Her son was her sole responsibility. The boy and his incessant needs. And of course she felt guilty, flying for the airline one week, home the next. She worried if her impatience was due to her absence, or otherwise caused by the boy’s cloying attachment for the limited time that she was around. What she craved was some fragment of alone time.
The afternoon’s soccer practice drove them both out of the house, despite the dew dripping from the eucalyptus and the iceplant, an anomaly. The California coast was normally sunny in early autumn, and the dreariness outside dampened the mother’s mood.
She spent the morning pouring cereal and milk, the spoon clanking against the ceramic bowl, the animated antics of a dog and his human companions barking from the television.
She picked up the used dish and spoon and wiped away spilled flakes, scrubbing those that had crusted to the breakfast table. Her book lay on the couch armrest, bifurcated where she’d last left a sentence in a paragraph where the hero had come to the protagonist while her robes draped open and spread over her milky thighs. Things were getting hot, and the mother longed to return to the story. But there were toys spread across the carpet in front of the television. The boy had to be dressed, entertained with something other than cartoons. The mother worried that the boy’s brain might rot out of his head if she left him to watch nothing but his shows and she knew that, without intervention, he would go on watching till he succumbed to some wide-eyed and drooling vegetative state.
They went to the grocery store, the post office, the gas station. She selected the chicken and vegetables for dinner that evening, after the boy’s father returned from work. She reminded herself that next week she too would return to work, with a flight to Hong Kong and from there to London, then to New York, and finally to Vancouver before returning home. She was on for a week, off a week, and it went like that for this flight attendant on her international routes. During her off week she had the boy so they might save on his daycare, and she tried to remember to savor these moments, the boy so sweet and cute in his little plaid button-up.
They had lunch at the cafe in town, huddled together in a booth with benches that had long supported too many bodies and now sank under her weight. She watched the boy spoon his mac n’ cheese to his lips and she forked up salad and counted down the minutes, added up the remaining hours. Soon came the boy’s soccer practice and then—only then—would she have a glorious two hours to herself. Till then, there he was. He’d been a good boy all morning. She’d only had to begin a count to three once when he dallied in the supermarket aisle where toys were displayed. The boy came to the head of the aisle with a sheepish smile. I’m right here, Mommy. The small pleasure she discerned growing over his face as he ate this, his favorite of foods. She lived for such moments.
At the park, she alternated between the boy as he scrambled about the jungle gym and slithered down slides and the pages of her romance novel. The heroine had chased her beloved into his rival’s castle, despite the danger—armored, sword-wielding guards—behind which she slinked, pressed to the cold stone walls of the courtyard, her nipples hardening. There, in the main hall, there he stood before his adversary. His brow dotted with sweat, his shirt ripped, exposing the fine angles of his muscled torso.
Then the sharp cry of pain and surprise. Her boy, on all fours at the base of the slide, lifted one hand to inspect it, his little mouth agape in his wail, notched with his little white teeth. She laid the paperback on the bench and walked over. A couple scrapes, some kisses and hugs, more reassurances than ought to be necessary. The boy was approaching his fifth birthday. And soon after they would save on daycare altogether, with the boy in kindergarten. He could hold himself together, walk it off. Be a big boy. Go on now and have some more fun.
*
The fog lingered the rest of the day and obscured the tops of the eucalyptus as she drove the boy to practice on the old country road where the elementary school had been built, and where, after school let out, the soccer team took advantage of the vacant fields. In the parking lot the other boys and their parents had gathered, waiting for the coach. The mother chatted with these people, all of whom she’d known a few years in this, their rural community. She knew them from church or the supermarket, from the boy’s daycare. Most of the parents were women, stay-at-home moms. The mother envied their devotion to their children, their ability to give themselves over to the duties of raising their young, to give of themselves selflessly, constantly. She just couldn’t do it. She’d thought for some time about ending her career. She’d been with the airline seventeen years already, since she’d graduated high school. She couldn’t bring herself to give it up. It wasn’t the work so much—which many regarded as glamorous—but the lavish cities around the world. Nights spent in hotels in Paris, Rome, Buenos Aires. The shopping. Over her running clothes she’d draped a long wool cape, purchased at Harrods in Knightsbridge. Though a sophisticated article of clothing more appropriate for a chilly night out on the town than for here, among the pines and strawberry fields and this empty fog-covered soccer field, the cape still blocked the wind and was easy to slip off before her run, and it wasn’t like she and her husband would be fine dining anytime soon.
Finally, the soccer coach arrived and gathered the boys about him and the mother was free. She set off at a trot out of the parking lot and turned deep into the little valley through which the road ran. She should be able to get in a few good miles. The road twisted away into the oaks and pines. The houses were set back from the road and she saw only their accompanying mailboxes at the roadside, the houses themselves behind the deep foliage and brush. She observed the muted greens of the world around her, dampened in the dim light filtered by the fog. She’d warmed up and her jog loped into a gallop. Her breathing sped as the road angled up the hill that grew steeper and steeper until it took her out of the canyon and terminated at the highway. She’d already come two miles. By the time she reached the end it’d be three and a half. A seven-mile run once she returned to the elementary school.
