“Okay, fair enough. And you think she should have?”
“Well, I don’t know. Her husband’s about to hurt someone close to him, kill him even, and she just stands back and lets it happen. Shouldn’t she have at least tried to tell him it was a bad idea?”
“Maybe the fact that she doesn’t says something about her. Maybe that’s her weakness.”
“I guess. But what are you supposed to do with someone like that?”
“I’m not sure I follow you,” she said.
“Well, say you know someone who isn’t stopping a person close to them from hurting other people. What are you supposed to do?”
She paused and stared at me sort of intently, like she was searching for something. It made me nervous.
“Chris,” she said, “is there something you want to talk about?”
“Not really,” I said.
“’Cause you can if you want.” She smiled.
I smiled back. “I’m good.”
“Okay. Well, in that case, to answer your question, I’d have to say that you have a few options. You could do nothing, of course. Or you could confront the person, encourage them to step up and stop whatever’s going on from continuing.”
“What if they won’t?”
“There’s always that chance. Maybe they can’t. Or maybe they’ve tried and the other person keeps on hurting people anyway.”
“So in other words, forget about it.”
“Of course not. Just don’t be disappointed if things don’t work out. People can be weak.”
They sure can, I thought.
“There’s another option, you know. You could always try confronting the other person yourself. Maybe you can stop what’s going on.”
“Right,” I said. I stood up. She stayed sitting at the desk, a smile, on her face. It was a nice smile, but it had an edge of worry to it. I wasn’t used to a smile like that.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Well, I’m just glad to see you’re taking Shakespeare to heart. You didn’t seem that interested in what we studied before, to be honest.”
“What can I say. It’s Shakespeare, right?”
“Right.” She laughed.
“See you tomorrow,” I said. I left and headed for practice.
Things with the team were better than they’d been on Saturday after the game. Josh, Steve, and a few of the other guys joked around with me in the locker room, but everyone still acted a little cold toward me, like they were pulling away somehow. I figured it was probably for the best, all things considered.
I went through practice sort of numb. Coach spent the whole first part lecturing us about our loss, rambling on about commitment and effort and all that crap. I barely paid attention. This time I wasn’t thinking about Amber. I’d seen her at lunch, but only in passing. As far as I could tell, things were pretty much over.
I had other things on my mind too. My conversation with Ms. Simpson had gotten me thinking more about Barry and Sheila and Echo. I just didn’t understand why Sheila would stand by and let Barry hurt Echo any more than I could understand why Barry would hurt Echo to begin with. In fact, I understood it less. In some ways Sheila reminded me of my own mother—a cold fish. But there was a toughness to my mother that Sheila didn’t have. My mother had an edge that could cut sharper than any knife. Sheila may have had an edge once upon a time, but it was blunt now. I suppose living with Barry would be enough to dull anyone. Maybe that’s why she stood by and did nothing—Sheila was just too weak, like Ms. Simpson said.
And what about me? Why didn’t I just take Barry on myself, like Ms. Simpson had suggested? While we did laps around the practice field and ran drills, I kept asking myself the very question. At first I figured I was just scared. After all, I was a coward—at least as far as I could tell. But that wasn’t it. Not completely. Underneath it all, I felt like it wasn’t my place. I was just a visitor, a stranger in their midst, no matter who I might look like. I mean, what made me think I could come along and try to change anything about the Parkers? Doppelgangers aren’t supposed to change the world; we’re just supposed to live in it. That’s what my mother always told me, anyway. And that’s what I tried to tell myself as I took the bus home from practice.
Along the way, the bus paused before a railroad crossing to listen for oncoming trains. I looked through the window and saw the tracks stretching into the distance on their way out of town. Not too far down those tracks was the culvert. I wondered how Chris was doing in there. I shivered imagining what he must look like by now.
Poor kid. I’d told him that night when I stuck him in there that I’d try not to screw things up. Now, five days later, I couldn’t tell if I was keeping my promise. Then again, things were so screwed up already, I wasn’t sure if I could really make them any worse. All I could do was make them bad in a different way.
Which was probably what I’d do if I confronted Barry. Who knew—maybe what had happened to Echo was an isolated incident. Maybe Barry felt guilty enough to make sure what had happened on Saturday would never happen again. But somehow the look on Sheila’s face had told me that wasn’t true. As the bus crossed over the tracks and headed on, I figured I’d just have to wait and see.
I didn’t have to wait long. Only three days.
It was Thursday. I’d just gotten home after a grueling practice. The game against Springfield was on Saturday and everyone was freaking out, especially the coaches. Bakersville and Springfield had this big rivalry going way back, and practically the entire population of both towns turned out for “the big game” every year. It was even more important than making the play-offs. By the time Steve dropped me off, I was pretty beat and looking forward to a hot meal, a shower, and then bed, but as soon as I walked in the door, I could tell something was wrong.
Things had been pretty quiet all week. Barry had been subdued, even going out of his way to be nice, particularly to Echo, and after a couple days I started to think that things were better. I was ready to forget about it. I mean, I’d almost allowed myself to forget about Chris, about what I’d done to him. It’s like I was Chris. Mother would have been proud.
