Only Child: A novel

by Rhiannon Navin

  “Your psycho son killed my Andy. My baby. And you wanted to come here and tell us you’re sorry?” Mommy was talking louder now, and then she started shouting. I could feel more people coming in the hallway behind us. I turned around to see who it was and to look at Mommy.

  Daddy grabbed Mommy’s arm. “Melissa, let’s not…”

  “No, Jim, let’s. Let’s absolutely,” Mommy said, and she pulled her arm away.

  I heard Grandma say, “Good heavens.”

  Mommy walked around me toward Charlie and his wife like she was going to hit them. Charlie’s wife took another step back and she probably forgot that there were steps behind her and she kind of tripped down to the first step and she almost fell down all of the porch stairs. She stayed behind Charlie like she was trying to hide.

  “Don’t tell me you’re sorry. That’s too little, too late, wouldn’t you say? Don’t tell me you didn’t know. Everyone knew Charles was a fucking freaker—all you had to do was look at him! Why didn’t you stop him? Why the hell didn’t you stop him?” Mommy was screaming now, and it really was like she was hitting Charlie, just not with fists, but with words.

  “Believe me, Melissa, if there was a way to go back and undo what happened…I would gladly give my life….” Charlie put his hands up again toward Mommy, but she moved away from him like she was grossed out.

  “Don’t you Melissa me,” she said, and she wasn’t screaming anymore. She looked at Charlie in a very mean, death-stare-y way. “Get away from my house and my family. Or what’s left of it.” Then she grabbed my hand and pulled me inside the house. I didn’t want to go with her, but she was holding my hand tight and was pulling it hard, so I had to. She shoved her way through the people in the hallway, and when I turned around to look at Charlie, there were too many people in the way and I couldn’t see him anymore.

  But I remembered the way Charlie looked at Mommy when she said those mean words to him. His eyes looked very big in his old-looking face with all the bones sticking out. It was the saddest face I’ve ever seen in my whole life.

  I thought about how Daddy was wrong when he said Charlie didn’t get hurt, because he did. His son died, too, so his feelings were hurting about that, like ours because Andy died, except it was worse for Charlie because his son killed his angels, and that was worse than just dead.

  [ 24 ]

  Poking a Snake with a Stick

  THE TOWEL UNDER ME was wet when I woke up today. Last night Mimi put the towel on the mattress because when it was bedtime my sheets were still in the bathtub, wet from pee. Mommy forgot to wash them.

  I took the wet towel off the mattress and the wet PJs off of me, got dressed, walked through Andy’s room to check the top bunk, and then I went downstairs to find Mommy. She was in the kitchen, talking to Mimi.

  “It says it right here, Mom. He had Asperger’s,” Mommy said, and showed Mimi something on the iPad. “I mean, officially diagnosed when he was in middle school. Apparently he had all sorts of issues in school and dropped out in tenth grade. No friends. No job. Just been hanging out in the basement ever since, basically. For two years!”

  “Well, I don’t think Asperger’s makes people violent, though, does it?” Mimi said. “I guess that explains why we’ve seen so little of Charlie and Mary these last few years.” Mimi looked up and saw me in the doorway. She put her hand on Mommy’s arm, but Mommy didn’t pay attention.

  “Some neighbors thought he had other problems, too, that didn’t seem Asperger’s-related, and they even asked Charlie and Mary about it. Listen to this: ‘A couple times I saw him acting odd around the neighborhood, walking up and down the street and gesturing, talking to himself. And he scared the hell out of old Louisa across the street last year when he yelled at her not to put up her Christmas decorations.’ That’s a quote from their next-door neighbor. I knew there was something wrong with him. I knew it when I saw him at Charlie’s party. I always thought he was such a cute kid when I babysat him, but now that I think about it, he was a bit strange even when he was little. But at the party he was downright creepy. He was standing there, staring at the kids and—”

  “Melissa, honey,” Mimi interrupted Mommy and nodded her head at me.

