by Jo Knowles
I wish my mom would come down and check on us. My dad keeps saying she’ll be down soon. But when?
I know it doesn’t make sense, but it feels like she disappeared with Charlie. And the more she stays up there, the more it feels like she isn’t coming back, either.
That night, Holden and Sara try to get me to come upstairs to go to sleep, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to feel the empty corner where Charlie used to lull me to sleep with his steady breathing.
My dad comes over and puts his hand on my head. “Come on up, honey. You shouldn’t stay alone down here again.”
“I’ll be OK,” I say quietly, staring at the firefighter.
He sighs in a worried way. “Just for tonight, then.”
“I’ll bring you a blanket and pillow,” Sara says.
Later, wrapped in the blanket in the big chair, I wait for my eyes to adjust to the dark. I reach down and pick up the firefighter and hold him close. I trace his plastic body with my finger. There are dried bits of something on his stomach, as if he had a messy meal. I imagine it was soggy Cheerios from Charlie’s fingers. But instead of disgusting me, I hold it against my heart and close my eyes so I can see Charlie. Charlie singing in the bathtub. Charlie banging his legs in his too-small high chair. Charlie pushing Doll in my face, insisting I give her a good-night kiss. Charlie.
Charlie.
Charlie.
THE NEXT MORNING, I wake up to the sound of coffee beans grinding. Sara, Holden, and my dad are already in the kitchen. My dad pours a tiny bit in a mug for me and fills the rest with milk, then lots of sugar. My mom doesn’t like it when I drink coffee, but my dad says it will grow hair on my chest. Charlie always thought that was so funny.
I put my cup down and glance over at the refrigerator. It’s covered with Charlie’s magnetic letters.
My dad clears his throat and looks at each of us. He opens his mouth, but it takes a long time for him to form any words. Finally, he says, “I’m going over to the restaurant today to talk to the staff. I — I’ll need them to help me make . . . Arrangements. Your mom. She can’t —” He grips his coffee cup. “Will you guys be OK if I leave?”
“Sure, Dad,” Sara says, putting her hand on his back.
I nod, looking inside my own cup.
He finishes his coffee and puts the mug in the sink. Then he hugs each of us. When he gets to me, his huge belly squishes against my chest. His plaid wool shirt scratches my face, and I close my eyes and try to hide in it. He squeezes me extra hard before he lets go, then leaves us in the kitchen.
Holden pulls out his phone as he walks out of the room. I turn to Sara, who glances over at the phone on the wall.
“There are so many people we’re going to have to tell,” she says. “I don’t know how that works. I can’t imagine any of us doing it, you know?”
I nod. “Maybe Mona could do it. We could give her Mom’s address book.”
“That’s a good idea. Let me see if I can catch Dad.” She runs outside to wave him down, leaving me alone. I walk over to the answering machine and stare at the flashing numbers showing all the messages we have. I remember helping Charlie record a new message just the other day. He made messages practically every week. Slowly, I press the PLAY button.
There’s a fumbling noise, then the faint sound of me whispering, “OK, now.”
And then Charlie in his little robot voice. “Hel-lo. Mom-my, Dad-dy, Sa-wuh, Hold-en, Fern, and Chah-lie ah not at home to take yo-uh call. Please leave a mes-sage, and we will call you back as soon as poss-ih-bull. Thank you. And see you at Hawee’s!”
I put my hand on the machine, as if I am touching Charlie. I lift it to my face. I play it again. “Hel-lo. Mom-my, Dad-dy, Sa-wuh, Hold-en, Fern, and Chah-lie ah not at home to take yo-uh call. Please leave a mes-sage, and we will call you back as soon as poss-ih-bull. Thank you. And see you at Hawee’s!” And again. “Hel-lo. Mom-my, Dad-dy, Sa-wuh, Hold-en, Fern, and Chah-lie ah not at home to take yo-uh call. Please leave a mes-sage, and we will call you back as soon as poss-ih-bull. Thank you. And see you at Hawee’s!”
