The patterns on the ceiling are changing now. I can make out faces, but I don’t want to see who it might be, so I close my eyes and think about Mom in heaven.
How close am I to her, really? I know the answer. I’m really just a breath away. Just a heartbeat. And the thought scares me so much that I thank God that Tyler’s Donald Duck night-light is here to fight the shadows.
It scares me because sometimes I think about how close heaven really is, and how easy it would be to go there and be with Mom if I really wanted to. And sometimes I want to.
15
NIGHT ON THE FAULT
November
As I step out into the night, I can smell the aroma of dying fires coming from the neighborhood chimneys. It smells like Christmas. Judging by store displays, Christmas has already arrived. But since we’re still eating leftover Thanksgiving turkey, I know it hasn’t yet. Christmas is still a month away.
Dad’s probably thinking about Christmas now. I think of him, sitting there in his minimum-security cell. I wonder if he’s counting down the days until he’s free, etching marks into the wall like prisoners always seem to do.
“Shh!” says Jason, even though I don’t make a noise. Gently he slides his back door closed. It’s a cold, still night. Cold for California anyway. There’s a low-hanging mist, and dew on the grass that seeps through my sneakers, making my feet cold as I cross the lawn. A few more degrees and it could be frost.
It’s three in the morning as we sneak out of Jason’s house. His father sleeps like a log, and we’ll be back before he even knows we’re gone.
The homes on the street are all dark as we tiptoe off, afraid that the faintest noise could give us away. The night is so still, you can hear the freeway two miles away, like a fast-flowing river. Where are people driving to at three in the morning anyway?
By bike the trip to the railroad tracks takes only ten minutes, but there was no way we were going to risk opening the garage to get our bikes. By foot it’s a half-hour trip.
“Do you think they’ll be there?” asks Jason. “Or do you think they’ll chicken out?”
“They’d better be there,” I tell him. “I didn’t get my butt out of bed the night before the biggest game of the year just to get stood up!” Then I shake my head. “Heather and her crazy ideas.” Only Heather has the guts to suggest a picnic at three in the morning by the railroad tracks.
“Wait a second,” says Jason. “Something must be wrong—weren’t you dating Heather last week?”
I whack him on the top of his head, and it makes a slapping sound that echoes in the still night. He just laughs.
Jason, who must make lists and keep statistics in his sleep, has a list of all the girlfriends I’ve had. He can recite them in order like the presidents of the United States, and he does it just to annoy me.
“I swear,” he says, “you go through girlfriends about as fast as you go through cans of hair mousse.”
He, on the other hand, has been going with Colleen since June.
“What do you think we’ll do once we get there?” asks Jason slyly.
“What do you think?” I ask him back.
“I don’t know,” he says. “The night is full of possibilities!”
“Not for you, maggot mouth,” I say.
Jason shakes his head. “Nope. No maggots today. I brushed my teeth.”
We both laugh, and then we shush each other, realizing that our voices can be heard for blocks.
Actually, we’re not planning to do anything we really shouldn’t, but anything you do secretly at three in the morning has the same excitement as if you really were doing something wrong.
We reach my street and steer clear of it, cutting across the park. As far as Grandma and Grandpa know, I’m staying over at Jason’s tonight. They’d probably have a heart attack or something if they knew I was out. Grandma gets upset when I miss my ten-o’clock curfew. I shudder to think what she’d say if she saw me now!
Grandma doesn’t think I like girls yet. She thinks I go out with them because they like me and it’s what all my friends do.
But I like girls, all right. Sometimes I like ’em too much, and I have to run a few fast laps around the park so I can stop liking them for a while.
The cold November night turns our breath into steam as we walk along. I rub my hands together to keep them warm. We walk quickly and get to the tracks before three-thirty.
We climb over the sound wall, using the footholds that were forged by unknown kids a generation ago.
