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Thomas H. McNeely
Since they left Houston that summer, Hugh and his mother had traveled in a long, slow circuit as far north as Amarillo, then worked their way down through El Paso and San Antonio and Austin, seeing sights Hugh had no desire to see, and in which he doubted his mother had any real interest, either. For a month, he had collected brochures in the bottom of his duffel bag. They had visited the Alamo, the Helium Monument, Dinosaur Valley, Prairie Dog Town, the National Mule Memorial, Fort Phantom Hill, The Cave Without A Name, Pioneertown, and the Tarantula Railroad, as well as museums -- the Dr. Pepper Museum, the Santa Claus Museum, the Texas Prison Museum, the Border Patrol Museum, the Confederate Air Force Museum, the Jim Reeves Memorial, and the Buddy Holly Statue and Walk of Fame. Currently, they were near Galveston, on their way to see the third oldest ship afloat. It didn't really matter where they went; his mother looked through everything, as if she did not quite know where she was. Hugh wondered whether she had kept her job at the hospital, and how they were paying for the trip, and when if ever they would go to Corpus. He did not want to go back to Houston, where his father still haunted their house like a ghost. Each summer, Hugh and his parents had taken their week-long vacation in Corpus Christi, where his cousins Cecilia and Amien lived. Aunt Beatrice, their mother, was his father's sister. This year, Hugh's mother said she didn't want to deal with Aunt Beatrice and all the questions she would ask. In their motel room near Galveston, his mother brushed her teeth and washed her face, chiding his father in the mirror. To keep from listening, Hugh turned on the TV; the voice his mother used in the mirror had nothing to do with anything she'd said to his father since he'd left last fall. Hugh changed into swimming trunks and a T-shirt, noticing, even in the room's dim light, how dirty they were. He propped himself up against a headboard and tried to remember the last time his mother had washed his clothes. As usual, they were sharing a room because his mother wanted to economize. When there was only one bed, like now, some motel clerks offered to set up cots, but most didn't bother. Hugh thought about Cecilia and Amien, whose father had died the previous summer. In past summers, Hugh and his cousins had snuck out, dressed as witches and gypsies, to tell each other secrets while their parents slept. But when Hugh and his parents had gone to their father's funeral, his cousins had hardly spoken to him. He hoped that this year, if he could persuade his mother to go, they could sneak out, as they had before. His mother glided past the TV. One minute, Mary Tyler Moore was there, then a silhouette of his mother's plump body. Her nightgowns were blue and thin; they seemed made not of fabric, but of smell: a warm, sweet odor of cold cream and sweat and flesh. She raised the stiff bedcovers and settled herself next to him. "I still don't see why we can't go," he said. "Please, honey." His mother lay her hand across her forehead and shut her eyes. "We've been over this a thousand times." "If daddy was here, we'd go." Hugh said this not because he believed it, but to nettle her. "Everything was better when daddy was around. We didn't drive all day and see boring things and stay in crummy motels. We were normal." His mother shielded her eyes. "The sun was brighter, the sky bluer, and you never had to go to school." "That's right." "We floated through life on a pink perfumed cloud." Hugh laughed, but his throat ached, as it did when he cried. "A pink perfumed cloud," his mother said, glancing at him, tweaking his armpit. Laughing, he squirmed away from her. It didn't feel like it used to, when they had sat on her bed, eating animal crackers and watching TV, waiting for his father. Then, tickling had been a kind of relief. Now, it felt as if his mother were trying to make him believe he was happy. She noodled his ribs, and he batted her hands away. "Honey," she said. "What's wrong?" "I told you." "Do you really want to go?" "I told you," he said, hiding his face from her. He lay with his head in her lap. She stroked his hair until he shook off her hand. Since his father left, he often slept with her, as he had when he was very young. He knew that most eleven-year-old boys didn't cry on their mothers' laps, or sleep with them, or allow themselves to be tickled, but he hadn't told any of the boys at school what his life was like with his mother. That was why he wanted to go to Corpus. His mother got up to turn off the TV. When she lay down, Hugh listened to her breath slow and deepen. Streetlight bled across the ceiling above the room's sole window. He tried to dream of Cecilia and Amien. He saw them as they had been at their father's