Black Maps (12 page)

“Mr. Kahlstrom made a fire,” he finally said, though she already knew that. Then he added, “He showed me how to do it. First you crumple up newspaper, then you stack up little sticks like a teepee over it and—”

“Jimmy,” his mother interrupted. “I wish I could bring you home with me right now. You know that, don't you?”

He nodded.

“It may be a little longer, but I'm going to bring you home with me soon. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said.

“And things'll be a lot better than they were last time, I promise. I still had a lot of anger in me then, a lot of hurt. But I don't feel like that anymore. I've got a new outlook, and I'm going to make a better life for us. You'll see.”

Jimmy looked at her. “You're not mad anymore?”

“No,” she said, and Jimmy smiled. But then she added, “At least not like before. I'm learning to deal with it. It was hard at first, but it's getting easier.”

Jimmy looked down then. She was still mad, she still had not forgiven him.

“At any rate,” his mother continued, “Mrs. McClure says it won't be long before I can bring you back home.”

Then she was silent. She was looking at the flames in the fireplace. One of the logs popped and some sparks struck the black mesh screen.

Jimmy knew he should say something, but he thought if he opened his mouth, he'd start to cry.

“The Kahlstroms have such a nice house,” his mother said then. “I've always loved fireplaces. When I was a girl, I used to imagine the house I'd live in when I got married, and it always had a fireplace in it. And after dinner on cold winter nights my husband would build a big, roaring fire and we'd all sit around it and talk, the firelight flickering over our faces.” She shook her head and laughed. It didn't sound like her laugh. And the things she was saying didn't sound like anything she'd ever said before. “I had it all figured out,” she said. “I was going to have five children. I even had their names picked out—Joseph, Kevin, Abigail, Christine, and John, in that order. No James—that was your father's idea.” She laughed again. “I had everything figured out. Every blessed thing.” Then she turned her face toward him. There were tears in her eyes. “Don't you ever have everything figured out, you hear? Don't you—”

Then she couldn't talk anymore.

“What's wrong, Mom?” he managed to say.

“I'd better go,” she said, and stood up. She took a crumpled Kleenex from her purse and wiped her eyes with it. “This was a mistake. I shouldn't be here.” She looked around the room at the large-screen TV, the piano, the watercolor landscapes on the walls, the philodendron in the corner, and added, “I don't belong here.”

“Don't go,” he said, but it was too late: she was already on her way out.

“Tell Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom thank you for letting me come see you,” she said as she put on her coat.

“Mom,” he said. “Mom!”

She leaned over and took his face in her hands and kissed him. “My baby,” she said.

And then she was out the door, and he was standing at the window, watching her walk carefully down the icy sidewalk through the falling snow, not even a scarf on her head, and Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom were coming down the stairs asking why she had left so soon. When he tried to answer, a sob rose into his throat and stuck. He shook his head, unable to speak.

Mrs. Kahlstrom put her hands on his shoulders. “Don't worry, honey. You'll see her again next week,” she said, but he wrenched himself out of her hands and ran upstairs and locked himself in the bathroom. And although Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom stood outside the door and tried to comfort him, it was nearly an hour before he came out.

Mrs. Kahlstrom hugged him hard then and said they'd stay downstairs with him next time, if he wanted, so they could make sure his mother wouldn't upset him again. Jimmy didn't say anything for a long moment. Then he took a deep breath and said something he'd been wanting to say for the past four months. “If I get a job delivering papers, and save all my money, and pay for the windows, will Mrs. McClure let me go back home?”

“Windows?” Mrs. Kahlstrom said, then looked at her husband.

Mr. Kahlstrom wrinkled his forehead. “What windows, Jimmy? What are you talking about?”

And then he confessed it all.

