Strays. Part 5

"Bob's at church, Astin's riding with some friends, and C.W.'s playing basketball. So I'm making waffles. It'll be our secret."

"I'm not all that hungry."

She turns around, holding the spatula like a wand. "You've never had waffles like these, Teddy. You fold the egg whites in separately. I'll bet your mother never did that."

I pull out a chair. "My mother fed everybody out of the same box. Me, the animals, Dad, everybody."

"Probably she was busy."

"You can say that again."

"Do you want coffee, honey?"

"Sure."

"And some milk. For your bones."

I start to get up.

"No, no," she says. "I'll get it."

She gives me a heavy mug and a tall plastic gla.s.s with oranges on it. Then she pours batter and closes the lid of a very old-looking waffle iron.

"Don't let me eat any more," she says. "I'm going to Curves at eleven."

"Okay."

"Did your mom belong to a gym or anything?"

I shake my head. "She didn't go out much."

"I don't know what I'd do without Curves," Mrs. Rafter says. "There are four or five gals I see there all the time that I just really like. We don't call each other on the phone and I'm not sure I know their last names, but we've all got time on our hands and a person can only watch so much Oprah. . . ." She lets the sentence drift away and gets busy coaxing a perfect waffle off the griddle.

And it actually is just about perfect. I tell her, "This is really good."

She comes all the way around the table and tries to play with my hair, then retreats back to the counter, where she worries little bits of dried batter off the waffle iron. "If I took you to get a haircut, would you like that? I'm thinking of a different kind," she says. "Something s.p.u.n.kier. Bob won't like it. Anything longer than a buzz cut is just another sign of the end times. But what does he know? He's about as sensitive as a two-by-four. If he ever had a feeling, he'd probably hit it with a hammer. Has he got my name on his big fat arm? No, he's got Semper Fi. And just try talking to him about anything."

Mrs. Rafter sighs and moves her coffee cup around. "Ms. Ervin says that you're starting to talk about what happened to your parents." She drips a little syrup onto a broken piece of waffle and pops it in her mouth. "It'll get easier, Teddy. It's not like you forget, but you just don't remember all the time. I don't remember all the time."

"Remember what?"

"I lost my baby. My Toby. Bob wasn't what you'd call supportive, but I wanted what I wanted. Everything seemed fine right up to the day I went in the hospital, and then it was one complication after another. Oh, Teddy, sometimes I'm so empty inside."

I push my chair back. Fast.

Mrs. Rafter asks, "Are you finished, honey?"

"Yes, ma'am. And now I've got -"

"Come with me, Teddy. There's something I want to show you."

"Mrs. Rafter -"

"Barbara."

"Barbara, breakfast was great. Really. But -"

"This will just take a minute. I wouldn't want to have to tell Ms. Ervin you were being difficult."

"Honest, I'm sorry about your baby and all, but -"

"Don't disappoint me, Teddy. Don't make me call somebody. There are foster children in this town who are sleeping in bas.e.m.e.nts with rats."

I don't want to, but I follow her down the hall past all those pictures of Mr. Rafter in uniform. I stop and look at the one where he's standing by a Jeep. What if I just made a run for it?

"Teddy!"

When I get to the bedroom, she's already in a rocker. It's about ten o'clock. The shades are down, and there's a fat candle burning.

She says, "Ms. Ervin likes you, Teddy."

"Barbara . . ." My voice kind of breaks, and I can't finish.

Up comes the index finger. "Shh. She thinks you're unusually sensitive. I think you're sensitive, too, Teddy. I think you'd understand things other boys might not. C.W.'s not somebody to confide in, and Astin's just a big noisy boy in tight pants."

My eyes adjust to the gloom. A door leads to their bathroom, where I can see a damp towel hanging on a hook. There's a big bed that's not even made. And there's a cradle, the old-fashioned kind with the curved rockers.

Mrs. Rafter holds out her arms. "Would you bring her to me, Ted."

"Who?" I sound like Woodsy the Owl. "Bring who?"

"Little Noodle." She nods toward the cradle. "She's had her nap."

"Mrs. Rafter, I don't think -"

"Please. Don't make me get up."

So I cross the swamp-colored carpet. Finally I look down and see her. Or it.

"Isn't she beautiful, Ted?"

I think its name is Nora Newborn. I think I've seen it in a Toys R Us ad on television. It's diapered, it's slightly wrinkled. It's supposed to be lifelike, but if you ask me it's corpselike. I pick it up by a foot.

"Careful." Mrs. Rafter frowns. "Hold her in your arms. Support her little head. Now let me have her."

I can't wait to be rid of it. The skin is cool and doughy, like zombies' feet. I hand her over and step back. As far back as I can.

She says, "Bob thinks I'm stupid and that I'm living in a dream world." She unzips her gold top and there's her bra. It's huge and all crisscrossed with straps, guy wires, and rigging.

There's even a trapdoor, and when she undoes that, a big nipple pops out like an accusing finger. Then she presses Noodle's plastic head to her chest.

"But who," she asks, "does it hurt?"

I don't know what to do. Much less what to say. The front door opens, then closes with a bang.

"It's . . . somebody," I hear myself say. "I should go."

She just plants a kiss on Noodle's made-in-Taiwan forehead.

