Josh considered his mother to be a nice mother and person. She was kind and she smiled and she gave tender hugs and was concerned with his well-being. Josh also considered his mother to be a difficult mother and person. She was unforgiving and she demanded kindness back and she killed with silence and said sharp but subtle things that cut deeply.
“You still have a lot of maturing to do,” Diane had said to the thirteen-year-old Josh, who was one of the last boys he knew to get through puberty. He had no defense because the only thing worse to a late bloomer than thinking about late blooming is talking about late blooming.
For her part, Diane did not have a good reason for why she wouldn’t tell Josh anything about his father. She didn’t have a good reason for most of what she did. Mostly, she went by what seemed right in the moment, and justified it to herself later, and in this way she was no different than anyone else she knew.
There were times—like that day in the movie theater or after her speeding ticket—when she had wanted to tell Josh about Troy, but the shape of his name felt wrong in her mouth, and the thought of talking about him made her feel dizzy, like she was waking up from a dream that had been almost exactly like her own life and was now trying to differentiate the two. She did not hate Troy. She did not hate anyone. But she just didn’t want to talk about him, and so she didn’t.
At age fifteen, Josh had not asked his mother who his father was. He did not want to upset her, partially for her sake and partially for his.
Instead, Josh wrote that note to a friend of his who knew some people who knew some of the hooded figures who knew an agent from a vague yet menacing government agency who had full access at City Hall. And that agent might be able to get some information on who Josh’s father was.
Now his mother thought it was a note about a boy he liked. She seemed not upset at all, and he wasn’t going to give her any reason to be upset.
“Oh! That note. I wrote that to my friend DeVon,” Josh said, truthfully, before going on to fail at accomplishing either element of a good lie. “His cousin, um, Ty goes to the new charter school on… DuBois Road, near Route 800? And DeVon keeps telling me that Ty’s single and really cute, and I said I wanted to meet him, and DeVon is like I’ll see what I can do, and I’m like do you have a picture, and DeVon’s like hold up, I’ll get you one but just wait. Let me see if he’s interested.”
“Did you get a photo?” Diane said.
“Yeah.”
“And?”
Josh was uncertain about the specifics of his imagined crush, and the lie faltered.
“Is he cute?” Diane did not blush about her boy getting old enough to date, although she would allow herself to blush later, when she was alone.
“Yeah,” Josh said, before his mind had caught up. The last thing he wanted was for his mother to ask to meet this nonexistent Ty or, worse, for her to ask DeVon about his cute cousin.
“When do I get to meet him?”
“Mom!”
“Sorry. Sorry.” And the conversation ended. They could both feel it, even though they continued to talk to each other. The connection, whatever had surfaced in the last few minutes, had sunk out of sight again.
“I’m not that interested anyway. DeVon’s a good friend. It’d be weird to go with his cousin.”
“Josh.” She did not cry, although she would allow herself to cry later. “I’m so proud to have such a smart, considerate boy.”
“Are you about to cry?”
“Nope.” Diane stood up and walked toward the kitchen. She was already back to thinking about Evan, and where she could possibly look next for information on him. She was tired and suppressing a nascent panic. She needed time alone, time to think.
“I need coffee, and you need to get to school” was how she explained that out loud.
Diane drank her coffee from a chipped Night Vale Community Radio mug she had gotten a couple of years back during a fund drive. She didn’t choose to donate to the station. But she had expressed her enjoyment of Cecil’s show to a friend of hers. Her comments were picked up by one of the thousands of listening devices the station had hidden around town. Using a complex algorithm that measures age, net worth, and perceived enthusiasm for the station’s programming, Station Management took a donation straight from Diane’s bank account without her having to write a check or send off an envelope or even know the money was gone. It was a convenient approach to fund-raising for everyone involved. One day she received the mug and a shirt that had that famous Eleanor Roosevelt quote on it (“One day we will destroy the moon with indifference!”), and that’s how she knew she was an NVCR supporter.
“Can I take the car today?” Josh asked, trying to cash in on the goodwill he’d built this morning.
“You cannot.”
“Mom.”
“I said no.”
“You just said I’m smart and considerate.”
“Right. I didn’t say you’re a good and responsible driver.”
“But you want me to get better, right?”
“Is that what you do, Josh? I try to have conversations with you. I try to talk to you, and we have a morning of real progress. A real breakthrough where you’re kind and articulate and charming, and what’s the endgame? Just to borrow my car?”
Josh stood perfectly still. This was the moment he feared most. This was how conversations with his mother went. He just wanted it to be over and for himself to be out in the world, where he could keep looking for his father. He wanted to understand who he was in relation to the father that had abandoned him (had his father even abandoned him? He didn’t know, and that was the point) as well as he understood who he was in relation to his mother, in all of its goods and bads. Then, seeing himself against and between these two people, he could start to figure out who he was beneath all of the forms he took every day, beneath whatever he looked like to the world in any given moment.
“I’m left to wonder if the only time you want to actually talk to me is when you want something from me. That’s incredibly disingenuous.”
“Mom. I—”
“Disingenuous means not genuine. Don’t know if they’ve taught you that word in school.”
“I’ll catch the bus.”
“Better hurry.”
Josh threw his things in his bag and walked out the door.
Diane stared into her coffee, knowing she had ruined a lovely moment with her son, knowing he must loathe being around her when she was like this.
“I love you,” she called, hoping it wasn’t too late.
“I love you too,” he said back, not loudly enough to be heard.
Chapter 18
Now that science and civic leadership had failed to solve her problem, Jackie sat in her car in the City Hall parking lot, unsure of what to do. No one had fixed anything. No one had been able to help her.
She watched as workers rushed out of the doors to begin the long process of draping the black velvet over City Hall. It was nice to watch people struggle over a problem that did not involve or affect her at all. She didn’t have to help or act or choose. Part of her wanted to just recline the seat as close to lying down as possible and sleep the night where she was. Stay in one spot and let the world go on with its strange and terrible business without her.
But before she had even finished having that thought, she was already turning on the ignition and reversing out of the parking lot. She wouldn’t stop. She couldn’t. There was something in her that made giving up feel as impossible as the most impossible of her problems.
Driving through Night Vale in the early evening was peaceful. There weren’t many cars out on the roads, mostly just the agents from a vague yet menacing government agency starting their slow-cruising night patrol of the town. It wasn’t late enough for the hooded figures to be prowling the sidewalks, looking for lone pedestrians to take and do whatever it was they did (almost no encounters were witnessed, and, if they were, the witness was wise to cover the witnessing part of their sensory systems until the whole thing, whatever it was, was over).