My Sunshine Away

by M. O. Walsh

  So, we helped Mr. Simpson to his feet. We dusted him off.

  My uncle Barry looked upset about all of this mess, like he knew the whole story about Lindy’s rape and her father’s decline, though I don’t believe that he did. Still, that was the thing about Barry. You just got the feeling that whatever was out there in the world, no matter how great, no matter how awful, he had seen it. I admired this about him.

  “Go on inside,” he told Mr. Simpson. “Have one last drink but no more, and get to bed. You can’t fix it all tonight.”

  Mr. Simpson stared at the two of us, his lips and nose already swollen, and he nodded. Then my uncle Barry tapped me hard on the shoulder and we set off across the street. We passed right in front of the mosquito-abatement truck and covered our mouths with our shirts. We waved at the driver.

  When we got to the porch, I said, “Holy shit.”

  I’d never seen anything so exciting as that.

  My uncle Barry took me by the shoulders. His voice was urgent and sincere.

  “I want you to listen to me,” he said. “I know that girl over there makes you want to be in love and get married and be a grown-up, but what you saw just now, that’s what being a grown-up is. That man out there crying on his lawn. So you just do what I told you and be yourself. I’m serious. Don’t wish any time away.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I won’t.”

  “Let’s not mention this to your mom, either,” he said. “She’s got enough to do without worrying about the neighbors. Now, come on,” he said, “let’s get in the house before we’re both gassed.”

  Once inside, my uncle Barry and I slunk off to different spaces as if it were midnight, though it was barely suppertime. After we eventually ate, saying nothing to each other while my sister Rachel droned on about some new organ they had gotten at church, I went to my room and got in bed. I slept poorly, thinking about that choking sound Mr. Simpson had been making, crying like a man does, and I had a dream that night that would reoccur many more times in my life, one where I am driving a car with no steering wheel but rather a large set of strings coming out of the dashboard. I feel the tires sliding all over the road in this dream, sending me in and out of oncoming traffic, and the only method of navigation available to me is a tangled mess of twine in my lap. I pull one string and the radio comes on. Another string and the wipers wave. I push on pedals that have no effect. And in the dream that night, the first dream, my uncle Barry sat beside me in the car but said nothing. He looked as if he thought I was doing a perfectly fine job of driving, as if he trusted me with his own life, and this made me feel worse. And as the years have gone by, the passengers sitting beside me in this nightmare have changed, but never my total surprise at the strange problem I’ve inherited, and never my inability to solve it.

  When I woke up the following day, my uncle Barry was gone.

  For some reason, I wasn’t surprised.

  I could tell he’d been shaken by what he’d seen in Mr. Simpson’s eyes the night prior, but I hadn’t the tools to assemble the connection between the men then. It wasn’t until a week had passed and I’d bothered my mother so much about Barry’s departure that she finally told me some things I didn’t know. The first was about the man who used to pull up in our driveway to talk to him about work. And what she told me was that Uncle Barry’s wife, Sharon, had been cheating on him, and that she’d gotten pregnant from some other guy, a professor in her new department in Arizona. And so the man Barry was talking to in our driveway was a liaison for a private investigator in Arizona, my mom said, who Barry had hired to give him all the details of what she was doing while he was away. The whole scenario seemed improbable to me, and so weak-minded of my uncle who I adored that I was upset with my mother for even suggesting it. I didn’t believe her.

  “How did he have the money to pay for all that?” I asked her. “Isn’t that expensive?”

  “He didn’t have the money,” she said. “That’s why he left. That’s why Barry is always leaving.”

  “But that doesn’t even make sense,” I said. “Why would he want to know the details if he already knew she was cheating on him? That just sounds like torture.”

  “It’s love, honey,” my mom said. “It’s complicated.”

  “That’s stupid,” I said.

  “It is,” she said.

