Chapter 129
Elliott let the information soak in a moment and returned his attention to the conversation on the other side of the wall. It was a little more heated now, and though the comments from the strangers were harder to pick up on, his mother’s strained voice was clear. “You’re forgetting, I didn’t choose this path. Just because my grandmother was one of you doesn’t mean that you have control over my life or my kids’. I don’t want that for them! Spending their whole lives looking for boogey men in the shadows. What kind of life is that?”
The words were alarming, even though he had no idea what his mother could be talking about and wondered if she was drunk again. He looked down at Jimmy, but he didn’t seem to be eavesdropping. He was too busy wiping his nose on the hem of Elliott’s shirt.
“Arlene, we’ve told you, the woman we’re recommending is no longer active. They’ll have no exposure to the Passel, I assure you,” said the man, in a clear, crisp, no nonsense voice.
The woman added something, but all Elliott could understand was, “Best for your sons,” and then, “may as well consent because it’s happening either way.”
That, Jimmy seemed to hear. He looked up, his eyes wide with recognition. “Did you hear that?” Elliott asked. “It sounds like we’re going away with those two people whether we like it or not.”
Nodding, Jimmy said, “I’ll pack my toys,” and turned to the mess on the floor. None of his toys were anything more than cast off junk brought from the thrift store lady, but they were important to him, and Elliott decided there were a couple of things he’d want to keep, too. He didn’t have a suitcase in his closet, though he was sure he’d seen one in the top of his mom’s closet once when he’d been hanging up a dress he’d rinsed out for her, one she’d vomited all over. He didn’t like to think about that night. That was the night he thought she wasn’t going to wake up.
In lieu of a suitcase, he grabbed his pillowcase, and even though it was ratty and threadbare in a few places, he decided it would work. He grabbed the letter Miss Hays had given him when he was in first grade, the one that said he was smart and was going to do great things, along with a picture of Carla she’d given him last school year, and slipped them into the pillowcase, trying not to think about the fact that this meant he’d likely never see her again, which was difficult since they’d decided they were going to get married as soon as they were old enough, in just a few years, after high school. He held the pillowcase open while Jimmy dumped in a couple of broken trucks, four blocks, a half a dozen tinker toys, a ball, and a one-eyed teddy bear he liked to call Jack.
“That all?” he asked Jimmy, who nodded.
“You think we’ll need any clothes?”
Elliott thought about the clothes he had in his drawer. One other pair of jeans with patched knees that were too short and a couple of shirts. He thought about the fancy clothes the strangers were wearing. “Nah.”
Once again, Jimmy’s head bounced up and down. The voices from the kitchen were growing more intense, though muffled from here, but the shriek of a chair pushing out made Elliott think the strangers might’ve given up and decided to leave without them. “Come on,” he said, grabbing Jimmy by the arm, headed for the door.
“Elliott!” Jimmy said, pulling back for a second. Elliott looked down into the wide eyes of his baby brother and saw fear. “You… you won’t leave me, though, will you?”
“Who, me?” Elliott asked, staring into eyes the same shade as his own. “You know I won’t ever leave you, don’t you, kid?”
Jimmy breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Then—let’s go.”
Elliott inhaled deeply and grabbed the knob, the flimsy door dinging against the wall as he threw it open. The strangers were still there, though they were in the living room now, standing between the tattered floral couch and the bureau as Arlene stood halfway in the kitchen, shouting at them. Both the woman and her counterpart had their arms crossed and seemed to be listening intently to what their mother was saying, which now was mostly, “Get the hell out of my house!”
“We want to help you, too,” the lady said whenever his mom paused to take a breath. “If you’d let us get you some help for your drinking problem, a job…”
“Drinking problem? Who the hell are you to tell me I have a drinking problem?”
There had to be at least two dozen empty glass bottles sitting around the living room since Elliott hadn’t collected them recently. He usually did that only once a week when he knew the pantry lady was coming over. The woman only made a sound in the back of her throat that should’ve told his mom she wasn’t fooling anyone, but she seemed to think she was as she continued. “Get the hell out of my house!”
The man took a step back toward the door.
“No! Wait!” Jimmy lurched forward, away from the hand Elliott has slung over his shoulder. “We want to go.”
All three grownups turned to stare at him, their eyes wide and their mouths wider. “What was that?” the woman asked, her voice the sappy tone it had been when she’d first addressed him in the kitchen only a few moments ago before the whole world had been turned upside down.
A little less confidently this time, Jimmy repeated, “We want to go with you.”
The three adults made their way around the couch, Mom pushing her way between the armrest next to the kitchen and an end table, making the bottles there clink against each other, rock, and nearly tumble to their demise. She came the closest while the other two stayed a few feet away.
“What the hell did you say?” she asked, leaning forward, close to Jimmy’s face.
He took a step backward, and Elliott put his arm around his brother, who had clearly lost his nerve.
“He said we want to go, too,” Elliott answered. “We want a new start, Mom. A chance to… have a decent place to live, to have someone to take care of us, to have good food to eat.”
“You don’t look like you’re withering away, boy,” she sneered glaring at him. “Who the hell do you think you are, talking to me like that? I oughtta….” She raised her hand to strike him, and Elliott braced himself for the sting of the back of her hand against his cheek, closing his eyes. But it never came, and when he opened them, the other woman was standing in front of him, his mother’s hand in her firm grasp. How she’d gotten there so quickly, he couldn’t say since his eyes had been clutched tightly, but Jimmy was oohing in amazement. Had she really crossed the space from the edge of the couch to the spot right in front of them that quickly? Maybe she’d been standing closer than he realized.
Arlene grimaced as the woman said, “That—that right there, above all else, is why we are taking them. You don’t get to strike a child in the face, not even if he’s your own.” She released his mother’s arm with a fling but continued to glare as Arlene wrapped her fingers around her narrow wrist and gawked up at the woman, more in shock than in pain, Elliott surmised.
“Fine! You two ungrateful little bastards want to go with this she-devil and her husband? Then by all means, get the hell out of my house, you little shits!”
Elliott’s feet were moving before she could try to hit him again, even though he was pretty sure that this woman wouldn’t let her. As they headed to the car, his mom continued to scream, “Stupid little shits! Fat assed little bastard! Scrawny, puny little son of a bitch!”
Some of the neighbors had their heads poking out of windows at the commotion, and his mom had some fine names for them as well, but Elliott didn’t stop until the man had opened the car door for them, and he and Jimmy were in the back seat, their pathetic pillowcase containing the remnants of two childhoods’ worth of sorrow between them.
The woman said a few more words to his mother, who was too busy screaming to listen, before she got into the driver’s seat, the man running around to the passenger’s side, and the engine fired up. Elliott looked out the window at the rundown house he’d grown up in and at the face of his mother. She was standing on the front porch next to the broken pillar, but she wasn’t yelling anymore. She had her hands over her mouth, and tears were streaming down her face. For a moment, he thought he saw sadness there, like she was truly sorry someone she hardly knew was taking her children away. And then she disappeared inside. Elliott never saw her face again.