The single track runs straight in both directions, south, all the way down to San Diego, and north up to San Francisco—maybe even farther. When I was really little, I actually used to believe that this was where the San Andreas fault was and that if we ever had “The Big One,” this is where the quake would hit. The western half of California would break off on the dotted line of the tracks and sink angrily into the Pacific.
I look toward the greenbelt that lines the other side of the tracks, where we planned to meet Heather and Colleen. The strip of no-man’s-land seems otherworldly: glowing tracks lined by the endless row of towering eucalyptus that were planted to break the wind when this was all farmland.
As I jump down from the wall and into the dark ribbon of land, I wonder how many other kids have snuck here in the middle of the night. These tracks run through the town where Mom and Dad met, twenty miles north. I wonder if they ever secretly met by the side of the tracks. Could it be that Dad gave Mom her first kiss in a secret place like this?
The thought drifts idly around my brain, but I shoo it away. I will not get to thinking of Mom or Dad now. This is my time, not theirs. I won’t let sad thoughts ruin it.
“I don’t see them,” says Jason. “Let’s get out of here before we become train meat.”
Far to the left, on the other side of the tracks, a flashlight seems to signal to us.
“Who’s that?” says Heather, in the distance. “Preston, is that you?”
“Police,” I say. “What are you girls doing here?”
A moment of silence, and then Heather says, “Shut up. You scared me.”
“We thought you weren’t coming,” says Colleen. As we get closer, we can see in the dim moonlight that they’ve set up a tablecloth on the wet grass, and on it sits a basket filled with sandwiches and a six-pack of Pepsi.
Some other kids would be drinking beer, getting drunk and making idiots of themselves. But we’re not other kids.
I sit down and put my arm around Heather, while Jason slides next to Colleen. We sit there for a while.
So we’re here. Now what?
“Have a sandwich,” says Heather.
“What kind you got?” I ask.
“Turkey,” she says. “They’re all turkey. We had lots of turkey in our house.”
Even though I have turkey coming out of my ears, I take one and tell her how good it is.
We get to talking. We talk about teachers, and what our parents would do if they knew we were out, and what creeps the kids in math class are. Somewhere along the way Colleen, who’s always bragging about something, brags about how her brother is a local motocross champion.
That’s when Jason screws up royally.
It’s bad enough when people put their foot in their own mouth.
But Jason manages to put his foot in my mouth.
“Preston,” he says, “maybe you’d be good at motocross, too.” Then he turns to the girls. “When his dad gets out next month, he’s gonna buy Preston a dirt bike.”
Heather’s pretty quick. Sometimes too quick.
“Out from where?” she asks.
“Back,” says Jason, covering up. “Back. When he gets back.”
Jason must have thought that I’d told Heather—because he and Colleen tell each other everything, but I’m not like that. Heather’s new in school, and all she knows about me is that I play football, which is all any girl needs to know about me. If I date a girl who doesn’t know about my parents, I’
m not going to tell her. Sure, I can talk about it now, but not to girlfriends. Girlfriends are different.
“Where’s your dad coming back from?” asks Heather again. Colleen doesn’t say anything. She knows about my mom and swore she wouldn’t tell anyone. It seems as if she’s kept her promise, but if we don’t cover up quick, it won’t matter.
“He’s out of the country,” I tell her quickly.
“He goes out of the country a lot,” adds Jason.
“He’s a pilot,” I tell her.
Heather tilts her head and looks at my eyes funny, like Dr. Parker and the district attorney. She shines the flashlight in my face, so I’m blinded.
“I thought you told me he managed a supermarket.”
By now Jason drops out and lets me fly this monstrosity alone.
“He does . . . ,” I say. “I mean he used to.”
“Oh,” says Heather. “It’s funny . . . but somebody told me that your father was in jail.”
My fists clench in the dark by my side, but I quickly make the fists go away.
Even here, in no-man’s-land, at almost four in the morning, my whole life still has to come down to the same thing: what my dad did. Why is that?
