But he never expected this.
“Where’s Ralph and Laurie?” he says, his light up on your mom’s face now.
Your dad hooks his head out to the lake like he’s sorry and the sheriff steps over there as best he can, with kids all over him, and shines his light on the three bodies in the lake: the owners at the edge, the counselor on the buoy.
He wades through the kids, back to his car.
Only, when he starts to scream something into his radio, a hand pulls his forehead back against his seat, and another hand, from the other side, drags a shiny knife across his throat like just drawing a line in Jell-O.
His blood burbles out onto his light brown shirt, and, when he falls forward, he pushes the sirens on.
The kids scream, everybody’s screaming, running through the red lights flashing everywhere, and your mom runs for the Chestnuts bunkhouse because it’s closest, but your dad’s already there, pulling the door shut behind him and pushing the wooden peg in to lock it.
She beats on it with her fists and stabs it with her knife but your dad’s in the bathroom already, hiding in the bathtub. Except the bathtub’s where that one artist kid has been leaving all his paintings, so it’s like the killer or the ghost is in there with him already.
Your mom finally crawls in through the window right over him, falls down onto him even though he locked her out, and somehow he doesn’t stab her with his poker and she doesn’t cut him with her knife, and they hide like that until the bus shows up, and then get married and love each other and have you someday.
But: “Who was it?” you ask.
“The—the artist kid’s dad,” your mom says.
They found him trapped in a complicated trap at the edge of the woods. It was a hole with broken paddles on the bottom, splinter-side-up. He had blood all over them, and his mouth was painted red just like his son had been drawing. Because the dad was a clown for parties.
“He got caught in one of his own things,” your mom said, looking to you like you’re supposed to nod.
You don’t, though.
What you’re trying to think is how could your dad know about the Sheriff getting cut like that across the throat if he was already in the Chestnuts bunkhouse?
But your mom must have seen it, told him.
Right?
But now your mom’s all over the road, and there are no lights at all out here.
“Was that Dad back there?” you ask.
“It’s too late!” she screams about your question, and spills her purse onto the seat beside her, isn’t even driving anymore, is just scratching for something.
She pushes it back to you.
You uncrumple it—it’s old paper—and you kind of have to smile.
It’s one of the artist kid’s drawings. She must have saved it all this time.
“We’re going to see Philip, yes,” she says, and hunches over the wheel like somebody just hit her in the stomach. “You’ll like it there, it’ll be . . . right.”
You see her eyes in the mirror for a moment but she pulls them away. Like she’s scared.
Clowns.
It’s what the kid was drawing.
Only—only it’s not a dad at all.
When you were dressed like this, your dad was wearing a pirate patch on his eye.
Not you.
You always liked the big wig, the funny nose, the red mouth. That scratchy collar that was like paper folded over and over. The floppy shoes that made that sound when you ran.
Maybe that’s how your mom figured it out.
Maybe she heard you running in the hall. And remembered.
But it’s not your fault, even. Some days your dad, he forgets to put the mirror frame up, doesn’t he? Just leaves it leaning there. And, without him to tell you not to, instead of reaching around like he taught, you can reach right through for that perfect magic summer camp. You’re even small enough to step through. To be there with them in the album. To watch them from the edges of the woods. From the dock, at night.
And you were right about future muscles.
“It’s you,” your mom says, her body all-the-way pressed to the door, like she wants to be as far away as possible.
You lean over so you can see her in the mirror again.
She’s trying to hide.
You smile, feel the paint crackle around your mouth.
It’s how she found you earlier, in your room. Already dressed up.
Paint on your hands too, but that’s not paint.
“I was just playing,” you tell her. “Are we really going to see Philip?”
She nods yes, yes yes yes, that’s right where you’re going, and you nod, look out the side window at the shadows of fence posts blurring together.
But there’s something in the floorboard, too.
It’s peeking out from under the seat, where you hid it.
The thick black blade from your dad’s lawnmower. The one he threw away.
