"Wren?" she asks.
"I got your note."
"Did the note say to call me Mom? Because that's fucking creepy, little girl."
"No, but I told them I was calling my mom and that's how I got phone privileges. It's fine, they're not listening anymore. I won't call you Mom again. Jesus."
"Good."
"So what do you want, psycho?"
Miriam stares at the house. Did she just see the curtains move? No. Maybe. Not sure. "I want to save your life."
"This again. Where are you?"
"What? Uh. Standing outside my old house. My mother's house, ironically."
"I thought you didn't like your mommy."
"I don't. I didn't. I dunno. I haven't seen her in years."
The girl pauses. "That's sad."
"Maybe. Maybe it's a good thing, though. I'm not good for her. She's not good for me. Why go through life with that kind of stored-up conflict?"
"Just the same, I'd love to see my mom. I kinda hate her. But I want to see her."
"Good luck with that."
"Thanks." A long inhale. "So are you really psychic?"
"You bet."
"Prove it. What am I wearing?"
"What are you, a phone sex operator?" Miriam says. "Besides, that one's a slow-pitch softball. You're wearing your school uniform."
"Oh. Yeah. Duh. Okay, then. What am I holding?"
"I dunno. Teddy bear? Dead squirrel? Soup can full of human teeth? It doesn't work like that. My voodoo is about one thing and one thing only. Death. I see how people are going to die and that's it. Game over."
Wren
hrms
. "That sounds like a sad life."
"Well, it is, thanks for bringing it up. Guess I'll just go and find some toxic mushrooms in the woods and eat enough to kill me. And then my corpse will be raped and eaten by bears."
"That's a real nice thing to say to a young girl. Filling my impressionable head with images of non-consensual ursine love-making."
"Ursine. Good word."
"Thanks. So cut to the chase, psycho."
"Psy
chic
."
"Uh-huh, whatevs. Why did you want to talk to me?"
"I just want to tell you to keep your eyes out. The killer – he's not coming for you now, but I think he kills other girls before you. And who knows: Maybe he's out there watching you already. Maybe it's someone you know. Just… let me know if you see anything weird."
"This whole place is weird."
"Yeah, I know."
"Did you know the school nurse actually owns the place?"
"I did know that."
"Also, there's a catfish in the river. Big enough to eat a person. Or at least a child. Some people say it's just a rogue manatee from Florida, though."
"I'm pretty sure none of this is what I'm talking about, nor do I believe it to be true. Just do as I ask and keep your eyes peeled. Okay? Call me if you see anything."
"Fine. Whatever,
psycho
."
"I hate you so bad, little girl."
"Sure you do. That's why you keep crawling up my butt. Say hi to your mommy."
Miriam starts in with, "You can't tell me what to do–"
But the girl hangs up.
What a little bitch.
Again, Miriam's left alone with the house. The rotten house. The ruined house. Has her mother gone rotten? Is she ruined, too?
Say hi to your mommy!
You can't tell me what to do.
And with that, she turns and walks away. Walks back to the road.
Turns right.
And keeps going.
Not today
, she thinks,
not today.
But behind her, she hears a click and a squeak as the front door opens.
A voice calls after her.
"Hey! Who's that?"
A male voice.
Huh.
She turns, squints, holding up an impromptu visor made of her flattened hand to keep the rain out. A man stands in the doorway of her childhood home, wearing a ratty white T-shirt and a pair of pin-striped boxers. He's got a bowl of cereal in his hand. A scraggly goatee collects milk. He's older. Mid-fifties, maybe.
Miriam creeps back toward the house.
The dude holds the spoon like it's a shiv.
It's then that she recognizes him.
"Do I know you?" he says, scrunching up his face and pointing with the utensil. More milk drips from his beard, and he drags the back of his wrist across it. "You look familiar."
"Hey, Uncle Jack," Miriam says. Gives a little wave.
"Oh." Blink, blink. "Miriam. Look at you"
"Yeah. Look at me."
"You, uh, here for your mom?"
I don't know
. "Sure."
