“Put these on,” she said. “Come into the living room.” She was wearing snow boots under her bathrobe and a scarf around her neck.
“Why?” I asked.
“Just do it, Mattie. Hurry.”
She tossed the jeans on top of me, and I heard her open the door to Brent’s room. The clock on my wall said 1:45.
Minutes later, my parents and my brother and I were hunched on our couch, peering through the half-closed curtains at the nine turtleneck men standing motionless in our yard, holding lit torches over their heads. No one knew who these people were or what they intended. They may have been vigilantes, or a neighborhood watch, or nine frustrated men who felt better roaming the Snowman’s night than sleeping through it. I found myself remembering the child-catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. All day long, I’d been remembering things that had scared me or made me feel bad, because all of them were weirdly comforting; they were so much less awful than what was happening now.
“Maybe if we gave them Mattie, they’d leave us alone,” my mother said.
“Good idea,” said Brent.
She might have been kidding. I glanced quickly in her direction and became aware, in a way I never was before, that my mother was a living thing, and she would not be living always. I leaned as hard as I could against her. She was wrapped in her blue blanket, and she didn’t free her arms or drop a reassuring hand on me. Eventually, though, after a long, long time, I felt her return the lean. That was good enough for me. For a little while, I even stopped thinking about Theresa.
“Joe. Should we call the police?” she asked my father.
“I’ve never heard of these guys hurting anybody,” he said.”I’m scared, Mom,” said Brent, and immediately he started to cry. It amazed me the way real emotions just seemed to surface in him, as natural as whitecaps on waves. Mine had to be called, like stray pets, and they didn’t always come. Finally, at some point when none of us were looking, the turtleneck men evaporated out of our yard.
The next morning, in spite of everything, my parents decided to send me to school. They felt it was the only choice. I had to face what I’d done, they said, and get on with my life the best I could. They were trying hard to talk to me as if everything was normal. My mother, especially, was having a difficult time doing it. I didn’t argue. I just got myself dressed and collected my backpack, and then Mrs. Jupp called.
I was sitting at the kitchen table, so I could hear my mother’s huhs and mmms, and I could see a new crease cut across her forehead like a fresh fault line. “I see,” she said. “Why, what are they saying?” She closed her eyes. “Yeah. Yes, okay.”
A few minutes later, she hung up.
“What?” I said, seeing nothing in my mind’s eye but the empty Solitude Desk.
“Everyone is talking about you. Mrs. Jupp’s not sure it’s such a good idea for you and Brent to go to school today.”
“Is Spencer coming? Are they talking about him too?”
My mother looked at the floor, and the crease in her forehead deepened. She surprised me by kneeling beside my chair. “Mattie, Spencer isn’t coming back to Phil Hart. His mother and Mrs. Jupp have decided it would be best for all concerned if he went back to Ferndale. I’m sorry.”
Slowly, but without thinking, I picked up my cereal bowl and threw it on the floor. Milk and Cheerios sprayed across the tiles.
“Thanks, Mattie,” said my mother, and she put her face in her hands.
“This is stupid!” I yelled. “He didn’t even do anything.”
My mother’s eyes hardened. “Didn’t do anything? I suppose you think you didn’t do anything either.”
The tears flooding my eyes were equal parts fury, frustration, and loneliness. “That’s stupid too.”
“Don’t you talk to me like that, Mattie Rhodes. Don’t you dare.”
“Spencer was just being my friend. We were just trying to be Theresa’s friends. He tried to talk me out of it. He should come back. Everyone can’t disappear.” I hated the whine in my voice, but I couldn’t control it.
“Mattie, I know this must be horrible for you. But maybe you should have thought about the consequences before you acted.”
“I—“ I started, and then I didn’t know what to say. I found myself crying again. “Can I go see him? Can we please just go over there so I can tell Mrs. Franklin I’m sorry?”
“Someday, Mattie. Maybe someday. Not today.”
I was crying so hard my saliva felt thick and tasted salty. “This is the worst thing I’ve ever done,” I said.
