The Cradle Read online

  “You can if nobody wants him.”

  Matt’s look was grim as he stood on the doorstep, watching her. She was very casual. He felt like stepping back and slamming the door in her face. She looked as though—well, as though she had known he was coming.

  “Why don’t you come inside,” she said, “and have some cereal?”

  “I want you to tell me when you plan to enroll that boy in school.”

  She raised her eyebrows, tilted her head, and stepped back into the house. For a moment he thought again of walking away.

  He followed her in.

  When they came around the corner, he saw that the boy, Joe, was at the kitchen table, dressed now and eating cereal himself. Beside his chair was a small suitcase and a colorful Little Mermaid backpack stuffed to the gills. He didn’t look up; instead he stared down at his Life cereal and slurped at it from time to time.

  “What is this?”

  “This is Joe eating.”

  “Why is he packed?”

  The woman just rolled her eyes.

  “I haven’t agreed to anything, lady. I can’t take him. You have a family. I have a family.”

  She nodded, then went to the fridge and took out a sandwich wrapped in plastic, then crossed the room and put it into her purse. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”

  “You have to go?”

  “I have to go to church,” she said. “You can let yourselves out.”

  “Lady,” said Matt, “you are the absolute—”

  “-Good-bye, Matt,” she said. She looked at Joe sitting at the table. “-Good-bye, Joe,” she said. Not even a touch on the shoulder and a squeeze.

  “I could be anyone,” Matt said. “And you’re leaving me with him.”

  “We keep going around and around with this,” she said. “You aren’t just anyone. That’s the point.”

  “If you go,” Matt said, “I will call the police on you.”

  She ignored this and strode past them both and disappeared around the corner. Matt heard the door open and close, then he heard the engine starting.

  Matt looked at Joe, who kept eating his Life.

  “Is she always like that?” he asked the boy.

  Joe didn’t look up. Matt came across the kitchen and sat down at the table. He opened his mouth to speak again, but as he did, Joe snapped a hand forward to the box of cereal and filled the bowl again. He put the box down and crossed the room—he was wearing pants now—and at the fridge he got the milk and carried the big gallon container back to the table. Matt watched him pour by levering the milk slowly, standing on top of his chair. “You got it?” he asked, holding a hand in the general vicinity, waiting for a milk explosion. Joe didn’t look at him or say anything; instead he kept a careful eye on the pour of the milk, then levered the jug back upright when he was through and popped the blue cap back on.

  “Wait here, okay?” Matt said.

  Joe started shoveling the cereal into his mouth. Matt doubted he was going anywhere.

  He went into the living room and found the cordless phone. He poked his head in the kitchen to make sure the kid was still at the table, then went back into the living room and sat down on the sofa. He dialed home. Marissa answered after a few rings.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey,” he said. “I’ve got it.”

  “You’ve got it!” she cried.

  “I’ve also got something else.”

  “You’ve also got something else!” she cried. “What? I’m the one who’s supposed to have the surprise for you.”

  “I know that you said you didn’t want to know,” Matt said. “About anything. About where she was or what she’d done since then.”

  “I don’t.” Now she was less excited.

  “I have to tell you.”

  “No, you don’t,” she said.

  “No, Marissa,” he said. “I have to tell you.”

  “You don’t have to do anything.”

  “It’s too important. Your little magical-quest idea has to end.”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Then Marissa said, “I guess you’re the one who has to decide.”

  “Decide what?”

  “What’s too important. For my magical-quest idea.”

  “I’m deciding, then,” Matt said. “Hold on.” He stood up, looked again at Joe, then walked past him, through the back door and out into the yard. He slid the door closed.

  “I’m in Indiana. Your mother had another child a few years after she walked out on you. An old woman who doesn’t want him just gave him to me.”