He frowns then. Shrugs. "Well, come on in, I guess."
THIRTY-FOUR
What Happened to Mother
It almost breaks Miriam's heart.
She's not a neat freak. But her mother was. And here the house sits, rundown. Filthy. A place pigs wouldn't be comfortable calling home.
Right off the front door, the kitchen is a holy terror. Bowls and plates stacked up. Food dried onto Formica countertops. A dirty microwave – the same microwave Miriam grew up with – with the clock blinking 12:00. Empty cans,
dog food
cans, and she thinks,
Oh, god,
Uncle Jack is eating Alpo.
But just then a little dust-mop dog scurries up, claws clicking and sliding on the wooden floor – pink tongue obsessively licking Miriam's boot.
Uncle Jack nudges the dog with his callused big toe.
"Go on, Pookie, get out, leave her alone. I said, go on!"
The dog paws scrabble on the floor, get traction, and the beast shimmies away.
"Come on, then." Jack waves Miriam in.
The smell of the place matches the look. Mold, must, dust, dog, and an underlying layer of–
Oh, god, Mother.
Death.
It's that faint piss and shit smell. And the deodorizer spray used to cover it up. The smell of hospitals and nursing homes. Miriam's smelled that hundreds of times in visions. She knows the odor intimately and it's here, now, not in a vision but right in front of her. She feels woozy.
Jack plods into the living room, collapses into a puffy blue second-hand recliner that wasn't there ten years ago, and begins finishing his cereal – Fruity Pebbles or some cheap facsimile – in earnest.
Water stains on the ceiling. Paintings hanging askew.
Their old TV in the corner, and atop it, a smaller flat screen using the dead box as a base.
"Just tell me," she says. "How did Mother… go?"
He narrows his eyes. Studies her while slurping milk. "How'd you know?"
"I can smell it."
"Yeah? Oh. Well. Uh. One day she just up and left us. You of all people know how that is."
You of all people.
"But how did it happen?"
He snorts, and she hears a snot gurgle in his sinuses. "Jeez, well, I don't know the mechanics of it. I just know that one day she made a decision and that was that."
A decision.
Suicide? A do-not-resuscitate?
"Was she sick?"
"I'd say so." He seems angry. "I still don't understand it."
"Christ, Jack, stop dancing around it. How did she go?"
"I don't know!" he says, suddenly flustered. "Bus, I guess? And then, damn, I guess a plane? I think it was a plane. Not my business how she travels."
"Bus. Plane. Travels?" Miriam pictures the Grim Reaper flying the friendly skies, jauntily tipping his captain's hat and adjusting his shiny bat-wings pin. "Jumping fucking Jesus, what are you talking about?"
"Your mother. How she got to Florida."
"Flor… fucking Florida?"
"Man, you ended up with a pretty sour mouth, young lady."
"Shut the fuck up, Uncle Jack. You're saying she's in Florida. Not dead."
He looks at her like she's got some kind of brain disorder. "Yeah, that's what I'm saying." He laughs. "You thought she was dead? That's funny. Nah, she just high-tailed it down south."
"Why didn't you just
say
that?"
"I thought you knew! You said you knew. That you could… smell it." He wrinkles his brow, noisily sips the dregs of colored sugar milk from the bowl. "Come to think of it, that was a pretty strange thing to say."
"Yeah, you think?" Miriam feels her internal organs slowly untwisting and realigning to their cardinal positions. "So what's with the smell in here?"
"What smell?"
That smell is him, isn't it?
Him or the dog.
"Never mind. When did Mother go to Florida?"
"About… two years ago, I guess. Went down to help build some new church and decided she wanted to stay."
Florida. Ugh. There goes the Grim Reaper again, except this time he's riding a jet ski along the coast. Swooping up old folks left and right with his reaper's blade. Fun and sun and skin cancer and colostomy bags.
It's hard to picture her mother there. That little walnut of a woman. Severe, like a kidney stone. Pale, too. Doesn't tan so much as blister.
