Denis Ever After

  “No. No!” He searches for Mom’s luggage, then falls to his knees.

  I leave with GeeGee just as Dad hurries into the room. The loneliness of it hits him squarely in the face. My last view of him is as he sits on the bed where she just sat and cries into his hands.

  37

  Iron November

  Like Macy Tibbs took his son Melrose back to Port Haven, I push through the razor with GeeGee. I’m sliced more painfully than ever, terrified I’m leaving something vital behind, but I can’t look, can’t think about it. GeeGee might have been cut far more deeply than I am, the result of too many times visiting there, but my cut takes the brunt of it.

  “You poor boy!” she exclaims when we hit the streets. “But I think we made it in one piece!”

  “I’ll check later. GeeGee, tell me what you wanted to tell my mom. You said ‘tell them’ and ‘he was there.’ Tell who? And who was where?”

  She looks me square in the face, reaches up to smooth my left eyebrow with her shaking fingers. “That’s the point. He was at my house!”

  “Who, GeeGee? My dad? My dad lived with you, I know that. What about it?”

  She shakes her head. “No, no, not him. Not that house. The other house. In Kittanning.”

  The contents of the suitcase shudder back to me. The photo of an old house with a porch.

  “The farmhouse? Are you talking about the white farmhouse? That was your house! We were there, Matt and I, weren’t we? But my dad doesn’t know that, does he? He doesn’t know we were ever there, does he?”

  GeeGee shakes her head. “Oh, no. We weren’t speaking by then. But that’s where it all happened. She can tell you. It was terrible, but she can tell you.”

  “She? My mother?”

  “He was wrong, he was sorry. After it happened. He changed.”

  “Who was sorry? Who changed?”

  “We’re all doing our poor human best, aren’t we? I think we are. I hope we are, I do.”

  It strikes me right then that, out of the entire living world, only my mother knows what happened at the farmhouse. We’re all doing our poor human best?

  “Stay here, GeeGee. I’ll be back!”

  Long story short, I hurl myself into the razor. What is this, my tenth time? It’s bloody. Enough said. Back in Buckwood, I can tell by the light that it should be afternoon, and Matt will be at school, but something’s wrong. The sun is low in the sky, flat behind the trees. And there is wind, a cold wash of air down the street, but the sound of the wind is not in the trees because the trees are bare. It is the rustle of curled brown leaves leaping and spinning on the ground.

  And I know in my gut it’s November.

  The minutes I was in Port Haven have betrayed me again, worse this time. It could be as long as a month since I left Matt at Silver Lake. It is the month of my death.

  As quickly as I can, I wing it to school and fly through the halls, already feeling the sparks of anxiety and anger flying off Matt. I see Trey first and brush Trey’s shoulder briefly, which stops Trey dead in the hall, looking all around and finally up at me.

  Trey gasps a sob, laughs brightly, then points back up the hall to the corner.

  “Chem lab!”

  I give a nod, which Trey pretends to catch as a kiss on the cheek. I slither fleetly toward the lab, when all of a sudden I am broadsided by a single barbed shard of black fire.

  It’s coming from my house.

  Putting Matt on hold, I soar back home to find Mom and Dad quivering on the doorstep. Dad holds an overnight bag. Mom is in her business suit. She is crying, weaving back and forth.

  “Gary, please not now. Not again, but certainly not now.”

  He shakes his head. “It’s time. I have to go. I’ll be back.”

  I step in front of Dad, try to catch the light. “Dad, where are you going? Why? Why now?”

  “You can’t go, not with Matt this way,” she says. “The therapist said he needs us together. He’s been in a dark place for weeks now. You’re part of it. It’s important—”

  “This is important too, Bonnie.”

  “For who, Gary? For you? For her?” Mom slashes the tears away from her cheeks with the backs of her hands, and they fly as jagged sparks at Dad, sending him down a step. “Gary, you know how you get. It’ll be worse this time.”

  “A couple of days. That’s all.”

  “Really, you’re going to abandon us. Just like you always do. You know what happens, don’t you? Five years ago. Do I have to remind you? You’re going to drink and drink—”

  He throws his bag to the driveway. “I’m not going to drink! We’ve been over this—” He cuts himself off and balls his fists into his pockets to trap them there.

