In A Country Of Mothers Read online

  The police, four of them, in foul-weather gear, stomped into the house and up the stairs to the bathroom. One of the cops banged on the door. “Police,” he said. “Open up.”

  No response.

  “If you’re able to open the door, I suggest you do it now. We’ll give you to the count of ten.”

  “I think something’s blocking the door,” Claire said, wiping rainwater off her forehead, pulling her damp blouse away from her skin. “I tried to open it before and it felt like there was something there.”

  “One … two …” the cop began.

  “They do that,” one of the cops said. “They get this superhuman strength and they do things like rip the sink out and wedge it against the door.”

  “… Eight … Nine …”

  “There was one lady threw a refrigerator down the steps, aiming for her husband. Missed him, but got the poodle.”

  The cops gestured back and forth among themselves, deciding who would knock down the door. One cop pointed to his back, shaking his head, and another stepped forward.

  “Stand back, please,” he said, warning Claire out of the way. He handed his gun and his raincoat to the one with the bad back and then hurled himself against the door. He rammed it three times before the wood frame cracked and the door popped open.

  Claire stood down the hall, her hand over her mouth.

  Two cops charged into the bathroom and Claire rushed forward. She watched them tackle Jody, slamming her face into the floor. One cop sat on her legs, another on her back.

  “Let me go, you’re making a mistake!” Jody screamed, her voice muffled. They pulled her hands behind her back and snapped the cuffs on.

  “Stop!” Claire said, held back by the two cops just outside the doorway. “You’re hurting her.”

  They lifted Jody to standing. Her arms were intact; no slit wrists, no punctured jugular. But blood was streaming out of her nose, down her chin, dripping onto her shirt.

  “Your nose,” Claire said, “I think they’ve broken your nose.”

  “Are you happy now?” Jody screamed. “Look at me! Who am I, Claire, who the fuck am I now? I don’t believe you, Claire. I never will. I have a mother. I don’t want you.” Jody drew in a breath. “You went into my building. I saw you. I have it on tape. You stole my mail. That’s a federal offense. And what did I do?” she asked, her voice escalating. “I locked myself in a fucking bathroom!”

  Jody choked and blood splashed onto the floor.

  “Why are you coughing up blood?” Claire asked, hysterical.

  “Where were you? Did you miss something? They knocked the fucking door down. They smashed my fucking face into the floor.”

  “Get her out of here,” one of the cops said. “There’s no point.”

  “You should’ve opened the door,” Claire said.

  “Why? I was just sitting there minding my own fucking business. I didn’t know it was against the law.”

  There was blood in her hair, mucus on her face. She looked wild, crazy. Claire went into the bathroom, got some toilet paper, and moved to wipe Jody’s face. Jody turned her head away and the cops pulled her toward the steps. Going down, she tripped, and the cop behind her tugged on her arms. Jody howled. They led her out into the cold, wet night, shoved her into the back of a police car, and slammed the door. An officer started the engine as Claire stood watching. The lights went on, the car edged backwards.

  Claire tapped on the glass. “Jody,” she said. “Don’t worry, sweetie. Everything will be all right.”

  37

  It was a warm Saturday in late May. Jody pulled a battered cardboard bankers box from under her bed and carefully unpacked the old reels of film and her father’s Super Eight projector.

  The windows were open; she could hear people talking as they strolled down Perry Street. “You forget how big a city is, how much variety. Anything goes.”

  The white space between posters from The 400 Blows and Apocalypse Now filled with images from Jody’s childhood. Eighth Birthday Party — Congressional Roller Rink, Rockville, Maryland. First Slumber Party — the Goodmans’ pine-paneled recreation room, bathed in the eerie, uneven glow of the Bell & Howell movie lamp, twelve little girls in sleeping bags arranged in a circle around the room. Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus — the Greatest Show on Earth, Jody chosen by the clown to ride in his wheelbarrow. A reaction shot of her mother laughing, hands over her mouth.

