by Joe Hart
~
They ate on the porch, Shaun downing his roast-beef sandwich in wild bites while Evan nudged his around and picked at the few potato chips on his plate.
After lunch they ventured down to the dock, Evan carrying a frying pan, an ice-cream-pail lid, some bubble solution, and a small bottle of dish soap. He set Shaun in his chair beside the beach and began to work, talking to him as he did so.
“You have to be careful not to cut yourself, but you also have to make sure these edges are smooth,” Evan said, carving the center out of the ice-cream lid with his pocketknife.
After a few minutes, the lid was only a thin ring, the flat center lying discarded on the dock. “Now, this next part is the real art.” Evan poured the entire container of bubble mixture into the frying pan. “You can’t put too much or too little dish soap in with it, it’s got to be just enough.” He squirted the blue soap into the pan, swishing his fingers through it to mix it in. “Then we check it,” he said, standing.
Evan set the plastic ring into the pan, submerging it in the substance. After a second he withdrew it, letting some of the liquid drain off. A transparent skin hung in the center of the ring, reflecting the afternoon light in swirling, oil-slick colors.
“Now we see if we did it right.”
He checked the breeze, then gently pulled the ring through the air with both hands. A huge iridescent bubble expanded from the hollow cover. It grew and grew until it became the size of a large beach ball. With a deft downward motion, Evan cut the bubble off and set it free. It drifted in a lazy motion toward the lake, its sides wobbling so much that he thought it might burst, but it didn’t. It kept moving out over the water, dipping and then rising like a confused bird.
Shaun’s face was a portrait of wonderment. His mouth was open an inch, his eyes wider than when Evan had awoken him earlier with his cry. A low breeze ruffled his light hair, and he pointed toward the lake.
Evan had completely forgotten about the bubble, his gaze fixated on the beautiful expression on Shaun’s face. When he turned his head, he saw the bubble floated only inches above the water’s surface. A particularly high wave rolled toward the island and grazed the bubble’s lower half, instantly bursting it.
That was our life before the accident. Then something came along and tore it apart for no reason.
Shaun’s mouth opened wider, and for a second Evan feared he might cry, but then his eyes shifted to Evan’s.
“More!”
Shaun placed his fingertips together in the accompanying sign, the one Elle had taught him, the only one he knew by heart, and then Evan bit his lip to ward off tears.
“More?”
“More!”
“Okay, here we go.”
They blew bubbles for hours. When the solution in the pan ran low, he refilled it, to Shaun’s happy sounds. The wind changed and began to come from the east, which helped the bubbles travel farther before disappearing. Evan lost himself in the moment, his hands slippery to the wrists. He couldn’t make the bubbles fast enough; Shaun’s laughter was the ultimate payoff whenever he achieved a truly giant orb. Evan wished the afternoon could last forever—the wind speaking in the pines, Shaun laughing, a smile almost constant on his own face. He wished ... and stopped himself, unwilling to break the spell that surrounded them, an invisible bubble of its own.
Finally, the bottle of bubbles became empty, and a curled line of clouds advanced in a steady wall from the west. The blue sky turned overcast, and the sun hid within the churning, gray folds.
“Time to go in, Shaun,” he said, and waited for a reaction.
Shaun frowned, kicking his legs once so that they banged into his chair. Evan tilted the pan toward him so that he could see its emptiness.
“All gone.”
Shaun’s head drooped. Evan smiled and patted him on the back, then cleaned up their supplies. His eyes kept trying to roam toward the house; he knew they would soon have to go inside. The clouds continued to build across the lake, but he heard no thunder and hoped it wouldn’t storm.
Evan fried the fish they caught in flour and butter, seasoning it the best he could with salt and pepper. They ate with relish, Shaun smacking his lips several times, doing it again when he didn’t need to simply to get a rise out of Evan.
