The O Henry Prize Stories 2005

I assured him that she did, but I was surprised to find myself hurt that he cared about Mother more than about me. I’d thought of us as the new threesome, now that his lady friends were out of the picture. “My father has a lady friend,” I said to Harry, and told him about the postal I’d received the day before. He listened to me intently, frowning, and without saying a word. I expected him to express shock and outrage, to jump up and do something, or to at least promise to do something. When he continued to lie there, silent and unmoving, I felt a cold anger welling underneath my mud-warmed skin. I’d confided in him because, despite all the games we were playing, I believed that he would want to help us. I’d thought he was our friend.

That night at dinner I watched him joking and talking with Mother, listening to her silly replies. They didn’t seem to notice that I wasn’t participating in their little charade. I realized, with a sickening feeling, that I had served my purpose and was now expendable. I didn’t like the way he stared at Mother, and I didn’t like the way she gazed back at him. I’d never seen her look at anyone else that way. It was as if she’d been infected by some strange virus and couldn’t help herself. I sulked through dinner, refusing to meet their eyes, grunting and shrugging when I was addressed. Before Mother could finish her cherry Bavarian cream, I told her I was tired and wanted to turn in early. I hoped she would read in bed and keep me company, but she tucked me in and said she was going back down to sit on the porch. It was too hot to read upstairs, she said. Did I mind?

“What happened to the parrot lady?” I asked Mother, who was brushing her hair in front of the mirror. “And Sylvia? Where’d they go? Maybe he rubbed them out.”

She rewound her hair in a bun and dug a tortoiseshell comb into it. “Don’t be silly,” she said.

“Harry says this place is a con game,” I said. “He says the mud is just ordinary.”

“Go to sleep,” she said.

I lay in bed, sweating in my nightshirt, imagining how I was going to get even. I considered calling the cops and ratting on Harry; then I decided to write a letter to Father, not mentioning Harry but asking him to come and get us. I was sorry that I’d ratted on my father, and I asked God for forgiveness. I finally dozed off. When I woke up, a full moon hung outside my window, and Mother's bed was still empty. I clambered out of bed, ignoring the throbbing in my knee, and hopped to the window, where I stuck my head outside, hoping to feel a breeze on my face.

Then I heard Mother and Harry talking on the porch. Their voices were quiet and intimate. I heard no teasing or laughing, no protesting or measured politeness. For the first time since we’d been there, I was hearing the sound of honest speech, and it spooked me. I couldn’t see them, and strain as I might, I couldn’t make out their words. Were they sitting side by side? Or standing, looking up at the moon? A sharp, stabbing pain went through my knee, and I collapsed on the floor. As I lay there, stinging truths seeped into my conscious mind, drop by drop. Something was very wrong with my knee. I would never be an Olympic champion. I would never jump again. Never use my leg again. Never.

I crawled underneath the bed and curled up in a ball. Mother finally found me there when she came in. “My God!” she said. “What's happened?” She kneeled in front of the bed, sounding satisfyingly terrified.

I rolled out from my hiding place. “My knee's been hurting worse and worse,” I said. “It's not getting better.” I started to cry then, relieved to be telling the truth, but feeling that I was tricking her all the same, and doing it for her own good. For our own good.

She laid a cool hand on my forehead. “We’ll see the doctor first thing in the morning,” she said, and I could hear the despair in her voice. “I’m sorry. I’m a terrible mother. I’ll never forgive myself.”

I closed my eyes and said nothing.

The next morning Mother found the Mudlavia doctor playing poker in Sin City, and he advised her to take me immediately to a hospital. Mother notified my father and made arrangements; we sat in the lobby with our suitcases all morning, waiting to leave. Many people stopped to wish us well, including Buster. He bowed to Mother and shook my hand. “The Human Frog didn’t go to the Olympics till he was twenty-six,” Buster said. “Remember that.” I could give him only a distracted smile. Harry never appeared, and Mother never left my side. That afternoon she and I began a journey to Chicago's Augustana Hospital. The doctor declared that I had a malignant tumor in my knee, and half my leg had to be removed. If we’d waited much longer, the surgeon told us, I might be dead.

