The Wake Up

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “So my time is almost up. Just telling you about why I think I need some help here.”

  “True. But that background is something you only need to share once.”

  “What do you think it’s all about?”

  “Which? The troubles with the boy?”

  “Well . . . that needs dealing with, all right. But actually I meant the part about the wake up. I mean . . . for starters.”

  It was veering in a new direction for him, but that could not be helped. Granted, he had not wanted to talk about it. But now that he had, he needed to know what she thought.

  “I wouldn’t want to make a determination based on that little bit of input.”

  “What if you had to guess, though? I mean, do you think I had some kind of . . . that thing with the buck. I haven’t told anybody else that. They’d think I was crazy. Do you think I’m crazy? Or . . . do you think I had some kind of . . . otherworldly experience?”

  The doctor sat back in her chair. Stopped taking notes. She did not answer for a time. Aiden wanted to ask her to hurry, but he didn’t wish to be rude. But they only had nine minutes.

  “How do you stand the ticking of that clock?” he asked instead.

  “I like it. It makes time seem very orderly to me. You know how time can play tricks? For me, hearing a tick for every second keeps things regular and manageable. But I can put it out in the waiting room if it bothers you.”

  “No. Don’t do that. It’s your clock. I didn’t come here to rearrange your furniture.”

  “I’m going to tell you where my thinking lies right now, Aiden, but it’s important you not see this as a diagnosis. At this point it’s more of an educated guess. I think you’re likely an empath. An extraordinarily sensitive person.”

  “I never was before.”

  “Not even when you were a child?”

  “I don’t remember anything from back then.”

  “Sometimes an empath can be quite purposely shut off to what they might otherwise feel. For some it’s possible to compartmentalize. Stand away from those emotions. Then the person can be viewed as numb. Almost dead to the world. Because knowing what others are feeling can be absolutely overwhelming. You have no memories at all of your childhood?”

  “Not before I was seven. We lived with my birth father until I was four. And then my mom took me and my sister and left, but I don’t remember any of that. I just remember being told about it. My mom met a new guy. The man I think of as my father. I was six when we went to live with him. He was a cattle rancher. We lived on the same property I’ve got now.”

  “Can he help you with remembering your childhood?”

  “He died when I was fourteen.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. Is your mother still alive?”

  “She is. But she can’t help me. She has dementia. Some days she can’t remember what she had for breakfast. It’s hard. She lives back east, in Buffalo where she grew up, with her brother. My uncle Edgar. I go see her once a year at Christmas.”

  “What about your sister?”

  “I don’t talk to her. I’d have to think on whether it would be worth it to me to talk to her now.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments. Aiden wasn’t sure how long it would take to convince her that he didn’t want to say more. The silence didn’t seem to bother Hannah. It bothered him.

  “Tell me the oldest memory you have,” she said at last. “When you were seven. Why does that stand out when so much else is gone?”

  “Oh. Okay. Well. I think it’s possible that before this I didn’t get on all that well with my stepdad. Adopted dad. Stepdad at the time. I’m not even sure why I say that, because I don’t remember how we got on at first. But I remember accepting him that night, so I guess that’s why I figure I didn’t before. He had these quarter horses. Really nice horses. I still have them. Well, not those exact horses. This was thirty-three years ago. But I still breed his same line. It was the middle of the night and he came and dragged me out of bed. I didn’t want to go. I was sleepy and it was cold out. But he insisted. He said he wanted me to see how life started.

  “He takes me out into the barn, just the two of us, and this brood mare of his, she’s foaling. He has me watch this amazing little thing being born. Watch him pull this colt right out of his momma. And then, just as this skinny, wet little thing is stumbling to his feet, my stepdad says, ‘What’re you gonna name your colt?’”

  “He gave the colt to you?”

  “He did.”

  “I can see how that would stay with you. Seven is awfully young for horse ownership, though.”

  “He was right there with me on it, though. He taught me everything as we went along. How to get him used to being handled, how to teach him to lift his hooves for picking. How to halterbreak him and train him to tie. And then of course we had to break him. As we used to call it. You know. To ride. Not one person ever rode that horse but me. Not even for a minute. After that, I looked up to my dad. Idolized him. I followed him everywhere. I did everything he did. He went hunting, I begged to come along. He rode the roundup, I wanted to ride. I wanted to be just like him.”

  “Was he a fairly unemotional man?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. Just normal, I guess. I never really thought about it. Why?”

  “Never mind. We’ll come back to that. You broke a horse to ride when you were seven?”

  “No, I was ten by then. You start them when they’re three. Give or take. Different schools of thought on it.”

  “I see.”

  “Everything after that night I remember so clearly. I mean, not every minute of every day, of course. But I remember so much from that day on. Before that it’s like trying to reach around a brick wall. It’s funny, but . . . looking back on it now, it feels almost like my life started that night. Like that’s the night I was born.”

  A brief silence filled only by the ticking of the clock.

  “Which makes this a terrible moment to have to tell you our time is up,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” he said. But it wasn’t. “I just ran my mouth a lot today, I guess. Which I usually don’t. Well, lately more than usual. Used to, I could go a month without saying as many words as I said to you today.”

