Someone Was Watching

by David Patneaude

  “Thanks. I will.” He started for the door, feeling cheered and hungry.

  But his parents drove up to the curb just as he walked outside, and when he got into the car the tension was still there. “The Cloverbud was closed,” he said. “And Helen asked about you. She said to come in and see her next time we’re in town.”

  “That may be a while, Chris,” his dad said.

  Was he supposed to ask why now?

  No—his mom spoke up before he had to. “We’ve decided to sell the summer house, Chris,” she said. Her voice was unsteady and she turned away from him, leaving him staring at the back of her head. Her shoulder-length brown hair danced in the breeze from the window.

  He didn’t say anything at first. He just wondered how the decision had been made. They hadn’t even asked him. “Can’t we wait?” he asked. “Maybe in a year or two we’ll feel better about things. And then it would be too late.”

  “We can look for another house,” his dad said. “We might even find one we like better.”

  “There’s no place I’ll like better,” Chris said.

  Neither of his parents said anything. He guessed that they were done discussing it. He slumped down in the seat, opening the bag of cookies. He was going to enjoy at least one of them before the knot in his stomach got too tight.

  They took a right turn onto the main highway and headed toward the river. Chris rolled down his window. He could smell it now, even from a mile away: that late summer odor of algae blooming in the calm backwaters and shallows, and the faint fishy smell that was only noticeable at first approach to the water.

  Memories of other summers came flooding back to him. He thought about the years before Molly had been born, when it had been just the three of them. They’d had a lot of fun coming to the river. Sometimes he’d come alone with his parents, and sometimes he’d bring Pat or another friend along. It had all seemed so natural. He’d never really regretted not having a little brother or sister because he’d never had one.

  His mom and dad had talked about the possibility of having another kid when he was younger, but he’d pretty much dismissed the idea. Then, four summers ago they’d taken him out for dinner and told him that his mom was pregnant. He was shocked, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen bigger smiles on their faces.

  She was born on Christmas Eve, only the first of many times that she disrupted his formerly peaceful, predictable life. His dad gave out little Christmas stockings full of candy and called her his sweet surprise. His mom simply refused to put her down.

  It wasn’t long before she was winning Chris over, too. He found himself volunteering to hold her and creeping into her room to check on her at night. And once the weather warmed up, walking to the beach with her in the backpack. There, he’d throw rocks or feed the ducks and she’d make noises over his shoulder. Ten-year-old girls thought she was adorable, which was a nice extra incentive. And except for once or twice, his friends didn’t tease him about spending time with his baby sister.

  By her second summer, she was talking. She said “shoot” when she watched him play basketball in the backyard, and “bite” when she begged him for some of whatever he happened to be eating at the time. She called him Kis. She would run to meet him whenever she heard him come home, yelling, “Kis! Kis!” He was never quite sure when she was saying his name and when she wanted a kiss. So he’d pick her up and give her a kiss just to make sure. At the summer house, he took her wading in the river and taught her to help him feed the ducks. At first she wasn’t sure about those greedy little creatures with the hard mouths, but Chris told her he had too many customers to handle all by himself. Before long, her favorite thing was feeding her “custards.”

  In the next two years, she was transformed from a baby to a little girl. Chris had had a hard time believing how fast she was growing up. At the time of the accident, his parents had planned to start her in part-time preschool in the fall. Chris figured she was ready. She was already trying to read books to him. Of course, her “reading” consisted of reciting from memory what was on each page of her favorite picture books. But she was good at it, good enough that she’d catch anyone who tried to skip over anything when they were reading to her.

  If she were sitting in the back seat of the car with me now, I’d be glad to read her as many books as she wanted, Chris thought. And I wouldn’t skip a word.

  They turned left at the River Road stop sign, drove a quarter of a mile north, and turned left again into their driveway. Across the road the big river moved as slowly as the midday sun, so slowly it couldn’t be distinguished from a giant puddle. Its surface was pool-table smooth, dimpled only occasionally by a rising fish, a duck, or something else: a turtle’s head?

  Chris looked at the house. It was different somehow. He’d expected the grass to be long, and it was. And the flowerbeds needed weeding. But the house itself had changed. He’d always thought its front, with its big picture windows on either side of the red door, looked like a smiling, surprised face. Now it stared out blankly, as if wondering what was going on. Maybe it was because the blinds were closed. But it made Chris uneasy. What if the house knew that it was going to be sold to someone else after all these years?

  They went inside, into the lifeless, musty air. Dust clung to everything. His mom opened the windows and sat down on the couch with her face in her hands. His dad walked over to her, stood there for a moment, and went into the kitchen. Chris heard the faucet running and the back door close. He walked into his bedroom and flopped onto the bed. Dust particles mushroomed up into the air and danced in the sunlight above him. He stared through them at the small, familiar stain on the ceiling. It had always reminded him of an ice cream cone, half-melted and broken.

  He heard the lawnmower putt to a start and decided to go help. He walked out through the living room. His mom stood at the window, staring at the river. She was thinner than he’d ever seen her, and he noticed for the first time today that she wasn’t wearing makeup. She looked sad and lost and vulnerable.

