Some Quiet Place (9 page)

“Oh, dear,” I murmur, feeling my own injuries twinge, demanding attention.

“Since I’m already breaking the rules … ” I hear Fear’s voice say in my ear. A moment later my cuts and bruises close up; my skin becomes smooth and unbroken as if none of it ever happened. The burning pain in my hand is gone, too.

“More interfering,” I say.

Fear doesn’t bother with a reply, leaving me alone to figure out what to do with Tim Caldwell. After much debate, I decide that the best course of action is to do nothing at all. I milk the cows and shut up the barn for the night, leaving one door open.

Eleven

The next day, there are two abnormalities. Joshua isn’t at school, and when I get home, Sheriff Owen is in our kitchen. He’s taking statements from Mom and Tim, who refuses to go to the hospital.

The story is simple: Tim woke up alone in the barn last night without a memory of how he was beaten or who did it. Standing there with his calm expression, Sheriff Owen waits for my statement, pen poised over a notepad. I focus on his sandy-brown mustache and tell him in simple terms that I came home late yesterday, milked the cows, and went into the house for supper and homework. No, I didn’t see Tim in the barn. I went to bed around ten. No, I didn’t see anyone suspicious around the farm.

“One of the doors was wide open, and you found Tim lying a few feet away in his current condition, correct?” Owen asks my mom. Lips trembling, she nods.

The sheriff frowns, rereading his notes. “Well, the way I see it, Tim, you must’ve been working in the barn and someone came at you from behind. It explains your lack of memory. Are you sure there’s no one angry with you that would have a motive to do this?”

Holding an ice pack to his head, Tim just scowls and shakes his head.

Owen sighs, pocketing the notepad. “I’ll ask a few questions around town and see what I can find out.”

Mom shows him to his car. There’s the sound of an engine revving as Sheriff Owen leaves. Mom comes back inside and goes right to her dishes. Tim lumbers upstairs to lie down.

I wait until he’s gone—I can hear him moving around above us, a water faucet turning, the bedsprings squeaking—and then sit down at the kitchen table. Mom doesn’t notice me at first. She sighs in her isolation, shoulders slumped. I notice the grooves in her soap-covered hands, the natural downturn of her mouth. I shift, making the chair creak deliberately. Mom gasps, whirling around. When she sees it’s just me, her expression tightens.

“Elizabeth,” she mutters unhappily. The name sounds reluctant on her tongue. “Did you want something?”

“I’d like some answers,” I say, and it occurs to me how much I sound like Fear. “I won’t take long.”

She turns her back to me, resuming the dishes. “What is it?”

I fold my hands on the surface of the table and decide to be direct. “Will you tell me about the car accident?”

She stiffens, facing me again. Her gaze is sharp. “Who told you about that?”

I smile wryly, acting real for her benefit. “People talk, Mom.”

Her face twists up. She’s so many things. Disgusted, sorrowful, wistful, angry. Suddenly we’re not alone—my gaze flicks briefly to Resentment, where he stands among the others. He winks at me. “ … call me that,” Mom is saying. “A mother knows. You’re not my child. I may not know how or why, but you’re not her. My baby
laughed
. My baby threw tantrums when I wouldn’t let her wear a princess dress all day, every day.” Mom’s fists clench in front of her, and there’s a desperate darkness in her voice. “The doctor said you were catatonic because of the shock, but I knew. I
knew
.”

Guilt also appears beside Mom, rubbing her shoulders. Even though Guilt is a big, lumbering Emotion, there’s something slimy and sly about her. She fills the room with her aura.

“Hello, odd one,” she greets me. I don’t take my eyes off my mom.

“She’s too good to talk to the likes of you,” Resentment tells her, smirking. The other Emotions have gone.

Mom is silently crying. Despite the evidence and the impossibility of it, she wants to believe her real daughter is out there somewhere, waiting to be found. She wants to believe that her child isn’t the cold person beside her. I need to fix this. I have to fix this. “It’s not your fault,” I say to her as I ignore the two guests sharing the space in the kitchen. “Whatever you think happened. The accident—”

“The accident.” Mom sniffs. She shakes her head, wiping away some sweat on her forehead with the back of her arm. Is the incident with Tim what’s rattled her? Or is it this conversation, here, now? “That’s when it all started. You never found out about it because we never talked about it. For Tim it was a matter of pride. He didn’t want to think about our four-year-old daughter wandering all the way out to the road without our knowing and getting hit by a car.”

