The Moon Pool Read online

  Shay drove around it and out into the street. She stayed to the speed limit as they headed for town.

  “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “I can’t believe you wanted to just pay her off! Is that how you solve every problem in your life? Never mind. I guess I already know the answer to that.”

  Colleen waited just a beat and then she couldn’t help herself. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “That means that instead of being a mom to your son, you were so worried about what people would think that you bought his way into everything so you wouldn’t have to deal with it! Even in Fairhaven we got a few mothers like you. The other kids don’t like their kids, they go out and buy Happy Meals for the whole class. Have parties at the jumping gym and spend more on the goodie bags than I ever spent on Taylor’s whole birthday! How much did you have to pay to get him into college? Huh? How much to keep the admissions people from knowing he nearly killed another kid?”

  “Stop it!” Colleen screamed. “Stop it, oh, God, let me out! Let me out!” She reached for the door, unsnapping her seat belt. She saw the asphalt moving underneath the car as Shay slammed on the brakes, and when her feet hit the ground, the momentum made her stumble. She tottered and fell, the shock of the impact shooting pain through her hip. Her purse had fallen upside down and emptied itself on the street.

  “Are you fucking crazy?” Shay yelled. “Do you have a death wish?”

  “Leave me alone!” Colleen pawed at her wallet, makeup case, keys, stuffing everything back into her purse. “You don’t know anything about my relationship with my son!”

  “I know that my son told me he was hanging out with Paul as a favor because no one else wanted to!”

  “That’s a lie!” Colleen was on her knees, trying to grab a lipstick that had rolled a few feet away. She tried to stand, slipped and fell again, this time on her knee. The pain was breathtaking. “Paul had a ton of friends!”

  “Maybe back east. You probably bought those too. That’s not how it works here. I mean, look around you, Colleen. You think anyone’s paying these guys to just show up? Everything here you have to earn. Maybe if you’d left him alone, Paul would have finally figured out how to be a man. Maybe that’s why he disappeared, he couldn’t get away from you even up here!”

  Colleen abandoned the lipstick. She finally got to her feet and stumbled toward the sidewalk. They were in front of a storage facility, its parking lot surrounded by tall fencing. She grabbed at the chain link for balance as she tried to get away.

  “Are you out of your mind? Get back in the car!” Shay shouted.

  Colleen kept walking, tears streaming down her face. She was sobbing, unable to catch her breath. After she’d gone another twenty feet she heard the screech of tires and Shay peeled off down the street.

  She thought Shay would turn around, make a U-turn and come back to harangue her some more. To rip at the open wound. Thinking of what she’d said about Paul... Colleen couldn’t stand it. She covered her ears with her gloved hands and made sounds to cover up her thoughts, horrible wailing sounds of pain, but she couldn’t obliterate them.

  Ahead, in the next block, was the truck stop where they showered and had breakfast. The sign still blinked SUPER STAR PLAZA FUEL—SHOWERS—DINER—HOT COFFEE—24 HOURS. Half a dozen trucks and a few cars were parked on the side; all but one of the pumps were occupied. Even the car wash was going, steam rising into the night as the hot water blasted away the snow and grime and salt.

  Colleen shied away from the light. She followed the edge of the parking lot, along the fencing. The snow covered shapes of dead plants. In the summer, they probably grew geraniums here. Marigolds, begonias. Hardy plants you could buy cheap at the hardware store.

  There was a bench, awkwardly placed by a planter that contained nothing but cigarette butts, some of them recent. Colleen brushed the snow off the bench and sat down, hoping no one would glance her way.

  After a while, the sobbing slowed. The tissues had fallen out of her purse along with the lipstick, so Colleen had been forced to wipe her nose on her sleeve and the back of her glove. Her hair was matted to her cheeks. She was terribly cold, but she welcomed it, wished for the pain that was setting into her fingertips and toes to spread. She wanted to feel the pain everywhere. Maybe she would freeze to death here. They would find her body frozen to the bench. With her long coat and her hood pulled up, she would look like the Virgin Mary in prayer. And this would be her pietà, her final sign of devotion to Paul. Because in the end, she defended him alone, no matter how much Andy loved him, no matter how he wrestled with his own demons. A boy grows into a man and leaves his father, to return as an equal. But a mother is always his mother.

