Black Maps (11 page)

But at the Kahlstroms' house, he wasn't brave for long. Standing in the entryway, Mrs. McClure cheerfully introduced him to the strangers who would be his temporary parents. Mrs. Kahlstrom was a small, bird-boned woman, and even though the house was warm and she was wearing a bulky turtleneck sweater, she kept hugging herself as if she were cold. She said, “Hello, Jimmy,” and smiled so big he could see her gums. Mr. Kahlstrom shook his hand when he said hello. He was tall and thin and had an Adam's apple like Ichabod Crane in the story Mrs. Anthony had read to Jimmy's class. Jimmy was so scared he wanted to turn and run out the door, but his legs were trembling too much. He didn't know what to do, and he surprised himself as much as the others when he suddenly lay down on the rug and curled up like a dog going to sleep. The three adults hovered over him, startled looks on their faces. From the floor they looked so different it was almost as if they weren't people at all but some strange creatures from another world. Mrs. McClure took his elbow and asked him to please stand up like a good boy, but he jerked his arm away. They all tried to talk him into getting up, but he stayed on the floor, even when Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom tried to tempt him into the house by showing him some of the toys they'd bought. Finally Mrs. McClure said it might be best just to let him lie there until he was ready to get up. “I don't know what to say,” she told the Kahlstroms. “I've never seen a reaction like this.” Mrs. Kahlstrom offered him a sofa pillow then, but he shook his head, so she just set it on the linoleum beside him. Then Mrs. McClure shook their hands and said goodbye, and Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom went into the living room to wait for Jimmy to get up and join them.

For a time after Mrs. McClure left, Jimmy could hear them whispering. Then he heard a sudden sharp sob, and Mr. Kahlstrom saying, “There, there, dear. Just give him time.” Then they went into another room, farther away, and he couldn't hear them anymore. After a while, a phone rang somewhere, and Jimmy heard Mr. Kahlstrom answer it, then say, “No, not yet” and “We'll let you know as soon as anything happens” and “Thanks for calling.” A long time later, Mr. Kahlstrom came, squatted down on his haunches, and set a plate beside the rug. “It's lunchtime, Jimmy,” he said. “Mrs. McClure told us you liked Sloppy Joes and potato chips. I hope that's right.” When Jimmy didn't say anything, he let out a long sigh, then stood up and went away. Jimmy was hungry, but he wasn't going to eat anything until they took him back home. He'd starve himself, and if that didn't work, he'd just break all the windows in the house. And if Mrs. McClure took him somewhere else, he'd break all the windows there, too; he'd break all the windows everywhere, until she'd finally have to take him back to his mother again.

A half-hour later, when Mr. Kahlstrom returned, Jimmy still hadn't eaten anything, but he was sitting up now and crying. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I won't break any of your windows, I promise. Just let me go home, please. Please let me go home.”

Mr. Kahlstrom knelt down beside Jimmy. “Sorry? You don't have anything to be sorry about. And you don't have to worry about breaking any of our windows, or anything else either. Just feel free to play and do everything you do in your own house. And if something does break, don't worry about it—we can get it fixed. All right?”

Jimmy looked at him. Maybe he didn't know about the windows, maybe Mrs. McClure didn't tell either of them. “All right,” he said.

“Say,” Mr. Kahlstrom said then, “I bet your Sloppy Joe is cold. What do you say we head into the kitchen and make you another one?”

For the next two months, whenever Mrs. McClure asked, Jimmy told her that he liked living with the Kahlstroms. And mostly, he did. Mr. Kahlstrom taught music at the high school, and he played songs for Jimmy on the big upright piano in the living room. Jimmy's favorite was one called “Down at Papa Joe's.” Mr. Kahlstrom showed Jimmy how to play the melody—he took his small hand with his big one and helped him poke out the notes with one finger—and Jimmy liked that. But he didn't like it when Mrs. Kahlstrom sat down on the corner of the piano bench beside them. She had scared him his third night there, when she tucked him into bed, by telling him that she and Roger—that was what she called Mr. Kahlstrom—had once had a little boy very much like him but that he had swallowed some gasoline and died when he was only three. It had been eleven years since he died and they still missed him, and that was why they had decided to become foster parents. She reached out her bony hand when she said that and brushed the hair away from his forehead. “He had curly hair too,” she said, “only his was blond.”