After dinner Shaun had a bath. Evan washed his hair and scrubbed behind his ears. As he rinsed a washrag, a strange feeling intruded on his mood, a cloud covering the sun. One more bath, another day gone, meal after meal. It was simply a meter, wasn’t it? A marking of time until the days were thin, the end near, near enough to touch, to taste. Is that what he was waiting for? The end? For this all to be over?
Evan gazed at his son and stopped him from putting the bar of soap into his mouth, for the tenth time. Shaun splashed the water, and a small runner of drool rolled down the side of his chin. Evan wiped it away, the sight of it more depressing than anything he’d seen in a long time.
“Let’s get you out, honey.”
~
They sat at the kitchen table working on tracing until Shaun’s fingers couldn’t hold the marker properly anymore. Evan watched him close, waiting for his attention to stray to the basement door, but either he had forgotten the prior night’s incident or he chose to ignore it.
“Okay, time for bed. Big day tomorrow, gotta go to the hospital and do some therapy.”
He helped Shaun out of his chair and let him walk to his room, his fingertips barely helping to balance him. After tucking him in, Evan sat on the end of the bed.
“This was a good day, buddy. I had fun.”
“Bub, bub.”
Shaun struggled with the word, and Evan let him work on it before helping.
“Bubble.”
“Bubbow,” Shaun repeated.
“Yeah, we had bubbles, didn’t we?”
Shaun smiled, snuggling into his pillow. “Moon?”
“Moon?” Evan said, glancing at the darkening window. His stomach sank. “You mean Goodnight Moon.”
He had forgotten the book at home. How had he missed it? He could even see it sitting on Shaun’s bedroom floor. Elle would’ve never forgotten something so important.
“I’m sorry, buddy, it’s not here.”
Shaun’s face darkened. “Moon?”
Evan opened his mouth to try to explain, but instead the first words of the story came out. He spoke easily and found that he could see every page in the book, the words standing out in bold black and red ink. Shaun’s eyes closed as Evan’s voice carried him away. He paused at the page about clocks but pressed on, ignoring the shiver that tried to run through him. At last, Shaun’s breathing became deep and his arm jerked a little as sleep took him fully.
The creaking of a door opening in the kitchen met his ears.
His head snapped in that direction. He waited, listening to the quiet of the house. With his pulse picking up speed, Evan stood and made his way through the living room to the kitchen, expecting the basement door to be standing ajar.
But it wasn’t. He checked all the other doors, and none were open even a crack. He stood in the middle of the kitchen, wondering why the hell they hadn’t left today.
Curiosity killed the cat.
The words seemed to come out of nowhere, and he shook his head, moving to the counter to make some tea. While the water heated, he watched the light fade from the day, the clouds on the horizon suspended, no closer or farther away than before.
He and Shaun were the clouds. Unmoving, unable to go forward or disperse, static in life. Soon they would both be old, himself in his eighties, Shaun nearing sixty. How would he take care of him then? How would he ensure that Shaun wouldn’t be scared if he couldn’t come to his calls right away, or if he couldn’t remember what he was supposed to do when he got there? What would they do when he couldn’t help them anymore?
The thought terrified him. This was the unsaid horror that stalked him each hour, submerged beneath the everyday trials and tribulations, the sadness and sufferi
ng. The image of Shaun alone and scared was too much to bear, so he banished it back to the depths of his mind from which it came, to hibernate with fangs of fear ready in its black mouth.
His hand felt cold, and when he looked down, he saw he was holding the basement-door handle. He yanked it back, surprised more by not remembering moving to touch it than by the chill it gave off.
“Basements are cold, that’s a fact,” he said to the kitchen.
His tea water wasn’t as hot as he liked it, but he poured it over the tea bag anyway, then sat at the table with his laptop. His email yielded no new messages, but he remembered he had no Wi-Fi service and couldn’t receive anything. He opened his article notes and scanned what he’d already written, and then typed for a moment.
Abel and Larissa Kluge—dead under mysterious circumstances. Allison Kaufman—died the same day as Larissa, look into death. Cecil Fenz—related to Kluges? Bob’s story—notes in basement.
Evan paused, his fingers hovering over the keys.
