by Cote Smith
My mother sighed. She looked down at her hands, shaking the wheel. “I know,” she said. “I know.”
She started the van and we drove away.
* * *
I didn’t know my mother snored until the first night we shared a bed. Not until I woke up, kicking her legs and calling my brother’s name. Stop, I said. Would you stop.
I thought she would leave after that first night, after I made her remind me that my brother wasn’t the one snoring. That my brother, her son, was gone. I thought she would go upstairs and sleep on the couch, not stay down in the dark with the spiders. Though maybe that was the point. In the basement, it was always dark. There was no window well like at our old house, no light to leak in. My mother could pretend night lasted forever and stay in bed entire days, which she did.
My dad, he had no idea what to do. Those first few days he tried to coax my mother out, like she was some wild animal, scared but dangerous. But instead of biting or snapping her teeth, my mother did nothing. She said nothing. Only, I’m fine. Only, Please leave me alone.
My dad was the one who handled all the disappearance stuff. While my mother slept or didn’t sleep, he did all the things I could never imagine doing. He talked to the KBI and the bordering counties’ sheriff departments. Put up posters in the appropriate places. He went out into the woods every day and every night and came back with nothing. He found the silo and we talked about its tree, but that was it. There were no footprints showing him where to go. No broken limbs bent by a fleeing body. The storm, he said, washed everything away.
What about the smoking lady? I asked him. I had seen her talking to Chris, hadn’t I? Whatever happened to her?
No sign, my dad said. Not since the tornado. We know she has no son listed, but we’re tracking down her relatives. Nothing yet.
When my dad couldn’t look anymore, he would come home. His eyes strained, his body tired and thinned with grief. If he was home at dinnertime, he grilled out. He stood alone on the porch and watched the open flame. He didn’t move when the wind changed and the smoke drifted across his face, already burned from hours spent wading through the woods. The last wave of the summer sun scorched him a sad brown, then a bright red, and each day he dried up and shrank a little. When the food was ready, my dad took a plate down to my mother, knowing she would eat next to nothing, if anything at all. He would murmur a few words to her, and slowly climb the stairs and return to the kitchen, where for the first time since we were all a family, he ate at the table. After the first week I stopped asking if he had found anything, if he’d picked up on any leads or discovered new clues. In those long hours we lingered in the living room, I learned to read my dad’s face too.
* * *
When I was alone, my mind wanted comparisons. It wanted to make sense of the overwhelming emptiness I woke up to every morning, and carried with me through the day. It’s like when Baron died, my mind told me. Remember? How strange and terrible it was to wander room to room and not be followed, to realize you would never hear the soft pant of his spent breath, the jingle of his collar clinking behind you. This is like that, don’t you think? In some way? Doesn’t that make it better?
The truth was it didn’t. The truth was I knew that when I went downstairs each night and climbed into bed, my mother would be crying, and that I would clench my fists and flex my body as tight as I could in the stupid hope that I would not cry too. That will only make your mother sadder, I told myself, and haven’t you done enough? The truth was I had dreams of the lake, only this time I was the one in the boat, and my brother was the one left in the water, with nothing to keep him afloat.
* * *
The city recovered. Or kept moving. So we would have something to talk about besides what we were avoiding, my dad kept up-to-date on the cleanup. Within a week the grocery store reopened. The car the tornado crashed through the front was removed, the windows replaced. Work crews cleared the streets of debris, filled dump trucks to their beds’ rims. What they couldn’t haul away they piled in yards, little hills of wrecked lives.
Still, the tornado wasn’t a big one, according to the newspaper. Not when compared with others that had struck our state the same summer. Unlike those storms, which flattened entire towns off the map, ours had inflicted what the state labeled “manageable damage.” Though many had been injured, though homes had been leveled or made unlivable, there were no known deaths.
“We’ll get past this,” my dad said one evening, his face hidden behind the paper.