funeral: They wore dark satin dresses, their eyes downcast, their mouths tightly shut. Toward dawn, sunlight peeked through the curtains. Hugh woke to find himself pressed against his mother's back. Carefully, he propped himself up and drew back the covers. He studied her soft, sleeping, mysterious body, then covered her before she woke. * * * That morning, his mother told him they could go to Corpus. After they breakfasted at a diner across the parking lot from their motel, she found a pay phone and loaded it with coins. Every few days, she called his grandmother, his father's mother, to tell her where they were. Hugh looked for the name of the motel, so he could tell his cousins where he'd been, but all the sign said was "Motel." "Hello, Bea?" his mother said. "Oh Cecilia? How are you, darling? Could you put your mother on?" The day was bright and hazy, already hot. Eighteen-wheelers moaned in the distance, then flashed past on the interstate, making rattletrap noises. His mother blinked in the flat white sunlight, as if for the first time on their trip she had woken up, and didn't particularly like what she saw. She wore a rumpled sacklike denim dress and work shoes. Her hair, which was threaded with gray, had outgrown its sensible cut. Though shadowed and lined by fatigue, her face was full and delicate, still beautiful in his eyes. "Bea?" she said. "This is Margot. We're fine. He's right here." She glared at him. "He wants to visit the girls. I'm sorry this is such short notice. We probably won't stay long." She held the receiver against her chest, then spoke into it. "It's very kind of you, Bea. We'll see you soon. "I hope you appreciate this," she said to him, when she hung up. Late that afternoon, they parked in front of Aunt Beatrice's house. The car shuddered, sighed, ticked in the heat. Hugh kept his eyes on a monster magazine. Three vampire girls, their hair long and blonde, their eyes feline, sauntered through the archway of a crypt. "We're here," his mother said. If Hugh looked closely, he could see through the vampire girls' blood-stained dresses. "The Daughters of Lilith bleed their victims dry," ran the caption. "But do these hapless lovers feel pleasure, or pain -- or both?! -- at the hands of Satan's concubine?" "Let's go," said his mother, looking at his magazine. "What is this? Where'd you get it? Put it away. You don't want Beatrice to see it." When he didn't move, she said, "What's wrong, honey?" "I don't know." "What do you mean you don't know?" Her question rankled him. "I don't know." His mother reached for his armpit, then glanced at Aunt Beatrice's neat suburban box. Hugh shrank against the passenger door. "If you don't get out of this car on the count of five," she said, "we're going turn right around and go back." "Fine," said Hugh. His mother stuck the key in the ignition, then seemed to deflate. "Dammit, honey. What're you going to do, sit out here?" "I might." "And what am I supposed to tell Beatrice?" "I don't care. Tell her I died." Glowering at him, his mother got out and slammed her door. Hugh watched her disappear behind an azalea bush which hid Aunt Beatrice's porch. A string stretched tight in his chest, but he did not follow her; he looked at his magazine. Its back cover, which advertised magic kits and mind-reading courses, was torn from its stapled spine. A boy at school named Sam Fahr had lent it to him. Sam's father had also left. Sometimes Sam's mother let his father spend the night, and Sam described to Hugh the noises which came from her room. Sam and Hugh agreed that vampire girls, if they existed, wouldn't let men treat them as their fathers had their mothers. All summer, Hugh had imagined himself and Cecilia and Amien as vampire girls, marauding through the streets, then curling into a crypt, their bodies slick with gore. Now, in front of Aunt Beatrice's house, he was afraid to show them the pictures. But he was more afraid that Aunt Beatrice would see them if she came to get him. He left his magazine in the car and approached the house. Before he could knock, the front door opened with an air-conditioned sigh. Amien peeked out from behind it. She was a year younger than Hugh, three years younger than Cecilia; a flouncy white dress covered a body as plump and awkward as his own. Her eyes, in her round, pale face, were dark, lustrous, and mean. "Where've you been?" she said. "There's something on your shirt." Blushing, Hugh looked down and scratched at a splotch of mustard. "I guess you should come in." Amien paused, holding the door ajar. "Cecilia and I have important things to do. Cecilia and I are allergic to dust." Wondering if his cousins had always been allergic to dust, Hugh entered a dim, familiar hallway. The house was hushed, as if everyone in it were waiting and hidden. Amien slipped behind him to close the door, then stood