Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee

by Mary G. Thompson

  “You acted to protect Lola and Barbie,” Dr. Kayla says. “I can see that.”

  “You can?” I look up at her, and I try to find the hate in her face, but it isn’t there. Her eyes are wet, and she grabs a tissue from her desk.

  “Amy, now that you’ve told me about the girls, I can see why you did everything. You were faced with the most difficult choices, and you always did what you thought would protect them.”

  “I did.” It’s true. It really is.

  “You will have to learn to forgive yourself,” she says. “You acted solely out of love.”

  I reach out and take a tissue from the box and watch Dr. Kayla dab her eyes. This is the first time she’s cried in front of me. I’m pretty sure she’s not supposed to. She’s supposed to be objective and distant. But now I can tell she doesn’t hate me, not just from her words. I can tell that she cares about me as a person.

  “There’s one very important thing that you haven’t recognized, Amy,” Dr. Kayla says. “You told me that Dee was coming for you and the girls. You have a right to protect yourself, too.”

  I stare at her. Never in all this time did I once think of that.

  “When we’re in danger, we act to protect ourselves,” she says, “and that’s okay. It is okay to survive.”

  “I don’t know if that’s true,” I say.

  “It is true,” she says. “It’s not just okay, it’s good. Amy, it’s good that you’re here today, that you’re alive, and that you will be able to live a long, full life.”

  I let the tears fill my eyes. It’s good that I’m here. It doesn’t feel good.

  “It’s good that you’re here because you deserve a life like anyone else,” she says. “But also, there are many people who love you and are very glad that you came back.”

  “I keep thinking about it,” I say. “I want to stop thinking about it. But I don’t want to forget her. Even the bad times, I don’t want to forget, because sometimes they were all we had.” Even when she was screaming, even when she was drinking soap, even that last minute, when she was pulling out Barbie’s hair. That was all Dee, and I’ll never be able to see her again.

  “We’ll work on helping you deal with this,” Dr. Kayla says. “We’ll keep working until we have a solution.”

  I swallow and wipe my eyes and blow my nose, and then I stare out the window and watch the people walking across the parking lot and the trees across the street swaying in the wind and a man walking his dog down the sidewalk. And then I tell Dr. Kayla all the details—about the dress, and about the wedding, and about what happened when Kyle told her. I tell her more about the girls, more about Stacie, everything I’ve been afraid to tell. I know that here in this room alone with Dr. Kayla, I’m safe. He can’t hurt me, and neither can anybody else.

  • • •

  There is a street in Grey Wood that separates the town from the country. On one side of the street, there are blocks divided into neat squares, and houses all lined up in rows, and spots at regular intervals for parks and schools. On the other side of the street, grass grows long, and buildings look like they were dropped there, and there’s a sign to the freeway and then a two-lane road that goes into the trees, where there are houses with land attached and sheep and cows.

  Kyle James Parsons grew up out there, past the edges of the neat squares, in a small house with a lot of land attached. This is what the police tell me, and what I learn from the paper as the days go by. When his parents were alive, he lived fifteen minutes from where we lived. He grew up here and went to Grey Wood High School, home of the Otters. But after ninth grade, he dropped out. He worked at the Toy Castle in Portland until seven years ago, when they fired him, and that’s the last job he ever had. They tell me that he spent time in foster care because his parents are dead, and I just nod. That was one thing he told me.

  The newspaper says his sister, Felicity, died of the flu at age seven, when Kyle was nine. And when Kyle was ten, his parents died of accidental poisoning. The paper doesn’t say what they were poisoned with or how exactly it happened. It doesn’t say that Kyle was suspected. It doesn’t give me any clues about how Kyle the doll-loving parent murderer came to be Kyle the kidnapper and rapist and father and man-child. But what can a reporter tell me? I’m the person who knows Kyle best in the world, and I can’t explain how he came to be. All I can explain is that it’s good for him to be in jail, and it would be better if the police had killed him.

