Only Child(38)

This Charlie standing in front of my house now wasn’t the same jokey Charlie. Everything about him was changed. He looked really old, and I could see all the bones in his face, and his smile was gone. His wife stood next to him, still holding an umbrella over their heads even though they were under the roof from the porch and no rain was coming down on them.

For a long time I stared at Charlie and he stared at me. I didn’t know if I should say hi to him or what, because his son killed Andy and maybe it was Charlie’s fault, too, because he let him in the school.

After a while his wife said, “Sweetheart, are your parents available?” and right then Grandma came up behind me and she put her hand on my shoulder and pushed me out on the porch. With the other hand she pulled the door almost all the way closed behind us.

“What in God’s name…? How dare you…?” Grandma started her sentences and didn’t finish them, and her hand was holding my shoulder hard. Charlie and his wife looked like they were scared of Grandma, and they both went back a few steps on the porch, but they didn’t leave.

Then Charlie talked, but in a voice that didn’t sound like his own voice, it was low and very quiet: “Ma’am, we are sorry to intrude….”

“You are sorry to intrude?” Grandma’s voice went up and Charlie’s voice went down. “Yes, very sorry. We came to express our condolences to Melissa and…”

“Oh, you came to express your condolences?”

I was starting to feel annoyed at Grandma. All she was doing was copying Charlie, and that’s not a polite way of talking. Charlie’s wife was holding on to Charlie’s arm and trying to get him to leave, and I saw tears on her face.

Behind us the door opened again, and this time Mommy and Daddy stepped out on the porch, and Grandma moved over to the side away from the door to make room for them. Out of the corner of my eye I could see she was giving Charlie and his wife a death stare. A death stare is when you look at someone like you want to kill them. Like your eyes are weapons, like invisible lasers or something. I know what a death stare looks like, because that’s what Mommy called it when Andy used to look at her like that a lot of times. When Andy had his bad temper and all the fighting and yelling was over, but Andy was still mad, he sometimes gave Mommy that stare. “Wow, if looks could kill,” Mommy said then, and tried to make a joke out of it.

I was standing on the porch in between Mommy and Daddy and Charlie and his wife, and I could feel Mommy and Daddy close behind me. I got a feeling in my stomach like something bad was going to happen. There were tears on Charlie’s face, and he let them run down. He was looking at something over my head, Mommy maybe.

Mommy used to be Charlie’s favorite student when she went to McKinley. Mommy told me that one time, when there was a father-daughter sack race at her field day, when she was in fifth grade, Charlie did it with her. Mommy’s dad died when she was in third grade, he had a car accident, and so Mommy had no one to do the sack race with, except then Charlie did it, and Mommy was really happy about it. Now, when Mommy comes to school for something, Charlie always says to me, “Don’t tell anyone, but your mother was always my favorite when she went here. And you are like a mini version of her.” He always says that, and he gives Mommy a wink.

Charlie lifted up his hands and took a step forward, and then he was really close to me and it looked like he was trying to give Mommy behind me a hug. “Oh, Melissa!” It sounded like Charlie had to press out Mommy’s name, and then right behind her name was like a volcano of sadness that started erupting, because Charlie started crying and not just in his face, but with his whole body. I’ve never seen anyone cry like that before. It looked like it was hard for him to keep standing up and his whole body was shaking and he cried really loud. It sounded like it came from somewhere all the way down inside of him.

His hands dropped back down to his sides, and his wife grabbed his arm again. For a long time everyone stood there and watched Charlie’s whole body cry, and no one did anything about it. I could feel Charlie’s body shaking in front of me, and my throat hurt a lot. I wanted to take a step forward and hug Charlie’s body and make it stop shaking.

When I was about to do that, Charlie’s wife started to say something: “We are sorry to intrude like this.” That’s what Charlie said earlier. I heard Grandma make a sound like a snort, but she didn’t interrupt or copy the words this time. “We…we wanted to come and see you in person to…We are so very sorry….” And then it was like she forgot what she wanted to say and she was quiet again.

“Sorry?” That was Mommy’s voice behind me, and she said it very quiet. The way she said it made the back of my neck feel like it was getting goose bumps, and the bad feeling in my stomach was right. “You’re sorry? And you wanted to come here? To our house. Our home. To tell us that?” Mommy’s voice was still very quiet, but her words were like they were pointy. She was shooting them out like flying icicles, and Charlie and his wife flinched like real icicles were hitting them.

“Your psycho son killed my Andy. My baby. And you wanted to come here and tell us you’re sorry?” Mommy was talking louder now, and then she started shouting. I could feel more people coming in the hallway behind us. I turned around to see who it was and to look at Mommy.

Daddy grabbed Mommy’s arm. “Melissa, let’s not…”