close, studying him. "Our mothers are fighting in the kitchen," she said. "My mother says your mother's insane." Hugh's heart sank. "Can we sneak out tonight?" Amien's eyes narrowed. "We don't play those kind of games anymore." She walked briskly down the hallway and vanished into her room. Hugh stood in the dim hallway. The house seemed to watch him. He ran to the kitchen and burst through its door. Aunt Beatrice and his mother turned, their mouths opened and eyes wide, but he did not stop until he clung to his mother's plump waist. "Stop that," his mother said, pulling him away. But he knew she would have gathered him into her soft lap if they had been alone. "Look what you've done to him," Aunt Beatrice said. Ready to show his aunt that nothing was wrong, Hugh faced her. Sheathed in a pink housecoat as stiff and quilted as an oven mitt, Aunt Beatrice crouched in front of him, steadying herself on his shoulders. Her skin looked hollow, as if her insides had been dissolved by a wasting disease. She examined him with eyes darker, yet kinder, than Amien's. "How are you, my little man?" she said. Hugh said that he was fine. "You don't look so fine to me. Did something frighten you?" "No," he said. Aunt Beatrice frowned. "Do you always miss your mother this much?" His mother lay her hand on the nape of his neck. "He's tired." Aunt Beatrice neither moved nor took her eyes from him. Her eyes were close; they seemed to almost touch him. "You're not very talkative," she said. "You're not the bright little talkative man you used to be. Now why do you think that is?" "I don't know," he said. She rose, pressing his shoulders. "Would you like to go to the beach tomorrow?" Hugh looked at his mother, who bit her lip. He asked Aunt Beatrice if his cousins were going; she said they were. Though he was afraid, Hugh said that he would go. That night, Hugh lay next to his mother on a fold-out bed in the parlor. She kept her back to him, but he could tell by her breathing that she was awake. He looked at the ceiling, where leaves tousled by the night wind cast quivering shadows. Aunt Beatrice had set up a cot next to the bed. In summers past, he'd slept on a trundle in Cecilia's room, but this year, Aunt Beatrice had taken his duffel bag to the parlor and told him he would sleep there. His cousins had refused to even come to dinner. "Hugh," his mother said. "Are you awake?" Hugh said that he was. "I'm sorry about the girls. Maybe we should just leave." "But we're going to the beach tomorrow." After a pause, his mother said, "You know why Beatrice wants you to go to the beach. She wants you to see how fun it is to live here." His mother wasn't usually so concerned with what he thought. "That's not true." She rolled over, her face red and convulsed. Hugh thought of a fat boy at school named Billy Flagg, whom the other boys teased each day until he cried. Sometimes, Hugh teased him, too. "I always knew daddy was going to leave," she said. "But I've never felt that way with you. I never want to lose you." As he had many times since his father left, Hugh drew his mother to himself, and felt her warm breath against his chest, and her body quake against his own. "I won't leave," he said, hoping no one could hear them. The next morning, Hugh did not look at his mother. Before she woke, he went to a bright yellow bathroom, where a mirror covered a wall above a pair of sinks. He turned on the shower and undressed, then tucked his private parts between his legs, wishing his cousins could see him from the mirror's other side. When he returned to the parlor, his mother was gone, so he went to the kitchen door. His aunt's voice was like a sewing machine. She had called his grandmother, and had some questions: Had his mother kept her job? Did she know where Hugh was going to go to school that fall? Did she have a destination? His mother said she didn't know. "You don't know much of anything, do you?" Aunt Beatrice said. "I guess I don't," said his mother. "I guess you've got it all figured out." "Maybe I've got it figured better than you. It's been almost a year since Bobby left; you need to start pulling things together, if not for yourself, at least for that poor child." "What do you think I've been doing? I get up and go to work and go to sleep and do it all over again. I feel like I'm not even human." "It doesn't matter how you feel. Do you think it's been easy for me since David's gone? At least my brother's still alive." "I'm not going back to Houston," his mother said. "I'm not saying you should," said his aunt. "I think you should stay here." Before his mother could answer, Hugh opened the door. Aunt Beatrice turned to him, holding a large knife. On the counter next to her were cubes of cantaloupe and plastic bags. She had exchanged her pink housecoat for a purple muumuu printed with trumpet-shaped flowers. His mother