A Tap on the Window

Twenty-one

She looks out the window and sees that their boy is home. Well, not a boy, really. He’s a man now. But isn’t that how mothers always view their sons? As their boys?

“I’m just here for a couple minutes,” he says to her as he comes through the door. “I’ve been running around all night putting out fires and I’m not done yet. But I wanted to see how he is.”

“Wound up,” she says.

“Did you give him something?”

“No, but I may have to. He needs his sleep.”

“I’m doing everything I can,” he says. “This’ll all get sorted out.”

His mother shakes her head doubtfully. “We started off with one big problem and you turned it into two.” She’s about to say something else, but bites her lip. But he knows what it would have been. That if it weren’t for him, they wouldn’t have this problem in the basement to begin with.

“I told you I’m going to deal with this. There’s a couple things I can do before morning.”

“You better, because I feel like this is all ready to blow up in our face. It’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop, but when it does, it’s going to land on a mine.” She sighs. “You’re just one brainstorm after another.”

Wearily, he takes a seat at the kitchen table. “God, I just want things to be normal. Things have never been normal.”

“Some people’s lives are never normal,” she says. “That’s just the way it is.” She surveys the room, but she’s really looking beyond it. More to herself than her son, she says, “It’s like we’re all prisoners. I haven’t had a vacation in years.”

“And I haven’t had a life,” he says. “This overshadows everything. It’s no wonder she broke up with me.”

“She wasn’t right for you.” His mother never thought any of his girlfriends were right for him. “What did she say, exactly?”

“She didn’t really say anything. She just ended it. But I know why. It’s because she could tell something wasn’t right. I mean, I couldn’t even bring her here, to meet you. It had to be at a coffee shop. She had to think it was weird that everything about this house was off limits.”

The woman puts her hand to her forehead. It’s late, and she’s exhausted. “You have more important things to worry about. Finding that girl, and then the boy. Making sure he can’t hurt us.”

“I know. You don’t have to keep telling me.”

“Even after you find them, deal with them, we may have to make some changes around here,” she says, casting her eyes down to the floor, as though she can see right through it.

“I’m going to go down and see him.”

“There’s something going on with his book,” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s never where I can see it. He says he writes in it after I’ve gone. That’s not like him. I’m worried what he might be writing in it. I need you to go down and find it.”

He goes downstairs, is gone several minutes. When he returns, he says to his mother, “It’s not there. I couldn’t find it anywhere.”

“What’d he say?”

“I asked him what he’d done with it. He said he didn’t remember.”

“Tell me he didn’t...”

“I think he did. I think he gave it to the kid.”

The woman closes her eyes, as though she’s in physical pain.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “It’s all gibberish. It’s meaningless.”

She shakes her head. “Maybe. But there are dates. And it’s all in his handwriting.”