She rounded a corner and on the other side of the road a pair of dogs ambled about, their snouts in the tall grass along the road’s shoulder. She paid them little mind as she approached and their ears twitched and heads lifted as they picked up her running shoes padding on the asphalt, her breathing chugging from her lungs. They stood, twinned, watching her, but she did not watch them and then she’d passed them and she kept going.
She was into the steep section of the hill now and her thoughts rambled and she had to settle on something to keep from thinking about the fact of her running, the pain in her tired legs, the burning in her chest. She landed on a fantasy in which she took the family with her on vacation to Tokyo. She and her husband had talked about what they might do this year, their last before the boy entered school. They had to take advantage of the time while they still had it—while she still worked for the airline. The implication, of course, being that she could not keep flying forever. That’s what her husband kept saying, anyway. She brought home good money, yes, but the boy’s father did well, and soon the boy was going to need someone around on a more permanent basis, to be there after school, to help with homework, to provide meals. Yes yes yes, she knew, she said. He knew, too. Her husband knew how she loved flying. He didn’t want to ask her to quit.
In her fantasy they checked into the Hilton Tokyo Bay—where she always stayed. She’d introduce her family to Takashi. The concierge always remembered her and they talked amiably. She’d shown pictures of her husband and the boy and Takashi had divulged photos of his own family: him, his wife, and their darling little girl. She’d take a day and her husband and little boy would visit Disneyland Tokyo. Yes, touristy, but why not? The boy would love it.
Like that she huffed to the top of the hill. The trees opened up and the road leveled and the cars swished by on the highway.
She turned back. The road slithered through pines and spare houses, little one- and two-bedroom places all but seeding a plot of land left grazed by goat and mule. Oaks lined the hillsides that hemmed in the road. The brush was of poison oak, impenetrable and autumn red. She’d paid little attention to such details on the way up the hill, while her concentration centered on the run and the story she made up in her head. She coursed down the turns into the valley at a steady pace and when the road straightened out there were the two dogs, noses to the roadway still, as if hunting invisible quarry. Their ears lifted and they turned their snouts her way as she scuttled down the road towards them.
She made sure to keep to the opposite side of the street, for she was wary of these animals, even if they’d paid her no mind when she first passed. But now their attention on her seemed more intent. Their heads moved as twins, alert to each of her feet as they plodded on the asphalt. One dog was dark brown, the other black, and their eyes seemed there at once then not, or if they had eyes they had been subsumed by their coats and had become but a shiny memory of eyes. Their muzzles drooled.
She jogged past. It was but a moment or two, all gone safely by, when the tug brought her to the ground. A tight pinch and a heave. It was not strong but it was strong. It did not hurt but it hurt. It was more the pressure. Then the tearing. Ripping. The sound was of one of the beasts grunting, growling, the one that had hold of her calf. As she went down, she twisted backwards so that it was her bottom that met the ground first and her hands splayed out behind her to keep her back from flailing down and her head from smacking the hard road. Her palms seared and burned with roadrash. She watched as the dark brown dog shook its head violently over her calf—her leg—as if it had been detached and was some large doll’s leg.
Before she could shout, the other dog had snatched upon her right shoulder, just behind her ear. She smelled it, its dog breath, hot and insistent, not unlike the breaths of dogs she’d known her life through, her dog when she was a little girl, poor thing run over by a garbage truck. They buried him in her mother’s rose garden. This dog, the one attacking her, had only a loose grip with its teeth and, as she slumped to the road, the dog released her then lunged for her throat. She threw up her right arm and the dark dog seized it. Only now did she scream—a primal scream, a desperate scream, the scream of someone being attacked by wild animals.
The dog that had mauled her calf released and lunged again, this time striking her right leg at the thigh. She imagined what this must look like from an aerial perspective, like something from a film. There she lay, the dogs’ tailless bodies feasting upon her, almost blocking her body out of the shot altogether, their bodies for the most part immobile, shuddering, their heads ripping forth and back with a violence only the worst of creatures can conjure, something shark-like, or—dog-like.
She was screaming and screaming, No! No! Get! And then the dog that had her by her thigh released and lunged, too, for her throat, and she brought up her free arm, her left. And now they had her by both arms and they commenced their tearing. She had not thought about their teeth or what they might do, how susceptible flesh might be. She’d not considered the word: canine. She had them, too: canines. She’d never thought about what canine implied in human teeth. She’d not known what canine canines were capable of.