Mr. Kahlstrom took Jimmy to see the high school counselor the next afternoon. His name was Mr. Sargent, but he told Jimmy to call him Ken. He was a skinny man with a ponytail, and he was wearing a corduroy sport coat but no tie. He leaned back in his chair and put his scuffed Hush Puppies up on the desk. Behind him, on the wall, was a poster of a strangely dressed black man kneeling in front of a burning guitar. “So, Jimbo,” he said, “what's a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?”

Jimmy sat there, looking down at his lap. His hands were shaking and he couldn't make them stop. He watched them tremble. Somehow, it seemed like it was happening a long way away, to somebody else maybe.

“You don't have to be afraid,” Mr. Sargent said. “You can say anything in here. This is one place where you can say whatever you want. ‘Cause I won't tell anyone anything you say. That's what ‘confidential' means—you can be
confident
that I won't tell anyone your secrets.”

Jimmy sat on his hands to make them stop. Then he tried to look up, but he couldn't. Finally, he said, “Did Mr. Kahlstrom tell you?”

“Tell me what, Jimbo?” Mr. Sargent said.

Jimmy didn't want to say. He was hoping Mr. Sargent didn't know.

“Tell me what?” Mr. Sargent asked again, more softly this time. “You can tell me.”

“The windows,” Jimmy managed to whisper.

“Oh, the
windows
. Sure, he told me about the windows. But who cares about the lousy windows?”

Jimmy looked up, startled. Mr. Sargent smiled and went on. “It was wrong to break the windows, of course, but I don't have to tell you that—you already know it. But once they're broken, there's nothing you can do about it, except admit it like a man and say you're sorry and go on with your life. Everybody makes mistakes. That's how we learn to be better people. If we didn't make mistakes, we'd never learn anything. So think of it that way—as a mistake you made that you can learn from.” Here he took his feet down from the desk and leaned forward in his chair. “What have you learned from all of this, Jimbo? Is there anything it's taught you that'll help you on down the road?”

Jimmy didn't think he'd learned anything, unless it was that he wasn't who he'd always thought he was. He didn't know who he was now, but he was someone else. Someone crazy, like his mother. And once Mr. Sargent found that out, he'd make him go to a hospital too.

“Let me guess, then,” Mr. Sargent said. “You tell me if I'm getting warm, okay?” When Jimmy didn't respond, he repeated, “Okay?” Finally, Jimmy nodded. “All right, then. Did you learn that—hmm, let's see—that it's best to talk about your anger instead of breaking things??

Jimmy hadn't been angry when he broke the windows, but he nodded yes anyway.

“Good. That's a good thing to learn. And did you also learn that secrets make you unhappy? That the longer you keep something inside, the more it hurts?”

Again Jimmy nodded, though he thought he hurt more now that people knew what he had done. And even though Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom told him he wasn't taken away from his mother because he broke the windows, he didn't know if he could believe them. They wanted him to like them, so maybe they would lie. And they wanted to adopt him, so maybe they would tell Mrs. McClure about the windows and Mrs. McClure would tell his mother, and then she'd say she couldn't take him back because she couldn't afford to pay for the windows like Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom could.

“That's good. That's very good. And did you maybe also learn how much people care about you? Because if they didn't, I wouldn't be here talking to you. I'm talking to you because
I
care, and because Mr. and Mrs. K care, and because everybody who knows you cares about you and wants you to be happy. Is that maybe something you learned from all of this, too?”

Jimmy looked at him, then at the floor. He didn't see the floor, though; he was seeing his father, the morning of the day he left for work and never came back, trimming his mustache in front of the bathroom mirror.

It took him longer this time, but once again he nodded.

The following Sunday, Mrs. McClure's Subaru pulled up in front of the Kahlstroms' house, but Jimmy's mother was not in it. “What a terrible day,” Mrs. McClure said to the Kahlstroms, as she flicked the snow from her boots with her gloves. “We must have a foot of snow already.” Then she cocked her head toward Jimmy. “I'm sorry, sweetie, but your mother isn't feeling well today. She said she'd try to come again next week. I hope you aren't too disappointed.”