The only time I faltered was when I’d see his face in the mirror. It wasn’t so much the fear of seeing those monster eyes again. Though it gnawed at me a little, I had enough trouble worrying about the things I could control. It had more to do with seeing Chris. It never failed to catch me off guard—to see him staring back at me like that, with an accusing look, even though it was my face now. So I took the mirror off the wall in my room and stuck it in the closet next to the pornos.
Things were even starting to get better with Amber. By Tuesday I’d managed to get her to talk to me a few times, and on Wednesday she even smiled at lunch when I made a joke. Of course, there were kids around, so who knows if she was faking it, but it was a start. She was still pretty cold, but I was going out of my way to be as nice as possible. Just like Barry.
But that Thursday when I walked in the door, the first thing I noticed was the smell of booze. It wasn’t beer—it was whiskey. That goddam smell was haunting me. I poked my head in the living room. Sure enough, there was Barry, wreathed in cigarette smoke, lying back on the sofa watching TV with a butt in one hand and a glass in the other. I looked at my watch—it wasn’t even five. He was home early.
I slipped into my room, dropped off my books and clothes, and headed back out to the kitchen. Echo’s door was open when I went by, and I could see her sitting on her bed, reading. She glanced up and gave me a quick, nervous look when I paused in the doorway, then went back to her book.
“What’s Dad doing home?” I asked, coming into the kitchen.
Sheila was at the sink, peeling potatoes. As soon as I opened my mouth, I could see her stiffen.
“He was here when I got home a half hour ago. Trouble at work. Trouble with Mitch.”
“The boss?” I said. Uh-oh. “Did he get fired?”
“No,” she muttered. “But that’s about all I kno
w.”
I could tell she didn’t want to talk about it, and she wanted me to talk about it even less.
“Just let me know when it’s time for supper,” I said, and headed back to my room. The next hour dragged by.
I tried reading Macbeth for a while, but it made me even more anxious. First Macbeth goes to the three witches to find out about his future. They conjure up three apparitions who each give him a prophecy. The prophecies make Macbeth feel safe, but any idiot can see he’s headed for trouble, especially when he orders that Macduff’s entire family be massacred. The whole thing is creepy and bizarre. But the next scene is even worse. Lady Macduff is all upset about her husband taking off to escape Macbeth, and so Ross, one of the lords, tries to calm her down. Then he leaves, and she jokes around with her son. Even in the middle of all this trouble, she still keeps her sense of humor. Then Macbeth’s goons show up. At that point, I closed the book—I knew what they were there for.
I watched the news instead. Big pick-me-up there. The police were still trying to figure out who was behind the killing of that woman from Springfield. They hadn’t found her Subaru yet and didn’t really have any leads. Good luck with that, I thought. I knew how those things worked. The rest was more of the same—terrorist attacks, bank robberies, a factory explosion, just a typical day. Oh yeah, and some dog that had gotten itself stranded in a flood got saved. Big deal. Like that made everything else better.
There was a knock on my door.
“It’s time,” Echo said, looking in.
“Right,” I said. I got up and followed her to the table.
Barry was in prime form. As we all sat down for a meal of mashed potatoes (apparently the Parkers had mashed potatoes every night) and frozen fried chicken, he didn’t waste any time launching into a sloppy rant against Mitch, who he pretty much just referred to as “that bastard.”
Apparently Barry had gotten into a fight with “that bastard” and had been sent home early—not before, of course, making a pit stop at the liquor store. None of us really said much throughout all this, though Sheila made feeble attempts to tone him down now and then.
Listening to the whole thing, I felt more embarrassed for Barry than afraid. At one point he practically broke down. Desperation flowed from him, tainting everything.
“I tell you, Sheila, he just doesn’t understand,” he said.
“Mmm,” Sheila agreed.
“I’m just trying to make things better there. That’s all I’ve ever tried to do.”
“I know, dear.”
“I have a system, goddamit!”
“I remember you telling me. It’s a good system.”
“Damn right it is. Only that bastard is too much of a numbskull to realize it. And then he gets pissed off at me because he’s too stupid to understand.”
“He certainly is.”
“That’s what I tried telling him today.”
“Oh dear,” Sheila murmured.
“And what does he do?” Barry went on, oblivious. “He sends me home. Says he’s going to dock my pay. Says I’m on thin ice. Like I give a shit.”
But I could tell he did. And he was worried. And that’s what he was really pissed off about.
Echo could tell too. “May I be excused?” she whispered while Barry paused to take a breath and another swig of his drink. He’d barely touched his food. Neither had she.
“Sure, Echo,” Sheila jumped in.
“Wait,” Barry barked.
Echo, who had just started to stand up, froze.
Oh God, here we go, I thought. Looking at the faces of Sheila and Echo, I could see they were thinking the same thing.
“You didn’t hardly eat a goddam bite,” he said, looking at Echo’s plate
“I’m not hungry,” she said. From the looks of things, none of us were.
Barry frowned. I could see the little drunken wheels turning in his head, trying to decide where or how to direct his anger. Sheila seized the opportunity to step in.
