Only Child: A novel

by Rhiannon Navin

  Mommy cried and screamed and made more “Aaaauuuuuuuuuuu” sounds. After a long while she let Daddy hug her and didn’t hit him anymore, so maybe she wasn’t mad at him anymore. All of a sudden she turned around to the wall and started throwing up. Right where all the people could see her. A lot of throw-up came out, and she was making really gross sounds. Daddy was on his knees next to her, rubbing her back, and he looked like he was scared and like he was going to throw up, too, probably from watching Mommy.

  But Daddy didn’t throw up. He put his hand out to me, and I took it and then we sat there, holding hands, and I tried not to look at Mommy. She stopped throwing up and she wasn’t screaming anymore. She just lay down on the floor with her eyes closed and made a ball with her whole body, her arms holding her knees, and she cried and cried.

  A nurse came, and I had to move over to the side so she could take care of Mommy. I sat back down by the wall under the TV. Daddy scooched over and sat next to me and leaned his back against the wall. He put his arm around me, and we watched the nurse take care of Mommy.

  Another nurse came out from the NO ENTRY door and brought a bag of stuff. She put a needle in Mommy’s arm, and that probably hurt, but Mommy didn’t even move. The needle was on a plastic string attached to a bag with water in it that the one nurse was holding up over her head. Then a man brought a bed on wheels, and he put the bed all the way down to the floor. The two nurses put Mommy on the bed, made the bed go back up, and then they started pushing it to the NO ENTRY door. I got up to go with Mommy on the bed, but one of the nurses put up her hand and said, “You have to hang back for now, sweetie.”

  The door closed and Mommy disappeared. Daddy put his hand on my shoulder and said, “They have to take Mommy back there to help her. Make her feel better. She’s very upset right now and needs help. OK?”

  “Why did Mommy get so mad at you, Daddy?” I asked.

  “Oh, bud, she’s not mad at me. I…I need to tell you something, Zach. Let’s go outside for a bit and get some fresh air. I have to tell you some news, and it’s really bad. OK? Come with me.”

  [ 7 ]

  Sky Tears

  ANDY WAS DEAD. That was the news Daddy told me when we stood in front of the hospital. It was raining still. So much rain all day long. The raindrops reminded me of all the tears, and it was like the sky was crying together with Mommy inside the hospital, and all the other people I saw crying today.

  “Your brother was killed in the shooting, Zach,” Daddy said, and his voice sounded very scratchy. We were standing together under the crying sky, and in my head the same words went round and round in a circle: Andy is dead. Killed in the shooting. Andy is dead. Killed in the shooting.

  Now I knew why Mommy acted crazy when Daddy came in—because she knew Andy was dead, only I didn’t know. Now I knew, too, but I didn’t start acting crazy, and I didn’t cry and scream like Mommy. I just stood and waited, with the same words doing circles in my head, and it was like my whole body didn’t feel normal, it felt really heavy.

  Then Daddy said we should go back to check on Mommy. We went back inside slow, and my heavy legs made it hard to walk. The people in the waiting room stared at us, and their faces looked like they were feeling very sorry for us, so they knew Andy was dead, too.

  We went to the CHECK IN desk. “I would like to get an update on Melissa Taylor,” Daddy told one of the women behind the desk.

  “Let me check for you,” the woman said, and went in the NO ENTRY door. All of a sudden Ricky’s mom was standing next to us.

  “Jim?” she said to Daddy. She put her hand on Daddy’s arm, and Daddy took a really quick step back like her hands were hot on his arm or something. Ricky’s mom dropped her hand and stared at Daddy. “Jim, please. What about Ricky? Did you ask about Ricky?”

  I remembered Ricky doesn’t have a dad, or he had a dad, but he moved away when Ricky was a baby. So his dad couldn’t wait at the church, just in case, and now Ricky’s mom didn’t know if Ricky was alive or dead or what.

  “I’m sorry. I…I don’t know,” Daddy said, and he walked a couple more steps back and kept looking at the NO ENTRY door. Then the door opened and the woman from behind the desk held the door open and waved to us to come in. Daddy said to Ricky’s mom, “I’ll try to check when I’m inside, OK?” and we walked in.