“Oh, honey,” said my mother. “Yes. Yes, it is. And it’s hurt a whole lot of people. And it’s going to be a long time before life goes back to normal.”
“Do you think the Snowman has Theresa?”
My mother’s mouth quivered, but her voice came out steady. “She’s a smart girl, Mattie. She might be all right.” Then she left the room.
Despite Mrs. Jupp’s warning, my parents sent Brent to school anyway, because he demanded to go and kept saying he couldn’t stand to be near me. I stayed in the family room all morning, watching game shows. My mother cleaned up the kitchen, and after my father went to work, she shut herself in her bedroom and got on the phone.
I stared at the TV screen through squinted eyes, praying for a Special Update break-in. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Coral Clark, and I’m standing on the corner of Cider Lake Road near Birmingham, where a dazed but unhurt Theresa Daughrety reappeared moments ago. Indications of her whereabouts these past thirty-six hours remain vague, but she is unharmed and police are sending her home to her family. And—let’s see now—it looks like Theresa has something to say. What is it, honey?” Theresa’s bow-mouth twitches, and she tugs at Coral Clark and whispers in her ear. Coral Clark listens, nods, smiles at the camera. Her teeth glitter like stalactites in a cave. “Mattie Rhodes,” she says, “Theresa says she misses you too.”
But the break-in never came, and I gave up praying. I leaned back against the couch and let the time crawl by. Then the doorbell rang. I glanced toward my parents’ room, but my mother didn’t come out. On the third ring, I crouched low and edged forward so I could shut off the TV without being seen from the front stoop. I thought it might be one of the reporters or Sergeant Ross with more questions or bad news. Or maybe Theresa, I thought, and leapt to my feet.
Stamping her boots on our mat, shivering in a yellow spring rain slicker, Barbara Fox glared through the window and leaned again on the doorbell.
“Take your time, it’s warm out here,” she snapped as I stumbled to the door and pulled it open. She pushed past me into the living room. “The Doctor forbade me to come here,” she said icily. Her voice quieted but didn’t soften. “He’s sitting on our living room couch like there’s a lance stuck through him. He can’t cry. He can’t speak.” She looked wildly around the room, as if Theresa might be hiding somewhere in it. Abruptly, sarcastically, she yelled, “Oh, hi, Mrs. Rhodes. Thanks but I can’t stay. Troubles at home, you know. I didn’t mean to come in, really. We’re trying not to fall apart.”
My mother sounded tired and teary when she answered from the bedroom. “Hello, Barbara, honey. I’ll be right there. I’m on the phone.”
“I’m taking Mattie for a walk.”
I let her lead me to the coat closet. When I took too long with my boots, she bent over and yanked my jacket on tight and snapped it around me.
“Aren’t you cold in that?” I asked, touching the sleeve of her rain slicker.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, and tugged me out the front door behind her.
White-silver light ricocheted off the new snow and stung my eyes. Barbara’s dark hair hung wet and unbrushed in rings down her back. Her fingers were twisted around my wrist, but I didn’t care. It felt good to be outside with someone who’d loved me, once. Ever since I left Spencer at the Foxes’, I’d felt like a fugitive, but now I had escaped, with another fugitive shackled to me.
Sighing, Barbara dragged me around
to the far side of our tallest evergreen. Instead of continuing down the street, she shoved the branches aside with her free hand and pulled me into the quiet space underneath.
Brent and I had already trampled or bent most of the lower branches playing Ghost-in-the-Graveyard games under here. Many times, Barbara had been the Ghost we were hiding from. Now she sat on the needles and pulled me down beside her onto the surprisingly dry, resiny near-warmth of the ground. It was like sitting on the remnants of someone else’s campfire. Barbara scooped up a palmful of needles and shook them like Pick-Up Sticks. The only thing I could think to do was put my hand on her arm, right where it stuck out of her sleeve, and I left it there.
“What have you done, Mattie?” she said.
Sergeant Ross asked me that. So had my mother. I still had no good answer.
