Someone Was Watching

by David Patneaude

  4

  Despite going to bed early and sleeping late, Chris felt exhausted on the trip home the next day. He tried reading and dozed off. He tried looking at the scenery and dozed off. When he awoke, his mom was asleep and his dad had his window rolled down and the radio turned up, sure signs that he, too, was fighting sleep. Five minutes later, they pulled into a rest area, and his mom took over the driving duties. Chris and his dad were both asleep before they’d gone a mile farther down the highway.

  When Chris woke up again they were pulling into their driveway. His mom braked the car in front of the garage and turned off the ignition. It was suddenly quiet.

  “The house looks nice,” his mom said, resting her hand on his dad’s shoulder.

  “It’s good to be home,” his dad said. He stretched back over the seat and tousled Chris’s hair.

  Chris ducked and scrambled out the door. He stood by the side of the car, grinning, hoping his dad would chase him. He was ready.

  But his dad got out and just looked at him for a long moment. “I like your hair like that, Chris,” he said finally, a smile in his eyes. “It reminds me of when you were a little kid.”

  Chris felt the top of his head. His hair was sticking straight up.

  “Back when you were still cute,” his dad said.

  Chris knew he was kidding, but he remembered when his dad and mom used to tell him what a cute kid he was. He hadn’t heard it for a long time.

  “You still think I was a cute kid?” he asked.

  “None cuter,” his mom said, getting out of the car. Suddenly she got that funny, faraway look in her eyes that Chris had seen too often in the past few months. He knew she was thinking about another cute kid.

  His dad must have seen the look, too. “How could you miss with such good-looking parents, Chris?” he said with a smile. He turned to Chris’s mom. “We passed our good looks on to both of our kids, didn’t we, honey?” he said. Chris felt relieved. His dad wasn’t going to ignore what everyone was feeling.

  His mom smiled. Bittersweet, Chris thought, understanding the word as he never had before. She looked at him and through him. “We sure did,” she said, slipping an arm around his dad’s waist.

  “I’m glad you think so,” Chris said.

  He grabbed his bag and headed for the house. When he got there, he found a piece of paper taped to the front door. Curious, he took it off, unfolded it, and looked at some familiar handwriting. It was a note from Pat.

  Chris—

  I came by to see if you were home yet. You weren’t. Hope everything went okay at the river. Call me when you get back. Pat.

  “From Pat?” his mom asked, reaching the front step.

  “Yeah,” Chris said. “I’m supposed to give him a call.”

  His dad unlocked the door and nudged it open. “I think you should,” he said. Chris rushed through and was almost to the phone before his dad called after him. “But before you make any plans, Chris, your mom and I thought it would be good to look at the tape tonight. What do you think?”

  The tape. Now that this was out in the open they weren’t about to sweep it back under the rug, Chris decided. He knew what tape they were talking about. He hadn’t forgotten it. As far as he knew, it was still in the camera. He stared at the phone for a moment before answering them, trying to think of what might be on the tape. Trying to think if he wanted to see it. He decided he did.

  “Sounds like a good idea to me,” he said. “Okay if Pat comes over for it, too?” He couldn’t see their faces, but for a moment he heard the silence of their exchanged glances.

  Then his dad’s voice: “He might as well. He’s just about one of the family.”

  Then his mom: “And ask him to come for dinner, Chris. Tell him spaghetti. Lots of it.”

  “Thanks,” Chris said, picking up the phone. Now he hoped Pat could come, and would want to. He figured he’d need the company.

  5

  Pat decided to come over early—real early. Five minutes after their phone conversation, Chris looked out his upstairs bedroom window and saw him run into the front yard. He was doing his impersonation of a running back, dodging and faking and hurdling phantom defenders as he crossed the lawn. One hand cradled an imaginary football, while the other warded off would-be tacklers. Chris smiled, but didn’t laugh. At nearly six feet and 170 pounds, with sprinter’s speed, Pat looked as if he belonged on a football field. And he did. Like Chris, he’d played junior football since he was eight years old.

