Midtown Manhattan, New York City
An hour later Jack saw her.
His mother came along the sidewalk, walking in her stiff, formal way, wearing a light blue raincoat. Her hair was impeccably styled and more gray streaked it than he remembered. She held bags from a local artisan grocery, and the plastic bulged with her purchases. He crossed the street, cutting toward her.
Please don’t turn away, he thought. Please don’t.
He stood and he waited for her to come to him. ‘Hi, Mom.’
She stopped and glanced up from the sheltering curve of the umbrella and seemed to study him as though he were a picture she’d found in a drawer, and couldn’t place when and where it had been taken. Every moment of her silence was an agony. He wanted the concrete beneath his feet to open like a chasm and swallow him. Drops of rain curtained off her tilted umbrella. ‘Jack. Hello.’ She just didn’t seem… surprised.
He reached for the bag of groceries. ‘Those look heavy.’ He could see in the bag rice and chicken, but also Oreos, apples, jalapeno potato chips. Weird, she still bought his favorites.
She allowed him to take them. ‘Yes, they are. Thank you.’
‘Could we talk for a minute?’
‘For just a minute?’ she asked and now he heard the slight edge of pain in her voice.
‘Not for long. I know you’re busy, Mom.’ It had been the litany of his youth: not now, Jack, I’m busy. Yes, darling, I’ll look at your painting in a minute, Mama’s busy. I can help you with your math later, Jack, right now I’m busy. And finally: what do the police want to talk to you about, I’ve got a meeting with the Ambassador. He remembered announcing once, when he was nine, that he was Ambassador of Kidonia, the nation of kids, and she’d laughed and hugged him and not realized he was begging for her attention. He was proud of himself for keeping the bitterness out of his voice.
‘Actually, I’m not, and I’m very pleased to see you.’ She reached over and gave him an awkward hug. The last hug he’d gotten from her was when he graduated early from NYU, two years ago. Before the FBI showed up at the doorstep, looking for him. He resisted the urge to embrace her, to seize her hard in a hug from which she couldn’t easily escape.
She put a hand on the side of his face. He tried not to close his eyes in relief. ‘What happened to you? Your neck, that’s a surgical scar.’
‘I was in an accident.’ They shot me Mom, I got shot. Your son got shot. But he couldn’t say this, even the thought of the words rising in his throat made him sick.
‘What accident?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Of course it matters, Jack. Why didn’t you call me? Where have you been?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ The nakedness of the lie nearly made him gasp but instead he just held on tight to his mother. After a moment her hands touched his back, pressed into his flesh, cautiously.
‘Jack, are you all right? Perhaps we should go inside.’ A bit of panic edged her voice.
He pulled back from her and he felt, mixed with the wet air, tears on his face. He felt mortified. She said nothing as he wiped them away with the back of his hand. Her own face was dry, as it always was.
‘Have you come back to turn yourself in to the police?’
She was a diplomat, so he gave the diplomatic answer. ‘Yes. I’m tired of running, I’m tired of hiding. I wanted to see you first. Before I go to the police.’ No, Mom, I came to say goodbye, he wanted to say. Goodbye forever. I shouldn’t have come. It’s too hard.
‘Well come inside, we’ll have some coffee and we’ll call the lawyers.’
She was still briskly efficient, he thought. ‘I just want us to talk first. You and me. Before lawyers, okay?’
His mother hurried him past the doorman and they rode in silence in the elevator, up to the apartment. He wanted to look at her face but instead he watched the umbrella weep leftover rain onto the floor. Jack stepped inside and despite the muggy warmness of the spring day he felt chilled. The apartment was as he remembered: magazine-perfect, accented with her collection of Chinese art on the red walls, along with photos of his mother with presidents, business leaders, diplomats, and other notables. Art from her various postings in the State Department: Hong Kong, Vietnam, South Korea, Peru, Luxembourg. It was as though she’d played magpie around the world, plucking beauty wherever she stopped, decorating a nest where no other birds wished to live. There was a family picture of himself and his father, off in a corner. On the periphery of his mother’s life, the edge of the circle.
