And then I hear the strangest sound I’ve ever heard. It sounds like no and help at the same time. It sounds like an animal trying to speak human. It sounds like it is dying.
I stand up.
“Mom?”
I hear it again.
It’s her.
I run up the stairs.
“Mom?”
Holden is in the hallway, his hair still wet.
“What was that noise?” he asks.
I run past him and stop at the door to Charlie’s room.
My mom is on Charlie’s bed, rocking him.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. But already I can feel something. Something squeezing my heart into a stone. Charlie doesn’t look right. He’s gray and still. His brown curls hang dully over my mom’s arm. Her face is buried in his hair. She’s saying something, but I can’t make out the words.
“Oh, my God,” Holden says behind me. “I’m calling 911.” He runs back down the hall.
I don’t move. I just stare at my mom holding Charlie. Rocking him and making that strange, awful noise.
The water in the shower stops. Holden’s voice is back in the hallway. “Sara, get out here! Something’s wrong with Charlie!”
He pushes past me and runs to my mom and Charlie, but stops when he touches him and pulls his hand away.
“Oh, my God,” he says. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”
My mom is sobbing into Charlie’s head.
My heart is twisting, twisting, twisting inside my chest and up into my throat. I can’t move. I can’t move.
Sara comes up behind me wrapped in a towel.
“What’s going on?”
Holden stands up and staggers as if he’s lost his balance. I hold on to the door frame to keep myself from falling. Sara rushes to my mom and Charlie and has the same reaction as Holden. She collapses at my mom’s feet and puts her arms around Charlie and my mom, as if she is holding them together.
“He’s so cold,” she sobs.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” Holden keeps saying.
“Mom!” Sara yells.
But my mom doesn’t respond. She just cries harder into Charlie’s quiet face.
“Call 911!” Sara yells at me. “Don’t just stand there!”
“I already called,” Holden says quietly, just as we begin to hear sirens in the distance.
Sara looks back at my mom and Charlie.
She touches him again, sobbing. “No! No!’
I know what it means.
Holden moves past us and goes down the stairs. We hear his panicked voice shouting to someone outside. Then the thud of heavy feet coming through the house and up the stairs. Someone pulls me back out of the doorway. I lean against the wall in the hall, and I realize I still have my backpack on. I slip it off and slide to the floor. I can’t feel anything but my twisted-up heart, squeezing, squeezing. Everything around me is loud and pounding. My mom is sobbing. Then screaming. Then sobbing. Soothing voices from the EMTs. Questions. I hug my knees to my chest.
Charlie. Oh, Charlie. Please be OK.
But the more time goes by, the quieter the voices get. And I know. I know he’s gone. As my mother’s cries turn to whimpers, I can’t stand it anymore.
I get up.
And I run.
I RUN WITHOUT THINKING where I’m going. Halfway to nowhere I stop and throw up. Up and up and up, as if my heart is coming up out of my chest. Up and up until I am doubled over and hurling in pain but not crying. Not crying.
Not crying because that would mean . . .
That would mean . . .
I wipe my mouth with my sleeve and find my way to the pine cave. But instead of going under, I start to pull on the branches. I break one, then two. I kick the trunk and feel the pain sear through my leg and up to my stomach. But then a numbness takes over. And there’s a ringing in my ears. No no no no no.
I push the palms of my hands against my ears to shut it out. The lights from the ambulance in the driveway flash on and on. I close my eyes and finally sink down onto the cold ground. Pine needles stick to the palms of my hands. I squeeze my knees to my chest and make myself a stone, but I can’t escape myself. Can’t escape the truth creeping into my chest where my heart used to be. I keep shaking my head against it, but the truth is filling me up so fast I can’t breathe.
There’s a beeping sound as the ambulance backs up. I can see Holden and Sara standing in the driveway, watching them take Charlie away.
I listen to the motor get farther away until it’s gone, and the door to the house slams shut, and the neighborhood goes from quiet to busy as the commuters leave home for another workday. I hear the school bus stop in the distance and pull away again.