Jimmy said, “You told her, didn't you.”

“Told her what?”

“You know.”

“Oh, that. No, I didn't say anything. I told you I wouldn't tell, and I won't.” Then she frowned. “Is that why you think she didn't come?”

“You can tell her if you want,” he said, sticking his chin out. “She won't come anyway.”

“Of course she will. She'll come tomorrow or the day after,” Mrs. McClure said. “It's just that today—” But before she could finish, Jimmy turned and started to run up the stairs. “Jimmy!” she called after him. “Let me explain.”

At the top of the stairs, he stopped and shouted down, “Tell her I don't care if she ever comes—not
ever
!” And then he ran into his room and slammed the door.

A few minutes later, he heard Mrs. McClure's car drive away, and then Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom came up and tried to talk to him. “We know you were looking forward to seeing her, honey,” Mrs. Kahlstrom said, but he just dumped his entire canister of Legos onto the carpet and started putting them together.

“What're you building?” Mr. Kahlstrom asked.

“Nothing,” he answered.

“Well,” he said, “that shouldn't take much time.” But Jimmy didn't laugh. Mr. Kahlstrom cleared his throat and looked at his wife. “Maybe we ought to let Jimmy be alone for a while,” he said. Mrs. Kahlstrom nodded and said, “We'll be right downstairs if you need us. Okay, Jimmy?”

Jimmy didn't say anything. And when they left, he got up and closed the door again.

He tried to play with his Legos, but after a few minutes, he gave up and sat on the edge of his bed, looking out the window. It had been snowing all day, and now the snow was so thick he could barely see the houses across the street. He watched the evergreens sway in the yard and listened to the wind whistle in the eaves, then pressed his warm cheek against the windowpane. The window was cold and it vibrated a little with every gust of wind. It felt as if the glass were shivering, and for a second he thought it might even break. But he didn't move his face away; he pressed his cheek against it harder, until he could feel the cold right through to his cheekbone. He wished he were outside, walking through the waist-high drifts, the wind making his cheeks burn and his eyes tear; he wanted to be so cold that nothing could ever warm him up. That didn't make sense, but Jimmy didn't care if it did or not. He had a lot of thoughts he didn't understand, but he didn't worry about them anymore. You couldn't do anything about the brain that was in your head. Even if you were as rich as Michael Jackson, you still couldn't buy a new brain. You could get a new mother, but you couldn't get a new brain.

Later that night, Mr. Kahlstrom built a fire, and the three of them sat on the sofa eating popcorn and watching
E.T
. on videotape. The movie was sad, but Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom were smiling. It was so easy to make them happy, he thought; all he had to do was sit on the sofa with them. And that thought made him feel bad, because he had stayed in his room almost all day, making them worry.

Outside, the snow was still falling, a thick curtain of it, and every now and then the wind would rattle the windowpanes. “My, what a storm,” Mrs. Kahlstrom said when the picture on the television flickered and went dark for a second. “We'd better get the candles out.”

“It looks like we'll be snowed in tomorrow,” Mr. Kahlstrom said. Then he tousled Jimmy's hair. “No school for us, eh, buckaroo?”

Jimmy smiled and Mrs. Kahlstrom grinned. “I'd like that,” she said. “We could sit around the fire and tell stories and play games, the way people did in the olden days. It'd be just like that poem ‘Snow-Bound.' I memorized part of it when I was in high school, for a talent show.” She lowered her head, as if it were immodest of her to say the word
talent
. But then she began to half speak, half sing the poem:

“No, that's not right,” she broke off. “I think I missed a line in there somewhere.”

“It sounded great to me,” Mr. Kahlstrom said. “Go on. Recite some more for us.” And he pressed the pause button on the remote control, freezing E.T. as he raised his glowing fingertip.

“All right,” she said, “I'll see what else I can remember.” Then she looked toward the ceiling as if the words were above her, floating through the air, like snowflakes.