  She remembered holding Paul in her arms when he was a baby, cradling him with that head full of downy dark hair nestled in her elbow, marveling at the beauty of him, the perfection of him. Even as an infant he’d been angry and restless; even then, if Colleen was truly honest with herself, she knew there was something different about him. But look at him! God, he was so beautiful.

  Yes. Dying here, now, with this image in her mind, this would not be so bad. God would forgive her this. She had done her best; He would judge her kindly. Andy would move on, eventually. Everyone would forgive him. They always forgive the men. He would find another woman, who would adore him, who would remind him that it was never his fault, none of it was ever his fault. She might spare Colleen some compassion; she might allow Colleen’s photo to stay on the mantel. But deep down she would know what everyone knew: somehow, it was always the mother’s fault.

  Because what Shay had said before she drove away was true. She had tried to buy Paul’s way in the world. All the tutors, the personal coaches, the Ivy League summer programs, the therapist and psychiatrists and private school counselors—with what she had paid them, they could have bought a summer home on the Cape. If there were a lever you could pull to flush another child’s future away so Paul could have succeeded, she would have been first in line.

  And then, at the end, she’d had to face her failure. The expression on Paul’s face that morning, as he scrubbed the floor, trying to erase the stain of his own rage—guilt and shame and fear and despair.

  Colleen was guilty of so many things. She couldn’t stand herself. No matter how much Shay loathed her, Colleen loathed herself more. And somehow, despite all her failings, she’d taught her son one solid lesson: how to loathe himself as well.

  Take me, Colleen whispered, hoping the wind would carry her plea to God’s ears.

  SEX WASN’T THE best form of self-obliteration, but it would do. Especially when the buzz Shay had worked up earlier in the evening had faded, leaving behind its chalky, dulling aftereffects. Shay knew from her hard-drinking days that it was possible to light a second wave and get hammered all over again, even after neglecting the buzz for several hours, but it took work and generally you wanted to stay in one place after, and she wasn’t up for either of those things.

  When she got back to the Oak Door Tavern, it was eleven thirty and the crowd was holding strong. She found a parking place wedged between two giant pickup trucks and went inside, stepping around a rowdy group of revelers clogging the doorway. She headed for the ladies’ room; she’d had to go ever since they were at the trailer.

  Thinking about the trailer made her furious all over again. She’d known so many sanctimonious women like Brenda. Go to church on Sunday and judge everyone all week long. Shay’d been used to people judging her since she was just a toddler, when her hippie mother let her hair grow down past her butt and dressed her in Indian-cotton dresses she tie-dyed herself. These days she figured she was a hell of a lot better adjusted than most of the women she knew. She bought a little weed now and then from a boy who’d once mowed her lawn; she had Mack when she wanted a warm body in her bed. She had a beautiful grandbaby, and her daughter and son-in-law came over every weekend because they wanted to, not because they needed a handout or felt obligated.


  And she got along great with Taylor, which was more than a lot of those uptight women could say about their relationships with their own kids. Which made her think of Colleen.

  The things she’d said. Christ, the things she’d said to Colleen.

  After she dried her hands, she reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out the poster. Paul was a nice-looking boy. You could tell he was shy from the way he looked at the camera, or rather didn’t look at it.

  Taylor had taken Paul under his wing the way he always did. He was such a mother hen, always scouting the outskirts of any party for the wallflowers, the tender ones, and folding them into his sparkling orbit. What he had actually said about Paul was that he seemed to be having trouble making friends, but it was because he was bewildered. Not disliked, as she’d implied to Colleen. “It’s like he’s never seen anything like us before, Mom.” Taylor had laughed after telling her about a prank in which Taylor had convinced Paul to drive their shift supervisor’s truck up onto a flatbed. Shay hadn’t completely understood the story, but she did understand what Taylor was doing, even if he didn’t—teaching Paul the way things worked, giving him the ticket to belong. Just like when he’d patiently taught Javed Suleman the rules of American football in the backyard before tryouts back in sixth grade. Or Paul’s nickname, Whale. Taylor had been the one who gave it to him, and it was his gentle way of showing Paul how to fit in, how his fancy, expensive East Coast clothes weren’t doing him any favors in the camp.

