Strange but True

by John Searles

  “Can I help you?” Philip asks, interrupting her thoughts.

  Charlene looks up from those bursts of purple at her son’s thin face and tired eyes. She wonders if all mothers see the same sort of time lapse when they stare at their child. In her mind, Philip is a pucker-faced newborn with his arms stretched toward the sky, and then he is a toddler with chocolate cake smeared on his face at a birthday party, and then he is a sulky, brooding junior high student standing apart from the other kids when she picks him up at school one afternoon, and then he is a waiter who takes classes on the side and comes home late at night, smelling of marinara sauce and garlic, and now here he is, this twenty-seven-year-old man with a broken leg lying in the sofa bed and asking if he can help her. “Help me? No. I just wanted to talk.”

  “Well, don’t you think it’s a little early for one of our wonderful mother-son chats?”

  Charlene glances at the hands of the clock, automatically doing the math to determine the correct time. “It’s quarter after nine,” she says, then tries a joke to lighten the mood. “In New York, people may just be waking up, but here in Radnor, we’ve been awake for hours.”

  “Very funny,” Philip tells her, running his hand over the wrinkled sheets until he locates the remote control.

  When he presses the Power button, Judge Judy bursts to life on the screen, shouting from the bench, “Stop lying to me! You look me in the eyes and tell your story one more time. I want to know, did you, or did you not, mail the check?”

  “Philip, can you turn that off?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Philip, can you please turn that off?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to talk about last night. Besides, I hate that lady.”

  “Hate her?” Philip says. “You are her.”

  Charlene can’t help but feel insulted by this comparison. As much as she wants to rage against all those people on her list, her behavior would be perfectly justified, whereas Judy Shienling, or Shinklin, or Shitface, whatever her name is, obviously bursts into those random tirades simply for higher ratings. With that thought, Charlene adds Judy’s name to her list, right between Martha Stewart and Dr. Laura, surprised she never thought of it before.

  “Listen to her,” Philip says. “Yelling all the time. Doesn’t she sound familiar?”

  “I don’t yell all the time,” Charlene tells him, making her voice quiet and gentle to prove her point. “Now can you please turn off this nonsense so we can talk about last night?”

  Philip pushes the Power button again and the room goes quiet. “What about it?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what about it?’ That girl comes here and claims she is pregnant with Ronnie’s baby five years after he died, and you have nothing to say?”

  “I have something to say all right. You didn’t need to freak out like that. She is obviously pretty messed up. And the last thing she needed was you screaming at her.”

  Charlene is about to raise her voice, but she stops herself. Count to ten, she thinks. When she gets to three, she says, “Well, what about me? What about what I need, huh? I mean, the nerve of her. She gets herself knocked up with some other guy, then comes stalking around pointing her finger at my dead son. As far as I’m concerned, I let her off easy. What does she expect us to believe, that she has the womb of a sea turtle?”

  Philip cocks his head. “A what?”

  “A sea turtle. I read once that they carry their babies for years and years before giving birth.”

  “M, I think that’s a certain type of elephant. And it’s not years and years. It’s twenty-two months.”

  “Fine, an elephant. Whatever. Anyway, my point is that it’s just not possible.”

  “Well, it’s not totally im possible,” he tells her.

  Despite the fact that he stayed behind in the car last night, Charlene never thought for a second that Philip—Mr. I-Don’t-Believe-in-God-Anymore—would buy Melissa’s line of bull. “Don’t tell me you are crazy enough to believe her.”

  “I’m not saying I believe her. But I thought about it a lot last night. And I realized there’s a small, very small, possibility that what she said is true.”

  Charlene doesn’t want to ask the question, but her mouth opens and out come the words: “And what would that be?”

  “Well, if Ronnie’s sperm had been frozen for some reason before, or even right after he died, then Melissa could have impregnated herself all these years later and that would make it his baby.”

  Charlene lets loose a high-pitched cackle that sends a message, loud and clear: you are being ridiculous. “I hardly think that was the scenario she was spelling out for us, Philip. For Christ’s sake, the girl hasn’t even been to a doctor in nine months. Besides, you know as well as I do that Ronnie never would have thought to freeze his sperm. He was a teenager with his whole life ahead of him.”

  Philip is quiet a moment, and she wonders if he is going to turn on the TV again and put an end to this conversation. But then he asks in a soft voice, “What if someone took it from his body afterward?”

  The only response Charlene can think of is, “You saw that limousine. You know what shape your brother’s body was in when they pulled him out.”

  Philip closes his eyes, as though changing a channel in his mind and ridding himself of the image of that mangled wreck and Ronnie’s body. When he opens them again, he tells her, “Well, I’m not saying it happened. I’m just saying that it’s a remote possibility, however unlikely. I thought I should mention it, that’s all.”

  “So you think Ronnie froze his sperm, and then what? Oh, wait, I get it. Melissa kept it in her freezer next to the Ben & Jerry’s until she finally decided it was time to have a baby. Then she just defrosted a batch and shoved it up her hoo-hoo and presto, she got pregnant. That makes perfect sense, Philip. I’m surprised I didn’t think of it sooner.”

