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“Hi,” the woman called out. “Were you speaking to me?”
“No, I’m sorry. I just got a little turned around.”
“What can I do for you?”
“My son is in first grade,” she started, before explaining what had happened and finally proffering the lunch bag.
“I’d be happy to bring it to him,” the woman said with a smile. “Which teacher does he have?”
She knew she’d be asked, but why couldn’t she remember? She really needed to have Tommie remind her again. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure. He’s new here.”
“It’s not a problem,” the woman said with a wave. “The first-grade classrooms are right next to each other. What’s his name again?”
Beverly told her as she handed over the bag.
The woman seemed to study her before coming to a decision. “No worries. I’ll take care of it.”
“Thank you,” Beverly said, and after watching the woman retreat down the hallway, Beverly left the school, relieved. She retraced her path to the road and started walking at a steady pace, feeling the weight of the sun on her back. Vehicles sped past her in either direction, some of them slowing but none of them stopping. She didn’t mind; instead, she found herself thinking about the woman she’d just seen at the school. It was clear that the woman didn’t recognize Tommie’s name, and while he hadn’t been there long, it would be nice to believe that Tommie was in a school where the staff knew every child, especially the ones who were new, since they were the ones who might need a little extra attention. And Tommie was so quiet, he could easily vanish into the background. No wonder he was having trouble making friends.
Maybe, she thought, she should redo his room to help him settle in and be more comfortable. Get rid of all the clothes and paintings and other grown-up stuff, so it felt like a kid’s room. Not today, but maybe this weekend. They could make a fun project of it. It would be great if she could get him some posters for the walls, but she realized she wasn’t sure what Tommie would want. Would he like skateboarding or surfing posters, football or baseball? She supposed she could ask him, but the truth was, she couldn’t afford any.
The idea of redoing his room made her remember the room she’d prepared for him in the months before he was born. She’d known he was going to be a boy—she told the ultrasound technician, Yes, absolutely! when asked if she wanted to know the sex of the baby—and the following weekend she’d found a classic wallpaper border to go with the light-blue walls she could already imagine. On the wallpaper were scenes of a boy doing country things—fishing from a dock, walking alongside a scruffy but happy dog, dozing beneath a tree—and Gary had made jokes about it, even though he agreed to purchase it. She’d spent days painting, hanging wallpaper, and assembling the rest of the furniture. They got a crib and changing table and chest of drawers and a glider-rocker she could use when breastfeeding, and when Gary had given her money for baby clothes, she browsed in stores, wanting to buy everything she touched. The outfits were precious, the cutest clothes she’d ever seen, and she could imagine Tommie in all of them.
Those were happy times, some of the best. Gary wasn’t drinking or hitting her, and she was able to drive a car instead of having to walk everywhere. Never in a million years would she have expected her life to turn out the way it had, and she thought about all that had happened since the moment she woke Tommie in his bed and told him they were going on an adventure.
Lost in her thoughts, she barely noticed the walk or the passage of time. It was only when she reached the gravel road that she realized how weary she actually was. She felt as though she were running a marathon where the finish line kept receding into the distance, but she continued to put one foot in front of the other. On either side of her were crops, green and leafy in the late-spring sun; beyond the crops, there was a pasture dotted with barns, odd-looking outbuildings, and a massive greenhouse. Near one of the barns were a tractor and two pickup trucks, tiny from her vantage point, and as always there was a cluster of people in the fields, doing whatever it was farmworkers did. Eyeing the greenhouse, she thought about the marijuana she’d found in the house.
Couldn’t marijuana be grown in a greenhouse?
Sure, but at once she laughed at the absurdity of trying to link the two. For all she knew, the greenhouse wasn’t even being used, but the idea was sticky enough to make her wonder again if there were more drugs in the house. She reminded herself to make sure there weren’t, sooner rather than later.
By then she could see the house in the distance, and she passed a second cluster of fieldworkers, this one closer to the road than the other group, maybe fifty yards away. They were bent over and examining the leafy plants, their faces shadowed by the hats they were wearing. From the corner of her eye, however, she noticed one of them slowly stand upright and stare in her direction; three others in his proximity did the same—like meerkats, or as though they’d been choreographed. Pulling her baseball cap lower, she picked up her pace, but she could almost feel their eyes lingering on her, as though they’d been waiting for her to return.
By the time she reached the porch, her heart was pounding, and Beverly tried to calm her nerves. She thought again that she was simply being paranoid—of course there were farmworkers at farms, and the sight of anyone walking in the middle of nowhere was an oddity. Besides, it wasn’t as though any of them had followed her to the house; when she glanced over her shoulder, they were back to work. She reminded herself that unless she learned to keep her thoughts from bouncing around like marbles tossed onto a granite table, she wasn’t going to be any good for either herself or Tommie.
