Shelter

  She stopped, dazed. "Who are these two?" she asked Taylor.

  "We, uh, found them loitering around," Taylor said. "We thought maybe they were the perpetrators."

  For a second, Mrs. Kent stared at us as though we were pieces in a puzzle she couldn't put together.

  "These are boys," she said.

  "Yes, I know, but--"

  "I told you it was a man. I told you he had a tattoo on his face. Do you see a tattoo on either of their faces?"

  Taylor said, "I was just eliminating . . ." But she was already gone, catching up to the stretcher. Taylor shot another glare toward us. Spoon actually gave him a thumbs-up, as though he'd done a good job. Again, with that facial expression, you couldn't tell if Spoon was goofing on him or sincere. Based on the mama line, I assumed the former.

  "Get out of here," Taylor said.

  We headed back down the brick walk. The man I assumed was Ashley's father was loaded into the back of the ambulance. A police officer was talking to Mrs. Kent. Two other cops were talking near us. I heard the words home invasion and felt my chest tighten.

  Now or never.

  I ran over before anyone could stop me. "Mrs. Kent?"

  She stopped and frowned at me. "Who are you?"

  "My name is Mickey Bolitar. I'm a friend of Ashley's."

  She said nothing for a second. Her eyes shifted to the right, then back toward me. "What do you want?"

  "I just want to make sure Ashley is okay."

  When she shook her head, I felt my knees buckle. But then she said something I never expected: "Who?"

  "Ashley," I said. "Your daughter."

  "I don't have a daughter. And I don't know anyone named Ashley."

  chapter 5

  HER WORDS PARALYZED ME.

  Mrs. Kent stepped into the back of the ambulance. The cops chased us away. When we reached the bottom of Prema Estates, Spoon and I split up and headed to our respective homes. I called the Coddington Rehab Center on my way, but they told me that my mother was in session and it was too late to talk or visit tonight. That was fine. She was coming home tomorrow morning anyway.

  Uncle Myron's car, a Ford Taurus, was in the driveway. When I opened the front door, Myron called out, "Mickey?"

  "Homework," I said, hurrying into my bedroom in the basement to avoid him. For many years, including his stint in high school, the basement had been Myron's bedroom. Nothing in it had changed since. The wood paneling was flimsy and stuck on with two-sided tape. There was a beanbag chair that leaked small pellets. Faded posters of basketball greats from the 1970s, guys like John "Hondo" Havlicek and Walt "Clyde" Frazier, adorned the walls. I confess that I loved the posters. Most of the room was like lame retro. But nobody was cooler than Hondo and Clyde.

  I did my math homework. I don't dislike math, but is there anything more boring than math homework? I read a little Oscar Wilde for English and practiced vocabulary for French. When I was done, I grilled myself a cheeseburger on the barbecue.

  Had Mrs. Kent lied to me? And why?

  I couldn't fathom a reason, which led immediately to the next question.

  Had Ashley lied to me? And why?

  I tried to run through the possibilities in my brain, but nothing came to me. With dinner over, I grabbed the basketball, flipped on the outdoor lights, and started to shoot. I play every day. I do my best thinking when I shoot hoops.

  The court is my escape and my paradise.

  I love basketball. I love the way you can be exhausted and sweaty and running with nine other guys, and yet, at the risk of sounding overly Zen, you are still so wonderfully alone. On the court, nothing bothers me. I see things a few seconds before they actually happen. I love anticipating a teammate's cut and then throwing a bounce pass between two defenders. I love the rebound, boxing out, figuring angles and positioning myself, willing the ball into my hands. I love dribbling without looking down, the feel, the sense of trust, of control, almost as though the ball were on a leash. I love catching the pass, locking my eyes on the front rim, sliding my fingers into the grooves, raising the ball above my head, cocking my wrist as I begin to leap. I love the feel as I release the shot at the apex of the jump, the way my fingertips stay on the leather until the last possible moment, the way I slowly come back to the ground, the way the ball moves in an arc toward the rim, the way the bottom of the net dances when the ball goes swish.