  “You’re going to leave us, knowing there’s someone out there? You’ve seen him.”

  Dad heaves in a breath. “Bonnie . . .”

  “Then you know what, Gary? Go! Just go!” She waves her hand at the car, scoops up her pocketbook, and is inside in an instant, slamming and latching the door behind her.

  Dad stares at, then softly pushes, the door, in no way hard enough to open it, even if it weren’t locked. A cold breeze comes down the driveway from the side yard. He turns, walks around the car, picking up his duffel on the way. He gets in. The engine roars. He goes.

  I slip in the door to find Mom sitting on the floor at the foot of the stairs, sobbing. I have no idea what I just saw. Short fierce bolts of light burst on the floor around her.

  “Mom, I’m sorry I left you. I’m sorry I died and messed it up even more.”

  Ten minutes later, not even, Matt runs in the front door, yelling, “Dad!” When he sees me hovering, he is boiling mad and ready to scream. Then Mom appears like an apparition at the top of the stairs in a bathrobe.

  Matt is stunned by her face, a white mask of tears. “Mom . . . ?”

  From the shadow of the landing, she clumsily tells him the bare details. “Your father is gone. He’ll be back in a few days. Don’t ask me anything. I’ll make supper later. I’m going to bed.”

  She pivots on her bare heel and goes into her room, closing the door quietly behind her.

  He stares up at the landing, then wheels around angrily to me. “You idiot! You jerk! Where were you?” He punches the air where my chest is, and it hurts more than I can say. Jerking his phone from his pocket, he hits the screen and sobs at it. “Come here now!” Then he pushes past me and jumps double steps up the stairs.

  “Where is Dad going?” I ask when we get to his room.

  He flashes a pair of dark eyes at me. “How should I know? The only thing I do know is that we can’t find your killer until Dad gets back from wherever he went because Mom’s certainly not going to take me anywhere!”

  I sit on my bed and roll that over in my mind. “I’m not sure we have to wait.”

  “Oh, let me trust you. Watch.” He burns a look right at me, not needing any trick of the light now. “I should have expected this. Dad’s been dark since we got back from Silver Lake. They patched it up, sort of, when we got back, but day by day, it’s been getting worse. He couldn’t sit down, always pacing. He shouted at Mom the other day. They both shouted. But what do you care? Gone for a month while I’m dying here! Some brother.”

  “Okay, okay. How many times can I say it? I’m sorry. But look, something weird happened at GeeGee’s house in Kittanning. It was her house Mom brought us to when we were two.”

  He looks up at me, goes through a bunch of words in his head before he says, “Why?”

  “I’m not sure. GeeGee’s confused and says ‘he was there.’ I don’t now who ‘he’ is, and apparently Dad doesn’t know, but Mom does. We need to unravel the threads—”

  “You and your idiotic threads. You ask Mom. Go ahead. See how far you get!”

  “Matt, look—”

  Trey bursts in almost on cue, pushing right past me.

  “He’s here again,” Matt snarls, with an unkind finger gesture at me.

  Trey looks
around for me. “I knew it. I felt it. I have feelings about things.”

  “The dope is all about me asking Mom what happened at GeeGee’s house in Kittanning ten years ago. Oh, and my dad just bolted. Again. So Mom’s a wreck. Again.”

  Trey makes a face. “Yeah, that’s a tough one, Denis. She gets in these moods and goes zombie.”

  “The instant she realizes it’s a you thing, she’ll die,” Matt says. “Plus, she’ll never talk. Ever. Ever. Ever.”

  “Unless you give her something,” I tell him.

  Matt looks at me. “Give her something?”

  “Like what?” Trey asks.

  “Move my bed out of your room.”

  “What? No. Your bed stays here.”

  “Move it out, and she’ll think you’re really over me.”

  “I am over you. I’m so over—”

  “You’re not, and she knows it.”

  “But I want your bed in here. Where are you going to hang out when you come? Where are you going to sit?”

  “On your head.”

