Woke Up Lonely (30 page)

“They were boring,” she said. “I’ve seen them.
ScoobyDoo
is for babies, anyway.”

“There were some other movies, too,” Esme said. “But I guess the reporters were more interesting.” She added this last bit casually, even sighed a little, like: Oh well, this country’s romance with the press has been in evidence for centuries untold, no harm done.

Ida perked up slightly. “Yeah, they were nice to me.”

They.
So before it was one; now it was many. The DoD had arms.

“So you talked to them through the gates, honey? That’s a long walk from the house, and it’s cold out!”

“Mo-om,” Ida said, annoyed. “Don’t you listen? They came up to the lawn. The back patio, too.”

Crystal popped a candy in her mouth. She said, “I guess it won’t surprise you to find out Rita fired me.”

Esme shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

“You got fired?” Ida said. She was gauging the mood of the room, trying to decide if this was funny or not. It was not.

“Yes. Because when your boss’s husband gets
abducted,
sometimes your boss thinks it’s your fault. She fired me from her bed. How humiliating.”

“What’s
abducted?
” Ida said.

“What, indeed,” Crystal said. “Sometimes it means being stolen from your perfectly honest life in foster care and thrown in with people you don’t know at all.”

“Sometimes,” Martin said, getting into the spirit of things, “it’s like those alien movies, you’ve seen those, where people get invited to hang out on another planet for a while.”

“Invited,” Crystal said.

“Enough,” Esme said. “Can we just talk about the reporters, please?”—forgetting she was trying to finesse her daughter and blowing the effort because Ida gave up on the adult discourse and retrieved an activity book from her knapsack. Esme could not help but notice that not a single animal was colored solid or even coherently. Why couldn’t her daughter keep to the lines?

“Ida, you only just got here. Don’t you want to pay me a little attention?” Esme was being weighed against the Little Mermaid and found wanting. “Just for a second?”

Ida rolled her eyes and said, “Ohhhkay,” and then, without prelude, knocked her head against her mother’s shoulder. Not hard, but insistent.

“Turtle, it’s okay. It’s your birthday soon, maybe we’re going to take a vacation. Just us two. Maybe sooner, if you can tell me something about the reporter you talked to.”

“Can we visit Ma and Pop?”

Esme nodded, and the words came out before she could stop them. “Sure, honey bun. Sure. Your grandparents miss you a lot.”

She was glad to be pressing Ida’s forehead to her neck, because in no way could she make eye contact with her. Already Crystal was remonstrating with jaw open and lids drawn so far back in disbelief they looked ready to dip behind her eyeballs. Even Martin shook his head.

What was worse than manipulating your daughter? Than lying in ways for which she would never forgive you? What was worse was your unstable DoD contact come to snatch your kid as collateral lest you cough up his name to the press. Jim had already left Esme unconscious on the bathroom floor. Who knew what he’d do next.

“So, the reporter,” she said. “Was he fancy? Like, in a suit and tie? Did he know your name?”

But Crystal had had enough. She said, “No, okay? No. Just normal press guys.”

“Okay, good.” It was the answer Esme wanted, the tension chased from her body, the lights gone out, only Ida saw it wrong and so, pawing in the dark, she said, “Yeah, but you didn’t see the one guy talking to
me.
You can’t see everything I do!” followed by her storming the bathroom.
Slam
went the door, though it was broken already.

Esme stood. Tried to think. Were there any safe places left to send Ida? School was out; even the English-speaking lycée in Haiti was out, because that was where all the spook kids went. As for the few at the DoD who had been briefed on the Taskforce for the Infiltration and Dismantling of the Helix, they were smote with amnesia—Esme Haas? Never heard of her—and thus unavailing of protections in vogue among mafia turncoats and spies. So that was out. Only place she could think of was her parents’ cabin in North Carolina, though Ida could hardly stay there alone.

Crystal said, “I’d better take her home,” and motioned at the bathroom. They could all hear Ida crying. Esme shook her head; there was only one thing to do. “Why not let Martin take her to the mall first. Buy some new clothes. Toiletries, too. Pajamas are fun.” Then, raising her voice, “That sound good, Ida? How about we take that trip right now.”

The door opened a wedge, the child nodding, eyes floorward.

