"I don’t understand her! I don’t understand how she could do something like that!" A hard wall of rage had formed beneath Nora’s diaphragm. She could scarcely remember having been this angry in her life. "I can’t even begin to fathom what must have been going through her head!"
"I don’t know." Dan shook his head, sighing. "I mean, on one hand, I feel for her. She has three little boys and no support system, and I don’t think their father’s been around since before Zac was born."
Nora nodded. "I guess I know that intellectually. Emotionally, though, I can’t work up much sympathy for her. Everyone has choices in life, Dan. People are trying to help her now."
"That’s the worst thing," Dan agreed. "It doesn’t have to be this way. She could have called, she could have asked to arrange the visit in a place where she felt more comfortable, she could have asked to talk with the boys on the phone. . ."
"Do you think she doesn’t realize that they just want to see her?" Nora asked. "That they just want to hear her voice?"
"It’s awful." Dan exhaled sharply, sounding irritated. "You don’t even know what to tell them."
"At least you tell them something," Nora reassured him. "I know you don’t always feel it, but you are doing the right thing. I’m sure that nobody, in nine years, has ever told Isaac that it isn’t his fault that his mother leaves. Can you imagine what it’s like to go through your entire life believing that it’s your fault your mother can hardly take care of herself?"
"Do you think it helps?" Dan asked, uncertainly.
"It helps a hell of a lot more than sitting back silently and letting them draw their own conclusions." There was absolute conviction in Nora’s voice. "A hell of a lot more."
"I don’t know." Dan shook his head. "I’m just scared of what might happen if
I meet her. What I would say. What I would do. I don’t know. I‘m just so mad at her right now."
"Yeah." Nora nodded. "I would find it hard to forgive this. She’s inflicting pain on three little boys, her sons. They’re the ones who have to deal with what she’s doing to them. She can’t escape her responsibility to them, no matter how hard she tries."
"I wonder why she does it," Dan mused. "Because that’s what they keep asking, and I can’t come up with any answer that really feels sufficient. I don’t have the slightest idea as to why she leaves. All I know is that I don’t think there would ever be any circumstances, no matter how overwhelmed I was, in which I would leave my children."
"And I know that both of us are working with a lot more inner and outer resources than she probably has," Nora agreed. "But even Ike. . . I mean, it has never crossed his mind that Taylor and Zac aren’t his full responsibility, and I have to say, he seems to do a way better job than his mother does." She ducked her head. "I feel awful saying things like that."
"It’s true, though," Dan pointed out. "And I don’t think he could live with himself if he didn’t take care of them. In his mind, he’s supposed to."
"It’s the only thing he can do." Nora agreed.
Dan sighed. "And that’s good, I mean, that he has that mentality. As opposed to feeling no responsibility whatsoever." He paused. "I mean, it’s bad that he has to have that responsibility, that it’s even an issue. But. . ."
"I know what you’re saying," Nora agreed. "He rises to the occasion."
"And he can ask for help," Dan added. "But what happens in five years? In ten years?"
"All we can hope for is that their mother does get her life back together," Nora decided. "Or that they find some kind of placement which works for all three of them, where they can be together."
"I’d take ‘em in a minute," Dan volunteered.
Nora nodded. "Me, too."
Zac had pulled the cushions off the couch and draped a blanket over them to make a little house. He sat in the small space, curled up into a ball, and pretended he was camping in the woods. This was his tent. He couldn’t come out, or the bears might get him.
He could hear the soft rise and fall of Dan and Nora’s voices from the kitchen, but he couldn’t tell what they were saying. He wondered if it was about his mother. She was supposed to come that day. They’d even gone down and waited for her. But she didn’t show up. He wondered why.
When his mother didn’t visit when she said she would, it was a lot like she left again. It made his stomach hurt and he felt almost like crying. He hadn’t cried, though. Not until Taylor started.
Isaac ran away, and Dan went after him, and then Taylor started crying. That had been when Zac felt tears sting his eyes and he buried his face in his hands. Then, the social worker came back in and took the two of them down the hall to go get M&Ms. Today, my mother didn’t come, Zac thought, but I got some M&Ms instead.
The voices in the kitchen stopped. Zac could see Dan’s feet through a crack in the blanket. They came out of the kitchen and into the living room, and they stopped in front of the tent. Zac scarcely dared to move. He had to be very still. . .
"Zac?" Dan called. His face appeared at the crack in the blanket. "Zac, are ya in there?"
"No!" Zac answered. If Dan found him, he’d make him come out and take a bath. "Zac’s not in here."
"Really?" Dan arched an eyebrow. "Where’d he go?"
"He’s gone," Zac assured him. "Not in here."
"Did he leave a message as to what time he’ll be back?" Dan inquired.
"Tomorrow, I think," Zac told him. "In a long time."
"Why did he leave?" Dan asked.
Zac leaned forward to whisper in his ear. "I think it’s because I don’t want to take a bath. I mean, Zac."
"He doesn’t?" Dan’s mouth dropped open. "That’s too bad. I’m going to miss him."
Zac paused, considering this. "You are?"
"Yeah, I’ll miss him terribly," Dan assured him. "I’ll cry."
Zac was worried. "If I tell him you’ll cry, maybe he’ll come back."
"Tell him that he can take a bath in the morning, if he’d rather." Dan offered.
"Hold on." Zac crept back into the dark recesses of the tent. "I’ll ask him." He was gone only a few seconds.
"What does he say?" Dan asked.
"He says that that sounds good to him," Zac told him. "He thinks maybe I’ll do that."
"Okay." Dan grinned. "May I ask who you are?"
"No," Zac shook his head. "It’s a secret."