  Mommy saw me standing there and said, “He’ll hear about this anyway.”

  “Mommy, I’m sorry, but I got the towel wet and the mattress,” I said. I went over to Mommy and sat on her lap and she hugged me, but only with one arm, because the other arm was holding the iPad.

  “Mommy?”

  “Oh, sweetie, don’t you worry,” Mimi said. “Come on, let’s go and get it all cleaned up for you.” She took my hand and I got off Mommy’s lap. Mommy was looking back down at the iPad. She had lines on her forehead and made clicking sounds with her teeth.

  Do you know something that you should never ever do? Poke a snake with a stick. The snake guy who came to McKinley the day before the gunman came told us that. When you go for a walk or a hike and you see a snake—well, you wouldn’t really see a snake where we live, because there aren’t any here, or at least not any dangerous ones, but maybe when you go on vacation or somewhere else where they have dangerous snakes—and even if it looks tiny or like it’s sleeping—don’t poke it with a stick or touch it with your shoe. It’s a bad idea. He even showed us why with one of the snakes he brought, not the emerald tree boa, but another one with red and black and yellow stripes. I forgot her name, but the snake guy said that some snakes with stripes are poisonous and some aren’t. He taught us a poem so you can remember which are the dangerous ones:

  “Red and black, friend of Jack. Red and yellow, kills a fellow.”

  The one the snake guy brought out had red next to yellow, so that means she was dangerous. At first she just lay there and didn’t move, so it looked like she was sleeping. The snake guy got out a long stick and he poked her with it. She jumped up at the stick right away and then she didn’t let go and was hanging from the stick with her teeth. It scared everyone, and some kids screamed, which was kind of dumb because we were sitting far away from the front where the snake was, so it wasn’t even dangerous.

  This snake fact popped into my head yesterday when I was sitting on a barstool in the kitchen and I was eating a sandwich Mimi made for lunch for me, and I was watching Mommy. She was standing on a ladder and cleaning on top of the kitchen cabinets. And she reminded me of the snake that got poked with the stick. When Charlie and his wife came to our house on the day of Andy’s funeral, and that was three days ago, she jumped at them like the snake at the stick, but then they left—only Mommy’s mad feeling didn’t leave. She switched from sad to mad in a second and kept hanging on to the stick.

  Mimi was watching Mommy clean the top of the cabinets, too, with a sad face that looked like it had even more wrinkles on it now. “Sweetie, why don’t you let me do that? Is it really necessary to clean up there right now?”

  “What? No…yes, Mom, it is!” Mommy took another step up on the ladder and scrubbed the cabinets really hard. “It’s absolutely filthy up here!” Mommy thought everything in the house was absolutely filthy all of a sudden, and she cleaned and cleaned, even where I didn’t see any dirt and it looked clean.

  When Mommy first started with the cleaning, on the day after Charlie and his wife came over, I tried to be her helper so we could do the cleaning together. Mommy told me when to give her a new paper towel piece and when to hold the bag open so she could throw out the dirty ones. But a couple times I didn’t open the bag fast enough and the dirty paper towels landed on the floor, and then Mommy got annoyed and said I should find something else to do. And she kept on cleaning without me.

  After I helped Mimi wash off the mattress with a wet sponge and we put the towel and PJs in the washing machine in the basement, I went back in my room and looked at my books on my bookshelf. I have a lot of books, and my favorites right now are the Magic Tree House books. I have
them all in a row on my shelf, from number 1 to number 53—that’s how I like it. They used to be Andy’s, and he read the whole series by himself a long time ago. He didn’t want them anymore, and so Mommy moved them onto my bookshelf.

  There was still no school this whole week. Daddy said next week the other kids were going back to school, but not to McKinley for now. They were getting split up and were going to the other schools in Wake Gardens. But not me. Daddy said I didn’t have to go to school yet next week because we’re one of the affected families. Maybe the week after, we would see. I was happy about that, that I didn’t have to go back and that we would see when, maybe not for a while. Every time I thought about school, I got a bad feeling in my stomach, like I really didn’t want to go back ever.