The Kahlstroms were nice to him. Mr. Kahlstrom took him up to the high school on weekends and let him play with all the different drums in the band room, and he bought him a Nerf football so they could play Goal Line Stand in the living room. Mrs. Kahlstrom worried about the furniture and lamps, but she let them play anyway, and when Jimmy tackled Mr. Kahlstrom she'd clap and say, “Way to go, Jimmy!” Mrs. Kahlstrom made him bacon and eggs for breakfast nearly every day and helped him with his homework and took him to the matinee on Saturdays, but she was so nervous all the time that she made him nervous too. And she was always talking about love. She had loved him even before she met him, she said. And at night, after she read him a story, she'd kiss him on his nose just like he was a little kid still and say she loved, loved, loved him so much she could eat him up. Then she'd sit there a moment, as if she were waiting for him to say “I love you” back, before she'd finally get up and turn out the lights. And the stories she read bothered him too. They were stupid stories, little kid stories. Once she read one about a dog that was on the ark with Noah. The dog seemed to think the flood came along just so he could have a good time, sailing around and playing games with the other animals. He never even thought about all the dogs that got drowned. His own parents had probably drowned in the flood, and his brothers and sisters too. But he didn't seem to care. And when the flood was over and Noah picked him for his pet, he jumped up and down like he was the luckiest dog in history.

Each Friday, Mrs. McClure came to visit for a few minutes. She never mentioned the windows, but Jimmy knew she hadn't forgotten about them, because she always told him he couldn't go home just yet. He wished she'd tell him how long he was going to be punished, but all she'd ever say was, “It won't be much longer now, sweetheart.” At first he thought he'd have to stay at the Kahlstroms' for eighteen days—one for each window—but when the eighteenth day came and went without her coming to take him home, he began to worry it'd be eighteen weeks. But then, a few days before Christmas, she called and told him to pack his things because she was coming to take him home. At the door, Mr. Kahlstrom shook his hand and hugged him. “Be good, Jimmy,” he said, patting his back. Mrs. Kahlstrom wasn't there; she was upstairs in her room, and although he couldn't hear her, Jimmy knew she was crying. “Tell Mrs. Kahlstrom…” he said, but he didn't know what he wanted him to tell her, so he stopped. Then Mrs. McClure took his hand and led him down the sidewalk to her car. He wanted to turn around and see if Mrs. Kahlstrom was watching from her window upstairs, but he didn't.

On the way home, Mrs. McClure mentioned that his mother had been at a hospital in St. Paul. “What was she doing there?” he asked.

“Getting better,” Mrs. McClure answered. “Wait till you see her. She's a new person now.”

And she was, too, at least for a while. His first day back, she told him he was the best Christmas present she had ever gotten, and she baked a turkey and made mashed potatoes and gravy. And afterward, she gave him a present—“Just one, for now,” she said, “You'll have to wait till Christmas Eve for the rest.” It was a Nerf football, just like the one Mr. Kahlstrom had bought for him. He looked at her. Her chin was trembling. “Mrs. McClure told me you liked playing football,” she said. “I thought maybe we could play a little sometime.”

They only played a couple of times, though, before she started getting tired again. The first Saturday after Christmas she went to bed right after breakfast. Jimmy watched cartoons in the living room all morning, then made himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. After he finished it, he went into her room to ask her if she wanted something to eat, too. She was standing in front of her bureau mirror. She was still in her nightgown, but she was wearing a strange white hat with a pink ribbon around its brim. Jimmy wasn't sure, but he thought he'd seen that hat before. Then he remembered: it was her Easter hat, and she'd worn it back when his father lived with them and they still went to church. “Are you going to church, Mom?” he asked. She turned around, and he saw that she'd been crying. For a moment, he was worried that she was going to say something about the windows. But then she said, “While I was in the hospital, I got a letter from Mr. Gilchrist. You remember Mr. Gilchrist, don't you?” Jimmy nodded. Mr. Gilchrist was the vacuum salesman who made the noises with her in the bedroom. “Well, he said he wouldn't be coming to town anymore. He said his company changed his route.” She laughed abruptly, then frowned. “Men,” she said. She looked at him. “I wish you weren't a boy, Jimmy. You'll grow up to be just like the rest of them, and you'll leave me too.”

“No I won't,” Jimmy said.

“Yes you will.”