Removing her wig and hat, she climbed the stairs to the bathroom. A shower would help clear her head, but as she started to strip off her sweat-soaked clothes, she suddenly remembered the marijuana. On impulse, after readjusting her shirt, she opened the mirror of the medicine cabinet. To her, it appeared to house a small pharmacy. There were all sorts of prescription medicines, most with names she didn’t recognize, but one she did: Ambien, for sleep. She vaguely remembered seeing the commercials. Assuming that all of them could be dangerous for Tommie, she tossed the bottles into a small wicker basket near the door. She searched the drawers and cabinet beneath the sink next, and then, grabbing the wicker basket, she carried it to the kitchen, where she dumped the contents into a plastic garbage bag.
“Where else would I hide drugs?” she muttered aloud, realizing she had absolutely no idea, which meant she had to look almost everywhere. She didn’t want to think that Tommie was the type of child who’d find pills or powders and ingest them, but who knew for certain? Children sometimes did dumb things simply because they didn’t know better. And anyway, who knew what other dangers there might be? Like faulty wiring or lead paint or rat poison or switchblades? Or what if there were other terrible things, like dirty magazines or Polaroids with the kinds of images children should never see? Even worse, what if there were guns? Weren’t all little boys interested in guns?
She thought again that she should have done this the moment they’d moved in, but better late than never. She started with the kitchen drawers, checking them one by one, digging through clutter and cooking utensils and half-used candles and pens and sticky notes and all the other kinds of junk that accumulated in drawers. Because her thoughts still seemed swimmy—she really should have showered to help with that—she kept each drawer open after searching it, so she didn’t lose her place. After that, she checked the cupboards loaded with pots and pans and another set of cupboards filled with bowls and baking items and Tupperware, leaving those doors open, as well, to confirm that she’d checked everything.
She pulled out everything from beneath the sink, finding all sorts of cleansers, including the ones she’d previously used. Some of them were poisonous, which meant they should be stored somewhere else, maybe on the high shelves in the pantry, where Tommie couldn’t reach them. For now, though, she left them on the floor.
In the pantry, she cleared the shelves, intending to reorganize them all later, but thankfully there were no more drugs or other terrible things. As for the living room, she’d already removed everything from the cabinet, so there weren’t too many other places to search, and it took only a few minutes. The next step was the hall closet, which was crammed with jackets, along with a small vacuum cleaner, a backpack, and other assorted odds and ends. On the top shelf, she found hats and gloves and some umbrellas, and as she pulled it all from the closet and examined the items one by one, she thought it would probably be a good idea to box most of it up to store somewhere else—no reason to put any of it back. Besides, she was on a roll, and not wanting to disrupt her rhythm or slow down, she moved next to the back porch.
A quick survey revealed that the shelves needed to be completely reorganized. On one of the lower shelves was a can of paint thinner; a small rusted hatchet and equally rusted saw sat right next to it. There was a power drill on the same shelf. Staring at them, she marveled that Tommie hadn’t already hurt himself. As in the pantry and the closet, she pulled everything from the shelves, piling it at her feet. She checked the paint cans a second time before reaching for a half-opened bag clearly marked with a skull and crossbones. The label showed that it was for use on rodents, and though she could practically guarantee there were mice in the house, there was no way on God’s green earth that she’d ever spread poison around, so into the garbage it went. She used a small step stool to put the paint thinner, hatchet, saw, and drill on the top shelf for now, but everything else could wait. She wanted to get through the house before Tommie got home, so she dragged the bag inside with her and went up the stairs.
In the hallway, she went through the linen closet, thinking all of it should probably be washed, so she left it piled on the floor; in her bedroom, she checked the closet along with the chest of drawers and the nightstand, her garbage bag at the ready. Tommie’s bathroom was next, until finally she turned to his bedroom.
It was there, under his bed, in the first place she probably should have looked, where she found the guns.
There were two of them, neither of them a handgun, one longer than the other, and both with barrels that were as black and terrifying as death itself. Beside them were two open boxes of ammunition.
Beverly choked out a sob, praying that her eyes were playing tricks on her, but when she focused on the guns again, she was swamped with self-loathing and burst into tears. Curling into a ball on the floor, she knew she’d failed her son. What kind of mother was she? How could it not have even occurred to her to make sure Tommie’s room was safe? In her mind’s eye, she kept seeing Tommie peek under the bed, his eyes bright with excitement as he reached for the guns. He’d pull them out and sit on the floor, feeling the weight and the cold, slick metal of the barrel. He would recognize the trigger and know exactly what it was for. He might even trace it with his finger, just to see what it felt like, and then…
“That didn’t happen,” she croaked, trying to convince herself, but the vision continued to unfold like a nightmare, drowning her words. She broke down completely then, giving in to the images and weeping until she was too exhausted to continue. She had no idea how long she cried, but when she regained a measure of equilibrium, she realized she had to take care of this right now, before Tommie came home.
Resolutely, she reached for the first of the rifles, tamping down her fear that it might go off. She pulled it gently by the stock, sliding it across the wooden floor, making sure the barrel was pointed in the opposite direction. While she still had her courage, she carefully reached for the other one, feeling like she was attempting to defuse a bomb. This one was a shotgun. She had no idea whether either of them was loaded—she wasn’t even sure how to check for something like that—and once they were on the floor beside her, she reached for the boxes of ammunition.