Esme squatted. “Now, listen,” she said. “I know things seem a little weird, but everything’s fine. Even if they don’t seem fine, they are. Also, I have a surprise for you. Martin will tell you in the car.” And as Ida looked warily at her mother and her mother at Martin and Martin at his phone, to make sure it was on for when Esme texted him instructions the second they left the hotel, an NPR commentator broadcast the news: the FBI had just issued Thurlow Dan an ultimatum. Come out or we’re coming in. And, by way of subtext: If the hostages die, it’s on you.

By now it was nighttime, which meant nothing would happen at the Helix House until dawn. Chances of a botched raid were high, higher still in the dark. The feds would wait.

When Esme saw Ida had fallen asleep, the release in her chest was awful. Had she really not been breathing? She was, quite obviously, afraid of her child. The child who was assiduous in the upgrading of her rage, so that by the time she got to Esme’s age, she would have rarefied her temper into a bid for the sublime. Already, it was bracing. In sleep, though, people forget themselves, or come into the selves they’ve spent most of their lives trying to repress. Ida was fetal, with knees and forehead sewn to Esme’s side. She had released the day’s hatred and said with the array of her body what she’d been feeling in secret: Mom, I need you; Mom, don’t leave. Her hair was in a twist, clutched in her palm. Esme checked her forehead, and, yes, she hoped it was warm, because whatever chance the world gave this mother to source her child’s problems elsewhere, she would take it. Ida mumbled and flung her arm around her mother’s waist. Esme felt Ida’s nails dent her skin and thought that if she could just break Ida of need in sleep, it would do wonders for her awake. Also, she could not write like this. She freed her hand from her hip and slipped out of bed. For a second, Ida cast about the mattress; then she rediscovered her hair.

In every life, an unraveling. Esme’s had started at her parents’ just a few weeks ago. Surprise! She had dropped in for a visit. She had taken a bus and ended up calling from the road. Her dad answered. He was hard of hearing, so it was: Who? Leslie? About what? And then her mother, who said, Hello, Esmeralda, though this name was not even on her birth certificate; it was simply what Linda called her when she was angry. Esme didn’t get a word in before she was hissing about Ida. Yes, of course they hadn’t told her about her father, because, duh, instructions from the
butler
—
P.S. Don’t tell Ida she is cognate with a cult leader
—were binding in every universe, except, Jesus, who taught Esme to parent like this? Because, as far as her mom knew, she’d done a good job with Esme, and her father had, too.

Their cabin was an hour afield of a sizable community in any direction. A two-bedroom in the woods. Esme understood wanting to live modestly despite their wealth, but she could never understand the privation of their lifestyle. Her dad drove an ’88 Chevy pickup. The clutch was shot; the truck wouldn’t go over forty or, who knew, might blow up if it did. When he got to the bus stop, it took him many tries just to get out of the cab. It had been months since her last visit, but he looked the same. When you are seventy-seven, what difference does the fluting of your skin make? She tried to give him a hug. One of his hands alit on the small of her back, while the other—and then she realized he wasn’t wearing his arm.

She’d asked, “Where’s the arm?”

He said, “I barely even need two arms nowadays.”

She got in the truck, in the driver’s seat, because technically her father was not supposed to get behind a wheel, with or without the prosthetic. Still, one had to wonder how he drove stick without it, maybe he used his shoulder to steer while he switched gears, and then she shuddered in fear for everyone else on the road.

Since she was always afraid to ask how were things at the house, she asked about his volunteer job. He was a docent at an astronomical research institute sited deep in the forest. A former NASA base—from there
One small step for mankind
was relayed to the world—that the DoD commandeered in ’81 for “listening.”

“Oh, they don’t need me much. It gets pretty dull at times.”

“What’s the big question these days?”

He looked at her wanly. “What is dark matter.”

Esme snorted. Five minutes together, and already they were negotiating the extent to which he was allowed to grouse now that his favorite pastime, the Internet, had been restricted by her mother. He’d been spending hours a day chatting with people online, and Linda didn’t like it.

He coughed into his fist. The road went up the mountain in christie curves, the locals taking them fast and Esme wending along like Grandma. Her dad hammered the dash because no heat was coming up through the one vent aimed his way, and said, “That’s some kid you’ve got,” before whacking the dash again. She had no idea what this meant, though it probably meant nothing. For her dad, the world was middling. How’s the weather? So-so. How’s your grandkid? Fine.