  Chris hurried downstairs, listening for the doorbell, half expecting Pat to crash right in. But he didn’t hear anything, and when he opened the door, he saw why: Pat was doing his touchdown dance on the lawn, his back to the house. Chris let him go through his whole routine, including the ceremonial spiking of the imaginary ball, before letting him know he had a real audience.

  “Nice moves, hot dog,” Chris said. “They never laid a hand on you. But the ref just dropped his penalty flag.”

  Pat turned slowly, a sheepish grin on his face. “You better be practicing your dance, too, Chris,” he said. “You know you’re gonna be getting some TDs this year.”

  “If we have anyone to throw me the ball,” Chris said. His team wasn’t known for its passing attack.

  “Hey, if we don’t have anyone else that can do it, I’ll get back there and toss you a few.”

  “I won’t hold my breath,” Chris said. But Pat could probably do it, and the coaches would probably let him.

  “You coming in?” Chris said.

  “Yeah,” Pat said, walking toward the door. He gave Chris a playful punch to the shoulder—a playful punch that Chris felt all the way down to his bones. “How ya doin’, big guy?” Pat said. “How was your weekend?”

  “Better than I figured it would be,” Chris said. He thought for a moment while they walked into the house and he closed the door behind them. “A lot better than I figured it would be.”

  “Really?” Pat said, looking Chris in the eye. “It really went okay?”

  “My mom and dad are talking again,” Chris said quietly. He glanced around, not sure where they were, but they didn’t appear to be in hearing range, at least. “They’re even talking to each other.”

  “That’s great,” Pat said. “That’s great.” He made a throwing motion and then repeated it. “You wanna go out and toss the football around for a while?”

  “The real one?”

  “The real one. You can even practice your dance.”

  “It’s a deal,” Chris said.

  Chris was near starvation when they sat down to dinner, but by the time he was halfway through his spaghetti, Pat’s plate was already empty. Pat, who had started out with a mountain of a serving, sat with his fork in his hand and a silly look on his face, as if he were waiting for a load of pasta to fall from the sky.

  “I think The Solution to America’s Food Surplus needs another helping,” Chris said.

  His mom, who had barely started on her food, looked over at Pat and his clean plate, smiled, and shook her head. “Would you like some more, Pat?” she said.

  “I thought you’d never ask,” he said, handing her his plate.

  “Why don’t you just bring the whole pot over for him?” Chris’s dad said.

  Chris and Pat did the dishes and shuffled into the dimly lit family room where Chris’s mom was removing the tape from the video camera. She handed it to his dad, who put it into the recorder.

  “You guys ready for this?” he said.

  They nodded and found chairs to sit in while Chris’s dad started the tape and sat down on the couch with his mom.

  The television screen flickered on and Chris focused in on it. Everything else in the room blurred and faded out. The TV was nothing but gray fuzz and buzzing for what seemed like a month. He wondered if the whole tape were blank and whether or not he’d be disappointed if it were. He didn’t think he would. Maybe something had been wrong with the camera that day. Maybe there was something else they could
watch instead—anything else. But then his mom’s face came on the screen, and his dad’s voice tumbled out of the speaker: “Tell us what day it is, hon.”

  “It’s May 20th,” his mom said, “and we’re on our way to the river for a weekend of fun and sun. Greenwater, here we come!”

  The picture faded out and right back in again. And there was Molly, walking through the front door holding Chris’s hand. As they approached the driveway, the camera zoomed in on her, showing her face in closeup, her blond hair aglow in the morning sun. She was looking up at Chris with a serious expression on her face. Her voice floated out of the TV as if she were right in the room. “I want to sit in Daddy’s seat, Kis. I want to drive to the river.”

  “When you’re bigger, Molly,” Chris’s voice said.

  The picture faded out, and then she was back on the screen again, sitting in the driver’s seat with her hands on the steering wheel, smiling at the camera through the open window. “I’m driving the car,” she said with a big smile.

  “Where are you driving, Molly?” his mom’s voice said.

  “I’m driving to the river,” Molly said. “Far away to the big river. To our little house.”

  In the next scene she was in the back of the car with Chris, sitting in her car seat and looking grumpily through the back window. Her plans had been spoiled. But she smiled and waved at the camera when Chris asked her to.

