by Lee Thompson
“And what happened?”
“She got sick of pretending. Her actions didn’t measure up to her words.”
“It happens to everyone.”
“You too, huh?”
She smiled sadly and we looked over a trailer park where there was probably more misery than joy. All these hollow shells with ants in them, working and striving for something greater, or only something true, and most of them would never get what they wanted. That was life. We seldom get what we want. Maybe some of it if we’re lucky. Kim played with her watch. She leaned back in the seat. “When I grew up I knew what I wanted to do. You?”
“I wanted to be a ninja.”
“No luck, huh?” she said.
“No. My buddy Mike rocks that angle though.” I cleared my throat, wondering what he was doing at that moment, hoping he was safe. “I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.”
“Why don’t you just be yourself?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure who I am.” I hated admitting it. I felt weak and useless and suspected she’d already decided she knew me. And I couldn’t blame her. I made snap judgments on people all the time without a thought to what they could really be going through inside, without knowing their history and what letdowns and sorrows they cradled when no one else was around. It reminded me of my mom and made me miss her too.
Kim said, “I think you’re one of the good guys.”
But I’m not, I thought. I’m stubborn and I can be cruel.
She said, “So, you’ve made some mistakes, you’ve misjudged, you’ve been hurt and lied to. What can you do about it?”
“Nothing. Move on I guess.” I glanced her way and she patted my leg like I was a puppy. I said, “Everything we ever loved is carried away.”
She cocked her head and snorted.
“It’s true. Every friend, every lover, every good time. They all run their course and we’re left with vapor, we’re holding shadows.”
“That’s not a very healthy way to think about it, John.” She scooted closer and grabbed my hand. “Listen to me, okay?” I held her eyes for a moment and then looked back over the weed-choked field on the south side of the trailer park. Kim squeezed my hand. “Don’t forget the good times. People love you. Doug loves you and he doesn’t just give his heart away, or call everyone his friend. He’s actually quite pessimistic when it comes to people.” She wiped her eyes and her voice thickened. “He told me a lot of things he’s experienced. He told me how your friend helped him dig his daughter up in that forest and how lonely he felt. I can’t imagine it and you probably can’t either. And my heart breaks for him.”
“I can understand it.”
“I hope he’s going to be okay.”
“He will.”
Kim held onto my hand a while longer, and it was nice. I said, “I’m really tired of the way the world works. How selfish and disrespectful people can be. Myself included.”
“Everyone makes mistakes, John. God knows I have. But people can do good things too. There are some who can love you more than others.”
“I know that.”
“I’m just saying,” she said. “Who do you have in your life that means the world to you?”
I didn’t have to think about it long. “My Uncle Red, Mike, my buddy Wylie, Doug.”
“No women?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
I felt us shuffle onto thin ice. We could sit and talk about that subject until the moon crashed into the ocean and the sea evaporated and the trees burned and crackled with god’s second coming, so I said, “Shouldn’t we get back to work?”
I wondered if she’d sat in this car with Tripper when he’d started, if they’d talked about these same things, if she had a thing for underlings, for wounded men.
She stared into my eyes for a moment, and then gave the slightest nod of her head, “Okay,” pouting a little, though it was wrestling with pride because maybe all she really wanted was to help me, or somehow help herself through me. She checked her mirrors and pulled out into the road and we rode in silence for fifteen minutes, and I kept waiting for her to say something else, but she didn’t until we pulled up in front of a nice ranch home in a small and newer subdivision. The house sat on one of the corner lots, off to the side and behind it, a large weeping willow leaned over a pond. A Lexus sat in the driveway. Kim parked next to it and said, “This is a very sad case.”
“How so?” I asked, thinking, Aren’t they all sad? Don’t they all infuriate you? But I didn’t have to ask because of course they did, or maybe not, maybe you learned to numb yourself, but even that was a joke, denial, because it didn’t change facts.
She grabbed a file from the black bag in the backseat. “A month ago their fifteen-year-old son hung himself in the tree out back. Their other son, David, he’s autistic, and he…” her eyes misted.
“Are the parents bad people? Did they lead the kid to killing himself?”
“David isn’t hurt. He just doesn’t understand.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure anyone understands. But since Jacob’s suicide, we have to look into it. I’ve met them once. They seem like a nice family though it’s pretty obvious Mr. and Mrs. Sholes aren’t friends.”
“Was one of them leaving when Jacob killed himself?”
She raised her eyebrows. “How did you know that?”
“I didn’t know. It’s just the only thing that makes sense.”
She smiled, said, “You’re going to do okay on this job, John.”
The front curtains shifted and a boy, maybe twelve-years-old, pressed his face to the glass. David, I thought. He who fights giants. Unsure at first where the thought stemmed from, but like so many things I didn’t want to acknowledge, its roots grew deep in my father’s teachings, in the words of Christ, and the lost and shiftless souls seeking meaning. Kim touched my shoulder and waved the file at David, whose brow knitted before he let the curtain fall back into place and disappeared behind it.