"Oh." Dan nodded, folding the blanket back over the opening. "It’s a secret."
"She maybe was stuck in a big traffic jam and she couldn’t call." Taylor was lying on his stomach on Dan and Nora’s bed, his chin resting on his hand. "Or maybe the phone was dead. Maybe she forgot to pay the phone bill again. I bet that’s what she did."
Nora sighed. All afternoon long, Taylor had been coming up with possible explanations as to why his mother hadn’t visited that day. She didn’t have the heart to tell him how unrealistic most of them were.
Zac, on the other hand, was a different story. "Could we please not talk about this?" he begged, gripping Nora’s shoulder as she helped him with the snaps on his Dr. Denton's. "Please?"
"But there has to be some reason. . ." Taylor began.
"Don’t talk about it anymore!" Zac buried his face in Nora’s shoulder.
"Tay, I think it would be better if you talked about something else," Nora suggested.
"Wait, one more," Taylor urged. "What if they wouldn’t let her call. . ."
"NO!" Zac bellowed. "No, no, no, no, NO!" Nora rubbed his back through his shirt.
"Taylor, don’t talk about it anymore. He doesn’t want to hear it."
Taylor sighed hugely, rolling his eyes. "Okay, fine." His lower lip went out in a Shirley Temple kind of pout. "It was just an idea."
Nora glanced over at him and smiled. "I know you’re coming up with a lot of different ideas, honey, but it’s over. It already happened. It’s no use thinking about it anymore."
"You said you were sure she had a good reason, though," Taylor persisted. "You did say that."
"Yeah, I’m sure she had a good reason," Nora lied. "She definitely had a good reason."
"Like maybe aliens got her?" Taylor suggested. "I saw it on TV."
"Stop!" Zac wailed, clinging to Nora. "Make him stop!"
"Are you okay, honey?" Nora felt his forehead. "Do you feel all right?"
"I want him to stop talking about it!" Zac made a face at Taylor. "You stop, all right?"
"I was just saying," Taylor grumbled. Again, the pout. Nora wished she could let him talk about his mother as much as he wanted, but Zac had turned clingy in the past half hour, not wanting to let her out of his sight. Isaac was sleeping. He‘d been asleep since Dan had gotten the boys home that afternoon. Nora reached over and ruffled Taylor’s hair. This had been an awful day for all three of them.
Taylor was a champion staller, Dan reflected. He’d never seen anyone who came up with so many excuses for staying up for five more minutes, and most of them were funny. Zac had settled down almost as soon as Nora had tucked him into bed and he lay watching his brother through heavy lidded eyes, his thumb in his mouth. Taylor, on the other hand, seemed to have gotten a second wind, and was attempting to keep Dan in the room as long as he possibly could.
"Just one second, I forgot to brush my teeth!"
"Just one second, I have to go back and go pee. If I don’t, I might wet the bed. And Zac’s sleeping in the same bed as me. Would you want to sleep with someone who wet the bed?"
"Just one second, I have to go see what time it is."
"Just one second," Dan had finally mimicked, "I have to go watch the Late Late Show to see who the guests are."
Taylor’s eyes grew wide. "Do you think that maybe I should go do that?"
"No!" Dan whispered, terrified of what he’d started. "I think you should go to sleep!"
Taylor sighed. "Can I say something about my mother?" Zac’s eyes shot open. He looked worried.
"Sure, go ahead." Dan had missed the scene in the bedroom. "But you have to whisper really quietly, okay?" He glanced over at Isaac, who hadn’t stirred throughout all of Taylor’s attempts at delaying bedtime. "If he wakes up now, he’ll never get back to sleep."
"Do you think maybe they didn’t find her at all?" Taylor wondered. "Maybe they just pretended they did. And they lied to us that they did. And then they told us she didn’t come."
"Tay. . ." Zac quavered.
"Taylor. . ." Dan began.
"Fine." Taylor drew in a long breath and heaved an extended sigh. "I was just saying maybe."
Late that night, Nora found herself awake. She glanced at the clock on the bedside table. 2:47. Four more hours until she had to get up. She closed her eyes. Trying to go back to sleep seemed useless.
She climbed out of bed and crept down the hall and into the boys’ room. In the dim glow of the nightlight, she could make out that all three of them were still there and still breathing. Zac was curled against the wall, his thumb just outside his mouth. He was clutching the silky edge of the receiving blanket like it was a lifeline.
Taylor was lying on his stomach with one arm thrown over the edge of the bed, his fingertips brushing the bloated, graying cat who lay on the floor next to him. Gallagher had belonged to Dan’s sister until she moved into a pet free apartment building; in eight years he’d hated everyone except Taylor. Taylor responded in kind, treating Gallagher as if he were a cross between a crotchety elderly gentleman and an adorable little baby. Gallagher lapped it up.
Isaac, in the other bed, looked like he’d just managed to fight his way back into sleep. He’d kicked half the blankets off and the bottom sheet had slipped off the mattress and was twisted underneath him. Nora wondered if she could fix it without waking him up. It would be safer just to put the covers back on, she told herself.
"Hi." Isaac opened his eyes, smiling dreamily, as Nora bent to cover him.
"Shh, honey. Go back to sleep." Nora whispered. She would fix the bottom sheet, she decided, as long as he was awake. "Sit up a second for me. . ."
She helped him into a sitting position, hooking the edge of the sheet back over the mattress and pulling it straight. "That’s better," she murmured, planting a kiss on Isaac’s forehead and tucking the rest of the blankets around him. "Good night."
"Bye," he murmured, losing his grip on coherence and sliding back into whatever he’d been dreaming about.
"See you tomorrow." Nora closed the door and stepped back into the hallway.