I stared at the article on the back page of what he was reading, a blurb about another escape, this time from the women’s prison. From what I could read, the article didn’t mention anything about the Stranger. It was like the world had moved on and everything I cared about was forgiven or forgotten.
“How?” I finally said. How were things going to get better?
“Just give it some time, son. We don’t know if things are the worst.”
He put the paper down and tried to smile at me, then went downstairs to talk to my mother. I followed him to the door and listened to him plead with her. Tell her how he needed her to be strong, to guide me through this while he was gone. Won’t you come upstairs? my dad asked. If not for me, for him?
There was a lull. Until I heard my mother’s voice. Soft, matter-of-fact. I heard her ask my dad if he’d found anything, if he knew who took her boy. When my dad said no, my mother said, Then you have my answer.
* * *
When my dad was gone, I hung out on his front step. There, I could think about whatever I wanted, or I could think about nothing. I could stay or I could go. I could sneak off and hurl a rock at a neighbor’s door or I could be good. I could behave. I could sit and wonder why my brother chose not to, why he snuck out all the time, why he went into the woods with the man we thought was Chris. What was he after? I could ask myself. Where did he want to go?
All this because I couldn’t watch TV anymore. I refused. I couldn’t watch another fake family laugh their way through their fake problems. I couldn’t watch the news and risk seeing a story about my brother. Only once did my dad suggest we go to the video store. No, I told him, but I didn’t give him the reason why. I didn’t tell him that, lately, there was only one tape I’d thought about watching. The one my dad kept upstairs, hidden in his closet. I didn’t tell him that part of me still thought Chris and the Stranger were the same, and that if I could just make myself watch that tape one more time, at least some of my questions might be answered. I didn’t tell him this because I was afraid. Because I couldn’t imagine watching something so horrible again, and this time, without my brother.
* * *
I had forgotten about the smoking lady until my mother started to resemble her. This was the third week without my brother. Three weeks of my dad and me walking around like zombies. We no longer talked to each other. We chewed our food, he read the paper, and at the end of the day we silently nodded good night. A reality was sneaking up on us. A story I never wanted told.
I grew used to the quiet. When my dad was gone during the day and I had no desire to be outside with worthless birds chirping and the mocking sun, I lay on the couch. I crossed my arms like I was in a casket and stared at the ceiling, at nothing. I slept, and when I wasn’t asleep, I thought of the worst things. And if I wasn’t at peace I was at something like it, only sadder. There was the numbness of calm, but it came with a shadow. Lurking over me on the couch, saying, Don’t get too comfortable.
So it was a shock when my mother came out of the basement during the middle of that third week. The middle of the day, even. I must’ve screamed when I saw her standing in the doorway. She startled and put her hand to her heart, wrapped herself tightly in the pink bathrobe she’d been wearing for weeks.
“Is your dad here?”
I shook my head, too mesmerized by her strange appearance to speak. She was new. She was once again transformed, but this time the change was bad. Her big yellow hair was limp, flat, matted to her head with swea
t and grease. Purple circles hung under her eyes, puffed out from her bony, pale face. She looked like she was dying, or was already dead. Her hands would not stop fidgeting, a tic she must’ve picked up from the smoking lady.
“Did you have any breakfast?”
“No,” I said. It was well past noon.
She slowly made her way to the kitchen and poured a glass of orange juice. She sat down and drank the glass with one long tilt, wiped her mouth with the back of her arm, and went downstairs, back into the basement. I did not see her the rest of the day.
* * *
One day my mother spent an entire morning upstairs, sipping her orange juice and staring out the back porch window. She didn’t say anything to me and I didn’t say anything to her. When my dad came home from an all-night shift and saw her sitting upstairs, he looked confused, like he came to the wrong home.
My dad sat down with my mom. She didn’t seem to notice him at first, or if she did, she still didn’t look in his direction. The two of them stared out the window, and although I knew neither would allow themselves to feel the smallest bit of happiness, for that fleeting second, the duplex lost a little of its gloom.