  “I’m going to help Dad,” he said.

  “Okay, honey,” she said, smiling at him. “I’ll be out to give you guys a hand in a little while. I just need to do a few things in here first.” Her brown eyes glistened. Her smile faded to a quivering crease on her face.

  Chris stepped outside. Through the window he watched his mom walk to the fireplace and begin taking down pictures from the mantel—pictures of a family at their summer place.

  He grabbed a shovel and attacked the flower bed next to the door, ripping out bulky clumps of weeds and warm dirt. Sweat beaded on his forehead and trickled into his eyes, mixing with tears and continuing down his cheeks.

  For the next two hours Chris lost himself in his work. When he finally stopped and looked around, the yard had changed. Between the three of them, they’d gotten it close to the way he remembered it. The lawn was trimmed and the flowers stood tall and free of weeds. Fresh-cut grass filled his nose with a familiar smell and his mind with memories.

  Chris watched his dad remove a board and a small toolbox from the trunk of the car. He walked over to the white picket fence that bordered the front of the yard and nailed it to a post facing the street. Chris couldn’t read it, but he knew what it said. He recognized a FOR SALE sign, even from the back. Without looking at Chris or his mom, his dad returned to the car, put the toolbox in the trunk, and started for the house. “I’m going for a run,” he mumbled as he hurried up the steps.

  Five minutes later he was back outside in his running clothes. He glanced at his watch and headed down the driveway toward the street, breaking into a fast jog.

  “Can we go to the park when you get back?” Chris’s mom called after him.

  “Sure, Lynn,” he said. “Give me an hour.” He took a left and headed down the road.

  Chris watched him until he disappeared around the bend. He’d been a runner as long as Chris could remember, but now he seemed to run differently. Head down. Mechanical. Finding no pl
easure but willing to take on the pain.

  A long time ago he’d told Chris that running gave him a chance to think about things and develop ideas. Chris wondered what he was thinking about now, what kinds of ideas he was developing.

  3

  They arrived at the park an hour and a half later. It was a nice walk from the house, just a half mile down the road. The day was still warm and sunny, but it was approaching dinnertime and a lot of people had already left or were getting ready to leave. They would have plenty of space to themselves. But Chris wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

  They walked past their usual spot, the place where they’d been on the day of the drowning, and found a secluded grassy area half-circled by leafy trees. Splotches of shade offered some shelter from the warm sun.

  “This is a nice little location,” his dad said, shaking out the big plaid blanket and smoothing it out on the ground.

  Always the salesman, Chris thought. “I liked the old one better,” he said. His mom looked at him. She seemed ready to say something, but instead cleared her throat and stared out at the river.

  “This will do fine,” his dad said and sat down on a corner of the blanket as if to say that he wasn’t about to move. Chris and his mom each chose another corner. His dad shoved the picnic basket to the middle.

  His mom cleared her throat again. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen the river this green,” she said.

  His dad looked up, studying the water. “Eighty-four,” he said. “It was greener in eighty-four. That was a real hot summer.”

  Chris thought back on the summers he’d spent here. As far as he could remember, they’d all been warm. The river had always turned green.

  For several minutes no one spoke. Was this going to be the extent of the conversation, then? Picnic spots and green water? The knot in Chris’s stomach wasn’t going away. And this pointless small talk was just making it worse. He took a deep breath, sucking in the moist air, and swallowed hard. “So, are we going to talk about it?” he asked, staring at the blanket.

  “What’s that, Chris?” his mom asked. He watched her eyes squeeze shut as if she were trying to keep something out.

  “You know. Molly and the accident and our feelings about it and how we feel about each other and what we’re going to do about everything. The reason Dr. Wilde told us to come here.”

  “We will,” his dad said. “We will.”

  “Now,” Chris said. “We need to do it now.” He watched his mom’s shoulders sag. “We didn’t come here to put stupid FOR SALE signs on our house or talk about how green the stupid river was in 1984.”

  His dad looked over at his mom and then at Chris. “You start, Chris,” he said finally. “Tell us what’s on your mind, everything you can think of. By then your mom or I will be ready to talk. Okay?”

  Chris nodded. He hadn’t planned on going first, and he didn’t want to make a speech. But he wanted badly to have their lives back to normal or at least better than they were now, and he was willing to try anything.

  He wasn’t sure how to express himself or how his parents would react. Then he found some words.

  “I told everybody this when we were at Dr. Wilde’s,” he said, just above a whisper, “but it keeps going around in my head: I don’t understand why it happened. That’s still the hardest thing. And not being able to do anything about it. Why did it have to be Molly? Why our family? It doesn’t make sense. We’re good people. Why didn’t it happen to some bad people? I can’t stand thinking about her at the bottom of the river, what she must’ve felt when she fell in. Can you imagine it?” The expressions on his parents’ faces told him that they could. That they had.

  “Trying to breathe and not being able to,” he continued. “How scared she must’ve been. The pain. The cold. The darkness.”

  “I know your feelings, Chris,” his mom said. Her voice cracked and tore at him. He looked at her tear-filled eyes. He could feel his dad’s gaze.