  My mother was telling the truth. I’ve yet to meet a person who didn’t become a stranger to themselves in love, at one time or another. And since I often saw kindness in my uncle Barry, since I saw something close to a boy like me in his eyes, I knew that he was likely as confused by his actions as I was. The random women who brought him home, the awful spying, I’ve no doubt that he is still surprised that these were choices he made, that he was even the least bit involved in these things. Like he always told me:

  “I couldn’t believe it, either. But there I was.”

  I’ve yet to see him again.

  All this to say that what my uncle Barry displayed for me that summer was just how strange and complicated adults are. As a kid you assume you know them because you see them often, and because they care for you. But for every adult person you look up to in life there is trailing behind them an invisible chain gang of ghosts, all of which, as a child, you are generously spared from meeting.

  I know now, however, that these ghosts exist, and that other adults can see them. The lost loves, the hurt friends, the dead: they follow their owner forever. Perhaps this is why we feel so crowded around those people who we know have had hard times. Perhaps this is why we find so little to say. We suffer an odd brand of stage fright, I think, before all those dreadful eyes. And maybe that’s what my uncle had noticed about Mr. Simpson on the lawn that night of the fight. Maybe in my eyes, a child’s eyes, it was just the three of us squatting in the grass. But, to those two men, the lawn appeared to be full of bodies, full of the people they’d made mistakes with in life now tethered to them and ill-rested and serving no purpose but to remind them of the one awful thing: that life is made up, ever increasingly, of what you cannot change. One man’s daughter. Another man’s wife. The song plays on.

  Yet all I know for sure is that two days after the fight on the lawn, our telephone rang.

  It was Lindy.

  24.

  This was late July of 1991 and although he’d left, my uncle Barry’s scent was still in the house. Our phone had been ringing so often from people looking for him—creditors, his wife, her new man—that I’d come to ignore it. Then, after a particular ring, my mother called me into the kitchen. She held the phone to her shoulder. “It’s Lindy,” she whispered, and the look in her eyes was so hopeful. “Are you two talking again?”

  “I’ll pick it up in my room,” I said.

  Little need to explain the panic that shot through me.

  The year Lindy and I had spent not talking to each other felt insignificant compared to the concentrated silence that followed our interaction after the dance that spring. Who were we now, I wondered, since she’d whispered something seductive in my ear? How much did she really know about me, about my feelings? Was that a night she even remembered? Or was that finally the real Lindy I had spoken to at Melinda’s party, the one who’d sought me out and pulled me close?

  I had no idea, and so I agonized over the event in a manner so complete that I’d begun to wonder if it had ever really happened. Had I felt her hot breath on my cheek? Had I held her up from falling? Had I touched the soft scars on her thighs? Had I carried her? Hidden her? Saved her? Understood her? The opposite of this seemed more likely to me now, as if I’d never known Lindy Simpson at all. I wondered, for a moment, if I would even recognize her voice.

  I picked up the phone in my room and waited until my mother hung up. Then I stood there with the receiver in my hand, looking at myself in a full-length mirror. I saw a skinny thing in ragged shorts and a T-shirt. I looked nervous and unprepared. I sm
iled as if Lindy might see me. On the other end of the line, I heard music playing low in the background.

  “Hello?” I said.

  A long silence passed between us.

  “Yeah,” Lindy said. “So, I’m supposed to apologize about my dad.”

  Although I recognized her voice immediately, although I likely could have recited nearly everything she’d said to me in life, I had no clear idea of what she was talking about at that moment.

  “Apologize?” I asked. “For what?”

  I could hear her flipping through radio stations. I imagined her rolling her eyes.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “For my dad being pathetic, I guess. For the other night with the Kerns. My mom made me call. I think she’s going to leave him.”

  “Shit,” I said. “Your poor mother.”

  Lindy laughed when I said this, a surprising sound I hadn’t heard in years. It must have surprised her, too, as she cut it off like a switch.

  “What?” I said. “Why did you laugh?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I’d just forgotten what a fucking weirdo you are.”

  “I’m weird?” I asked her.