Miriam tells herself she's happy that the reunion didn't happen. Not today, maybe not ever. But that curdled feeling – what's that about? Is that the stirred mud of disappointment clouding these waters? Disappointment over… what? She's not going to get to see Mommy Dearest? Mommy, who treated her like a second-class citizen every day up until she revealed she was pregnant?
"So," Jack says, setting the bowl down on a stack of hunting and fishing magazines. "How you been?"
"Delightful," Miriam growls, plucking a cigarette from a pack. "Can I?"
"Long as you give me one."
She flips a cigarette into his lap. He rescues it, and by the time he's got it between his hangdog lips, there she is with the lighter.
"Where you been?" he asks.
"Around."
"Been a long time since we've seen you."
"We? Come on. I saw you maybe once every couple years."
Whenever you needed money. Or a place to crash. Or to hide out from the cops
. Her pious mother, harboring a lawbreaker. The woman's excuses were always different. God forgives. Or,
that's what family does for one another, Miriam. We take care of each other even when it hurts us to do so, and you'd know that if you weren't so selfish.
"Doesn't mean an uncle can't miss his niece."
"Quit it. You didn't miss me. Please."
"Well. Maybe not. Your mother did."
She shrugs. "I'm sure."
"Don't get the wrong idea about me. I've changed."
"People don't change, Uncle Jack. They just put a new face on old problems."
"That's awfully cynical for a young woman like you."
"And I'm usually so
rosy
."
He pulls out a crumpled tissue from his pocket, gives his nose a good blow. "I get it. What happened to you was some rough stuff. With that boy and the…" His voice trails off. "I'm just saying, I get why you took off. But you should've come back. Or called. Your poor mother got left holding the bag. You sucker-punched her and ran."
"Well!" Miriam chirps. "This has been super-fun. I'm going to go now."
She blows smoke, turns tail to leave.
Jack doesn't get up. "Uh-huh. Go on, run away again."
"I'm sorry. Did you just say what I think you said?" She wheels on him. "You got a lot of nerve, Guy-WhoUsed-To-Steal-Cars-And-Hide-Them-In-Our-Garage. Oh! Remember that time we didn't see you for two years and then one day you drove drunk into that old oak tree
right across the street
? The power was out for days but did you hang around? If I recall, you stumbled out of the car and just… wandered off, like Moses out into the fucking desert. You were a bum then and, by the look of this fucking
midden heap
you live in, you're a bum now. I'll see you later, Jack. Tell Mother I said… well, tell her whatever you want."
Now she's really leaving. Stepping over that squirrely little froo-froo dog, striding through the doorway to the health hazard that passes for a kitchen.
Jack comes up out of his chair and follows hot on her heels.
"Oh, I'm bum, but what are you?" he's saying as he dogs her escape. "You don't look like you have a pot to piss in. Sure. Okay. I'm just a bum. I get that. I don't have shit. But that's not all my fault. I'm learning disabled. And I got depression issues. Give your damn uncle a break."
She stops in the doorway, turns to face him. Sees now just how haggard he looks: the hollow pits below his cheekbones, his sunken eyes, those teeth the color of tobacco spit. But she doesn't find pity stirring there. Only anger. Maybe it's for him. Maybe it's for someone else.
"Sorry you're both sad
and
stupid," she says. "But that's not my fault. I've got my shit under control, Jack. You know I used to think you were pretty cool? God knows why. Why don't you just tuck your little pity party between your legs and fuck-off back to your fleabitten Barcalounger, yeah?"
"You got mean," he says.
"I got
honest,
" she hisses. "All the bullshit was beaten out of me on a high school bathroom floor."
He reaches for her, but she pulls away.
She doesn't want to see how he dies. It's going to be a pathetic, meaningless demise. He'll probably leave a lit cigarette in his lap lying there in that chair, and he'll combust like a dried-out Christmas tree. Or maybe he'll hit his head on something and that dog will eat his face.
Miriam marches off.
"Why'd you come here anyway?" he calls after her, standing there barefoot on the front steps.