by DW Gillespie
I fast-forwarded a bit, bored now, but still hopeful that I might catch Andy in the act. It would be a special moment for a little sister to have irrefutable evidence like that. If he hadn’t dissected the damn thing, I might even have a chance to get it back. The screen flickered, and there he was, Memphis in all his fat, orange glory. With a cringe, I hit Play and watched it unfold.
That damn cat.
In the scramble that followed, the camera dropped onto the edge of the couch, and the unmistakably sweet sound of Andy’s laughter rose up, filling the room once again. Without a moment of hesitation, I turned down the volume to a whisper. I wasn’t ready, despite how pissed I was, for Andy to hear it all again. Part of it was fear of retaliation, but much more than that, I hated the fact that I was the one who silenced that amazing peal of laughter. It was true, deep regret that I felt in that moment, knowing that I might not ever hear a sound like that again.
There was the light sound of my slap, and the laughter was gone, followed by the slight sound of stomping feet. And then nothing at all. The image showed the edge of the couch, the bottom of the end table, the cardboard stage on the floor, and, farthest away, the sliding glass of the back door, a sheet of blackness. I had to get closer to the screen to make it out, but there it was: the single cotton foot of the doll, resting at the corner of the screen. Pink. Soft. A physical manifestation of everything sweet inside Sallie.
Ugh.
I waited and watched, not quite ready to fast-forward because I was so certain that the deed would happen at once. After we fled to the bathroom, Andy had nothing but a cold glass of Coke and a red, stinging cheek. I know exactly what I would have done in that moment. I would have found the first thing in reach that belonged to him, and I would have destroyed it. Shredded it. Pissed on it even. Anything to give that pain away to someone else.
I don’t blame a nine-year-old for being petty, but it was amazing how poorly I understood my brother in those days. He never hurt me, other than by simply ignoring me, and I don’t know why I felt so certain he would this time. Something about that slap had tipped some invisible balance, like a globe spun upside down, and suddenly, I was the one on top.
I’m not sure exactly what Andy did with the rest of that night, but he never did reappear in front of the camera. So I watched, and watched, and watched, and when I finally couldn’t stand it, I hit Fast-Forward and let the world spin by, minutes reduced to seconds. Even at double or triple speed, it was terribly boring, and my attention had fluttered to something else in the room when I heard the tape stop. I’d come to the end, and as far as I knew, I had nothing to show for it.
Instead of giving up, I ran the tape back a few seconds and hit Play just to be sure, and there it was. The door still showed black beyond the thin glass, and the cat stage still waited unused. But the doll…
It was gone.
Again, I hit Rewind and stared at the corner of the screen, waiting for the single moment when the foot reappeared, and in a flash, it did. I think I gasped a little when I saw it, and I fumbled for the Play button. There was some movement, a lightly shaded shape that glided around the side of the couch. Memphis, his tail curling up as he explored in the dead of night.
“You,” I said bitterly. Of course he was responsible for all this. I rubbed my thumb across my gnarled, bandaged fingers and cursed him under my breath. I was about to stop the tape, wondering briefly where the cat must have dragged the doll off to, when I saw Memphis step further into view onscreen. His head tilted this way and that, and without warning, his back began to arch, fur standing straight up, ears folding neatly back against his head. He was staring at the back door, and after turning the volume up, I could hear his low, vibrating growl echoing in the empty room. Memphis could be temperamental. He was the type of cat that might decide to bite you after letting you pet him for half an hour. He wasn’t a bad cat exactly; he just liked to do things on his terms. Even if you were doing him a favor by stroking his back, he always seemed to think he was the one doing the favor. But despite his prickly nature, he wasn’t the type to growl at strangers or stare out the window, hissing at birds. To be honest, the outdoors didn’t really seem to exist for him, and that made the sight on the TV all the more strange.
All at once, the cat darted away with a hiss, gone from the screen for good, and before I could even begin to wonder why, I saw it. The glass door, as silent as a quiet breeze, began to inch open. I must have screamed when I saw it. Honestly, I don’t remember, but I heard Dad calling from the next room.
“You okay, Jack?”
“Fine,” perfectly calm. I was very, very good at turning my emotions on and off. Even at nine, I knew it. But as the tape played on, the last thing I felt was calm as I watched the door to our home opening like some kind of black mouth. There was a puff of breeze from outside that caught the thin drapes, then…a shadow.
There’s no other way to describe it. From the angle, I could just barely see the top of the door and a blank patch of white wall leading up toward the unseen ceiling. A smooth, dark shape seemed to melt up the wall, like liquid defying gravity. The thin line rolled up and out of sight in less than a second, disappearing out of view onto the ceiling somewhere above. I tried to wrap my brain around the layout of the room, tried to convince myself that all I was seeing was just the play of light from a passing car. Then a pair of thin, black fingers reached into frame from above, and just like that, the doll was gone.