We approached the door. A woman opened it. Brunette, pale, her lips bloodless, a cut-out from some bygone era where women slaved over the stove. She wiped her hands on her apron and said, “I’m sorry, I was baking cookies.” She held the door for us and urged us inside. The moment we stepped across the threshold the sense of loss and confusion rained down, the lights on in the house but offering no reprieve from what lurked in the shadows, all the memories and hopes this family had possessed for the son they’d lost.
Jesus, I thought. Thinking of Ethan, all the times I thought he’d grow up, one day on my shoulders pretending he was a jet pilot, the next moment holding me up as old age set in and my false teeth chattered because the Pennsylvania winters had grown too harsh, and he’d buy me and April a little place in Florida…
I shook my head as Mrs. Sholes struggled with David, trying to get him to sit still in a large green chair against the wall. He kept studying us, glancing around her shoulder. She whispered, “It’s okay,” though the tone of her voice said nothing was, and it never would be again.
Kim sat on the matching sofa and I eased onto the cushion beside her. She said, “I’ve always loved the smell of baking cookies.” Mrs. Sholes nodded absently to herself and stroked David’s cheek as he stilled. He watched me. I smiled at him and he cowered into the back of the chair. His mother said, “Excuse me a moment,” and walked into the kitchen. She slid the cookie sheet from the oven. When she walked back into the living room, she sat next to her son and held his hand. I didn’t doubt her love for him, though I knew nothing of how her or her husband had treated Jacob, if the boy gave them hell the way boys will, or if he was a model student, one of those who seemed to have their shit together from an early age. I said, “What was Jacob like?”
Mrs. Sholes looked at me as if I’d slapped her. Kim fumbled quickly for words, an apology to her, or perhaps a reprimand for me, but the broken mother raised a hand and said, “It’s okay. It’s just so fresh.” David laid his head against her should
er and stared at the wall. She said, “We didn’t know, never even suspected…”
We waited for her to find the place to start her story while outside the sky grew brighter as if just speaking of their loss had somehow lightened the world. And sometimes I thought it was like that, because to hold everything inside was what killed you, a lesson life teaches but is seldom heeded, because we’re so scared of what other people think, or just scared of what lays lurking beneath our denial and cover-ups.
She said, “Robert works hard, and he was actually very close to Jacob. He encouraged him the way you’d think a father should, even if it appeared Jacob didn’t have much talent in any areas. Jacob was the typical older brother,” her fingers played with David’s hair, “he was cruel to Davey sometimes, but he was also his protector.”
I said, “And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“When your husband encouraged Jacob, what did you do?”
She hung her head. “Not much. It’s always been an unspoken thing, but I’ve always cared for David. Robert didn’t know how to, or sometimes he didn’t have the patience, or maybe he was just frightened by the unknown.”
Kim listened.
I said, “What unknown?”
She rubbed David’s thigh, said, “I’m not talking about this in front of my son.”
I nodded.
Kim said, “Did your husband have a hard time dealing with David?”
Mrs. Sholes lips formed a firm line. “I think it would take a very special man to deal with anyone like Davey. Robert did his best, but he always fell way short.”
I said, “And is that what caused a lot of the tension, even for Jacob?”
“Of course. He mimicked his father like boys will do, even if he wasn’t fully aware of it.” Her face grew red. “Robert treated David like someone with a disease, and he was a coward, and I think Jacob picked up on that.”
“Do you blame your husband for Jacob’s death,” I asked.
“Sometimes. He was just a kid. He didn’t know what he was doing.”
I thought, He was fifteen. He knew what he was doing.
Kim said, “It’s safe to assume that whatever troubles Jacob had, they stemmed from more than just his father’s influence. What was he like in school? How did the other kids treat him?”
“He was well-liked.”
She was lying, mostly to herself.
I said, “And how is David handling it?”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t understand. He thinks his dad and brother just went somewhere and they’ll be back.”
Kim said, “And what do you think?”
“I don’t want to think about either one of them anymore. I just want me and David to do what we’ve always done. We’ll survive.”
Kim frowned. I could tell she didn’t like Mrs. Sholes’s callousness. I wondered if we had to go talk to the father today too. If what he felt was the same as her, because we all need someone to blame, or if he’d agree and say it was his fault, that he didn’t love enough, didn’t try hard enough to understand his own children, so caught up in the problems of his marriage, in his life, that to walk those parallel paths presented a burden too great to bear. I thought of my parents, and of how different Mark and I had been. It wasn’t a great mystery that parents usually played favorites, they clung to one child more than the other, maybe nothing more to it than that they saw themselves in this one and not that one, maybe they saw qualities of their partner in the child they didn’t care for as much, and it only added to the distaste.
Kim said, “Well, that should about do it for today, I think.”
I said, “Can I talk to David for a second?”
Both women stared at me as if I was something other than a man. David’s mother said, “He won’t understand you.”
Kim said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea, John.”
I studied a photograph on the wall, one of their family, and Jacob’s wolfen face, though young, demonstrated the coldness that would harden and shape him later in life. I wondered if he hated himself those days before he took his life, and if it had nothing to do with his parents or his brother. Mrs. Sholes said, “What do you think of him? What judgments can you pass on our family by studying a photograph?”