  He stares at her without speaking until finally, he says, “You need to get a grip.”

  “No, you do. You’re the one who believes her.”

  “You see, that’s the problem with you, M. You exaggerate everything. Did you even hear what I just said? I do not—repeat, do not—believe her. I just wanted to tell you that these things happen in the world. I’ve read about it in the paper and seen it on TV.”

  Charlene has had enough of this twaddle, so she stands up from the bed. “Yeah, well, watching too much TV will make your brain rot.”

  “You should know,” Philip says.

  As she walks out of the room, Charlene says beneath her breath, “No, you should know.”

  “You should,” he calls after her.

  “You should,” she says back, managing to get the last word as she cuts through the dining room and foyer again, then heads into the messy, pea-soup-smeared kitchen, where she grabs two Diet Cokes and a box of SnackWell’s.

  For the rest of the morning, Charlene lies upstairs in bed, flipping channels and staring at the television, letting her brain rot the way she had just warned Philip. From nine-thirty to ten-thirty, she loses herself in an infomercial that features a contraption called “Mister Magic Dicer,” which chops vegetables into exactly ninety-nine different shapes and sizes. Charlene becomes so entranced by all the frantic dicing on the screen that the colors actually start to look pretty and the vegetables seem like works of art to her. She especially likes the bright orange carrots shaped like rosebuds, sitting atop a bed of shredded zucchini that resembles mowed grass. Finally, she picks up the phone and orders a Mister Magic Dicer with her American Express for $19.95, plus shipping and handling. When she hangs up, Charlene flips to the higher channels—88, 89, 90, 91—numbers that she thinks of as no-man’s-land because she never knows what she’ll find up here.

  Today, she stumbles upon back-to-back reruns of The Jenny Jones Show. The first topic is “HELP! MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER IS A SLUT!” For half an hour, Charlene watches as a pack of young girls, dripping in makeup and jewelry, parade around in short skirts and skimpy
tops. Every time they mouth off to their mothers, the audience erupts into a chorus of cheers and boos, which only encourages them more. By the end of the show, no one seems to have learned a thing from the experience. As much as Dr. Phil annoys Charlene, she decides that at least he tries to help people. So for that reason, she takes him off her list and puts Jenny Jones in his place instead.

  The topic of the second show is “HELP! MY WOMAN IS A CHEATIN’ HO!” Charlene finishes the last of her soda and cookies, tosses the empty containers onto the floor because the wastebasket is too full, then makes herself even more comfortable by folding an extra pillow beneath her neck as she watches. There is a white couple, a Hispanic couple, and a couple of mixed ethnicity. All three of the men recount stories of how they caught their girlfriend cheating—one in a public rest room, one in their very own home, and another at a motel. Finally, the skinny white guy with a shaved head announces that he suspects their baby is not even his. The audience shrieks, and Jenny says in a perky voice, “When we come back after this commercial break, we’ll have the results from the paternity test, which will tell us if the baby belongs to Jared or to some other guy. So stay tuned.”

  Charlene presses the Mute button and wonders what has become of the world. Eventually, her thoughts return to Philip downstairs, who she figures is probably reading more of that damn biography right now. She doesn’t understand why he is so interested in Anne Sexton anyway. The only reason the woman got so much attention was that she had the stupidity and courage to do herself in. The same goes for Sylvia Plath, who he also had been reading about. Take Robert Frost, on the other hand. Charlene considers that man to have been a poet through and through. He knew how to string a few words together, and he didn’t have to fumigate himself in a sealed garage or stick his head in the oven to prove it.

  She toys with the idea of sharing these thoughts with Philip but decides that it will only lead to another argument. It’s been years since the two of them were even remotely close, but their bickering has been nonstop since he came home one month ago. Other than what the police officer told Charlene when he called to say that Philip was in St. Vincent’s hospital, she doesn’t know the details of how he ended up going over the edge of that fourth-floor fire escape. And she’s not sure she wants to know either, since what little she has gathered leads her to believe that it’s not the kind of thing a mother wants to hear about her son. As a result, there have been so many times during these last weeks when she finds herself staring at him, and after seeing that time lapse in her mind, wondering how someone so smart could get himself caught up in such a mess. She blames it on the fact that he moved to New York in the first place. She still remembers when he called, as sirens wailed behind him, to tell her he was in the city.

  “But I thought you were working at the Olive Garden last night,” Charlene remembers saying, “and then, I don’t know, you didn’t come home.” They’d had another one of their arguments the day before. In the midst of it all, the most horrible statement possible had sprung from her mouth, and Philip grabbed his apron and tore out of the house for the restaurant.

  “I was, Ma. But I hate that place. I hate my life in Pennsylvania. I hate living with you and fighting all the time. You’re just too mean now. That’s why … that’s why I’m not coming back.”

  First Ronnie, then Richard, and now Philip, Charlene had thought as a line of dominoes toppled over in her mind. And since she didn’t know what to say—the words she had shouted at him the day before were far too cruel for a simple apology, after all—Charlene just slammed down the phone. Over the years, they hardly spoke to each other until that officer called to tell her that Philip had been found in an alley, barely breathing but alive.