“How long was I in the hospital?” I ask next.

Trying to regain her composure, my mom starts on the dishes yet again. Resentment leaves but Guilt remains. “Just a day,” Mom replies. “The doctor said it was a miracle. You got away with just a few scrapes and bruises. They only kept you overnight for observation.” She laughs softly, her shoulders shaking. “Since the driver that hit you was the one to call 9-1-1, Tim and I got to the hospital later. As soon as I walked into your room and you turned … that was the moment I realized you’d changed. You looked at me like you didn’t even know me.”

I stand, moving to the counter to help her dry. She doesn’t object. “It really could just have been shock.”

Mom shakes her head so adamantly that some of her hair comes loose from her ponytail. She’s going to cling to her delusions. “No. No. I rocked my daughter to sleep every night, I sang her songs, I dressed her, I fed her, I played with her, I carried her inside of me for nine months. She knew me, and I knew her.” She scrubs a dish so hard that she slips a bit and dishwater splashes over the edge of the sink. I think, not for the first time, of how different we are, yet it’s her I look like the most. Both of us tall, slender, blond and blue-eyed.

“I should have done more,” Mom murmurs, pulling me back to the present. “Said more. I should have fought for my daughter, tooth and nail, looked for her until my last breath. But I stood here in this kitchen, doing dishes, pretending that everything was all right.”

I should have expected this; it’s the way of humanity, after all, to deny. To hope when there is none. I study the shine of a glass in my hand as I ask, “What do you think happened, then?”

Mom just shakes her head. Really, she has no idea what she believes.

People are so complex. They want to hear the truth, but they want you to lie to them. I choose silence rather than making another mistake with my mother. I dry each dish meticulously, concentrating on the plates and silverware and pans as if they’re the reason for my existence. I become aware that Mom has stopped washing and is watching my hands, her eyes wondering, worrying.

“You can ask me anything you want,” I tell her. She shudders, probably because I’ve guessed her thoughts. She doesn’t move away, though, or snap at me. I watch her toy with her wedding ring. It slips easily off her wet finger, and she puts it back on little by little.

“Who are you?” Mom asks finally, her voice a broken whisper. “
What
are you?”

My hand towel goes around and around on a plate. “I’m your daughter, no matter what you believe.” Around, around.

Following my example, Mom starts scrubbing again. “Just the way you’re so controlled … ” She purses her lips. “Even when you were little, you didn’t crack a smile.”

“I could try harder—”

“No.” Mom ducks her head and hair falls forward, hiding her haggard face. She grips the edges of the sink. Knuckles white. I can see her heart breaking all over again. Guilt is still there, answering her summons solemnly, her spindly fingers tight on Mom’s shoulder, and she’s joined by others again. Sorrow, Anger, Hope. As the seconds tick by the air begins to tremble with expectation. Tension and pressure builds in the room and I know something’s coming. Something that won’t be easy for her. Finally, her chin trembling, my mother plunges. “Do you know where my daughter is?”

I meet her sad, sad eyes. And in this moment I realize that she’ll always deny me, never accept me. I’ll never be her child. But I can’t release her. If I let her sink into these impossible despairs, there will be no place for me. So I tell her, in the same hard way Tim speaks, “
I’m
your daughter. And you owe it to me to believe that, no matter how much I’ve changed.”

Silence. The soap in the sink bubbles. After another minute she nods, pursing her lips. She turns away. And thus ends the first meaningful, sincere conversation I’ve ever had with my mother.

This time there’s no disorientation. I know, the moment I open my eyes and find myself in an unfamiliar room, that this is another dream. The walls are blue, the furniture all mismatching. There’s a narrow bed in one corner with messy sheets, all wrinkled and tossed. There’s a stereo on the dresser. But what makes this square place remarkable, individualistic, is the books. Dozens upon dozens of them are stacked up, covering every surface, every possible spot. Some are open, some are bookmarked, some look ancient, and others have yet to have their spines cracked for the first time. Titles and words fly at me: THE GREAT GATSBY. THE GRAPES OF WRATH. THE ASSASSINATION OF JOHN F. KENNEDY.

