Light as a Feather

  Part of her was on the road. Part of her was in the grill and tires of that white Chevrolet, less a car and more an abstract painting in red and white. Part of her was still in the Russian House, clawing its way back from the darkness. A piece of her childhood was lost during that ritual—a piece she would never be able to get back because she was dead.

  One of the neighbors ran to call an ambulance. The owner of the white Chevy stepped out of the car and vomited. Another neighbor, Sandy Chambers, took my mother in her arms and sat with her at the end of the driveway. Mrs. Chambers was speaking to my mother, but her eyes were shut tight, blocking it all out. It all happened in a fog of sound, but crystal clear vision that I get the privilege of replaying daily.

  “Get him out of here,” someone shouted at me.

  I looked down at my little brother and saw the expression on his face. It was pure heartbreak, the look a child gets just before the tears and wailing started, but he never wailed. He couldn’t. Just like there were no words for that moment, there were no tears either, at least not yet.

  I took Danny back in the house and sat him down at the kitchen table. He stared for a long time before he scooped up the stack of Robin’s drawings and hugged them to his chest. I stared at nothing. His eyes glazed over.

  “She rode her bike,” he said.

  Emotionless and eerie, Danny sat at that table and stared. Then he looked up at me and repeated the phrase.

  “She rode her bike.”

  Then the tears came with force and volume. There was no way he could comprehend the finality of death. He just knew something horrible happened to his sister. I knew it as well. I understood death a bit better, but just a bit. I still couldn’t look at it or Granny Agnes might get me.

  Where’s my juice, boy?

  Danny rushed up the stairs to his bedroom and I found out later, he’d placed the drawings in his own desk drawer. I thought about following him, but wondered if anyone had called John. I don’t know why I gave one shit about what he felt or if he’d been contacted, but it was the responsible thing to do. I’d watched him long enough to know how not to act.

  Danny needed me. Mom needed me...and when word got to our father, there was no way of knowing what kind of drunken shit storm it would bring, but he needed to know. Out the window, I saw the circus of neighbors bustling around with grave faces and tear-stained cheeks, and in the middle of it all, my mother still sat sobbing in Mrs. Chambers’ arms. I dialed the phone with a shaky finger. It just wouldn’t stop. Thankfully, the old rotary dial telephone helped hold it still once I found the hole containing the right number. After the third ring, someone picked up. I tried to steady my voice, but failed.

  “May I please speak to John McNeill? This is his son, Todd.”

  “Justaminnit,” the man said.

  I heard scraping sounds as he cupped his hand over the receiver and then a muffled shout. “John! You gotta call.”

  The phone bounced, rolling on a desktop or maybe a counter. It seemed like forever, but then I heard a gruff, “Yeah?”

  “Dad?”

  “Todd? What is it? I’m workin’,” he said.

  “Dad, it’s Robin. She’s…I…she…please can you come home?” I said.

  “Where’s your mother?”

  “She’s outside…the whole neighborhood…Robin is…”

  My voice quivered, sounding more like a lamb than a person. I thought he was going to yell at me for interrupting him at work, but he didn’t. He just hung up the phone. At the same moment, the front door opened and my mother was escorted inside by Mrs. Chambers and a female police officer. She had blood on her face, on her hands and down the front of her shirt. She must have hugged Robin’s little body before they took it away. Mom sat at the kitchen table with a vacant look. Mrs. Chambers had a hand on her shoulder to steady her. I saw Danny peek around the corner from the stairs, waved him over and we sat on either side of her. Mrs. Chambers smiled at each of us warmly, but mom just stared into space. She was out of tears for the time being. Her hands found our heads and she caressed them absently and stroked our hair.

  “Mrs. McNeill?” the policeman said. “Mrs. McNeill, is there anyone else we need to notify? I’ll make any phone calls you might need. Your husband perhaps or maybe a grandparent?”

  Both sets of my grandparents were dead. Still, I saw the face of Granny Agnes McNeill lying in her coffin. Then her face became Robin’s face, twisted and pale with those blue, pupil-less eyes.

  “I called my dad. I think he’s on his way home,” I said. “I didn’t know what to tell him.”

  “I’m sure you did the best you could, son,” the officer said, kneeling down to my level.

