“I’m not a child,” I said. “I’ve seen things. Things you can’t even imagine.”
“What have you seen, Adam?” said Lucy, her voice so soft and full of syrup I could see she was thinking I might know something that could damage her. Her shadow was huge and black against the wall behind her, bigger than when I’d left. It crossed its arms and waited for my answer.
I said nothing, though. I turned and walked away.
I tried sleeping on the couch that night, but as it had for so many of the nights since I’d climbed into Jamie’s grave, sleep rejected me. I was getting used to rejection, but I was still tired. Looking at the Christmas tree’s winking lights, its shiny tinsel and satin bulbs, didn’t mesmerize me like it had when I was little, so I lay on the couch, picked up the remote and flipped on the TV, hoping to find something that would exhaust me.
Immediately the Weather Channel came on, its blue screen washing through the living room like a wave of ocean. I thought of the past few weeks and closed my eyes, wishing myself away again. Sure it had sucked in some ways, living in closets and abandoned Amish loggers’ shacks, but it hadn’t been this black hole in the center of my family that vacuumed everything good into it, leaving only shells of what we were supposed to look like moving around in this world. Out there, outside of this house, I was me at a higher volume. Here you had to turn yourself down or else off completely.
I spent the next few hours channel surfing, not really seeing the shows. I was thinking about Jamie. I had faith he’d return at any moment, even though he’d been gone when the police had taken me that morning, and that thought kept me hoping I wouldn’t be alone forever. Gracie had turned out to be someone who shifted loyalties when it was convenient, but I still had him. He followed me when I didn’t think he was with me. He’d saved me when I needed saving. Now all I had to do was wait for him to find me again.
I watched the hands of the clock sweep through the night and finally fell asleep around six that morning. An hour later, though, I was woken up by my father.
My father’s hands were rough from working construction. They were huge mitts that could swallow a baseball or cover a face almost completely. The skin of his palms felt like the skin on the bottoms of my feet: thick and sandpapery. My feet got that way from all the running I did and my father’s hands got that way from the heavy things he made them lift, from the rough surfaces he had to hold steady. Carpenter’s hands, he called them. Full of splinters. Once he came home with a fingernail blackened from being hit by a hammer. The nail filled up with blood and fell off a day later, and then my father’s finger had no cover for a while. The nail grew back eventually, but during the in-between time, I asked him if it hurt to not have the nail protecting him. “Nah,” he said. “These hands are used to pain. They don’t feel anything.”
Here they were, those numb devices, lifting me up from the couch. He slipped one under each of my armpits and hauled me up like a kitten. “Shit, shower and shave!” he hollered. Spit flew out of his mouth, but I didn’t feel it as it landed on me. “You’re not going to do whatever you want,” he said. “I’m in charge now. Not your useless mother!”
Lucy and Andy came thumping into the living room. “John? What on earth?” said Lucy.
“He’s going to school,” said my father, making it a point to not look away from me. “He’s not going to stay home and sleep all day.”
“Dad,” said Andy. “It’s Christmas break.”
My dad looked at Andy. His eyes were filled with rage, but they drained into embarrassment quickly. “Fuck,” he whispered, still holding me up. “Jesus,” he said, before he threw me back on the couch like a piece of trash.
“What’s going on out there?” My mother’s voice came from the bedroom.
“Nothing,” Lucy hollered over her shoulder. She folded her arms across her chest and said, “Well. Now that we’re all up, I guess I should make breakfast.”
Half an hour later, we all sat around the dinner table for the first time in I didn’t know how long, eating scrambled eggs and sausage, pancakes and bananas. I couldn’t taste anything, but I kept forking food into my mouth to make them happy.
I hated the forced mechanics of our movements, not just at the dinner table where the only sound was our forks clinking, but the mechanical movement of our lives. The way everyone always said and did the same thing and pretended they didn’t notice the seasons changing or the way other people changed. Why the Weather Channel all the time? Why settle for the wheelchair without trying therapy? Why a joint every day after school, right on schedule? Why did a dead boy come watch me run, but none of you bothered?
I was thinking these things, looking down at my plate, when Lucy’s shadow said, “That’s the way life is. Get used to it.”
I looked up to find her shadow spread out against the wall in front of me, but Lucy herself was on the kitchen side of the room preparing more pancakes. I looked back and forth between them. A thin tendril of darkness ran across the floor from Lucy to her shadow. It looked like, at any moment, her shadow could pull out a pair of scissors and snip the cord.
My father herded us into the van later that day and we went to the cemetery to brush off my grandparents’ headstones, to put Christmas wreaths on their graves. I thought of the Mexican cemeteries Gracie had told me about and wondered how Mexican cemeteries looked in winter. Probably it was sunny all year round there; if that were true it probably helped make everyone want to keep things colorful and festive.
We had trouble pushing my mother’s wheelchair through the snow, so Andy and I picked the chair up and carried her to the graves as if we were Egyptian slaves and my mother our Cleopatra on a litter. She laughed and her hand fluttered near her heart. She looked down at us, smiling to be held up in the December air with snowflakes drifting around her. “Be careful,” she chided. “Don’t hurt yourselves.” It was too late for that, I wanted to tell her. We’d been hurt. We’d all been wounded, and the blood still seeped out.
