Mother Dearest

by Michael Wright

scuffed—well used, he could tell. The faded brown color of it told him that it was an old box, as old as he was at least. The scattered gray rub marks showed where it had been hidden and moved so many times. The sides were dusty, but surprisingly, the top was not. He found that strange.

  Gently, slowly, he pulled back the top of the lid, and the familiar, dusty rubbing sound that cardboard makes filled the room.

  He looked over his shoulder.

  Nothing.

  The box flap came loose with a final pop that made him jump for no reason other than he was terrified of being caught. Mother had to be asleep by that time, there was no way that she could have heard that in her sleep, especially with the Nyquil she was taking for her sickness. He was in the clear.

  He had to be.

  The smell from the box was the familiar dusty, sweet smell of old paper, decaying as it aged, sitting in a rotting cardboard box underneath a mountain load of papers.

  As soon as he opened the box he knew exactly what he was staring at, and it for a moment took him aback.

  On the top was a newspaper article that he had not seen before, that had a picture of his father in it. The headline was the part that had grabbed his attention, however: “Suspected Murder of Virginia Man”. The article’s caption told him that Mother was the prime suspect in his supposed murder that was meant to look like an accident.

  Tom wracked his mind, but came up with nothing. He didn’t remember any of it.

  There was a pile of articles just like it, some from the photo album that he had seen before, and others that he had not seen. There was one article about the death of a local woman, how it had ended up in the box he had no idea, but he quickly found out from the caption that she was a prostitute downtown somewhere. Her death was mysterious as well, but there were no leads, and probably nobody cared.

  He didn’t find any more articles about the woman.

  Tom paused and looked at the box, realizing how deep it was, and wondered what must be inside it. He began to take out large piles of it all, the ones that he had seen in the photo album came out first, and a few papers that were there that he supposed were for separation that he would have to check when he reloaded the box.

  As he unloaded it he saw more and more of the papers stacking up underneath, with various articles of murders that dated as far back as when Mother was a child.

  Why did she keep all of this?

  He moved the papers that had been in the photo album to the desk in one large pile, and one of the separation papers fell out of the stack and hit the floor.

  The smell of the papers filled the room, his nostrils were loaded with the fragrance and if it wasn’t for his focus on his task, he might have felt sick.

  He looked down into the box and saw several photos stacked in there of little kids, one of them obviously Mother, standing in front of a tree. There were four of them in one picture.

  He saw the paper that had fallen out of the stack, and reached for it while he was looking at the pictures in the box, piled helter-skelter within, a chaotic pile of memories.

  The other picture had three people in it. In the first picture it was winter, in the next it was probably summer.

  He felt the paper brush his fingertips and tried to find the edge to get a good hold on it.

  The next picture was in fall, a pile of leaves stacked behind them and the telltale grin of a Jack-o-Lantern peeking out in the corner of the picture. There were only two in that picture.

  Tom turned his attention away from the photos to get a good grip on the paper and saw that it was no blank, but had a bunch of writing on it. It was a computer printout.

  He looked down at it a moment before he paused.

  What in the world?

  Breath was sucked out of him.

  He recognized the print out; it was an article that he knew all too well. The words on the top were a more generalized font, probably from the printout, but it was obviously the same one that he knew by heart.

  It was an article he had written only a few months before. Attached to it was a small picture, the paperclip was hardly noticeable before in the huge pile. He looked down at it unsure if what he was seeing was real or not.

  What are you doing, Mother?

  The article was his, and the picture had been his at one time. He didn’t recall missing it, but he knew that he hadn’t left it somewhere in easy access, it was somewhere it had to be looked for. Mother had gone looking for the picture.

  What the devil is wrong with you?

  It was Trisha.

  THE CEILING fan brushed the air, scooping it from one side of the room to the other in endless repetition. The faint “swoosh” of the fan blades was all that Tom could hear as he stood in his room, looking down at the box that he had removed from the study.

  He had carried the box back with him and sorted through each article, reading the entire entry of some and only skimming over the rest. What he found was an unconnected mass of collected murders, thrown together without reason and locked away where they were never intended to be found—not by Tom or anyone else.

  But he had found them. He had read most of them, and he didn’t think there was a connection between them, and how they related Mother—save for the ones that were about his father and her with her friends—was a mystery to him. But still, for some reason, the cool trickle of ice slithered up his spine.

  In front of him were piles of the articles, arranged by how he had read them and what he thought was important. One side whispered of the deaths of several children, mostly young girls, sometimes and a young boy. The one to that pile’s left spoke wistfully of the deaths of more children, this time younger children, ones who were almost without parents because they were working all the time. They were constantly left with a babysitter, and one day they turned up dead, the neighbor was suspected. The next three piles were just an unrelated articles about disappearances and deaths, some suicides, others not. The final two, one pile only containing one article, the one about the murdered prostitute, and the last one containing the information about his father’s death on the bottom, and on the upper half of the pile was all about Trisha.

  The slithering chill expanded, as if it were slowly swallowing his spine.

  There was a lot of information there about Trisha’s disappearance, and he had no idea why all of it was in the box, locked away in a drawer where it wasn’t supposed to be found.

  The computer printouts were lined up neatly, and the small article that had been released was piled on top. With that, was a single picture, a portrait that had been deliberately taken, it was one of the best photos he’d had of Trisha. How Mother had gotten it was he wasn’t sure, and even more disturbing, was the question of why she had taken it.

  He looked down at the picture. The picture was Trisha in her best clothes, she had bright pearly smile in it, her almond eyes sparkling with that internal joy and her perfect brown-leather hair fixed in a way that was both elegant and simple. It was really the best picture that he had seen of her—and Mother had taken it. She had stolen it from him.

  It didn’t make him mad.

  It didn’t make him depressed.

  It offended him. Deep down, there was a deep offense, at seeing the picture piled among the stories of murder and disappearance. There were piles of articles of children who had probably been killed by a pedophilic maniac, there was a prostitute that nobody cared about who had probably been killed by one of her own customers and there was his father, victim to a tragic, violent auto accident—and Trisha, in that beautiful picture, had been thrown in the middle of it. Her smiling face had been rubbed in the same pile as that of a prostitute, and a maniac’s publicized evil deeds. That offended him.

  Trisha wasn’t like them; she shouldn’t be packed in with them like that.

  They were dead. She wasn’t.

  They were unknown to him. She wasn’t.

  They were all part of Mother’s strange obsession. Tris
ha was not.

  Trisha was his. Mother didn’t like Trisha much at all; Tom loved her with all that he was. She didn’t belong there. She didn’t belong in Mother’s box. She didn’t belong to Mother, not one bit of her.

  He looked at the photo, and the rest of the articles that were lying on the floor. He thought that he should leave. If Mother were going to hide that much from him, then perhaps it would be better if he moved out while he tried to find out who Mother really was, instead of the illusion that he had grown up knowing. Perhaps he should just leave—

  You’re just like your father!

  —and never come back.

  Tom bent down and picked up the picture and put it into his pocket, reclaiming it from the pile.

  The clock ticked in the corner, it told him it was past four in the morning but he didn’t care—not in the least.

  He thought about it once again, just packing up and leaving. He would take his picture of Trisha with him.

  But he knew he couldn’t. It wouldn’t be right. He had to look for Trisha, he had to help her, and Mother was sick. She may have offended him and betrayed his trust, but she was still his Mother and she still needed looking after.

  But the temptation was still there.

  I could just pack up and go, forget everything else; nothing else matters, just getting out of here and away from Mother.

  He would not give in. He would stay.

  He would stay to find Trisha.

  THE BOX was in his arms. The weight of the articles pushed against his chest as he held