  “Is Robin…Is she?” I started, but couldn’t finish the sentence. I knew the answer.

  The officer nodded, mouthed the word yes and then looked at the floor. I think there was a tear in her eye as well. I felt the knot in my throat grow. The officer sniffed and straightened briskly.

  “Well, if there’s anything else we can do, let me know, Mrs. McNeill. You too, boys. Anything at all.”

  “I’ll sit with them as long as they need,” Mrs. Chambers said. “And I’ll ask if they need anything that I can’t provide.”

  The officer acknowledged her with a solemn nod and gently patted Danny on the head. Mom kept stroking his hair. I stood up and walked the cop to our front door, opening it just as the ambulance pulled in with its siren howling and lights spinning.

  I watched the street. Several more neighbors had gathered and by then, the white Chevy was on the side of the road with a blanket draped over its hood to hide the mess. The driver was answering questions with another uniformed officer. He had a hand shoved into his hair, holding it up like the comb of a rooster. His cheeks were blotchy and wet with tears and his eyes bulged.

  The road looked like God had drawn a line with a red magic marker that separated the safe world I once lived in from the evil world I now know. I couldn't stop staring at that line. Not even as they peeled my sister’s tiny lifeless body off of the street under a stained white sheet.

  I heard Danny crying and a single tear came to my eye. Grief fought with guilt. Then I saw Sean and Matt. I knew they felt the same way. Somehow it was our fault and there was nothing that could be done to change the events of that day or the Friday before. I got angry. It was the emotion I hated the most because it reminded me of my father. It seemed to be the emotion he liked most—the one he went to the easiest.

  I was mad at Sean. He had brought all of it on. He goaded us into joining his game. He asked for five people and said it wouldn’t work with less. I wished he’d tried it alone. I wished he’d summoned Nataliya Koslov by himself and I wished she’d ripped him apart instead of my sister. It was selfish, but Sean, I could have lived without. That would’ve been Matt’s problem. I wasn’t sure how I was going to live without Robin…or how I was going to keep my father from killing us since his little girl was gone, especially if he ever found out his own children were involved.

  “Todd,” Danny's weak voice said behind me.

  I turned to see my little brother, looking ever smaller and standing there with red-rimmed eyes and irises of the clearest blue, amplified by his tears.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Where is Robin now?”

  I didn’t know. I hoped she wasn’t going to be stuck, haunting that piece of US 49, or our upstairs for the next hundred years, or worse, some kind of slave to the Russian House ghost. Another lost soul to be summoned by some future, naïve group of children. I said the only thing I could.

  “She's gone, buddy.”

  “Gone where? Can I go?”

  I hugged him. I wanted to hug Robin. I looked into the kitchen to see my mother, still staring off with that blank, defeated expression. I wanted to hug her too, but she was just as distant as my sister. Mrs. Chambers was still attempting to console her and wipe the tears and blood from her face.

  “Heaven, I guess ... and no. You
can't go. Not for a long time,” I said.

  “We can't play with her?”

  “No,” I said.

  He began to cry again.

  At that moment, my mother approached. She stared at us, me holding my little brother in my arms. Her hair hung in frazzled strands and wisps of it stuck to her moist cheeks. Her eyes were sunken from leaking and the smeared blood on her face had dried. It looked as if Mrs. Chambers had wiped most of it away, but enough was left that it didn’t matter. It would never be all gone, I thought. Not all gone like Robin.

  “My angels,” she said.

  We looked up at her.

  “My angels. You're all I have left,” she said.

  “Mommy,” Danny started, but she interrupted him.

  “I'm so sorry I wasn't out there. I should've been out there. I could've...” she trailed off.

  “Mom,” I said in protest, but couldn’t finish.

  I wanted to tell her it wasn't her fault, that it was mine but I couldn't form the words. She hugged us. It was the first time in over two years that she’d hugged me. When I looked up at her, she was really there. Not a shell, not a lost woman, but my mother was there.

  She hugged us and stroked our hair and breathed in our smells. She loved us in a way I think she'd forgotten she could. Like when she was first blessed with us. She loved us like she could no longer love Robin and we sat that way, crying and holding on for a long while.