Only Child: A novel Page 5

  When I was sitting next to Daddy on the barstool, eating my Honey Bunches, I thought about the fighting yesterday. How Mommy yelled at Andy, and how the fighting got worse because of Daddy, after he came downstairs from changing his clothes. And I thought about how we didn’t know then that it was going to be the last normal day, or maybe we would have tried not to have all the same fighting that we always have.

  I looked over to Daddy and wondered if he was thinking about the fighting, too. He was putting cereal in his mouth, one spoonful after the next, and he didn’t even chew, only swallowed. He looked like a robot, one that was moving too slow because it was running out of batteries.

  “Daddy?”

  “Hm?” Daddy turned his slow robot head and looked at me.

  “Daddy, where’s Andy?”

  Daddy looked at me funny and said, “Zach, Andy is dead. Remember?”

  “No, I know he’s dead, but where is he right now?”

  “Oh, I’m not sure, bud. I wasn’t allowed to…go see him.” Daddy’s voice got different when he said the last words. He looked down fast and stared at his Honey Bunches floating in the milk, and he didn’t blink for a long time.

  “Is he still at the school?” I asked, and I thought about the people lying in the hallway with blood around them, and that one of them was Andy. Was he dead then already, when I walked down the hallway to the back door? And when I was hiding in the closet with Miss Russell and my class, was he already dead?

  I thought about how it must have hurt badly to get killed with bullets from a gun, and Andy was probably really scared when he saw that the gunman was about to shoot him.

  “Where did the gunman shoot him?” I meant where on his body, but Daddy said, “In the auditorium, I think. His class was in the auditorium when…it happened.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “Today the fourth and fifth graders got to see the snakes!”

  “Huh? What snakes?”

  I remembered that I never got to tell Daddy about the emerald tree boa yesterday. Last night I waited in the hallway for Daddy to come down from changing his clothes because I wanted to tell him that I touched a real live snake at school. I really did. It was long and bright green with white marks on it, called an emerald tree boa, and all the kids were scared of it except me.

  We had an assembly and this guy came in with different kinds of snakes and birds and a ferret, and he told us snake facts. It was so cool. I love snakes. I wish I could have one in a terrarium like my friend Spencer. But Mommy hates them and she thinks they’re dangerous. I told her not all of them are, and she said, “Well, you don’t know that though until they bite you, do you? And then it could be too late.”

  So when the guy asked if someone wanted to touch the boa, I raised my hand fast, and he picked me to come to the front and pet it. It was wrapped around his arm, like it would be around a tree branch waiting for its prey, he told me. The boa’s skin was dry and had hard scales, and it wasn’t slimy like I thought. The guy told us lots of facts about the emerald tree boa: emerald is a green color, the color of the snake. The snake doesn’t have any venom, but it wraps its body around its prey and squeezes it so tight that the prey can’t breathe and dies.

  But when Daddy came down and I tried to tell him, he heard Mommy and Andy’s fighting and said, “Hold on, bud, let me handle that first. Tell me later,” and he went in the kitchen, and of course right away the fighting got worse. That’s how it always is—it always starts because of Andy acting bad, and he and Mommy have a fight. When Daddy is home and gets involved, he and Mommy get into a fight, too. “Jim, I was dealing with this,” Mommy tells Daddy, and then everyone is mad at everyone, except me, because I’m not part of the fighting.

  I followed Daddy in the kitchen and started getting napkins out and forks and knives—that’s my job before dinner. Andy’s job is to get plates and make our milk cups, but he wasn’t doing that again tonight because he was still not done with his homework. I did it instead. Daddy sat down at the table and said he worked like a crazy person all day and could he never come home and have dinner in peace? And by the way, the back door was open so the neighbors could probably hear all the yelling. Mommy sat down, too, and she gave me a fake-like smile and said, “Thank you for setting the table, Zach. You’re such a good helper.”

  “Yeah, Zach, little suck-up,” Andy said.

