by Greg Fowler
The biggest practical change for Eddy was the previously unthinkable permission to leave his bedroom. Not just to go to the bathroom (no more cold showers either!) but to roam the house as he pleased and to even go outside. He’d taken the opportunity too. He’d seen with his own eyes what this TV stuff was all about. The documentaries were good but he didn’t care much for anything else. The very first thing he did once he got through that squeaky front door was to pay Reagan a visit. Mrs Crowe made a real big fuss about it and made him a fancy lunch. Grandma Daisy had even come over and shared the table with them. You could tell she was still a bit awkward about it but she tried hard and, best of all, she smiled. Eddy had always watched her closely but now, instead of being all about prediction and self protection, it was about observing the gradual changes within her. It was about watching an old lady begin to realise that she never stops growing and that we’re always children wandering through a magical kingdom in some form or fashion.
Eddy went to the mall with Reagan. He went into the city and craned his neck up at the impossibly tall buildings. Best of all, he went to the ocean. He saw that great, immense body of water reach out and touch the land in a way that belied its underlying power. It reminded him of yet greater things in that respect. It reminded him of Mr Tree, his very personal conduit into a higher place beyond, a place he could, for now at least, only observe from the beach of his bedroom.
But in the end, despite all these new sights and sounds and the mystical allure of the ocean, Eddy was always drawn back to his bedroom. It was his special place. He felt the connection strongly here and it was ‘home’. Neither Grandma Daisy nor Reagan could understand it. He had the whole world at his feet now and yet he chose to stay in that little bedroom of his, it didn’t make sense. When they brought the subject up, which they did an awful lot, he’d simply smile and say he was happy….and they knew Eddy Sullivan wasn’t in the habit of lying. Not today, not any day.
On that very afternoon of Grandma Daisy’s breakthrough, after Reagan had forced herself off to school, she’d wandered meekly back into his bedroom with a small box in her hands. A shoe box. Then, taking Eddy by the hand she’d sat down next to him on his little bed, placed that box on his lap and looked deep into his eyes.
‘Eddy,’ she’d said. ‘I don’t know where to begin.’
‘It’s alright Grandma D..daisy.’
‘No, I don’t think it is, but I intend to do whatever I can to make it alright. I just hope it’s not too late.’
‘It’s n..never too late.’
She’d smiled at that. A little bit of a sad smile but a smile all the same.
‘I’ve done a lot of things wrong Eddy. More things than I can count. I took advantage of you. I did things to you that no Grandma should ever do. I had the Devil in me.’
‘G…grandma, it’s okay…’
‘I believe you. I’ll never not believe you again. But I need to get this off my chest because if I don’t I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive myself.’
‘O…okay ‘
Grandma Daisy shifted a trifle uneasily and then settled in to say what she had to say.
‘I’ve hidden things from you Eddy. At first I thought I was doing it to protect you but after a while I knew it was more to protect me than anything else. It was then that I should’ve stopped but I didn’t and for that I’m so sorry.’
‘After my daughter, your mother, got up and left you at the hospital like that, I was ashamed. I was ashamed of her and I was ashamed of you. I was too old to start all over again with babies and you were, well…different.’
‘It made me angry. I was still grieving the loss of Nevil, Grandpa Nevil, and here I was, lumped with what I felt was someone else’s burden. I resented you Eddy and you suffered almost thirteen years for that. All the while you were the completely innocent one in this whole tragic situation.’
‘So what did I do? I locked you away in a room. I fed you, I cleaned you, I kept you alive but that was as far as I went. That’s about the same as a prisoner in my reckoning.’
‘I couldn’t bring myself to love you. Love had seemed to get me nowhere except heartache and pain. My husband had left me way too soon and my daughter, my one and only child, had abandoned me. I couldn’t put myself out there again. I just couldn’t.’
Grandma Daisy had started chewing that cheek of hers again and Eddy had reached across to hold her hand.
