“What is your name?” He sounded already angry, already not believing my lies.
“Janey Duncan.”
“Are you this boy’s mother?” Gesturing towards the door, the hallway, in, one presumed, the general direction of Atlas.
“Yes.” I kept my voice level, made sure it didn’t rise at the end, but I still sounded defiant rather than matter-of-fact, the way I imagined one would sound if one were the boy’s mother.
“Why does he have a different last name than you?” Who had given them Atlas’s last name? Jason must have when he brought him in.
“Mattison is my husband’s name,” I said evenly, angry though that they’d concluded that this couldn’t be my son simply because our last names didn’t match.
“Then why are there two people in the lobby who claim to be Atlas Mattison’s parents?”
I had no idea. “Two people?”
“Ma’am, I need you to be straight with me, and tell me what’s really going on here.”
But how could I do that? So I had to keep lying. I had no choice. There was no way to explain what was really going on here. I was Atlas’s mother in all the ways that counted, and right now, Atlas needed his mother.
“I’m his mother.” I shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know who those people are.”
He looked me up and down and studied my face for a while, his eyes going squinty. Then he sighed and said quietly, “One of the people out there is pretty upset. She’s done a lot of yelling. Her name is Mattison too. And she’s just left the building claiming to be on her way home to get a birth certificate. If she’s lying, we’re very sorry for this inconvenience, but, you understand, we have to be careful. There’s a lot of crazies out there. If she comes back with a birth certificate though . . .” He trailed off, so I didn’t know what would happen. I’d go to jail on kidnapping charges? I’d be denied access to Atlas? I’d be yelled at by the large man and possibly beaten with his large stick? I had no idea. But also, I didn’t care that much. It was a gnawing detail way in the back because the first thirty rows or so were taken up entirely with Atlas who was hot and sick and seizing and I didn’t know why. And next to that, nothing mattered. “We’ll keep you posted,” the guard said on his way out, neither kindly nor unkindly. “Please don’t leave.” I sat down in the chair and waited. What else could I do?
What I always did. Analyze. Why would I lie? Especially since, clearly, they were about to find out? Admitting it when you first get caught, laughing it off as a silly accident, a harmless misunderstanding, a perfectly-understandable-if-I-see-now-totally-unacceptable error in judgment, even a halfhearted, half-muttered apology, is always, always preferable and more sensible than lying more and worse. How do I know? Because I teach film. Because I have seen this movie before. Only twelve-year-old boys and everyone in the movies think that more lying will get you out of an initial lie. Every audience member (at least every non-twelve-year-old boy) shouts at the screen, if only in their own heads, “You idiot. You are making it worse. GO BACK.” It makes audiences feel all squirmy and uncomfortable, knowing if these characters would only tell the truth, things might turn out, but since they won’t tell the truth, they are almost certain to wind up dead within the hour, never mind that it is also only in movies that lying is an offense where the narrative justice is death. I had panicked I guess. And I felt my loyalty to and love for Atlas was being questioned. And I was his mother in many ways. And I was angry at Jill. But mostly, I think, I plead Narrative Syndrome. I had film on the brain, and in film, the only way forward is deeper.
Generally, I hate hospitals. Everyone hates hospitals I know. But of course, it’s different when it’s you. So I feel that, unlike everybody else, I really hate hospitals. They seem dirty and infectious places to me, cold and unfeeling and dangerous as hell because at any moment someone could come rushing in with a gunshot wound or drop down clutching his chest or cough until blood comes out in red chunks of—I don’t know—lung? And I don’t want to see that. And I don’t want to catch whatever’s causing it. But right then, the hospital was the most comforting place to be. They were taking care of Atlas, making him better. And they were keeping me from Jill. From Jill, from Daniel, from Katie, from everyone. And kept away was the only way I wanted to be.
I called my grandmother, just to check in, or really, just so she could comfort me, but as soon as I had her on the phone, I realized that I couldn’t very well tell her that Atlas was sick with some as-yet-unidentified disease or that I was being held hostage in a hospital where at any moment someone could throw lung up on me. I couldn’t tell her that I might soon be carted off to jail for claiming to have mothered a boy whose mother I was technically not. Come to think of it, the large man with the large stick had not asked me if I had borne Atlas. If he were my adopted son, the right answer to the question “Are you this boy’s mother?” would clearly be yes. If he were my foster son, the answer would be yes. If he were my sister’s son but she left him on my doorstep when he was an infant on her way to checking herself into a mental institution, even if she never informed the authorities, then clearly the answer would still be yes. So we were splitting hairs here. I hoped. In any case, obviously, I could not have this conversation with my grandmother. At the sound of her voice, I started crying and couldn’t stop. But she is my grandmother, who understands without understanding, and said oh my poor baby very softly and promised it would be okay, and still, somehow, I believed her.
I had relocated from the chair to the tile floor, back against the wall, so at least I could stretch my legs and rest my head when the door flew open. The door was opened by large man, but large man immediately stepped out of the way, and two people instantly identifiable as real police officers rushed in behind him.
“Janey Duncan?”
“Yes?”
“We need you to come down to the station and answer some questions for us.”
“Am I under arrest?” They stopped mid-motion, looked half surprised.
“Is there a reason you should be?”
“No.” I tried to sound sure, indignant even.
“Come with us please.” Not a request by any stretch. A command.
In the police car, there was no talking. I sat in the back, locked in and behind wire but not handcuffed. Not yet. Inside, I followed police officer one while police officer two stayed carefully behind me. In a room just as bleak as the one in the hospital but with loads more furniture (a table and two chairs), they turned on a light bright as day, slammed the door shut, and struck up movie cop poses—one straddling the chair with its back turned forward, one with arms crossed, leaning against the wall in the corner and looking angry and skeptical.
“Are you Atlas Mattison’s mother?” asked the sitting-backwards cop in front of me quite calmly as if she’d asked, “Do you like chocolate ice cream?”
“No,” I said, equally reasonably, as if answering the ice cream question.
She did not look surprised at all. She already knew this evidently. “Why did you say you were?”
“They wouldn’t let me see him otherwise. I had to be with him.” Still calm, reasonable, confident even.