“She had a son,” my dad said. “Your neighbor.” My mother glanced up from her glass. “Not biological. The kid of the man she was with. But she raised him. He lifeguarded at the city pool.”
“So,” my mother said. “So what?”
She stared at my dad, her face desperately trying to make meaning of his words, trying not to jump to any conclusions. Finally her mouth opened, whispered, What? What is it?
“It seems he was fired,” my dad said. “Nothing was ever proven, but there were charges … rumors that he”—he glanced cautiously at me—“hurt one of the kids.”
“What do you mean?” my mother said. But then she seemed to realize something. The meaning behind my dad’s words, his tone, the helplessness in his eyes, became clear.
My mother stood up. She looked at my dad hard, and left the kitchen, not wanting to hear any more. She was halfway down the basement stairs before she stopped and called back up to us.
“Do you know where she is?” she said. “Does this tell you where he might be?”
It didn’t.
“Then don’t,” she said. “Don’t you say it. Until you bring him back, don’t you dare say what might’ve happened.”
The last few stairs moaned under her feet. My mother didn’t come up the rest of the week.
sixteen
MY DAD STILL did his job. He no longer spoke of a promotion, or seemed to hope or care about such a thing anymore, but he didn’t miss a day. Unlike my mother, who never returned to the golf course, who never called Rick to let him know what was going on, my dad put on his uniform and went to work. He came home, changed and ate, went back out. Not to the bar, like before. Not to rent stupid movies. He went out looking for my brother, again and again. He never took me, and if I asked where he went and what he found, he wouldn’t say, but I could see it all over him. I knew.
When it had been over a month, my dad got a call about the Stranger. Until then, it seemed the rest of the city had forgotten about the escape. For them, the threat had never become real. It became a waste of their time. There were no murders over the summer, nothing to satisfy the fears that buzzed the thick air. A prisoner had escaped. Yes. A dangerous man made himself free, but he never went after their family. He did what my mother promised she would do, if she ever got half the chance. He left. He fled this city of prisons and little else, and he never looked back.
My dad hung up the phone and sat at the kitchen table. He didn’t know I was in the living room, lying on the couch, in the dark. He opened his police pad, thumbed some pages, and shut the pad with a look of disgust. I imagined what he saw there, in his notes, the scribbles that told the story of this terrible summer. A few jots about the Stranger, yes. But most of the notes came from my dad spying. They were about my mother, with Rick, then without. If you read the pages closely, they showed what my dad really wanted.
My dad put on his gun and his badge.
“It’s not him,” I said, startling him from the darkness. “It can’t be.”
My dad came into the living room, saw me on the couch, my arms pulled into my shirt for warmth. “Sleeping here tonight?”
I nodded. I waited for him to shake his head, to say boys sleep in beds. But he pulled a blanket from the closet and draped it over me. He tucked me in and kissed me on the head.
“I love you, son. You know that.”
I closed my eyes, unsure if his last words were a statement or a question. I told him I loved him, too, and listened to his footsteps move to the door, out into the night.
* * *
I woke at a painful hour. Too dark to be up, too light to go back to sleep. For a while I stared at the TV, blank and black. I tried to remember what day it was, what had happened the night before and if any of it mattered. My dad had not come home. He was out chasing the Stranger lead, following the claim to its dead end. I tried to imagine what my dad would find when he arrived wherever the tip took him. An empty shack, perhaps. A stack of dirty dishes. In the sink an insulting note: Sorry I missed you. I pictured the disappointment on my dad’s face, his hand crumpling the note or tearing it into a million pieces.
I poured a bowl of cereal before discovering the milk carton was empty. I went into the basement to tell my mother, as if this little tragedy would finally rouse her. I knelt by her side and listened to her light breathing. She wasn’t asleep.
