Only Child: A novel

by Rhiannon Navin

  We sat in the car for a long time and no one said anything and I didn’t know why we weren’t driving away. I stared out my window and all of a sudden I saw a big white cloud go up in the sky from behind the water tower. It was the balloons to remember. I watched them go really high up in the sky, and it looked like they were going to fly all the way up to heaven.

  [ 44 ]

  A Minute in the Spotlight

  ON THE DAY AFTER the memory ceremony, some news trucks came in the morning and they parked in front of our house, like when the LOCAL 4 news van came and parked in front of our house for the interview. I watched them from my window for a while, but nothing was happening and no one came out of the vans. They just stayed parked there. I was glad about that because I was definitely not going on an interview again. I was only wondering what they were doing there, and then it got boring to keep watching them.

  I went downstairs to find Mommy and to ask her why the vans were there in front of our house. She was in the family room, watching TV. I sat down next to her on the couch. It was like Mommy got famous or something, because on the TV she was watching herself. It was the news, and it was about the memory ceremony and the fight between Mommy and Charlie’s wife on the grass. I didn’t like that I was seeing it all again—how Mommy yelled, “Everyone, did you hear that? They’re suffering, too,” and then she did the witch laugh. And then she said the thing about how Charlie’s wife raised a monster, and Charlie’s wife fell down on the grass.

  Then the news showed me—I was right there on TV— I was walking behind Daddy on the grass. The TV like zoomed in and showed my face, and it was red all over. That was from Dexter’s camera when he was pointing it right at me, and he made it so that it got all the way close to my face like that. My face got burning hot when I watched my red face on the news. Tears came in my eyes. I really hated Dexter a lot because he did that to me.

  The news switched away from my face and it showed Miss Wanda. She was holding a microphone and she was talking to a woman and I noticed it was the woman who went over to Charlie’s wife yesterday and helped her get up from the ground.

  “I just think she’s taking it too far, that’s all,” the woman said to Miss Wanda. Right then, after she said that, the balloons to remember started to go up in the sky behind them, so that was when we were sitting in the car after we left the memory ceremony. On TV the woman and Miss Wanda turned around to look at the balloons. They made sad smiles, and then the woman kept talking: “I mean, I can’t imagine the pain she’s going through, and her family, losing her little boy like that. But I don’t see how this is going to help anybody, that’s all. It’s not going to bring her son back. And you have to feel bad for them, too, you know? I can see both sides, that’s all I’m saying.” Miss Wanda shook her head yes, and she was making a serious face.

  Mimi walked in the family room. I didn’t even know she was here. “Honey, why are you still watching this? They’re just going to show the same thing over and over.” Mommy kept staring at the TV and said: “Can you believe this, Mom? Fucking Michelle, anything for a minute in the spotlight, huh?” Mimi looked over at me, probably because of the F-word Mommy said.

  Mimi let out a long breath. “Maybe it would do you some good to take a step back, give it a little time? You’re so exhausted, honey.” Mommy looked down in her lap and didn’t say anything for a while, and I could see tears dripped from her eyes in her lap.

  “How can I give it time, though?” Mommy said. She wiped away her tears, but more kept dripping in her lap. “I AM exhausted, I really am. But what am I supposed to do —move on? Accept that their son did this to us?” Mommy made choking sounds like she was trying to hold in her crying, but it came out anyway. Her whole face got red dots on it.

  “I don’t know, honey,” Mimi said. Her voice came out shaky. “But I hate to see you wearing yourself down like this. It’s all so…hard already.”

  “It’s…it’s almost like they’re painting them as the victims now,” Mommy said, and pointed at the TV. “Look, they’re sensationalizing this one thing, this one particular situation. Like Mary is the victim here. Her son did this! I know it’s not bringing Andy back…what I’m doing. I know that! I don’t know what to do…,” Mommy said, and got up and walked in the kitchen fast. Mimi looked at me with a sad face and put her hand through my hair. Then she went in the kitchen after Mommy.