  Daddy slammed his hands on the table so that everything moved and the milk spilled out of the cups. It made me jump because it was so loud, and then Daddy yelled at Andy, and the neighbors were definitely going to hear that.

  That was the last normal dinner on the last normal day, and now it was only one day later and I was eating cereal for dinner with just Daddy, and not Mommy and Andy. That was going to be the last fight because now Andy was gone, and so there wouldn’t be any more fighting without him here.

  I wondered if the snake guy got killed from the gunman, too, and what happened to the snakes. Maybe they were on the loose in the school now?

  [ 9 ]

  Yellow Eyeballs

  DADDY’S PHONE STARTED ringing again and this time he pulled it out of his pocket and looked at it. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “I have to go make some phone calls. I have to call Grandma back and Aunt Mary and…some other people. It’s really late. Let’s go upstairs and get ready for bed, OK?”

  The clock on the microwave said 10:30, and that is very late. I only stayed up that late one time before, on July Fourth. We went to see the big fireworks at the beach club and that was the first time we went to the club for a big party because we only got into the club this year. I love going to the club because we’re allowed to go wherever we want, on the beach and by the tennis courts and cabanas, because it’s safe for us everywhere. We went there a lot of days in the summer. Mommy and Daddy sit with their friends on the terrace and drink wine, and Mommy doesn’t care that it’s getting dark and I’m still up. A lot of Daddy’s work friends are at the club, and it’s important that Daddy spends time with them, and he wants me and Andy to play with their kids, so we don’t have to leave early for bedtime.

  The fireworks on July Fourth weren’t starting until it was dark, and in the summer it doesn’t get dark until late. We stayed to watch all the fireworks, which was really cool because on the other side of the bay they had lots of different kinds, and we could see them all from the beach.

  When they were over it was time to go. The rule was to come back to the terrace after the fireworks, but Andy didn’t come, so everyone had to start looking for him. Finally, Daddy found him on the fishing dock, and Andy wasn’t supposed to be there without a grown-up because that’s the only not-safe place to be in the whole beach club. There was a big fight in the car on the way home, and Daddy said how could Andy embarrass him in front of his work friends like that? I didn’t go to bed until 10:30, like today.

  We went upstairs, and to get to my room we had to walk past Andy’s room. Daddy walked by really fast, like he didn’t want to look inside. “Can you please put your PJs on and get ready for bed?” Daddy said, and kept walking into his and Mommy’s room. Then I could hear him talk on his phone, but I couldn’t tell who he was talking to because he talked very quiet and closed the door behind him.

  I went in my room and everything looked exactly like this morning. But it didn’t feel the same. Everything felt different without Mommy and Andy here, and also it felt like a very long time ago since I was in my room.

  I looked at my bed, all made nice, and I thought about how Mommy made it after we left for school this morning—she does that every day. I don’t know why, because you get right back in it at night, but Mommy says that’s the old type A account director in her. Today started out like a normal day, and so after we left for school on the bus, Mommy made the beds like always. Maybe it was right when the gunman was coming in the school, but Mommy was at home making the beds and didn’t even know that
that was happening.

  I thought about how me and Andy waited in Mrs. Gray’s driveway for the school bus this morning. It wasn’t raining then yet, the rain started when we were at school, it was cold though, but Andy still had shorts on. Andy always wants to wear shorts. In the morning he and Mommy have fights about it because Mommy says it has to be at least 60 degrees outside, or it’s a no to shorts, but Andy still puts shorts on even when it’s not 60 degrees, like today—it was 57 degrees when we left the house, I checked on the iPad. I know he had shorts on, but now I couldn’t remember what color they were. I just remembered he had on a blue Giants jersey, and it really bothered me that I couldn’t remember what color the shorts were.