‘Would you like some decaf?’ she asked.
‘Do you have any regular coffee? I’m zonked.’
‘Um, no. I now find too much caffeine disruptive.’
Only a food could be disruptive to you, Mom, he thought. Jack felt torn by need and resentment, two ends of the same rope, tugging straight through him. ‘Decaf is great.’
‘Are you hungry?’
‘No.’ He followed her into the kitchen, watched her putter with the coffee maker. ‘How are you, Mom?’ I shouldn’t have come here. The sudden temptation to tell her everything, lay out an epic confession of the danger he faced, to ask her for help was overwhelming. Say your goodbyes, and go, and don’t look back, ever. No good will come of anything else.
‘I’m all right.’
‘You still consulting?’
‘Yes, here and there. Thinking of writing another book.’
‘I’m glad.’
She poured water into the coffee maker. ‘Jack, where have you been hiding?’
‘The Netherlands.’
‘I suppose I should have considered that as a possibility. So many young people from around the world, crowding around the canals. You went there for the drugs, I suppose.’
‘No, Mom, I went to grad school. I tried pot but frankly I would rather read a good book or see a movie.’
She blinked. A smile wavered near her mouth. ‘Grad school. On the run from the police, you go back to school.’
‘Well, under an assumed name.’
‘How did you get a new identity? Transcripts? How did you pay for tuition?’ Then she raised her hand, as if warding off a flash of fire. ‘Never mind. Best I don’t know what additional crimes you’ve committed. You can tell the attorney. My God, now the Dutch will be bringing up charges against you.’
Including manslaughter, he thought, maybe. Best not to go there.
‘I would like to see Dad’s grave.’
‘There is no grave. I had him cremated. He’s in the study.’
‘He’s here?’
Now she turned back toward the coffee maker. ‘Of course, did you think I threw him out?’
‘They call it spreading the ashes, Mom.’
‘Well, he’s still here.’
He wandered back into the den. An urn sat atop a large bookshelf, next to a row of volumes on art history. It was very pretty. He felt tears hot inside his face, aching for release. He glanced at the desk, at the carpet, the grief a well in him, deep and dark, and every awful memory rushed back in an unbidden surge.
‘How could you be so thoughtless?’ His father’s voice rising in shock and shame. ‘The police want to arrest you. What you’ve done is a felony.’
‘I know.’
‘A felony! What the hell did your mother and I ever do to you to deserve this? You’ve destroyed your life, do you understand that? Over what? Pranks? Proving that you’re smarter than everyone else? Because all you’ve done, Jack, is prove that you’re stupid beyond compare.’
‘Yes. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
‘Sorry you did it or that you were caught?’
‘I don’t know. I just did it.’
‘You’re not innocent? It’s not a mistake?’
‘No, sir. I did it all.’
‘Why? Why? Did you sell the information you stole?’
‘No. I don’t know why I did it.’
‘You expect me… ’ his father caught his breath, ‘you expect me to believe that a boy as smart as you is incapable of knowing his own motives?’
‘I just did it, it’s done.’ Jack’s voice broke. ‘I love you, Dad, I’m sorry. I love you.’
‘You love me? Then why do you flush your future down the toilet?’
‘That’s all you care about, my future?’
‘Are you trying to suggest you did this for our attention, Jack? Oh, please. That’s such a shallow reason. Babyish, almost.’
‘I don’t know why. I just don’t.’
The agony in his father’s eyes had cut Jack more deftly than any ax. Then his father had sat down at his desk, pulled a yellow legal pad toward him, picked up a pencil. He began scribbling thoughts on the paper. ‘We have to start considering your options. Your mother… and I… ’
And then his father, bunching up the cloth of his shirt over his chest with a surprised fist, saying ‘That’s not right… ’ and then collapsing to the carpet.
His mother, hurrying in, screaming his father’s name. Jack grabbing the phone, calling 9-1-1, pleading for the ambulance to hurry.