After we cleared the headstones and replaced the flowers with wreaths, we backed off as usual to let my mom have some private time with her parents. Correction: we all backed off except Lucy. She stayed beside my mom with her hand on her shoulder. Me, my father and Andy stood side by side, my father between us. Their breath steamed as it left their mouths, but mine remained invisible. My breath was as cold on the inside as it was outside. I was the walking dead, slouching through their lives. I didn’t understand the secret of how to keep going like everyone else. I could keep running, but only on the outside. On the inside, I was a corpse waiting for the body to catch up.
Afterward we went to town for lunch. My dad parked the van next to the curb in the town square, and we walked across the park together. The ground was covered with snow and people were out last-minute shopping because Christmas was only three days away. We went to the Wildwood Café and sat at a table instead of a booth so my mom could sit on the end in her wheelchair.
The Wildwood Café was my father’s favorite diner. In the summer the place was crowded with flies and smelled of grease and burned potatoes. In the autumn they served hot apple cider. In the winter they made cocoa and chili with venison instead of ground beef. In the spring the café shut down for a month while the owners, the Wintersons, vacationed in Florida. While they were gone, the chalkboard in the front window always said, “Back in a jiff! Happy Easter!” in soft pastel colors.
We ordered lunch and sat around like a real family, and I looked from the corners of my eyes to find everyone getting an eyeful of the McCormick family, together again, with a cameo appearance by Lucy Hall and the runaway son, the fuckup who was once a good runner and got decent grades. Pathetic, they all thought. Their shadows said what their faces wouldn’t.
My dad kept nodding and smiling at these people, these fakes who didn’t have much good to say about us behind our backs. I didn’t understand why he wanted the approval of people who thought badly of us even when they had shit going on in their own liv
es. Mr. Winterson and his pornography collection hidden from his wife in the shed behind their barn. Alice Chapman and her lover in the next town over. What would her husband think if he knew she was cheating on him with the man who sold him his new tractor? And then Reverend Mann and his thing for boys around my age. Both his shadow and those of some of the guys at school had things to say about that, but no one but people like me ever heard them.
My father had never been good at listening to live people, let alone shadows, so he didn’t notice we weren’t as bad as anyone else. He thought his family had gotten out of control and now he had to put us in line again, as if that had ever been the case. He wanted to show off. Look! Here they are! I’ve got them all rounded up!
I wanted to laugh in his face. How could he sit there and eat his goddamn chili and think these other people would let him make things better? They liked it when they saw a person down. Everyone likes seeing someone down—it makes them forget their own fuckups. Help someone who needs it? No way. Keep them there, is the way people think. But my father hadn’t figured that out.
I kept these thoughts to myself. It wouldn’t help to tell anyone how I felt. Life in the McCormick family was nonnegotiable. So I ate my toasted cheese and my tomato soup, trying to imagine the buttery toast on my tongue, the crumbly bread and the warm, soft cheese. But no matter how I concentrated, I couldn’t taste or feel a thing. I ate because I was supposed to.
The next morning, I woke to the sound of a car crunching over the gravel of our drive. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and went to the picture window. Past the branches and tinsel of the Christmas tree I could see a black woman getting out of her car carrying a briefcase. She wore a dark skirt to her knees, a white blouse with frills down the center, and a dark buttoned-up jacket. She looked official, which should have been my first clue she’d bring trouble. And after taking a deep breath and standing up straighter than she already had been, she marched up to our front door and knocked.
I didn’t answer. I kept peeking out between the branches of the Christmas tree and, after a while, she knocked again. There was movement in the back bedroom and a moment later my father came out in his underwear, asking, “Why don’t you answer the goddamn door?”
“It’s a black woman with a suit on,” I told him.
“Fuck,” he said. “It’s the social worker.”
“Let’s ignore her,” I said. “She’ll go away.”
She knocked again, hard and quickly.
“Lucy!” my father yelled.
“What?” Lucy called from my bedroom.
“Can you answer the door while I get dressed?”
Lucy came into the living room in her nightgown and we all stood around looking at each other like stupid people. “Who is it?” Lucy asked.
“The social worker,” I said.
My father said, “Keep her busy until I can get some clothes on and get Linda dressed.”
He turned the corner and I realized that this was the first time I’d seen him almost naked since I could remember. Then I realized Lucy had seen him almost naked too. It made me feel weird. Like maybe this was the beginning of a new set of signs to look for.
The social worker knocked once more and Lucy opened the door asking the woman to excuse her for not getting to the door sooner. We’d all been sleeping, you see, she explained. But the social worker was unfazed.
I heard her voice before I saw her. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you folks,” she said. “I’m from Social Services. I spoke with you on the phone last week? The police called to say Adam McCormick’s been found. I just need to ask you some questions, Mrs. McCormick.”
“Oh bless you,” said Lucy, her cheeks flushing. “I’m not Mrs. McCormick. I’m just a friend. My name’s Lucy Hall.”
She brought the social worker into the living room and said, “Right here’s our little missing person. Say hello, Adam.”
