Only Child(39)

“No, Jim, let’s. Let’s absolutely,” Mommy said, and she pulled her arm away.

I heard Grandma say, “Good heavens.”

Mommy walked around me toward Charlie and his wife like she was going to hit them. Charlie’s wife took another step back and she probably forgot that there were steps behind her and she kind of tripped down to the first step and she almost fell down all of the porch stairs. She stayed behind Charlie like she was trying to hide.

“Don’t tell me you’re sorry. That’s too little, too late, wouldn’t you say? Don’t tell me you didn’t know. Everyone knew Charles was a fucking freaker—all you had to do was look at him! Why didn’t you stop him? Why the hell didn’t you stop him?” Mommy was screaming now, and it really was like she was hitting Charlie, just not with fists, but with words.

“Believe me, Melissa, if there was a way to go back and undo what happened…I would gladly give my life….” Charlie put his hands up again toward Mommy, but she moved away from him like she was grossed out.

“Don’t you Melissa me,” she said, and she wasn’t screaming anymore. She looked at Charlie in a very mean, death-stare-y way. “Get away from my house and my family. Or what’s left of it.” Then she grabbed my hand and pulled me inside the house. I didn’t want to go with her, but she was holding my hand tight and was pulling it hard, so I had to. She shoved her way through the people in the hallway, and when I turned around to look at Charlie, there were too many people in the way and I couldn’t see him anymore.

But I remembered the way Charlie looked at Mommy when she said those mean words to him. His eyes looked very big in his old-looking face with all the bones sticking out. It was the saddest face I’ve ever seen in my whole life.

I thought about how Daddy was wrong when he said Charlie didn’t get hurt, because he did. His son died, too, so his feelings were hurting about that, like ours because Andy died, except it was worse for Charlie because his son killed his angels, and that was worse than just dead.





[ 24 ]


    Poking a Snake with a Stick


THE TOWEL UNDER ME was wet when I woke up today. Last night Mimi put the towel on the mattress because when it was bedtime my sheets were still in the bathtub, wet from pee. Mommy forgot to wash them.

I took the wet towel off the mattress and the wet PJs off of me, got dressed, walked through Andy’s room to check the top bunk, and then I went downstairs to find Mommy. She was in the kitchen, talking to Mimi.

“It says it right here, Mom. He had Asperger’s,” Mommy said, and showed Mimi something on the iPad. “I mean, officially diagnosed when he was in middle school. Apparently he had all sorts of issues in school and dropped out in tenth grade. No friends. No job. Just been hanging out in the basement ever since, basically. For two years!”

“Well, I don’t think Asperger’s makes people violent, though, does it?” Mimi said. “I guess that explains why we’ve seen so little of Charlie and Mary these last few years.” Mimi looked up and saw me in the doorway. She put her hand on Mommy’s arm, but Mommy didn’t pay attention.

“Some neighbors thought he had other problems, too, that didn’t seem Asperger’s-related, and they even asked Charlie and Mary about it. Listen to this: ‘A couple times I saw him acting odd around the neighborhood, walking up and down the street and gesturing, talking to himself. And he scared the hell out of old Louisa across the street last year when he yelled at her not to put up her Christmas decorations.’ That’s a quote from their next-door neighbor. I knew there was something wrong with him. I knew it when I saw him at Charlie’s party. I always thought he was such a cute kid when I babysat him, but now that I think about it, he was a bit strange even when he was little. But at the party he was downright creepy. He was standing there, staring at the kids and—”

“Melissa, honey,” Mimi interrupted Mommy and nodded her head at me.

Mommy saw me standing there and said, “He’ll hear about this anyway.”

“Mommy, I’m sorry, but I got the towel wet and the mattress,” I said. I went over to Mommy and sat on her lap and she hugged me, but only with one arm, because the other arm was holding the iPad.

“Mommy?”

“Oh, sweetie, don’t you worry,” Mimi said. “Come on, let’s go and get it all cleaned up for you.” She took my hand and I got off Mommy’s lap. Mommy was looking back down at the iPad. She had lines on her forehead and made clicking sounds with her teeth.

Do you know something that you should never ever do? Poke a snake with a stick. The snake guy who came to McKinley the day before the gunman came told us that. When you go for a walk or a hike and you see a snake—well, you wouldn’t really see a snake where we live, because there aren’t any here, or at least not any dangerous ones, but maybe when you go on vacation or somewhere else where they have dangerous snakes—and even if it looks tiny or like it’s sleeping—don’t poke it with a stick or touch it with your shoe. It’s a bad idea. He even showed us why with one of the snakes he brought, not the emerald tree boa, but another one with red and black and yellow stripes. I forgot her name, but the snake guy said that some snakes with stripes are poisonous and some aren’t. He taught us a poem so you can remember which are the dangerous ones: