by J. Warren
I took what I could get, though. When I lost interest in little league, I think he sort of lost interest in me. I think I may have even understood that in a very vague way at the time. I got older, went out for football, got a car and a girlfriend. He and I saw less and less of each other. We worked on that car every weekend for awhile, though. Mostly he’d point at something and grunt and I kind of knew what he wanted. It was strange that way.
Somewhere in all that, Randy was taken. I think for about a year after, my father and I were silent. I think I understand it now, in some vague way, but at the time, I didn’t know why he didn’t want to talk to me. That’s how it felt. It felt like he didn’t want me around. I didn’t know what I’d done to make him so unhappy. All I wanted was someone to put their arm around my shoulders and tell me it was going to be okay. Boys aren’t allowed to have that, though. We don’t get that once we’re older than five. We have to hide things inside. We’re supposed to, so I did. I didn’t tell anyone just how much time I spent watching all the other little kids and following them home, even though some lived way out of the way.
So, when I hear my dad’s voice on the other end of the telephone , I spend a few minutes trying to gather my thoughts. I had always been the one to make “my monthly call.” That’s how I referred to it to kindly Dr. Bledsoe, who would laugh and ask me what my father said. Our whole session after the phone call would be devoted to my father. Dr. Bledsoe might point out how nothing my dad said was offensive, but I’d feel like Dr. Bledsoe betrayed me then. I’d tell him that and he’d cock his head to the side and then we’d talk about how people don’t like me and I don’t understand why.
This time, though, my father said “hello” and I stumbled through a hello in return. I asked him how things were going. In the background, always mumbling or whispering, was my mother.
“Your mother wants you to come home for Thanksgiving,” he said. I froze. I tried to remember when the last time I’d been home was. It was two Christmases ago. I’d stayed a week.
“I’ll have to see, Dad. I don’t—I don’t know.”
There was quiet on the line for a while.
“Your mother would really like it. Things have gone to hell around here.”
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“Hank says they found some bones. Couldn’t be sure, he said, but he thinks it’s a little one. Said he didn’t know from Adam, but something about the hip bones makes him think it’s a little boy. Christ, it’s a mess. Your mother’s in quite a state,” he said.
“Where?”
“Up near Eukiah, along one of the ditches. Hank says there’s a shack out there where they found some pictures.”
I didn’t need to ask him to know what he meant. I had heard stories about things like that. In the dark of my room, I had been unable to keep away what those images might look like. No matter how hard I’d pressed on my eyes, the pictures had still come. I sat down because I felt dizzy. I didn’t tell her about the idea that had started to form in the back of my mind the past few months. Of what might have happened to Randy McPherson.
“Tell him he should come home for thanksgiving, Albert.” I could hear my mother in the background, behind dad’s steady breathing. And I knew I’d have to go home. They’re my folks. It’s not like I don’t love them, just that I feel they don’t understand me. I wonder if they ever did.
I think my mom did, once, but that stopped when I got in my first fistfight. It had been with Kevin O’Mally. He was taller than me, that I remember clearly. I was walking without looking. Truthfully, I don’t know how it is that I didn’t wind up tripping over more people. From there it was pretty much how it always goes: I tripped over his foot, my lunch tray went flying. He got covered in thin spaghetti sauce and milk. I tried to say I was sorry, but it was a little late, then.
Thing is, I saw the swing, when he hit me, but it didn’t hurt. It felt more like a pressure somewhere far off that blocked out all the sounds round me. I saw the swing plain as day and I could have ducked it. Not a day goes by I don’t see my own knuckles and think back to how O’Mally’s fist. First thing I said about those new television’s was that the picture was almost as clear as I remember things the moment O’Mally hit me. I could have counted the hairs on his fat knuckles if I’d wanted to, I guess. I didn’t get big until after sixth grade. I’d started working out, staring at the pictures in muscle magazines and stuff. I wanted to be huge. At that time, though, I was still skinny and lanky. My feet looked to large for my age. I slouched over at the stomach to try to hide just how tall I’d gotten.
I say it was a fistfight, but I guess it was more like a beating. I didn’t fight back. He punched me as I got up and I fell back down. Then he kicked me in the ribs. Coach Porter came over and made him stop, but that was it. He didn’t go to detention or anything. I never swung back.
Nobody was all that surprised, either, except my mom.
She went into a fit. She yelled at me, then yelled at my dad when he tried to explain how these things happen. She threatened to call the police. She threatened to sue the school. She just kept threatening and yelling all through dinner. I remember we had meatloaf and green peas that night with mashed potatoes. I kept hiding the peas in the mashed potatoes so I could eat faster and get away from the table. When I asked to be excused, my dad’s face fell some. I think he felt abandoned. I went up to my room and stretched across the bed.
The next day I think dad wanted to pull me aside, but never did. At the time I was pretty glad about that. The last thing I wanted to hear was about how he’d been pretty good at boxing back in the Army. He’d go on for hours about it whenever we were raking the leaves up or repainting the garage. Those times, though, I could nod and pretend that it all made perfect sense, the jabs and haymakers. I couldn’t do that after the fight, though. I got hit and didn’t even swing back.
