I'm Thinking of Ending Things(43)

Maybe the Ms. Veal incident isn’t scary to others because it lacks drama. It’s just life. But to me, that’s why it was scary. It still is.

I didn’t want to go and live with Ms. Veal.

The first time I met Ms. Veal was in my kitchen. I was seven. I’d been hearing her name for years. I knew she called my mom a lot. She called my mom to tell her all the bad things that had been happening to her. Mom would always listen. It wasn’t like Mom didn’t have her own issues. And these calls would go on for hours at a time.

Sometimes I’d answer when she called, and as soon as I heard her voice, I felt uneasy. Sometimes I would try to listen after my mom picked up another phone, but always within a few seconds she would say, “Yes, okay. I’ve got it, you can hang up now.”

Ms. Veal had a cast on her right hand. I remember Mom saying there was always something wrong with Ms. Veal, a tensor bandage on her wrist or a brace on her knee. Her face was the way I’d pictured her voice on the phone—sharp and old. She had curly reddish-brown hair.

She was over at our house because she was collecting our bacon fat. Mom used to keep our bacon fat in a container in the freezer. Ms. Veal made Yorkshire pudding with bacon fat but never cooked bacon herself. Every so often, Mom would meet her somewhere or go over to her house with the fat.

This one time, Mom invited Ms. Veal over. I was home sick from school and was sitting in the kitchen. Mom made tea; Ms. Veal brought her oatmeal cookies. The fat exchange took place, and then the two ladies sat and chatted over tea.

Ms. Veal never said hello to me or even looked at me. I was still in my pajamas. I had a fever. I was eating toast. I didn’t want to be sitting at the table with that woman. And then, Mom left the room. I can’t remember why; maybe she went to the bathroom. I was alone with her, that woman, Ms. Veal. I could barely move. Ms. Veal stopped what she was doing and looked at me.

“Are you good or are you bad?” she asked. She was playing with a strand of her hair, curling it around her finger. “If you give up, you’re bad.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about or what to say. No adult, especially one I didn’t know, had ever talked to me like that before.

“If you’re good, you can have a cookie. If you’re bad, then maybe you’ll have to come live with me instead of living here in this house with your parents.”

I was petrified. I couldn’t answer her question.

“You shouldn’t be so shy. You have to get over that.”

Her voice was just like it had been on the phone—whiny, high-pitched, and flat. There was nothing put on, nothing friendly or gentle about her. She glared at me.

I could barely talk to a stranger at the best of times. I didn’t like strangers and often felt humiliated when having to explain something or discuss even the smallest trivialities. I had trouble meeting people. I had a hard time making eye contact. I put my crust down on the plate and looked past her.

“Good,” I said after a while. I felt my face blush. I didn’t understand why she asked me this, and it scared me. I would get hot when I was scared or nervous. How does a person know if they are good or bad? I didn’t want a cookie.

“And what am I? What does your mom tell you about me? What does she say about me?”

She smiled in a way I’d never seen before. It stretched across her face like a wound. Her fingers were shiny and greasy from handling the fat jar.

When my mom came back into the room, Ms. Veal began transferring more fat from Mom’s jar to her own. She gave no indication that we’d been talking.

That night, Mom had food poisoning. She was up all night, vomiting, crying. I couldn’t sleep and heard the whole thing. It was her. It was Ms. Veal’s cookies that made Mom sick. I know it. Mom later said it was a fluke stomach issue, but I know the truth.

Mom and I ate the same thing for dinner, and I wasn’t sick. And this was no flu. Mom was fine by morning. A little dehydrated, but back to herself. It was food poisoning. She’d eaten a cookie. I hadn’t.

We can’t and don’t know what others are thinking. We can’t and don’t know what motivations people have for doing the things they do. Ever. Not entirely. This was my terrifying, youthful epiphany. We just never really know anyone. I don’t. Neither do you.

It’s amazing that relationships can form and last under the constraints of never fully knowing. Never knowing for sure what the other person is thinking. Never knowing for sure who a person is. We can’t do whatever we want. There are ways we have to act. There are things we have to say.

But we can think whatever we want.

Anyone can think anything. Thoughts are the only reality. It’s true. I’m sure of it now. Thoughts are never faked or bluffed. This simple realization has stayed with me. It has bothered me for years and years. It still does.

“Are you good or are you bad?”

What scares me most now is that I don’t know the answer.

I STAYED BEHIND THE BENCH for probably an hour. It could have been much longer. I’m not sure. How long is an hour? A minute? A year? My hip and knee went numb from the way I was positioned. I had to contort myself in an unnatural way. I’ve lost track of time. Of course you lose track of time when you’re alone. Time always passes.

That song kept replaying: “Hey, Good Lookin’?” over and over and over. Twenty or thirty or a hundred times. It might have gotten louder, too. An hour is the same as two hours. An hour is forever. It’s hard to know. It’s only just stopped. It stopped halfway through a verse. I hate that song. I hate the way I had to listen to it. I didn’t want to listen. But now I know all the words by heart. When it stopped, it shocked me. It woke me up. I’d been lying down using Jake’s hat as a pillow.