Day 174 (part 2)

He comes home from his first day back at elementary school and finds himself alone in the house; a little uneasy, he drops his backpack on the floor and ventures into the kitchen, searching for something to eat. But at his level, there is nothing edible�"at least nothing that he recognizes. And the kitchen feels cold and unfriendly.

What’s happened? He can’t have been gone very long, but the whole house feels different, somehow…. It’s only been 168 days. Nothing could have changed this much.

But it’s so different. There’s no food; the pantry is strewn with yellow, gritty dust and stray boxes and canisters, and the little food in the refrigerator smells awful enough to make him gag. He is used to cookies after school, at least one or two, but he can’t smell any, and the cookie jar, deep blue with bright green designs, which has been there since he was a baby, and which he has to knock over onto its side to see into, is empty.

The whole place is dirty, too, though it’s taken him a long time to notice. And when he inspects all the other rooms, looking for his dad, who would surely be able to explain all of this, he sees that all the rooms are unkempt and covered in dust and have a cold, hostile feel to them, as if no one has been in them for a very long time. And the walls don’t look like he remembers them; they’re so blank that it makes him nervous, as if they’re staring at him. Where are all the pictures, and the mirrors, and his mother’s paintings?

He glances over his room, but it feels the same as it did last night, so nothing new there. And then he hesitates before sneaking forward, peering around his parents’ bedroom door. He’d only been allowed in here some of the time, before, and with his mother not around to tell him if it’s okay, he’s not sure what to do. But no one speaks, and he remembers that no one is there, so he goes in.

He feels the difference right away: one whole side of the bedroom is empty. His mother’s dresser is gone, and her side of the closet is barren, not even the hangars left, or the shoes. He runs into the bathroom, but the counters are swept clean, no longer cluttered with all of her things. He starts opening drawers and cabinets, but the ones that are not filled with his father’s things are either empty or padlocked shut. Padlocked? He’s never seen locks like these before…but he knows right away that he doesn’t like them, not at all. They’re too heavy, too strong….

He doesn’t know what to do. There’s nothing left of his mother at all. Where has she gone? She said he might not be able to see her anymore, but not that all of her things would leave, too. Did she take them with her? But that meant that she was living somewhere else…she wouldn’t do that, would she? She loved him, she wouldn’t leave him like that….

But it’s all gone, and there are locks on the drawers, and on his father’s dresser and wardrobe and nightstand…. He climbs onto his mother’s side of the bed, but it’s cold, and hasn’t been slept on in ages, and he’s so confused….

Well, his dad will explain this. His dad used to know everything, if he asked nicely enough. All he had to do was wait for him to come home.

He went back downstairs, sitting at the kitchen table and trying not to look around at everything. It makes him feel dizzy, seeing all these changes…. He sits where he can see the clock very easily and keeps track of the time, wondering in which rotation of the minute hand his father will appear. It must be soon.

He goes upstairs and finds a few of his toys, sitting in the kitchen and playing with them. They’re not as fun as he remembers; but then, he’s barely ever played with them before. Just with his mother, when they were bored.

He’s hungry; some mean kids stole his lunch earlier, before he even got a chance to look inside it. His dad made it for him, so it must’ve been nice, and that made it worse that he couldn’t eat it…. Maybe he should try and make cookies. He helped his mother out all the time, back when she was…when she was there. It wasn’t hard. He knew you needed flour, and butter, and….

An hour later, his dad’s car pulls into the driveway, but he, so absorbed in scraping a bowlful of melted Halloween candy, burned at the edges and getting harder every minute, into a bowl of yellow mush. This is how you make chocolate cookies, he is certain of it….

He hears his dad open the door and looks up, beaming. “Dad!” he cries, running up to greet him as his dad trips on his backpack, muttering a bad word, which he decides to overlook. “Where’d you go? Where were you?”

“I�"what the hell are you doing?” he demands, staring in disbelief at the kitchen, coated with flour and batter and sugar.

“Making�"um�"see?” He grabs the empty cookie jar and shows his father, who stiffens at the sight of it, his hands clenching into fists. “They’re all gone, and I was hungry, and you were gone, and�"”

“You couldn’t wait five minutes?” his dad snarls, holding up a paper bag and a brightly-colored cardboard carton.

“What�"hey! McDonald’s!” Evan cries, delighted, instantly forgetting his terror at the anger in his dad’s voice. “For me?”

He reaches for it, but his dad holds it out of his reach. “Have you done your homework?” he snaps.

“Huh? Oh�"I forgot,” he muses.

“Then what have you been doing all this time?” his father says furiously. “Couldn’t I leave you by yourself for two hours without you destroying the kitchen?”

“I was hungry,” he protests in a tiny voice, frightened, though he doesn’t understand why he should be.

“What, didn’t you get enough to eat at lunch? Did you eat the whole thing?”

“Um…no,” he admits, staring down at his shoes. “Someone took it.”

His dad stiffens again, hand tightening around the paper bag. “You let someone take your lunch?” he repeats in disbelief, his voice shaking, though Evan doesn’t know why.

