Michael drank water from the purple mug and Deming wanted to smack it out of his hands. He didn’t want her to be dead, never ever, but it seemed preferable, in a fucked-up way, to having her leave without a good-bye. The last words he said to her had been, “When are we moving?” If he hadn’t gotten detention—if he had left school at the usual time—if he hadn’t resisted Florida—if he’d intercepted the fight she had with Leon—she would still be here. Like a detective inspecting the same five seconds of surveillance video, he replayed last Wednesday afternoon, walking the blocks from school to home. Again and again Deming and Mama crossed Fordham Road, waited at the light, slipped on the ice, hugged, Mrs. Johnson forever watching. He zoomed in on the frames, slow-motioned their walk up University, then reversed it so they goose-stepped downhill, cars and buses groaning backwards. He picked apart the words she said, hunting for clues, the way his English teachers made them read poems and spend twenty minutes talking about a sentence, the meaning behind the meaning. The meaning behind her telling him about her life. The meaning of Florida. The meaning of her not coming home.
He heard a key in the door and hoped it was her, going, “What, you thought I left you? Who do you take me for, Kid, Homecoming?” They had watched the TV movie where a mom left her kids at the mall and never came back, and he’d been more entranced by the mall, its sprawling, suburban emptiness. If she came home, he wouldn’t play with his food or speak English so fast she couldn’t keep up. He would do his homework, wash the dishes, let her kick his ass at Whac-A-Mole like she’d done at the church carnival in Belmont last summer, where Michael had barfed up cotton candy after riding the Octopus.
But it wasn’t his mother in the door, only Vivian, shaking slush from her shoes. He ran to her and shouted, “You need to find her, she’s in danger.”
Vivian put an arm around him, her face round and wide like Leon’s. “She’s not in danger.” She was warm and familiar but not the right mother, and instead of nail polish and hand lotion she smelled of sweat and lemon disinfectant.
“Is she in Florida?”
Vivian bit her lip. “We don’t know for sure. We’re trying to find out. I’m sure she’s okay.”
SNOW MELTED. PINK BUDS appeared on the trees. One night Leon and Vivian spoke in the kitchen but when Deming walked in, they stopped and looked at each other. That week, Deming and Michael packed away their winter coats and took out their T-shirts. Deming saw his mother’s spring jacket in the closet, the one she called her Christmas coat because the green was the color of pine needles, and turned away fast. He apologized to Travis Bhopa in hope that it would set things right, that by sacrificing his pride it would guarantee her safety. “Are you crazy?” Hung said, and Michael looked like Deming had tripped him instead. Travis grunted, “Whatever.” She stayed gone. The worse he felt, the more it would make her return. He decided to not eat for a day, which wasn’t hard as Vivian and Leon were always out and dinner was a bag of potato chips, a cup of instant ramen. Bodega pizza four times a week. Now she would have to come home. He fell asleep in school, lightheaded from skipping breakfast. She would take him out for enchiladas but be glad he lost weight because she wouldn’t have to buy him new clothes. She stayed gone. If he cracked an A in Geometry, she would come back. He pulled a B-minus on a quiz and doubled down for the next one—B-plus. She stayed gone. Vivian was right. She’d left for Florida and left him, too.
Two
A decade later, Daniel Wilkinson stood in a corner, hoping no one would notice his shoes. They were insulated hiking boots, clunkers with forest green accents, necessary armor for upstate winters but aesthetic insult in the city. With his Gore-Tex coat, wool hat, and puffy gloves stashed in a back room with his guitar—a butterscotch Strat he’d bought off of Craigslist—his jeans and black T-shirt didn’t seem too blatantly suburban, yet the other guys’ feet were clad in stark white sneakers or dark leather boots, and the old fear bucked up that he’d be exposed, called out, exiled. You’re a fake. What’s your real name? Where are you really from?
He dug his hands in his pockets and rubbed the fabric between his thumbs and index fingers. How did you sew the inside of a pocket, anyway? He saw a roomful of sewing machines, women guiding denim beneath darting needles, and thought of his mother.
The show was in a loft apartment on the last remaining industrial block in Lower Manhattan. Windows lined one wall, edged with late February frost, and the concrete floor was tacky with spilled drinks. Closer to where the bands played, it was as hot as July. The current act, math rockers whose set sounded like one thirty-minute-long song, dull grays and feeble angles, the singer’s head shaved bald around the sides while the hair on top sprouted up like a fistful of licorice, reminded Daniel of being stoned for days in his dorm room at SUNY Potsdam, hitting repeat on the same song until the notes separated and unraveled.
Thank God he was no longer at Potsdam. He drank vodka in his plastic cup, let the warmth spread into his belly, sandpapering his nerves until the music soaked down to his toes. When he and Roland played, the audience would be incredulous, admiring. Not like earlier, when this dude Nate had been talking about Vic Sirro and Daniel had blurted, “Oh, you mean the blue backpack guy?” and Nate had made a face like he’d noticed a stain on his pants.
Oh, you mean the blue backpack guy. Daniel mentally punched himself. Nate was so tall and skinny he had a premature hunchback, and his long, thin face was giraffe-adjacent, but even he thought Daniel was a loser. After tonight, no one would turn away from him in the middle of a conversation or look over him as if he was invisible. The band would play sold-out shows, be profiled on music blogs, his picture front and center. Roland had been telling people that this new project was his best yet, reunited with his original collaborator, with Daniel’s insane guitar. Hearing this made Daniel nervous, like they were tempting fate. All week he’d been waiting for someone to tell Roland to shut up and stop bragging. But half the room was here because they wanted to cheer Roland on, and Daniel was trying hard to absorb the excitement.