‘I cheated you Eddy. I cheated you of life. I took the government’s money, money they gave me to look after you, and pretty much wasted it all on myself. Do you know something? Every Tuesday night, from six until nine, I’d leave you alone. I’d just get up, walk out of the house and spend a good chunk of that money, your money, on bingo. I didn’t even tell you I was leaving. Not even a ‘see ya later’. What if there’d been a fire or something?’
‘I lied to so many other people about you too Eddy. I lied to Mrs Stanton. And despite my selfishness you still succeeded. I thought that was absolutely amazing…but the thing is, I couldn’t bring myself to tell you that. That would be too close to love.’
‘But worst of all. The thing I hate myself the most for…..is your mother. She did leave you that day, there’s no doubt about that and what she did was about as wrong as wrong can be but, in the end, she did see that. And when she did…..open the box Eddy. Open it and see for yourself.’
Eddy had done just that.
Lifting the lid and placing it to one side, he’d found the box full almost to the brim. Half of it was taken up with all sorts of envelopes, some of them tatty and dog eared with age, but the other half was jammed with one solitary item that immediately tugged at Eddy’s heart. It was a teddy bear, a small but beautiful teddy bear, tucked away like a baby in a crib.
‘I’m so, so sorry.’ Grandma Daisy had begun to cry again and as much as Eddy had wanted to be strong for her, he’d cried too.
48. THE FIRST NOTE
Most of the envelopes had been cards. Christmas cards and Birthday cards of one form or another. Eddy noted that they went right up until his ninth birthday which was kind of interesting really because that was age he was when he first met Reagan. After then though, they appeared to have dried up altogether. When he’d asked Grandma Daisy about that she’d told him that was the last she’d heard of her too. She dropped off the edge of the world.
Eddy felt his mother was still out there somewhere. She wasn’t dead, he knew that much. She was probably in a different country, somewhere far, far away. A pretty place, by the ocean.
He would see her again one day, he knew that much too…and everything would be just fine.
He’d removed ‘Barney Bear’ from the box and since then he’d held pride of place on Eddy’s desk, staring back at the boy who’d taken so long to find him. Sometimes, when it was especially lonely, Eddy would bring Barney Bear over to the bed and run his hands across the artificial fur. He would think that maybe he was touching a piece of something that had last been touched by his mother, and, if that was the case, how close they were to actually holding hands.
There was one other thing in that little box that wasn’t a card or a bear. It was a letter, and it had been written so long ago that the paper was beginning to discolour. Grandma Daisy had picked that one out of the bunch specifically and it was one of the few that had been already opened. She’d said that this was one he should probably read first. It was important she’d told him, and she’d sat there on the bed right next to him and waited as he worked his way through it, just in case he needed a hand with the words.
Hi Eddy,
I like your name. You won’t be able to read this yourself I guess but I’m sure your Grandma will. I just don’t want you to think that I don’t think about you. I think about you a lot.
You’re also probably wondering why I’m writing a letter instead of being there to tell you in person. It’s not that I don’t feel love for you Eddy. I just don’t know ‘how’ to love. And that’s not fair on you. You h
ave special needs that I’m just not built to offer. I hate saying that and I hate knowing that but at the same time I can’t change it.
If I came back to be your mother it might work for a day, a week, maybe even a year but in the end it wouldn’t work at all and then we’d all just be hurt again. I hope you understand. I didn’t want to leave you Eddy. I had to. For you and for me. For everyone.
I hope you like the bear and I hope you grow up to have a wonderful life.
Please tell mum I’m sorry. I never meant for this happen.
Thinking of you always,
Hailey XXXO
Grandma Daisy had had to explain what the ‘XXXO’ meant at the end of the letter and Eddy didn’t quite know what to make of that. Imagine trying to put the whole emotion of a mother to son hug in those simple letters.