“What do you want?” she said, and I told her about the milk. “Be quiet,” she said. “Come here.” She moved over and pulled me onto the bed, wrapped me in both arms. She had taken on a certain smell these last couple of weeks, from rarely bathing, wearing the same robe day after day. She breathed into my neck. “Big spoon, little spoon,” she said, and weaved a leg around me like a giant spider, squeezing me tight. “You know, when you were a baby this was the only way you would sleep. Just like this. Someone always had to be hugging you. Otherwise, you’d cry your head off.”
She asked me if I remembered that, and when I said no, she said, Well, of course, you were just a baby.
“I don’t remember when it stopped exactly,” she said. “When you didn’t have to be in bed with me or your dad.” I felt her arms and legs flex with thought. “I guess it was when you were big enough to sleep by your brother.” She sighed. “That makes the most sense.”
She held me for a moment longer, then, as if satisfied with the answer she gave to her own question, she released me. She lay on her back and stared at the black ceiling, a sky without stars, with no stories to tell.
“You stink,” my mother said. “When’s the last time you had a bath?”
I lied and said it was yesterday.
“Well, you need one now. Grab your things. Close the door behind you.”
The bathroom was upstairs, next to my dad’s bedroom. Since my mother and I had been staying here, the bedroom door was always closed. This morning, it was open, and an eerie daylight shone through the window blinds. I tried not to look, pretended that looking was also forbidden. But it was weird. The bed was made. Zero clothes were thrown on the floor, and the fan chair had been moved to the opposite side.
So there was a clear path to the closet, if I wanted it. I didn’t want it. I put my clothes on the sink and started my bath. I waited for the tub to fill. I peed, flushed the toilet, and listened to the water move down the pipes, descending to the basement, rushing above where my mother lay in the dark. My dad was out there. My mother was downstairs. Everyone was somewhere else, and why couldn’t I know? I deserved to know.
I kept the water running and tiptoed to my dad’s closet. The box was still there. So was the tape. I waited until the bath was full before I snuck downstairs and put it in. I pressed rewind. I pressed play.
But there were no clues.
There was the woman. There was the gun. There was her face.
It�
�s OK, the Stranger said. They need to understand you deserve this.
My wailing must’ve woken my mother, though I didn’t realize it was me making those sounds until she appeared in the basement doorway.
“What’s wrong with you?” my mother said.
I wiped the last bit of tears and snot off my face. I pointed to the VCR. The tape, done playing, half ejected itself, as if the VCR had spat it out, out of disgust.
“What is this?” my mother said.
I opened my mouth and wailed some more. “He’s killed him,” I cried. “I know it.”
My mother dropped the tape. “What?” she said. “What are you talking about?”
The phone rang. In the story I accepted, the call was right on cue. It was an officer. It was my dad, calling to say he’d found another tape. With my brother. With Chris. You’d better come down here, he would say. To the station. It’s over. It’s all over.
* * *
On the way to the police station my mother would not say a word. I didn’t blame her. I couldn’t imagine myself ever wanting to talk again. Before we left I had thrown up, quickly, violently. Heaving all I had, and when all I had was gone, my body retched some more. Even though there was nothing left. No words. Only feeling terrible. Only the awful taste.
I sat in the back of the van. I would stay here. I would wait silently as my mother went into the station. Cars and clouds would roll by. A siren would shriek, and a minute later my mother would reappear, changed again.
* * *
My mother shook my knee to stir me from my daydream. We’re here, she said, and stepped out of the van. Where we were wasn’t the station. We were parked in an unfamiliar lot, behind a big brick building I’d never seen. Or I had seen it once, I was later told, but when my eyes were new and I entered our prison town for the first time, in the arms of my mother.
The hospital smelled like the school nurse’s office, chemical and clean. My mother held my hand. A nurse gave her a number and my mother pulled me through a maze of halls. I peeked in a few of the rooms, saw serious-looking people standing over still feet. In one room I caught a man, not much older than my dad, pushing a pole to the bathroom. In another, an old woman slept in a chair, flowers in her hand, saggy balloons dying just above her head. Eventually we came to the door with the number. It was closed, and when my mother gently knocked, I heard my dad’s voice call for us to come in.