“I don’t know and I’m not sure I really care at this point.”
“It’s been a rough few days, hasn’t it?”
“Yeah.
“Has she eaten?”
“About six onion rings and a french fry.”
“Water?”
“A few sips.”
“Alcohol?” Tom must have told her about that.
“No. But she was drunk when we started out.” Peter felt the room moving past him, like a highway, and stood up. “I don’t want to get in a car for a long time.”
He went into Gena’s living room. For all the sunlight outside, the house was buried in darkness. He felt like turning on a light. He walked around the room slowly, though there was little to see, just a brown flowered chair facing a television. He heard scratching beneath it and squatted to lift the skirt of the chair. It wasn’t a cat that bolted out past his feet to the kitchen.
“What was that?”
“You’ll have to meet all my babies.” She scooped up something brown and white at her feet. It was a guinea pig. “This is Fluffanutter.”
Peter tried to stroke the top of its quivering head but it quickly tucked itself into Gena’s elbow. “They’re all going to be a little shy at first.”
It was too much of an effort to stand, so he sank into the brown chair. Gena dragged the metal chair from the kitchen and sat beside him.
“Either you drove a hundred miles an hour or you didn’t sleep much.”
“I didn’t sleep much.”
“I should call Tom. Do you want to talk to him?”
Peter shook his head. He didn’t really believe the Belous still existed. That chapter of his life was over. He knew he should get up and check on his mother; the car would be getting pretty hot. But he didn’t have the strength. He shut his eyes and highway lines rushed past. Someone laughed, Fran or Stuart. A huge yellow ribbon was being tied in a bow. He was in history class, in the front row, away from the window, and Kristina was unzipping his fly. His erection jerked him awake. But Gena wasn’t looking. She was on the phone in the kitchen, facing the window. She was speaking quietly but not whispering. He heard “… exhausted but otherwise fine … yes … yes, I know.”
He remembered Stuart’s trip with his mother, and Tom’s worry back at home. He wouldn’t be feeling anything like that now, not for a wife of a few weeks, not for a boy he’d done a little woodworking with, that was all. He’d been so stupid to think the Belous would become family, that you could press people together and they’d stick. Look at him and his mother. They’d been pressed together all his life and they still weren’t a family. He’d always thought that was because two was too small a number for a family, but that wasn’t it. He knew now that wasn’t it.
“Oh God,” he heard Gena say. “Peter. Here.” She held the phone out as far as it would reach.
“What?” He didn’t want to get up.
“Talk to him. I’ve got to go get your mother. She’s walking away.” She put the receiver down on the counter and went out the door. He could hear the gravel being thrown in the air behind her as she ran.
He lifted the phone to his ear. Out the window he saw his mother, still in her trench coat, hobbling toward the road.
“Hello?” he said as Gena caught up to her.
“Peter?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re okay. Thank God you’re okay.” There was all sorts of emotion in Tom’s voice. He pressed the receiver closer.
“I’m fine.” His mother kept walking and when Gena tried to take her arm she flung it away, just as she’d done to Peter for the past few days. But she was no match for Gena, who stood in her path and clutched her by both shoulders.
“Are you still there?”
“Yeah. I’m just watching.” He was so tired. He hadn’t meant to say that.
“Watching what? TV?”
“No. Gena and Ma. I’ve never seen women fight before.”
“They’re fighting?”
“Wrestling.”
“Wrestling?”
“They’re in a sort of lock right now. Gena’s heavier so you’d think she could just shove her down, but Mom’s got the height.”
“Peter, is your mother okay?”
“I don’t know. I found her on the JV field that morning. I had to carry her.”
“I’m so sorry.” From the way he said it, Peter could tell he already knew that part.
“They’re down.”
“They’re done?”
“Down. On the gravel.”
At first Peter thought his mother was laughing. Her mouth was open wide and her arms were wrapped around her stomach as if so much laughing hurt.
“What’s she doing now?”
“She’s laughing.”
After a long time, Gena led her into the house.
“I’m going to run your mama a bath.”
“All right,” he said loudly, cheerfully, hoping his mother would look up. But she didn’t. She was watching her feet move along the floor. Her tights had holes in the toes now. Her trench coat was bent up in the back. Her whole body seemed as delicate and precarious as a dried leaf. He wasn’t on the phone with Tom anymore, though he didn’t remember saying good-bye.
From the flowered chair he could hear Gena’s voice above the rush of the water into the tub. The faucet stopped running and there was only the sound of water tinkling as his mother stepped into the bath.
Gena’s face was pink and glistening. She sat on the metal chair again and put a hand on his knee. There were no more noises from the bathroom, not even a few drips from an arm reaching for soap. Could you really drown in a tub? Wouldn’t your head, after you went unconscious, bob up automatically and gulp for air?
“She’s going to be all right, honey, she really is.”
If his mother died would he start looking for his father? Whenever he thought of finding his father the same image always came to mind, of a man outside a small unpainted house, raking leaves. The man had a kind flat face and wore a wool sweater. He was lonely and distracted, and even in his dreams Peter couldn’t get his attention when he called to him.
Was there somewhere among his mother’s possessions, somewhere he hadn’t checked in all his years of rifling through her things, a clue? He’d forgotten until a few minutes ago how Gena always said your mama. Mama was such a cozy word, absolutely the wrong word for what he had.
In the bathroom water thundered out of the faucet again. He pictured her huddled up near it. She wasn’t like those women in ads who could sprawl out under a blanket of bubbles. His mother didn’t know how to relax. He thought of their trips to York Beach, her pile of books, her dash to the bookshop when she got halfway through the second-to-last one. She huddled on her towel on the beach just like she’d be huddling now. She never swam, never wanted to play Ping-Pong in the rec room. After dinner she might agree to a game of Scrabble, but never Monopoly or Stratego. And she took it so seriously. He tried to think if he’d ever seen his mother having fun. Even her wedding was more like a dentist’s appointment to her, the way she’d put on her dress at the last moment, and let out a big “uhhhh” when they reached the church parking lot. There was only one time he could think of, years ago, when she’d had people over to the house after he’d gone to sleep. He’d awoken to the sound of the blender and talking. He listened at the top of the stairs to his mother imitating people, other teachers who weren’t there. Suddenly she turned and ran up the stairs, giggling to herself. She ran right past him without even noticing him, into her room. Then she went downstairs again, wearing a wig, and everyone exploded into laughter.
The water was still running. He needed to get out of this house. Gena looked relieved when he said he was going to take a walk.
Her street, though narrow and quiet, extended perfectly straight in both directions. He went left because there were more palm trees that way. He’d never seen a palm tree before, and was surprised to find on the sidewalk long stiff straw-colored fronds that cracked under his feet like regular leaves. He didn’t recognize anything else on the sidewalk, not the smashed purple berries or the hairy red stalks. There wasn’t a cloud to be seen and Peter kept expecting to get hot and sweaty beneath the uninterrupted sun, but it just seemed to keep everything at room temperature. A car drove by, fast, with many people in it playing music he didn’t know.