  I stayed on the couch and kept looking at the TV and it was commercials, but then the news came back on. It wasn’t about Mommy and Charlie’s wife anymore. It showed a cemetery at nighttime—it was dark and hard to see, but it looked like the cemetery where we went for Andy’s funeral. I recognized the road inside the cemetery where all the people parked who came for Andy’s funeral and where Daddy and Mimi had to hold up Mommy on the sides and put her in our car because she couldn’t stand up anymore from the heavy sadness blanket.

  Now only one car was parked there on the road, and a man was walking to it. The TV zoomed in and I could see the man was Charlie and Charlie took keys from his pocket and tried to open the car door, but then he dropped the keys on the ground.

  “Charlie, can we talk to you for a second? Charlie?” I heard a voice say, or maybe it was two voices, the second “Charlie” sounded like from a different voice. A man walked up next to where Charlie was bending down to pick up his keys and he was holding a microphone, so he was from the news. A light was shining on him and it made the darkness around him get lighted up. When Charlie stood back up, the man from the news pointed the microphone at him. Charlie blinked his eyes because the light was pointing right in his face. He looked even more old than when I saw him when he came to our house and Mommy talked to him in a mean way. All the bones in his face were sticking out and his eyes had dark all around them.

  “Charlie, would you like to comment on the allegations that are being made against you and your wife? By some of the victims’ families?” the man from the news asked. Charlie didn’t say anything. He just turned his head very slow away from the light and looked at the man like he was trying to figure out who was talking to him. Then he turned around and opened his car door and he didn’t drop the keys this time. He sat down in the car and closed the door.

  Charlie’s car started to drive away very slow, and the man from the news talked in the microphone: “Every evening, Charlie Ranalez, the father of Charles Ranalez Jr., the McKinley shooter, can be seen visiting his son’s grave. Not a day has gone by that he hasn’t—”

  “Zach?” Mimi called from the kitchen. I didn’t answer her. I wanted to hear what the man from the news was saying about Charlie. But then Mimi came in the family room and she picked up the remote from where Mommy left it on the couch and she turned off the TV, right in the middle of what I wanted to listen to.

  “Your dad is here to pick you up for breakfast. Let’s get you ready to go, OK?” Mimi said. I forgot that it was breakfast-at-the-diner day with Daddy today. Every Sunday now he picks me up and we go to the diner and have breakfast. It was like a new/old tradition and it used to be me and Andy and Mommy and Daddy, all of us going, but now it was down to me and Daddy.

  “Front door!” I heard the lady robot voice say in the kitchen, and then the front door got slammed loud. “Goodness,” Mimi said, and we went in the kitchen. Daddy came walking in from the hallway. He had a mad look on his face.

  “Did they hound you, too, when you came in?” Mimi asked Daddy.

  “It’s ridiculous, the whole damn thing,” Daddy said. “Totally getting blown out of proportion.”

  Then Daddy made his voice quiet and said to Mimi, “Has he been out there yet?”

  “Not yet,” Mimi said.

  “Jeez. OK,” Daddy said.

  He came over to me and said, “You know what, Zach? I think maybe it’s best if we skip the diner today, OK?”

  I didn’t know why Daddy didn’t want to go get breakfast all of a s
udden. I didn’t get to see him this whole week except for at the memory ceremony. Why did he even come to the house if he didn’t want to go with me? I could feel the mad feeling starting out in my belly and tears came in my eyes.

  “Here, let me show you something,” Daddy said, and he went to the front window and moved the curtain to the side a little. I saw the news vans that were still parked there in front of our house, and now some people were there, too, one with a camera and one with a microphone. They were standing next to one of the vans and were looking at our house. I recognized the man with the microphone, it was the man that I saw on the news, the one that was talking to Charlie at the cemetery.

  Daddy let go of the curtain and turned around to me. “See those guys out there?” he asked. “They’re trying to get us to talk to them and they’re being a little pushy about it. That’s why I thought you should probably stay here today. Do you understand?” Daddy asked.

  “OK,” I said, and I thought about how Charlie was blinking his eyes in the light that got pointed at him at the cemetery and how his face looked—old and sad and scared.

