His Illegal Self

2

He forgot so much, but he remembered this, years later-it was a good seat, an armrest between them which the mother lifted so the boy could rest his face against her upper arm. When she had crammed her big pack between her legs she spelled out a tickly secret word onto his palm, her fingernails a natural seashell pink, her fingers brown.

I know what you wrote, he said.

I don’t think so.

He got the stuff from the back pocket of his shorts and found his chewed-up yellow pencil. He rested Cameron’s father’s business card on his knee and carefully wrote DILE on the back of it. When she had read it he returned everything to its place.

Wow. That’s a lot of stuff you carry.

My papers, he said.

I didn’t know boys had papers.

The boy could not think what he could say. They sat awhile. He looked up the aisle. He had never been on a Greyhound before and was pretty happy to see the toilet at the back.

You’re very tall, Dial, he said at last.

Tall for a girl. Not everybody’s cup of tea.

You’re my cup of tea, Dial.

She laughed suddenly loudly, putting her lovely hand across her mouth. He wished he could call her Mom.

You have lots of colors, Dial. The boy’s ears were burning. He did not know where all these words were coming from. Grandma would have been amazed to hear him talk so much.

The mother took a hank of her hair and pulled it over one eye like a mask, squinting through it, a field of wheat, every seed and stalk a slightly different color. She had a big nose and wide lips. She was very beautiful, everyone had always said so, but this was bigger than they said, better.

I’m a bitzer, she said.

What’s a bitzer, Dial?

Suddenly she kissed his cheek.

Bits of this and bits of that.

He was shy again, looked up the aisle. The windshield glass was starred with sunlight.

Dial was searching in the big hiking pack between her legs. She had lots of books down there, he saw them, candy too, some yellow socks.

How will Grandma find me?

The book she now removed had two dogs fighting on its cover, blood was everywhere, she was giving him a Hershey bar. The chocolate was soft and bendy. Thank you, he said. How will she find me, Dial?

She opened her strange book at the beginning. He noted with disapproval that she cracked its spine.

Grandma knew we were going to run away?

Uh-huh, she said, and turned a page.

He tasted the melted chocolate, considering this.

Is the chocolate nice? she asked at last.

Yes, Dial. Thank you. It’s my favorite.

She lowered the dog book to her lap. You’ll talk to her real soon, she said. We’ll phone her.

Where will we go?

You heard-Philly.

Apart from that.

It’s a surprise, sweetie. Don’t look so worried. It’s the best surprise you could ever have.

She went back to her book. He thought, If my grandma had known I was leaving she would have kissed me good-bye. Also-she would have made him take his own suitcase and promise to brush his teeth. So his grandma was against all this. A good sign, so he figured.

What sort of surprise? he asked. He could think of only one surprise he wanted. His heart was going fast again.

A really, really good one, she said, not looking up.

He asked was it a motel but he didn’t think it was, not for a second.

Better than that, she said. And turned a page.

He asked was it the beach but he didn’t think it was that either. The beach made her lower the book once more. Do you like to swim at Kenoza Lake?

You know about the lake?

Baby, you and I were there together.

No, he said, confused.

At Kenoza Lake.

But at Kenoza Lake he never had a mother. That was the biggest thing about it. It would always be summer, in his memory, the roadsides dense with goldenrod and the women from the village coming to steal the white hydrangeas just like their mothers stole before them. The geese would be heading up to Canada and the Boeings spinning their white contrails across the cold blue sky-loneliness and hope, expanding like paper flowers in water.

It was always summer, always chilled by fall, the mother’s absence everywhere in the air, in the maple leaves, for instance, lifting their silver undersides in the breeze which corrugated the surface of Kenoza Lake as his grandmother swam to and fro between the dock and a point in the middle of the lake where she could line up the middle chimney with the blinking amber light up on 52. Later he would wonder more about his missing grandfather and the Poison Dwarf who had once been Grandma’s friend, but that would be a different person who would ask those questions, all the old cells having died, been sloughed off, become dust in the New York City air.

He could swim too. He had the shoulders even then, but the lake water was slimy and viscous and it left a clammy feeling on his skin which the sun would not burn off. He never did ask but he was certain it was millions of little dead things and he thought of the wailing signals on the radio and lay on his stomach on the dock and his back became black and his stomach was pale and ghostly as a fish.

Small black ants were almost everywhere. Some he killed for no good reason.

He looked up at Dial. She had huge dark eyes, like an actress on a billboard in Times Square. He would have swum with her any day he could.

Would you like to go to a beach? she asked him now.

But this wasn’t what he wanted.

Will we stay in a motel?

She looked at him with wonder. You outrageous little creature, she said. We’re just going to a sort of scuzzy house. We’ll probably be sleeping on the floor.

Maybe there’s TV, he said. None of this was what he really meant. It was his upbringing, to “not say.”

A lot better than TV, she said.

That’s where the surprise is, Dial? In the scuzzy house?

Yes, Jay.

He was so happy he thought he might be sick. He snuggled into her then, his head resting against her generous breasts, and she stroked his head, the part low on the neck where all the short hairs are.

Maybe I can guess what the surprise is, he said after a while. In the scuzzy house.

You know I won’t tell you if you do.

He did not need to say. He knew what it was exactly. Just as Cameron had foretold. His real life was just starting. He was going to see his dad.