  “Things are changing very fast for you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He rose from his deep, soft chair. Walked with her to her office door. Just a dozen or so steps. But in those few seconds, Aiden experienced a full-on hailstorm of emotion. He didn’t want to go. He might have found a refuge here. He needed someone to know for him. To understand what he did not. He did not want to leave the safe cocoon of her office and reenter his own world.

  “I’m wondering if you’d be willing to commit to two sessions a week,” she said.

  “Yeah. Sure. If you think that’s the way to go.”

  “Just out of curiosity, what did you name your colt?”

  “I called him Magic.”

  “Because of the feeling you got watching him being born?”

  “I don’t suppose I would have put it like that at the time, but yeah.”

  “Nice,” she said. “Well done.”

  “I had him right up until a handful of months ago. And you know, now that I think about it, I’ve had a much tougher time of things since he died. But I guess that’s a subject for next session.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I think it is.”

  Aiden walked out into the bright, hot sun, shocked to see that the world had waited for him, unchanged.

  He felt utterly unequipped to go home. Forcing himself back into a world that had put him in some role of authority felt akin to turning a puppy loose on a busy highway.

  He drove home anyway.

  Because, really, what else was he going to do?

  He had let himself back inside his own gate when he saw her. He had parked his truck and stepped out into the midday heat. He’d reached down to give Buddy’s head a pat. Watched the whole dog wag as he di
d so. Then, when Aiden straightened up, he saw a slim figure standing outside his fence. A girl, down a few dozen yards from the gate. It was hard to tell from this distance—and through the waves of rising heat—but it looked like Gwen’s daughter, Elizabeth.

  He squinted into the sun, shielded his eyes with one hand, and tried to look more closely. Or, at least, more effectively.

  She raised one hand to him and waved shyly. Well, she didn’t wave the hand, exactly. Just held it up like a stop sign.

  Aiden walked toward the gate and so did she.

  “Elizabeth,” he said.

  “Hi,” she said, purposely avoiding his eyes. Either that, or the dry dirt beneath her untied sneakers was an endless source of fascination for her.

  He opened the gate again and let her through.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I could leave if you don’t have time.”

  “No, it’s fine. I just meant . . . where’s your mom?”

  “At work.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “Walked.”

  “Walked? It’s almost five miles.”

  “I like to walk. I walk all day sometimes.”

  “In this heat, though? You need to come in and have something to drink.”

  “Who’s looking after Milo?” he asked as he poured a can of soda over ice.

  “My mom hired a babysitter. But she told the lady I can go for a hike if I want to.”

  “Oh,” Aiden said.

  Then he clammed up, fresh out of words to speak. He handed her the cold drink. He knew she must have something to say to him. Some reason for seeking him out. But he had no more idea how to approach that situation than he had a plan for flying up into the trees like a bird.

  They stood in awkward silence for a time. Aiden wanted a cold soda, too, but he had forgotten to stop at the store on the way home, and he had given the girl his last one.

  Then they sat on the couch in his living room, Aiden respectfully backed up into the far corner to give the girl her space. She wore cutoff jean shorts, and her legs were skinny, red from the sun, and about a yard long from the look of it. She would be a tall girl.

  “Remember when my mom said Milo doesn’t hurt animals?” Her voice startled him. He had been deeply dug into the silence. “Or anyway, she said he never did before.”

  “I remember that. But I’m a little confused about the fact that you remember it. We thought you were asleep.”

  “Part of the time I was. But I woke up on the way home.”

  “Oh,” Aiden said. “Okay. Well. What about it?”

  “It’s not really true. She thinks it is, but it’s not. Our dad gave Milo a BB gun. And my mom took it away. Because . . . well, you know. Milo and a gun. Holy cow. Bad mix. So she threw it out. But my dad got it out of the trash. And he showed Milo a good place to hide it. So when my mom used to leave to go to her therapy appointments, Milo would get it out. And he used to stand out in the backyard. Really still. And then he’d shoot at birds. Then he’d hide the BB gun again before she got home. She doesn’t know. She never found out.”

  Now we’re getting down to it, Aiden thought. He’d known she must have walked all the way out here for a reason. It set up a tingle in his belly, the gravity of it. He wondered how deep they were about to dig down today. What percentage of the underwater mass of the iceberg would be revealed. And why everything seemed like so much more of a problem once you dredged it up above the waterline.

  “And you never told her?”

  “No,” she said, and swung her face away. It made a swoop of long hair fall over one eye. “I feel kinda bad about that. Like the birds were my fault. But it’s weird to tell on somebody. It’s hard. And my dad would’ve made me pay, believe me. It would have been telling on my dad, too, not just Milo. That’s something you just don’t do. You’d have to know him to understand.”

  “So what did he do with the birds? Milo, I mean. He couldn’t have just left them in the yard or she would have figured out that something was going on.”

  “He’s a bad shot. Really bad. That helps. But we had a lot of birds. So sooner or later he was bound to hit a couple.”