  I thought this might be a good thing.

  After all, this is what I’d been going for. This is why I wore black T-shirts and ghoulish jewelry and shaved the sides of my head. This is why my bangs hung over my eyes. This is why I was likely unattractive to all but one particular type of girl, one with issues, one with problems.

  I smiled. “What do you mean I’m weird?”

  “You sound like an old grandma,” she said. “Your poor mother. Who says shit like that?”

  This was not the weird I wanted.

  “An old grandma?” I asked. “What did you expect me to say?”

  “For starters, idiot, you don’t have to act all sad. It’s not like your parents are splitting up.”

  “My parents already split up,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Still.”

  And then nothing.

  I waited for Lindy to say something more, but instead she turned up the music on the radio. The song she’d settled on was heavy and growling, and I was humiliated not to know it. If only I could tag the opening bars. If only I could sing along. That would be something. I expected Lindy to turn it back down so we could talk, but she didn’t.

  “Still what?” I said, and thought I heard her voice. “Did you say something?”

  On the radio, the song went into its chorus. It was all sloppy chords and high screaming, and Lindy spoke to me over the blare. “Yeah,” she said. “I said you’re not supposed to be all concerned about my mom. You’re supposed to be upset because it means we might be moving.”

  I froze at the words.

  “Are you serious?” I asked.

  “No,” Lindy said. “It’s all an elaborate joke made up just for you. We spent months on it.”

  She was being sarcastic and making fun of me, but I still thought quickly about grabbing that moment to spill my whole heart, about apologizing for all I had done to her, about letting her secret out and denying her at the party, and maybe even about loving her since I was eleven years old. Then I recalled what my uncle Barry had said to me about just listening to her whenever I got the chance to, just being there for her, so I did.

  I stood tall and mute. I waited for her life to open up to me.

  “Look,” Lindy said, “I was supposed to call and tell you that, and I did, okay? I’ll talk to you later.”

  And that was it. She hung up.

  I walked to my window, the phone still at my ear, and stood there. Lindy’s house had green shutters. Someone had hung a rug over the rail of the front porch. The blinds were all drawn. I leaned my head against the glass.

  “Lindy,” I said. “What song was that you were listening to?”

  The line went dead.

  I spent the next hour in my room devastated.

  I’d no idea how to conjure a Piney Creek Road without Lindy and therefore worked so hard at discrediting the notion of her moving that I became positive I’d misheard her, or that maybe everything would be okay between Mr. and Mrs. Simpson, and I promptly began to imagine ways I could make this happen. I could send flowers to the house for Mrs. Peggy. I could type love letters and sign them Your Husband. I could sneak into their home and steal the booze from their cabinets. Or, maybe I could just burn the Kerns’ house to the ground, make them leave the area to clear up Mr. Simpson’s mind. What was that thing that Superman did, where he spun the Earth backward to go back in time? Or what if Lindy could just stay with us if her parents moved away? This was not such a crazy idea. She would be a senior this year. No need to uproot her now. There are sometimes complicated issues with credits transferring, with nitpicky technical stuff. What a shame that would be if she had to repeat a year due to a preventable technicality. I hate to even think of it, the poor girl. Of course, we’d be happy to take her in. Yes, yes, I decided. It’s all settled, then.

  This thought excited me to such a degree that I began to imagine Lindy walking into my room on accident, wearing an oversized T-shirt and panties, having just woken up on some aimless weekend morning. I stood in front of my bedroom mirror and assumed several poses that I imagined she might like to surprise me in. I took off my shirt and flexed my pale stomach, trying to look sexy. I hooked my thumb into the top of my shorts and pulled down the waistband. Oh, Lindy, I said. I didn’t see you standing there. Sure, come on in. It’s no problem. Just close the door behind you. Yes, of course.

  You can lock it.

