Steven Womack - By Blood Written

Then he saw, on the end table next to her, a blood sugar tester and one of those cheap, battery-operated sphygmo-manometers that were available in any drugstore or grocery nowadays. A row of amber plastic pill bottles was lined up next to the machines, stretching from one end of the table to the other.

Type 2 diabetes, Kelly thought, high blood pressure. All the earmarks of American poverty …

“Yes, well,” Kelly said after a moment, clearing his throat.

He opened his notebook and pulled out the more-or-less standard form used in these kinds of checks. “The person we’re doing the background check on, Mrs. Schiftmann, is actually your son, Michael.”

From across the room, Kelly felt the old woman stiffen.

Her eyes narrowed, and she seemed to straighten her back on the couch. He watched as her right hand gripped the armrest and her knuckles grew white.

“What’s he done?” she asked.

Wow , Kelly thought, that’s not what I expected.

“Uh, actually, Mrs. Schiftmann, I don’t think he’s done anything. This is a standard background check.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why is he getting a background check?”

“I’m not actually at liberty to discuss that,” Kelly answered, thinking that even if he were, he didn’t know the answer. “But I assure you, it’s just standard procedure, all perfectly above board. These things are very routine these days.”

She eyed him nervously and relaxed her grip on the armrest. Then she looked down at the floor, her eyes darting back and forth.

“I don’t really like to talk about him,” she said softly.

“It’s just a few questions,” Kelly said. “Like, for instance, we know your son was born in 1969. Did you live here then?”

Mrs. Schiftmann shook her head. “No, my husband and I had an apartment in Portage. I moved in here with Michael after he left.”

“Which was?”

“I don’t know,” she said wearily. “It was kind of a blur.

I was working in the extrusions factory, worked the night shift. Slept during the day; it was hard.”

“Who kept the baby?”

“There was a teenage girl who lived down the way. She was thirteen.”

“So a thirteen-year-old was keeping your baby?” Kelly asked.

“I had to work.”

“And where did Michael go to elementary school?”

The old woman was silent for a few moments. “O. C. Barber Memorial,” she answered. “It was down the street just a mile or so. He could walk.”

“And how did he do in school? Was he a good student, did he enjoy school?”

Her head seemed to be shaking nervously, side to side, in a jerky, continuous motion now. “Michael is very smart. He always made good grades, especially in English and spelling. But he didn’t like school. The other children were mean to him.”

“Mean to him?”

“Because he didn’t have a father, because we were poor, because I worked in a factory … Who knows why? Kids are just mean.”

“Did he have any friends there, anyone he was close to?”

“Not really. That was a long time ago. I don’t really know.”

Kelly stared at the old lady for a moment. He wondered if she didn’t have Parkinson’s disease or something on top of everything else. He cleared his throat again.

“How about junior high and high school?”

“He got a scholarship in the ninth grade,” she said, with a hint of pride in her voice. The first he’d heard, Kelly noted.

“Went away to that expensive, private school.”

“What was the name of the school?”

“Benton School, Benton Academy … something like that.

I have trouble remembering.”

“And how did he do there?”

“It was harder than public school,” she answered, her voice lowering. “It was hard on him, being away from home, away from me. But he made it, he graduated. Barely.”

“Did he have any girlfriends, any close friends at all?”

“I don’t know. He was away. He always liked girls, but he was shy when he was younger. We didn’t go out much.”

“Mrs. Schiftmann, did your son ever get in any kind of trouble at school or anything? Were there ever any kinds of disciplinary problems, difficulties like that?”

The old woman coughed, hard, her whole body shaking as the rumble echoed through her chest. She cleared her lungs after a few hard coughs, then settled back on the sofa and panted a few times.

“No,” she said. “Never. My Michael was never in any trouble at all. He was a good boy.”

Kelly leaned back in the chair and studied her for a moment. “Mrs. Schiftmann, if you don’t mind my saying so, it seems like you and Michael had a lot of obstacles to overcome. A tough time … But my question, I guess, is how did Michael go from being apparently a lonely but bright kid to being a famous, wealthy writer? I mean, this guy’s on magazine covers now. How did that happen?”

When Michael Schiftmann’s mother finally looked back up at Kelly, he could see a shiny film of tears in her eyes.

Her hands shook as she raised a finger and pointed at him.

“Because Michael was willing to do what it takes to get what he wants. Once he wanted something, nobody in heaven or hell could stop him.”

Kelly made a couple of notes on his legal pad and looked at the form. There were a few other questions he could ask, but they probably didn’t apply here. He could tell Mrs.

Schiftmann was starting to get upset. So, on impulse, he closed his notebook and stuck his pen in his pocket.

“Thank you, Mrs. Schiftmann. I think I’ve got just about everything I need. If there’s anything else, I’ll give you a call. And while there’s certainly no legal requirement for you to do so, we always ask that you keep this just between us. If you don’t mind, there’s no need to say anything to Michael about this.”

Kelly stood and reached for his coat. The old lady looked up at him, her eyes filling even more. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We haven’t spoken in years.”

Kelly looked around at the tattered living room, the peel-ing wallpaper, the general sense of decay, deterioration.

He almost said something about that explaining why, even though her son was rich and famous, she still lived this way, but then he held his tongue. He stood, threw his overcoat over his arm, and closed his notebook.

Mrs. Schiftmann struggled to pull herself up off the couch.

“Please, don’t bother,” Kelly said. “I can find my way out.”

He took two steps toward the door, then stopped. He turned, faced the old woman as she sat there staring at him.

“Mrs. Schiftmann, this really isn’t part of the check, but I’m curious. If you don’t mind my asking, how did you and your son become estranged?”

She stared at him through rheumy, bloodshot eyes for a few moments without answering. The silence continued, and Kelly realized he wasn’t going to get an answer. He turned and walked toward the door.

Outside, the sky had abruptly clouded over in the short few minutes he’d been in the Schiftmann home. He walked to the sidewalk, pulling his coat around him as the wind picked up. The air felt heavy, as if snow were imminent. After a few years around the Great Lakes, one learned to feel the weather as much as observe it.

He stopped on the sidewalk, thinking. The interview with Michael Schiftmann’s mother had been frustrating. He didn’t know if she was withholding or if she was just unable to focus. He wondered if he should knock on a few doors, but his supervisor in the Cleveland Field Office had told him not to take any more time than he had to. There were other things on his plate.

Kelly stood there for a few moments, appearing to be almost in a kind of trance. Behind him, at the end of the block, a car drove past with a bad muffler. A siren wailed in the distance. He was about to turn and head back to his car when the front door of the house next door to Mrs. Schiftmann’s opened.