  The fact that Kyle is in jail and I came back with two children is all over the papers and the TV, too. There are pictures of me getting out of the car in our driveway, but the newspaper has blocked out the kids’ faces. I suppose I should be grateful that someone is trying to protect the girls, but when I see their little bodies without faces, I think of dolls. That’s why, when Aunt Hannah comes over with papers to apply for birth certificates for the girls, I tell her to put down Barbie’s name as Barbara. Aunt Hannah says that Lola is short for Dolores, so we put that down for her. Dolores and Barbara Springfield, because that was Dee’s last name.

  “We don’t have to put these names down at all,” Aunt Hannah says.

  “I don’t want to confuse them,” I say. In front of me is a lined sheet of paper with space for me to write out my affidavit, since I’m the only person besides Kyle who knows when they were born and who their parents are. Whatever I write here will be the truth as far as the world knows. All the things Kyle did to make them and the pain they caused Dee and the moments when I washed the blood off of them and they first cried and looked up at me, all boil down to this little piece of paper. And I’m about to tell the world they aren’t mine, that they’re more related to Aunt Hannah than me. But I write the truth. I’m not sure of the exact dates, but I write what I remember. And how I know who the parents are. Then I push the paper back across the table.

  “We have to take it to a notary,” Aunt Hannah says.

  “Okay.”

  “Amy . . .” She sets her hands on the papers. It’s as if her hands want to ball into fists and crumple the papers up, but the papers are too important, so she smoothes them and smoothes them.

  “You want them,” I say. Right now, the girls are with my mom and dad. They are at the park a few blocks from our house, playing on the slide and the jungle gym. They went for the first time a few days ago, and they loved it. It was an amazing new thing. Life is a series of amazing new things for them now. Maybe it won’t be so bad for them. Maybe they’ll enjoy new things and not miss the old things.

  “I want what’s best for them,” she says. She smoothes and smoothes. “I know what it takes to raise children. I have a stable home to give them. You need to go to high school and then to college. You deserve to have your own life.”

  “I know what it takes, too,” I say. “After five years, I know.”

  She nods.

  “Teenagers have kids all the time,” I say.

  “There’s another way we could do it,” she says.

  I wait.

  “You could come live with us. That way, the kids would still have you, but I would be their legal guardian.”

  “What about my mom and Jay?” I ask. I don’t know if I can leave my mom again, after what I did, trying to go back. But what Aunt Hannah is offering is the best thing I could imagine. She’s not going to take them away from me. I can’t process this fully. She’s giving me a way to be with them.

  “We live in the same town,” she says. “You and the girls could come over whenever you want. Even stay here some nights.”

  “Yes,” I say. All of a sudden, the tension breaks. I burst into a smile and into tears. “Yes yes yes yes.”

  Aunt Hannah reaches one hand out and takes one of mine. Our hands lay clasped on the cold table. “I’m sorry for how I treated you when I didn’t know,” she says.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. I w
anted to.”

  “I know. They are precious. They’re lucky to have you.”

  I guess they’re lucky to have Aunt Hannah, too. She’s changed since I came back with the girls. It seems like she’s gained weight in just a few days, and her cheeks are a better color, and the way she sits—even though she’s nervous, she’s sitting taller. The girls have given her something to live for in place of Dee. They’ve given her a new hope. And now that I know I’m going to live with them, I have hope, too.

  “I’m going to work through my issues,” I say. “I’m working with Dr. Kayla.”

  “I know. I’m seeing somebody, too,” she says. “When you lose a child . . . but I guess you understand that now.” She looks up, right into my eyes. “Please, tell me what happened to my baby.”

  “Dee fell and hit her head,” I say. I’ve thought about this every minute since I came back from seeing Dr. Kayla, about whether I should tell Aunt Hannah the truth. But I’m not ready, and she’s not ready. I just can’t.