Chapter Three
I never pressured Dad much into talking about Mom, mainly because I knew he wasn’t a talker, but also because I knew how much it had to hurt, thinking about her, dwelling on the past. Even so, I learned a lot just from diving through the old pictures he kept in albums tucked away in the ancient, undusted cedar chest in the corner of the playroom. I found the albums the first time when I was about seven or so. There were five of them, mostly small and cheap plastic things that held dozens of moments locked in time, relics from before my mom and dad were married. There were beers in nearly every frame, and more often than not my dad had this sort of cross-eyed look that I couldn’t recognize yet as pure, ass-faced drunkenness. But he was always smiling, and so was Mom. You could feel the joy edging off the pages, out of the frames – the sort of joy that is exclusively reserved for young people in love.
Dad’s hair was longer, shaggy even, and he wore button-down shirts with his chest showing, the tiny patch of hair just starting to show. He was cute too. Not the sweaty, filthy guy who walked in every night with bags of garbage food. This was a young man, a handsome one, and I could see why my mother would have fallen in love with him. More than anything else, he looked like the kind of guy who carried the party around with him, a fella who always seemed to be humming a tune.
On the other hand, Mom was me, because of course she was. Add a couple years, some boobs, sun-kissed hair, and there I stood. It scared me, because I wondered if I too could be gone so quickly, my own life little more than a blink. Even so the pictures excited me a bit too, because she was so damn gorgeous. Her hair was pure Seventies: feathered and layered in a Farrah Fawcett style that might have been laughable on a plain Jane. On her, it was radiant, and my stomach fluttered a bit thinking that I might look like that one day.
Then there was the gigantic wedding album, all white, meticulously kept, and there they were, a few years on. Dad’s hair was shorter then, his face lined with a short cut of a beard. His eyes were straighter. Apparently he had laid off the beer, for the wedding at least, but he was no less happy. This was his day as much as hers. She was a pearl next to him, white and gorgeous, and the pair of them smiled, fed each other cake, kissed and kissed again. After that, there were a handful of honeymoon pictures, vacations in exotic places I had never seen, tan skin, fruity drinks, the whole nine yards.
And then…Andy.
An entire album. Smiling, cooing, laughing. In flipping through a handful of pages, I had seen my
brother happier than I ever knew was possible, and I could only stare at them, wondering why he had grown so sour and cold. More than anything, I wondered with some bitterness why I hadn’t gotten a brother like that of my own.
Of course, the world looks very different as a grownup. I can’t believe it took me so long to notice it, but the pictures ended with Andy. When I realized this fact, I was furious, until I understood that it was my mother who had done all this. She was the one who brought out the camera and forced people to smile. She was the one who printed off the pictures, bought the albums, arranged them just so. It was sad really. It wasn’t just one life that ended when I was born. It was three.
I put the albums away in the back of my closet for years, but when I was about seventeen, long after everything had happened, I came across the pictures again and started flipping through them. I noticed things I hadn’t seen before. Little things really, but enough to tell a story if you cared to look close.
Like the picture someone snapped at a party where my mother stood chest to chest with a guy twice her size as my father pointed over her shoulder. I don’t know who took it, or even what exactly is happening, but it’s clear that an altercation is very close to breaking out, and she’s the one standing in the middle. Or the pictures of her knee-deep in a garden, sweat slick on her brow, my father behind the camera. I can tell where the spot is in our yard, and for as long as I’ve been alive, not a single thing has grown there.
There were others too. Andy on one hip, a bag of groceries on the other, her thin arms straining. Her on all fours, laying a rock walkway through the backyard, a path that is still barely visible to this day. I’d probably looked at those pictures dozens of times before the weight of them really hit me.
The moments. This was who my mother was. Tough. Brave. Hardworking. And, quite possibly the most important thing of all, not someone who was easily rattled.
Now that I’m nearly the age she was when Andy was born, there’s no question that I look just like her. But it wasn’t until I saw that doll disappear that I knew how alike we really were.
* * *
So many of the moments from my youth are lost in a haze, brief bits of memories that have changed, blended, or been created whole cloth by my mind. In other words, I don’t always trust my memory, because most moments aren’t memorable enough to move over to the long-term area, like a stamp in steel. With that said, I can vividly remember the few minutes after seeing that hand snatch Sallie’s toy away. Me sitting there, staring at the blank screen, trying my damnedest not to scream. Dad was milling around in the next room, Andy was hidden away out of sight somewhere, still stewing from the night before. Whatever this secret was, it seemed to be mine and mine alone.
It all started there, but it ended several days later, and in between were chances, opportunities for me to share the burden with someone else, to get help. Who knows what might have happened if I had. But once my heart stopped pounding, I jumped up and quietly shut the playroom door.
I’m not sure how long it took for me to work up the nerve to rewind the footage and watch it again, but it was long enough for me to convince myself that I had been mistaken. The door wasn’t open, it was just the jittery beat of the video. The dark shape was just a shadow, Memphis probably. And that hand. It was Andy’s of course. It had to be. He had just sneaked back in after the coast had cleared to snatch the doll as a bit of vengeance against me.