“He is,” I tell her. I sigh, and tell her the whole story. What choice do I have now? But I make it quick, and I tell it to her without any feeling at all in my voice, so she won’t get all choked up and pathetic about it. But she does anyway.
“Gosh,” says Heather. “I’m sorry!”
“Don’t be sorry,” I warn her. “It’s not your fault.”
Now that I’ve told her, no one feels like saying much, so instead we kiss for a while. Only now I’m not really in the mood to kiss anyone.
In the distance a train’s headlight appears, just a pinpoint in the darkness. I hear a distant whistle, but the train seems to take forever to get any closer. We kiss a good five minutes before we can hear the churn of the wheels and the clang of the gate as it closes off the nearest avenue.
“Want to dodge it?” suggests Jason. It’s just a joke, but I think I just might do it. I’m feeling angry, and there are no bullies to take care of. I’m the fastest runner in school. I could compete with a stupid Amtrak train.
Sensing that I’m about to stand, Heather digs her well-grown nails into my forearm to keep me from moving. Or maybe it’s just because she’s afraid of the approaching train.
The headlight grows. The whistle sounds, ten times louder than it was the last time. The moving light makes the dark shadows of the eucalyptus trees march along the sound wall like an army. The ground shakes as if there’s an earthquake and we’re all going to be torn off at the dotted line.
But the headlight passes, and the train’s three cars are gone in a fraction of a second.
“Who takes a train at four in the morning anyway?” I mutter.
“Maybe it’s ghosts,” says Heather with a smile, but even as she says it, her smile fades and she shrinks away from me.
“Sorry,” she says.
• • •
The next day, after my football game, Jason and I sit on his porch throwing Christmas lights into the street to watch them explode.
“You know,” he says, “I think Heather really likes you.”
I shrug. “So? I like her, too.”
“No, I mean she really likes you. Colleen told me at the game today that she thinks Heather is in love with you.”
I grab a red bulb and toss it in the air. As it hits the pavement, it explodes like a miniature grenade.
“She’s not in love with me,” I inform Jason. “It’s just that now that she knows, she feels sorry for me.”
Jason hurls a green one at a pigeon pecking gravel in the middle of the road. The bulb explodes just next to the pigeon, and the pigeon takes off in a flurry of feathers, figuring it’s been shot.
“I think she’s even better looking than your other girlfriends,” Jason says. “Colleen says you’re the first boyfriend she’s really had.”
I take a blue bulb and squeeze it in my palm. “I’ve been thinking about breaking up with Heather,” I tell Jason.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I just feel like it.”
Jason gives me a disgusted look. “What’s the matter?” he asks. “Run out of hair mousse again?”
The bulb in my hand shatters, but the tiny pieces of thin glass are too fine to cut my skin. “I don’t need girlfriends feeling sorry for me.” I open up my hands and drop the tiny fragments. They tinkle on the ground. “I don’t like her all that much anyway,” I say, trying to convince myself. “And there are lots of other girls in school I can go out with.”
“I think you’re nuts,” says Jason.
“Maybe so,” I tell him, “but it’s my life.”
I don’t need Heather’s sympathy anyway. I got four touchdowns today.
16
SILENT NIGHT
Saturday, December 20
I’m locked in the closet again, and I’m mad!
This nightmare ended such a long time ago, it has no right to come back again. No right!
“I’m coming, Preston.” I can hear Mom’s voice, but I don’t think it’s really her voice. I can’t remember exactly what her voice sounds like. I touch the doorknob. It’s hot. My hand slips off it. A hot wind blows through the crack underneath the door and rises, tickling the hair on my leg.
I turn. The shirtsleeves around me try to smother me, they try to strangle me. But they’re not sleeves after all.
They’re ropes.
Wrapping around me, cutting into my skin, twisting around my neck like a noose. I reach the back wall, hoping to escape into my secret room, but it’s a different closet. It’s the old closet in our old house. Small and dark.