  Mrs. Gray’s driveway is really skinny and has rocks on the sides, so we sometimes play this game called “Don’t get eaten” where we try to jump all the way from the rocks on the one side to the rocks on the other side. We pretend that the driveway in between is water with sharks in it, so we can’t touch it or we get eaten from the sharks. I asked Andy if he wanted to play “Don’t get eaten” today, but he said no, he wasn’t playing that baby game anymore. Andy calls everything I want to play baby games now. He just stood there and didn’t say anything else and kicked the driveway rocks with his shoe over and over again. “Don’t get eaten” was going to be the last thing I talked to Andy about, only then I didn’t know that.

  Today started out like a normal day, but now it was all changed. And Andy wasn’t going to get in his bed anymore, so it would stay made nice.

  I have sheets with racecars on them and they match my bed, which is a red racecar with wheels. Mine and Andy’s beds are different because Andy has a bunk bed. He only sleeps on the top bunk because that is far enough away from us people, he said. But the rest of our rooms are almost the same, except that we have different toys. We both have a window from where we can see the street and our driveway, and we both have a desk under the window, and on the other wall we have two white bookshelves and a reading chair. There’s a bathroom in between our rooms. That’s not good, because when Andy goes to the bathroom, he always locks the doors on the inside and then he doesn’t unlock them after. I always have to walk around into his room to get to the bathroom, and he yells at me to get out of his room and throws pillows at me from the top bunk.

  The really big difference between me and Andy about our rooms is that I really like my room, but Andy doesn’t like his. He doesn’t go in it very much, except for sleeping and when he needs to take a time-away. Andy needs to take time-aways a lot when he gets his bad temper, and then he’s supposed to go in his room to calm down. It’s not a punishment, it’s so he can learn to handle his big feelings. That’s what the doctor said, his name is Dr. Byrne, and Andy has to go talk to him every week even though he doesn’t want to. He has to because of his ODD—that’s the thing Andy has that makes him have the bad temper.

  When Andy gets his bad temper, it’s scary. I got pretty good at telling when he’s about to get it, and then I try to get away from him. I don’t even want to look at him then because of how it makes his face look. His whole face gets red and his eyes get big and he starts to yell really loud. It’s hard to understand what he’s even saying because it sounds like one long word with no breaks in between, and a lot of spit comes on his lips and chin.

  Sometimes when Andy has to go to his room for a time-away, Mommy has to stand in front of his door because Andy tries to come out and he pulls the door from the inside and he does his loud yelling. Mommy has to pull the door from the outside to keep it closed, and it takes Andy a long time to calm down and stop pulling and yelling. Or Andy tricks Mommy and runs out through the bathroom and in my room. One time he did that, and I saw Mommy go in Andy’s room. She sat down on his reading chair that’s way too small for her and she put her head on her knees, and it looked like she was crying. I got mad at Andy because he made Mommy sad like that.

  I’m in my room all the time because it’s quiet, and sometimes I want my own peace. I come back out when the fighting is over, so it’s like I skipped it. I like to play with my cars and firehouse and trucks. I have a ton of trucks, all different kinds of construction trucks, fire trucks, tow trucks….Every night before I go to bed I line them up straight in front of the bookshelves and say good night to all of them. This morning I played with my trucks for a little bit before the bus, so now they were not in a straight line and that bothered me. I stared at them, all mixed up, and I thought about how they needed to be fixed, but I didn’t do it.

  I went over to my window instead and looked outside. It was very dark, and the streetlamp in front of our house was making a round light ball in the dark air. Inside the light ball I could see raindrops falling. All the houses on our road have a streetlamp in front of them, on the grass in between the road and the sidewalk, and they were making a long row of round light balls with raindrops falling inside. They kind of looked like yellow eyeballs with lots of tears in them, and I got a feeling like they were staring at me. Creepy.

  I sat down on my bed. My whole self felt tired, and my feet were still very cold. I tried to take my socks off and they were still wet a little, so pulling them off was too hard. I started to miss Mommy a lot, and I wished she was home so she could help me take my socks off and get ready for bed. I felt like I was going to cry, but I tried not to because Daddy said we had to be strong now for Mommy.