  Jody flipped through the film reels, trying to read the dates, the titles. With everything there was a story, a memory, a moment, fluid like the stuff of lava lamps, stretching and pulling, constantly reconfiguring itself. She threaded the film through the projector; the sprockets grabbed the leader, drawing it in; the bulb flickered.

  Family Vacation — Rehoboth Beach. An orange bathing suit, a yellow flower cut out around her belly button. Every day the sun would brown the stencil; every night she would see the darkening of the flower, coming up on her belly, like a photograph developing.

  Jody riding the waves for hours and hours on end, waving at her father, standing at the water’s edge, camera in hand. Jody coming up for air, her hair long, wet, and salty, calling, “Mom, Dad, watch me, watch me — I’m doing a somersault.” The three of them a triangle, two in love with the third.

  The telephone rang, and she let the machine answer it. “Hi, I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave your name and number after the beep …” Silence. Not a hang-up, but silence. The caller was there, waiting. After thirty seconds, the machine turned itself off. It happened again later, and then again, and again, and always there was someone there on the line, waiting.

  38

  In the kitchen, taking down glasses, wrapping them one at a time in brown paper and fitting them into a box, Claire shook, not so much a tremor as a shiver.

  “It’s the house,” Sam said. “You’re nervous about moving.”

  It was the house. She never wanted to go there again. If Sam knew the extent of things, the extreme to which she’d gone, he might be forced to take some action.

  Jody. She wanted to talk to Jody, but there was nothing casual, nothing easy in what she would say.

  The movers came, wrapped the furniture in heavy blankets, and carried cardboard boxes marked FRAGILE/KITCHEN or JAKE/BEDROOM out of the building and down to their truck. From the tenth-floor window Claire watched her life being loaded into a moving van. And when the time came, she swept through the empty rooms, opened all the closets, took one last look around, and then closed the door. As in a funeral cortege, they followed the moving van slowly, steadily up East River Drive, over the Triborough Bridge, onto the thruway, and out to Glenville. At the house, Sam unloaded her, carried her in like a piece of antique furniture. The children laughed. She kept her eyes closed. She didn’t want to see where she was, where she had been. From now on there would be an impenetrable layer between inner and outer. Fixed in this pose, she would wait. Jody knew where the house was. When she was ready, she would come.

  “Where do you want the sofa?” the movers asked.

  “Here,” Sam said, leading them into the living room.

  Inside, they began the process of laying on hands, touching each of the brown cardboard boxes and divining where it should go. Throughout the afternoon and on into the evening there was the thick sound of packing tape being torn away. As Sam struggled to find a place for everything, to make order out of nothing, Claire hovered nervously, moving from room to room gathering trash, wads of tape, newspaper, jamming empty boxes one inside the other.

  Late that night, as Sam, Jake, and Adam slept, Claire lifted tomorrow’s clothes off their hangers and slid into them, gliding from room to room like a ghost, taking inventory, counting her possessions, her children, and then let herself out of the house, taking care to lock the door behind her.

  In the country night, the roar of the cicada circus swelled. Claire hurried to the car and quickly backed down the drive. Headlights on high, she navigated the twists
and turns of the dark and narrow Hutchinson River Parkway with determination, hugging the middle line, more than once catching the bright eye of a wild animal in her beam. Hutch to Cross County, Saw Mill to Henry Hudson; the lights of Manhattan and the G.W. Bridge, a warm and romantic welcome home.

  The office was still, the air unmoved. She turned on a lamp, checked her appointment book, sorted the magazines in the waiting room, refilled the Kleenex supply, plumped the pillows on her sofa, and then sat down in her chair, ready.

  About the Author

  A. M. Homes is the author of several novels including Music for Torching, The Endof Alice,Jack and most recently, ThisBookWill Save Your Life, and two collections of highly-acclaimed short stories, Things You Should Know and The Safety of Objects, all published by Granta Books. She is the recipient of numerous awards including a Guggenheim and NEA fellowship. She is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and has published fiction and essays in the New Yorker,Granta,Harper’s,McSweeney’s,Artforumand the New York Times. She lives in New York City.