  Matt tried to imagine the course of Marissa’s thoughts after he said it. Most times he was wrong when he tried to predict the paths in her mind—she seemed to have an unpredictable sense of direction when it came to thinking. You could be talking about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with her, wait ten seconds, and she would turn and ask you whether you had ever been to Kansas. And there was some sort of reasoning, some chain that led her from this to that. Now, as he waited, he thought that maybe the paths were leading her down to the night her mother had come home, then past that to a picture of the cradle in the sanctuary she’d found for it. Then past that to other places, dark grottoes where her mother slept with strange men, or past that and into sterile rooms where the women screamed in the throes of labor. Perhaps there was war, too. Perhaps she found herself all the way back, at Gettysburg, the cradle in the center of the battlefield as both armies, insectlike, converged.

  “What does ‘gave him to you’ mean?” she said. “Where is my mother, Matt?”

  “She’s not here,” Matt said. “She left. Again. She must have had him...a few years after she left you and Glen.”

  Marissa thought a little more, and again Matt waited.

  “So who has this boy been living with?”

  “With the father, for a time,” Matt said. “Then he gave him away to his mother.”

  “Why do you keep using the word gave?”

  “Because that’s what all these people have been doing,” he said. “I’m in some other goddamned dimension.”

  Matt looked back through the glass doors. Joe looked up at him for a moment, then returned to the cereal.

  “He looks like you,” he said to Marissa.

  “Oh Jesus Christ, Matt,” she said. He could hear that she was crying. “Don’t.”

  “I’m sorry,” Matt said, “but he does.”

  “That bitch. That bitch.”

  “Mare.”

  He heard sniffling. She didn’t bother to take the phone away from her face when she blew her nose loudly. Matt held the phone away from his ear, thinking that the snot might come through the holes.

  “Matthew,” she said, “why are you standing around in Indiana?”

  “Because I’m—”

  “You get him,” Marissa said. “You get that boy, you put him in your car, you get his things, and you bring him home to me.”

  Don and Lucille Kincaid had not been angels, mind you. Matt remembered swimming in the lake and the songs, but there was another story from that time. As the bad stories of his childhood went, it was not particularly horrible, but it was one that had stayed with him more than the others, probably because his time with them was so mixed, so equivocated. Once, they’d left him at the house. For a vacation. Lucille had sat down with him at the kitchen table and had given him a long list of chores to do. She told him that he was not allowed to leave the house, and was not allowed to call anyone, and was not allowed to answer the door if it rang, and was to do his chores and read his books and play and they’d be back in four days. She showed him all the food and the cereal and she showed him the sandwiches in the fridge for him, each one marked for a particular day. She said, “You’re a big boy now and you can do this on your own.” Sometimes, now, as an adult, Matt wondered whether Lucille had been insane. Once, he found her standing in her bedroom, dressed up in one of Don’s business suits, holding his briefcase and looking at herself in the mirror. She�
�d shooed him out. Another time she served him a salad with piles of ranch dressing. When he got to the bottom, he realized that in among the lettuce there were clippings of grass, too. She smiled and told him that she’d gotten them from the big bag attached to the lawn mower and had put a bowl in the fridge. “Just to try,” she’d said.

  He didn’t wonder. Lucille had been insane.

  What he couldn’t figure out was why Don, too, had been so okay with leaving him for that vacation. No one was that stupid. Was anyone that stupid? Matt supposed it was too complicated and not something he could understand by tracing through his memories alone. That would require Don back alive, explaining. Whatever the reason, however, they said good-bye to him in the front room, patted him on the shoulder, and walked out with their luggage. He remembered the feeling of watching from the living room window as they pulled out of the driveway. Excitement. Then. Only later, on the second night, after the nightmares and a long thunderstorm, was it simple dread.

  His dread took the form of tigers for those next days. He had hours and hours to envision their plans for him and to work out their exact paths as they circled the yard and slowly closed the noose. First they were up in the trees only—he saw them through the windows, saw the beads of their eyes glowing. Then they were more aggressive. They would come to the windows and stand all the way up, like cats, their great paws on the windowsills, their breath steaming the glass with a low purr-grumble. They even tried to break in through the door, but Matt had buttressed it with furniture and had stayed awake all night, in the center of the dining room, sitting upright on the table, twisting and making sure that every single sound he heard was something that he understood.