I kick at the door in anger, but it doesn’t give. It’s nailed shut.
“I’m coming, Preston,” says Mom, farther away now. “I’m coming.” It’s all she ever says in this dream. Maybe it’s a recording. I take a step back, and step on the vacuum cleaner. The ropes turn back into sleeves and fall to the floor as the vacuum comes on. I turn to look at it, startled. It’s moving toward me. But it’s not a vacuum cleaner anymore.
It’s an engine.
A big hot grinding engine with groaning belts and sharp steel gears. The gears pull the shirts and coats into it, eating them with a sinister mechanical burp. The gears seem to smile. As the gears take in the edge of my shirt, I turn and smash my body against the door. The door is burning on the other side. I can hear it. The house is on fire.
But this closet isn’t in the house, is it? I know that. This closet is in another place. It’s in hell.
I sit up in bed, keeping the scream deep inside. No one must hear it. Not Tyler, not Grandma and Grandpa, nobody.
I calmly get up and change out of my sweaty pajamas into a clean pair. I open the door to my closet and step in. There is no vacuum. The shirts are just shirts. I push on the back wall and step into my secret room. Nothing scary in there.
Think of good things, I tell myself. Happy things. That will make me feel better. That will help me get back to sleep.
And so I think of Dad.
Where is he now? It’s one in the morning. He’s probably still in the car.
At 12:01, he stepped out of the prison. Wasn’t a friend picking him up? He was going to take Dad to his parents’ house. They’re probably still on the road.
I step out of my room in my bare feet. The hallway is cold. Tyler’s door is open a crack, and I can hear his steady breathing. No nightmares there. He still has little-boy dreams, even now. Even tonight.
Downstairs I rummage through the refrigerator for food, then sit in the den, eating junky snack cakes that I know will give me zits.
Across from me, next to Grandma’s organ, is the Christmas tree—a six-foot Douglas fir, freshly cut and still green. But its arms are bare. They’ve been bare since we got it three days ago. Dad’s going to help us decorate it this year.
Ah
! Now I remember what Dad’s doing now. He told us. He’s gone to World Famous Tommy’s to get a chili-burger. Sure—World Famous Tommy’s is open all night, and where else do you go when you get out of prison?
I wonder if Dad will sleep tonight. I wonder what he’ll do when he finally gets to his parents’ house.
He’ll probably just take a long hot shower.
He’ll probably sit in a comfortable chair in his father’s bathrobe and watch the sun rise on the first day of his freedom, while I sit here in front of our bare Christmas tree and wait for him.
Is he thinking of me now? Is he thinking about what we’ll do when he arrives? Is he making plans?
When does the camping trip start? When do we go rafting? Is he making plans as we speak?
Or are you thinking of Mom, Dad? Are you calling to her in heaven, endlessly apologizing for what you did, and apologizing that you’ve been set free? Are you praying that the district attorney was wrong, and that she’s happy for you? Are you praying that she forgives you for what you did and for surviving and that she gives you permission to start all over?
You’re free now, Dad. You’ll be home in a little while.
So why am I afraid to go to sleep?
17
CHRISTMAS PORTRAIT
In the living room, above the grand piano, is the big family portrait of Uncle Steve, Aunt Jackie, and, of course, Mom. My eyes always seem drawn to it, but today the feeling is worse. I can’t help staring at it for most of the morning and half the afternoon, as I wait for Dad’s three-o’clock arrival.
In the kitchen, Grandma waits for pies to cook, sitting as erect at the kitchen table as she does at the piano. She looks a little tired, a little concerned, and the fact that there’s nothing in front of her—no newspaper or cup of coffee to give her attention to—makes me uncomfortable. She’s just sitting there.
“It’s a good thing that Dad’s finally coming home,” I say to her, just to see what she says back.
“Yes, it is, Preston,” is her answer, plain and simple. The tone of her voice is unreadable. She smiles at me, but the smile is unreadable, too.
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