He’d set the phone down and then his mother, very calmly, said: ‘Get out.’
‘The ambulance is coming, Mom.’
‘Get out.’
‘I can’t, I won’t leave him.’
‘You did this. Your selfish stupidity did this to him and I want you gone.’ She knelt by her husband; she didn’t look at her son. ‘You have to go or the police will arrest you.’
‘Mom, I can’t leave Dad.’
‘You know, in jail, there will be no computers. I don’t quite know what you will do.’ Odd, her calm.
‘I don’t care.’
‘He’s dead.’ His mother looked at him with a fierce, burning glare that frightened him, because it was hatred. ‘You’ve taken him away from me. Go. Get out of my sight right now, Jack. I don’t ever want to see you again.’
He had turned and ran and when he went out of the building the ambulance was at the curb, lights flashing, too late.
*
His mother stood in the doorway, watching him stare at the urn. ‘I think, from a legalistic standpoint, Jack, you should surrender to an attorney immediately.’
‘I wanted a night here, Mom. At home first. Please.’
‘Of course.’ But the tension was tight in those two words. As if she was the one who was going to be in trouble. She walked back into the kitchen; he followed her.
‘I’ll stay out of sight. I know what you said before – but if you didn’t want to see me you wouldn’t have let me come up here. Don’t you want to spend time with me?’ She didn’t answer; she upended the precisely measured water into the brewer. The maker began to chug.
‘Of course,’ she said again. She was turning over his crimes in her head; he knew the pinched look on her face. What he had done here was nothing compared to his misdeeds in Amsterdam. Well, I hacked for some bad guys. I didn’t know how bad they were but now they want me dead and I have a notebook that they want so badly they will kill me for it because it will blow them open and I don’t even understand what I know means and I’m going to sell it to the CIA and you’ll never see me again, Mom. But you were already resigned to never seeing me again .
‘I think tomorrow we should call a defense lawyer.’
‘You’re right, Mom. Tomorrow, okay?’
His mother turned to him, an uncertain smile on her face. ‘I’m right? Um, you’ve never said that before. I don’t know what to say.’
‘I wouldn’t say I told you so. Maybe just enjoy being right. For once.’
She surprised him with a laugh. ‘All right, I’ll bask in the glow. I am happy to see you, Jack, I really am.’
‘Mom… ’
The awkward silence felt like a curtain. Neither seemed to know what to say, how to lay the first plank in the bridge.
‘I wish I hadn’t gone to Amsterdam, Mom.’ He wanted to grab the words hanging in the air. What had possessed him to confess this? It was pointless. He’d only come to say goodbye before he vanished to Australia or Fiji or Thailand or wherever he went with the CIA money. What was he hoping for? She didn’t know what he was here for. She was just someone to whom he needed to say goodbye. ‘Jail would have been better. At some point I’d have been free. Now I never will be.’
She said nothing and the coffee maker gurgled in the quiet. ‘What kind of new trouble are you in, Jack?’
The back of his eyes felt warm. He blinked. ‘I’m not in any trouble, Mom. Any new trouble.’ He forced his emotions down, but the heat kept rising into his throat.
‘Don’t you lie to me, Jack. I know… I didn’t help you very much before.’ She twisted the dishrag in her hands. ‘Let me help you now.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You can.’
‘I… I got involved with some bad people… Some really bad people, Mom, I didn’t know how bad… ’
She took a step forward. ‘Tell me.’
‘They… nearly got me killed. I got shot. Hurt bad. Then in the hospital, they sent a guy to kill me.’
He saw her go pale with shock. ‘Oh, my God, Jack.’
‘I killed the guy. I killed him and I got away and I think they will try and kill me again.’
His mother knotted the dishrag. She didn’t take a step toward him and he could see her playing out the possibilities of what they should do next in her mind. ‘It was self-defense,’ he said.
‘Tell me what happened.’
He did.
‘Did you see the gun before you hit him?’
The question felt like a shove. ‘He shot at me. Mom, for God’s sakes, don’t you believe me?’
‘Yes. Of course. And then you fled.’