And then, after a long, long time, I hear someone calling my name.
HOLDEN’S FEET APPEAR near a broken branch. His shoes aren’t tied.
“Fern,” he finally says. “You have to come home.”
But I don’t move.
“Fern. Now.”
His knees bend, and then his face pokes in. It’s swollen from crying.
“Come on.”
But it takes his hand reaching for mine and pulling me out to get me to move.
When we reach the front door, he lets go of my hand.
“They said they think it was something called an epidural hematoma,” he says quietly. “Some kind of blood clot in his brain or . . . I don’t know. They don’t think he felt any pain.”
And he walks into the house, leaving me on the doorstep.
I don’t know what an epidural hema-whatever is. All I can picture is Charlie. Charlie in his bed this morning, the covers pulled up so all I could see was his curly hair. And Doll, sitting on the pillow next to his head, where she always keeps watch.
Stepping inside the house feels like walking into darkness. Holden and Sara are both sitting on the couch. Holden stares at the coffee table. Sara is crying into a pillow. I slowly walk to the empty oversize armchair that only my mom sits in, usually with Charlie curled up in her lap. When I sink into the chair, I feel myself waiting for him to come tearing into the room. “That’s Mommy’s chair!” he would yell, then crawl into my lap and pretend I was Mom. I close my eyes and wait for him to come. Wait for his sharp baby voice. For the brush of his stinky hair on my face. For the smell of Doll as he makes room for her next to me. For the feel of his pudgy hands squeezing my wrist. And his voice, “Read to me, Ferny. I love you, Ferny,” as he snuggles his head into my neck and reaches for my ear.
I wait and wait. But my lap stays empty.
Everything is empty.
LATER, THE FRONT DOOR OPENS, and my dad and mom walk in. My dad has his arm around my mom’s waist. Sara and Holden both stand up to go to her, but my dad waves them off and leads her through the living room and up the stairs. When he comes back down, he sits next to Holden and puts his hand on his knee. He breathes in and opens his mouth as if he’s about to speak, but nothing comes out. Sara moves closer to him and leans into his side. He puts his free arm around her and makes a choking sound.
Sara lifts her head and looks at my dad. “Why?” she asks.
My dad shakes his head. His voice is so quiet, it’s like a whisper. “They think that whatever happened is related to when he fell yesterday.”
Flashes of Charlie lying so still on the pavement flick through my mind. How he looked up at me through his tears. But then he jumped right up! He was fine!
“They think he must have hit the back of his head,” my dad says. “And it caused a blood clot that went to his brain. If . . . If we had just taken him to the hospital yesterday . . . Maybe . . . Oh God . . .”
Holden looks at me. “How hard did he fall, Fern?”
Sara and my dad are looking at me now, too.
The Big Bad Wolf.
“He . . .” I start to say. “I didn’t see . . .” My face starts to burn. I can feel them accusing me. I let him run in the parking lot. It’s all my fault.
“He was OK!” I say desperately. ?
??He got right up! He ran! He — he wasn’t even hurt!”
“Then why? How could this happen?” Holden stands up and starts pacing, pressing his fingers against his temples.
“They said these kinds of injuries are some sort of fluke,” my dad explains. “The brain can hit against the skull just the wrong way and cause a concussion. Or something.”
“I didn’t know he was going to run!” I yell. “I didn’t know he was playing a game with me! He just took off!”
They all stare at me.
My body is tingling all over. I feel like I am turning inside out.
“We know, Fern,” my dad says. “It’s not your fault.”
“He just ran away from me! I didn’t know what he was doing!”
Sara starts to cry again.
“He and Doll were playing! I was just doing my homework!” I yell louder because Sara won’t look at me, and I know that must mean she blames me. “Mom should’ve taken him to the hospital! He should’ve had X-rays! Charlie never complains when he’s hurt. Mom should have known!” I choke on the unforgivable words.
“Shut up!” Sara screams, finally facing me. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
“Stop it!” Holden yells. “It’s no one’s fault!” He pulls at his hair, then looks up at the ceiling. Up where my parents’ room is. Where my mom is.