In the two years since he’d first read that letter, Eddy hadn’t had cause to open it again. He wasn’t angry, not in the slightest. It was just that he preferred that Barney Bear be his connection to his mother, not a confused and confusing letter written too many years ago to remember. You couldn’t hug X’s and O’s but you could hug a bear.
So the shoe box in question now rested under Eddy’s bed, catching what little dust Grandma Daisy allowed in the room.
49. BACK TO REALITY
Life had moved on in the old neighbourhood in the last two years. They say that over any given three year period that a third of the people on a street will move on in one form or another. From his spot at the front window, Eddy could vouch for that.
Mrs McGinnity had moved to Europe to be closer to her grandchildren. Ted Heffernan had got a new job out of town. Dave and Polly Ashburn had upgraded to a new neighbourhood closer to the city and taken all their kids with them…all five of them.
Mrs Elsdon was still around though and she was still making her daily round of the cul de sac. Eddy supposed it was because he saw her nearly every day but she didn’t look a day older than when he’d first met her. That still had her looking very old of course, but she hadn’t relegated herself to ancient status yet.
Even though she knew Eddy’s boundaries had changed, she still preferred to stand outside and engage him up there in the window. She said she liked it that way. She said it felt ‘right’ that she should be looking up.
Eddy couldn’t possibly count the vast subjects they’d covered in their conversations but not once did he get bored with her company and he was absolutely certain that went both ways. It all came back to one place in the end though, Ben Elsdon. That was no problem though. Ben Elsdon was a wonderful man and that made him perfectly worth talking about. In fact, Eddy was probably third in line in knowing the life and times of Ben. First being Ben himself, then his wife, then Eddy…but then again, that wasn’t quite true either.
There was one aspect of Mr Ben Elsdon’s life where Eddy moved securely into second place. Not that he’d ever reveal this to old Mrs Elsdon of course. He’d come to know, when Mr and Mrs Elsdon had only been married less than a handful of years, he’d met another lady. A lady who’d especially captured his eye for some reason. And from that chance meeting had commenced a fleeting affair, one that was all over the minute Mr Elsdon truly realised the prize he was placing in jeopardy. Whatever it was, the underlying, inexplicable attraction of this lady, it could never match the precious connection he had with his wife. The guilt racked him terribly and for years afterwards he hated himself for what he’d done. He’d scolded himself for being too weak to confess his indiscretions and had pleaded with his God Almighty to forgive him his sins. While he was alive, he never got an answer from above but, as Eddy learned, even remorse has a silver lining. Nothing is so precious as the diamond almost lost, and, although it was of his own foolish doing, Mr Elsdon never forgot that. And from the day he told himself enough was enough to the day he passed on from this world, there was never another woman in his life. Not even close. He loved his wife dearly and he loved her well.
Was it Eddy’s place to tell her this? Was it his place to let her know that the very first love note she got under the green stone was the very same day Ben Elsdon had promised to himself, and to God up above, that he’d never do something so foolish again? No, of course it wasn’t. She would find out in her own due course and on that day she wouldn’t be angry because she’d understand.
Nathan was doing well. He was in his second year of university this year. A local one too, so Eddy regularly saw him on his way to the bus stop and he’d always wave out. He was doing Engineering and getting solid B’s too, certainly in the top half of the class. Despite what could have been a very different life, Nathan was going to do just fine. Would he be a millionaire one day, maybe, but happiness didn’t come out of a wallet and it never had. It was probably going to take him a little while to discover that, but by the time he understood that little gem he’d be in a contented space anyway. Contented enough to be at peace when Monday morning’s rolled around, and that was saying something.
Dion was okay too. Unlike his bigger brother, he was struggling at school and as a consequence he would lose interest fast. It wasn’t that he was unintelligent, it was just that the style of education served up a schools didn’t suit him. His imagination was too wild to be tamed and placing it within the confines of mathematics and ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’ was akin to placing a lion in a cage. All it led to was frustrated pacing and no one got anywhere.