  [ 45 ]

  Do Something

  AFTER DADDY LEFT, I went upstairs, and when I walked down the hallway I heard sounds coming from inside Andy’s room, crying sounds, but they sounded like they were far away or like underwater. I stopped walking and listened to the sounds and I didn’t know what they were. “Uhuu, uhuhuhu,” like ghost sounds, they gave me goose bumps.

  Then it was quiet for a while and I went closer to the door of Andy’s room and peeked inside. No one was there. I thought maybe it was just my imagination that I heard the sounds, but right when I was thinking that, they started again. My eyes followed where they were coming from. It was Andy’s top bunk.

  I could see the back of Mommy’s head—her hair was spread out all over Andy’s pillow. I tiptoed inside the room and closer to the bed to see what Mommy was doing up there, but I couldn’t really see her, she was up too high, so I climbed up the first couple steps of the ladder very quiet.

  Mommy was lying under Andy’s blanket, and her whole self was shaking a lot. She was holding Andy’s pillow with her hands and pressing it against her face. She was making crying sounds inside the pillow—that’s why they sounded far away before. I watched Mommy, how she was lying there crying, and it made a big lump come in my throat.

  Then I climbed all the way up the ladder and onto Andy’s bed and I lay down next to Mommy. Mommy let go of the pillow and she looked at me. Her face was red and wet all over, and the insides of her eyes were red, too. I put my hand out and touched her face. It was very hot and sweaty. Her hair was wet and sticking to her face from sweat, or from tears, I didn’t know which.

  “Are you OK, Mommy?” I said, and my words came out like a whisper.

  A lot of wrinkles came on Mommy’s face. She lifted up Andy’s blanket and I lay down under it next to her. Mommy put her arm around me and pulled me close, and we put our foreheads together.

  It was very hot under the blanket because I could feel all the hotness coming off of Mommy’s body. She had her eyes shut tight and was breathing in and out fast. Her breath came right in my face, but I didn’t move away. Tears kept running down Mommy’s face, and she just let them run over her nose and drip into Andy’s pillow.

  “Mommy?” I whispered.

  “Yes?” Mommy said, but she kept her eyes closed.

  “Are you crying because of the news?” I asked. “Because of how Miss Wanda and the other lady were talking about you?”

  Mommy opened her eyes and did a little sad smile. “No, sweetie, that doesn’t matter. I’m…I miss your brother so much, you know? I miss him so so much.” She hugged me tighter and we didn’t say anything. I listened to Mommy making quiet crying sounds and I thought about Charlie on the news again.

  “Are you still going to be mad about Charlie?” I asked.

  Mommy let a breath come long and slow out her nose. “Ugh, Zach,” she said, and her voice didn’t sound mad, just very tired. “I don’t want to be…but it’s his fault that Andy isn’t here with us anymore.”

  “But I think he feels really bad about that,” I told Mommy.

  “Maybe, “Mommy said.

  “He does. I know that. And he feels sad, too, like us.”

  “Yeah?” Mommy said. She moved her head back on the pillow a little bit and then our foreheads weren’t touching anymore. “How?”

  “He’s my friend. I’m his best buddy. And you’re his friend, too, aren’t you? He did the sack race with you,” I said.

  “That was a long, long time ago,” Mommy said.

  “We are his favorites at school,” I said.

  “Oh, Zach, he says that to everybody,” Mommy said, and she closed her eyes again and I thought that that wasn’t true. He didn’t say that to everybody, just us.

  Mommy’s breathing went in and out slow, and I could tell she was falling asleep. I kept lying very still next to her. I liked lying here with Mommy and we didn’t do that in a long time, not after Mommy got poked with the stick.

  After a while it got too hot under the blanket and I got up slow to not wake up Mommy and I climbed back down the ladder. I went downstairs and Mimi was making dinner in the kitchen. It was going to be spaghetti with red sauce, and Mimi let me help make the salad—spin the lettuce in the salad spinner and cut the cucumbers. When we were almost done making dinner, Mommy came downstairs again, too, and her hair was messy on the one side and her eyes looked red and puffy all around. She sat down on a barstool and put her chin on her hands on the counter and watched me and Mimi make dinner, making a sad smile.