My dad reaches out and takes Holden’s hand. Sara hides her face against his shoulder again. And I still sit alone.
“Come here, Fern,” my dad says quietly. “It’s no one’s fault.”
But I just shake my head and pull my knees to my chest so I can hide my own face. No, I keep thinking. No.
AFTER A WHILE, my dad gets up and goes to the kitchen. I imagine him coming back with a huge smile on his face saying he called the hospital and it was all just a big mistake. But instead, he comes back carrying the anniversary tray. It has a glass of water, a plate with toast, and a bottle of pills.
“I need to bring this up to your mom, but I’ll be back,” he says. As we watch him slowly climb the stairs, I remember all the anniversaries the three of us — and then Charlie, too — quietly climbed the stairs with that same tray, stacked with special treats for my parents. We’d knock on the door and say in our exaggerated lovey-dovey voices, “Room service!” and then giggle as we’d run down the hall and back downstairs to watch hours of bad TV that we normally weren’t allowed to watch.
When Charlie was born, as a joke we left him in his bouncy seat asleep next to the tray of food in the hall. It was Holden’s idea to remind my parents to be a bit more careful celebrating their anniversary that time around so we wouldn’t have another unexpected surprise. Sara thought that was crude, but I thought it was pretty funny, once Holden explained the joke to me. Unfortunately, Charlie woke up before my parents retrieved their tray, so we had to go get him. Holden wanted to leave a dirty diaper in the baby seat instead, but Sara put her foot down.
While my dad’s upstairs, we sit and stare. We don’t look at each other. We just wait and wait. I imagine my dad giving my mom those pills. I guess they must make her sleep. I wish we could all take them.
When my dad finally comes back downstairs with the empty tray, his eyes are red and his cheeks are shiny with tears. It seems to take all his effort to walk down the final steps and sit on the couch between Holden and Sara. He pulls them to him on either side and sobs. They bury their faces in his chest and cry, too.
“Fern,” he whispers. “Come here.”
I look into my dad’s watery, bloodshot eyes and stay where I am. I know I’m supposed to be crying. But I won’t. I won’t if it means what they’ve already accepted.
Holden gets up and walks over to me. He pries my hand from the armrest and pulls me up. I try to pull back.
“No!” I yell.
But now my dad is at my side, too. His strong arms pull me up and hold me close around his huge, soft belly. As he presses me into him, I feel like I could disappear.
I feel like I am breaking.
THAT NIGHT, Holden and Sara both go to their rooms to sleep, but I stay in the chair. My dad tries to carry me upstairs after I fall asleep, but I wake up and make him put me down. After he leaves me, I curl up in the chair and wait. But Charlie doesn’t come back.
In the morning, my dad makes us a breakfast we don’t eat, then goes upstairs to check on my mom. We still haven’t seen her since she came home. I don’t understand why she doesn’t come down and hold us. I don’t understand why we can’t go up and crawl into bed with her. My dad says we need to give her some time. But I need her now.
“I have to get out of here,” Holden tells Sara and me.
“Where will you go?” Sara asks.
“I just need some fresh air.” But as he turns to go, the phone rings. We all look at each other.
“What do we do?” Sara asks.
“Take it off the hook,” Holden says.
Before anyone can get to the phone in the kitchen, though, we hear the machine pick up, and Charlie’s voice echoes through the quiet house. “Hel-lo. Mom-my, Dad-dy, Sa-wuh, Hold-en, Fern, and Chah-lie ah not at home to take yo-uh call. Please leave a mes-sage, and we will call you back as soon as poss-ih-bull. Thank you. And see you at Hawee’s!”
No one moves.
Beeeeeep.
“Hello? Is anyone there? It’s Mona. Oh, God, we just heard. Um. Oh. Um. Please call when you can. We’re all here. Um. OK. We’ll try to call again later.”
Beeeeep.
“I’ll turn it off,” Holden says quietly.
I pull my knees to my chest again as he walks away.
“Fern,” Sara says. “Fern, you have to stop doing that. It’s OK to cry.”