Clock at the center of everything?
He glanced at the basement door before snapping the laptop shut.
“Nope, I’m tired.”
Without bothering to put his untouched tea away, Evan shut the lights off and headed for bed.
But sleep wouldn’t come. It seemed drifting off was a magic trick he’d forgotten, a subtle secret of the mind that wouldn’t show itself. His thoughts played on a continuous loop, facts and words whirling like a tornado in his skull. After nearly two hours of tossing and turning, he rose and headed to the basement.
“I gotta get that light fixed,” he said, traipsing down the unlit stairs until his fingers found the switch at the bottom.
The basement looked the same, and he didn’t spare a glance at the doll lying on the floor. Knowing it was silly but doing it anyway, he took a chair and positioned it at the end of the table, not wanting his back to the clock. He sat and ran his weary eyes over the notes. Tonight, the scrawls looked different, Bob’s incoherent hand not seeming wild or unruly. In fact, the lines actually appeared to be words, although disjointed and hacked into the page. Evan sifted through them, seeing letters strung together one second, and the next they were gone, lost in a jumble of scribbles.
At the bottom of the pile, he found the words pressed into the paper. Closing his eyes, he ran his fingertips over the ridges, imagining he could read them like braille. I CAN SEE THEM.
He shuddered and opened his eyes. What the hell was he doing? Looking through the ramblings of a man who most likely wandered off into the winter night to freeze in some hidden place. Evan rubbed his forehead. God, he was tired. Without thinking about it, he whipped a hand across the sheets of paper in frustration, scattering several to the floor. They landed next to one another like birds alighting to feed.
“I need some sleep, then I can sort this out,” he said. “I also need to quit talking to myself.”
With that, he stood and reached down to pick up the papers, but his hand stopped inches from the floor. The air around him froze, and all sound stopped. The pages lay side-by-side, their edges almost touching, the scribbles and unintelligible drawings finally becoming clear.
“What the fuck?” he said, stooping to the ground.
He slid two sheets together and saw that they formed the word BACK. “No way,” he muttered.
He grasped another paper and moved it close to the first two, flipping it different ways, but it didn’t fit. Grabbing all of the loose notes from the table, he pulled them to the floor, moving back to give himself room. He swung the papers different directions, matching their edges and then pulling them apart. Moving around the growing spread of pages, he looked at it from different angles like an artist studying a half-finished sculpture. His mind became focused on the task, the basement around him receding, the promise of something just out of reach coming together.
After pushing the last page into place, he stood and observed the four-foot by eight rectangle he’d formed, the mosaic finally complete.
HIS NAME WAS BILLY AND I KILLED HIM WITH MY TRUCK. HE WAS SIX. I CAN GO BACK I CAN GO BACKICANGOBACKICANGOBACKICANGOBACK.
Evan staggered away from the papers, his hand coming to his mouth. “Oh my God,” he whispered.
12
The waiting-room Wi-Fi signal looked strong on his laptop screen.
Evan glanced at a passing nurse who gave him a smile, then lowered his face into his palm. He hadn’t slept much the night before. Not that it surprised him. Bob’s message still hung like a macabre painting in the hall of his mind. He may have gotten two hours of broken rest in before Shaun woke.
Sighing, he logged on to the Internet and sat still for a moment. Was he really going down this path? A madman had cut the trail before him, he was sure of it. The urge to shut the computer down overcame him, and he went so far as to put his hand on its lid before setting his fingers back on the keys. He typed Bob Garrison car accident into the search bar and waited. The results came back with nothing of interest. He tried again, Robert Garrison Colorado.
A webpage appeared at the top of the screen, with the title Bob’s Odd Jobs over it. Evan clicked on it and saw a simple and outdated website with a few pictures of landscaped yards, paintbrushes, and a smiling man with sandy-blond hair in cargo shorts and sunglasses. He read through the description of services and studied the man’s photograph. That was him, it had to be. A phone number was at the very bottom of the page, and Evan hesitated only a second before calling it. It didn’t ring; an automated voice picked up and told him the number was either disconnected or no longer in service.
