Only Child: A novel

by Rhiannon Navin

“Next time you have to bring your own sleeping bag or like a blanket or something. This one is too small for two people,” I told Daddy.

  “Yes, sir,” Daddy said, and he put his hand to his forehead like a soldier. He sat down crisscross applesauce like me and ripped open the bag of cookies and put it in between us. We both took a cookie. “What are you doing?” Daddy asked.

  “Reading.”

  “To Andy?” Daddy asked, and he looked at the picture on the wall.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I listen, too? What are you reading?”

  I showed him the cover of Dark Day in the Deep Sea. “I’m on page seventy-eight already, so you’re not going to know what it’s about,” I told Daddy.

  “Can’t you tell me what happened so far?”

  “OK. So Jack and Annie land on a tiny island with the Magic Tree House, and a ship called the HMS Challenger comes, and it has explorers and scientists on it. Jack and Annie are allowed to go on the ship with them, and the crew tells them they are looking for a sea monster that looks like a floating nest of snakes.”

  “Yikes,” Daddy said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “And then a big storm comes and Jack and Annie get washed off the ship from the big waves, but they get rescued by a giant octopus. The giant octopus is the sea monster the crew is looking for, but he’s not a monster, and he saves them from drowning in the ocean. But the crew doesn’t know that, so they try to catch the octopus and kill him. And now Jack and Annie are trying to figure out how they can save the octopus. That’s where I am, and there’s only two chapters left.”

  “Sounds very suspenseful. Go ahead!” Daddy grabbed another cookie and leaned his back against the wall and closed his eyes. I took one more cookie, too, and then I started to read out loud again.

  Jack and Annie end up using their magic wand. It makes the octopus talk, and the crew understands that the octopus is not a monster and they let him go. In the end Jack and Annie discover that the third secret of happiness for Merlin is to have compassion for all living creatures. I didn’t know what compassion meant, but Jack explains it to Annie: “That means feeling sympathy and love for them.”

  “What does ‘sympathy’ mean?” I asked Daddy, and that was a hard word to read and say, sympathy.

  Daddy opened his eyes. “Well, it means you care about how they feel. And you try to understand their feelings and share them. It’s hard to explain.”

  “So you’re like supposed to feel their feelings with them?”

  “Yeah, I believe that’s what it says here, right?” Daddy said.

  “But then how is that going to make you happy? At first I thought maybe we could try out the secrets of happiness that Jack and Annie find out, but this is about living creatures, and that’s like nature and animals and stuff, so I don’t think we can use it to get happy.”

  “Hm. If this is the third secret of happiness, then what were the first two? And what are they for, by the way?” Daddy wanted to know.

  “Jack and Annie are trying to find the four secrets of happiness to help Merlin. He’s a magician, and he doesn’t feel well. He’s very sad and he needs the secrets to feel better. The first one was to pay attention to the small things around you in nature, and to feel curious was the second one. But I tried those out and they didn’t work.”

  Daddy thought about it for a while before he gave me an answer: “Well, people are living creatures, too. I do think it makes sense what they’re saying. It could make you feel good not to only think about yourself, but to think about others and care about them. When you try to be sympathetic, to have sympathy, maybe it helps you see why people behave in certain ways. So you don’t just see their behavior, but you understand where it’s coming from. What do you think?”

  I thought about what Daddy said. Daddy and I both grabbed another cookie, and there were only a couple left in the bag. “I think I should have done that with Andy,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I only noticed how Andy acted bad all the time. That he was being mean to me. A lot of times I didn’t like him because of that, and I didn’t try to feel the sympathy with him,” I said. “Maybe Andy wouldn’t have acted bad a lot of times if he could have noticed that we were feeling the sympathy with him. I don’t know,” I said, and I put my shoulders up and down.

  Daddy put down his cookie and looked at me. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but no words came out.

  “Why do you think he was doing that?” I asked.