If it was the truth Esme wanted, she needed to ask her mother. Or just stand within one hundred feet and Linda would tell her.

They got to the house. It had snowed, and because her parents never departed from the path to the road, the snow was untrammeled but for deer tracks and wild turkeys and, beautifully, a snow angel. Her daughter lived here. She thought she even saw her face peering out the window from behind a curtain, though the second they got out of the truck, the curtain stopped rustling and all was quiet.

The Helix had been making news for years, but by now it was making headlines. Rumors and gossip. Her parents didn’t have a TV, but they read the papers, and there was always the Internet. And, while they had never met Thurlow, they knew who he was. Esme didn’t think it would be long before her mother took it upon herself to tell Ida everything. Her plan was to hope she didn’t.

“Mom? Ida?” She walked through the house. It had two floors and a porch that overlooked a valley and mountains in the distance. Half the trees had lost their leaves; the view was a mixed treat. She went to the kitchen and saw her dad by the fridge with an ice cream sandwich. He had taken off his jacket, and, since his sweater made prominent the empty sleeve hung by his side, she suddenly wondered if Ida was terrorized by the sight—if, despite the years she’d been living here, the arm creeped her out.

In the mudroom were sneakers but no boots, the boots put to better use on Ida’s feet as she and Linda played outside, the one making a snowman and the other taking photos, a million per second, one for each second Esme had missed seeing her child grow up. She had the idea her mom was making her a scrapbook, though none such had ever materialized.

She watched them through the window. Ida was wearing leggings that looked like neoprene and a bubble jacket she did not recognize, or recognized dimly; it was colored bark and had an HB Surf Series badge sewn into the arm. And then it hit her: these were her brother’s clothes. His steamer wet suit. His travel jacket for that one surfing trip off the coast of New Zealand when he was twelve. Esme was so floored by the evidence her parents had kept his stuff and even brought it with them to this place that it helped ease down the pill of her daughter ignoring her when she ran out of the cabin all smiles.

She hugged Ida anyway because the parent unloved is also undeterred. They had not seen each other in 3 months. Ida had been alive for 117 months, of which most of her last 1⁄39 Esme had been traveling. There were other 1⁄36s and 1⁄27s and even 1⁄18s for that half-year deployment to Diego Garcia, though maybe that was more like a 1⁄12 expedition, since Ida was only six at the time, which meant not even math could declaw Esme’s failings.

Next Esme greeted her mom, who did the scariest thing in her repertoire, which was to cock an eyebrow. The hairs there had shed long ago, so she’d taken to penciling them in with black liner. Every month, the curve got more pronounced and severe. It was a sickle, an arch, and, by now, a delta above each eye. When raised, the brow was lethal.

“Well, well,” Linda said, but without the scorn Esme had been readying herself for. In fact, the A brow was a red herring. She wasn’t mad anymore. Esme thought maybe she was fronting for Ida’s sake, but so what? She would take it. They hugged. And the hug was nice. She had never found in her parents a source of strength since Chris went down, and it was not like one hug was going to lade her coffers with the courage of heart to right her life, but it wasn’t hurting, either.

Linda said, “Ida and I were just finishing up this snowman,” and, to Ida, “What’s his name again?”

“Don.”

Esme was not sure she’d ever heard a name spoken with greater spite. Ida jammed a stick in his eye and looked at her mom. “Your clothes are ugly,” she said, and she marched back into the house.

“That went well,” Esme said. “Don? Who names her snowman Don?”

“She’s right, you know. If you’re going wear that nonsense, at least join the army. Be for real.”

Esme shrank a couple of feet. Her parents had only a vague sense of what she did, enough to know it screwed them up—New identities? Really?—but not enough to think it worth the trouble to find out more. Perhaps her father was more sympathetic, but she didn’t know; they didn’t talk.

She fixed the snowman’s eye. Apologized for his care.

“Not to worry,” Linda said. “He’s cold as ice,” and then she grinned, and to Esme this grin might have seemed stupid, except that nothing about her mother was ever stupid. She was too sharp and cagey to grin like that unless it was for sport or design. “Now, listen,” she said. “I’m glad you’re here. I’ve got news.”