  Matt had to move the cradle. Joe couldn’t fit inside the truck with him if it was there as well. He had some bungee cords and a tarp in his utility box, so he removed the cradle, wrapped it, and tied it down as best he could. Not satisfied, he went into the garage of the house through the kitchen and found some twine, then used that to tie the cradle down better. As he worked, Joe followed him. First outside to see the cradle removed, then into the garage for the twine, then back outside. Matt didn’t talk to him as he worked, but he was glad to see that the boy appeared to have a mind.

  “Okay,” Matt said once he’d tied the last knot. He looked down at Joe. “I think it’s safe.” He turned back and gave the cradle a few tugs. “You?” he said. “You think that’s safe in there?”

  Joe didn’t say anything.

  “You wanna see?”

  Still nothing. Matt squatted down in front of him. “You’ve been moving around a lot,” he said, and the boy kept his eyes focused on Matt as he talked. “One more time, then you’ll be through. I saw you were all packed up.”

  Joe looked over his shoulder, back at the house.

  “I have to ask you, though,” Matt said. “Do you want to stay here? With your grandma?”

  Joe looked back at him and didn’t nod or shake his head.

  “You don’t know who I am,” Matt said. “But we’re related, actually. You see, you’ve got a big sister. She’s a lot older than you. She lives in St. Helens, which isn’t very far from here. And I’m married to her.”

  Joe looked back at the house again.

  “Your grandma talked to me for a little while and she said that she thinks you might have a better time coming to live with us for a little while. What do you think of that? Do you want to stay living here with your grandma? Or do you think you might want to meet your big sister?”

  Finally, Joe shrugged.

  “You don’t know or you don’t care?”

  “I don’t know,” Joe said.

  Matt smiled. It was the first time he’d heard a word from him. He said, “Okay. Well, what about this: how about you come to meet her, and you stay for a week or so, then we talk about it again and see what you want to do?”

  Joe walked past him to the truck and looked at the twine that was visible from down below.

  “I moved it to make space,” he said. “So you can ride in the front. The cradle, I mean.”

  Joe looked at the truck.

  “You like driving?”

  Joe, still looking at the truck, started shaking his head slightly.

  “No? I drive safe, mind you.”

  Matt stood and went back into the house, and Joe followed him in. They went to the kitchen and Matt leaned down and picked up the boy’s small suitcase. Then Joe got his backpack. He spent a moment twisting his arms so it fit onto his back, then waited.

  “Let me ask you a question,” Matt said to him. “What’s your favorite color?”

  “Red.”

  Matt said, “Okay. Come on.”

  So this was happening. What it meant, Matt didn’t want to think about. But it was happening. He was tired from the driving, from the questions, from having to tell his story over and over again. And yet somehow, here he was, with a cradle. And then some. Joe followed him out to the truck, and Matt opened the door for him and stepped back. He didn’t know whether or not the boy would be able to climb in on his own, whether or not he’d have to lean down and hoist him up. But Joe didn’t have much of a problem. He looked around the truck a little, then found a handhold, got a foot up, and hauled himself in, then climbed onto the seat and began arranging himself. “Good work,” Matt said, and he leaned over and stuffed the suitcase behind the seat.

  He went around the front, climbed in, started the engine, and looked down at Joe. “You ready?” Matt said. Joe didn’t say anything. He was still wearing his backpack, and the hump of it forced him to lean forward a little bit in his seat. Matt looked closer and saw that he had peed in his pants.

  “I guess we shoulda stopped in the bathroom on our way out,” Matt said to him.

  Matt hoped he would smile, but he saw that Joe’s hands were shaking. He was staring straight ahead, into the latch on the glove box.

  “Hey,” Matt said, touching his shoulder. “Hey. It’s okay.” Joe just shook.