I could see it in his face while he drove me to school he wanted to say something. He looked forward and never said anything, though, the whole time. We listened to the radio and didn’t sing. After that day, I don’t think we sang together again. That night, mom didn’t act any differently, but I could tell, things had changed. She fixed dinner and I set the table and we ate and then watched television, just like always. Only, no one really said anything.
It got better. I mean, we all started talking again and after a while it was almost like nothing had happened at home. I knew it was different, though. I knew mom and dad were aware I wasn’t perfect. I knew they felt like they’d gotten a dud.
School was tense after the fight, too. O’Mally was in the PE class just before mine, so we passed each other a lot. He’d sneer and sometimes flinch at me like he was about to swing. I ducked and walked quicker. I didn’t know what else to do. More fights happened that year at school with O’Mally and eventually he disappeared. Everyone kept saying he’d gotten sent to reform school. I didn’t care. He was gone and that’s all that mattered.
Mom in the background snaps me back to the moment, as Dad’s waiting to hear what I’m going to say. She just keeps repeating “Albert, make him come home” in a hurried whisper.
“Your mother would like to speak to you,” Dad said, and I hear his hand go over the phone. I can also hear her in the background telling him over and over again that she doesn’t like talking on the phone, and just to tell me to come home for Thanksgiving dinner.
I knew she wasn’t going to talk. She’s never liked the telephone. They make her nervous for some reason. My father and I used to laugh about it in that way two people make fun of someone they both love. There were times when the phone would ring and though she’d be sitting in the kitchen inches from that phone, I’d have to come down from upstairs to answer, to take a message. Then she’d tell dad what she wanted him to say for her when he called them back. .
In the background, I heard their tug of war. I could see them in my head: he with his hand over the phone, trying to hand it to her, her with a grimace of pain and disgus
t, backing away as if the phone was some monster. The whole time her mouthing the word no, and shaking her head.
I closed my eyes. “I’ll be home,” I heard myself say.
The night after the phone call, I dreamed of a casket coming up out of the ground. It slid up slowly, the soil moving away from it in long streams, as if someone was under it, pushing gently. When it came up to the surface, it slowly levered over and laid down. I moved closer without wanting to and inside I could hear a knocking. Someone wanted out. I will never know why, but I kept yelling through the closed lid “You can’t come out, You can’t come out.” I remember being terrified that whoever it was wouldn’t hear me and would come out anyway. What would happen to the world if they did? Just then I turned away and I could tell out of the corner of my eye that the casket flew open. Millions of Polaroids came flying out, swarming like bees. They swarmed all over me, and before they stung me to death, I could see a little boy in each one of them. I woke up that next morning in a cold sweat. It was still dark outside and I made coffee.
THREE
I didn’t tell anybody how I always checked every carton of milk for the ‘missing’ notices. I never saw Randy’s. I would look into each and every face, though. I would read the birth date and subtract the date they went missing, thinking about how old they were now, and how long it’d been since the date they’d gone missing. If I found one that had been born on the day I was looking, I’d sing happy birthday in my head for a little while.
That’s when I knew I needed to see a psychologist. I found Dr. Bledsoe in the phone book. He had the least colorful advertisement. I figured that’s what I wanted: just the nuts and bolts, no frills. I don’t want to be sitting across from some guy telling me that deep down I wanted to do…things…with my mother. I wager most people fear that that’s what a psychologist will tell them. And maybe most people do get told that, I wonder. I’ve been seeing Dr. Bledsoe for almost a year now. He says “we’re making progress.” I hope he’s right.
On our very first session I told him about Randy for about thirty minutes and then he started asking me questions. Had me flustered: this disappearance didn’t have anything to do with me; it had happened to Randy. Dr. Bledsoe was asking me about my mom and my dad, lots of strange questions, but when I told him that he said “Do you know how a computer works?” and I lied and he said, “There’s a processor, a hard drive with programs on it, and something that gives it power, makes it go. Can we agree on that basic idea?” and I nodded.
“Mike, do you think that you could be like that computer?” Dr. Bledsoe asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I think that maybe we all are, and I’ll tell you something else. I think that maybe your power supply is fine. It seems to me your processor is working right. What we have to do,” he said, “is get at some of that faulty programming on your hard drive.”
I felt stupid because I’d never thought of it that way. I kept going back every week after that. He says we’re making progress. The reason I’m thinking about this is, if I’m going home this week, I need to cancel my appointment, and he’s going to ask me why, and then I’m going to tell him. I’ll start talking and he’ll say, “Mike, why don’t you come in today?” and I will. I’ll feel better, but it’s sort of like surgery: you know you’ll feel better later, but the right now is pretty scary.
I suppose I should see him before I go, but I don’t want to. He’ll ask questions about my parents and why I don’t want to go to visit them and from there it only gets worse. “Why did you give up football?” or “Why do you think it is you can’t sleep at night unless there is a light on?” As if I have any idea why.