  I moved now around the blacktop, taking shots, grabbing my own rebounds, moving to another spot. I played games in my head, pretending LeBron or Kobe or even Clyde and Hondo were covering me. I took foul shots, hearing the sportscaster in my head announcing that I, Mickey Bolitar, had two foul shots and my team was down by one and there was no time left on the clock and it was game seven of the NBA Finals.

  I let myself get deliriously lost in the bliss.

  I had been shooting for an hour when the back door opened. Uncle Myron came out. He didn't say a word. He moved under the basket and started grabbing rebounds and passing the ball back to me. I moved through the shots in around-the-world fashion, starting in the right corner and moving to my left, taking a shot every yard or so, until I ended up in the opposite corner.

  Myron just rebounded for me. He got it, the need for silence right now. This, in a sense, was our church. We understood respect. So for a while he let it go. When I signaled that I wanted to take a break, he spoke for the first time.

  "Your father used to do this for me," Myron said. "I would shoot. He would rebound."

  My father had done the same for me too, but I didn't feel like sharing that.

  Myron's eyes welled up. They well up a lot. Myron was overly emotional. He was always trying to raise the subject of my father with me. We would drive past a Chinese restaurant and he'd say, "Your father loved the pork fried dumplings here," or we'd go past the Little League field and he'd say, "I remember when your father hit a ground-rule double when he was nine to win a game."

  I never responded.

  "One night," Myron went on, "your father and I played a game of horse that went on for three hours. Think about that. We finally agreed to call it a draw when we both had H-O-R-S for thirty straight minutes. Thirty straight minutes. You should have seen it."

  "Sounds epic," I said in my flattest monotone.

  Myron laughed. "God, you're a wiseass."

  "No, no, a game of horse. You and Dad must have been party animals."

  Myron laughed some more and then we fell into silence. I started for the door when he said, "Mickey?"

  I turned toward him.

  "I'll drive you and your mom tomorrow morning. Then I'll leave you two alone."

  I nodded a thanks.

  Myron grabbed the basketball and started shooting. It was his escape too. Not long ago, I found an old clip of his injury on YouTube. Myron was wearing a Boston Celtics jersey with the horrible short-shorts they wore in those days. He'd been pivoting on his right leg when Burt Wesson, a bruiser on the Washington Bullets, slammed into him. Myron's leg bent in a way it was never supposed to. You could hear the snap even in the old video.

  I watched him another second or two, noticing the startling similarities in the release on our jump shots. I started to go back into the house when a thought made me pause. After his injury Myron became a sports agent. That's how my parents met--Myron was going to represent the teen tennis sensation Kitty Hammer, aka my mother. Eventually Myron branched out to represent not just athletes but people in the arts, theater, and music. He even repped rock star Lex Ryder, half of the duo that made up the group HorsePower.

  Mom had known HorsePower. So had Dad. Myron represented them. And Bat Lady had their first album, which had to be thirty years old now, on her turntable.

  I turned back to Myron. He stopped shooting and looked back at me. "What's wrong?"

  "Do you know anything about the Bat Lady?" I asked.

  He frowned. "The old house on the corner of Pine and Hobart Gap?"

  "Yes."

  "Wow. Bat Lady. She has
to be long dead."

  "What makes you say that?"

  "I don't know. I can't believe kids still make up stories about her."

  "What kind of stories?"

  "She was like the town bogeyman," he said. "Supposedly she kidnapped children. People claimed they saw her bringing children to her house late at night, stuff like that."

  "Did you ever see her?" I asked.

  "Me? No." Myron spun the ball on his fingers, staring at it a little too intently. "But I think your father did."

  I wondered if this was yet another attempt by Myron to bring up my father, but no, that didn't seem to be Myron's style. He was a lot of things, my uncle, but he wasn't a liar.

  "Can you tell me about it?"