  Matt turned the engine off, got out, and came around to Joe’s side and pulled open the door. “Let’s just do a quick changearoo and start again. For the first time. Sound okay?” He reached back behind Joe and got the suitcase, laid it on the ground, and sorted through the messy pile of clothes inside. He found a second tiny pair of sweatpants and held them up. “How do these look?”

  Joe looked down at the pants.

  “Okay, then,” Matt said. “And also, we’ll be needing one nice pair of Spider-Man underpants. Wouldn’t you know it?”

  Matt held up a pair of Spider-Man underpants.

  “Okay,” said Matt. “Hop out.”

  Joe started to climb down. Matt said, “Hold on. Leave your backpack up there.” Arms rolling and body squirming, Joe slid out of the backpack, climbed down to the floor, and jumped out onto the driveway. He stood in front of Matt, and Matt started unlacing his sneakers. The pungent smell of urine wafted directly into his face. He said, “You know how to tie these things already?” He didn’t bother looking up for a response.

  Joe’s shoes off, Matt helped him out of the sullied sweatpants, then helped him out of his white briefs, stained bright yellow, when Joe didn’t start doing so himself. He couldn’t help but see the boy’s small penis. He didn’t want to see it. Matt looked down. He picked up the Spider-Man underpants and held them open low and told Joe to step into them. The boy did, one foot at a time, and Matt pulled them up and let the elastic snap closed, then they did the same with the pants. Matt found a plastic bag in the truck and put the wet pants and undies into it, tied it off, loaded the suitcase back behind the seat, and nodded at Joe to climb up again. “Let’s try this again, shall we?” he said.

  Joe climbed in, this time quicker than he had before. Matt helped him set the backpack down on the floor, then closed the door.

  He checked the cradle one last time in the back, then came around and climbed inside. He started the engine, put the truck into reverse, and smiled down at Joe. He shook his head with t
he smile to make sure it seemed like it didn’t matter. “You ready to—”

  Matt frowned.

  There was a new stain in the crotch of the pants, right where Joe had peed again.

  It took four stops and all of Joe’s pants to get them out of Indiana. When they were through Chicago, Matt kept telling himself to just not look down at him anymore. He hadn’t said another word or made a sound at all, but the shakes were coming intermittently. He was terrified.

  That was what alone did. His fear made Matt again wonder at the wisdom of what he was doing. This was all too rushed. There had to be social workers involved, forms, consultations. A lot of bureaucracy. You don’t just walk in somewhere and take somebody because he’s given to you. A week ago none of this existed—not the idea to find the cradle, not wrinkled old women in Green Bay, not Darren, not Rensselaer, not the boy. Now it was impossible to back away from it. No matter what happened, it would be impossible to walk away from it.

  He’d been numb since the woman had walked out of the house and had left him alone with Joe. He hadn’t felt a thing. Now, though, beyond the frustration with the kid, as the highway past Chicago opened up, something was growing again. Something that was made by the Kincaids, in their way, but made more by all the rest. By the worst of them: by Clyde Hancock and his drunk German wife, Hilda, and by Mr. Wasserstein, and by the man whose name he’d never known, the janitor at the Fryer Boys’ Home. He remembered this kind of fear now.

  It wasn’t fear, actually. It was dread. The hollow, stultifying pressure of it, the way it soaked into you and made something as simple as opening your eyes in the morning, realizing a new day was there for you, almost impossible.

  He had scrubbed himself clean of it. He had literally spent years tearing out his own insides, all of his twenties spent removing everything that had come before, all of those years to remove each and every organ capable of producing that sensation of the past. He had known that if he didn’t, he would always be followed by it. What had scared him even more, then, was giving it to somebody else, either passing it down to a child or transferring it sideways, to someone he loved, if he ever found somebody to love. He had, of course, and by that time he had taken the steel wool to the farthest edges of his mind and his heart and had left nothing unsterilized. All that was so far behind him...he had even taken care to scrub away the scrubbing itself, to mute it and make it small and make it seem as though it hadn’t happened, hadn’t taken every ounce of energy he had.