He put his phone away and returned to the search engine, typing Colorado car accidents Billy. A few dozen hits came up, but most were decades old and none involved any information about a child.
He readjusted himself in the chair and glanced down the hospital’s hallway, his brain running too fast for him to examine his thoughts. He saw the arrangement of papers on the basement floor again and pushed the image away, but not before a new idea bloomed in his mind.
With trepidation, he typed Colorado hit-and-run Billy 6 years old. The first website that came up made his stomach coil in on itself. Hit-and-run in downtown Boulder leaves 6-year-old dead. Evan clicked on the article and began to read.
A community mourns the loss of a young child today after a hit-and-run accident late Tuesday evening. William Akely, 6, was playing in his front yard at approximately 9 p.m. when he wandered into the street near his home. An unidentified vehicle struck and killed him without stopping. Police say they are following up each and every lead in the case, and are confident that a suspect will be arrested soon. William’s mother, Janet Akely, was watching him at the time of the accident, but officials say she momentarily stepped into the house to answer a phone call. A memorial service will be held at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church of Boulder on Saturday, June 11. The Boulder Police Department is asking for any and all information in regards to the investigation.
With a shaking hand, Evan closed the webpages, and sat staring at the opposite wall of the waiting room. He let the white paint invade his eyes until it was all he could see.
“Mr. Tormer?”
He snapped out of his trance and saw that a young Asian woman stood a few paces away, holding Shaun’s hands in hers.
“Sorry,” Evan said, putting his computer aside. He stood.
“That’s okay. I’m Becky Tram. Dr. Netler said you inquired about a PCA?”
Becky had jet-black hair tied back from a round face. Her uniform looked tight in places, as if she had gained weight since she bought it and wasn’t willing to give in to a larger size. She smiled, revealing a set of very white teeth and dimples in her plump cheeks.
“Oh, yes, nice to meet you,” Evan said, holding out a hand for her to shake.
“You too. And this little man did awesome today,” Becky said, guiding Shaun to Evan.
Evan grinned and pulled Shaun up, to hold him on his hip. “Did you?” he asked, tickling
Shaun’s neck.
Shaun laughed and kicked his feet.
“Yes, he did great. We worked really hard, so he might be tired. Have you been doing small motor skills with him lately?”
“Yeah, we’ve been doing tracing and some therapy putty from time to time.”
“Great. I can tell you work with him at home since he’s versed in most of the stuff we do.”
“He has a great PT and OT staff back where we live.”
“Well, he’s doing wonderful, lots of echolalia today too. So, were you thinking of regular PCA hours, or once in a while?”
Evan shifted Shaun to his other hip. “Probably just from time to time. I’m home with him now, but I thought it might be good to set something up in case I needed to go somewhere.”
Becky nodded. “Absolutely. My schedule is pretty open for the summer, and I could probably do almost any day of the week except for Mondays. Did the front desk give you my résumé?”
“They did, it looked great.”
“Good. Yeah, I’ve been doing PCA stuff for about six years now, and it works really well with my OT. I’ll eventually be full-time here, but not until they have an opening.”
Evan’s eyes glazed slightly. “Would you be able to come out tomorrow?”
“Sure, what time?”
He blinked. “How about one? Shaun usually takes his naps in the afternoon.”
“That sounds great. Where do you guys live?”
“The Fin.”
Becky’s cheerful face lost some of its color, but she recovered immediately. “Okay, sure, I know where it is. My dad has a boat he’ll let me use. I’ll be out a little before one.”
“Perfect,” Evan said, shaking her hand. “We’ll see you then.”
~
Even with the sun straight overhead, Evan was cold. As they crossed the water and the Fin materialized, the notion to pack and leave as soon as they got there became more and more appealing. What were they staying for? The possibility of a story in a magazine? At what cost? Visions of a floating body and the doll standing on the basement landing flashed through his mind, and he pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. That could’ve been his imagination, just circus acts in the old brainpan.
