Not long after I’d come back home after being kicked out of Iron Mountain, we were in the driveway, my mom about to take me to school. And when she started the car, smoke began pouring out from under the hood, this terrible grinding sound. More smoke. I ran to the house to get some water, and my mom used some rags to protect her hand while she popped the hood. I ran back outside with a pitcher of water sloshing around, and now the engine was on fire, the flames reaching pretty high. And I stopped a few feet from my mom, who was just staring at the fire, with that same look on her face that I was seeing now. It was like she could see something inside the flame, some prophecy. Or maybe she could see the span of her life up to this point, how she got to this moment, standing over her ruined car.
I’d walked over to her and held up the pitcher, but she just shook her head. “Look,” she said, gesturing toward the engine, “just look at it.” I didn’t know what she wanted me to see, if we could even see the same thing. “It’s kind of pretty,” she finally said. And we stood there, watching the fire, until she finally took the water from me and dumped it on the engine, which didn’t do much of anything. “You don’t have to go to school today,” she told me, sighing so deeply. “I’m not going to work.” I nodded, smiling a little, because I thought maybe we’d spend the day together, go see a movie, but when we went back into the house, she lit up a cigarette and closed the door to her bedroom, locking me out, and I didn’t see her until the next morning. And this was what I finally realized, that even as we sank deeper and deeper into our lives, we were always separate. And I wondered what it would feel like, to fall but to hold on to someone else so you weren’t alone.
And now, here we were, back in this house. What I wanted to do, if this was a dream, was to walk into that room. I wanted to sit next to my mom. And I wanted to ask, “Why did you hate me?” And I wanted her to say, “You’re looking at it from the wrong angle. I didn’t hate you. I loved you so much. I protected you. I kept you safe from harm.” And I would say, “You did?” She would nod. I’d ask her who my father was, and she’d say that he was the worst man who had ever been born. She’d say that she had given up everything in her life to get away from him. And she had raised me all alone, as best she could. And I would say, “Thank you.” And she would hug me and it wouldn’t be weird. It would be like the way somebody hugs another person. And the entirety of my life, everything that had come before, would disappear. And things would be so much better.
I stared at her for a few more seconds, and I could not imagine what was inside her head. I didn’t hate her. But there was no way that I was going to sit on that sofa. There was no way that I was going to say anything to her. I turned around, the steps creaking so loud that she must have heard me; how could she not have heard me? And there were the kids, still curled into the shape of sleep, their bodies both rigid and loose at the same time. I crawled back into bed. And Bessie opened her eyes.
“What’s going to happen?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I told her. Because I had no idea, had barely made it this far.
“Will we have to go back?” she asked.
“Eventually,” I admitted. “Yes, we will.”
She thought about this. It was so dark in the attic. I couldn’t really see her and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to.
“Okay,” she said.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It really is.”
She kissed me, the first time either of the children had kissed me. I stroked her hair, her weird hair, this weird child.
“How much longer is summer?” she asked.
“A long time,” I replied. “We still have a long time.” And this was enough. She was asleep again. And then, soon enough, so was I.
When I woke up, Carl was standing over me, his hand lightly resting on his cheek, like I was abstract art, like he saw something that interested him but he wasn’t sure what it meant, like he thought I was something a child could have made. And, honestly, I wasn’t that shocked. He’d let us go, but I always knew that at some point he’d be the one to bring us back.
“Hello, Carl,” I said, and he shook his head, observing my circumstances.
“There wasn’t anywhere else that you could go?” he asked.
“I . . . I don’t have many friends,” I told him. “When did she call you?”
“Late last night,” he replied. I wasn’t even mad at her. I don’t know what I thought would happen. Maybe I wanted it to be over with, had reached the limits of what I could do on my own. That it had taken barely a day seemed pathetic.
“So this is where you grew up?” he asked me, looking around the attic.
“No, Carl. I grew up in a normal room. Downstairs. This room is where I ended up.”
“I see,” he replied.
The kids heard us talking and opened their eyes. When they saw that it was Carl, they simply groaned, flopped onto their sides, and pulled the sheets over their heads.
I should have been more afraid, after all that had happened, but Carl, as much as he irritated me, didn’t scare me. If it had been the police, then I’d have been scared. I realized that Madison and Jasper hadn’t told anyone else about me, about the kids.
“Please tell me the mansion didn’t burn down,” I told him.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Some smoke damage, a month of renovations. It’s fine. It could have been much worse.”
“How did you explain it to the fire department?” I asked him, genuinely curious. My guess, if I had only one guess, was that money was involved.
“The fire chief is a close friend of Secretary Roberts,” Carl said. Well, okay, I realized, favors. Rich-people favors were better than money. And then I noticed the title Carl had used, Secretary.
“He’s not resigning?” I asked.
“I’m not here to talk about that,” Carl replied. He held out a cellular phone.
“Who do you want me to talk to?” I asked him.
“Mrs. Roberts,” he replied. “She’s the one who set all of this up. She wants to talk to you.”
“Carl, I don’t know if I can talk to her,” I said. “Legally, I’m not sure what—”
“Just talk to her, okay?” he told me. He put the phone in my hand. “Just press the green button,” he said, and then he shook the bed, pulling the covers off the kids. “Do you kids want to get ice cream?” he asked.
“Not really,” Bessie admitted.
“Well, do you want to get out of this awful attic and get some fresh air?” he tried next.
“With you?” Roland asked, sneering.
“It’s okay,” I told them. “Carl has been good to us. I just need to talk to Madison for a little while.”
“You’re not leaving us?” Bessie asked, cautious.
“Carl’s just going to take you downstairs so you can hang out with my mom,” I told her. “It’s okay.”
They got out of bed, adjusting their clothes. Carl held out his hands, and each kid took one, disappearing down the stairs.
I looked at the phone. If I threw it in the trash, if I could sneak down the stairs and out a window, I could be back on the road, entirely on my own. I resisted this urge, which was pretty common with me, the slightest friction causing me to jump out of whatever it was that was in motion. I’d get a little banged up, would ruin my reputation, but it always seemed worth it for the escape. And then I imagined those kids sitting with Carl and my mother, such a sad fate. I put the phone to my ear and waited to hear that voice, one that I’d replayed in my mind for so many years.