The Toy Thief
Page 23
That was how we first found Memphis. He’d been hiding in the shed out back, desperate and tiny, ribs showing through his short fur. I fished him out with a can of tuna, parsed out a piece at a time. He was rough from the start, always skittish. The kind of cat you couldn’t quite trust not to eat your food whenever you left the room. Still, he was the best damn cat I’d ever had. He lived to be fifteen, and he was just as mean as ever on the day he died. Some people might hate a cat like that, but I think we understood each other. Maybe that’s why I was able to coax Andrew out just the same way.
Just this year, a few months after he turned four, I took him to the Trails. We live on the other side of town now, and I don’t have much reason to go back to the old stomping grounds. The whole place was built up, sliced into small lots where the Trails used to be. We drove around the new subdivision, crisscrossing our way through each of the different side streets, my hands shaking a bit on the steering wheel.
“This place,” I told Andrew. “They called this the Trails.”
“What’s trails?”
“It’s…hard to explain. It was like, woods. Forest. With all these little paths cut in it.”
“Why?”
I laughed. That was his new favorite word.
“It just was, baby.”
I tried to mentally pinpoint the landmarks I had known, based on the houses that rested in the same spots. A two-story house of dark red brick was probably the place where we stumbled onto Barnett. A little roundabout marked the spot with the tree etched in pentagrams. If only these people knew. This side of town has changed so much, especially since we left. Did we take the bad parts with us? Or was it the Thief?
Bit of both, if I had to guess.
We drove to the far side of the neighborhood and found it fenced off, the chain link hidden behind a wall of greenery, much less offensive to the eye. There was a small turnaround in front of the gate, and I stopped there, almost certain that someone would ask me to leave. I didn’t care. Even if a cop showed up, I was going in.
“What’s this?” Andrew asked.
“Just a place I want to see, baby. Just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.”
I pulled back the chain around the gate, enough for him to shimmy through, and I slipped in behind him. It was lovely back there, just as it had been before, that last time I’d seen it. I’d never come back before then. For most of my adult life I couldn’t have even imagined setting foot here. But there I was again, a woman grown, awestruck by the place, by how small it all looked, how the spans between tree lines seemed so very close. I thought once more of Andy, who had taken one last trip back this way. It had been in the dead of night then, and I wondered if the moon had been out for that last stroll.
The quarry came into view, wide and lovely and silent. For all its beauty, it was an ominous place, the sort of place where a hand might shoot up from below and drag you down into the angular, man-made caverns, and to the wild caves beyond.
“Careful,” I said, pulling Andrew far away from the edge.
“What is it?”
“A quarry.”
“Why?”
“Just is.”
I stood there for a while, feeling afraid and very small, like every choice I’d ever made had been wrong, if for no other reason than it had brought me here.
Mom was dead.
Dad was dead.
Andy was dead.
Had I ever done anything right?
“Look!”
I scanned the horizon and saw it. A heron, tall and thin, was gliding across the glassy water as silent as a water skimmer. She rose up, tipping her blue-gray wings before landing on the top of the wall across from us.
“Birdy!”
She alighted on a patch of green, and I noticed how much everything had changed over the years. The burned yellow of that summer had turned now. Trees poked up through the sides of the quarry. Wildflowers painted the field on both sides pink and yellow.
This whole place was alive. It didn’t remember the horrible things that had happened here. Those were all so far in the past, and the only thing left for nature to do was get on with living. I was alive too, and so was the boy at my side. We all had Andy to thank for that. Somehow, I managed a smile, and Andrew and I walked back, holding hands.
* * *
That’s almost all there is to tell. I did end up keeping the bear. After it was all said and done, I found it sitting there on the floor, right where the Thief had dropped it. I wanted to burn it the second I saw it, to pretend like that moment, and all the moments after, were just a bad dream, something I could forget seconds after it ended. But I couldn’t do it then, and I still can’t do it now. I threw the bear into a plastic bag and tossed it in the closet. I thought about it every night when I lay down, obsessing over it, changing it into something warped and obscene, something forever tainted. Then, when I finally worked up the nerve to pull the bag out and peer in, all I saw were cotton, buttons, the same metal clasp.
I took it out, washed it by hand once, twice, three times, and once all the dirt and grime were washed away, I saw it for what it was: a simple gesture, a gift given by a woman and man who loved me very much. I still have it. It’s threadbare and worn, but I keep it in a box in my closet. Every once in a while I take it out, just to make sure it’s still there, that it hasn’t vanished in the night. Every time, I consider giving it to Andrew, but I never have. This toy means a lot to me, the good and the horribly bad, and there’s no reason to put my own messed-up shit on him. He’s still so young. His own little dysfunctions are still waiting out there for him to go find.
I will tell you one more thing. About a week ago, a moment happened that made me consider writing all this down. Something that threw the whole thing into a new perspective. I’ve learned that most everything in life comes down to perspective in the end. I was cooking breakfast. It was a Saturday morning, and most weekends I get up and make French toast. It’s Andrew’s favorite. He was sitting at the kitchen counter, half watching me, half drawing with his crayons. That was when he said it.
“Momma?”
I stopped, spatula in my hand, feeling my eyes well a bit as I processed exactly what had just happened. I could tell by his voice that he didn’t need anything, not really. He said my name three dozen times a day in that same bored, sweet tone. He might have needed some more milk, or a different set of crayons, or maybe a new sheet of paper to draw on. It didn’t matter. The word, though. That meant everything.
Let’s get one damn thing straight. I’m not his mom. I don’t deserve that name, not yet at least. But I have to say that in that moment, I felt as if I could be, that maybe everything that happened, from Mom and Dad to Andy and me, had all been for something. That maybe, just maybe, something good had made it out of that cave intact.
I took a deep breath, and I answered.
“Yes, baby?”
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Text copyright © 2018 D.W. Gillespie.
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