  As soon as he gets better, she knows he will leave again too. He all but said so to Melissa last night: in a few more weeks, I’ll be good as new. Someday soon, she could walk downstairs and find him gone. Once more, this big old house will be empty, except for her. Charlene’s life will continue its tiresome, lonesome routine of crafting and recrafting that vengeful list in her head, watching endless hours of television, going to the garage to start Ronnie’s car, checking her bank account for Richard’s monthly alimony deposit, watching the mail for the eternal updates from her lawyers regarding the lawsuit that is still ongoing all these years after Ronnie’s death, and whipping up the occasional pot of something or other to satisfy a sudden craving. The thought of going back to living a life unchecked by another person under the same roof frightens her. Having Philip home again has made her realize how much she has let things go. So despite all of their arguing, Charlene doesn’t want him to leave. But there is nothing she can do about it.

  On TV, the commercials are over and Jenny Jones is on again. Charlene leaves the volume down, because she couldn’t care less if the baby belongs to Jared or some other loser. As she watches their mouths move with no sound, she thinks about something else Philip said:

  I’m just saying that it’s a remote possibility…

  For the first time, she allows the thought to slip quietly into her mind, like the books used to do when dropped into the return bin at the library after she put a pillow at the bottom to soften the noise. It comes in the form of a question, this question: wouldn’t it be nice? Her eyes go watery as she lingers over the answer. It would be more than nice; it would be wonderful, joyous, miraculous, just to have some small part of her son back after all these years.

  A grandchild, Charlene thinks. My grandchild.

  She knows she’ll never get one from Philip, so she gave up hoping a long time ago. But if this did turn out to be a chance, however small, a chance…

  Charlene stops herself.

  She does her best to douse that flicker of hope, because no matter what Philip has read in the paper or seen on TV, she knows deep down that it can’t be true. It simply cannot be true. She feels embarrassed for even allowing herself to consider it.

  Still, the feeling lingers as the credits roll on the screen and Jared and his hussy wife hug, kiss, and cry behind the scroll of titles and names: lighting designer: Trip Hilkin, key grip: Bob Trinkis, assistant to Ms. Jones: Melanie Reinwink… Charlene can’t believe that any of these people actually want credit for this circus act. She looks away and stares up at the skylight. The spider is nowhere in sight, but as she gazes at the empty web, she thinks back to those story hours and remembers herself holding the book in front of the children as she read each page that she knew practically by heart:

  All winter Wilbur watched over Charlotte’s egg sac as though he were guarding his own children. He had scooped out a special place in the manure for the sac, next to the board fence. On very cold nights he lay so that his breath would warm it. For Wilbur, nothing in life was so important as this small round object—nothing else mattered.

  While Charlene read, Pilia stood behind the circulation desk stamping books so loudly she may as well have been taking a hammer to them. The commotion was all done in an effort to distract Charlene, since Pilia was jealous that she didn’t get to run the library events. But Charlene didn’t let it bother her. She maintained perfect focus as she turned the pages and read on, never once stumbling over the words:

  He walked drearily to the doorway, where Charlotte’s web used to be. He was standing there, thinking of her, when he heard a small voice.

  “Salutations!” it said. “I’m up here.”

  “So am I,” said another tiny voice.

  “So am I,” said a third voice. “Three of us are staying. We like this place, and we like you.”

  Wilbur looked up. At the top of the doorway three small webs were being constructed. On each web, working busily was one of Charlotte’s daughters.

  “Can I take this to mean,” asked Wilbur, “that you have definitely decided to live here in the barn cellar, and that I am going to have three friends?”

  “You can indeed,” said the spiders.

  After she finished the book, Charlene used to take out a fake spider’
s web made from white yarn and ask the children to tell her what words they imagined in it to describe themselves. The boys always saw adjectives like fast, strong, and tough, whereas the girls saw words like sweet, pretty, and happy.

  Even though she feels silly about it, Charlene allows herself to play the same game now. She looks into the web above her bed and imagines that spider coming back from wherever it is to spin something that describes her too. At first, all she can envision are the same words from the book, Some Pig. Lying there among all those empty soda cans and junk-food packages in her bedroom, the truth of the statement causes her to laugh in spite of herself. Then she squints her eyes and does her best to imagine other possibilities. It’s been so long, though, since she’s pretended or played any sort of game that it doesn’t go very well. All Charlene sees is:

  Some Mother.

  Some Wife.

  Some Failure.

  She looks away, releasing an enormous sigh and telling herself that it’s a stupid game and she’s too old for it anyway. On the TV screen, there is that grating commercial for a wide-eyed psychic with a purple scarf and clunky jewelry. The sound is still off, but Charlene has seen it enough times to know that she is promising a 100 percent accurate reading as she shuffles the tarot cards and the phone number flashes beneath her with the words CALL NOW! It makes Charlene think of Melissa Moody again and her cassette tape of the woman who claimed to speak to the dead, so she turns her gaze from the screen once more and looks at the ceiling. The image must still be etched in her vision, though, because for the briefest moment Charlene thinks she sees the same words up there in the web: CALL NOW!