  I could see that Myron wanted to ask why, but he also didn't want to ruin the moment. I didn't talk to him much and never about my dad. He didn't want to risk me clamming back up. "I'm trying to think," he said, rubbing his chin. "Your dad must have been twelve, maybe thirteen, I don't remember. Anyway, we walked past that house our whole lives. You know the stories about it already, and you've lived here only a few weeks. So you can imagine. One time, your father and I, we were young then, he was maybe seven, I was twelve or so, we went to a horror movie at the Colony and we decided to walk back. It got dark and started to rain and we walked past some older kids. They chased us and started yelling how the Bat Lady was going to get us. Your father was so scared he started to cry."

  Myron stopped and looked off. He was fighting off tears again.

  "After that night, your dad was always afraid of the Bat Lady's house. I mean, like I said, we were all creeped out, but your father didn't even want to walk past it. He had nightmares about the house. I remember he went to a sleepover party and he woke up screaming about the Bat Lady coming to get him. The kids teased him about it. You know how it is."

  I nodded that I did.

  "So one Friday night, Brad is out with friends. That's what we used to do back then. We'd just hang out at night. So anyway, it's getting dark and they're bored, so one thing leads to another and the friends challenge Brad to knock on Bat Lady's door. He doesn't want to, but your father was not one to lose face."

  "So what happened next?"

  "He approached Bat Lady's house. It was pitch dark. No lights were on. His friends stayed across the street. They figured he'd knock and then run. Well, he knocked, but he didn't run. His friends all waited to see if Bat Lady answered the door. But that's not what happened. Instead they saw your father turn the knob and go inside."

  I almost gasped. "On his own?"

  "Yep. He disappeared inside, and his friends waited for him to come out. They waited a long time. But he didn't come back. After a while, they figured that Brad was playing a trick on them. You know. The house was empty, so all Brad did was sneak out the back--trying to scare them by not coming out."

  I took a step closer to Myron. "So what did happen?"

  "One of your dad's old friends, Alan Bender, well, he didn't buy that. So when your dad didn't show up for two hours, he was terrified. He ran to our house to get help or at least tell someone. I remember he was out of breath and all wide eyed. I was out back here shooting, just like, well, tonight. Alan told me that he saw Brad go into Bat Lady's house and that he didn't come out."

  "Were Grandma and Grandpa home?"

  "No, they were out to dinner. It was a Friday night. We didn't have cell phones back then. So I ran back with Alan. I started pounding on Bat Lady's door, but there was no answer. Alan said that he saw your dad just turn the knob and walk in. So I tried that, but the door was locked now. From inside, I thought I could hear music playing."

  "Music?"

  "Yeah. It was weird. I started freaking out. I tried to kick in the door, if you could believe it, but it held. I told Alan to run to the neighbor's house and have them call the police. So Alan takes off. And just as he does, the front door opens and your father walks out. Just like that. He looks so serene. I ask him if he's okay. He says, sure, fine."

  "What else did he say?"

  "That's it."

  "Didn't you ask him what he'd been doing for two hours?"

  "Of course."

  "And?"

  "He never said."

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. "Never?"

  Myron shook his head. "Never. But something happened. Something big."

  "What do you mean?"

  "He was different after that, your father."

  "How?"

  "I don't know. More thoughtful maybe. More mature. I thought it was just because he faced his fears. But maybe there was more to it than that. A few weeks ago, Grandpa told me that he always knew your dad would run off--that he was meant to be a nomad. I never quite bought that. But I think that started, that feeling that your dad was meant to wander, after he visited the Bat Lady's house."

  chapter 6

  SLEEP DIDN'T COME easily that night.

  I thought about Bat Lady. I thought about Ashley. But mostly I thought about my mother coming home in the morning. At seven A.M., Myron drove me to the Coddington Rehabilitation Institute. The drive was only about ten minutes, but it felt ten times longer. When we arrived, I jumped out of the car before it even came to a stop. Myron called out to me that he'd wait out here. I waved thanks in mid-sprint.

  The security guard nodded and called me by name as I flew by him. Everyone here knows me. I visit my mother every day, except when their protocol doesn't allow it.

  Christine Shippee owned the place, but she also liked to work the front desk. Her facial expression was permanently set on grumpy, peering intensely at everyone through a Plexiglas window. I nodded at her and rushed through a lobby that reminded me of a fancy hotel. I stopped at the entrance so she could buzz me right in. She didn't. I walked over to where she sat.

