One For Sorrow

  When she came knocking at my door the next morning I told my mom I was sick, and she said through the door that she’d send a note excusing me to the principal with Andy. She only let me sleep into the early afternoon, though, before she came around knocking once again. Knock, knock, knock. “Adam?” she said, her voice worried. Knock, knock. “Honey? Why is your door locked? Are you all right?”

  “He’s not coming out, Linda,” Lucy said from the living room. “Not now anyway. Come watch soaps with me while he sulks.”

  Before my mother wheeled away, she said, “I’m setting your lunch down out here, honey. Please eat something for me.” The TV came on then, tragic music announcing the beginning of the soap opera, and my mother and Lucy began to comment about who was sleeping with who, about who was possessed by the devil, their chatter turning into a mantra the longer I listened.

  “He’s a dog.”

  “She should really get a clue her man is cheating.”

  “Who would have thought she was a princess?”

  And soon I fell back to sleep.

  It was night when I woke again. The Weather Channel’s Muzak was playing in the living room. I groaned when I heard it, then rolled over to find an empty space in my bed. Jamie was gone, but I could still see his muddy imprint on my sheets.

  When I got out of bed, I found my room had been ransacked. All of my pants and shirts were strewn across the floor, their hangers with them, but my closet door was closed. I didn’t understand why Jamie would have done this, but it had to have been him.

  I was still covered with dirt from the night before, so I unlocked my door and slipped into the bathroom. I got in the shower and watched mud circle the drain until nothing ran off but clear water. Afterward I dried off and wrapped the towel around my waist. Shaking the last of the water from my hair like a dog, I opened the door to find my mother in the hall. She looked up and said, “Don’t. You. Dare. Lock. Me. Out. Of. Your. Room. Again.” Then she turned her chair around and wheeled into the kitchen where I could hear my dad’s and Andy’s forks clinking against their plates.

  I went back to my room, locked my door again and sat down on my bed to open my Social Studies book. I was trying to find the entry on Mexican funerals Gracie mentioned, but there was no follow-up from the ninth grade edition, so instead of Mexican funerals I ended up reading about a tribe of people in Africa who spoke with clicks. I thought clicking noises were probably better than words anyway. Words never really work except for the person saying them. Everyone else hears whatever they want. I thought maybe I’d start clicking to people instead of talking too. That would be as good as saying, “How are you? I’m fine. My mom is paralyzed and my dad never talks. My brother hates me and there’s this strange woman in my house who paralyzed my mom. Everyone thinks this is normal.” You can tell people stupid shit like that all day and they’ll just smile and nod.

  After that I stayed up playing Nevermorrow, waiting for Jamie to come back. I got through the first five layers of hell by one in the morning, and was maneuvering my knight through a maze of dim castle halls when I heard something come from behind my closet door. I listened harder. It sounded like someone crying maybe. I wasn’t sure. So I got up and went over and slid the door open, and found him on the floor in there with his legs curled up to his chest, his arms around them, crying without tears. “Jamie?” I said.

  He looked up, frowning. “I tried,” he said, “but I can’t wear any of them. They’re all yours.”

  “They’re too big?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “They’re being used,” he said. “I can’t wear them like that.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I told him he could wear my Cleveland Indians jersey that I never wore anymore, and found a pair of jeans and old running shoes I’d worn out last year. He couldn’t believe I’d give them to him. “Are you sure?” he said, his hands out, fingers curling.

  “Sure I’m sure,” I said.

  He put everything on in a hurry, as if I might change my mind, and I sat at the computer to continue playing Nevermorrow. He stood in the center of the room looking at the clothes he wore, touching them over and over, going on about how we wore the same size. “Who would have thought we’d wear the same size?” he said. “Isn’t that great?” It was like he was happy we actually had something in common. He rested his hands on my shoulders and lowered his head next to mine, to get the same perspective on the computer I had. His bruised cheek brushed against mine, but I didn’t shudder one bit.

  I commanded my knight to open a door and three skeletal warriors who had been waiting for an ambush came at me with swords raised. I clicked the attack command and my knight took his Flame of Truth sword and slaughtered them, one right after the other.

  “This looks cool,” said Jamie. “What’s it called?”

  “Nevermorrow,” I said. I didn’t mention it was the same game he’d played the night before. Instead I paused the game and said, “Where did you go?”

  “What’s the matter?”

  I spun my chair around to point at the clothes on the floor. “When I woke up, my room was a mess and you were gone. I just want to know what happened.”

  “Chill,” he said. Just that. Chill. I was about to clock him for being an idiot when he said, “I was looking for a way out.”

  “A way out? So you tore my room apart?”

  “I didn’t mean to.” A stupid grin slid up one side of his face.

  “Have you ever heard of a door?”

  “I can’t go through that one,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Right.”

  “I’m serious, Adam. I can go through it, but not to get where I was going.”

  “So you went through the closet instead?” I got up from the computer and sat down on the bed.

  He came over and sat next to me, placing his hand on my leg, trying to catch my eyes. “Hey,” he said. “I needed to find a dead space. That’s the truth.”

  “Dead space?” I said. I didn’t move my head, but I shifted my eyes to get a look at his face.