  “Doing what?” Daddy’s voice sounded different.

  “Acting like that all the time,” I said. “Bad.”

  Daddy made a coughing sound. He looked down at his hands and started picking the skin around his fingernails. “I’m not sure, bud.”

  “I think maybe it was because of the Hulk,” I said.

  “The Hulk?” Daddy looked up from his nails and looked at me. He made lines on his forehead.

  “Yeah, the Hulk gets really mad and then he goes crazy, even though on the inside he doesn’t want to, but he can’t help it, and after, when he turns back to normal, when he’s Bruce Banner again, he feels bad about what he did. I think that’s probably what happened to Andy, and now that happens to me a lot, too.”

  “Why do you think that is?” Daddy asked.

  “I don’t know. The mad feeling kind of sneaks up on me really fast, and then I can’t do anything about it.”

  “But when does it sneak up on you like that? What happens before then?” Daddy asked.

  I thought about it for a minute. “The first time it was at the interview, and I didn’t want to talk.”

  “Yeah, you got very upset then.”

  “Yeah. And now I want to be with you and Mommy all the time, but I don’t get to, and then the mad feeling happens,” I said.

  “I…that makes sense,” Daddy said. And then we were quiet for a long while.

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes, bud?”

  “Did you and Mommy feel the sympathy with Andy when he was still alive?” I asked, and I looked at Andy’s sad face in the picture and I thought that it would be really sad if no one in his family tried to feel his feelings with him and now he was dead.

  “Well,” Daddy made another coughing sound, “I think we did. I think we…tried to. But…it wasn’t easy, and I think we…probably could have done a better job at it. Or I should say I. I could have done a better job. Should have.” Daddy’s face looked very sad when he said that, and I could feel a lump coming in my throat.

  “Do you think it’s too late to think about it, because Andy’s dead and he’s not going to know about it now? Or do you think he can feel it or something? Now?” I asked.

  “I don’t think it’s too late. I think it’s…amazing you’re thinking about it at all. You’re a very special kid, Zach,” Daddy said.

  “I should make a page for sympathy, I think,” I said.

  “That’s a good idea,” Daddy answered.

  “What color do you think it should be?”

  “Oh, that’s a tough one,” Daddy said. “It’s a good feeling, right? So I’m thinking a light color…How about white? White is…”

  “Like clean or something?”

  “Yes, clean. Pure. It’s a pure feeling,” Daddy said.

  “What’s pure?” I asked.

  “Well…clean…honest. Not selfish, maybe?”

  “OK, white. That’s easy, all I need is the piece of paper. I’ll go get it.” I ducked out of the hideout and got a piece of paper from my room and went back inside. I found the tape and put up the sympathy page. We leaned our backs against the wall and looked at the new page on the wall with the other feelings pages.

  “That’s a lot of feelings,” I said.

  “Yeah. But you were right. It does help to look at them separated.
That was smart of you,” Daddy said, and I smiled because it made me feel good when he said it and I thought that the third secret of happiness was working, and I felt a little bit happy now.

  [ 35 ]

  Back to School

  MOMMY CAME BACK from New York City, but like a new version of her. The version she started to change into when she got mad when Charlie and his wife came to our house and it was like she got poked with a stick like the snake at school. But now she was like all of that new version, and nothing was left from her old self. She walked in our house with high heels, she never took them off, and she talked on the phone all the time. She was doing more interviews on the phone, and she talked to other people she called “survivors.” Every time she put down the phone for a second it started to ring again.

  At first I tried to spy on her and listen when she talked on the phone. It wasn’t real spying because she wasn’t trying to keep her talking a secret. She was talking loud on the phone, right in the kitchen or wherever in the house. She saw I was listening and she didn’t say I couldn’t. So it wasn’t technically spying, except it didn’t feel like a good thing to listen, but then it turned into that I didn’t want to listen anymore. All Mommy talked about was Charlie and his wife, and that it was their fault what happened. She said all the same things over and over again. It got boring to listen to, and it was starting to give me a mad feeling, too.