still wore her denim dress. "There you are," Aunt Beatrice said, as if Hugh had been hiding from her. She told him to take the beach chairs and umbrella out of the garage and load them into his uncle's station wagon. "You're a big, strong man," she said. "It shouldn't be a problem." His mother smiled at him, but her smile was distant and sad. In the back of the station wagon, Hugh grappled with an umbrella and beach chairs, remembering how his uncle and father had tossed them to each other from the garage. His father caught them easily, but his uncle flinched, like a girl afraid of a baseball. Corpus had been different, then. His mother, though timid with his father, had used to keep Hugh in line with merely a glance. His uncle had died in a car crash in Amarillo. Sometimes, Hugh wished his father had come to just as definite an end. He had never been around much, and now he wasn't exactly gone. When Hugh was very young, his father had worked at the laboratory where Hugh's mother worked, then went to medical school, then did his residency in Detroit, then served his time in the Army. When he returned last fall, he walked like a marionette, staring blindly ahead, as if he was not quite sure where he was. He lived briefly with Hugh and his mother, but also stayed with a girlfriend, and sometimes with Hugh's grandmother. After he left, his shirts and ties still hung in Hugh's mother's closet, and occasionally he spent the night. Hugh knew that it was not his father's absence, but his ghostly reappearances, which were driving his mother crazy. Hugh felt someone watching him. Through a smudged window in the back of the station wagon, he saw, standing on the porch, a long-limbed girl with golden hair, whom he did not recognize at first as Cecilia. They drove through winding streets, past identical houses, until they reached the beachfront road. There, the houses looked like abandoned movie sets, their pink adobe facades cracked and peeling. Dead palm trees swayed landward over the road. In the front seat, Aunt Beatrice and his mother were silent. Hugh sat between his cousins in the back. Amien was pressed against her door, scowling at him. Her eyes weren't as mean as they had been in the house, but Hugh no longer cared. He furtively studied Cecilia. Her face was covered with a vague, hazy film which Hugh had noticed on older girls. She looked out her window, her stare far away, as if she could not be bothered with where she was. The palm trees disappeared and the flimsy houses were replaced with skittering fields of brush. "The beaches in town aren't safe anymore," Aunt Beatrice said. When they parked on a desolate shoulder paved with oyster shells, the sun was high and blinding. Cecilia and Amien tore out of the car and ran toward the beach, leaving the rest of them to unpack. After the chairs were set out, the umbrella planted, and a red cooler unloaded, Hugh's mother rubbed sunscreen on him; he twisted away from her. Cecilia and Amien returned to shed their T-shirts and shorts. Both wore blue, one-piece bathing suits. When Cecilia bent to pick a handful of plastic bags out of the cooler, Hugh glimpsed the cleft between her breasts, and felt a hollow ache. "Remember, girls," Aunt Beatrice said. "Don't walk past the pier." Without acknowledging her, they raced back to the beach, harsh laughter trailing behind them. Hugh hesitated. "Go on," his mother said, in the voice she used in the mirror with his father. "This is what you came for." Uncertain of what she meant, though cut by her tone, he started after them. Aunt Beatrice clasped his arm. "Keep an eye on them, my little man." Without meeting her eyes, Hugh nodded until she let him go. As he neared the ocean, seaweed, dead fish, and tar overwhelmed the babyish scent of his sunscreen. Ahead, Cecilia tossed cubes of cantaloupe to chattering gulls, who swooped above the tidal water, then settled into their awkward, land-bound gaits. She walked as if she watched herself in a secret mirror. Amien picked her way through broken bottles and bits of Styrofoam, scampering toward her sister with a gull's mincing steps. Afraid to come closer, Hugh slowed his pace. Cecilia stopped and turned to him. "We're going to see some friends of mine," she said. "My mother doesn't know about them. If you tell on us, I'll strip you naked and lock you outside the house tonight." Arms folded over her stomach, Amien nodded sternly. His cousins walked on, and Hugh fell in beside them. He wanted them to himself. "What's it like, living with your mom?" Cecilia asked him. "It's okay," he said cautiously. "Our mother's crazy. The only place she takes us is this crappy beach." Cecilia's eyes focused on a distant point. "D'you know about Janis Joplin? I'd give anything to live on the road like she did. Rick told me about getting high with her." "Who's Rick?" said Hugh, but Cecilia