“What about your sisters?” he’d ask. I didn’t know what he meant. I didn’t think about them much. We didn’t speak much. They weren’t missing like Randy. They weren’t dead. “How do you get along with your sisters?”
“Everyone says that I was probably adopted or something. I don’t act like Sarah.”
“What about your other sister?” he asked that session. The heater in his office had broken down and I had to keep my coat on. I remember that was a cold day.
“I don’t know where she’s at. We haven’t heard from her in a long time.”
“Why not?” he asked. She’d run off was the answer, but still I didn’t know what to say. I thought it’d sound stupid if I said it; as if I’d lost my car keys and didn’t bother to look for them.
I’d have to call Sarah before I left. She would probably be packing at that moment, too. Often, when we were little, even though we didn’t act anything alike, we’d often do the same things at the same time. Somehow, in the back of my head, I knew she was packing right now.
Then I’d have to call Susan. She was hoping we could have Thanksgiving dinner together, and then make love. I wouldn’t have minded that, either. Making love to Susan is the only time I get to relax and not think. Sometimes I hate thinking. I had a friend once who was a student at the University, and all he did was think. I have no idea how he lived. Susan is that way, too.
When I first met her, Susan was still an undergraduate. The park has a small man-made lake at the center. Jogging trails follow the outskirts of it. I had been sitting on a bench near there when she came walking up and sat down. She pulled a book out of her purse and started reading. I was amazed. She was so comfortable with herself she could just sit there and read sitting next to a total stranger out in public. I tried not to let her see me staring sidelong. I was amazed.
After a time, she put her finger in as a place marker and said “You could just say ‘hi’ instead of staring, you know,” and I smiled. Susan was the picture of pretty. We talked all day about that book, or, I should say, she did. I listened. It was something by a Russian guy. I’ve never known anything about literature. She told me the story and how much she loved it. She re-read the book every year at the change from autumn to winter. She said it made her feel like she was home again. I thought that was a little weird, considering how the main character molests a young girl in it, but I didn’t ask. I just wanted her to keep talking.
When she got up to leave that day, she asked me if I’d be there the next day. I said I didn’t know and she said that, if I was, she’d bring cookies. I was stunned. I had a job changing oil and rotating tires at the time. It was pretty thick-knuckle work, and I didn’t want to tell her that I might not be able to come out that next day because I might have to work overtime to make rent. It was pretty hand to mouth back then. I was embarrassed and I didn’t know what she’d think. She was obviously a college girl.
It got close to time to meet her that next day, and there was still a Chevy waiting to be serviced. I faked sick all of a sudden. Because I almost never got ill, my boss let me go. “That Mike fella,” he said to someone else on the telephone one day the next week, “he’s one helluva horse. When he ain’t here, I don’t get nothin’ done.” It was true, too. That Chevy was still there the next morning when I came in.
When I left work that day, though, I rushed to my place. I got cleaned up as best I could. No matter what I did, there was some grease that would not come out from under my fingernails. I shaved, put on a clean shirt. I wanted to be nice for her, even though I didn’t know her name. The whole time, I still fully expected that she wouldn’t show.
I thought about that the whole drive down to the park. I thought about how she wouldn’t show. I thought about how she would show, but then it’d turn out to be some sort of recruitment scheme like “have you found Jesus as your personal savior?” Something was going to go wrong, I could just feel it. My Pontiac shuddered the whole way there, too. I knew it was going to fall apart. The woman I might marry someday was sitting in the park reading her college books and I was going to break down on the side of Market Street with no spare tire.
She was there, though. The ducks were all gliding smooth on the surface of the water. I shut the car off and prayed it wouldn’t diesel on me. It didn’t, and that I took as
a good sign. Not a single duck took off.
I walked up and she was on a huge blue and white checkered blanket. She had a basket with her. As I got closer to her, I saw she had grapes and strawberries in small containers. There was also a bottle of wine. I walked up and stood for a moment while she finished reading the page she was on. She looked up and the sun caught in her hair and I felt like I was in a movie. She was perfect.
She sat up right then, and put her finger in as a place Marker. She set the book in her lap and extended the other hand out to me to shake. She said “I’m Susan.” I shook her hand softly and then she said, “I’m really sorry about the other day. I should have introduced myself. I’m usually not that rude.” I told her I didn’t think she was rude at all. “Your name is Mike,” she said and I froze. When I asked her how she knew, she said “You worked on my car a week back,” Her face didn’t look familiar to me. I was in panic: she knew, she knew. I didn’t know what to say. “Dark blue Chevy truck?” she asked and then I remembered. “Your CV boot went bad,” I said, and she smiled as if I’d just noticed how pretty she was. “Yep,” was all she said.
I sat down and she offered me fruit. Her and me together like that felt like freedom. I remember thinking that. Me and her on that blanket with no problems to solve, no outside things to take care of: just us, and this thing between us. It was huge but not scary. I kept thinking that I wanted to tell her about things in my life. Things from when I was little. Then I thought about Randy. I didn’t want to tell her about that.
“What was it like for you as a kid?” she asked me just then and my eyes got huge. It was like she was reading my mind.