  When I looked at my books and I thought about school, I remembered my book baggie that was still in my backpack at school. I wished I could have it, because on the day before the gunman came, Miss Russell let me pick out all new books, and I didn’t even get to read them yet. I wondered if the backpacks were still in our cubbies or what, and if we were going to get them back, and I really hoped so, because my FIFA sticker book and cards were in there, too.

  The Magic Tree House books are my favorite books because it’s a brother and a sister going on a lot of adventures in different places and different times. Even if it happened in the past, they can still go there because of their tree house. They’re really brave, especially the sister, even though she’s the younger one. She’s not scared of anything. When you read about how they’re going on adventures, it feels like you go with them and you are brave, too.

  By the way, the brother’s name is Jack, and the sister’s name is Annie. Jack and Annie—that sounds almost like Zach and Andy. We noticed that when we were taking turns reading at bedtime one night. That’s our tradition, mine and Mommy’s—we take turns when we read a book. At first, when I couldn’t read so good yet, I did one sentence and then Mommy did a few sentences and then me one sentence again. But now I can read a lot more than one sentence. I can read a whole page or even more, and then we switch.

  When we noticed the thing about Jack/Zach and Annie/Andy, Mommy said, “Hey, we can pretend it’s you and your brother going on adventures,” and I said, “Yeah, except we don’t do adventures together, so it’s just the names that are like the same, but not the rest.” And Mommy looked at me with a sad face when I said that.

  I decided to pick one of the Magic Tree House books and see if Mommy wanted to take turns reading. Maybe she was done with the iPad and we could have time to do reading together. I went downstairs to look for Mommy but she wasn’t in the kitchen anymore. I thought maybe she started with the cleaning again, but I saw her through the glass door in Daddy’s office. I was about to go in, but then I heard Mommy and Daddy talking, and the way their voices sounded made me not open the door. Daddy was sitting in his big brown chair at his desk by the window, and Mommy was standing next to him, so I could only see their backs.

  “No, I can’t wait and see how things play out!” I could hear Mommy say, “You’re a lawyer, for fuck’s sake. Our son got mowed down by a madman and you’re just sitting here. I’m tired of watching you sit here. We should be doing something about this!”

  Daddy scooched backward like he was trying to get away from Mommy. “I’m not saying let’s do nothing about it. I didn’t say that. I—”

  Mommy interrupted him. “You did, actually.”

  “I did NOT!” Daddy’s voice sounded louder now. “All I said was it’s been two weeks, Melissa, that’s it. Not even.”

  “Exactly. Which is why now is the time to do something!” Now Mommy was yelling, and I could feel my chest starting to get tight.

  “Can you please…?” Daddy made his voice quiet and waved his hands like he was pushing the air down.

  Mommy’s voice got even louder. “Don’t shush me! It’s on them, Jim. It’s on them. My son is dead because of them, and I’m not going to sit on my ass and let them get away with it.” All of a sudden Mommy turned around, and I didn’t have time to move away from the door. Mommy was going to get more mad now because I was listening to their fighting.

  Mommy opened the door. “What, Zach?”

  I held up the book and said, “I wanted to see if you wanted to take turns reading.”

  Mommy stared at me for a minute. I thought maybe she didn’t hear me, but then she said, “I can’t. Not right now, OK, Zach? Later, OK?” and then she walked out of Daddy’s office and around me back to the kitchen, and I heard the TV go on in the family room. Daddy leaned forward in his chair and put his elbows on the desk and his face in his hands again.

  I was wrong about how it was going to get better after Mommy stopped being sad and in shock. There was still fighting, even without Andy here. I went back upstairs and into my hideout. After I got comfy on Andy’s sleeping bag, I switched on my Buzz flashlight and opened the book to the first chapter, and I read all the way through the whole book, no taking turns.

  [ 25 ]

  The Secrets of Happiness

  “I feel like I’m seeing spring for the first time,” said Jack.

