He waits for her to look up and into his face, which is hard to do, his green eyes unblinking like a cat’s.
“Look, I don’t want to intrude, but is his father coming back? Do you know?”
“What?” She watches Harvey swinging higher and higher.
“Harvey said that you told him his dad is coming home soon. He also said that he hears you crying at night because there’s a ghost in your house, and that he wets the bed.” He pauses and waits until she looks at him again. “He says that he’s saving his money for the Smile Train, and for you to go to a motel on a honeymoon. That he’s scared of the ghosts and all the killers in the world, that Peggy can’t hear and he wants to get her what old people stick in their ears to make them hear better. And, last but not least, that he has a turd collection.” He shakes his head and laughs. “Oh, and he also has quite a wealth of knowledge about murders, and knows a lot of dirty jokes.”
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard some of those. Lizzie Borden and a horse walk into a bar.”
“Well, the one today was a little more risqué than ‘Hey, why the long face?’”
“Oh?”
“One about a blow-up doll and the virgin? Except he said ‘the Virgo.’”
“Oh no!” She shakes her head and puts out her hand to stop him, in case he was even thinking of saying the punch line; his face is flushed and he is not making eye contact with her. “Please don’t go there.” She could just imagine Harvey with a mustache, there in the center of a group of kids.
“So you’ve heard it?”
“No, but I can only imagine. I am so sorry,” she says. “I am so embarrassed.” She covers her face with her hands, her shoulders still shaking, first laughing and then crying.
“I’ll probably get a call from a parent or two,” he says. “There have been a lot of calls. One kid is scared to watch television because he’s afraid that the Menendez brothers will kill him, and another told her mother she is scared of little people flipping their car over if they have to stop at a red light. Things like that.”
“I am so sorry,” she says into her hands. “I am so very sorry.”
“I really think I can help,” he says. “You know, spend some extra time with Harvey after school, maybe give him a job as my helper?”
“I did this to him. I did this. I gave him all these terrible fears and problems.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” he says. “We all do the best we can.”
It seems he’s about to say something else, but a car pulls up and the other kid jumps from his swing and comes running over, Harvey right behind him, his mustache slipped to one side, and Ned excuses himself to go speak to the other parent, the kind of woman Shelley admires and also feels intimidated by—a “business casual” look, they call it, hands on her hips with great confidence, a sticker on her window that says she belongs somewhere. She sweeps her son into her arms and gives him a big kiss, while two other kids in the back seat watch a movie on a pull-down screen. She has a vanity plate that says mom’s car, with a heart, and probably she parks it beside one that says dad’s car.
Shelley is trying to imagine what that would even feel like when Harvey plops down beside her, his thin legs scratched and covered in bugbites.
“Am I in trouble?”
“Should you be?”
“No,” he says, and presses his nose into her arm. When the woman drives away and Ned Stone walks back over, Shelley reaches in her pocket for the matchbook and note and holds it out for them both to see.
“Thanks for my note, Harvey,” she says, and he tells her he has lots more of those. “A whole collection,” he says, and looks at his teacher. “Another collection.”
“I’ve never heard of the Lorraine Hotel,” she says, and Ned tells her that’s because it was torn down years ago.
“You’d have to go back in time to stay at the Lorraine Hotel,” he tells Harvey, who grabs his hands and begins pulling him.
“Let’s go. Let’s go right now.”
“Maybe tomorrow,” he says, a steady calm hand on Harvey’s shoulder. “But right now, your mom is waiting for you.” He gives Harvey a gentle push toward her and then says goodbye.
“Thank you,” Shelley tells him, and watches Harvey run ahead and climb in the back seat, relieved to know that she does not have to go back in time.
