Mister X

59

Ohio, 1997

Miriam Grantland wished the wipers sweeping the windshield of her Ford Taurus would swipe away her tears along with the rain.

When she'd gotten the phone call, she left immediately. She was halfway to Cleveland and had sobbed through most of her journey.

Her thoughts nagged her like restless demons.

Why had Jerry been born? What had gone wrong? What had she done wrong?

Maybe nothing, considering the circumstances.

Maybe everything.

Damned trucks! An eighteen-wheeler swished past the Taurus doing over eighty miles per hour, trailing a deluge of rainwater that temporarily blinded Miriam so that she was driving sightless through the night and into the glare of oncoming headlights.

The truck became an object of her fury. She leaned forward to peer out the windshield, honked the horn, flashed her highlights. The Taurus's engine strained, and the steering wheel began to shimmy in Miriam's sweating palms. Inch by inch, she recaptured the highway lost to the truck, and on a gentle curve she passed it.

Her rage was unabated.

She glanced at the speedometer. Eighty-five. She held her speed, watching the headlights of the semi fall farther and farther back. There were only a few cars ahead of her on the dark, rain-swept highway.

On the straightaway now, she eased up slightly on the accelerator until the shuddering in the steering wheel and the car's front end went away. The sheet metal on the hood stopped vibrating. Eighty-two miles per hour. That was as fast as she dared to go without risking mechanical trouble. Any sort of delay was out of the question. Miriam set the cruise control. She needed to get to Cleveland, do what she had to do, and then get back home.

She thought about Jerry and all the problems he'd caused. It had to be him. Something was very wrong with him. His behavior wasn't normal. That was a fact she had to face.

He'd been born almost a month prematurely and weighed only slightly more than four pounds. Had that caused the problem? Maybe. Had it been her fault? Hardly.

Jerry's father? The bastard hadn't been around long enough to have much of an effect one way or the other. But then, who knew for sure about such things? And at a certain point, what did it matter? So maybe it had been Jerry's father. The past was impossible to change. Like it or not, we all lived in the present.

Miriam had nothing against gay people; that was obvious. It was an old friend in Cleveland who'd phoned her, a woman named Grace who'd for years lived with her lesbian partner she'd met in college. No big deal. Other people's sex lives were none of Miriam's business. It was nobody's concern what people did behind closed doors, in the privacy of their homes or in businesses that catered to such clientele. Miriam didn't doubt that eventually, even in Ohio, people of the same sex would be able to legally marry. That was fine with her. Times were changing, and Miriam could change with them.

But Jerry! Her own son.

She'd suspected something was wrong, known how he used to sneak out of the house at night and spy on the twins next door. Miriam never talked to Jerry about that. It was heterosexual and possibly not so unusual behavior for a boy his age. So he peeked, probably mostly out of curiosity. If the little teases didn't lower their shades that was their problem. Besides, Miriam had her own problems, and they were crushing and repetitious. Work, drink, sleepless nights, loneliness. Now and then a relationship that meant nothing other than sex and went nowhere beyond the bed. Work, drink, sleepless nights, loneliness. Over and over. Like a damned treadmill that would wear her down and someday leave her useless and hopeless. That was her life. It was difficult enough without Jerry coming up with ways to make it worse.

Of course he had come up with ways, but this was something she hadn't considered. And she was trying now to consider it only in a detached way. The time for recriminations and philosophizing was past.

Right now, she had to act.

The dark highway seemed to roll out before her forever. Talk radio matched her mood and kept her company. There was trouble everywhere. A man claimed the government was using silent black helicopters to spy on people. Code was spray painted on the backs of road signs to guide armies that moved by night. A secret global triad was running things, and was scheduled to reveal itself at the turn of the century-only three years away!

Miriam switched stations and encountered more talk radio.

By the time she reached the Cleveland suburbs, a formation of asteroids was speeding toward earth and would collide with the planet. They would arrive at the turn of the century. It was ordained. There seemed no way they could miss. Maybe that horrific event was what would cause the global triad to reveal itself.

Miriam got out the directions she'd scribbled on a blank envelope back in Holifield and followed them carefully through neighborhoods that were increasingly poor and more dangerous.

At last she reached the downtown street she sought, blocks of mostly brick commercial buildings, some of them boarded up with graffiti-marred plywood.

Ahead, blurred by the mist, was the red neon sign: EVERY LITTLE THING.

The rain and wet streets reflected the flickering red sign as well as streetlights that gave off an eerie orange glow. Through the sweep of the car's wipers, Miriam saw that several people were standing outside the club, beneath a fringed brown awning over its entrance. Some of them held glasses or bottles. Some of them were women.

Miriam slowed the car, veered it toward the curb, and parked. She would have to steel herself and go into this horrid place. She would have to come out with Jerry in tow and get him back to Holifield and make it clear to him that he was to stay away from…people like her friend Grace.