  When I finally emerged from my room I was ecstatic with fantasy. I saw my mom and Rachel folding clothes in the den and thought my mother also looked happier than I had seen her since before Hannah’s death, humming a bit to herself as Rachel spoke. I wondered if she was starting to feel better, or if maybe my uncle Barry’s departure had finally allowed her to relax, and I tried to sneak past the two of them, still flush from my phone call.

  “What are you grinning about?” Rachel asked me.

  My mother looked up at me and smiled.

  “Did you have a nice chat with Lindy?” she asked. “I’m so glad to know you kids are talking again. She is such a sweet girl. She’s had such a hard time.”

  For one second I considered answering my mom honestly, telling her first about the fight on the lawn, and then about what Lindy had said about her parents’ troubles and possible split. I realized, though, that this news would do nothing but sadden my mother, not only because her good friend was perhaps losing her husband, but also because this meant that the reason Lindy had called was not to make peace with me, not to be close to me again.

  This was important.

  If Lindy and I were friends, if we were close, if it looked like our relationship was anything more than a one-way street, my mother would not have to worry about what she had seen in my lockbox. It all made sense to me then. Even though we never spoke explicitly about the rape anymore, and even though she never directly accused me of it, the hopeful look I had seen in my mother’s eyes when Lindy called had proved only one thing: she still hadn’t made up her mind about me.

  My name had yet to be cleared.

  It then broke over me how hard that span of silence between Lindy and I must have been for my mother, and it made me ashamed. Even when I think of this now, it depresses me. How many hours had she worried about things she didn’t need to? How much pain had I caused her when she still had my father to deal with? When she still had Hannah to mourn? When she still had so much life left to live without either of them?

  I couldn’t bear to think of it.

  I still can’t.

  So, “Yeah,” I told her. “We had a good chat.”

  “Good,” my mom said, and winked.

  Behind her, Rachel lifted up a pair of my ratty jeans. “Why do you dress l
ike such a thug?” she asked me. “Are you trying to look like a skater or something? Do you even own a skateboard?”

  “I don’t know, Rachel,” I said. “Are you trying to look like a lumberjack?”

  This comment didn’t come out of nowhere.

  Rachel had changed since Hannah’s death, in more complicated ways than I understood at the time. Her increasing preoccupation with Jesus and prayer made sense to me, but not the way this had aged her from a decent-looking coed into a frumpy thing that wore sweatpants and flannel shirts. I suppose that Rachel felt as if caring about her physical appearance suggested she was not thinking about the right things in the wake of our tragedy, not asking the right questions, not facing the truth.

  She may have been right. She has always been a good person.

  “He’s not a skater,” my mom said. “He’s a rocker. A guitar-playing rocker. Isn’t that right, honey?” My mother was being kind, but I was immediately annoyed. Parents have that special skill of making the truth, no matter how benign, an embarrassing thing. We all know this.

  “That’s not what I am,” I said.

  “Well, what are you, then?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I know what he is,” Rachel said, and then mumbled under her breath, “He’s a sinner.”

  “Rachel!” my mom said.

  “What?” Rachel said. “We’re all sinners, Mom. We all could do better.”

  And with that, my mother deflated right in front of us. She looked immediately sad and exhausted, and although we all knew Rachel hadn’t meant to upset her, it didn’t matter. In those days, my mom was always one memory away from being devastated, one conversational turn from a brutal remorse. I believe she might still be this way. I believe everyone might.

  Rachel said, “Okay, Mom. I’m sorry,” and continued folding my jeans.

  I then walked past them both and into the kitchen, where I felt genuinely starving for some reason, all full of energy and strange hope. I dug around in the pantry, searching for anything to eat, and had designs on becoming a healthier person in life, working out at the gym, and maybe even looking buff the next time Lindy saw me. I could spend the rest of the summer training, I figured. I could convince Lindy to start running again like she used to, this time with me, where we would stop to rest on the track at our school. Where I could pull off my shirt because of the heat and be proud when Lindy stole glances at me, or when she leaned into me jokingly, at first, and then placed her hand on my chest, on my stomach, on my thighs.