Mrs. Cobb drew on her Kool, eyes fixed on a point midway between us. On a point years past. Then her chin cocked up as a sudden thought struck her.
Her gaze shifted to me.
“You find my child?”
“We might have.”
Smoke curled from her cigarette and floated across her face.
“Dead?”
“It’s a possibility, Mrs. Cobb. The ID is complicated.”
She brought the cigarette to her lips, inhaled, exhaled through her nose. Then she flicked the ash and rotated the burning tip on a smal metal saucer until the fire went out.
“I’l be joining Charlie Senior shortly. I believe it’s time to set a few things right.” She rose from her chair and shuffled toward the back of the trailer, slippers swishing on the indoor-outdoor carpet. I heard rustling, what sounded like a door.
Minutes cuckooed by. Hours. A decade.
Final y, Mrs. Cobb returned with a bulky green album bound with black cording.
“I think the old goat wil forgive me.”
She laid the album in front of me and opened it to the first page. Her breathing sounded wheezy as she leaned over my shoulder to jab at a snapshot of a baby on a plaid blanket.
The finger moved to a baby in an old-fashioned bassinet. A baby in a strol er.
She flipped ahead several pages.
A toddler holding a plastic hammer. A toddler in blue denim coveral s and bicycle cap.
Two more pages.
A towheaded boy of about seven in cowboy hat and twin holsters. The same boy suited up for basebal , bat on one shoulder.
Three pages.
A teen with palm extended in protest, face twisted away from the lens. The teen was about sixteen, and wore an enormous golf shirt over baggy cutoffs.
It was the hammer-basebal -buckaroo boy, though his hair was darker now. The visible cheek was smooth and pink and dotted with acne. The boy’s hips were wide, his body softly feminine, with a marked lack of muscle definition.
I looked up at Mrs. Cobb.
“My child. Charles Grant Cobb.”
Circling the table, she sat and wrapped her fingers around her mug.
For sixty ticks we both listened to the cuckoo. I broke the silence.
“Your son must have had a difficult time during his teenage years.”
“Charlie Junior just never went through the right changes. He never grew a beard. His voice never changed, and his—” Five ticks. “You know.” XXY. A Klinefelter’s syndrome boy.
“I do know, Mrs. Cobb.”
“Kids can be so cruel.”
“Was your son ever examined or treated?”
“My husband refused to admit there was anything wrong with Charlie Junior. When puberty came, and nothing seemed to happen except for Charlie Junior getting heavier and heavier, I suspected something wasn’t right. I suggested we have him looked at.”
“What did the doctors say?”