“No I won't,” he repeated, shaking his head.

“Goddamn it, you
will
,” she said, and tore the hat off her head and flung it against the wall. Jimmy flinched and took a step backward. “I'm sorry,” she said then. “I didn't mean it.” She reached out for him. “Come here, honey. I'm sorry.”

But he didn't move.

“All right then,” she said, and dropped her hands to her sides. “Do whatever the hell you want. You will anyway.” She got back into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. Jimmy stood there, watching her. “What are you waiting for?” she said. “
Go
.” And he left.

The next day she was better—she even helped him build a snow fort in the yard until she got too tired—and Jimmy thought everything was going to be all right again. But by mid-January, she was so tired all the time that she had to go back to the hospital. Mrs. McClure said she was a lot better than she had been, but she still wasn't quite well. When Jimmy asked what was wrong with her, she said, “It's nothing to worry about. She just needs a rest.” Jimmy tried to convince her that his mother could rest at home—he could clean the house for her and do the laundry and cook—but she only sighed. “It's not just for a rest, Jimmy. Your mother's not very happy right now. At the hospital they'll help her be happy again.”

Jimmy didn't say anything then. He knew why she was unhappy; it was all his fault. Why had he thrown those rocks? If he had just put that first rock down and walked away, she wouldn't have to go back to the hospital and he wouldn't have to go back to the Kahlstroms'. He didn't want to live there anymore. It wasn't that he didn't like the Kahlstroms—he did—but he missed his mother when he was there. Most people didn't know how nice she was; they only saw her when she was too tired to be nice. But sometimes when he'd tell her something funny that happened at school she'd laugh so hard she'd have to hold her sides and she'd smile so big there'd be wrinkles around her eyes. He loved that smile, and in the weeks that followed, he often stood in front of the Kahlstroms' bathroom mirror and tried to imitate it. He'd stand there for a long time, smiling at himself with her smile, until Mrs. Kahlstrom would get worried and come looking for him.

This time, his mother got out of the hospital after only a month, but Mrs. McClure said he couldn't go home just yet. He cried so hard then that the Kahlstroms agreed to let his mother come once a week for a visit. That Sunday, Mrs. McClure dropped her off in her Subaru. Jimmy was upstairs in his room when the doorbell rang. “Your mother's here,” Mr. Kahlstrom called, and Jimmy came running downstairs just as he opened the door for her. It was snowing lightly and her hair and the shoulders of her coat were dusted with snow. “Come on in, Mrs. Holloway,” he said, and helped her out of her coat. “Welcome to our home.”

She didn't look at him. She just cleared her throat and said, “Thank you,” then looked at Jimmy, who was standing beside the potted fern in the hall. “Jimmy,” she said, and knelt on one knee for him to come to her. He had been looking forward to her coming, but now that she was here, he felt strangely shy, and he walked toward her slowly, with his eyes down. Then her arms were around him and she was kissing his cheek. She didn't smell like herself, though; she was wearing perfume that smelled like the potpourri Mrs. Kahlstrom kept in an Oriental dish in the bathroom. He stepped back and looked at her. Her eyebrows looked darker and there were red smudges on her cheekbones. As she stood up, her silver earrings swung back and forth. She was smiling, but it wasn't her real smile, the one she gave him when they were alone.

“If you'd like, you can sit in the living room,” Mr. Kahlstrom said. “I've just built a fire in the fireplace.” He led them to the living room. “I'll leave you two alone,” he said then, and went upstairs to join Mrs. Kahlstrom, who had told Jimmy at breakfast that she hoped he'd understand but she just couldn't be there when his mother came.

Jimmy sat in the wingback chair beside the white brick fireplace and swung his legs back and forth. His mother stood in front of the fire a moment, warming herself and looking at Mrs. Kahlstrom's collection of Hummel figurines on the mantel, then sat down on the end of the sofa next to the chair. He knew he should go sit with her, but he didn't. Then she touched the cushion beside her and said, “Won't you come sit with me?” He nodded and slid out of the chair and climbed up next to her. It felt strange to be alone with his mother in someone else's house—it was like they were actors in a movie or something and not real people. He didn't know what to say to her. He wasn't at all tired, but he stretched and yawned. He didn't know why he'd done that, and he suddenly wanted to be upstairs in his room, playing with his toys, the visit over and his mother on her way back home.