  What I don’t tell him is that I’ll be leaving soon anyway, that I have to leave soon or I’ll be so messed up for the rest of my death. I don’t tell him, but I will have to. He’s my brother, and when you have to leave, you say good-bye properly to your brother. I didn’t get to the last time.

  “Don’t tell her. Just take the bed apart and move it out. Then say to her, oh, by the way, Mom, about that old lady’s house. . . .”

  38

  The Place I Used to Be

  After Trey lovably approves the plan, it happens exactly that way.

  Not that night, of course, or the next night, or even the next, because Matt has to stall until he can’t possibly stall anymore. He waits until Trey can make it back for dinner one night. At the table he offhandedly asks Trey to help him afterward.

  “Help? Doing what?” Mom says as she and Trey wash blueberries and pick off their stems before dropping them on ice cream.

  “Muscle,” Trey says, flexing both arms comically. They’re pretty soft.

  Mom laughs. “Okay, then.”

  That night after Trey leaves, Mom taps on Matt’s bedroom door, the room that used to be ours. I watch her kiss him good night but linger on the edge of the bed. I remember how she used to go from one pillow to the other, alternating night after night for who to kiss first. I sense how it still grieves her to have only one son now.

  “Good night, sweetie. Another day done. See you in the morning.” She swivels toward the other bed on her way out. “Oh!”

  “Yeah. Trey helped me. It’s in the attic. But it’s okay. Denis is . . .”

  “Right here!”

  “. . . gone. Like you said.”

  “Matt, I’m so sorry. I didn’t ask . . . I didn’t even hear you two.”

  “Stealth. Trey and I are perfecting it. But it was time, you know? Maybe because Dad’s not here or something. I don’t know. It just seems right.”

  By giving this to her, little by little, Matt proves he’s one of the cleverest people I know.

  She lowers and kisses her forehead to his. “I love you.”

  “Mom?”

  “Yes?” Her voice is so soft.

  “When will Dad be back? Days? Longer? He’ll come back before . . . you know, won’t he?”

  “Of course, but Matt . . .” She draws in a long breath, opens her lips to speak, then closes them into a flat smile. Another breath, and she starts, “Honey, you see what’s happening. I know you do. No matter how hard he tries, Daddy can’t get away from his dark thoughts. He’s chained to them like some poor old dog.”

  “He said Denis died because of what happened to the girl. I told him no, but . . .”

  “He told you about her, then?” She stiffens. “Well, it’s her, Denis, his own father. He feels responsible for all of it. It falls on him like a huge weight this time of year. This horrible month. This year is especially bad. The girl would have been twenty-one this month. Denis would be twelve, like you, but isn’t. It’s just a horrible time.”

  “Is she the one you and Dad were arguing about?” he asks.

  Mom nods. “He’s gone to visit her. Her grave. In Valdosta. He drove there five years ago, too, the week before we went to that terrible amusement park. His ‘business trip.’ You remember that, right?”

  Right. The day we went to Funland, Dad was extra lively. So. He’d just come back from the mess in Valdosta. Maybe he felt he needed a break from the pain of it. Then I happened.

  “Matt, I’ve tried,” Mom goes on. “I keep trying. I’m chained too, right? Your father and I are tied together forever, I guess. But day after day? He’s digging at the ground about Denis, this year is really bad, and he roped you into it. We can’t let it happen to us, Matt, not like to him.”

  Matt wants to scream, protest, throw something. He wants to tell her it’s him too, and not just Dad. He wants her to know I’m right here with her and that I’m involved too. But he also knows the past weeks have been leading exactly here. And that she’s right.

  “I guess. I get it. But . . . there’s one last question I have. Please don’t get mad. It’s just a tiny thing, then it’s over. Really over. I promise. Cross my heart and . . .”

  She closes her eyes for a second, opens them, and glances at where my bed used to be. “Matt . . . all right. Make it quick, though, please. Okay?”

  He breathes in, out. “So, it’s our great-grandmother’s house.”

  “Her house?”

  “I saw a picture of it. The farmhouse. I remember it now.”

  “You remember it?”

  “The porch, the big windows. I was small. Around two, right? Denis was there too. Dad doesn’t know. But you brought us to her house. We had vaccinations there. But that’s not everything, is it? Mom, please tell me. The last thing, and it’s over.”