  I realize that my story is a little different now than what I told the girls. In the car, I didn’t think of the fact that someone may actually look at her body, that there’s a way to tell whether she really drowned. So she was at the river, a place that even as Stacie she sometimes liked. Sometimes she got a chance to wade in it and feel the cold water on her feet, and if she was like me, she thought about our river, and Grey Wood, and maybe she remembered all the people who loved her. And she slipped while she was wading and hit her head.

  “She was wading in the river,” I say, “like we used to do all the time, and she slipped and fell. She hit her head on a rock, and then she went under the water. We pulled her out, but it was too late.” I imagine this. She is falling, and I am screaming, and Kyle is running down the bank. He jumps in to save her. He swims to the middle of the river, and the water is rushing all around him, and he pulls her out and carries her back to shore. He gives her mouth-to-mouth, he compresses her chest, he does everything, but nothing works. Dee lies there, her hair matted to her face, her blue eyes open to the sky.

  In this version, Dee never did anything wrong. In this version, she never would have hurt her precious girls. The second before she fell, maybe she was even happy.

  “You’re not telling me everything,” Aunt Hannah says.

  “It was an accident,” I say. “Nobody killed her. It just happened.” There are so many problems with this story. I didn’t think of them until it was too late. If she died in the river, then why did I leave? I’m sure Aunt Hannah is going to call me on it, but she doesn’t. Instead, she gets up from the table and grabs her papers. I’m afraid she’s going to take back her offer. She’s going to tell me that she’s taking the girls and I can’t see them.

  But she wraps her arms around my shoulders. “It’s all right, Amy,” she says. “I can wait. I have two beautiful girls to focus on now. That’s what Dee would want from us.” She leaves the house, and for a few minutes, I’m alone. I’m alone, and I am home. Kyle is in jail, and the girls are safe.

  I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong or who I am or what will happen. All I know is that it’s over. I feel like bursting into tears, and I do, but also, I smile. It is actually, for real, finally over.

  IT’S A CLEAR, warm night in June, warmer than average. I’m standing on the porch in the back of Ben’s house, leaning on the cracked wooden railing. Empty and half-empty beer bottles litter the cheap outdoor furniture. I’m staring out at the overgrown backyard and up at the clusters of yellow stars. I’m remembering how I used to look up at those stars with Lola and Barbie, and how we made up our own names for the constellations. I see one we called the silly snake, one we called the donkey’s ear. Even now, I don’t know their real names. I don’t need to know them because our names are just fine.

  I take a long swig of my beer. It’s a little warm, but it still tastes good. It tastes like freedom.

  “Wooooooooooo!” Kara slaps me on the back. One of her giant pumpkins knocks into me, too, pressing me against the railing. She’s completely wasted.

  “Graduates!” Christina is even worse. She wraps one arm around me. “We’re gradutates!” She bursts out laughing.

  “We thought it would never happen,” Kara says. She lifts her beer. “To miracles!”

  “To miracles!” Christina and I say together. We raise our beers, and then we drink.

  There’s a crash behind us, and laughter. Marco is coming through the sliding glass door, carrying Lee in his arms. One of the plastic end tables has overturned, sending beer bottles every which way. Marco spins Lee around.

  “Stop!” she squeals.

  He puts her down clumsily, and she falls into his arms. Her hair is flying around her face, which is flush with the activity and probably with the beer, and with love, too. In the last two years, she and Marco have broken up and gotten back together about ten million times. But this year, they got back together just in time for senior prom, and they’ve been together ever since. This time, it seems like it just might last. Behind them, more kids from our school are hanging around in Ben’s living room. They’re listening to the music, or dancing, or lying on the couches. Ben disappeared a while ago with some sophomore girl. It’s basically just another party. But this one is special because we’re celebrating the end of an era. In a couple months, we’ll all be going off to college. We’ll be moving on from Grey Wood and the Fighting Turkeys and each other.