didn't answer. Ahead loomed the pier, whose planks had mostly vanished, leaving a line of bare pilings to march into the waves. His cousins stopped behind one of them. Hugh could see the pulse in Cecilia's neck, and her blue bathing suit flutter over her heart. In a clearing in the scrub brush beyond the pier was a rough circle of cars, and men and women leaning on their hoods. The men wore cut-off jeans and concert T-shirts, the women, some not much older than Cecilia, bikini tops and jeans cut shorter than the men's. Hugh had seen such people before, on beaches and in the parking lots of malls. Sam Fahr's older brother was one of them. He flashed a switchblade so swiftly that Hugh had never actually seen it; he only knew it was there enough to be afraid. "Someone's with him," said Amien. "I got eyes," Cecilia said. "What're you going to do?" "I'm gonna talk to him." She looked at them. "I've got nothing to be ashamed of." Cecilia walked slowly toward the cars. Amien let out a stifled cry, then covered her mouth with her hand. The people glanced at Cecilia. A man and woman, older than the rest, watched her closely. The man was tall and thin; the woman's face was as hard and still as a mask. The man hoisted himself up from the hood of his car and approached Cecilia. A thick, gray ponytail swung from the back of his head. "Who's that?" Hugh said. "It's Rick," said Amien, as if Rick were someone he should know. Rick stopped close to Cecilia, and Hugh noticed how small she was. He brushed her hair from her face and let his hand settle on the nape of her neck. Amien's dark eyes were riveted; Hugh clenched his fists, his imagination bloody and heroic. Cecilia did not move. The woman turned to the people, who looked away. "Is he Cecilia's boyfriend?" Hugh asked. "No," said Amien. "Of course not." Rick spoke to Cecilia, but they could not hear him. When he brought his face close to hers, she shook her head, like a horse refusing a bridle, and ran toward the pier. By then, the people had noticed Hugh and Amien, and Rick lumbered toward them. They ran. Amien clutched Hugh's hand, but let go of it when they neared Cecilia. She wheeled on them. Her face was red, as his mother's had been the night before, but Hugh felt none of the revulsion for her that he had for his mother. "I've got nothing to be ashamed of," she said to him. "You understand?" "Yes," he said, though he didn't. "'You're my little girl,'" she said to Amien, her voice bitter. "That's what he said to me. Then he tried to kiss me, right there in front of his girlfriend." Amien stared at her. "You better not tell anyone," Cecilia said to Hugh. "I swear if you breathe a word I'll do worse than what I told you." "I won't," he said. He thought: I will never hurt you. "I know what he's thinking," she said to Amien. "He wants to make her jealous. But I'm not gonna hang around just so they can laugh at me." Amien nodded, but her eyes were frightened and vacant. "He's like my father," said Hugh. Amien looked at him as if she wished he would disappear, but Cecilia's gaze was sharp and searching. "If we sneak out tonight," he said. "I'll tell you all about him." Amien turned away, but Cecilia said, "Maybe." When they returned to Aunt Beatrice's house, his cousins disappeared, and Hugh went to the bathroom, to avoid his aunt and mother. He showered, not looking at himself in the mirror. An image haunted him: Rick bent over Cecilia, his wiry body enveloping her, his ponytail on his bare back, pendulous and obscene. After his shower, he went to his uncle's study, which was more dim and still than the rest of the house. Gilt lettering glimmered on bookcases in the wood-paneled gloom. He touched a pair of reading glasses on his uncle's desk and felt a queasy shock. He remembered his uncle lifting him to pluck oranges from a tree in the back yard. His hands had been gentle, his smile friendly, and Hugh had wished that he was his father. "There you are," Aunt Beatrice said. Hugh turned to her. She stood very close to him. In the room's pale light, her face was thinned almost to transparency. She asked him what he and his cousins had done at the beach, and he told her they had talked about Janis Joplin. Hugh lay on the cot in the parlor, watching leaf-shadows sway across the ceiling, hoping that his cousins would come. At dinner, they sat mutely through Aunt Beatrice's interrogation, then retreated without a word to him. Hugh wished he had told on them, to protect them from Rick, to punish them for not coming, to insure that at least they would throw him out of the house naked. That might be easier than telling them about his father; he had told no one about him, not even Sam Fahr. "Hugh?" his mother said. "Are you there?" Hugh debated whether to answer. "Yes," he said. "I want to leave. Your aunt means well, but she's driving me crazy." Hugh said