Harvey
As soon as he gets home, Harvey gets his cape and his Fu Manchu and goes out in the yard with Peggy to see if the ghost left a note or more good stuff. He doesn’t even get a snack. He’s searching the ground for tracks and turds when he sees the ghost, all bent over, kicking and digging at the manhole. Jason said Harvey should never, ever go down that hole, even if it does look like the Ninja Turtle’s, because it isn’t safe. “They leave you stuff to keep you away,” Jason had told him. “As long as you don’t do something stupid, they won’t hurt you.”
“Hey there,” the ghost says, and holds a piece of paper up. “Is this yours?”
Are you hear? Harvey wrote that, and somebody wrote, NO!
The ghost’s pants is torn-up where his knee is bloody. Harvey nods. “Are you the ghost?”
It shakes its head no and laughs.
“A murderer?” Harvey asks. More shaking. “A shape-shifter or a zombie?” Harvey takes a step back.
“I’m just an old man, son. I used to live here when I was a boy. In fact, I’ve been here before but it wasn’t a good time to see the house. Remember? You came to the door with your mother but you had a different mustache.” He holds out his hand. “My name is Frank.”
“Was it a handlebar or a walrus?” Harvey asks. Jason gave him a poster with all the names, like horseshoe and chevron and Fu Manchu but Harvey doesn’t have a walrus, so it’s a test.
“Definitely a handlebar,” the man says. “And same towel. You have a green-and-white sofa in the front room—that’s all I could see that day. When I was a boy, we had a brown one in the exact same place there in front of the fireplace.” He puts his dirty hand out again. “How’s that? Did I pass the test?”
Harvey reaches and shakes the hand. He shakes really hard, like he heard his dad tell Jason to do if he wanted to get something like a job or a good grade or maybe a girlfriend. “Did you write ‘no’ right there on my message?”
“No.” The man looks at his watch, a big one like the kind that goes swimming and ticks real loud. “Must be somebody else.”
“Are you sure you aren’t a alien or serial killer?”
“Completely sure. You know a lot of dark things, son,” he says, and looks at that big watch again. “Tell me about your mustache. You seem mighty young for facial hair.”
“It’s not real.” Harvey takes off his mustache and starts to put it in his pocket with the penny and matches but the man is staring at him so he changes his mind and puts it back on. “But it will be when I’m a teenager.”
“I have a scar, too,” the man says. “Several of them, in fact. I fell from a tree when I was about your age, had to get stiches in my chin. And I’ve got a great big one like a railroad track when they went in to fix my heart.” He lifts his shirt just enough for Harvey to see part of the scar, big and purple, like on Frankenstein’s head. He points to the middle of Harvey’s Fu Manchu. “Do you know what this is called?” he asks. “This little dip right above your lip?”
“No.” Harvey knows his mom wouldn’t like him talking to a stranger, even if he did live here thousands of years ago.
“It’s called a filtrum,” the man says, and he sounds just like when the teacher says, “This is important, so be quiet and hear it,” and everybody says, “Oh no,” with their hands on their faces, like in the Christmas movie, because it will be boring. “In fact,” he says, “there’s a whole story about it.”
“Is it boring?”
“I don’t think so,” he says, and then tells a kind of long story that’s a little boring about how people know everything before they get borned and then an angel comes along and mashes her finge
r on your lip to make you forget it all.
“That sucks,” Harvey says, and holds his mustache in place. “She mashed me way too hard.”
“You must have known more than most,” the man says. “And now you get to spend a whole lifetime remembering.”
“I do know a lot of junk but she still hurt me,” he says. “Somebody ought to mash her up hard too.”
“I’m sure she didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Well, I think she’s a stupid shitty doo-doo bitch,” Harvey says, and waits to see if the man is going to keep acting like a teacher and get after him, but he doesn’t. He just laughs.
“What’s that other note you got?” Harvey asks.
“Oh, just something I keep in my wallet—a little reminder my wife wrote me.” He puts it in his pocket and goes back over to lift that lid Jason told Harvey never, ever to touch.