  “Did he sneak them into the trash or something?”

  For a long, strange moment, silence. No answer. He wondered what could be so bad about the answer, to delay its arrival for so long.

  “It was weird, what he did.” Aiden braced himself for the worst. Tried to guard against it without picturing it. “He buried them.”

  “That’s not so weird.”

  “But not just . . . I don’t mean he just put them under the dirt. I mean he had these . . . funerals. He’d put them in a little box, like a crayon box or a model car box. He’d wrap them up first in one of our father’s good silk handkerchiefs. He just kept stealing them out of Dad’s dresser drawer, and I guess Dad must have thought he lost them or something. Then he’d bury them—Milo, I mean—and say these words over them. I never got close enough to hear what he said. And he had this little bamboo flute, and he’d play a tune . . .”

  He waited, but the girl seemed to have run out of steam.

  “Okay, that’s fairly weird,” Aiden said.

  But then he didn’t know how to go on. He wanted to know if that was the whole reason she had come all this way. And how it felt to live with a person like Milo as a brother. He wanted to know if she had come to warn Aiden because she worried about him, or if she’d come to unburden herself to Aiden because she worried about herself. And a few other things that were harder to pin down.

  “We’re going to have to move,” Elizabeth said, before he could make his way through those thoughts.

  “Already? You’ve only been in that place a few months. Is the owner selling it?”

  “No, it’s getting repossessed. The bank is taking it.”

  “Oooh,” Aiden said, drawing the word out long. “That’s low.”

  “Well. They’re a bank.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I meant the owner should have told you that before he rented to you. You have to be behind in your payments for quite a few months before the bank starts foreclosure proceedings. Makes me think that’s something that should have been disclosed. How long before you have to find a new place?”

  “Three days.”

  “Three days?”

  “Yeah. Sheriff came by last night and told us we have three days to get out. Served us some kind of notice. He was sorry about it and all. Because he knows it’s not us who got behind with the bank. But there’s nothing he can do. And now my mom is all worried because she thinks we won’t be able to find anything to rent around here. Because . . . you know. It’s such a small town. Not much for rent.” She levered herself suddenly to her feet. Swung onto those long, skinny legs like a foal standing up for the first time. “So, I just wanted to tell you all that,” she said on her way to the door. “Because I like you. But don’t tell my mom I told you, okay?”

  “Wait,” Aiden said, and stood to follow her.

  “What?”

  “At least let me give you a ride back into town.”

  “What do you think of your new school?” Aiden asked her on the drive.

  Then he kicked himself a dozen times over. Because it was such a stupid thing to ask. Such a typical question for a grown-up to pose to a kid. Just the kind they despise because they’ve heard it so many times before.

  “I hate it,” she said with a wry little smile.

  “Oh. That’s too bad.”

  “But I hated my other school, too. Before we moved. So it’s not a step down or anything. I just hate school.”

  “I used to hate school,” Aiden said.

  And then, just like that, he pulled up in front of their rental house. The short drive was over. Aiden felt relieved. He liked Elizabeth. He just had no idea how to talk to her.

  She didn’t jump out of his truck. Not right away. She just sat there and stared at him, as if taking some kind of measure of him. At f
irst he avoided her eyes out of embarrassment. Then he quickly glanced over to see how he was measuring up.

  Fairly well, from the look of things.

  “Grown-ups never say things like that,” Elizabeth said.

  “What? That they hated school?”

  “Right. That. They always say it was the best time of their lives.”

  “Hmm,” Aiden said. And sighed out some tension. It wouldn’t pay to be on his guard around this girl. She’d be with him a lot as time wore on. At least, she would if things went well with Gwen as he hoped. “Some of them, it might be the truth. Maybe school was something they could handle. They were popular and smart, so they had school on a string. And school was the only life they knew, so they thought they had life on a string. And then later they found out life is a lot harder than that, and now they spend their lives wishing they could go back. Others I think hated school at the time, but they have terrible memories. But a lot of people lie to kids. Tell them what they figure kids should hear instead of what’s true.”

  “That’s what I think!” She sounded happy now, and excited. As if she had dug down to the underside of him and found just what she was looking for. “Especially that last part. About the lying.”

  A silence fell.

  It was time for her to jump out, and they both knew it. He didn’t want to give her a hug, because it was too physical and personal. And a handshake seemed formal and staid after all they had just shared. So he formed his right hand into a fist and reached it across the seat, and she smiled and bumped his fist with her own.

  “So don’t tell my mom I came to talk to you, okay?”

  “If you don’t want me to, I won’t.”

  She smiled again and jumped out, slamming the truck door behind her.

  Aiden watched her go. As he did, it formed in his head, wordlessly, that she was a gift being given to him. Something rich and good coming into his life to make up for Milo and the rest of this mess. To give him back a little of the peace that was being stripped down and hauled away.

  “Well, well,” Marge said. “If it isn’t your knight in shining armor.”

  Aiden was standing in the market when she said it, looking at Gwen’s back. Waiting for her to turn around and see him. And yet it didn’t occur to him that Marge might be talking about him.