“What were you thinking?” she asked again. “I really want to know.” Each word she spoke seemed to crumple her a bit more, and she balled forward into her coat. “I want someone to explain all this to me. Right now.”
She didn’t sound like she was chanting, or hoping, or even asking. Her voice came out in a monotone, and her head bobbed, and she suddenly stopped seeming like the person I knew at all. You ran over your father, I thought, and almost said it, and then I just felt bad, and sorry, and scared.
“I was thinking I could help,” I said. “I thought she needed me.” I felt a single fat tear on my cheek. Barbara reached out and squashed it against my skin like a bug, but then her hand flew back to her hunched-up knees.
“Help. Need,” Barbara said, as though the words were new. The smile she flashed and then swallowed was horrible.
“Barbara, are you—“
“You took them to my fucking house. What were you doing in my house?”
This time, Barbara made no move to wipe my tears. She didn’t even look at me. In my stomach, the panic that had become a near-constant companion stoked itself again.
“It was a safe place to go,” I told her.
“Safe?” Barbara snorted.
“It isn’t even your house anymore,” I blurted, and immediately regretted it.
Barbara didn’t say anything for a long time. The intermittent breeze lifted wisps of snow and slid them across her face. Finally, she let out a sigh that might have been a shudder. “The Doctor...” she said, then let the sentence trail away with her breath. I watched her pluck a pine needle from the nearest branch and roll it against her cheek. “My dad was so sick, Mattie. And even when he wasn’t sick, he was so needy all the time. I couldn’t get away from him. He followed me around the house and into the yard and everywhere I went like a pull toy. I had to shower with the goddamn bathroom door open or he’d threaten to break it down.”
I gaped. “He wanted to see you in the shower?”
“He didn’t want to see. He just wanted to be sure I was still there. He’d sit on the hallway rug and ask me if the water was warm enough, whether we were out of shampoo, one inane question after another until the shower was over and I was out and dressed and he could watch me again. He wanted to die. If he could talk to me now, he’d probably thank me for mowing him down.” She leaned her head forward and pushed her cheek against the nearest pine branch as if it were a pillow. All at once, tears detonated from her eyes, and her whole body was shaking so hard I thought she might fly apart. “Hi, Dad,” I heard her say, which made no sense at all. Her throat kept making this horrible squeaking rasp, like a bicycle brake failing in the middle of a plunge downhill. The sobbing went on so long I almost ran for help. But finally the shaking subsided, and Barbara’s head tilted a little toward me, and I could see her chapped lips working and then smoothing into a flat quivering line.
“That’s one thing about the Daughrety house,” she said. “There’s plenty of space. Oh, Mattie, I know the Doctor seems cold to you. But he’s different with the people he loves. He doesn’t ask stupid questions. He doesn’t clutter up the world with chatter, and he doesn’t need much except his daughter and sometimes me around him. He said he loved me, once. Before...well, before.” She jerked her head up and cocked it slightly. Then she said, “Something was happening with Theresa and me, too. Something nice. I can’t explain it. But it’s gone now, whatever it was. She showed me a picture of her mom. That was something, don’t you think?” And just like that, she was weeping again. “Goddammit, Mattie, where is she?”
Right then, I was seized by a jealousy that might have been overwhelming if I could have located its source. Mostly, I think I was jealous of the days going by in the Daughrety house, all those hours Barbara and Theresa had spent not talking together on the white living room couch or at the dining room table where the Mind Wars were held.
For a long time, Barbara sat with her head up, tears streaming down her face and into her coat collar. She never moved to wipe them. It looked like she was melting. My jealousy leaked away, leaving me guilty and sad. Barbara’s face was so wet I couldn’t even tell if she was crying anymore. But the silence was making me too anxious to sit still.
“Are you going to stay there? Are you going to marry the Doctor?”
“Mattie, I haven’t had a home in a really long time. And I need one. And there are worse places, and worse people. Much worse.” Her voice caught and her eyes blinked, but I was pretty sure she had stopped crying after all. Shoving to her feet, she parted the branches of the pine tree. “Get up,” she said.