  The next morning, when I was waiting in the hallway for Daddy to come down and then we were going to do our school drive, I heard Mommy getting done with a phone call in the kitchen. Then she came in the hallway and she said, “OK, that was the last one for this morning,” and she smiled at me, but I didn’t smile back.

  “You’re not having very good sympathy,” I said to Mommy.

  Mommy’s smile went away, and she looked at me with a hard face, making her eyes small. Daddy came down the stairs behind me. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Mommy said, and her voice matched the hardness of her face.

  “It means that you are not trying to feel the sympathy for Charlie and his wife. You are not trying to feel their feelings with them,” I explained to her.

  “Damn right I’m not,” Mommy said.

  “Come on, Melissa,” Daddy said.

  “No, I’m not going to COME ON,” Mommy said, and she looked at us in a mad way. “Aren’t you two a great little team now? What feelings am I not feeling with them, Zach?” Mommy asked like she was making fun of me.

  I didn’t look at Mommy, and I didn’t give her an answer. I pretended like I had to tie my shoes again, even though they were tied good already.

  “Well, you’re right about one thing, Zach. I don’t give a damn about their feelings,” Mommy said, and then she went back in the kitchen. I kept looking at my shoes, but they looked all blurry from the tears that came in my eyes from how Mommy talked to me. Like she didn’t even love me anymore.

  “Let’s just go,” Daddy said, and we went.

  In the car on the way to school, we didn’t talk. But when Daddy pulled up in front of the school and kept the car running, I said, “That was a bad idea that I told Mommy about sympathy. I wanted to help her feel better and get happy again, but it made Mommy feel the opposite—mad. All of the stupid secrets are not working.”

  I looked out the window. There were kids walking in the front door of the school, and I could hear their voices coming through my window—yelling, laughing, and loud calling, and they were just going to have a regular day at school, and it was easy for them to walk inside.

  “Are you going in?” Daddy said, of course.

  “Not today,” I said, of course.

  “Got it,” Daddy said, and he drove away from the school. For a while it was quiet in the car, and then Daddy said, “You know, I think people have to be ready to let the secrets of happiness work. The time has to be right.”

  “And it’s not the right time for Mommy right now?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so, no,” Daddy answered.

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes, bud?”

  “I miss Mommy. The regular version of Mommy.”

  “Me too,” Daddy said, just as we got to our house again.

  Daddy walked me in the house, and right away Mommy was in the hallway and she still looked mad.

  “Oh, no!” she said in a loud voice. “Enough of this, Zach. You need to go to school. You’ve missed almost six weeks. Get in the car, I’m taking you this time.”

  I grabbed Daddy’s arm. “Daddy said I don’t have to go if I’m not ready.”

  “You’re ready,” Mommy said. “We need a little bit of separation here. Get in the car.”

  “Melissa, can I talk to you in the kitchen, please?” Daddy said. I could tell by his voice that he was starting to feel mad, too, but Mommy didn’t care.

  “No, I’m done talking. Let’s go, Zach,” Mommy said, and she grabbed my arm and started pulling me hard toward the door to the garage. I turned around to look at Daddy, but he just stood there and he wasn’t helping me.

  Mommy drove fast on the way back to the school, and she used the brakes hard. I started to feel carsick, and I never got carsick before with Mommy driving. I had mad tears on my face. Daddy should have helped me. He promised me I didn’t have to go if I wasn’t ready, but now Mommy was taking me anyway, and Daddy was breaking his promise.

  Mommy pulled up in front of the school, in the same spot where I was with Daddy a little while ago, in his car. She got out and opened my door. “Get out, come on, Zach,” she said.

  “I don’t want to go,” I said.

  “I understand that,” Mommy said. Her voice sounded like she was trying to make it more polite. “But it’s time. I’ll walk you inside.”

