The child is ugly, she thinks. It doesn’t look anything like me. The hollow brown irises bleeding into pupils, the hooked nose, the small mouth. He got it all from his father. Too late for an abortion. It’s not like I would’ve had one anyway, she thinks. Adoption? I couldn’t deal with the guilt. God, I wish I wasn’t raised Catholic.  

The next day she goes to church. It’s an Irish church and Jesus smiles at everyone on a golden cross. She feels a little better.  

So, can I still check out books?” asks a hairy man with glasses.

“No,” she says. “You have to pay the fine first.”

“But they were only two days late,” he argues.

She’s in no mood. “Then the fine is only one dollar.” This is what she does. She’s a clerk at the public library and she doesn’t do it well. At the end of each day, she goes home to her child, who is ten years old.  

“Hi, mom.” He speaks from a small mouth. She can’t bear to look at him so her eyes wander when they talk.

“Did you do the dishes?”

“Yes.” He rises from the chair and approaches her. “Ms. Moss taught us how to look up books in the library today.”

“I’m tired, Max. I’m gonna go lay down for a bit.”

Max taps his foot up and down on the Berber rug. “Can we have dinner first?”

She expects this. “I suppose so. We’ve got mac and cheese...”

“We should have pizza,” he interrupts.

She doesn’t expect this. “Why pizza?” Now she’s curious.

He looks at the floor, foot still tapping. “Because we haven’t had it in a long time.”

“Okay,” she says, defeated. “I’ll order from Pizza Hut.”

“No!” Max shouts. “I mean, no, not from there.”

“What’s wrong with Pizza Hut?”

“I don’t know,” he starts, “I just like LaPizza better. Can we go there?” Truth be known, she likes LaPizza better, too. It’s just more expensive. She agrees, perplexed by her son’s decisiveness.

They get in the car, a 1998 Buick LaSabre. The alignment’s off and the tires never have an equal amount of air. The car’s way too big for the two of them and every time he rides in it, Max wishes that he could have brothers and sisters. They go west on Main Street to where the food places are and pull into LaPizza’s parking lot. On the way in, she notices that the building’s foundation is crumbling.  

Max runs to the counter. Where is his energy coming from? She wishes she had some. She feels faint and puts her head between her knees. Max stands on his tip-toes and peeks over the counter into the back where three men are making pizza. Two are high school kids and one is older, much older. He looks about forty. Max waves to this man and the man waves back. He’s kneading dough and starts twirling it around for the boy’s amusement. Max’s mother picks her head up from between her knees. She sees her son laughing and looking at someone behind the counter. Why is he laughing? I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him laugh, she thinks. She walks over and looks at the man twirling the dough. He stops. They stare at each other in silence for four eternal seconds. The next thing he knows, Max is being dragged out of LaPizza by his shirt collar toward the big, lonely car.

“Do you know that man?” she asks furiously on the drive home. “Answer me!” Max is frightened. She’s awfully loud for a lady who works at a library. “I do,” he says. Obviously, she knows the man too. The hooked nose, the small mouth, those God damn ugly eyes...Yeah, she knows him all right. “How do you know him?” she yells. It’s an interrogation now.

“I stopped at LaPizza one day after school earlier this year.” His voice is quiet.

The realization comes. “Have you been going there…often?” Her head hurts.

“I stop there every day on the walk home. I thought you’d be happy, mom,” he pleads. “Why don’t you like him and why are you so mad?”

“I’m not mad, I’m furious! You’re not to set foot in there again. Ever. Do you understand me?” She’s delirious.

Why is she so unfair? He answers “yes,” but thinks, “I hate you,“ and says nothing else, waiting for her to continue.

“I just can’t believe this,” she remarks more to herself than to her son. Her expression is vacant and her cheeks are pale. “I didn’t even know he was here. Does he live here? Oh my God, he lives here, doesn’t he.” She feels faint again. The road in front of her is starting to spin. The yellow lines look like brush strokes on a canvas.

“He lives near the bank, but I haven’t been there. He says he wants to see you and that he misses you. Can’t we just go see him, mom?”

She’ feels so tired. But it’s more than that. It’s exhaustion. She can’t stay awake. The muscles in her body relax, her eyelids close, and she loses consciousness. The car drifts quickly to the right into a telephone pole.

Time of death, 6:08 p.m.,” says the doctor on TV as he pulls the sheet over the old lady’s face. Max’s mother shuts it off and looks at her son, who is asleep on the couch. He still has bruises around his left eye from where he hit his head on the glove compartment a week earlier. He has a long cut with the stitches still in. It snakes up the side of his cheek and runs across his forehead. And yet, for the first time in months, she smiles. It’s involuntary, she can’t help it. She stares at her little boy as he takes the slow breaths of someone in a deep sleep. His small mouth is closed so peacefully. There’s something about the way he’s breathing—the child is beautiful, she thinks.