The Single Undead Moms(16)

Wait.

I pulled my cell phone from my pocket, ignoring the multitude of missed calls and e-mails that had come in while I was underground, and checked the calendar. I opened my Internet browser and pulled up the school’s Web site.

I had to register Danny for first grade in two nights. It was inevitable, I supposed, that when you made a change like this, something would slip through the cracks, but I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about school registration—the annual refiling of paperwork that I’d already filled out the previous year, just so the school district had updated parent signatures. It was my belief that this practice was a conspiracy by notary publics to keep their industry afloat.

School registration—a big, crowded school building full of people and their smells and their noise and their tempting blood. And kids running around. And people who would try to recruit me into volunteering for stuff. This did not bode well, in terms of what sort of vampire parent I was going to be.

I rubbed Danny’s back and gave myself a cross between a pep talk and a “come to Jesus” scolding. I knew this sort of thing was coming. It was all part of raising a child. Dang it.


Danny ran ahead of me in the hallway, his lime-green T-shirt disappearing into the crowd of people milling around in the school’s maze of classrooms. The school staff had gone all out with the decorations this year, festooning the hallway in blue, gold, and white streamers, balloons, and tissue puffs. A huge mural of Happy the Half-Moon Howler Pup had been added to the entrance over the summer, his blue sweater stretching over a chest puffed up with Howler pride. Beyond that, not much about the building had changed since I was a student here.

I could only be grateful that my illness had gotten me off of the PTA’s social committee the previous spring, so I wasn’t obligated to organize this insanity. I’d tried to come up with several different scenarios in which I could register Danny for school without leaving the house before sunset—calling the school and claiming I was too sick to come in and asking the administrators to just fax all of the permission slips and registration documents over for a signature, or asking Les and Marge to take him and sign the documents for me. But those didn’t paint me as a very good parent, and I didn’t want Les and Marge to gain any foothold as potential legal guardians. Frankly, I was surprised they hadn’t shown up for registration just to make sure they made contact with Danny’s new teacher . . . who wasn’t in the classroom or anywhere that I could see.

So far, I’d managed to duck my in-laws’ calls for two days. I texted to assure them that I was fine. Danny was fine. We were both resting up for the beginning of the school year.

Danny, a social bumblebee by nature (he refused to be called a butterfly, too girlie), was in heaven, darting back and forth between his kindergarten classrooms to talk to his former teachers. Every former classmate he saw was treated to a big hug and an interrogation about his or her summer. I hung back, pleased to watch him play tiny politician while I wrestled with my senses. This was a considerable development from the skirt-hugging kid who had only started morning preschool a few months before Rob died.

I was not in top shape for this little outing. For days, I’d been having recurring dreams about my blurry-faced sire. At first, it was just a repeat of my turning, the same sweet nothings he’d whispered to me while I was dying. And then it progressed to new, more intimate scenarios. Sitting on my kitchen counter while he stood between my thighs. Cuddled up on the swing on my front porch. Sprawled across a large, unfamiliar bed while he traced every vertebra of my spine with his fingertips and spoke soft nonsense to me. But I never saw his face. It was like I was compelled not to look him in the eye. Even while he held me, he kept his face tucked into the crook of my neck or buried in my hair. It was warm and lovely and made me so happy, knowing that there was someone who cherished me this much. And naked. We were usually naked.

It was confusing, feeling that much for someone who was a virtual stranger. I knew that it wasn’t real. I didn’t know this man. He didn’t know me, much less love me. But to be yanked out of that sweet illusion every sunset into a world where I was unsteady and uncertain was disorienting. At least, that was the rationalization I used for being so damned late for Danny’s school registration.

We were coming in late, driving in Jane’s sunproof vampire-mobile she called “Big Bertha, Jr.,” during the final (increasingly sunless) minutes of the registration window. At this point, most of the parents had finished their paperwork and were standing around socializing while their kids ran around like feral cats. As usual, the sight of all those complete family units, mothers and fathers herding their kids around in tandem, made my chest a little tight for Danny’s sake. Danny had never seen his dad put up a tent in the backyard for a campout. He would never know what it was like to have his dad coach his Little League team. He would never be a big brother. While I’d survived being a fatherless only child, I’d hoped for something better for my son. Now I simply hoped that having one parent who whole-assed it was better than one absent parent and another who less-than-half-assed it.