  What Shay hadn’t said to Colleen was that after that, it was always “Paul and I” and “Paul was telling me...” and never again was there talk of him not fitting in.

  A girl came into the bathroom, talking on her cell phone, and Shay hastily shoved the paper into her pocket and headed back out into the crowd. She didn’t see McCall Whittaker from South Bend, despite taking her time circling the bar. Well, it probably hadn’t been her best idea ever anyway, even if it might have bought her a place to spend the night in addition to a few hours of release. Tomorrow was still going to be tomorrow, and Taylor was still going to be missing, and she needed to have a clear head to figure out what to do about all that, and Colleen too.

  Actually, what she really ought to do was go back and find Colleen and make sure she was okay. Shay sighed deeply, wondering when she was ever going to learn to think first and speak later. Even though it was looking like she and Colleen weren’t going to be able to work together, Shay couldn’t just leave her out there, where, it occurred to her, she was as vulnerable as her own son had been when he showed up, a fish out of water.

  She was heading for the door when she saw a familiar face. It took a second to click: the man from Walmart, the one Colleen had been hoping to meet up with here earlier. He looked uncomfortable, standing at the end of the bar, staring at his phone. He was the only man in the bar wearing a suit jacket, though his tie had been loosened, and he was also the only man in the bar with a wineglass in front of him.

  Shay hesitated, not knowing what to do. They couldn’t afford to miss this opportunity. She got out her phone and dialed Colleen, but there was no answer—and she wouldn’t have been able to hear her in the din of the bar anyway.

  She slipped the phone back in her pocket, thought for one more minute, then headed outside. In the back of the Explorer, she dug through the bags and found what she needed. She didn’t even bother returning to the ladies’ room to change, just threw her coat into the back and shrugged Colleen’s cashmere sweater over her own clothes, pulling it down over her hips. She twisted her hair into a chignon with an elastic from her purse and wiped most of her makeup off with a tissue—and then, on second thought, reapplied her lipstick.

  Then she headed back to the bar. She was ready as she’d ever be.

  COLLEEN NEVER GOT to the part she’d read about in the Jack London story, the part where you just want to go to sleep, when all the pain leaves you and you gently drift. On the contrary, it just got colder and her shivering more violent, until the numbness in her fingers and toes was too painful to ignore.

  But that wasn’t the reason that Colleen finally got up off the bench, her coat pulling away with a tearing sound since it had frozen to the metal.

  She got up because she had no proof that Paul was dead. And as long as he wasn’t dead, she was on duty. It didn’t matter what he’d done. It didn’t matter what bad decisions he’d made. There wasn’t anyone else, and so she got up.

  Her face stung, and she was sure she looked frightening. She pulled the hood tighter. She’d go freshen up, and then she’d get a cup of coffee and figure out what to do next.

  Two more posters were taped to the glass doors. Colleen stared at the photo for a moment. Was this how it would be, now? Every door she went through, was she going to have to confront this image of Paul, which had been ruined for her now from what Shay said? Why had Andy used this photo, why couldn’t he have used the one from the Cape two years ago, when Paul was laughing and tan and holding up a crab by its pincer?

  Because no one else needed to see evidence that he had once been happy, Colleen answered her own question. Only she needed that.

  She opened the door and stepped onto the mat. The smell of coffee and bacon drifted to her nose. The music was quiet, some country song she vaguely recognized.

  Other than the waitress, it was all men. They were sitting by themselves, at the counter, at tables. The digital sign showed that only two showers were in use. No waiting. The only sound besides the music was the clack of a spatula on the grill and the quiet thud of a coffee cup being set down.