  Then they were on the road. Pictures taken through the car window of the countryside between home and the river flashed on the screen. Road noise and music and voices paraded from the speaker. Chris picked Molly’s small voice out of the jumble, trying to sing along with a song on the radio. He closed his eyes and imagined she was there in the room. Her voice stopped and he opened his eyes again. Her face filled the screen. Chris had caught her sleeping in her seat, her head flopped to the side, her long eyelashes resting on her round cheeks.

  Then she was gone again. They’d arrived in Greenwater and his dad was operating the camera, doing his traditional scene of Chris’s mom walking out of the women’s room at the gas station. On every trip they took he had to have at least one of these shots. He called it his contribution to art. Chris’s mom called it childish. Once she even crawled out of a restroom window to escape the camera. But she usually managed to laugh with the rest of the family when the segment showed up on the TV screen.

  Now, she was walking out once more, this time holding Molly’s hand. Molly could never decide to go the first time she had a chance to. She was looking up at her mom and talking while they walked toward the camera. “Now can we get ice cream, Mom?” she asked. “Now can we?”

  The next scenes ran together like a steady stream of cold rain drops on Chris’s head. Molly and Chris walking into The Cloverbud for ice cream and wandering back out with Bud and Clover and an ice cream cone the size of a small building in Molly’s hand. More scenery between town and the summer house. And scenes at the house: Chris and his dad throwing the football in the front yard, his mom pointing out the famous tree—the tree with the six inch trunk—that Chris tried to hide behind once to avoid taking some medicine. Molly helping to mow the lawn with her toy lawnmower.

  Then they were at the beach: Molly in her little flowery swimsuit trying to catch a big plastic ball; Molly and Chris racing each other through the sand; Molly winning and squealing with delight and running ankle deep through the cold water; Molly and Chris and their dad eating lunch on the blanket; Molly feeding leftover bread to a squirrel.

  The river scenes started—the ones Chris taped after he wandered down to the beach by himself. He knew he’d seen the last of Molly, but he kept watching the screen, transfixed by the motion and color and dim noises in the background. A bird, a water skier, a splash far out in the river. Sand and grass and trees and sunshine. A quiet day in late spring.

  Then the screen was blank, and the only sound from the speaker was the buzz of dead static. Chris kept staring at the fuzzy gray image in front of him, vaguely aware of Pat getting up and moving toward the door.

  “I gotta go, big guy,” Pat whispered. “Talk to you tomorrow.” And he was gone.

  Too late, Chris waved his hand and said, “See ya, Pat.” The effort dragged him out of his trance. He glanced around the room. His mom and dad, sound asleep, leaned on each other in the middle of the sofa.

  He stood, stretched, and walked stiffly over to them. He gently shook his dad’s shoulder but got no response. “Dad. Mom,” he said in a tired voice. But they didn’t move. He pulled a big knit blanket from underneath the coffee table, draped it carefully over them, and started upstairs, switching off the TV and VCR on the way.

  Sometime during the night he awoke with his mom and dad standing over his bed. Dim light streamed through his open door from the hall.

  “You okay, Chris?” his dad asked.

  “You were talking in your sleep,” his mom said.

  For a minute Chris couldn’t think. “I’m okay,” he finally said. But he didn’t feel okay. He felt troubled—burdened—but he didn’t know why.

  “Well, sleep tight, then,” his dad said and put his hand on Chris’s head.

  His mom kissed his cheek, and they walked out and closed the door, leaving Chris sweating in the warm room.

  Then he remembered his dream. The warm wind in his face, the trees drifting by like ships’ sails, the exhaustion, the silence in the car. Then the voice on the radio, sounding just as it had during the trip back home from the summer place last May. The flat, uncaring voice trying to sound concerned. “Missing and presumed drowned,” it had said. Missing and presumed drowned. He got out of bed and staggered to the bathroom for a drink.