I turned to her. “I don’t want to pass judgment on anyone.”
“It just comes easy, is that it?”
Kim said, “Agent McDonnell never implied anything like that.”
Mrs. Sholes squared her shoulders. “I don’t like being under a magnifying glass.”
I said, “No one does.”
David pulled himself from the chair and crossed to the back room to stare out the window at the willow where his older brother took his life.
I said, “So, I take it we’re not getting any cookies?”
Mrs. Sholes laughed but without warmth. “David is safe. Jacob was safe too, and it breaks my heart more than you could ever imagine accepting that he did what he did. But we’ve done our best, always, for our children.”
A shadow passed over her face and settled in her eyes. Kim shifted, possibly sensing it as well. Here was a woman who thought being a good parent was something noble when all it really boiled down to was something that should come naturally, something that a parent wants to do. The room hummed with ghosts. I wanted to ask what her childhood was like, if the image of adulthood, of parenthood, had cut her when the illusion shattered in her lap.
I said, “Does his father come see him?”
“No,” Mrs. Sholes said. “But that’s a mutual agreement.”
“Where is he?”
Kim said, “John, relax,” as if she thought I was getting worked up over nothing, but this was something, this was life in all its agony and glory right there staring us in the face. I said to Mrs. Sholes, “Did you ever think that you can suffocate a child with isolation?”
She stood quickly. She pointed her finger to the front door and ordered us out. Kim tried to placate her, throwing hard looks in my direction for poking a nerve, or being unprofessional, but as we walked to her car and rain fell, I said, “It’s true. She’s overbearing. That kid is going to end up hurt because he isn’t going to know the dangers.”
“What are you, a psychologist now?”
“I wish. I’d have a lot of people thrown in padded rooms.”
We climbed in the car. I said, “Not so well that time, right?”
“What were you trying to prove?”
“Nothing. I was making a point.”
“You attacked her.”
“No. I pointed out a fact.”
“What fact?”
I scratched my knee and looked over the Sholes home, wondering if I was just angry at April still. “There’s a fine line people walk when raising their kids. Too much protection is just as bad as neglect.”
“I’ll have to disagree with you on that.” She clutched the steering wheel. “Beating a kid is one thing. Trying to keep them from being hurt is good.”
“You’re not hearing me. I’m talking extremes.” I tried to find a way to express what I meant by way of example but no scenarios manifested that made sense, and I was left holding my hands in my lap, feeling like an asshole.
Kim said, “If you’re going to act like that when you’re on your own we’re going to have a lot of problems. You and me.”
She started the car. I glanced to the house again and saw David in the window. He raised his hand and pointed across the road. I turned my head, hand going to the pistol beneath my coat, thinking, This is the moment they were waiting for, for me to relax.
A popping noise whispered in my ear. Heat enveloped the car, soft and comforting at first, like striking a match to light a candle, and then it grew fierce and I heard Kim screaming in the seat beside me, reached for her, to pull her close and cover her head with my arm, but her skin had blackened, her mouth open and teeth so white against the surrounding flesh. I threw the door open, trying to get away and get my bearings, to s
ee where the enemy stood, imagining four men bearing flamethrowers at each corner of the smoking wreck, but there was only the rain and in the yard, the boy with tears in his eyes.
The willow out back snapped its branches against the pond like a whip. Lightning crackled and David crossed his heart as if promising to keep a secret. Voices, soft and lovely, yet terrifying in their secrecy, whispered upon the wind. The boy nodded and pointed behind me to where Kim had died but when I turned to look over my shoulder, the car was gone and something else, a pocket of darkness that held pieces of my childhood and the firm hand of my father, glittered like a jewel, and I thought, You’re giving me this, kid?
David stood at my side, took my hand, his as light as a sickly child. But his grip grew stronger from one second to the next and my instinct was to pull away because if he kept tightening his fingers he’d break my hand, yet I couldn’t because part of me felt I deserved this. Whatever greater forces hunted us, I’d brought it on myself, and as stupid and weak as it sounded, I wondered if I gave myself willingly it might mean no one else had to die. But the thought was fleeting, alien, so similar to my internal voice, but off. I studied his eyes and clenched my jaw as his hand tightened further, him smiling, wanting to bring me to my knees either for his own pleasure or someone else controlling him.
I whispered, “Get out of my head.”
He looked innocent. He shook his head. He pulled me around the back of the house where the willow bent over the pond beneath the hazy sky and the heat of an inferno coursed through my blood. His brother hung in the tree, his sneakered feet swaying, his face purple and fingers too white. David released my hand and looked up at him. His brother opened his eyes and smiled down at us but tears slid down his cheek and when he tried to speak it came out garbled and brief and broken. They both continued smiling while the wind swept tears from all our cheeks and something inside me sounded like breaking glass.
The willow groaned.
I glanced at the water and saw Kim face down, floating on its surface, her hair pasted to her skull, arms akimbo. I feared seeing the future through the eyes of a child, and that’s what I thought it was, this boy had a gift, and he was showing me that he knew Kim’s death would be brutal, at the hand of a man who treated life as if it were expendable.