  Over. The word kills me.

  Mom sits up, then lowers her head so we can’t see her face. “It was ten years ago. Daddy took off for the first time, I didn’t know he was going to the girl’s grave. He just left. I had to find him. I took you boys to his grandmother’s house. She was living in Kittanning then. You were small. I wanted to ask her if she knew where he’d gone. I didn’t know anyone I could trust. I carried Denis up those steep front steps. He was asleep. It was late. I held your hand and you climbed up by yourself, so brave, not knowing why, but just being a good little boy.”

  As Mom speaks, the fog of time thins away, and the farmhouse begins to rise around me like a dream made real.

  39

  I Fell Asleep

  The old house builds itself, board by board, from the cold gray yard. It is ten years ago.

  I enter. The front room is small and square and close. Pale light seeps from the room on the left, where a dark painting of Jesus in the Garden, weeping blood, hangs over the buffet. Ahead, a narrow set of black stairs leads up.

  “She lived only a few years in the Kittanning house,” Mom says. “As far as I know, your father never visited her. She blamed him for what happened to her son, his father. She took it back, finally, but it didn’t make any difference to him. He broke with her, but she was always kind to me. And to you.”

  Matt turns to me. “I never knew. You must have been so afraid for us. For Dad, too.”

  A tiny voice fluttered down the stairs. Feet tramped down a hall, two sets, one lightly, on tiptoe, the other clacking heavily. Beyond the top step was a small room with a wooden crib wedged against a wall. A child moaned softly inside.

  The child was me.

  “Matthew, please! You’re wearing me out!” GeeGee said ten years ago.

  The phone began to ring. And ring and ring. GeeGee chased Matt, who ran like a crazy child. “Matt, stop!”

  “It was that—this—horrible month,” Mom says. “I found out later that it was the little girl’s birthday, as it would be every year around now. I didn’t know that then. I was terrified when he left, didn’t know what to do, so I took you to his
grandmother’s and went off to find him. Talk about chained. I loved him, love him, and I was afraid of what he might do. I drove everywhere, called everyone I knew. I searched for days. Then your great-grandmother phoned me—”

  “I call her GeeGee,” Matt says.

  She looks quizzically at him. “Okay. GeeGee phoned me that she’d gotten you your vaccinations, but now Denis had a fever. I was going to come right to you, when it finally hit me what the date was and that he might have gone to Georgia. His terrible place. So I called her back to say I needed a couple more days. But this time she—GeeGee—didn’t answer the phone. I kept calling. Still no answer. I got in my car and drove straight to you.”

  My head was splitting, burning. The gray house closed in, suffocating me. I rocked in the crib, back and forth, my face on fire, while Matt ran like a maniac. The phone stopped ringing.

  GeeGee came to me. She leaned over the railing and put a cool palm on my forehead. “Do you feel better yet?”

  Matt galloped in, roaring, “Me! Me! Memememe!”

  “Please, stop,” she cried. The phone started again. She took her hand away. I wailed.

  “What did you find when you got there?” Matt whispers this.

  From her sparks I know that Mom’s remembering driving. “What do you remember?”

  Matt is at the house now too. “The phone rang and rang. Denis cried, but I couldn’t stop bouncing. I saw GeeGee lie down on her bed, but not answer the phone. It kept ringing.”

  Mom is trying to read Matt’s face. “Anything else?”

  “There was pounding on the front door. That was you?”

  “I had a key,” she says.

  “You pounded anyway. The phone and the doorbell were both ringing. But she was already sleeping. ‘Phone!’ I told her. ‘Phone!’ And you kept pounding on the door.”

  Mom looks out the black window. “No, Matt. I was the one calling. It wasn’t me at the door.”

  All the noise! I stood in my crib. My legs stiffened. I saw GeeGee across the hall on her bed, I cried for her, but the hall between the rooms suddenly darkened with a shape.

  “Daddy?” I said, and reached for him, but my legs collapsed. I fell over the crib rail to the floor. My eye was wet and hot and my eyebrow burned. I howled. The shape came at me.