You nod, look out the side window again.
Your heart’s thumping like a rabbit now.
Go ahead, lift the blade with your toe so it meets your hand, know that your dad won’t catch up this far for ten or thirty minutes.
It’ll be just like camp. The best one ever.
You smile, lean forward, breaking the seatbelt rule but the seatbelt rule doesn’t matter anymore.
Your mom, though. She’s been through all this before, hasn’t she? She doesn’t just remember the bad parts, she remembers how to live, too. She opens her door, rolls out into the darkness, and, one hand on the back of the front seat, you see the road about to turn in front of you, but there’s nobody to turn the wheel anymore. To keep up with the road.
“Philip,” you say, right at the end.
It was the artist kid’s name. The one who wouldn’t ever go to sleep. The one who would never come out into the woods to play.
When the car hits whatever it hits, you launch over the front seat, and it’s just like letting go of a tire swing at the exact perfect right time. Especially when you see that the window’s already breaking. The glass is going away, getting ready for you.
Leaving only the frame it was in.
You’re just small enough to slip through it without touching it, even with the back of your clown shoe. Just small enough to crash into the water of the past, like always.
You stand from it, the water dripping off the lawnmower blade you still have.
Right now the camp’s empty, deserted, lonely.
But it won’t always be.
THE MANY STAGES OF GRIEF
THE CONVERSATION JIM HAD FIRST THING MONDAY MORNING:
“So what happened to your face there?”
It was Kate talking.
Jim raised his hand to the ragged side of his face, shrugged, told her some truth: “While my two year old son thinks it hilarious for me to pretend to eat from the dog’s bowl, the dog doesn’t see the humor.”
“It looks like a knife fight.”
“Labrador teeth.”
“Or your face caught on fire and someone tried to put it out with a hatchet.”
“Is Smithson paying you to be this extra-funny?”
“When does the eye patch come off, captain?”
Never.
Jim was a monocular dad now. That he might need depth perception to properly raise his son was having absolutely no bearing on whether he would get to have depth perception. Maybe his ears would compensate, though?
He could hear Kate grinning all the way down the hall.
THE CONVERSATION JIM HAD WITH HIS WIFE AT 9:00 BREAK:
“Hello?”
Jim put a question mark there because she hadn’t spoken into the phone yet.
“I’m in the car, dear.”
“Just one question then.”
“One.”
“The other day when I asked if you liked my new basketball shoes, do you remember?”
“Yes. That’s your question?”
“No. You looked at them and said yo
u just can’t seem to get into the new style.”
“And?”
“What were you saying?”
“You can’t play basketball anymore, Jim, heart. Sorry to have to be the one to tell you.”
“That’s just what you want, isn’t it?”
“You think he’s watching, but he’s not. Are you listening?”
No.
Yes.
‘He’ was the new neighbor across the street, one house to the right. The new high school coach. He watered the lawn in polyester coach shorts; looped over his rearview mirror was a gold-plated whistle and a stop-watch.
He was watching, all right. Jim could tell.
THE CONVERSATION JIM HAD OVER LUNCH WITH LARRY, JUST RECENTLY PROMOTED:
“I just saw it in the paper, the supplement. I don’t know all the details.”
Larry read all the papers. It was his job, now.
“But it was a dolphin?”
“The old man just moseyed out for the morning paper or to watch the college girls across the street jiggle to their car or whatever, and there it was.”
“The dolphin.”
“Breathing, man. That’s the thing. In Boulder, Colofreakingrado, get it? The foothills of the Rocky Mountains?”
Jim looked up like the old man had to have, for an explanation, for where this fish could have come from, and Larry stood into that space: “They think it was this kidnapped dolphin. Like the kidnappers ran out of water or the owners wouldn’t pay anything but market price.”
“But they ate it?”
“It’s a delicacy. It died in their bathtub. They tried to use rock salt to make seawater.”