Her screaming was gurgled now, pained. It was, she realized, a scream of submission. Her blood thudded in her temples. The dogs snarled with her flesh in their jaws, their heads shook. She surged, screaming yet more and her screams were matched by another’s. Another voice, not her own, yelling Get! Get away! Get away! The woman to whom the voice belonged came in swinging a broom. The dogs released their grip and the mother slumped to the ground. The woman was still swinging the broom and yelling and the dogs backed away then slinked off like the disappearance of shadows with oncoming night.
The mother did not recognize the woman. The woman looked to be just a little older than the mother, the woman’s hair curled, a bun, her nose hooked. The woman said, My god, honey, can you stand?
The woman helped the mother to her feet and supported her with a shoulder. Slowly, they limped off the road, onto the woman’s driveway. The mother’s blood trailed behind them, marking where she had been mauled and where she lay when the woman beat the dogs off, then followed her the short distance to the woman’s car. The mother told the woman about the school, about her boy at soccer practice. She needed to get back to her boy, she said.
You need to get to a hospital, the woman said.
My boy, my boy, the mother kept saying.
Before they left the woman wrapped the mother’s arms and legs in towels in an attempt to stop the bleeding. They raced the miles back through the valley to the elementary school. They did not talk. The mother watched the trees and the turns she had jogged on the way in and she counted the miles, thinking about her run, focused on her, her own self, her wrecked body.
*
Coach had asked him to try out at the goalkeeper position and he’d done so reluctantly. He wanted to kick the ball into the goal with the other boys. But he was soon having fun diving left and right to block or stop the balls as they came off his teammates’ cleated feet. The grass was cool and dewey on his skin from the fog. Then they were running a drill and, while he and the other boys jogged through a maze of cones, there came shouts from the parking lot.
Some of the other boys’ parents were waving their arms and yelling his name. They stood at the edge of the field where all the parents’ cars were parked—the boy’s too—and they waved the team in and the coach yelled Hustle, hustle on in boys!
He was running with the rest of the boys to the line of cars parked beneath the cypress trees, and as he approached he realized that the crowd of parents had circled at the back of his mom’s car, his car. Someone was saying Backup, please, please give me some space.
The boy inched his way into the circle and found one of the boy’s dads—Colin’s dad, who was in the army—bent over the boy’s mother who sat in their station wagon’s back back seat—the way back seat where sometimes the boy sat when he wanted to feel what it was like to move backwards, because that seat faced the road unfolding behind them as they sped along.
It looked as though his mother had shed parts of herself and left them somewhere—like the boy’s Legos that littered his bedroom and lumped in spots into more discernible shapes, the ideas of things—and tiny pieces of his mother were strewn around the back of the station wagon. Pieces of the mother’s meat flopped off her arms and legs, and bits of flesh and skin that had dismembered from these flopping pieces had adhered to the vinyl seats where the dried blood held the chunks in place. Fresh blood smeared everything—the seats, the seatbelt straps and the metal connecting parts, the plastic molding that bordered the car’s frame. His mother lay moaning, her eyes closed then open, and she yelled at the other parents to get back, just like Colin’s dad had said.
Colin’s dad had his green army bag open at his feet and he was bent over the boy’s mother trying to fit her back together again. When Colin’s dad noticed the boy standing there, he said, Son, maybe you ought to go sit up in the front seat for now? I’m just going to get your momma comfortable here.
But the boy did not budge. He stood motionless, staring at the bits of his mother strewn all over the backseat of their station wagon. His mother saw him and she said, Now sweetie, listen to Mr. Wilson, please. Then her head rolled against the seat’s backrest and she moaned again. The boy opened his mouth like he might say something but he had nothing to say and he continued standing there. His mother looked at him again and she said, I’m okay, honey. Mommy’s going to be okay. Get into the car now, please.
Now the boy moved. He climbed into the back seat instead of sitting up front as he’d been instructed. He was right behind his mother, and she felt the weight of his little arms as he rested them on the top of her backrest, which was his backrest as well, the back back seat and the back seat bifurcated, not unlike the mother’s book when it had sat astride the couch armrest earlier that morning. She looked up and back at her little boy, who gazed over the seat at her ruined body. Mr. Wilson was finishing the first aid job. He held the keys to their car. He said, I’m gonna drive you to the hospital now, okay? The mother looked back at him and nodded. Suzie’s going to follow in my car, Mr. Wilson said.
The mother looked at her boy, who still stared, mesmerized. The chunks of her skin and blood rested on the top of the seat’s backrest. The gauze Mr. Wilson had used to temporarily patch the mother up had already soaked through dark red with blood. The mother maneuvered her hand to caress her boy’s face and she was visibly pained to do so.
She said, “Sit down now and put on your seat belt like a good boy.”
The boy did as he was told, the belt loose over his body.
Mr. Wilson sat in the driver’s seat. The boy had only ever seen his mother or his father in this seat. It was very strange to see a stranger driving the car—his car—his family’s car. How strange, the boy thought.
The boy could not have described it like this at the time, but the feeling was that of giving up control, letting yourself be gripped by another.