  Jamie nodded at the door that opened on the hallway. “That door goes somewhere,” he said. Then he nodded at the closet and said, “That one doesn’t. Dead space. A door that doesn’t go anywhere. Unless you know how to make a way out of no way.”

  “It goes to my closet,” I said, “where my clothes used to hang.”

  “You know what I mean,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “Actually I don’t.”

  He rolled his bloodshot eyes and said, “If you don’t believe me, I’ll show you.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the closet. “Don’t let go,” he said. “And whatever you do, don’t look back.”

  I nodded and he pulled me into the closet and slid the door shut.

  “Don’t talk,” he whispered. “They might hear you, and you’re not ready to be here yet. It could make them mad, so don’t say anything.”

  “Who are they?” I whispered.

  “The men with no skin,” said Jamie.

  As we took a few steps toward the back of the closet, I reached my hand out to brace myself, tracing my fingertips along the wall as we walked. But five steps later the wall dropped away and suddenly I was touching damp air and empty space and I wasn’t inside my closet at all.

  Voices murmured around me, soft and raspy, but I couldn’t see anything. Something wet brushed against my arm and I jerked away, but Jamie held me tight. Something crackled underneath my feet, something like twigs snapping, something like dead leaves. Water gurgled nearby and I wondered if we were in a forest. In the distance wolves were howling.

  After a few minutes Jamie stopped walking and I bumped into his back. A click, then hinges squealing. A square of light appeared, blinding me, and when my vision returned we were in another closet, looking out at a yellow room lined with shelves of rocks. “This is Gracie’s room,” I said.

  Jamie nodded.

  “How did we get here?”

  “Dead space is
n’t what it looks like,” he said. “You just have to know how to use it.”

  I let go of his hand and stepped over the threshold. I stared at Gracie’s bed, the white quilt and fluffy pillows. I thought of her on top of me, rocking and rocking. I thought of her going over to the window and looking out at the maple tree in front of her house. That was where everyone said Jamie turned in circles, round and round the tree, looking up at Gracie’s face in the window, waiting for her to let him inside.

  I went over to the window and looked out. No ghost was down there though. He was with me instead. I wandered over to her shelves of rocks and picked out the heart-shaped pink quartz she’d shown me earlier and slipped it into my pocket. I wanted something of hers, something to remind me it had been real, even though she’d kicked me out.

  “We shouldn’t stay here,” said Jamie.

  “Where is everyone?”

  “Downstairs,” he said, looking around the room, from door to window to closet. “Come on,” he said, adjusting his smashed glasses. “If she catches us here, she’ll kill us.”

  He grabbed hold of my hand and we went back in the closet. Jamie pulled the door shut and darkness surrounded us again. We walked through that same place where I couldn’t see anything but shadows passing, couldn’t hear anything but soft murmurs and crackling, the sounds of water moving and wolves howling. We walked through that space where I couldn’t feel anything but a bitter wind blowing against my face. Then Jamie slid my closet door open and we were back in my room with my clothes all over the floor. A pair of my running shoes lay at the end of the bed. I needed to start running before it was too late, but I didn’t know where I should run to.

  So I decided to look for a sign. Grandma would do that. Wait until all your ducks line up, she always said, before you do anything. I had the running shoes and the body to take me wherever I went. I just needed to know where to run. I’d get a compass, I decided. I’d take clothes and food. Maybe a knife. Knives are useful. I got a pad from my backpack and started writing a list. Jamie lay on the bed and watched as I paced the room, making plans. A map. Also a flashlight would help. And I had something else to take with me, I realized. Inside my front pocket, I had Gracie Highsmith’s pink little heart.

  The next day I missed school again and, since my mom and dad didn’t seem to mind, I decided to keep missing. I stayed in my room playing Nevermorrow with Jamie. We left my clothes on the floor. Usually he’d leave while I slept. I wondered where he went to, how many places a dead person could even go. After his reaction when I asked about his murder, though, I thought it was best to leave some things alone.

  I didn’t want to bother my mom now that she was in her wheelchair and things were hard for her, but several days after Jamie took me through dead space, I woke up to hear her making breakfast in the kitchen. I was hungry for the first time in days, and since she was making it anyway, I went out to ask what it was.

  “Scrambled eggs,” she said, not looking up from the pan. “Would you like some?”

  I nodded and, even though she wasn’t looking at me, she wheeled over to the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of eggs. “Only two left,” she said. “That enough?”

  “Plenty,” I said. “Thank you.” Her face lifted a little to hear me say something nice.

  Andy came out and forked his eggs down in under a minute. “Gotta fly. See you in the loony bin, Adam,” he said, then opened the side door and went out laughing.

  My mother wheeled over with a plate of eggs. “Toast?” she asked.

  I nodded. She wheeled over to the counter, untied a bag of bread, started reaching up to slide the bread into the toaster. She struggled trying to reach it, so I said, “Wait. Let me get that.” I put my eggs on the table, took the bread from her and slid it into the toaster myself.

  She looked down at her hands and sighed. “Thanks, sweetie,” she whispered.