His voice vibrates against my wet cheek as I play it over and over. Finally, I unplug the machine and carry it to the hall where my backpack is. I unzip my pack and hide the machine inside just as the front door opens. “Caught him,” Sara says, out of breath. “I’ll go get the book.”
When she comes back a second time, she tells me she’s going to try to get Mom up and out of bed. I want to tell her that shouldn’t be her job. I want to tell her I’m scared that it is. But I don’t say anything, because I think she already knows.
While Sara is upstairs, I slowly walk around the house, gathering up Charlie’s toys and things. I move his high chair into the kitchen closet and put his shoes and coat in the closet in the hall. I find whatever toys and books are lying around and put them all in the antique trunk we use to hide them in when guests come over. Each time I touch something of Charlie’s, I can see it in his small hands. I can see his beaming face looking up at me, begging me to play with him. And it hurts. It hurts so much. But I keep going.
Holden finds me in the living room and asks what I’m doing, but I don’t know how to answer. I just know that every time I see one of Charlie’s toys, it’s as if it’s waiting for him to come back. And every time I hold one, the ache in my chest hurts even more.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s just too hard to —”
“Let me help you,” he says.
Together, we quietly finish gathering Charlie’s things, then sit on the couch. The water is running upstairs, so I guess Sara got my mom out of bed and into the shower. When the doorbell rings, neither of us moves to answer. It rings again.
“We should see who it is,” Holden says. But neither of us gets up.
A minute later, the door creaks open and Ran walks in.
“I TRIED TO CALL,” Ran says. “But no one answered.”
For the first time, I can’t read his face. I’ve never seen this Ran before. Usually his face matches his T-shirt motto. But today his coat is zipped up, just like his expression. And I don’t know what to say.
“There was a story on the news last night,” Ran says. “I didn’t want to believe it. When you didn’t answer the phone, I went to the restaurant this morning and saw your dad, and he . . . he told me what happened. I just . . . can’t believe it.”
When he looks at me, I wonder what he must see, because suddenly his blank expression changes and he looks exactly like how I feel. And when I see him, tears start to slip down my cheeks again, stinging the raw skin there. And then he starts to cry, too. Holden moves over on the couch so Ran can sit down. Then he pulls us both to him and we cry into his chest, our foreheads touching. I can feel Holden’s heartbeat against my cheek, and I close my eyes, concentrating on the sureness of it. Grateful for it. But then the stairs creak, and we sit up and quickly wipe our faces as my mom’s feet appear at the top step. We wait quietly as she starts to come down, my sister following. I realize, when I see her feet, how much I really need her. How much I want her to hold me. To tell me — I’m not sure what. Maybe just to let me know she’s here. That she always will be. But when she reaches the landing, she stops and turns. “I just can’t,” she says. “Oh, God. Oh, God.” She starts to sob. Then her feet slowly climb back up the stairs and disappear.
Holden takes a deep breath and stands up. “I need to take a walk. You guys wanna come?”
We nod.
Outside, it’s chilly but sunny. We stand at the end of the driveway and look around. Everything feels quieter. Holden kicks a stone across the road. I realize it’s a school day and Ran has skipped. He shoots a stone across the road perfectly. The dog across the street comes bounding over and starts yipping at us hopefully, but he’s trapped as usual.
Holden’s cell rings, and he pulls it out of his pocket, turning his back to us.
“Hi,” he says quietly. “Yeah. . . . Really? Yeah. I’m here. I’m at the end of the driveway, a
ctually. . . . OK. OK, thanks.”
He puts his phone back in his pocket.
“Gray’s coming to get me,” he says.
The three of us continue to quietly kick at stones until Gray’s car pulls up and Holden climbs in and they drive away.
Ran looks cold and uncomfortable with his hands stuffed in his pockets.
“Come on,” I say.
He follows me to the neighbors’ yard and what’s left of the pine-tree cave. We climb under and sit up against the tree, our arms pressed against each other.
For a long time, we don’t talk. I can feel our thoughts swirling together. Our memories. Our emptiness.