  We walked behind the woman down a long hallway and came to the big room that I remembered from when we came here with Andy, it has little rooms all around the side with no walls, only curtains in between. One little room had the curtain open and I saw a girl I knew from McKinley—she’s in fourth grade, I don’t know her name. She was sitting on a bed with wheels and her arm had a big white wrapper around it.

  The woman brought us to a little room where Mommy was. She was lying on a bed with a white blanket over her, and her face was also white like the blanket. The bag with the water was hanging on a metal stand, and the plastic string was stuck on Mommy’s arm with a big Band-Aid. Mommy’s eyes were closed, and her head was turned away from us. She looked like she was a fake doll, not a real person, and I got a scared feeling. Daddy went over to Mommy’s bed and touched her face. Mommy didn’t move at all. She didn’t move her head, and she didn’t open her eyes.

  There were two chairs next to the bed, and we sat down on them. The woman said the doctor was going to be with us soon, and she pulled a curtain in front of the door when she left. We waited, and I watched the water drops dripping from the bag into the string and then down into Mommy’s arm. They looked like raindrops or teardrops dripping down, and it was like the bag was giving Mommy all the teardrops back she cried out earlier. Now only the bag was crying.

  Daddy’s phone started to ring in his pocket, but he didn’t take it out to answer it. Usually Daddy always answers his phone because it could be work. He let it ring until it stopped, and after a little while the ringing started again. Daddy stared at his hands and they were the only things moving on him. First his left hand pulled all the fingers on his right hand, and then the right hand pulled all the fingers on his left hand, and they kept taking turns. I started copying Daddy and pulled my fingers at the same time as him. I had to pay attention to do it at the same time, and that made me stop thinking about Mommy lying in the bed like a fake doll. Daddy was making a pattern, so I knew what came next, and that helped. I wanted to sit here with Daddy and pull fingers for a long time.

  But then the curtain got pushed to the side and a doctor came in and started talking to Daddy, and we stopped our finger patterns. “My sincere condolences,” the doctor said to Daddy. Daddy only blinked with his eyes a few times but didn’t say anything back, so the doctor kept talking. “Your wife is in shock. We had to sedate her and will keep her overnight. As soon as things settle down in here, we will find her a room for the night. She’s heavily sedated, and I doubt she will wake up at all tonight. I think the best thing would be to regroup in the morning and assess her situation. Why don’t you go home and…try to get some rest?”

  Daddy still didn’t talk, he just looked at the doctor. Maybe he didn’t understand what he said. Then he looked back down at his hands like he was surprised they were holding still now.

  “Sir? Do you have someone who can take you home?” the doctor said, and that woke Daddy up and he said, “No. We…we will go. I don’t need anyone to take us.”

  The curtain got pushed open again and Mimi was standing there like frozen, holding on to the curtain. She stared at Daddy for a long time with really big eyes, and then she moved her stare to me and then to Mommy lying on the bed like a fake doll. Mimi’s face started to crumple up like a piece of paper. She opened her mouth like she was going to say something, but only a quiet “oh” sound came out. She took a step toward Daddy, and Daddy got up like in slow motion. Maybe his body felt too heavy, too.

  Mimi and Daddy hugged each other tight, and Mimi was making loud crying sounds into Daddy’s jack
et. The doctor and the nurse were standing next to them, and both of them were staring at their shoes. They had on the hospital kind, like green Crocs.

  After a while Mimi and Daddy got done hugging. Mimi was still crying, and she came over to me and put her arms around me. She pulled me close to her belly. It felt smushy and nice and warm, and my throat got a tight feeling inside. Mimi kissed the top of my head and whispered into my hair: “My sweet, sweet Zach. My poor, sweet little boy.” Then she let go of me. I didn’t want her to, I wanted to stay there hugging her and feel warm and smell her sweater that smelled like fresh laundry.

  But Mimi turned away from me and toward Mommy. She pushed some hair from Mommy’s face with her hand. “I will stay with her tonight, Jim,” Mimi said in a quiet voice, and tears were just running, running down her face.