  “Me too,” said Annie.

  “Not just for the first time this year,” said Jack. “But for the first time in my whole life.”

  “Me too,” said Annie.

  Jack felt happy, really happy, as he and Annie headed for home in the sparkling morning light.

  I closed the book and put it on the stack of books in the corner of the hideout, all the books I read in the last few days, and I stood up to stretch my legs. They hurt from sitting crisscross applesauce the whole time, and my neck hurt from leaning over the book. My throat felt scratchy from reading out loud. At first, when I started reading the Magic Tree House books all by myself, I read them quiet in my head, but then I switched to reading out loud. Miss Russell says it’s good to practice your reading out loud. You can read to a person or pretend, and your brain can record the sound of the words and learn faster.

  So I started pretending like I was reading to someone.

  And that someone was Andy.

  I didn’t even know why I started doing that, except that after the funeral, when I first talked to Andy in the hideout and I said the truth to him, that he was being a jerk to me, it felt good to say that. So I decided I wanted to keep saying stuff to Andy. I started out with whispering, I didn’t know why. No one was going to hear me anyway, with Daddy staying in his office with the door closed all the time and Mommy reading on the iPad or cleaning invisible messes. And Mimi wasn’t staying overnight anymore, so we could have space, she said, even though there was already all that space in between everyone in the house.

  But I still only whispered at first: “Hi, I’m back in your closet,” and it was like I could hear Andy say, “Duh,” because “Hello, I can see you sitting in there!”

  “You didn’t always have to talk to me like that in your meany way,” I told Andy, and then I said all the truth things, all the stuff that he did that was really mean, to me and to Mommy. And it was weird because it was like the most I ever talked to Andy in my whole life.

  But then I started to feel bad about saying just the bad things to him and nothing nice, because he was dead, and who knows, maybe he was really sad about that and lonely where he was now, so I wanted to say other things to him, too, but then I didn’t know what, so that’s when I decided to start reading out loud to him instead. Not in a whispering voice because that hurts your mouth after a while.

  I started on Magic Tree House #30—that was the one I picked out to read with Mommy—and I read all of that and then #31, 32, 33, 34, 35, and 36, and it took like one whole day to read one book, so I was reading out loud for a lot of days already. The book I finished today was #37, Dragon of the Red Dawn, 105 pages and not a lot of pictures.

  I liked reading to Andy, even if it was only pretend. Wh
en I was in the middle of reading, it didn’t feel like pretend. I had a feeling like he was right there, listening to me, and I went on adventures with Jack and Annie, and Andy went, too, all four of us.

  After I was done stretching my legs, I sat back down and I looked at the wall with my feelings pages. A few days ago, I hung up something else on the wall, a picture of me and Andy. I found it on a whole pile of pictures on the dining room table, the ones that were hanging up at the wake, and I sneaked it upstairs.

  When I took breaks from reading, I looked at the picture a lot. It was from when we went to Grandma’s beach house in the summer, not this year, but last year. Uncle Chip was still alive, but he was really sick, and in the same year, in the fall, he died. Grandma wanted us all to wear matching clothes, white shirts and beige pants, and a photographer came and took a bunch of pictures of us on the beach. There was fighting, because Andy ran in the ocean and his pants got wet, and that wasn’t going to look good in the pictures. Also he kept making his funny faces in almost every picture.

  In this picture, we were sitting on the beach on the big sand hills in front of Grandma’s beach house, and Andy wasn’t making a funny face in it, but a serious face. I was sitting next to Andy with some space in between us, and I did a cheese for the camera, but Andy looked like he was staring at something next to the camera. His wet pants were rolled up to his knees, and he was sitting with his legs pulled up and his arms were hugging his knees.

  He looked sad, and when I first noticed Andy’s sad face, my throat started to hurt a lot. I moved the picture onto the sad feelings page, the gray one, and the whole picture didn’t look like it belonged there, because it had a sunny blue sky, but it did, because of Andy’s face and because of how it made me feel when I looked at it.