“Yeah,” Jim said, “rock salt,” and after Larry was gone he monoculared in on his own thumbnail clicking on the table top, saying in dolphinspeak please, please help me. No one in upper management wears a patch. They don’t even wear eyeglasses up there.
THE CONVERSATION JIM HAD WITH HIS LABRADOR (TAD) WHEN HE HAD GOTTEN HOME FROM THE HOSPITAL THAT NIGHT AFTER THE DOG FOOD:
“I know it wasn’t your fault, bub.”
Jim the Forgiver. The understanding human in the room.
Tad thumped his tail on the floor in appreciation.
“But did you have to do it so deep? I mean, isn’t there supposed to be a growl, then maybe a feint, then a snap? Don’t they teach you this at dog-school? You have to admit it was funny, though. Brent, you saw him, Brent was even still laughing when, when my, you know, when you—” but then Jim couldn’t finish, couldn’t describe in words his eyeball in the dog food, the dark pupil contracting in fear.
THE CONVERSATION JIM HAD WITH HIS WIFE MARGARET ON THE DRIVE HOME FROM THE HOSPITAL THAT NIGHT:
“Thank you.”
“You would have done the same thing.”
“I wouldn’t have known to.”
“He was just protecting his food, you know.”
It’s what she’s been saying all day already.
“But . . . Brent.”
It’s also what she’s been saying. Brent. Brent Brent Brent.
“I know, I know. But couldn’t you have just like lured him away with some people food?”
“It was an emergency. That’s what the taser’s for, an emergency. I mean, we had to get your eye, right? There was still a chance.”
Jim rubbed his hollow eye socket.
“I know.”
“But you think it scarred him psychologically?”
“Brent?”
“Brent? Tad.”
“Tad, yeah. He’s going to be scared of all handheld devices now, don’t you think? I mean, I’ll pull out a calculator to help Brent with his homework, and—”
“He’s got the taste of blood, now.”
Margaret looked across the seat at Jim, importantly.
“I’ll talk to him,” Jim said, but what he wasn’t saying was Did she really have to use the taser on him, too? He hadn’t been that out of control, had he? In front of Brent, in the backyard, where the whole neighborhood could hear?
THE CONVERSATION JIM AND MARGARET OFTEN HAVE ABOUT BRENT:
“It doesn’t look like a diaper bag. It looks like a purse.”
Jim isn’t lying. They’re at the grocery store, checking out, or standing in line for a movie that’s a compromise.
“Can you just hold it while I write the check, please? Just for a moment?”
“That you used it as a purse before we had a . . . before we had Brent. It doesn’t help any here, you know.”
“It doesn’t look like a purse.”
“You wear it like a purse, though. Your lipstick’s in there. I say anything with lipstick in it’s a purse.”
“Would you just hold it for a moment, Jim? Please?”
“Men don’t carry purses.”
“Keep your elbow straight. Hold it as far away from you as possible. That’ll tell anybody looking that you’re a manly man. That you watch football and drink beer and play poker and smoke cigars all at once.”
“How much is the check for?”
“This is just like when you call me from work. Brent’s crying now, okay?”
“What’s that he’s wearing anyway? Is that a shirt or a dress?”
Margaret cries too much, really, Jim suspects. And draws far too many suicide-pictures. In one series of them she’s hanging from a bouquet of balloons by the neck, floating away dead (eyes X’d) from Jim, lying on the floor with a kitchen knife in his eye. These pictures were all before the dog food day, too, before the hospital night. Jim says it wasn’t coincidence, can’t be. His therapist is inclined to agree.
THE CONVERSATION JIM HAD WITH HIS THERAPIST ON THE WAY HOME FROM WORK:
“I’m in traffic, see? That was just a real, live honking horn.”
“Are they honking at you, Jim?”
“Do you have to say my name so much, doctor? Is there like somebody else on the other line, is that it? You just trying to keep us straight or something?”
“One question at a time, Jim. You know the rule.”
“Okay then, doctor. Your honest, expert opinion now. Do I have a chance?”