We returned to Lafayette, where I was fitted with a wooden prosthesis and began my life as a cripple, learning to hobble around my bedroom with the help of Mother and Dottie B. My mother acted falsely chipper and then wept periodically in her bedroom, muffled, gasping sobs. I assumed she was crying for me and feeling guilty, but the situation was more complicated than that. Three months later, when I could finally manage to get downstairs on my own, using a cane, I told Mother I was going to walk across the street, alone, to Dottie B.’s. I can’t remember if she encouraged or discouraged me, but it wouldn’t have mattered. I was determined to go.

Since I’d last been outside, the seasons had changed. The world had gone gray and cold. It was only midafternoon, but the lights were already shining in Dottie's house. I left Mother standing on our porch, arms folded, watching me go. When I reached Dottie's front steps and turned to wave, she’d already gone back inside. Did she act different right before I left? I couldn’t say, because I’d been preoccupied with making my escape, with getting some relief from her weeping.

A couple of hours later I returned home, sweating with exhaustion. When I called for Mother, she didn’t answer. Upstairs, in my parents’ bedroom, I saw that her clothes were gone from the wardrobe. I rummaged around the house for a note, all the while knowing I’d never find one. She had taken the sudden opportunity to leave, and she hadn’t wanted to linger long enough to write a note, having no idea when I’d return. Maybe she told herself she’d send me a letter when she got to wherever she was going, thinking that a letter would be better than a note anyway. She’d have time to really think about what she wanted to say.

On her bedside table lay Go Forth and Find, a leather bookmark near the middle. Later I read the book cover to cover. It was a romance as banal and unbelievable as the stories of Frank Merriwell's athletic prowess, and I assured myself that the book hadn’t influenced her in any way. She’d read many such romances, and surely she knew how far-fetched they were. Besides, she’d told me it was tedious. She hadn’t finished it, and didn’t bother to take it with her, because maybe, at long last, she’d found the real thing. I wanted very much to believe that.

One afternoon, not long after her departure, Father sat on the sofa beside me in the parlor, wearing only his undershirt and pajama pants, his fake glasses and moustache gone, his stopwatch abandoned.

“You sure?” he kept asking me. “She didn’t talk to any men?”

I never mentioned Harry Jones to anyone. I told myself that I was keeping our secret, and that Mother wouldn’t have wanted me to blab, but that was only part of it. Harry Jones seemed like a fantasy, a figment of our imagination, and I didn’t want to expose him to the harsh light of conventional Lafayette. Besides, she could’ve gone anywhere, with anyone.

“None?” my father said again. “No men at all?”

I recalled her saying good-bye to Buster, thanking him profusely. “Nobody except Buster,” I told my father, and he wrote the name in a notebook.

I felt terrible that I might’ve caused Buster some trouble, so I lashed out. “Dottie told me she saw you in Indianapolis. With your cousin.”

He flushed but didn’t hesitate. “That's preposterous. I haven’t gone anywhere near Indianapolis in months.” Then he gave me his superintendent's smile. “Dottie's not too bright, son.” He patted my good leg, got up, and left the room. He never again pestered me about Mudlavia, and after a while he refused to speak about my mother at all.

For a while I thought about trying to write to Harry, or waiting till I got a little older and looking him up in Chicago, but I did neither of these things, telling myself that Harry Jones couldn’t possibly be his real name. I tried to accept my losses, feeling deep down that I was at fault for losing both my leg and my mother. Of course, when I was angry, I also had to ask myself how she could have gone off and left her only son. Especially one who needed her so badly. Perhaps it was because I needed her so badly. Or perhaps her flight had nothing to do with me, or with my father, or with Harry Jones, or with anything or anyone we knew about. I kept expecting to turn around and see her, and often thought I heard her calling me on the street. Even now, even though she's long dead, I’m still waiting for her to reveal herself, wearing her egret-feather hat.

After I went away to college in Bloomington, I received a letter from my mother's sister, May, in Cleveland, whom I hadn’t seen or heard from in years. Aunt May wondered if my father had told me the truth about what