He felt a stab of pain in his back and whipped his head around. One of the other infants was digging into his lower back with claw-like fingers. Another baby bit down on the fleshy part of his arm, teeth clenched hard around skin and fat.
The other infants were paddling forward. Laughing excitedly, their little mouths filled with tiny teeth newborns didn't have teeth --they splashed through the water toward him.
Frightened now, he let up the first baby, which promptly bit into his stomach. He screamed with pain, then screamed louder as tiny fingers dug into his crotch.
How many babies were there? He could not remember. One of the women had had twins, he thought. His feet touched a box underneath the water, and he pushed off, trying to reach the stairs. A tiny grinning infant head popped up directly before him, and thin hands lashed out at his eyes. He batted the baby away, but she bit into his too-big hands even as she was knocked back.
"Help!" he cried, and his voice sounded high, feminine.
He was not a man.
"Help!"
But no one heard.
And his children took him down.
OK It was hot as they prepared to leave Mesa, the temperature well into the eighties though the sun had not yet risen. The pale brightening above the Superstitions would soon bloom into a typical August morning, Dion knew, and by noon the lighted display on the side of the Valley National Bank building would be flashing triple digits.
He helped his mom carry the last of the luggage out to the car--the bathroom suitcase, the sack filled with trip snacks, the coffee thermos--then stood next to the passenger door as she locked up the house for the last time and deposited the keys in the mailbox. It felt strange to be leaving, but he was surprised to find that he was not sad at the thought of their imminent departure. He had expected to feel some sense of loss or regret, depression or loneliness, but he felt nothing.
That alone should have made him depressed.
His mom walked purposefully across the brown grass to the sidewalk. She was wearing a thin halter top which barely constrained her large breasts, and shorts much too tight for a woman her age. Not that she looked like a woman her age. Far from it. As more than one friend had admitted over the years, she was the closest thing to a real-life sex symbol any of them were ever likely to meet. He had never known how to respond to that. It would have been one thing if they were talking about a stranger, or someone's cousin or aunt, but when it was your own mother ... Sometimes he wished his mom was fat and plain and wore frumpy old lady clothes like everyone else's mother.
His mom unlocked his door and he got into the car, stretching across the seat and pulling up the lock on her side. She smiled at him as she positioned herself in front of the wheel. A thin trickle of sweat was cutting a path through the makeup on the far right side of her face, but she did not wipe it off. "I think we have everything," she said brightly.
He nodded.
"Ready to go?"
"I guess."
"Then let's hit it." She turned on the ignition, put the car into gear, and they pulled away from the curb.
Their furniture was already in Napa, but for them it was going to be a two-day trip. They were not going to drive for eighteen hours straight but were going to stop off in Santa Barbara and then continue on to Napa the next day. That would give them a little more than a week to unpack and get settled before he started school and his mom started work.
They turned onto University and drove past the Circle K, where he and his friends had said their final farewells the night before. He looked away from the convenience store, feeling strangely embarrassed. Saying good-bye last night had been awkward not because of the emotions involved but because of the lack of them. He'd supposed he should hug his friends good-bye, tell them how much they meant to him and how much he would miss them, but he'd felt none of that, and after a few hesitant, misguided attempts on all of their parts to drum up that sort of emotion, they had given up and parted in much the same way they always had, as though they would see each other again tomorrow.
None of them, he realized, had even promised to write.
Now he was starting to feel depressed.
They drove down University toward Tempe and the freeway. As he watched the familiar streets pass by, the familiar stores and personal landmarks, he found it hard to believe that they were really going, that they were actually leaving Arizona.
They passed by ASU. He had wanted to see the university one final time, to say good-bye to the walks and bikeways where he had spent so many weekends, but for once they hit all green lights, and the car sped by the campus inappropriately fast, denying him even the opportunity to savor his last look. Then the university was behind them.
He had half hoped that he'd be able to attend ASU, though he knew realistically that his mother could not afford to send him to anything but a community college. Now he knew it would never come to pass.
A few minutes later, they hit the freeway.
A half hour later, they were in the desert and Phoenix was in their rearview mirror.
Ten minutes after that, no buildings at all could be seen silhouetted against the orange globe of the rising sun.
They took turns driving, trading off at the infrequent rest areas they encountered. For the first hour or so they were silent, listening to the radio, each lost in private thoughts, but when static finally overpowered even the rhythm of the music, Dion-turned the radio off. The lack of conversation, which had seemed normal and natural up to a few moments ago, suddenly seemed tense and strained, and he cleared his throat as he tried to think of something to say to his mom.
But it was she who spoke first.
"Things are going to be different," she said, glancing over at him.
"This is going to be good for both of us. We'll be able to start over."
She paused. "Or rather, I'll be able to start over."
He felt his face reddening, and he looked away.
"We have to talk about this. I know it's hard. I know it's difficult.
But it's important that we communicate." She tried to smile, almost succeeded. "Besides, I have you trapped in the car and you're going to have to listen."
He smiled halfheartedly back.
"I know I've disappointed you. Too many times. I've disappointed myself too. I haven't always been the type of mother you wanted me to be or I wanted me to be."
"That's not true--" he began.
"It is true, and we both know it." She smiled sadly. "I'll tell you, there's nothing that hurts me more than seeing the disappointment in your eyes when I lose another job. It makes me hate myself, and each time afterward I
tell myself that I'm not going to do it again, that things are going to change, but ... well, they don't change. I don't know why. I just can't seem to ... you know." She looked at him. "But they're going to change now. We're going to start a new life in California, and I'm going to be a different person. You'll see. I know I can't just tell you; I have to show you. And I will. It's all over now.
All that's behind me.
It's in the past. This is a fresh start for both of us, and we're going to make the best of it. Okay?"
Dion nodded.
"Okay?" she said again.
"Okay." He stared out the window, at the sagebrush and saguaro passing by. It sounded good, what she said, and she obviously meant it and believed it herself, but it also sounded slightly familiar and more than a little pat. He found himself wondering if she had taken it from a movie. He hated himself for thinking such a thought, but his mom had given him these sorts of reassurances before, with equal conviction, only to abandon them when she met a guy with a bottle and good buns.