  We sat down at the table in the dining room and started eating dinner, but nobody talked. Mommy didn’t eat anything again, all she did was move her fork around in the spaghetti. The phone rang in the kitchen and Mommy got up to answer it. After a few minutes, she came back in the dining room.

  “OK, the Eatons are still coming tomorrow with the lawyer,” Mommy said when she sat back down at the table.

  Mimi made her lips in a thin line and then she said, “Honey, I’m wondering…have you thought more about what we talked about…to maybe start thinking about this in a different way? Instead of focusing on Charlie and Mary? This group I mentioned to you—MOMS DEMAND ACTION—they’re really doing some important things. Use your voice, get involved to try and prevent—”

  “I know…I mean, I want to,” Mommy said. “But not now. I don’t want to think about that now.”

  “Who’s coming?” I asked.

  “Oh,” Mommy said. “Um, the Eatons, remember? Juliette’s parents?”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  Mommy looked over at Mimi and Mimi pulled up her eyebrows high.

  “Why are they coming with a lawyer?” I asked.

  “Well, sweetie, it’s…we planned to talk to him about the next steps with…the Ranalezes, Charlie and his wife, to schedule a court date,” Mommy said.

  “You’re going to go in court with Charlie?” I asked, and my stomach started to feel bad and I knew what that meant from Daddy’s work, going in court. It means that there’s going to be a judge and he decides who’s right, and the other person gets punished and has to go in jail. So Mommy was trying to do that—put Charlie in jail. When me and Daddy went to the diner and we had milkshakes on the first day of snow, Daddy said that Charlie didn’t have to go in jail, so he didn’t say the truth about that.

  I started to feel hot all over and I got up fast from my chair. My knees were shaking a lot. “But you said you don’t want to be mad at Charlie anymore,” I said, and my voice came out loud, but it was shaking, too. “Earlier you said that, when we were lying down in Andy’s bed. That’s what you said!”

  “Zach, honey, calm down. I did not—” Mommy started to say.

  “Yes, you DID!” I yelled at Mommy, and then we stared at e
ach other. I was feeling very mad at her. When we lay in Andy’s bed together it was nice, but I was wrong—it wasn’t going to get better. It was going to get worse now. Now Mommy was going to try to make Charlie go in jail, and that was making everything even worse.

  “Zach, can you please come here? We’re just…this is just to talk about possible steps,” Mommy said, and she tried to take my hand, but I ripped it away from her.

  “Leave me alone!” I yelled, and I ran out of the dining room and upstairs. I really wished I could go in my hideout and talk to Andy about it, but I wasn’t going in there anymore.

  I didn’t know why I stopped feeling like Andy was in the hideout. A few times after I noticed that the feeling stopped, I went in Andy’s room and I looked at the empty top bunk and I thought I was going to check the hideout again, but then I didn’t because I knew it was changed inside, and I didn’t want to feel again that Andy was gone from there because it was like someone put a fist in my stomach.

  So I went in my room instead and closed the door. I sat down on my chair and my breathing was going in and out fast and my stomach hurt a lot. Everything was getting worse and worse all the time, and it was giving me a big scared feeling. I felt like maybe I had to throw up, so I went in the bathroom fast and sat down in front of the toilet. The floor was really cold under my legs and my stomach felt bad, but nothing was coming out, only tears, tears, and more tears.

  I heard a knock on my bedroom door, and I got up fast to lock my bathroom door and Andy’s.

  “Zach?” I heard Mommy call in my bedroom. Then she knocked on the bathroom door. “Zach, are you in there? Can I come in?” Mommy said.

  I didn’t feel like talking to Mommy, so I said through the door, “I’m going to the bathroom.”

  “OK, honey. I just wanted to…make sure you’re OK,” Mommy said.

  “Mhmm” was all I said back, and then I heard Mommy go back out of my room and close the door.