“It wasn’t my fault,” he protests. “They were mean. They pinched me, look�"”

“I don’t care!” his dad shouts, so suddenly that Evan flinches and takes a step back, clutching the cookie jar like a security blanket. “Just�"clean up this mess, right now�"”

Clean it up? Evan’s eyes widen. “But I don’t know how,” he protests.

His dad sighs sharply, covering his eyes with one hand. “Then go to your room and�"and do your homework�"right now�"”

“But I don’t want to,” Evan argues, eyes glued to the carton, heavily decorated on two sides with pictures of Spiderman, and on the other two with drawings of Hello Kitty. He wonders if they gave him the right toy this time. What was he supposed to do with a Hello Kitty toy, anyway? “I’m hungry.”

The food drops to the floor; Evan squeaks with surprise as his dad grabs his shoulder, leaning down until he’s at Evan’s level. Evan can feel the anger radiating from him, can feel his hand shaking, tense and heavy….

“Evan Thomas Moore,” he says very quietly, his voice deadly. “You listen to me. When I tell you to do something, you’d better do it right away, and you’d better not talk back to me, or you’ll be sorry. Am I clear?”

Evan is terrified, and doesn’t understand: his dad has been like this before, but his mother would always intervene�"she should have come to save him long before this. Voice trembling, he recoils from his father, saying doubtfully, “Mom said…Mom said I don’t have to listen to you….”

The hand on his shoulder tightens painfully; Evan gasps with pain as the fingernails dig into his skin. “She’s not here,” his dad mutters, every word as cold and lethal as poison.

“She said,” he protests, speaking faster now, his fear heightening until he could taste it, metallic and heavy, and hear it as a low whine in his ears…. “She said I don’t have to, she said you can’t tell me anything ever, ‘cause she l-l-loves me more than y-you�"”

“What?!” his dad screams in his face, and Evan screams too, throwing his hands up to protect himself; the cookie jar clatters to the floor as he is thrust backward, his shoulder slamming into the sharp edge of the kitchen table; he grabs the table before he falls, then clutches at his shoulder, which is bright red and�"and bleeding�"it’s bleeding�"

And then the pain hits him, and he starts to sob, tears pouring down his cheeks, his arm hurting so bad that he feels sick�"

“Stop crying!” his dad yells, so loudly that it hurts his ears. “Stop it right now and say it again�"you say it again, Evan!”

But he can’t stop crying�"the sobs continue, painful now, as he tries to back away, trapped in a nightmare, unable to understand what he’s done wrong….

“I said say that again!” his dad shrieks, grabbing the cookie jar and hurling at him; Evan screams and ducks, too late to avoid it, but it misses him, shattering against the wall above his head, and he screams again as he is showered by shards of ceramic, two of them cutting him on the way down�"

And then his dad snatches at him again, grabbing the top of his arm hard enough to make him cry out in pain. “What did you say?” he yells, shaking him so hard that his teeth knock together and his vision blurs. “What did she say? She didn’t say that at all, did she, you lying little s**t, answer me! WHAT DID SHE SAY?”

But he is crying too hard to answer; he can’t speak, though he tries to say that he’s sorry, that he didn’t mean to be bad, and that his father is hurting him�"

His dad releases him; he shrinks against the wall, looking for an escape, relieved�"but then his father’s hand flies out of nowhere and slaps him hard across the face.

For half a second he is confused by the rush of blurred images, edged with black, and by the loud, violent noise that deafened him; and then the pain hits, and he whimpers and falters, nearly falling over�"

His dad grabs his arm again, holding him up, giving him a brief, brutal shake to claim his attention. “Shut up,” his dad hisses, and he obeys, too frightened to cry. He stares up at his father in disbelief, feeling very small, very insignificant, and very weak, helpless, vulnerable, utterly dependent….

“You listen to me, Evan,” his father says very quietly, and he is unable to disobey. “You will never talk about her again. EVER. To me or to anyone. Or I will KILL you. Do you understand?”

He is too shocked, too scared, to know what to say; he tries to nod, though it is a lie. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand any of it. Why is this happening to him? What did he do wrong?

“But,” he hears himself saying, his voice almost a whine. “But�"she’s�"she’s coming back, isn’t�"?”

His dad slaps him again, so quickly that Evan didn’t even see his hand; he wails in pain, throwing his arms up over his face.

“What did I say? What did I just say?” his dad snarls in his face, shaking him again. “She is not coming back, she’s NEVER coming back, she doesn’t f*****g exist anymore! She doesn’t even know who you are anymore, and she doesn’t care, all she is is that�"that body�"and soon that’ll be gone too, she’ll be rotted and eaten by bugs and trapped in a tiny little box underground. She doesn’t f*****g care about you anymore, she LEFT, she didn’t want to be here anymore�"She’s GONE, do you hear me? SHE’S F*****G GONE!”

He is released; he backs into the wall, the kitchen closing in around him, his vision obscured with black spots�"he sees his dad’s livid face, and then he can see something quite different, a figure pale as death, stiff and lifeless as a doll, dressed in black, laid in a coffin…he can see her face, and see it trapped under the dirt, buried, falling apart, leaving nothing at all behind�"

“Stop crying,” his dad says harshly. “Stop it right now�"”

He raises his hand again.

Evan screams. 

Reviews

[silver threaded queen]

wow. just wow.