“Go ahead, sweetie,” she said. She turned to Barry. “Echo’s got a lot of homework for tomorrow. A big project. I told her before dinner started she could be excused early.”
Good one, Sheila, I thought.
“Fine,” Barry growled, and the rest of us sort of breathed a sigh of relief.
“Thanks, Mom,” Echo said, and finished standing up, bumping her plate in the process. The plate jumped forward and collided with her full glass of milk. I watched the whole thing unfold, a little chain reaction of disaster. It was as if everything immediately went into slow motion, just like on TV, with the glass tumbling over and a cascade of milk washing across the table and spilling into Barry’s lap. For a second after it happened, we all stopped and stared.
Then, the explosion.
Barry jumped up, dripping milk from the waist down.
“You little brat,” he yelled, “you did that on purpose!”
“No!” Echo cried, stepping back as both Sheila and I froze at the table.
“Goddamit!” Barry cried, wiping at his pants with a napkin. It was a futile gesture—he was already soaked through—and he was just sober enough to realize it. He threw the napkin aside, picked up his plate, and slammed it down on the table, where it shattered into a dozen pieces.
Echo, meanwhile, had slipped around the table and was almost out of the kitchen when Barry spotted her. Before I could do anything to distract him, he jumped toward her.
“Get back here and clean this up,” he shouted as she darted away.
Suddenly it was Saturday night all over again. There was Barry, banging on her door, threatening. Then, from the other room, I could hear the door opening and slamming, and muffled shouts and Echo crying. Once again Poppy began tearing around the house, yelping. And there was Sheila, at the table with that deadened look, picking up the pieces of a broken plate.
“Go in there,” I hissed.
She looked up at me with a sort of dazed expression.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“Do something.”
She sort of shook her head a little, like she was waking up from a dream. She glanced toward the hallway, toward Echo’s room.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh.”
Then she went back to gathering pieces of plate, her eyes down at the table.
“Mom!” I shouted. She started and finally looked up at me. I could see resentment in her eyes. I had always thought Chris looked like Barry, but suddenly I could see a little bit of her in him too.
“He’s just in one of his phases. It’ll pass,” she said. “You should know,” she added, and looked away.
A slow, silent minute passed. I didn’t know what to say. All I could do was sit there and stare.
“What do you want me to do?” she suddenly shouted, even though I hadn’t said anything. Her eyes began to well up. “Echo’s tough. Just like you.”
“Listen to her,” I said. Echo was still crying.
Sheila was shaking now. I could hear the pieces of ceramics rattle as she carried them to the sink. She came back to the table with a washcloth. She started wiping up the milk and picked up the tipped glass. It broke in two as she lifted it. She held the bottom piece up before her, looking at it in amazement.
“Everything breaks around here,” she said, choking back a sob. “I can’t have anything nice.”
She dropped the glass back onto the table. I watched as it rolled across and come to a stop in front of me.
Echo had stopped crying, but Barry was still yelling like crazy. I looked up at Sheila. Her eyes were closed. She was squeezing the washcloth, and milk was dripping between her fingers and onto the floor. Finally she threw the washcloth down and left the kitchen. A moment later I heard her bedroom door slam.
That’s it, I thought. If she doesn’t care, then neither do I. I jumped up from the table, grabbed my jacket, and took off.
The days were getting shorter, and it was already starting to get dark. The streetlights were humming to life in the
dusk, and the air was sharp with cold and the smell of fallen leaves. It felt good to breathe it in, to be out of that house, that cramped, suffocating box.
It had been nearly a month since my mother kicked me out into the human world. But I felt like I understood them less now than I ever had before in my cabin on the mountain, watching the world from a distance. Things were messier the closer you got. All that emotion, all that intensity. And it wasn’t just the Parkers—Amber, her parents, Coach, all the kids at school, everybody. It made me dizzy just thinking about it. Worst of all, I still had the whole rest of my life to have to deal with this kind of stuff. Today in Bakersville, tomorrow somewhere else. Somehow I had the feeling that I’d never get it right, never figure out how to make it. My mother was right—I was an embarrassment. A loser.
Anyway, I just started walking, and before I knew it, I was walking toward the edge of town. I figured I’d keep going. I really didn’t see how I could go back to the Parkers’. Besides, I couldn’t be Chris forever. I’d have to leave at some point. It had been over a week now, and I hadn’t felt any problems with the form, but who knew how long that would last?
But then I tried imagining what my leaving would do to the family. I mean, in the middle of everything else, to have their son disappear, only to turn up dead? They were already falling apart. Wouldn’t this just be the final blow? I didn’t care so much about Barry or Sheila, but what would happen to Echo? On the other hand, maybe a death in the family was just the thing they needed—something to sort of pull them together. They would all stop and realize what was really important, just like in all those shows on TV. They would be a whole new family. Right?
Either way, I won’t be around to find out, I thought as I neared the far side of town.
A pair of headlights came up from behind, casting my shadow out in front of me. I watched it as I walked along, all stretched and thin like a doppelganger. There I am, I thought, seeing the shadow weave and shift as the headlights drew nearer.
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