  “You’re trying to get rid of me!” I yelled at Mommy. “All you want to do is be on your stupid phone. You don’t even care about me anymore.”

  Some people in front of the school stopped and looked at us, and I turned my head so they couldn’t see my face. Mommy said very quiet, “Get out of the car, Zach, for the last time,” and I realized she wasn’t going to give up. She was going to make me go inside anyway. I got out of the car, and I was still feeling sick from the car ride. I noticed the people were still looking at me, so I put my head down and looked at my shoes. Mommy started to walk in front of me, and I followed her.

  When we got to the front door, there was a security guard waiting outside the door. It was a woman security guard and her name tag said MARIANA NELSON. She was pretty short, but like wide. She looked like a square almost, and her face was round like a ball.

  “Hi, can I help you?” she asked Mommy.

  “Yes, this is Zach Taylor. Today is his first day here. His first day after…um, McKinley,” Mommy told her.

  “I see,” the security guard said. “Welcome, Zach. Who’s your teacher, honey?”

  I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know and I didn’t want to talk.

  “Miss Russell, his teacher from McKinley,” Mommy said, and I looked up at her because I didn’t know Miss Russell was going to be my teacher here and at least that was good.

  “All right, my colleague Dave is inside. He can take you to the main office to sign you in and then show you to Miss Russell’s room,” the security guard said, and smiled at me.

  I grabbed Mommy’s arm. “You said you’re coming inside with me,” I said.

  “Could I please…he’s still…he’s nervous still. Could I go inside with him?” Mommy asked.

  “I’m afraid not. No parents are allowed inside the school during drop-off and pickup times,” the security guard said. “One of the new rules since…you know.”

  “You promised me!” I said to Mommy, and I held on to her arm tighter.

  “Don’t worry,” the security guard said. “We’ll take good care of you here.” She pressed the b
ell next to the door and the door buzzed open. “Dave?” she yelled inside.

  “Yeah?” A man security guard came, and he was like the opposite of the woman security guard, very tall and skinny.

  “Dave, can you help this young man Zach sign in and find Miss Russell’s room? Today is his first day,” the woman security guard told him.

  “Sure thing. Come on, champ,” the security guard Dave said to me, but I didn’t move.

  “Go ahead, Zach,” Mommy said. “Listen, I need you to be brave now. I’ll be here to pick you up, OK? OK, buddy?”

  I didn’t answer. I just shook my head no over and over again. Mommy gave me a hug, but I didn’t hug her back.

  “Sometimes it’s best to just rip off the Band-Aid, so to speak,” the woman security guard said to Mommy. “Two minutes later they’re happy as can be.”

  “Yeah…,” Mommy said, and then the woman security guard gave me a little push inside and the door closed behind me, and her and Mommy were outside and I was inside with Dave. I felt like I wanted to turn around and push the door back open and yell for Mommy, but then I saw lots of kids looking at me in the hallway, so I didn’t.

  “Come this way, champ,” the security guard Dave said, and started walking down the hallway, and I noticed that the hallway looked almost the same as at McKinley and it smelled the same, too. The security guard Dave walked into the main office on the right side of the hallway that also looked the same as at McKinley. “Claudia,” he said to an old lady with gray hair who looked up and gave us a smile. The security guy Dave put his hand on my shoulder and said, “This here is Zach—what’s your last name, champ?” he asked me.

  “Taylor,” I said in a very quiet voice.

  “Zach Taylor for Miss Russell’s class.”

  The old lady walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a red folder and looked at some papers inside. “Ah, yes,” she said, “Zach Taylor, I see. We’ve been waiting for you, Zach,” and she smiled at me again.

  “All right then, let’s get you to class,” Dave the security man said, and he walked back out in the hallway and turned right and he talked to me the whole time we walked down the hallway, but I didn’t say anything back. I had this scary feeling that something was behind me, behind my back in the hallway, and the feeling got bigger and bigger.