I was still in my T-shirt and sweatpants, not really the sort of armor I’d prefer to be wearing to take on this lady, but I knew I had to get her off our backs in order to make it up to everyone. So I said, “Hello, ma’am,” like a good boy, and she smiled. Her teeth were huge and white.
“Good to finally meet you, Adam,” she said in a buttery soft voice that made me want to trust her. But I knew better. People who sound like her always get picked to talk to troublemakers, but really they’re just as bad as the rest.
My father wheeled my mother into the living room, both of them looking dragged-out-of-bed tired. My father’s beard had started to grow in, even though he’d shaved the night before. My mother offered her hand to the social worker and said, “Please. Won’t you sit down?” The woman sat, and then she told everyone she’d need a little time alone with me.
I spent the next hour with her, answering questions. Why had I run away? Did I feel threatened by a family member? What had I encountered while I was gone? Could I explain my actions so she could understand my feelings? Why did I choose to stay in Gracie Highsmith’s closet, of all places? Why did I burn down the Wilkinson farm?
Goddamn it. Gracie had told them more than I’d thought. How can someone so smart get scared so easily? I mean, there’s no difference between them and us. They’re just older. You can’t let them intimidate you.
I answered as evasively as possible. I told her I was just having a bad time and not to take it out on my parents. I told her I might need medication. I told her I felt threatened, but not by my family (although this wasn’t true). I told her I’d stayed in Gracie’s closet because she let me. I mean, that was a really dumb question. When she asked about the Wilkinson farm, I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and she looked up from her notebook and gave me a look.
“You had nothing to do with that incident?”
“I didn’t know it had burned down until you told me.”
“Mmm-hmm,” she said. She looked down again and began to write something in her notebook.
When she asked about Gracie, I said, “She told me to stay there. I only planned on running away for a couple of days, you know, just to be on my own for a bit, but she convinced me to stay in her closet.”
“Is that right?” said the social worker. She’d told me her name, but I’d already forgotten. I didn’t want to know her. To me she would always be the social worker. Formality is best with these sorts of people.
“That’s right,” I said. I could have spared Gracie, but after the way she’d walked away from me without a word, after finding out she’d told them everything, I felt justified. Why should she get off just because she was from a good family?
When she asked why I’d taken Mr. Highsmith’s money, I said, “Gracie told me to take it. She wanted to take a train to California and told me where I’d find the money while she and her parents were visiting her uncle and aunt in Youngstown.”
“California?” the social worker said, looking doubtful.
“She told me to pick a place I’ve never been,” I said, “so I picked California. That’s where my aunt Beth lives.”
“I see,” said the social worker, scribbling furiously on her notepad.
Finally the social worker stopped recording the session and brought my family back in. She thanked us for our time and said she’d be in contact, and that possibly I’d have to go to court.
“Court?” said my mother, looking bewildered.
“Court?” I said, getting mad.
“Yes,” said the social worker. “It’s standard procedure with runaways and delinquents. Which is what your son is, I’m afraid. You’ll have to have a session with a juvenile court judge.”
“That is so lame,” I said, but Lucy hushed me.
“What could happen to him?” my mother wanted to know.
“He could be sentenced to juvenile hall, or possibly placed in a foster home.”
“A foster home?!” my mother cried.
“Yes, ma’am,” said the social worker. “I’m afraid so.”
After we closed
the door on her, my mother burst into tears. “Oh God,” she moaned. “Where did I go wrong?”
My father said, “Don’t cry, Linda.” But my mom kept on crying. He couldn’t stop her, which I guess must have made him feel out of control, because he shouted, “Stop it! Stop your goddamn crying already!” and my mother wheeled back to her bedroom, the tears still coming.
My father turned to me and his face was filled with the same rage he’d woken me with the other morning. In an instant I saw his hand go up, but I couldn’t move out of the way. It came down fast, the back of his hand against my mouth, and then I was on the ground looking up at him.
“This is all your fault! If you ever try to pull a stunt like this again, you better hope the cops find you before I do!”
I stayed on the floor. If I moved, he’d hit me again, so I lay there and looked up at him and said, “I’m sorry, Daddy, I didn’t mean it,” which made him run right out of the room. I knew a few of his weaknesses. I knew which words could hurt him.
Afterward I touched my fingers to my lips, not feeling any pain, and came back with blood. I held my fingers in the air and looked at the red wetting my fingertips and thought, There. There it is.
Me.
Christmas Eve came and we all tried not to look at one another or talk most of the day in fear that if we did we’d start brawling. By the time we exchanged presents, it felt almost like things were getting a little back to normal. A cheery glow filled the living room. The whiskey-flavored coffee Lucy made probably helped.
My mom gave me a new pair of running shoes and my father gave me one of his old hunting rifles. Just what I need, I thought. A gun. I tried to be thankful, like when I’d thanked Jamie, because now with my dad out of work, money was tight. I kissed my mother and patted my father’s shoulder from a distance, then opened the present my aunt Beth had sent me from California. She hadn’t come this year. After all the trouble I’d caused, she thought maybe it would be better if she visited for Easter.