  Daddy made a sound in his throat and then he said, “OK. Thank you, Roberta.” He took my hand and said, “Let’s get you home, Zach.” But I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to go home without Mommy. So I grabbed the side of Mommy’s bed.

  “No!” I said. My voice came out loud and it surprised me. “No, I want Mommy. I want to stay here with Mommy!” My voice sounded like a baby voice, but I didn’t care.

  “Please don’t do this, Zach, please,” Daddy said, sounding very tired. “Please, let’s just go home. Mommy is OK, she just needs to sleep. Mimi will stay here and take care of her.”

  “I will, honey, I promise. I’ll be here with Mommy,” Mimi said.

  “I want to stay here, too,” I said with the loud voice again.

  “We will come see her tomorrow. I promise. Please stop shouting,” Daddy said.

  “But she has to say good night to me! We have to sing our song!”

  Every night at bedtime me and Mommy sing a song, and it’s always the same. It’s our tradition and it’s the song that Mimi made up when Mommy was a baby, and then Mommy started singing it to me and Andy when we were babies. The song sounds like the “Brother John” song, but with our own words made up. You change the name in it for who you are singing it to. For me, Mommy sings it like this:

  Zachary Taylor

  Zachary Taylor

  I love you

  I love you

  You’re my handsome buddy

  And I’ll love you always

  Yes, I do

  Yes, I do

  Sometimes Mommy changes up the words and sings it like this: “You’re my smelly buddy, but I love you anyway…,” and it’s really funny, but in the end, she always has to sing it the regular way so I can go to sleep.

  Now she was going to stay here in the hospital and not be at home with me for bedtime.

  “Just…OK, do you want to sing it now, then?” Daddy asked, and the way he said it sounded like that was going to be a stupid thing to do. I shook my head yes, but then I didn’t want to sing with Daddy and Mimi and the doctor and the nurse all looking at me, so I only kept holding on to Mommy’s bed until Daddy came over and forced me to let go.

  Daddy picked me up and carried me back through the big room and the hallway, out the door to the waiting room, and back out through the slidey doors into the rain. He carried me all the way to his car that was a long way from the hospital, but parked in a real spot, so it didn’t get towed. I wondered if Mommy’s car got towed and how she was going to get home without her car.

  Daddy opened the car door and at the same time we both saw Andy’s sweater on the backseat. It was the sweater he had on at lacrosse practice last night, and he took it off after we got in the car. Daddy picked it up and sat down in the driver’s seat. Then he put his face in Andy’s sweater and for a long time he sat there like that. It looked like his whole body was shaking and crying and he made little rocking moves forward and backward, but no sounds.

  I sat very still in my seat in the back and watched the raindrops on the sunroof, the sky crying on top of the car. After a while Daddy put the sweater down on his lap and wiped his face with his hand. Then he turned around to me. “We need to be strong now, Zach, you and me. We need to be strong for Mommy. OK?”

  “OK,” I said, and then we drove home through the sky tears, just me and Daddy.

  [ 8 ]

  The Last Normal Tuesday

  DADDY WALKED AROUND the house with me right behind him, and my socks made wet footprints on the floor. Daddy turned on all the lights in all the rooms, and that was the opposite of what he does on other days, which is turn all the lights off all the time because lights use up electricity and electricity costs a lot of money.

  “I’m hungry,” I said, and Daddy said, “Right.” We went in the kitchen, but then Daddy just stood there and looked around like he was in someone else’s kitchen and he didn’t know where stuff was. I heard his phone ringing again in his pocket, but he didn’t take it out to answer it again. He opened up the fridge and looked inside for a while and then he took out the milk. “Cereal OK?”

  “Sure,” I said, because with Mommy I’m never allowed to have cereal for dinner.

  We sat down on the barstools at the counter and ate Honey Bunches—that’s my favorite cereal. I looked at the family calendar on the wall next to me. It’s Mommy’s big calendar, and everyone in the family has a row with their name on the left and all the things we have on the days of the week next to the names. So that way Mommy can look at it in the morning and remember everything we have that day.

