“I…” I swallowed down what felt like a wasp stinging my throat on its way down the pipe. “He left me. After the gym, he took off,” I said, sticking with some version of the truth. I forced myself to quit talking, not to ramble, not to offer any details that could be used against me. People were always too quick to volunteer the details with which to hang themselves.
“Shoo, shoo,” I heard from behind me. On the porch, a door thwacked against the wood frame. Einstein resumed barking. “What’s going on?” My mom’s bare feet stepped onto the grass. She had managed to wrap a robe around her shoulders. “What are you people doing on my lawn?” Without makeup and with her red hair all askew from a few hours’ sleep, it was easy to see how much she’d aged in the past few years. I could hear the empty wine bottle in her words.
Go back inside, Mom. Go back inside. I made a silent wish.
“We’re looking for Adam Smith, ma’am. Is he here?”
My mom’s face screwed up in the headlights. She noticed me standing a short distance to the right, and then she noticed Owen. “That’s Owen. Owen Bloch,” she said, and seemed so pleased with herself for remembering. In other circumstances, I would have been quite impressed myself.
“Has an Adam Smith been residing at your house the last few weeks, ma’am?” Officer McMustache widened his stance.
“Don’t you think I’d know if a boy was living here in my house?” She said her consonants extraloud, like somebody was adjusting the volume on her remote control without her looking.
McMustache looked to his partner and then back at Mom. “Yes, ma’am, I suppose you would. But, all the same, would you mind if we had a look around?”
“Yes!” I pressed my lips together. Just once could she not—“Yes, I mind!” she shrieked. And that was when my mother’s robe flew wide open, revealing only an oversized Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt with nothing on underneath but her bony, white-sheet legs.
McMustache’s partner took off his hat and crossed it over his chest. Both of them averted their eyes to the ground. Owen scratched his temple and squinted one eye like he didn’t know what to do.
With the sound of the sirens cut, I heard a distinct creak from the back of the house that made my armpits sticky.
“What was that?” The younger partner raised his hand to his holster.
“Probably just the dog,” I said quickly. “She’s always knocking things over.” I looked over my shoulder. Every so often, I could hear Einstein’s frantic puffs of breath underneath the threshold.
“Ma’am, maybe—” continued the officer while definitely, most certainly not looking up at Mom.
“Did you not hear me right? I didn’t give you permission to be on my lawn,” Mom shouted. “I didn’t give any of you permission. Get off!” The sleeve of her robe fluttered. “Get off! All of you! Scram!” She pointed back at the robe and took several more barefooted steps toward the police. “This is my property. Don’t go telling me who is on my property like I don’t know.”
I wanted to laugh and cry and hug my mother, open robe and all.
The officers exchanged looks again. McMustache cleared his throat and said, “We apologize, ma’am. You’ll let us know if you hear anything, I’m sure.”
To that, she spat on the ground. Then she pulled the robe around her chest and marched back into the house. The younger partner raised his eyebrows. Then to Owen and me he nodded. “Y’all take care. We may be back around if we hear anything else.”
As the sirens faded and the lights disappeared, I felt the emptiness spread out over my house like the first day of winter, cold, bleak, and alone. The realization seeped into the pores of my skin. Owen wrapped his arm around me and tugged me into his side. I leaned into his chest and listened to his heart thud steadily against my cheek. The experiment was over. Adam was gone.
THIRTY-FIVE
I return to my father’s favorite quote:
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
—Thomas A. Edison
*
I slid my textbook off my desk at the end of Dr. Lamb’s class and stuffed it into my book bag. I wasn’t sure if I’d dozed off those last few minutes or if I’d just turned off my brain. That seemed to be happening more and more these days. I had these long stretches of time where the outside world was filled with white noise and afterward I couldn’t remember anything.
“Tor.” Dr. Lamb was peering at me over her glasses. Her chunky half-inch heels clacked over to her desk, where she took a seat in the rolling chair in front of a poster of a rocket launch. “Can you come here for a minute?” she asked.