“When my mom was sick, I used to imagine what it would be like if she died,” he says after a while. “I used to ask my dad what would happen to us. But he would just shake his head and not answer. He’d already lost his job because he kept staying home to take care of her. I kind of had to take care of myself, even though I didn’t really know how.”
I picture Ran when I first knew him. With his too-small clothes and always-runny nose.
“Anyway, one weekend, I went and stayed with my grandma, and she took me to her church. The minister told a story about this mystic who believed that even when there was all this horrible stuff going on, like the plague, that all would be well. She had this chant, and no matter how horrible things got, she would keep saying it. All will be well, she’d say. All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. The minister had everyone in church say the chant, too. And I remember sitting there, hearing everyone around me say those words, and I started to believe them. So after church, I started saying them to myself. Muttering them every time I got scared about my mom. And pretty soon she got better. And I really believed it was because of my chanting. So I kept doing it. And life just kept getting better. My parents started the T-shirt company together. Business boomed. I really thought if you said the words and believed them, they would be true.”
He stops for a minute and takes a sad, deep breath. I do the same and smell the piney Christmas smell and realize that Christmas will never be the same again.
“But the whole thing was a scam,” Ran says. “It was just some stupid thing to say to make me believe life isn’t unfair. And just when I thought life was perfect, it became unbearable again.”
I think of all the times Ran has said those words to me. He said them like they were a fact. I always secretly loved when he said them because I thought if anyone knew how things were going to turn out, it would be Ran.
“I was so wrong,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry, Fern.”
The ache in my throat throbs harder, but I don’t cry again. I breathe in the cold air and concentrate on the branches in front of me. The hundreds of needles poking out of each thin stick. I think of all the times Holden and I hid under here, listening to Charlie call out for us. “Holdy and Ferny! Whe-ah ah you!” How we giggled and shushed each other so he wouldn’t find us.
Why didn’t we want him to find us?
My mom said she named me Fern because she knew I was going to be a good friend. That I was the kind of person who would save anyone in trouble. But she was wrong. I couldn’t save anyone. I didn’t even try.
“I wish he knew how much I love him,” I say quietly. “But I was always telling him to leave me alone. What if he thinks I didn’t love him?”
“He knew — knows,” Ran says. He reaches for my hand and holds it gently. “He knows.”
When the sun moves and leaves us in the shade, we both start to shiver.
“I should probably go,” Ran says.
We climb out of the cave and walk back to my yard. The house seems quiet. We both look up at the front door but stay standing outside. Charlie’s tricycle is tipped over next to the garage. I think we notice it at the same time because we both turn away. Usually when Ran goes home, he leaves me with some sort of slogan that matches whatever T-shirt he’s wearing. Today he just looks at me with sad eyes I’ve never seen before.
Help me, I say with my own eyes.
But his say back, I can’t.
THAT NIGHT AT DINNER, my dad tells us about the plans he’s made for the funeral. And Charlie’s ashes. He chokes on the words, but the rest of us are all cried out. We stare at our plates and listen to him, but we don’t answer. My mom is still upstairs. My dad tells us he will get her to come down tomorrow. But I want her now. I want her to be the one to hold me, not Sara. I want her to tell me it’s OK to cry. I want her to show us that she isn’t going to disappear, too.
Instead, my dad has to tell us about funeral plans and ashes and how we’ll have to decide as a family what we’ll do with them. My grandparents’ ashes were scattered in the lake where they both loved to sail when they were young. But where would Charlie’s go? He would be all alone.
And then I remember.
“Doll!” I yell, standing up.
Everyone looks at me like I’m crazy.
“Charlie can’t be . . . He needs Doll! Are we too late, Dad?”
My dad looks totally confused.
“Calm down, Fern. What are you talking about?”
“Charlie and Doll! They should be together!”
Sara and Holden exchange looks. “She’s right,” Sara says.
“Can we get her to him?” The familiar ache in my chest starts to push up my throat again.
“I . . . I don’t know,” my dad says.
“Please! We have to!”
“I’ll try, Fern. I’ll bring her first thing in the morning.”
“Promise! You can’t just try!”
“I promise,” he says quietly.