  I leaned against the counter, waiting for the toast to pop while my mother stared at me. Her hair was tangled from sleep. Finally she opened her mouth and said something I should have known was coming, but as usual I was the last person to realize what was happening.

  “You have an appointment with Dr. Phelps,” she said. A moment later she added, “Today.” Then she wheeled away, opening the refrigerator to pretend like something in there was very interesting.

  “I’m not going,” I said.

  The toast popped out of the toaster.

  “Yes. You. Are.”

  “No. I’m. Not.”

  She turned her chair around and said, “I’m your mother, and when I say you’re going to see Dr. Phelps, there’s no arguing.”

  “You can’t make me,” I said. I imagined her chasing me around the house in her chair, her arms pumping the wheels. I could have outrun her when her legs were working. What made her think she could catch me now that she couldn’t even stand up?

  “No,” she said. “I can’t, can I?”

  I sat down at the table to eat, feeling like a bastard. “Your father will be driving us to the doctor’s office,” she said a minute later. “Be ready at noon. You know your father doesn’t wait around for anyone.”

  She didn’t have to say anything else. She’d slapped down her last card and knew she’d trumped me.

  I left the table, my food uneaten. I wanted to tell Jamie what had happened, but when I got to my room the bed was empty and the door to my closet was closed. He was gone again. I was alone again. On my way, as my brother said, to the loony bin.

  When it came down to it, the visit with Dr. Phelps wasn’t so bad, really. He had pale white skin with brown age spots that reminded me of some of Gracie’s rocks. His head was bald except for a ring of grayish-white hair around the crown, so it looked like a bird’s nest holding one large, age-spotted egg. He spoke with a rumble in his throat, as if everything he said might turn into a cough. But what was best about Dr. Phelps was his total ignorance. I could tell him anything and he’d just go along.

  “So tell me, Adam,” he said, very friendly. “What made you get undressed and get into the place where they found the Marks boy?”

  “I was curious,” I said. “My brother keeps taking people back there. They have orgies there, him and his friends and their girlfriends. I thought I could hide there and maybe see some action.”

  “And your clothes?”

  “Oh, those,” I said. I waved my hand in the air as if to bat away such a silly question. “You know,” I said, “I’m used to masturbating naked. I just wanted to be ready.”

  “I see,” said Dr. Phelps. He was still nodding as usual, but I could tell he was maybe starting to catch on. So I decided to throw in some stuff I figured he’d like. “Also, well, I thought maybe about killing myself and I didn’t want anyone to have to undress me. When my grandma died, my mother had to undress her and redress her in good clothes before the mortician came. I thought maybe I’d make it easier on her. Just be naked and then all they’d have to do is dress me.”

  His eyes lit up at that. Like some old lady at Bingo, all the muscles in his face came alive. “And what did you feel when your grandmother died?” he asked, excited. “Did that disturb you also?”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “It really fucked me up. She was like my best friend in the whole world.”

  He smiled. Blinked his eyes and nodded. I could tell this was what he wanted, how it would be from now on. Me and Dr. Phelps, for however long my parents wanted to drag this out, wasting their money while I entertained him with the worst case scenarios I could imagine.

  My parents came in after we were done, and my mother wanted to know if I should leave. “Not at all,” said Dr. Phelps. “Nothing we talk about in here should be kept from Adam. No secrets, that’s my policy.” I thought maybe the fool wasn’t so bad after all.

  He told my parents I needed some time to myself. “Adam’s had a big shock. Some kids deal with death more directly than others,” was his explanation. “Some time at home with his family is what he needs. Also
three sessions a week, right here in my office.”

  My father didn’t think we could afford the sessions but that two weeks off from school would be fine. My mother said, “Two sessions a week,” and the deal was struck.

  On the way out of his office, Dr. Phelps put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Death is difficult, Adam. But we all face it. Don’t worry. Everything will be all right.”

  You stupid fuck, I was thinking, do you think you’re talking to an idiot? Of course we all face it. I probably faced it more than he ever had. I got in there. Right in where they’d buried him, for Christ’s sake. How close to facing it can you get?

  But he meant well, I knew. They all did. All of the so-called grown-ups, the adults, the mature audience. They mean well, even if they make you feel like you don’t know anything about anything, just because you’re a kid.

  So I did as suggested and spent more time with my family, trying to make everything seem normal. I sat with them in the living room and watched stupid reality television shows, which aren’t really about reality at all really. Like that show where all the people get dumped off on a deserted island and have to eat worms and catch fish with their bare hands. My dad loved that show about as much as he loved the Weather Channel. He liked this one cast member who was a Navy SEAL, who painted his face with camouflage to go hunting in this one episode. He even made a spear. He found a wild boar somehow, even though in the previous episodes it didn’t seem like anything lived on the island at all. You hear this snorting sound, and the camera pans to this wild boar, which is really a little pig probably flown in from America, and the Navy SEAL spears this baby pig and swaggers around like he’s somebody. My dad thought that was the greatest thing in the world. I could tell he was imagining himself on that island, what he’d do to survive, who he’d ally with, who he’d try to get thrown off the island. He’d be a pig killer too. I could see him doing it over and over. Behind his eyes, the pig killing was happening.