The wail of a siren slices through the window plastic: rising, here, gone. The only sign of life in the world. With a finger he drills into the corner of the plastic, stretching it, until a pinprick hole spreads. He bends down, puts his eye to it.
Outside he expects only more blackness, but instead what he sees is a dizzying array of light. Lights glimmer from window after window in a glittering mosaic. A sea of lights. A tidal wave of lights. Washing down over him in sparkling droplets. Each of those lights is a person, washing dishes or working or reading, completely oblivious to his existence. The thought of so many people dazzles and terrifies him. All those people out there, millions of them, billions, and not one of them knows or cares about him. He claps his hand over the hole, but still he can feel the lights sizzling against his skin like a sunburn. Even curling up inside the sleeping bag, the covers pulled over his head, brings no relief.
Out of him pours a cry so long buried the sound of it is like an earthquake in his throat. A name he hasn’t uttered in years.
Mama, he cries, stumbling out of bed, and the darkness reaches up and tangles around his ankles, tugging him to the ground.
When he opens his eyes again he is curled up tight in a ball and a hand rests warm and heavy on the tender V between his shoulder blades. His mother.
Shh, she says, as he tries to turn over. It’s all right.
She is sitting on the floor beside him. A less-dark shape against the dark.
You know, I felt the same way, she says, the first night I spent on my own.
Her palm warm and soft on the nape of his neck. Smoothing the hairs that bristle there.
Why did you bring me here, he says at last.
I wanted—she begins, and stops.
How to finish? I wanted to make sure you were all right. I wanted to make sure you would be all right. I wanted to see who you were. I wanted to see who you had become. I wanted to see if you were still you. I wanted to see you.
I wanted you, she says simply, and this is the only explanation she can give, but it is what he needs to hear. She had wanted him. She still wanted him. She hadn’t left because she hadn’t cared.
The understanding seeps into him like a sedative. Limpening his muscles, scooping smooth the hard edges of his thoughts. He leans against her, trusting her to bear his weight. Letting her arms twine around him like a vine round a tree. Through the tiny hole he’s poked in the window covering, a thin strand of light pierces the black plastic, casting a single starry splotch on the wall.
She strokes his back, feels the nubs of his spine under the skin like a string of pearls. Gently she sets their hands together, finger to finger, palm to palm. Nearly as big as hers, his feet perhaps even bigger. Like a puppy, all paws, the rest of him still childlike but eagerly lolloping behind.
Birdie, she says, I’m just so afraid of losing you again.
He looks up at her with the fathomless trust of a sleepy child.
But you’ll come back, he says.
It is not a question, but a statement. A reassurance.
She nods.
I’ll come back, she agrees. I promise I’ll come back.
And she means it.
Okay, he murmurs. He isn’t sure if he is speaking to her, or to himself. About what is to come, or what happened long ago. All of it, he decides. Everything. It’s okay, he says again, and he knows, by the gentle tightening of her arms, that she has heard.
I’m here, she says, and Bird lets the darkness absorb him.
* * *
? ? ?
When Bird wakes again his mother is gone and it is morning. He is curled in the crib, legs folded nearly to chest, the sleeping bag left behind on the window seat, twisted like a shed skin. He has a dim memory of wanting to be small, of finding this safe place to hide. Of retreating. Draped over him is a blanket he doesn’t recognize, heavy and too small and oddly shaped, and then he realizes it is not a blanket but his mother’s coat.
III
In the morning, at ten o’clock precisely, the Duchess arrives in her long sleek car, driving herself this time. Just inside the back door, Margaret hesitates. But Bird doesn’t. He is eager to go.
Good luck, he says. Confidence beaming from his eyes.
Okay, she says at last. I’ll see you soon.
She pulls him close, kisses him on the temple, just where the pulse beats under the skin.
Then Bird, backpack slung over his shoulder, darts through the back garden and out the fence and slips into the car at the curb. There, at the other end of the seat, is a figure silhouetted against a tinted window, turning as he enters. Taller—half a head taller than him now, maybe—longer haired, but the same quick eyes, the same skeptical grin.