‘Yes.’
‘And then what?’
He did not want to tell her about the notebook. Right now it lay taped to the small of his back. ‘Then a friend helped me get out of the Netherlands. On a Belgian passport.’ He said this in the tone that he might once have used to admit he cut school.
‘You entered the United States under false pretenses, with the Dutch police looking for you?’
‘I had to.’
‘Jack, you always have to do the exact opposite of what you should do.’ She put the dishrag on the counter. ‘Perhaps something strong with our coffee.’
‘Mom. I’m sorry.’
Then she surprised him: ‘Don’t apologize, Jack. Not for surviving. Not for staying alive.’
‘I said more than I meant to.’
She had been walking toward the counter and his words stopped her in her tracks. ‘More than you meant to? You weren’t going to be honest with me?’
‘I was going to be honest with the lawyer,’ he lied. ‘I didn’t want to burden you.’
‘Oh, Jack. You think I’m the delicate widow?’
It was two jabs in one. ‘You’re not delicate, Mom. I don’t need to be reminded you’re a widow. You’re still a mother.’ The words spilled out like quicksilver, faster than he could stop them.
‘You’re right. You’re right. The way I spoke to you when your father died… well, it’s done now. You cannot blame me for you running away and getting into deeper trouble.’
He blinked. ‘I don’t blame you at all, Mom.’
‘Of course you do. You blame me for being a bad mother. You think I’m a bad mother.’
‘No. I don’t.’ He couldn’t look at her face.
She mercifully changed the subject. ‘Why exactly are these people after you?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I’m going to cancel my appointments this afternoon,’ she said. ‘We’ll plan out a strategy. Just you and me. They want you dead because you know something?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘What?’
‘Well, I don’t know anything. But they think I do.’ Telling her the truth was only putting her in danger. He couldn’t do that. He’d lost his father to his mistakes; he was not going to lose his mother.
‘All right. But you have information you can give the police. We need to be able to make a deal, Jack. That’s what I’m asking. What’s your leverage?’
Always the diplomat, always the deal maker. He wanted to turn around and leave. Just walk out the door. Would she call the police on him before he reached the elevator? Or would she let her only son simply vanish again, because in the end it would be less trouble for her?
‘I can give them some names. Guys in Amsterdam and New York.’
‘Well, then. That’s a start. But surely if they want you dead, you know more than that.’
‘Not really.’
‘Why don’t… I know you’re exhausted. Why don’t you go get showered? Your clothes – they should still fit, I kept them all.’
‘Mom.’
‘I knew you’d come home.’
You have more faith than I did, Jack thought. Suddenly the idea of his old room felt like heaven. A cocoon to transform himself, where he could be the old harmless Jack Ming again, not be the kid being chased by the bad guys, not be the guy sneaking into his own country under a false name, not be the disappointing son coming and confessing his sins to his mother. ‘I don’t want to talk to the lawyer until tomorrow, though, Mom. Okay? We’ll call him in the morning.’ He would get what he needed here, for the meeting with the CIA, and then he would vanish. This was the goodbye to his mother, every moment of it.
She poured him a cup of coffee and he drank it down in silence. It was delicious. His mother always made good coffee, and he thought it funny that this was the comfort food he remembered of her: not peanut butter sandwiches or handmade ice cream or wonton noodles, but coffee. She’d let him start drinking it too young. Never objecting when he’d dump a dollop from the coffee pot into his milk. Just to see what she would do.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asked him. Now she sounded like a mom.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, why don’t you go shower and get into some fresh clothes, and I’ll make us lunch. Then we can talk.’
‘All right.’
She went to the refrigerator and opened it, peering inside, clearly hopeful that appropriate ingredients would be present. He went into his room. It seemed to be an echo of his old life: the framed certificate of achievements from his school in math, the worn paperbacks he’d plowed through as a kid, a neat stack of video games of which he’d explored every detail of every level. A row of CDs he’d forgotten he’d owned, bands that screeched about suburban angst. He thought he’d known then what feeling trapped was like, and, oh, was he wrong.