“Be careful,” Harvey says, but doesn’t go any closer. “What do you see? Skeletons? Half-eat animals and blood?”
“No.” He shakes his head, one hand on that torn-up knee. “All I see is a backpack and some textbooks, a few beer cans, some old newspapers.”
“Beer?” Harvey says. “Ghosts drink beer?”
“This one does. Eats granola bars and has a calculus book too. I see part of an old empty jar. That’s all.”
Harvey wants to see but is scared of falling in. He wants to be with Peggy, who’s snoring in the sun, but he doesn’t want to hear his mom say don’t tell jokes, like the one about that doll fartin’ and flyin’ out the window. Peggy can’t hear nothing, but Super Monkey can hear that old man breathing and something ticking like a clock, but the train will come soon and even Super Monkey has trouble hearing anything when that happens. The train is the best part of the day.
Shelley
Shelley can’t say how long she has been sitting in the kitchen crying; it’s such a relief just to get home and collapse. She is relieved to have her job back and that justice was served, relieved that Harvey’s teacher is so kind and attentive, but also horrified by all the ways she is failing as a mother. She goes to get a paper towel to wipe her nose, and that’s when she notices that green Toyota parked down at the corner by the woods. Not today. He cannot come inside this house today.
A door down the hall creaks on its hinges and then slams shut, and she nearly jumps out of her skin. The wind? She glances out on the porch, where Peggy is curled up in a pool of sunlight. Has Harvey been spying on her? She tiptoes down the hall; the door to Jason’s room is closed, and she stands, her ear pressed close, and she hears something in there. A radio? Someone talking? She puts her hand on the knob and, with a deep breath, pushes it open to see Jason sitting on his bed, headphones off to the side, a stack of papers and newspaper clippings spread out in front of him.
“Jason! Oh my God!” she says, both relieved to see him and sorry for him to see her looking this way. “You scared me!”
“You scared me,” he says, and stares like he’s looking right through her.
“Harvey will be so excited.” She turns to call him. “Let me—”
“No. I don’t want Harvey to hear this. I’ll see him later.”
“Hear what? What’s going on?” She steps closer now.
“Why don’t you tell me, Mom?” His voice is angry, shaking like he’s about to cry, too. “Why don’t you explain everything to me?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Well, for starters, Harvey calls me every day, has since school started, saying he’s scared because you cry every night.”
“Not every night,” she says. “I lost my job, but I got it back. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to worry you.” She steps closer, shocked to see the headlines and dates of the newspaper articles around him: June 1994—partly cloudy and humid—highs in the 90s. “Harvey gets scared at night, but he’s okay.” domestic assault: 1 critically injured and 1 missing. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“I had to pick a topic to research,” he says. “The professor said pick something you know practically nothing about, and so I chose my family.” Jason pulls up a handful of the copied articles. “So tell me the truth. When I asked if you were getting a divorce from Brent, you said you weren’t sure, and now I know that you were never married. Not to Brent, and not to my dad.”
“But it was like we were.”
“But not. And you told people he was your husband. You told me he was.”
“I wanted us to be a family.”
“But you lied.” Jason stands and waves the papers in front of her. “You’ve never been married. You have two sons, and neither have fathers listed on their birth certificates.” He thrusts copies of his and Harvey’s birth certificates into her hand. “Do you even know who my dad is?”
“Jason.”
“All those stories you told. The war hero. Big marine. Do you know how many people in this country are named David Moore? And I was just looking at the dead ones. So tell me.”
“I don’t know.” She leans against the wall, eyes closed. “I’m sorry.”
“What about that stuffed dog you said he gave me? Where did you get that, the thrift shop?”
“It was my brother’s.”
“Oh yeah. Your brother. Your wonderful, brilliant brother, who beat the shit out of your dad. There’s a story.” He’s in her face now.
Don’t blink, don’t blink.
“No wonder you read all that true-crime crap when I was a kid.”
“I work at the courthouse.”
