to the air vent beside the toilet. This was an old building, an old hotel converted to apartments, and instead of a window in the bathroom there was an air shaft covered with a cruddy metal grate. While sitting on the toilet, Todd often heard the intimate sounds of other tenants using their bathrooms, a bit of voyeurism that he found endlessly, disgustingly fascinating. There was also something distinctly creepy about it, that barely visible dark shaft in which anything could be hiding and peeping back at him. Sometimes when he went to the bathroom late at night, he envisioned a weird, spidery man who lived behind the grate, scuttling up and down the shaft or huddling only inches away as Todd sat on the toilet. Mr. Green.