Maybe Grace was still inside the club, or whatever it was. She'd been there when she'd called Miriam.

Where Miriam had parked was about a hundred feet from the knot of people beneath the canopy. She left the engine running and the headlights and wipers on, watching the people she'd have to walk past to get inside. Even with the car's windows closed she could hear their loud voices, sometimes their laughter. They were milling around restlessly, as if they didn't want trouble but wouldn't mind it. One of the women, who looked overdressed for such a place, almost fell, and a man caught her and helped to steady her. He kissed her ear, and she grinned and grabbed his arm. Another woman, in a black cocktail dress like one Miriam owned, separated herself from the others and began shouting something unintelligible and lifting a beer bottle as if in a toast. She had long blond hair and a lineup of bracelets on each bare arm. Apparently she was drunk, because she was having difficulty keeping her balance in her black spike high heels.

She took a swig of beer, sashayed into the orange glow of the nearest streetlight, and noticed the parked Taurus.

Miriam switched off the headlights.

The blond woman hadn't moved. She took another long, slow pull on the beer bottle and then walked closer with a slight forward lean, as if to see who was sitting behind the steering wheel.

The glance, the meeting of gazes even through the rain-distorted windshield, was enough to force Miriam back into the car's seat, to gasp at what she saw.

Her dress,

Her bracelets.

Her son!

She opened the door and climbed out of the car without thinking, barely aware of the movements of her body. The gentle rain was cool on her face.

Jerry had turned around and was staggering back toward the club's entrance on his high heels, toward his friends, who were staring at him with puzzled and amused expressions.

"Jerry!" Miriam heard her voice call.

He tried to walk faster and stumbled, almost fell.

"Jerry! Goddamn you!" Miriam began to run. She knew what she was doing now, had her wits about her, and she was furious. That her own son should do this to her was unthinkable. It couldn't be happening. Couldn't be true. Yet there was the proof right in front of her, in a blond wig and high heels. Her heart was like an engine pumping rage through her blood.

She caught up with Jerry right outside the door, beneath the brown canopy. The people who were clustered there-some of them women, others up close obviously not women-moved back in stunned silence.

Miriam grabbed the back of her cocktail dress and ripped it as she yanked Jerry back. He tottered on the high heels and fell. Lying on the wet sidewalk, he stared up at Miriam with made-up eyes, lipsticked mouth. His blond wig had slipped sideways and appeared about to fall off. His mascara was running.

Miriam spat at him, then kicked him hard in the side.

Jerry scrambled to his feet, wearing only one shoe. Miriam shoved him hard toward the car. He opened his mouth to complain, and she shoved him again.

"Mom-"

"Fucking pervert!" She struck at him with her fists. Pushed! Hit! Pushed! Hit! Moving him toward the car. Pushed! Hit! The other shoe had fallen off, and he held his hands over his head and the blond wig, his body bent so low to avoid the blows that he was almost duckwalking.

Miriam opened the passenger-side door and shoved him inside the car. He shut the door himself. Anything to stop the rain of blows her clenched fists and tired arms continued to launch with the force of her disgust and desperation.

After stomping around to the driver's side of the car, Miriam screamed at the people near the club entrance. "Fucking perverts!" It was all she could think of to shout. The objects of her insult merely stared at her, as if there were something wrong with her. A few of them laughed.

The car's engine had died, and it took three tries to get it started. Finally Miriam crammed the shift lever into drive and spun the tires on the wet pavement.

As the Taurus sped past the club entrance, Miriam saw almost all laughing faces now. One of the women shouted at her and raised her skirt high with both hands. She, or he, was wearing nothing underneath but black net pantyhose. Miriam had pantyhose like it at home in her dresser drawer. She glanced over at Jerry's drawn-up legs. They were clad in black net pantyhose.

"Why?" Jerry's mother asked him, driving automatically and retracing her route out of town. "For God's sake, why?"

Jerry didn't answer.

"Your father," she said. "Where was your goddamned father? This is his fault!"

Neither Jerry nor his mother exchanged another word all the way back to Holifield.

They managed to get inside the house without anyone seeing them. Miriam hoped. There were some nosy people in this neighborhood. People who peeked through windows.

Miriam made Jerry remove his-most of them her-clothes, and then climb onto his bed on his hands and knees. He was so embarrassed, so demolished by what had happened, that he couldn't offer even token resistance. He was a little boy again.

She got a thick leather belt that had been her husband's from the closet and whipped Jerry's buttocks and the backs of his thighs until she was exhausted. Neither of them said anything while this was transpiring. Jerry did not so much as whimper.

Afterward Jerry's mother sat in front of the TV in the living room and began to drink gin. Before her on the television screen was an old black-and-white movie, Humphrey Bogart kissing Ingrid Bergman. Jerry's mother seemed more interested in her bottle.

Jerry waited until she was sleeping soundly on the sofa before he packed a suitcase and crept from the house.

He didn't leave a note.

He never returned to Holifield.