  I squeezed my nose hard and I picked up Clancy—that’s my stuffed giraffe I got from the Bronx Zoo when I was two. He’s my favorite stuffed animal, and I always need him for bedtime. I can’t go to sleep if I don’t have him.

  After a while Daddy came in my room. “Let’s get you to bed, bud. We have to try and get some sleep. It’s the best thing we can do right now. The next few days are going to be really tough and we need our strength, OK?” Daddy pulled the racecar sheets up. I got in my bed with my clothes on instead of my PJs, and that’s gross because earlier I peed in my underwear, but it was dried now. And I didn’t even brush my teeth.

  “Daddy?” I asked. “Can you tell me a story?”

  Daddy rubbed his hands over his whole face and it made a scratching sound on his chin. He looked very tired. “Probably not tonight, bud,” he said. “I…I don’t think I can…think of stories, not tonight.”

  “Then I can you tell one tonight instead. It’s going to be about the emerald tree boa I saw yesterday,” I told Daddy.

  “It’s very late. So not tonight,” Daddy said, and he leaned over to give me a hug. I thought about how that was the only part of today that was the same as yesterday—that I didn’t get to tell Daddy about the snakes.

  “I’ll be down the hall, OK?” Daddy said, but then he didn’t get up to go, he stayed with his arms around me tight for a long time. I felt like I wanted to sing mine and Mommy’s good-night song for Daddy.

  I started to sing in a very quiet voice, and it was hard to do because Daddy’s one arm was on top of my chest and it was heavy. I could feel his breath going in and out fast right next to my ear and it tickled, but I didn’t move. I sang the whole song all the way through to the end: “And I’ll love you always. Yes, I do. Yes, I do.”

  [ 10 ]

  Handshakes

  THE NEXT MORNING I woke up and I was in Mommy and Daddy’s bed, and I didn’t know why I was in here. It was quiet and I could hear rain outside plopping against the window—plop, plop, plop—and then the plops started to sound like POPs, and it made me remember the gunman, and then everything from yesterday and from last night came back in my head. And then it made sense, because I never get to sleep in Mommy and Daddy’s bed, only last night, because I got so scared.

  Daddy left my room last night after I got done singing. He turned off the lights in the hallway, and Mommy always keeps the lights on because it can’t be too dark in my room. It got too dark in my room. I tried to squeeze my eyes shut tight, but then it was even more dark. Right away pictures of
people with blood came in my head and my heart started beating at super speed and my breathing went in and out fast.

  I heard a sound in my room somewhere or in the bathroom like somebody was coming, and I started screaming very loud. I screamed and I got up and ran in the hallway, but I couldn’t see anything and I didn’t know where Daddy was and I could feel a person coming closer behind me, he was going to get me, and I tripped and fell down. I couldn’t get up and I screamed and screamed.

  Then the door to Mommy and Daddy’s room opened and Daddy came running out. He turned on the hallway lights, and it was too bright in my eyes.

  “Zach, Zach, ZACH!” Daddy picked me up under my armpits and yelled my name in my face over and over again. He shook me and I stopped screaming and he stopped yelling. It got quiet except for a loud whoosh, whoosh sound in my head. I looked behind me, but no one was there. I looked in my room and it looked like a dark black cave and I wasn’t going to sleep in there ever again by myself, and so Daddy let me sleep with him in his bed for once.

  Now Daddy wasn’t in the bed with me anymore, so I got up to look for him. I walked down the hallway and past Andy’s room, and my hands felt sweaty and my legs walked very slow. I pushed Andy’s door open and walked in his room with very small steps. I didn’t want to look up to his top bunk at first. I thought that maybe I had a bad dream and Andy would be there, in his bed. But if the top bunk was empty, then it really happened, that Andy died, because Andy never gets up first, never before me. It’s really hard for him to wake up in the mornings. Mommy says it’s because of the medicine he has to take for the bad temper.