  Everyone was staring at her. Colleen’s hand went to her face—she must look worse than she thought. But to get to the ladies’ room, she would have to walk past every customer in the place. She looked down at her pants—they were crusted with dirt from when she fell and there was a tear over the knee, rimmed with dried blood. She hadn’t even noticed she was bleeding.

  “Ma’am, are you all right?”

  It was the waitress, a girl scarcely older than Paul. She was standing behind a row of ketchup bottles. Some had other ketchup bottles balanced precariously on top, the last of the spent bottles draining into the new ones.

  “I’m...”

  She couldn’t seem to get the words out. I’ll be fine. I just need a moment in the ladies’ room. Oh, and could I have a cup of coffee, please? Just black is fine. You’re a lifesaver. I’ll be right out.

  “I just... I need...”

  She looked from face to face; older men, mostly, their faces creased with worry lines, their bodies thick with years of hard labor. Maybe this was the only place to come if you didn’t want the noise, the partying, the strangers jostling you. Maybe this was where you looked for peace.

  “I’m Colleen Mitchell.” She wasn’t sure why she said it. Her voice sounded broken. Her fingers and toes, as they warmed up, ached intensely. “My boy is one of the missing ones. Paul Mitchell. We put up those posters... well, my husband had those posters put up—I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know where else to look. I don’t know where to go.”

  No one moved. The men’s expressions didn’t change. They had seen things before. Things had happened to them. They weren’t young; they were cautious. That was all right. She didn’t want their pity or even their compassion.

  “Mrs. Mitchell, I knew your son,” the waitress said quietly. “I think you better sit down.”

  THE WAITRESS’S NAME was Emily. She told Colleen that when she got back from the bathroom, there would be a cup of coffee and a turkey club waiting for her.

  Colleen had been here only fifteen hours earlier for a shower and breakfast. The first time she’d looked in the truck stop’s mirror, she’d been shocked by what she saw, by how much she had aged since this whole ordeal began. Tonight, she was not shocked at all. She understood the bargain she’d made: herself for Paul. And if the devil or whoever had been sent to collect had left behind the lines around her mouth, the purple hollows under her eyes,
the sagging lifeless skin, she knew it was all part of the trade.

  But that didn’t mean she couldn’t fight back. She splashed water on her face and dug into her makeup kit. Repaired what she could and combed her hair. Dampened a handful of paper towels and wiped the mud off her clothes. Pulling up her pant leg, she inspected the bruise and torn skin. She dabbed at it with soapy hot water, and welcomed the sting.

  Back at the counter, the sandwich was indeed waiting, cut into four perfect triangles, with a tiny sprig of parsley and a lemon slice on the side. The men had resumed what they were doing—reading the paper, watching a game playing silently on the TV hung from the ceiling—and didn’t even glance her way. Emily watched as Colleen forced herself to take a bite and wash it down with water.

  “I am so sorry for what you’re going through,” Emily said.

  “You knew him?” Colleen felt a little better. She had been hungrier than she realized. “You knew Paul?”

  “Only a little. My friend’s roommate was his girlfriend. I met him at a party once.”

  “Paul had a girlfriend?”

  Emily’s expression softened. “You didn’t know?”

  “He... he never said.”

  “Okay then, well, what I have to tell you is going to be kind of a shock, I guess. I wouldn’t say anything, I mean, I feel like it’s not my place or whatever, but you have a right to know, especially since, well, because of whatever happened.” She took a deep breath and said, “He and Kristine started dating last fall, and, well, she’s pregnant.”

  “What?”

  Pregnant. The word tumbled in Colleen’s mind, spinning and bouncing against all the impossibilities. Paul had never had a girlfriend, not for more than a few weeks at a time; he never had any trouble getting girls to go to dances with him, and Colleen had always felt that they might have been interested in more, but for some reason Paul had never let things go further. While he was at Syracuse, she’d had the impression that there were a couple of girls he dated, but he never talked about it at home.