  Even me. I’m only going to Portland, but still. For the first time, I’ll be living on my own. I’ll be coming back every weekend to see the girls, but Monday through Friday, I’ll be living like a regular eighteen-year-old college freshman. A college freshman who only went to two years of high school and still hasn’t caught up to ninth grade math, but still . . . I’ll be out there, past the edge of our little town. I don’t know how I feel about it yet. I know that if Dee were here, she would be ready to jump into life. If she had had the life she deserved, she would be ready now to break away from her parents, to stay up late, to go to parties, to meet boys. In another life, she’s already out there doing that. But I have a feeling the other me, the one who never was kidnapped, would still be a little different. I think she would miss our little town the way I will.

  Kara climbs up on the railing and sits there, swinging her legs. Christina climbs up next to her. The whole thing creaks like it’s ready to come down.

  “Bail!” Christina yells, and they jump, rolling on the grass together. Whatever they were fighting about when I first got back, they got over it a long time ago.

  I take one more drink of my beer, and that’s the last of it, so I set the bottle down on the plastic end table that’s still standing. I turn and brush past Lee and Marco, who are now making out on a lawn chair. Inside, I look for Vinnie and find him sitting on the floor, leaning up against his boyfriend’s legs. Connor is passed out in a full upright sitting position, his head lolling back over the top of the headrest. Vinnie is playing a game on his phone.

  “Hey,” he says. “You ready to go?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’ve got a long day tomorrow. Need to get a good night’s sleep.”

  Vinnie gets up and hits Connor on the arm. “Connor. Hey! Wake up, dude.”

  Connor opens his eyes.

  “Time to go.” Vinnie helps Connor off the couch, but pretty soon it’s clear he wasn’t really passed out, just asleep. He lopes along next to us as we head for Vinnie’s car. My dad bought it for him after I stole and wrecked his old one. He says I did him a favor, because the Kia my dad got him is actually big enough for him to fit into, but I’m pretty sure he’s just being nice. He’s never gotten angry at me in all this time. Not once.

  I get in the backseat, and as we head toward my house, the silence stretches.

  “So you’re really going to do this?” Vinnie finally asks.

 
“Yep,” I say.

  “Dr. Kayla—”

  “I know what Dr. Kayla said.” I keep my voice calm. I will not let anyone sway me from my goal, and I will not give anyone an excuse to call me crazy. I’m doing this because I know it’s what I need, for me. Not for Dr. Kayla or for Vinnie or Lee or Mom or Dad or Aunt Hannah or Barbie or Lola or anyone else. They don’t have to understand.

  Vinnie brings the car to a screeching stop in front of my house. I get out of the car and hover next to his window. Maybe I do need him to understand, a little.

  “You sure you don’t want me to drive you?” he asks.

  “She wants to visit a man in prison, not risk death, Vins,” Connor says.

  “Ha ha,” Vinnie says.

  “Good point, Connor,” I say. I lean on the window frame. “This is something I have to do myself. Every thing that I do by myself, every choice I make, that’s freedom. I don’t want to be free just because they locked him up. I want to be free because I can face him, and then I can walk away again. I could have walked away all those years, but I didn’t know it. I know it now. I’m going to go, and then I’m going to come back.” I slap my hands on the window frame.

  “Amy, he’ll say things,” Vinnie says. “Whatever he said to you before, stuff you haven’t even told us. All that shit he made up about you killing Dee. He’ll do anything to hurt you.”

  “But he can’t hurt me,” I say. “I know it’s true, but I need to prove it to myself. By myself.”

  “We’re all here for you,” he says. “Me, Connor, Lee, Kara, Christina, your family.”

  “I know,” I say. “That’s why I know I can do it alone.”

  Vinnie sighs. “Not gonna change the lady’s mind.” He turns to Connor. “She rejected all this. Mistake after mistake.”

  “Total idiot,” Connor whispers, and then he gives Vinnie a big, sloppy wet kiss.

  “See you later!” I call, stepping away from the car.