“Or maybe you’re interested in why people try to kill each other.” His voice is so loud that now she has to turn away, wanting to cover her ears with her hands, but she knows she can’t do that, and she’s worried about where Harvey is, and that old man. Where is he?
“It was an accident.” She takes a deep breath and opens her eyes. Peggy is still out there in a puddle of light, and she is relieved to see Harvey walking up from the woods, a stick held out in front of him like a sword.
“That’s not what’s in the papers,” he says. “The paper says your crazy brother went nuts, and you hid under a bed while it all went down.”
“No,” she says. “My brother was scared—they hurt him. And he won that dog at the fair. He was a winner.”
“Right. And what about my dad, huh? What’s the DNA story there?”
“He was kind. And handsome.”
“And what was his real name, Mom? Alive? Dead?”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry because my whole life is a lie!” Jason shoves all the papers to the floor and starts pacing, fists clenched. “Do you even know where your parents are?”
“Dead,” she says. “In my life, they are dead.”
“He is, but for all I know, she’s still alive somewhere. I didn’t find an obituary.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“But it matters to me,” he says. “My life is one big lie.”
“That isn’t true.”
“Yes, it is. Your life is a lie, and that makes mine one, too. Are you even really my mother?”
“Yes, and I love you. I’ve always loved you. That is the truth, my truth.” She reaches her hand out, but he shakes his head and keeps moving.
“I wanted to be a good mother,” she says.
“And so you lied about everything?”
“I thought I was protecting you.”
“Pretty sure you were protecting yourself.”
“Yes. I see that.”
Jason sits down on the edge of his bed, head in his hands. Shelley wants to go and sit beside him, but she’s afraid he’ll push her away. He tells her how he’s been getting a ride back and forth from school to come and check on them, see what he could find out; he’s the one who ate the bread and drank the milk. He has heard her cry at night, watched Harvey wake and make his way to her room. He took showers when she and Harvey left the house, sometimes even slept a few hours in his own bed. Otherwise, he was in a tent out
there in the woods.
“I don’t get it,” he finally says.
“I was afraid.” She steps closer, and he doesn’t move, doesn’t raise his voice, just lets out a big breath and slumps onto his pillow, eyes closed. “I’ve been afraid my whole life. I know you might never understand and you might never be able to forgive me, but I just couldn’t look back. I was so afraid it would all poison me, too. I wanted to be a good mother. That’s what I wanted more than anything. I was afraid anyone who knew the truth wouldn’t want me, or you or your brother.”
After a long pause, he reaches off the bed to the floor and riffles through the pages until he holds up the one that has her photo from sixth grade; she’s in navy-blue knee socks and her favorite plaid skirt. It was wool, and she wore it even though it was springtime and way too hot. “Honey, you’re gonna burn up,” one of the teachers in charge had said, and offered to help her find something else, but it was her favorite, and she felt best about herself when she wore it—a kilt, like kids sometimes wear at schools where they all dress alike so nobody feels different, and it had a big safety pin holding the flaps together, and she liked the security of that pin, the sturdy click of something that held things together. The teacher asked were her parents coming, but she pretended not to hear and focused on tying her shoes instead. Her features are blurred in the picture, but she is smiling and holding up the ribbon they gave her when she was the last one standing.
“C-o-n-v-a-l-e-s-c-e.”
The boy before her had said “s-s,” instead of “s-c,” or maybe she wouldn’t have gotten it right; maybe she would have made that same mistake. But the state competition got her the next month. All those hard words, and then she missed parliament—left out the a—and it was strange, because both of her parents smoked that brand of cigarettes, and so her whole life that word had been right there, all around her, in every room, on every table.
“There’s a whole list here of what you spelled,” he says, and leans in close to the blurred paper. “‘Abysmal,’ ‘sepulcher,’ ‘hemorrhage,’ ‘hallelujah.’”
Hieroglyphics Page 26