  He didn’t feel better when he got back to his room. It wasn’t just a dream he could forget; it was a memory that would play in his mind forever. And something else was gnawing at him, too, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. He sat on the edge of his bed and thought, but nothing shook loose. Whatever was stuck was stuck tight. Finally he crawled back under the covers and fell asleep, tossing fitfully back and forth across the mattress.

  When he opened his eyes again it was still dark. The only light in his room shone from his clock radio. He turned on his side to look at it—3:21. Early. Real early. He didn’t even get up that early to go fishing. But he was wide awake, and something was playing through his mind. Something troubling.

  The videotape. Scenes and sounds from the videotape were rolling through the built-in player in his head. But they were fuzzy and he couldn’t play them back. He couldn’t reverse and fast forward and stop them in their tracks.

  He lay on his back and tried to think. Had he just been dreaming, or had a bit of reality crept into his dreams? He couldn’t sort it out. He had to go downstairs and see.

  The family room was dark. Chris switched on a table lamp to low power, blinked his eyes to get used to the light, and turned on the TV and VCR. He picked up the remote control and sat down on the rug six feet in front of the screen. After rewinding the tape, he hit the play button and the familiar images reappeared. Once again, his family was in the front yard getting ready to leave for the river. But this wasn’t what he wanted to see. He hit the fast forward button and stopped. Country scenes taken from the car window. Fast forward. Stop. His mom coming out of the restroom. Fast forward. Stop. He and Molly walking into the Cloverbud. Fast forward. Stop. At the summer house. Fast forward. Stop. At the beach. Fast forward. Stop. His shots down at the water. Stop. This was what he needed to see.

  He reversed the tape a bit to make sure he wouldn’t miss anything and then let it play. Molly was feeding the squirrel again for just a moment, and then she was gone and the camera lens was scanning slowly along the river’s surface. Following a lone duck landing in the water and a water skier, stopping at a splash for just an instant and continuing on. The sandy shoreline and point of land to the south, with the river beyond it, and, unseen, the dock. The turtles.

  The camera continued its sweep away from the beach to
the grass. Then the trees floated into the picture. A squirrel darted into a clearing, and the camera stopped to study it picking up something and stuffing it into its mouth. It sat on its hind legs and chewed, and the camera zoomed in on it. Behind the squirrel the trees stood thick and leafy, but a few cars were visible in the parking lot beyond. On the road an occasional car passed with a glint of sunshine and a whoosh.

  And now Chris could hear a new sound, barely audible at first, and then louder but still faint, still distant. It was music—a familiar, music-box tune. He hadn’t just dreamed it.

  The camera stayed on the squirrel. Chris’s eyes were watering. His ears were straining. He was afraid to blink. This should be the place, if his mind wasn’t playing tricks on him. He waited, his mouth a dry sponge, as the music got louder and suddenly blended in with the sound of a vehicle pulling into the parking lot from the highway. Then it appeared through the trees, big and white and dappled with shade. A ghost in the shadows. And now the music was even louder, more distinctive. The vehicle, half-hidden by trees and bushes, inched across the screen and stopped, its back half still visible. For another heartbeat, Chris could hear the music. And then it stopped, replaced by the idle of a motor.

  As the squirrel chewed and the engine idled, Chris watched and listened. For what seemed like an eternity, he listened. Finally, he heard a muffled thud—the sound of a car door closing—and the vehicle eased out of the picture, the rumble of its motor growing louder and then softer, as it accelerated out of the parking lot. He continued to listen until the squirrel disappeared from the screen and was replaced by blue sky and clouds. But the music didn’t play again.

  Chris took a deep breath and thought for a moment, his heart racing. He hit the stop button, then reverse, then stop, and then back to play. On the screen, the squirrel was eating again, quietly enjoying its food. Chris waited, listening, edging closer to the TV. When he heard the first faint strains of the music, he started counting slowly. By the time the music stopped, he’d gotten to twenty-seven. He reversed the tape, started it again, and waited. As the vehicle appeared on the screen, he hit the pause button. A still picture appeared. A picture of a squirrel and grass and trees and a large white van, frozen in the parking lot. The room was silent, as if Chris had put everything on pause. But he was conscious of his heartbeat as he slid even closer to the TV to get a better look.