  My row on the calendar doesn’t have a lot on it, only piano for today, Wednesday, and lacrosse for Saturday. I wondered if Mr. Bernard still came to the house today at 4:30 for my lesson, but no one opened the door for him because we stayed at the hospital the whole day.

  Andy’s row has something almost every day. He gets to do a lot more things because he’s older, and also it’s better when he’s busy with activities. For yesterday, Tuesday, it said lacrosse for Andy and that was only one day ago, but it felt like a long time ago, maybe a month.

  Yesterday we did all the things we do every Tuesday, because we didn’t know that today a gunman was going to come. Sometimes on Tuesdays Daddy comes home early so he can go to Andy’s lacrosse practice. He works in New York City where we used to live when I was little, but then we moved to this house because there’s more space here, and New York City is not a safe place for kids to live, Mommy says. And here we could have a whole house, not just an apartment.

  Daddy’s office is in the MetLife Building, and that’s really cool because it’s a building on top of a train station. He made partner at his firm last year, and we had a party to celebrate. But I don’t think it’s such a great thing for celebrating because now Daddy is always working until late, so on school days I don’t even see him, only on weekends. He always leaves before I wake up in the morning, and I have to go to bed before he comes back home. Andy gets to stay up longer than me, because he’s three and a half years older, so he sometimes gets to see Daddy before bed, and that’s not fair.

  In the summer I went with Daddy to his office one time because Mommy had to take Andy to the doctor. I was excited to go and I was going to be with Daddy all day, and that never happened before. And also Daddy told me about the cool new office he got that has all windows on two sides, and you can see the Empire State Building from it. I couldn’t wait to see it, and I even brought my bird-watching binoculars to see all the way downtown with them.

  But then I didn’t get to be with Daddy very much inside his new office because he went to a lot of meetings where I couldn’t come. I had to stay with Angela most of the time. Angela is Daddy’s assistant, and she’s nice. She took me to Grand Central for lunch—that’s the name of the train station under Daddy’s office—and there’s a bunch of restaurants all the way in the basement. Angela let me have Shake Shack and I even got a chocolate milkshake, and that’s not a healthy lunch. Milkshakes are my favorite drink. I always dip my French fries in them, Uncle Chip taught
me to do that, and everyone thinks it’s disgusting, but me and Uncle Chip love it. Now I still always do it, and it makes me think about Uncle Chip.

  Andy has lacrosse practice on every Tuesday and Friday and then games on the weekends, and the whole family has to go to show our support. He’s really good at lacrosse, like all the sports, and he scores a lot of goals at the games. Daddy says Andy’s probably good enough to play in college, like him when he went to college. He talks about that a lot and he still has a record at his college for most goals in one game, and no one has broken it yet even though that was a long time ago that Daddy made that record. But Daddy says Andy isn’t trying hard enough to get better, and he should be working on his stick skills more. Andy gets mad and says it’s a stupid sport anyway, and maybe he’s only going to play soccer next year and no lacrosse.

  I started lacrosse this year, too—it starts in first grade. But I only had three clinics so far, and the whole family did not come to show their support, because Andy’s games are at the same time, so Daddy takes him and Mommy takes me. I don’t think I am going to be very good at lacrosse, it’s hard to hold the stick and scoop up the ball. I don’t even like it, the other boys bump into me too hard, and I hate putting the helmet over my head, it’s too tight.

  On the last normal Tuesday, Daddy came walking in and I was waiting for him by the front door, but he was still on a phone call, so I wasn’t allowed to say hi to him yet. He put a finger up on his mouth to say “Shush,” and he went upstairs to change from his suit to his game clothes. He always does that, I don’t know why, because Andy was playing, not him.

  I waited in the hallway for him to come back down because there was fighting in the kitchen. The fighting was between Mommy and Andy, and it was about homework. Andy wasn’t doing it again, and it all has to be finished before practice because we come home really late, at nine almost, one hour after my bedtime. I did my homework already right after I got off the bus.