“Of making the team?”
“Yes.”
“You’re thirty-four years old, Jim.”
“I’m in good shape, though. Hear that? That’s how my stomach sounds when I hit it. I can pick which calf muscle to push the accelerator with.”
“And you’re not really enrolled in high school, either. That might be the big thing.”
“But if I was?”
“You’re not, though, Jim.”
“Then why does he watch me?”
“Why do you think he watches you?”
“You’re trying to make this about my eye, aren’t you?”
“Which one, Jim?”
Jim hung up with his thumb. He knew why his new neighbor was watching him: nostalgia, for what never was—him and Jim, coach and player, sweeping state two years in a row, Jim’s junior and senior years, the time of his life he never had. That neither of them ever had.
Jim held the wheel with both hands and misjudged the light, pulled a half car-length into the intersection and held his place, making everyone go around him.
THE SHORT CONVERSATION JIM HAD WITH HIS FAMILY OVER DINNER (CHICKEN):
“Is that dog food in your okra?”
Jim looked to Brent to see if Brent had heard this accusation from mother to father. Brent had; his fork was stopped halfway up for the rest of his childhood. Jim turned back to Margaret.
“Have you been looking at my food again?”
“I can smell it, Jim.”
“Jim? What about dear, heart, love of my life, father of my only son?”
“Jim.”
“Yes, okay. It’s dog food. It’s perfectly nutritional.”
“Does Tad know?”
This was Brent in a small voice, peering up.
Jim closed his one good eye.
No, Tad didn’t know. Jim had distracted him with an open gate and a fa
ke meow then sneaked a pocketful. It was therapy. Nobody was supposed to know, though.
THE CONVERSATION JIM HAD WITH LARRY WHEN HE ASKED HIM OVER TO PLAY BASKETBALL AFTER DINNER:
“You really want me to wear this thing?”
The extra eye patch.
“Yes.”
“This going to get kinky?”
Jim shook his head no.
“It’s just to even things up some. You can play without depth perception, you know.”
“Should I give myself a quick frontal lobotomy too, captain? Develop some peculiar neuroses? What about those shoes, though. Did you buy them just for this?”
“I needed new shoes. Don’t look at them please.”
“Pret-ty.”
In the kitchen window Brent and Margaret were receding in Jim’s vision, small like at the end of a telescope.
Across the street a set of blinds fingered open.
Jim smiled, bounced the ball to Larry.
“To eleven. Make it take it.”
Larry dribbled the ball once with both hands, testing it, and smiled.
“Like always,” he said, pulling it back by his waist, his triple threat position.
Jim nodded and crouched over in his defensive stance, palms up, and spread his finger, waiting.
THE CONVERSATION JIM HAD WITH KATE AGAIN TUESDAY MORNING:
“So what happened now?”
“Nothing.”
“But you used to have teeth, didn’t you? I think I remember teeth, definitely.”
“It was a last second shot. A buzzer beater.”
“And your ankle. It didn’t used to have all that stuff on it, did it?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I hope you won, at least?” and Jim grinned into Kate’s cubicle, told her some truth: that Brent had been watching. That of course he had won. His new neighbor had even come out onto his lawn to watch at the end, and then flag down the ambulance.
“He told me I made the team,” Jim whispered. “That I was good enough.”
“You were bleeding, though. You still are.”
“And I stayed awake until the paramedics—” but then he could hear the tears forming in her eyes and had to look away, hold his breath against the salty smell. The office wasn’t the place for that kind of emotion. Smithson had warned him about it, even, but still, hobbling away from her with a noisy grin Jim felt the tears on his own face—on both sides—and finally breathed in, made his office in two great vaults of his crutches, then only leaned on them for a moment with his head down before reaching for the phone, to ask Margaret if she’d ever heard of a human eye growing back. Because he could feel it in there like a pearl, perfect and unborn.
Zombie Sharks with Metal Teeth Page 9