Yes, he’d leave school early. As early as his mother and the law would allow. But that was fine. That was just the way it was meant to be. He’d fill in time doing the odd thing here and there, something to pay the bills, but in the end he’d find his true calling. Dion would be a writer, and a good one too.
And of course there was Reagan. There was always Reagan.
In the two odd years since that first kiss on Mr Tree, it had remained Eddy’s only kiss. Would he ever have the opportunity to kiss her again? That one was a bit fuzzy. Something made him want to say yes, but at the same time he couldn’t class it as one of those certainties that were becoming common to him now. He didn’t know why that was the case and instead he took solace in accepting that he couldn’t worry about things beyond his control.
He definitely wasn’t going to put her on the spot though. If she wanted to kiss him she’d do it. That was Reagan. That was the way she did things. At the end of the day he figured it was a good thing. Sometimes friends couldn’t be friends anymore after they kissed. Something between them changed forever, sort of like taking a bite from the forbidden fruit. No, as much as that kiss had been a trip to Heaven and back, if having Reagan in his life for the rest of their days meant that kisses were a thing of the past, then so be it.
She had grown up too, had Reagan. Whereas two years ago she was dabbling around the edges of womanhood, lately she’d dived right in. The boys at school had noticed it too. She seemed to have become the target of an awful lot of attention and while she didn’t exactly play on it, Eddy could tell she wasn’t in the mood to make it go away either.
Richard Duggan had finally got his way. He’d ended up being her first real boyfriend but, as with almost all first romances, it didn’t last long. Reagan never said much about it. Something about Samantha and how that dirty little so and so could rot in hell was all he got out of it.
After that there’d been a couple of others. One of them had even come to pay Mr and Mrs Crowe a visit; a night out for dinner at the girlfriend’s house. Eddy had seen him arrive. He looked nice enough, certainly not a thug. The poor guy had been so nervous Eddy could almost smell it from the front window. Mrs Crowe had been there to greet him at the front door and he’d shaken her hand like the true gentleman. That was good. Reagan deserved a gentleman. She deserved someone who would treat her well and never hurt her. She deserved someone who could sit and watch the sunset, share the world’s biggest jam sandwich and have a whole conversation without having to say a single word.
Those amazing, miraculous blossoms on Mr Tree had blo
omed all through that first spring and then halfway into summer. Well past any of its lesser cousins around the neighbourhood. But in the end, as with all things, their time came to pass and they gave way to even newer life. Such was the lushness of the bed of leaves that followed, Eddy was worried that their vibrant weight would bring some of the branches down. But he needn’t have fretted. Mr Tree was strong and healthy, more so than it had ever been and Eddy came to realise this incredible wonder of nature could hold entire universes in the bow of a single limb…like a mother cradling her child.
50. THE SECOND NOTE
‘Hey Eddy.’
‘Yep.’
‘Jam Sandwich time.’
‘You bet.’
‘Back in a sec.’
Eddy knew the routine. He climbed out to his perch on the tree and waited for Reagan to come back, the chef’s special in tow.
She’s sad today. The green has blue.
Eddy watched her closely while she settled down beside him. His instinct had been right. There was something wrong. It was in the way she had trouble looking him in the eye, and it was in the way the bounce had gone out of her step. She was heavy because something in this world was weighing her down.
‘Reagan?’
‘What?’ she responded a little too defensively.
‘What’s wrong?’
She’s thinking about saying ‘nothing’ but she won’t. She needs to get this out.
Instead Reagan didn’t utter a single word. She just reached into her back pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. For a while all she did was run it through her fingers, pondering all the ways, all the paths that had led her to this moment and then, finally, she handed it over to him. Still she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. Her only other option was to stare blankly ahead, into a place only she could see.
Eddy took the piece of paper and opened it, reading the scrawly handwriting carefully so he didn’t miss a single word.