“Barbara, what should I do?”
“Get up, I said.” She stepped out of the evergreen and waited for me to do the same. “I’ll tell you what to do. Don’t try anything heroic. Don’t do anything else stupid. And don’t break, Mattie. Your family’s going to need you.”
“I’m sorry about your dad,” I said, and Barbara stared at me out of her wet eyes. Except for the tears, she looked as blank as Theresa, and I got scared again. She walked me to the front door and then lifted her hand to my hair and left it there, barely touching. “I have to go find Theresa now,” she whispered, with an intensity I had never heard from her. “I think maybe I can.”
“Barbara,” I started, trying to think of something to say that would keep her here a little longer.
But she was already halfway down the driveway, gone from me. And I knew, somehow, that she was never coming back.
I didn’t go inside until Barbara was out of sight. Then I went into the family room and turned up the TV so I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone, but no one came in.
Later that afternoon, I was sitting on the couch, listening to the emptiness in the world, when an ice ball burst on the window behind me. The second ice ball cracked the storm glass as I dove to the floor. Seconds later, my mother flew out the back porch door and came in dragging my brother by his ear.
“You ice-balled your own house?” I said, momentarily thrilled. My brother’s temper tantrum had lasted two days. A few more actions like this one, I thought, and he just might draw a little attention away from me.
“I was ice-balling you,” he said, smirking as my mother jerked him toward his room.
“Get in there,” she said, shutting his door behind him. “Don’t let me see or hear from you until dinner.” Then she went back to her room without looking at me and closed herself in again.
My father came home early. He didn’t touch his stereo, and he said he couldn’t eat. He went out to his workshop for a while, but when I checked on him he was just sitting with his hand picking idly at the teeth of a circular saw, reminding me of the barber fish in Strange True Fish Tales that picks its food from the mouths of sharks.
For dinner, Brent and I ate hamburgers in the family room with the TV on, which we almost never did. My mother watched with us, which was even stranger, but at least we were sitting together. On Hogan’s Heroes, Sergeant Schultz had to wear a dress. None of us laughed. No one got up to clear the dishes. At nine, we watched the Special Update. The entire show was devoted to Theresa. According to Coral Clark, Dr. Daughrety had been knocking on every door in Troy during
the past twenty-four hours, demanding access to garages and basements. He’d even gone to houses that the police had already searched and houses with hands in the windows. At last report, he was deep into Birmingham, working street by street. Police were encouraging residents to provide any assistance they could.
“A dedicated father,” Coral Clark said, completing her report. “Our prayers are with him, and with you, little Theresa. Wherever you are.” In the woods. Stuffed in the bottom of a pickle barrel at Avri’s Deli, hands bound, eyes blank, chanting Oak Park, Covington, Mini-Mike’s, my name.
“Jesus Christ,” my mother murmured, and put her face in her hands again.
The turtleneck men came back in the middle of the night. I was up with my jeans on before my mother even called me because I’d seen torch flicker on the lawn. Through the living room window, we saw the torches planted in a row like signal flares. Their light illuminated a series of shapes in the snow.
My mouth went dry, and my tongue seemed to swell and harden against my teeth until it felt like a peach pit being stuffed down my throat. Maybe they had found Theresa’s body, I thought, and brought it here. The thought rocketed me to my feet. I dashed straight past my parents and out the front door, skidding down the ice on our driveway. The turtleneck men scattered. I ignored them and ran straight to the torches and looked down. I tried to scream, but I couldn’t get sound past my tongue.
Graves: deep coffin-shaped indentations in the snow, with little stick crosses planted at their heads. Each cradled an imprint of a little kid, a snow angel, its arms tucked in rather than waving, as though whatever was buried there had flown away. There were ten in all, laid out in neat plots. One each, I thought, for the eight kids already dead, plus one for Theresa. And one for me? I didn’t know. I was too hypnotized by the shapes themselves, the nothingness within them.
The Snowman's Children Page 25