And then, after watching it again, all attempts to rationalize what I had seen flew out the window. The door was open. The shadow was something solid, something real. And those fingers, those gaunt, bony things, like Halloween decorations, they were painfully real. I stopped the tape and popped it out of the side of the camera before slipping it into my pocket. I knew why I was afraid, because someone had somehow broken into my house last night, but I couldn’t say why I was so secretive about it. This entire scenario felt as if it had somehow sprung from me, like the slap across my brother’s innocently laughing face had been the catalyst that started…well, whatever was happening here.
As shocking as it was on the second viewing, I was able to catch the rest of the scene before losing it. That’s when I noticed the dark shape slipping out once again, quick and silent. Then the door slowly sliding shut. A moment later, the latch slid back into place, locking the door behind it. Once more, I ran the tape back, realizing that I had never noticed the latch the first go-round, but there it was. Seconds before the door began to open, the latch flipped and slid out of place.
Immediately, I went back into the den, where it happened. I needed to see it for myself, to try to process what the hell was going on. I walked in silently, careful not to touch anything, struck by the odd feeling that whatever had let itself in and out of the house had somehow infected the place. I snatched up one of the flashlights we had used for our show the night before and peered at the walls, searching for…what exactly? A trail of slime? Bits of hair? Fingerprints?
I found nothing at all, so I turned to the door, flipping the latch and sliding it open with my shirttail, still unable to touch it. I checked the handle, the walls, the concrete-and-brick porch, the eaves hanging over my head. In each case, I found nothing more interesting than bird shit and old chewed-up bubblegum I had spit out. I glanced through the murky glass and saw Memphis peering at me.
“You saw it, didn’t you?” I asked when I walked back in.
He purred and nudged my leg, but he didn’t have any more answers than I did. I watched the video three more times before I finally worked up the nerve to tap on Andy’s bedroom door. It was a little after noon, and depending on the day, he might not even be up yet, but the familiar sound of his Nintendo told me he was wide awake. I tapped. Waited. Tapped again. Knocked. Banged my fist.
“What?” he snapped as the door flew open.
The room behind him was a dark pool, somewhere forbidden, the realm of the reclusive teenager. I peeked over his shoulder and he narrowed the door to a crack.
“I said, ‘What do you want?’”
“Nothing,” I spit back. “What’s up your ass?”
Already off to a rough start, even though it was intended to be an apology. I’ve never been much for saying I’m sorry though, and Andy knew it.
“Leave me alone,” he said before slamming the door in my face.
“Andy…jeez. I’m sorry,” I said to the closed door. “I lost my temper. You know how I am about stuff.”
I waited, but the sound of his game being unpaused was the only response I got. The door was locked, but I knew how to pick it. He didn’t know that I knew, and I’d been saving that particular surprise for a very special occasion. I couldn’t imagine there being a bigger reason than this.
“What are you playing?” I asked as I sat down on the bed.
“Get the hell out of my room,” he demanded.
“Wait. Please, just listen. I’m sorry I acted like a butthole last night, but there’s something I need to show you. Something I have to show you.”
In the time it took to convince him and run back the tape yet again, I was starting to feel silly. Now that I had an audience, I’d see that it really wasn’t as terrifying as I thought it was. It simply couldn’t be. Then the tape started, and I felt my heart pounding in my ears, felt my lungs refusing to fill up, a reminder of the asthma attacks I’d had when I was five.
“So, what am I looking at?” he asked.
“Watch,” I whispered, wanting to turn away.
The latch. The door. The shape. The dark hand.
When I finally glanced back up into Andy’s face, it took a minute to register what I was really seeing. Some sort of embarrassed, stoic fear hidden there. Maybe outright terror. So why did he also look so mad?
“Well?” I said finally, still staring at him. “It wasn’t you, was it?”
“Me?” he barked. “You slap me in front of your dumbass friend, t
hen you stage this bullshit, and you have the nerve to ask if it was me?”
“But I didn’t…I mean, I wasn’t even…”
He wanted to hit me. I could tell that much by the way his fists were white around the edges. He didn’t hit me though. Instead, without a word, he dropped to one knee next to the camera, popped open the case, drew out the tape, and threw it as hard as he could against the wall. It exploded in a fan of plastic bits, leaving a hole in the drywall the size of a nickel. I was frozen, my eyes and mouth gaping as the evidence shattered in front of me. Andy’s abrupt turn into violence was so sudden, so unexpected, I could barely speak, my words falling out in a strained whine.
“Why would you—”
“Get the fuck out of my room!” he screamed.
The rest was a blur. Dad was there, stomping his foot, demanding answers about the wall and the screams. I lied. I told him half a dozen stories about how Andy was picking on us the night before, about how he broke Sallie’s tape just to be mean, and how all I wanted to do was spend time in his room. In between screams, Dad listened, fussed, told Andy he should know better, that he was the bigger brother, that it was his responsibility to be the grownup. I watched it all, stewing and self-righteous, but not really triumphant. The wedge between me and my brother was only growing wider by the day, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like I actually needed him. To this day, I don’t know why my natural inclination was to turn on him at the first sign of trouble.
As for Andy, all the fight was gone. He stared at the floor just in front of his feet, blinking every once in a while. When Dad finally gave him a chance to speak, he only shrugged his shoulders.