“Busy?”
She sniffs and snorts and makes a funny laugh. “Yeah. Busy. Back then we didn’t have call waiting for two lines and Leo and I sold the answering machine at a yard sale, so...yeah. Busy. The cop spent the next hour calling.”
I’m remembering the nice police officer with the ginger hair and the wide brown eyes. His eyelashes were the color of my peach crayons in my box at school. His name tag flashes through my mind.
“Murphy. Officer Murphy.”
She jumps like I shocked her.
“Holy shit. You do remember. I still send that man a Christmas card every year.”
Mom doesn’t curse. Ever.
“I remember how he gave me a second Dr. Pepper and told me my mom wouldn’t yell at me for it. How he talked to the other officers and they kept looking at me. Then one of them grabbed his hat and took off, then came back. And how Officer Murphy said we were going for a ride in a police car. That was really cool.”
Mom slowly drops to the floor, her back against the kitchen cabinet under the sink. Twilight’s descending and the change from the sun’s disappearance gives the room a kind of faerie light that makes me feel like a child.
I hold her hand. She clings to it like a lifeline.
“That man—that beautiful man—put two and two together and brought you home.” Her throat is jumping in spasms and she’s sniffing. I pull the hem of my shirt out and wipe her eyes. She doesn’t move, just sits there, shoulders shaking. “He kept it quiet. Pulled the police cruiser over a half block from home and just walked you up. Kept it calm.”
She takes in a hitched series of breaths, then lets it all out. “That moment is etched in my mind forever, Amanda. I had just started to force myself to assume you were dead.”
I reach out and hold her. She holds me right back. I’m not sure how long we both just sob, but it feels like hours.
Finally, I break the silence.
“But I wasn’t.”
“No. You weren’t. You later told us that when you couldn’t find your dad, you decided to start walking until you found a police officer. You ended up taking an alley away from all the traffic. One different turn and you’d have found a cop right away. You headed for the Financial District and...just kept going. I guess. That’s how we reconstructed it all.”
I just nod. That’s how I remember it.
Minus the whole car accident part.
“What about dad?”
“Your father? Your fuckin’ fathah.” Mom’s Revere accent comes roaring out of her. She’s smoothed it out over the years, but I’ve heard it leak through in times of extreme anger. “When he sobered up, we still hadn’t found you. I said...some things.”
“I’d have said them, too.”
“Told him he’d killed you.”
“Jesus.”
“And the cops took him away. He was booked with a DUI and when you came home, child services got involved. They interviewed you at school and me here at home but Leo...Leo disappeared.”
“He just left?”
She nods.
Reconstructed, indeed.
“I don’t...Mom, I had no idea all this happened. I remember parts of the baseball game and walking around Boston. It was an adventure. I felt like the little kids in that book. The one where they live in New York at the museums for fun. From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler. I was just fine and all I needed was a police officer and I’d find my way home. I remember being pretty proud of myself for figuring it all out. The Dr. Peppers were a bonus.”
We share a laugh. It feels good.
“That’s how I wanted it. You were always such a smart little girl. Unflappable. The counselor at your school and the lady from children’s services said you didn’t need to know. About the car accident. And I just told you Leo went out to get some beer and didn’t come back. Which was probably true.” She buries her head in her arms, which are resting on her knees.
“You hid me from all that.”
“I thought it was best. I didn’t know. You’re my one and only, kiddo. I’m not an expert in this parenting stuff. We all start out completely clueless and...” She laughs, the sound buried by sadness. “And we stay clueless.”
I understand so much now. Why Mom worries when I don’t check in. How she was such a hovermother for so long. What it must have done to her emotionally and psychologically to go through an alcoholic husband and the horror of thinking I was dead.
Why she’s always been so obsessive-compulsive about controlling so much of our life.
“Did my dad ever find out I was alive?”
She looks at me. Her eyes narrow, brown triangles of deliberation.
“You tell me, Amanda,” she whispers.
My turn to share something she only knows bits and pieces of.
“He came to my school. Once. When I was in second grade.”
Her shoulders slump. “I thought so.”
“He stood on the other side of the chainlink fence. He cried, Mom. Said I was beautiful and he was sorry and that he’d make it up to me some day. My teacher came over to see why I was talking to a strange man and he ran away.”
“She told me.” Mom uses the hem of her own shirt to wipe her face now. There’s more I could say, but I can feel her limit. Pain radiates from her limbs like love in twisted form. I’m not adding to that right now.
I stand. My knees pop. I reach down to offer her a hand and as she lifts up, she groans with pain.
“I’ll regret sitting like that in the morning.”
The front screen door opens. A man’s voice calls out. “Hello?”