  She studied me for a moment. "Good morning, Mickey."

  "Good morning, Mrs. Shippee."

  "Big day," Christine said.

  "Yep."

  "I've warned you all about the pitfalls."

  "You have."

  "And I've told you how the chances of relapse are somewhat high."

  "Several times."

  "Super." Christine Shippee looked at me over her reading glasses. "Then there's no need to repeat myself."

  "None."

  She gestured with her head toward the door. "Go. Your mother is waiting."

  I tried not to break into a sprint again, instead doing a little gallop down the corridor. When I entered her room and saw my mother, I broke into a smile. She looked great. For the past six weeks, she had been locked up in this place, detoxing, doing both group and individual therapy, taking pensive walks, exercising, eating right.

  The day before Myron brought her here, my mother had gone out late to a seedy bar to get a fix. I used my fake ID--yes, I have a very good one--to get into the bar. I found her with a skuzzy guy, both half passed out, looking like something a cat had spit up.

  Now the poison was out of her system. She looked like, well, my mom again.

  Kitty--she wanted me to call her that for some reason, but I never did--hugged me and then she took my face in her hands. "I love you so much," she said.

  "I love you too."

  She winked and gestured to the door. "Let's get out of here before they change their minds."

  "Good idea."

  My mom was Kitty Hammer, and as I implied before, if that name rings a bell, you're probably a big-time tennis fan. When she was sixteen, Kitty Hammer was the number-one-ranked junior tennis player in the country. Mom was on track to be the next Venus or Billie Jean or Steffi, except something derailed her career for good:

  She got pregnant with yours truly.

  The world wasn't ready for my parents' relationship, I guess, so they ran off to parts unknown. Everyone predicted that the marriage would not last. Everyone was wrong. My mom and dad lived the corniest of love stories, and as I got older, it embarrassed me to no end. It was the kind of love that makes pe
ople jealous--and makes them cringe.

  I used to want that kind of love for myself one day. Who doesn't, right? But I don't anymore. The problem with an all-consuming love like theirs is what happens when you lose it. Love like theirs turns two into one--so when my dad died, it was like ripping one entity in half, destroying my mom too. When we buried my father, I watched her crumble, like a puppet with its strings cut, and there was nothing I could do.

  I learned a lesson from all this: that kind of obsessive storybook love was not for me. The end price was simply too high. While I liked Ashley a lot--while I cared about her and enjoyed my time with her--I would never let her or any girl get too close. Maybe she sensed that. Maybe that was why she ran away and never told me. Maybe that was why I should stop looking for her.

  Uncle Myron was waiting for us next to his car. I tensed up as we approached. To say that the relationship between my mother and Myron was strained would be a gross understatement. They pretty much hated each other. It was Myron, six weeks ago, who had threatened to take me away from her if she didn't agree to intensive rehabilitation.

  I was surprised then when she walked up to him and gently kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you."

  He nodded, said nothing.

  My mother has always been frighteningly honest with me. She was barely seventeen when she got pregnant with me, my dad nineteen. Myron thought that she had trapped my father. Myron called her names, even telling my dad that the baby--me--probably wasn't even his. It culminated in a fight between the two brothers that ripped them apart in a way that meant they would never be brought back together.

  I know all this because my mother told me. She never forgave Myron for what he said about her. But here Mom was, fresh out of rehab, letting go of the past, surprising him, surprising me, and maybe that was the best sign of all.

  As promised, Uncle Myron just dropped us off and left. "I'll be at the office if you need anything," he said. "The spare car is in the garage if you need one."

  "Thank you," Mom said. "Thank you for everything."

  Myron had converted the ground-level office into a bedroom for my mother. I would be in the basement below while Myron had the master bedroom upstairs. Most nights, before I came into his life, Myron stayed in a famous apartment building in Manhattan. My hope was, now that my mother was home, he'd go back to that routine and give us some privacy until we could get on our feet and find a place of our own.