I shake my head and tuck my face between my knees again.
“Fern,” Sara says. She touches the top of my head.
“Stop!” I yell at her. “Stop! I don’t want to . . . to . . . Just stop!”
“Stop what?” she asks quietly.
“Stop acting like he’s . . . like he’s not coming back.”
Sara kneels in front of me and wraps her arms around my legs, squeezing.
“Fern,” she says again, crying, hiding her face against me.
“I should have paid more attention to him,” I say. “I should have played with him. Then I wouldn’t have been the Big Bad Wolf. And then —”
“It’s not your fault,” she says quietly.
“He was so lonely,” I say.
“No, he wasn’t. He was just bored.”
“But if I had stopped doing my homework, maybe he wouldn’t have run away from me.”
“And maybe if the waitress service had been better, Mr. Seymore would have left the restaurant earlier and Charlie wouldn’t have run behind him. Maybe if Mom and I had come out to help sooner . . .” She trails off and looks away. And then she starts to cry uncontrollably. Shaking. This time I put my hand on her back, but she shrugs it off. When she finally stops, she takes a deep breath and shakes her head. “No,” she says quietly. “No.” She turns back to me. “It was an accident. Do you understand? It wasn’t your fault. It was —” But she stops and turns away again, as if she can’t lie to my face. As if it’s too hard to convince me.
“I’ll be home in a little while,” Holden says, coming from the kitchen. “I took the phone off the hook.” He pauses in front of the door, a guilty look on his face. “I just need to get out of this house,” he says. I can tell from the way he says it that he knows he shouldn’t. But he leaves anyway.
Sara pulls herself up and motions for me to move over. I slide over to make room, and she sits snug against me.
“Cry, Fern,” she says. “Cry right here.” She pats her chest, and I rest my head against her. She puts her arms around me so tightly, I know I won’t slip away. I feel my heart untwisting just a little, as if it is uncurling enough to call out for Charlie. But it doesn’t find him.
“Cry,” she says, and rubs my back the way my mom used to. “Please.”
I
unclench my hands and reach for hers. I hold on to her as tightly as I can.
If I cry, he won’t come back.
I squeeze tighter.
I feel my body start to shake.
He won’t come back.
“Cry,” she says again, as if she needs me to.
I’m holding her so tightly, I feel my fingernails dig into her skin. The place in my chest where my heart must be hurts so badly, I know now that my grandfather probably did die from a broken heart. And I feel like I will, too.
He isn’t coming back.
“I have you, Fern.”
And then a sound comes out of me. And my chest opens up again, and I am holding on to Sara as I sob so hard, I think I will turn inside out. I sob and sob, and she does, too. I soak her shirt with my tears, and she soaks my hair with hers. And she holds me and holds me and doesn’t get up. And eventually we tire ourselves out so much we fall asleep.
The doorbell wakes us up.
We’re slightly stuck to each other, and by the time we get up, my dad is coming down the stairs. We hear him open the door and step outside. After a few minutes, he comes back in.
“That was Mona,” he says. “She said she tried to call.”
Sara nods. “We let the machine pick it up.”
“Where’s Holden?”
“He went for a walk,” I say.
“If I make lunch, will anyone eat it?”
We shake our heads. He nods. And we sit there in silence. No one seems to know what we’re supposed to do now. How can we do anything?
Sticking out from under the coffee table, I see a tiny plastic firefighter lying on his back, smiling up at us. I start to picture all the pieces of Charlie in the house. The half-drunk cup of milk from Charlie’s dinner the night before, still waiting for him in the refrigerator. Who would throw it out? By the front door, Charlie’s tiny sneakers are still lined up next to mine. His coat is on the coat hook. There’s nowhere in the house that you can’t see a trace of him. He is with us forever and gone forever all at once.
When Holden gets back, my dad decides to make us lunch after all, but we barely eat. We clean up, then sit on the couch again. Every so often, my dad goes upstairs to check on my mom or answer the doorbell to receive condolences from friends. But he doesn’t invite anyone in.