nothing. His mother turned under the covers, and her scent breathed into the room. Arms at his sides, he lay rigid, furiously wishing she would sleep. "Why don't you come over here so we can talk?" she said. "I can hear you just fine from where I am." After a pause, she said, "I'm scared, Hugh. Won't you please come here?" Hugh closed his eyes. His mother's breath was shallow and quiet; she waited for him. When his father spent the night, he lay in bed, listening to her plead with his father to stay, and his father's murmurous answers, and his brutal grunts, and her thin cries. He knew what the sounds meant, and hated his father for hurting her, and his mother for submitting, and both of them for leaving it to him to comfort her. Now, as he listened to her breath slow and deepen, he knew that he was no better than his father. "Come on," Cecilia whispered. She stood over him, her face close to his. Heart racing, he followed her to the living room, where she told him to wait until he heard his name, then slipped behind a wall of curtains. He stood in darkness, shadows gathering around him, then heard his name, like wind through a porch screen, and lifted an edge of the curtains and slowly slid open a glass door. At the far end of the sunroom, his cousins sat in a circle of candles, which cast their wavering shadows on the screen windows and aluminum walls. They were draped in paisley dresses and flowing scarves; their faces looked masked and strange. "Close the door," Cecilia said. Fingers trembling, he slid the door closed, remembering how they had danced here while their parents slept, their faces white, lips blood-red, fingers bent like claws. He had told them he wanted to live with them, but he could not remember their secrets anymore. "Come here," Cecilia said. As he approached, he saw that his cousins' eyelids were green and purple, their lips a glistening pink, their faces dusted with sparkles. Amien's was pale and brooding, and Cecilia's seemed drained by its harsh colors. He wished that he was dressed like a gypsy, his face painted like theirs. "Sit down," she said. Hugh stepped over the candles, their warmth tickling the soles of his feet, and sat crosslegged on the floor. The room disappeared behind the candlelight. "We speak to the dead and tell the future and read people's minds," said Cecilia. "We're going to read yours, to see if you should live with us." When he didn't answer, she pressed her fingers to her temples and fluttered her eyelids. "I hear your mother crying in my dreams." "She misses your father," said Amien. "She misses you." Cecilia stared at him. "She's afraid you'll run away and live with us. She's afraid of your father, who won't leave her alone." A night breeze fluttered the candles, and his cousins' faces shifted. Hugh was frightened by how much they knew, and how much they might not be saying. "Tell me about Rick," he said. "That's none of your business," said Amien. His cheeks burned, and he looked away from them, but Cecilia leaned toward him. "Some nights," she said, "I meet him outside and we drive to the beach, where they have bonfires. They're out there right now, and I could go if I wanted." The image of Rick's bare back returned. Hugh glanced at Amien, but she would not meet his eyes. "What do you do?" he asked Cecilia. "What do you think we do?" "I don't know." "Really?" Cecilia smiled. "You don't know what people do?" "I know." Hugh stopped, aware of the trap into which he'd fallen. His cousins studied him, their eyes curious and hooded. "Then why don't you tell us?" Cecilia said. If he told them to read his mind, their game would end. "My father is a vampire," he said. "He visits in the middle of the night. My mother cries when he feeds on her." "That's a lie," Amien said to him. "What does it sound like?" Cecilia asked, her stare intent, her face glittering. He had no words for what it sounded like. Instead, he beat the floor, uttering high, sharp cries, until his fist was numb. No longer smiling, Cecilia caught his hand and unfolded his fingers. "Is it true?" Amien asked her. "Of course it's true." Cecilia pressed his hand. "That's why his mother's crazy." "He's lying," Amien said. "That's not what people sound like." "How would you know?" Gripping Cecilia's hand, he leaned close to Amien. "Maybe I'm a vampire. Maybe I sneak into my mother's bed and drink her blood and look at her when she's naked." Amien rose awkwardly, gathering her dress around her. "You're crazy," she said. "Just like your mother. You want to ruin everything with your sick stories." "Be quiet," said Cecilia. "You're gonna get us in trouble." "I don't care." "Then leave." Cecilia didn't look at her. "Go to your room and be quiet." Amien hovered over them. For a moment, Hugh thought she would scream, but she fled to the sliding doors. Cecilia regarded him evenly. "Is it true?" she