I run all the way to the Gold Line station. There's only one place I want to be right now.

On the ride south, I'm kind of sick at my stomach. My mouth tastes like old pennies. My mother was odd, but she wasn't psycho. If she'd had something called Little Noodle, it would've been a dachshund.

People doze or talk on their phones. Somebody with an old school boom box gets on, turns it way down, and leans his ear against it. At the Arroyo station, a man watches the woman he's been talking to walk south carrying plastic bags in each hand; then he holds up a little portable radio and I can hear Vin Scully, the voice of the Dodgers.

I let myself think about my parents.

My dad was a baseball fanatic. He always had a game on the radio. His bedtime stories were all about mistakes: Enos Slaughter scores from first, beating Johnny Pesky's lousy relay throw (Game 7, '46). Bill Buckner lets Mookie Wilson's dribbler get by him, and the winning run scores (Game 6, '86).

My mother's stories were about animals - how giraffes in captivity lick the fence when they're upset, why hurt animals in the wild don't whine and carry on because it'd attract predators, how birds that migrate have to learn and then remember the route because it isn't hardwired into their brains.

Every now and then I'd hear about the day she was walking home from the store with some groceries and my dad pulled up on a little Yamaha. She said how long his legs were and he said how cute she was.

I have to sit back and take a couple of deep breaths.

A family of four gets on. The father stares out the window; the daughter opens a book, then fumbles with her gla.s.ses; her little brother crawls into his mother's lap. He settles in with both arms around her neck, but as he dives deeper into sleep, his arms slip loose and hang over the back of the seat, limp as vines.

That about does me in. I've got that photograph in my wallet. But I don't take it out. It'll just make things worse.

The Gold Line ends downtown. It's only a few hundred yards from that platform to the bus stop in front of Union Station. Then twenty minutes on the DASH bus.

I'm first off that, first in line to get the student discount, first to push through the turnstile. The zoo is big and green. It reminds me of Africa. At least all the bamboo does. Not the corny asphalt trails or the caterpillar-like trams with the loudspeakers.

I still feel more at home. I like the heavy air - biting and sour. Most people hold their noses, but it tells me things: I live here. This is my territory. Don't come any closer.

I stand outside the new enclosure for sea lions. Huge windows give everybody an underwater view, and up a dozen stairs there's plenty of room for the pups to lie in the sun.

I say h.e.l.lo to them, but they're too busy diving and having fun to reply. My dad didn't like the sea lions or the seals. He said they loved their jailers too much. He wouldn't watch them bark and clap their flippers and roll over for fish at the two o'clock public feeding. He told me that the reason I didn't have any brothers and sisters was that he couldn't breed in captivity.

A hundred yards away, the flamingos squawk and bend their long necks to hunt under one wing for something that's aggravating them. One of them spots me and walks toward the iron railing.

"Your pants are awful," he says.

"They're Ralph Lauren."

"They're brown. You should wear brighter colors."

"Are you guys okay?"

He shrugs. "I miss flying. How are you?"

"I'm having a little trouble. I kind of miss my folks."

"Really? My mom's in Florida, I think. Eggs are definitely the way to go."

A little girl standing just behind me says, "Daddy, why's that boy laughing?"

Her father isn't quite sure what to do. He likes having the tall colorful bird right up close, but he's not so sure about me.

So I move on. I don't go by the chimps, because they all jabber at once. My mother told me a story once about chimp wars. A couple of troops of males would meet on neutral turf and throw it down. That's how researchers finally figured out the weird female-to-male ratio they ran into every now and then; a lot of the males had been killed. Mom said Jane Goodall hated to think her beloved chimps could do something like that. But they could and did.

Giraffes don't make war. I like seeing a real giraffe instead of the one in the backyard. I stand by their big enclosure, and the dominant female strolls my way.

"Teddy. How nice of you to drop by."

Giraffes are always polite and kind of upper-cla.s.s.

She leans as close as she can and bats her lashes at me. "You seem shorter. Or maybe that's because you look so awful."

"I'm just upset, I guess. You know what happened. . . . The accident and all."

She nods as only a giraffe can nod. "That was a shame. They were young."

"It's not like they were perfect. No way were they perfect, but . . ."

"n.o.body's perfect, Teddy." She leans a little to her left. "See that big oaf over there? n.o.body can go into that corner by the boulders because it's his precious corner. He has to eat first. He has to go inside first at night. But n.o.body wants to see him die. Wasn't it rather like that with your parents?"

"Sort of, yeah."

"Just being alive at all is pretty much a combination of good and bad, Teddy. This is a bad part. If you can be patient, it'll get better."

"Were you patient," I ask, "when you were captured and brought here?"

"It was terrible at first; then I got used to it."

"It's kind of terrible where I am."

By now there are people all around me. A dozen fathers holding up their kids while the giraffe nibbles at my hair.

I say, "Look, I'm just going to, you know, wander around a little, I guess."

"Go visit the lions. All boys like predators."

"All right. I will. Thanks."

I make my way through the little crowd. I'm sure people are looking at me and wondering, but I don't care.

When I get to the big cat pavilion, the male lion stands up, shakes his mane, and makes one of those low, coughing roars.