I feel bad for making him go back to wherever it is he has to go, but I would feel worse if Charlie was alone.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I say. “But —”
“I know, Fern. It’s OK.”
That really puts an end to dinner, so we all clear our plates and clean up.
I want to sleep in the living room again, but my dad says I need to get a real night’s sleep in my own room. When everyone goes upstairs, I get my backpack from the front closet and bring it to my room.
After brushing my teeth, I step into the dark hallway. No one has turned on the night-light that we keep on outside Charlie’s room. I can see well enough to find it and turn it on. It’s in the shape of Snoopy’s doghouse. It was Sara’s when she was little, then Holden’s, then mine, and finally Charlie’s. A faded Snoopy lies asleep on top. Charlie used to sit on the floor in the hall and pet Snoopy’s belly as he told him to have sweet dreams.
I sit on the floor and touch the plastic. I feel it get warm from the heat of the lightbulb inside.
“Fern?” Sara whispers. I turn. She makes her way to the bathroom. “What are you doing?”
I don’t know.
“Get some sleep,” she says before she disappears inside.
I stand up and look down the hallway. Charlie’s room is on the left; mine is on the right, just beyond. The hallway is so quiet, it echoes in my ears. I’m used to Charlie’s quiet snores or the steady scritch-scratch of his fingers on the wall as he talks himself to sleep, telling Doll stories.
I strain to listen. It’s so quiet, it hurts. I cover my ears and hurry to my dark room. I shut my door, grab my backpack, and pull out the answering machine. I plug it in and crawl into bed, pulling the covers over me and the machine. I turn the volume down as low as it can go, then press play and slowly turn the volume up so I can just barely hear. Hear Charlie. I hold my hand on the speaker and feel his voice gently vibrate against my palm.
“See you at Hawee’s,” he lies happily. I rewind the tape and play the broken promise again. And again. I will never see him again. I will never see his tiny hand waving to me through the glass. Or Doll’s face, bobbing up and down excitedly, as if she’s been waiting for me all day. I let the words fill the empty space inside me that aches and aches. But every time the machine goes quiet, I feel the emptiness open up again. I breathe
in and out through my mouth to fill the quiet. In. Out. Over and over. Until I fall asleep.
THE NEXT MORNING, when I step into the hallway, the light in Charlie’s room is on and I can hear a sobbing sound coming from inside. I step back into the shadow of my room. After a few minutes, I see my dad come out of Charlie’s room with Doll in his hands. He pauses outside the door and wipes his eyes with the cuffs of his shirt. I listen to him go down the stairs before I crawl back into bed.
When my dad comes back home, he tells us all to eat breakfast and then get some warm clothes on. “We’re getting out of here for a bit,” he says.
When we’re heading down the driveway, Sara asks where we’re going. No one mentions that my mom still hasn’t left her bedroom.
“Away from the house. Just for a little while,” my dad says.
We drive through town and back out the other side, along the lake. It’s a cold late-September day, so no one is at the beach. My dad parks in the empty lot, and we all get out. He gets the thick wool picnic blanket from the back and leads us to the far end of the beach, out of sight of the parking lot. We sit along the edge of the blanket, facing the water. The wind is blowing, causing small whitecaps on the waves. We sit there listening to the steady lap of the water on the shore. We’ve been here as a family so many times. My dad used to throw us up out of the water so we could cannonball one another. He taught us how to float on our backs and look up at the clouds. And Holden and I used to dig holes in the sand to make a swimming pool for Doll.
A group of seagulls nears. In their screechy chatter, I can almost hear the echo of Charlie’s giggles.
The ache in my chest rises up in my throat again. I want to scream at the birds, at the water, at the sky. It isn’t fair!
It isn’t fair.
My dad gets up and walks to the edge of the water. He picks up a stone and skips it out across the surface. It hops three times before it disappears. We watch him silently from the blanket. The cold air blows between us. Even though I am sitting between my brother and sister, I feel more alone than I’ve ever felt in my whole life. I close my eyes and will Charlie to come running up behind me, put his sticky hands over my eyes, and scream, “Guess who?” in my ear. I wait and wait.