said. "I mean, not really true, but true your dad comes around?" He nodded, looking at their hands. "Everything I told you about Rick is a lie. They have bonfires, but I've never even been to one." "I knew that." "You can't stay," she said. "Amien'll say something to my mom." "I never said I wanted to stay." "I'm gonna leave, too. I can't right now, 'cause they'll just bring me home. But when I'm sixteen, they won't be able to do anything. Maybe then I'll come and get you." Hugh knew she was lying. When he looked at her, though, he saw that she believed what she'd said. She pulled him up by his hand, and he could not help but feel dizzy and blessed. They blew out candles until it was dark, and then Cecilia was gone. Before dawn, Hugh woke his mother and told her that he wanted to leave. While the house still slept, they packed their bags and snuck out to the car. At sunrise, they tilted onto the Corpus Christi Bridge and rose into the air. Hugh looked down at the tiny scalloped waves below, and imagined the car spinning off the bridge and crashing into them. He wished it would happen. He had betrayed his mother for nothing. There was nowhere else to go. He did not know that in a week, he and his mother would return to Houston. His mother would get her job at the hospital back and work overtime to pay off her credit cards. His father would appear less and less, until he faded into Christmastime visits. The summer before his first year of high school, Aunt Beatrice would call to tell his mother that Cecilia had run away, and Hugh would find himself waiting for her, though he knew she would never come. By then, he and his mother moved carefully around each other, spending their evenings in separate rooms, shutting their doors at bedtime. They mentioned their last trip to Corpus, when they mentioned it at all, as if it had happened to other people. But now they are in a motel somewhere in Texas. The room is cold and bright. His mother has just finished brushing her teeth and changing for bed. She glides past Hugh, who is sitting crosslegged on their bed, staring at the dead, green eye of the TV. She lifts the covers and settles herself on a pillow against the headboard. Her scent wafts toward him, and he tries to believe it is filthy. She dons a pair of glasses, opens a book, then lowers it. "What's gotten into you?" she says. "Nothing." "Are you still upset about Corpus?" "No." "I told you we shouldn't have gone. If you're upset, it's your own fault." Hugh looks at her. Behind her reading glasses, her eyes are warped and peevish. "I'm not upset," he says to the TV. "And it's not my fault." "Really? Whose fault is it?" "It's your fault." "I don't know what you mean," she says indignantly; but he knows she is afraid. He turns to her. "You keep pretending like you don't know what I mean so you can keep acting crazy. But I'm not crazy. I'm not a freak. You're a big, fat freak and everyone can see it." "What happened, honey?" He looks away. In the TV, they are faceless, huddled shadows. "Hugh?" she says. "Do you want a house like Aunt Beatrice's?" "No." "Do you want sisters like Cecilia and Amien?" "No." "Do you want another daddy?" "No," he says, afraid of what he will say to her. "Leave me alone." "Why, honey? What did I do? Please tell me what I did wrong." She leans toward him, and he faces her. Her breasts sag against her nightgown, and she sees him glance at them, and covers them with her arm. "I don't want to be here," he says. "I haven't ever wanted to be with you." "Am I really that bad?" "Yes." Hugh thinks: no, you're not. If she's that bad, then he is, too. But what he says is true enough, hurtful enough, for the moment. "Yes," he says. "You really are." Her eyes strain through her glasses. He cannot stand her eyes on him anymore. Swiftly, he wiggles a finger into her plump armpit. She lets out a yelp, then yaws backward, trying to escape. She catches his ribs and he falls on her hand, but she tweaks him behind his knee. He springs like a doused cat. He wriggles and kicks, but here she comes. She has him now. She digs into his ribs and he screams, wondering if anyone can hear them, and if so, what they must think. He imagines how they must look in the dead, green eye of the TV: a plump boy wriggling beneath his half-naked mother, who giggles while she tickles him. He kicks the air. She tickles the soles of his feet. It is delicious, unbearable. He bats her hands from his chest, and they go under his arms, he bats them from there and they go under his knees, like a crazy, short-circuiting machine. Around and around go her hands, and his hands chase them. He clutches her arm, ready to beg mercy, but he will stay here just a moment longer. He writhes, gasps, thinking: this is not how it should be; thinking: I do not know how it should be.
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