  “Every day,” his dad said. “Every hour. Every minute I’m awake. I see her face and wonder what might have been.” He stared down at the blanket and then out toward the river. Shadows on the ground were lengthening.

  Chris held his breath. He didn’t want the smell of the river—the smell of decay—in his nose. Not right now. He swallowed again. “One thing I haven’t said before—maybe it’s the reason things aren’t getting any easier—is that I blame myself a lot of the time. Why did I have to walk away and leave her there just so I could take stupid pictures? I thought about taking her with me. Why didn’t I? She’d still be alive now.” He paused and took a quick breath, trying to ignore the smell. His mom and dad were both shaking their heads.

  “And I’m sorry, but I blame you guys, too. I mean, why did you have to fall asleep, Dad? You were supposed to be watching her.” His dad’s face suddenly looked old. “And why were you sleeping, Mom? You know he can’t stay awake after he eats a big lunch.” She stared straight into Chris’s eyes as if welcoming whatever it was he wanted to say. She nodded, encouraging him to go on. “And why wasn’t she wearing her life jacket? What good did it do her sitting back in the car?” He paused again and sat there, looking back and forth at his parents. “It’s hard to go on like this, just kind of ignoring what happened, or at least what we feel about it. I think so, anyway.”

  He felt tired, as if he’d pedaled his bike up a long hill on a muggy August afternoon. Only now there was another hill to worry about: how were his mom and dad going to react?

  But they didn’t get angry. They didn’t try to defend themselves or launch an attack on Chris’s feelings or what he’d said. They sat on the blanket and looked at him for a long time, and then at each other.

  His mom finally began talking. She covered some familiar things—things she’d mentioned during their counseling sessions—but then she talked about the day of the accident, how she had blamed Chris’s dad for what had happened but knew all along that it wasn’t his fault. She talked about her own feelings of guilt, how she wished she could go back and do things differently, how much she loved Molly, and how she longed for their lives to get back to normal.

  She took Chris’s hand and told him never to blame himself and thanked him for talking to them about his feelings. Her face was damp with tears when she stopped and looked over at Chris’s dad.

  His dad stared out at the river. He didn’t say anything. Chris watched him swallow hard and run his hand nervously through his dark hair. For a long moment, Chris thought that maybe he wouldn’t talk. Maybe he’d just sit there and wait for someone else to start talking again. Maybe he was just waiting for it to get dark so they could go home and forget this discussion ever happened.

  But then he began. His voice was soft and shaky at first, like Chris’s used to be when he had to talk in front of the class. But then it smoothed out, got stronger. Maybe he sensed that Chris and his mom were really willing to listen, that all the anger wasn’t directed at him. He said something he’d never admitted before: that he blamed himself for the whole thing. All he had had to do was stay awake, he said, just stand up when he started feeling tired. It never would have happened. And that he was pretty much in charge of Molly’s life jacket. He’d left it in the car. He didn’t think she’d really need it with her whole family there. He knew he’d never take his eyes off her. But he did, and now she was gone. And he hadn’t been able to deal with the fact that she wasn’t coming back. And that it was his fault, and that he’d wrecked their lives and their family relationship, and he didn’t know what to do about it, but he wanted to do something to make things better again.

  He held out his hands to Chris and Chris’s mom. They took them and slid from their corners of the blanket to his. And they hugged, and breathed words of comfort, their voices mixing together and floating away on an early evening breeze. Tears ran freely down their cheeks and onto each other’s cheeks and shoulders. While the sun set and the air cooled and the park emptied of people, they sat on their blanket, holding each
other, vowing to face their trouble together, beat it, and get on with their lives.

  Finally, Chris stood up and walked toward the river. His legs felt like dry spaghetti, weak and stiff. But inside he felt good, better than he could remember feeling in a long time.

  He waded into the river and stood knee deep. Sand filled the spaces between his toes. The warm water left little green blooms of algae on his skin as he gazed across its surface. He hadn’t touched the river since the day Molly had died. It didn’t seem as threatening now, not as cold or dark or deep as it had then. And he didn’t hate it as much anymore. He didn’t wish it would dry up or turn into a big ribbon of cement winding through the state. But he still couldn’t help wishing that he had that day to live over again.

  He looked back toward shore, into the orange glare of the setting sun. Through squinted eyes, he saw his mom and dad waving to him. He waved back and they stood up together. The sun’s rays filtered through the trees and lit their hair afire, turning their faces into dark shadows beneath the light. His heart skipped, and a cold tingle ran down the back of his neck. But then they stepped toward him, and he saw their smiles. He hurried from the water.

  They walked back home single file on the road’s narrow shoulder. A comfortable weariness had come down on them like a heavy, warm blanket. They didn’t say much, but Chris felt that they were together again.

  “I’ve got something I need to do,” his dad said when they reached their driveway.

  Chris and his mom watched as he retrieved the hammer from the trunk of the car and pried the FOR SALE sign from the post. He bowed deeply to their applause and sailed the sign into the trunk with a flourish. “Maybe we’ll need that for something else some day,” he said. Chris slammed the trunk lid shut, and they walked into the house.

  On his way to bed later, Chris glanced at the mantel. The photographs were back.