I’m standing in a corner, gazing at it all. Through the window to my left I see that it’s morning. The sun is just awakening and fingers of orange and pink stretch out over the world. There’s a distant roar, something mighty and older than time. My mind recognizes it after a moment. The ocean.

The realization hits me then: I’m in the house. The one that I see sometimes in my dreams. The one by the cliff side.

“ … almost time to eat,” a woman says from down the hall. And then the door opens and the boy enters. I remain where I am, expecting him to lift his gaze and see me. But he doesn’t.
I might as well be invisible. He just strides to the cluttered desk and rifles through some papers in a drawer. His mouth is puckered and his movements are graceful, thoughtless. He’s just showered; his hair is wet and he smells of sharp soap. He finds what he’s looking for—a notebook and a textbook along with it—
and he pulls them free of the pile, tucks them under his arm, and leaves again. Without hesitation, I follow.

We walk into a kitchen. The house is small; it only takes five steps. Everything is clean and orderly in contrast to the boy’s room. Though the furniture is worn and there’s only one very old TV as entertainment, someone has worked very hard to make this place a home. The rugs are colorful and there are pictures on the walls, framed images of a smiling family of three: the boy, the mysterious girl who always weeps in my dreams, and an older woman with crinkling eyes. Grief doesn’t exist. These pictures … these pictures are genuine. The Caldwell mark is nowhere to be seen—no shadows in their gazes, no tight smiles, no distance between shoulders.

I pull my attention away from the pictures and examine the room. A woman has her head half-inside a refrigerator. As the boy circles her and approaches the table I see that she’s sniffing milk. “You’re going to be late,” the boy says.

The woman sets the milk down in front of him, telling him, “I’ll be fine. Oh, and I did pick up an extra shift, so I’m going to be little late tonight. Make sure you tell your sister, okay?” Of course she’s his mother; the knowledge is there in the way she brushes his bangs back, the way she moves around the kitchen with such purpose. This is her purpose. He is her purpose. It must be so fulfilling, to have a design.

The boy pops the mouth of the milk carton and tilts it. The sound of the milk streaming into a glass is the only sound for a second. It’s strange for me, the silence. There are no ticking clocks or thudding boots coming into the house.

“Where is she?” the boy asks his mom after a moment. I lift my head at this—it’s the same thing he asked me in that clearing. Before the churning skies and bloodthirsty swarms.

This time he receives an answer. The dark-haired woman sighs. “She went out to the woods again. She didn’t hear me when I tried to call her back.”

He watches her. “Don’t worry. She’ll be back. She always comes back.”

It doesn’t soothe her, but she hides her expression. When she turns back to her son, she raises her brows. “Are you sure you want her to? You wouldn’t have to share that damn bathroom anymore.”

He smiles faintly, holding his fork tight. She smiles too, a sad curve of the lips. They’re entwined together through loyalty, not obligation. This is what family is supposed to be.

The boy bends his head again, back to his food, and hair falls into his eyes. Just like Joshua. I lift my hand to push it out of his—

Suddenly the scene is rushing away. Cold air and streaks of black and blue shoot by. A dizzying sensation makes my head swim, and I lower to my knees to maintain balance.

Everything goes still again. It’s not gradual. One moment I’m on a speeding, burning train, and the next I’m at a stop, and the whistle announcing my arrival is an abrupt silence. I lift my head … and see.

He lies there. He’s just a foot away, so close I could reach out and touch him. Where any other person would recoil or cover her mouth in horror, I just stay right there on my hands and knees, gazing down at him. My wall of nothingness twitches a little.

This time the girl is nowhere to be seen. There’s no cradling, no screaming. Just the absoluteness of death. The moon gazes down at us with its white face. It’s chilly. Dew coats the grass and soaks through my dress. I hardly notice. Blood seeps into the earth. I study the scene for a long, long time. No matter what other theories I’ve had up until this point, I now know one thing for certain: this was no accident.

The isolation wraps itself around me. Briefly I wonder why there are no crickets. I continue to sit there by the body, trapped in this place. For some reason, I seem unable to tear away from the sight.

“You did this,” his voice whispers in my ear. The boy himself doesn’t open his eyes or move. But it’s true. I feel it to the marrow in my bones. Because of me, somehow, someway, all of this is ended. No more breakfasts, no more laughter, no more studying. Never again will that beautiful boy turn the page of a book or squint at a sentence. Never again will he share a joke with his mother or wait for his sister to return.