He turned on the shower, waited, flicked fingers beneath the water. Cold. He wanted it as hot as possible, to rinse the dirt of Amsterdam off himself. He hated to stand by a shower to wait for it to warm. He could go get what he needed while the shower heated; his mother was busy in the kitchen.
He ducked out of his room, padded down the hallway to his father’s study. Weird to think of Mom living here in an apartment that seemed more dedicated to men who had left her than to her own life. He ducked into the office. He stepped quickly around the desk – his dad’s heart had stuttered and failed, standing in front of that desk, and he didn’t like to let his gaze linger on the spot; it creeped him out: he could still hear the thud of the body striking the floor.
He opened the desk drawer. The keys to all seven buildings his father owned in the New York area remained in their places. Mother hadn’t sold them, thank God, and he knew better than to ask. He sat at the computer and brought up the Ming Properties website. The Williamsburg, Brooklyn, property was still empty. His father had not been willing to make the investment to renovate it alone and he’d died before he found a partner. Mom hadn’t done anything about it, either, and thank God. He took the one set of keys and tucked them into his pocket. She wouldn’t think to miss them, not with his surrender – his disappearance – on her mind.
Next to the keys: his father’s gun. He’d gotten it when he used to own buildings in neighborhoods that weren’t quite gentrified yet. Jack lifted the gun and studied it. He inspected the clip: three shots in it. He double-checked on the safety and he stuck it into his pocket. It felt awkward. He would put it in his knapsack.
He went back toward the shower – it should be nice and steamy now – and it was then that he heard the quiet of her voice. She must have thought he was still in the shower.
She stood, her back to him, speaking softly, over the hiss of boiling water. ‘Yes. He’s here. Where do you want me to bring him?’
He stood back from the door, the notebook itching in the small of his back.
‘No. I won’t do that. But I want to make a deal for him.’
Shock reached inside him and wrenched his stomach. She had lied. Who the hell was she calling? A lawyer.
‘So where do you want me to bring him?’
Bring him. You promised, Mom. He listened to his mother, sewing up his betrayal.
‘Send a car for us. He might… resist.’ She dumped noodles into the pot. She stirred in chopped vegetables. He took a step backward. ‘Not sure I can get him out of the apartment without help.’
Resist? A chill flicked along his spine.
‘No. No one else saw him. He wants to hunker down here today.’ Silence. ‘I am so glad you called me about him. Thank you.’
Jack Ming stepped slowly back from the kitchen. He tiptoed back to his room, back to the hissing steam of the shower. He grabbed his backpack. He left the shower jetting against the porcelain, the steam curling from the bathroom like fingers raised in farewell. He spared his childhood room a final, bitter glance. And then he hurried toward the door.
‘Jack?’ his mother’s voice sliced across the room.
He glanced back at her.
‘Goodbye, Mom,’ he said.
‘You lied to me!’ she said. And he knew she meant the shower, that she was the one outraged that he had not done what he said.
‘Goodbye. Forever. I still love you.’
‘Jack, wait! Wait! They can make all the charges go away. They called me, all right, they called me first… ’
She knew I was coming? Panic flushed through him. He ran, not wanting to wait for the elevator, feet hammering down the stairs.
He bolted into the lobby and out onto the street. He ran the whole way to the 59th Street subway station. He got onto the first train that arrived. He sat huddled on the cold plastic bench, holding the backpack close to him.
Send someone. He might resist. Who the hell had she been talking to? Who would call her before he arrived?
This can’t be. Not my mom.
He rode down to Union Square and then he changed trains and rode the L train into Brooklyn, getting off at Bedford Avenue station in Williamsburg. Trust no one, he thought. So much for help and shelter from his mother.
He exited onto Driggs Avenue and crossed the street and watched the faces of those who’d left the train with him. Could his mother have called someone? Could he have been followed? Her betrayal cut him to the point he could not breathe.
They can make all the charges go away. Then who the hell were they?
He was going to have to be very careful. A plan began to form in his mind.