Only Child(60)

“But when does it sneak up on you like that? What happens before then?” Daddy asked.

I thought about it for a minute. “The first time it was at the interview, and I didn’t want to talk.”

“Yeah, you got very upset then.”

“Yeah. And now I want to be with you and Mommy all the time, but I don’t get to, and then the mad feeling happens,” I said.

“I…that makes sense,” Daddy said. And then we were quiet for a long while.

“Daddy?”

“Yes, bud?”

“Did you and Mommy feel the sympathy with Andy when he was still alive?” I asked, and I looked at Andy’s sad face in the picture and I thought that it would be really sad if no one in his family tried to feel his feelings with him and now he was dead.

“Well,” Daddy made another coughing sound, “I think we did. I think we…tried to. But…it wasn’t easy, and I think we…probably could have done a better job at it. Or I should say I. I could have done a better job. Should have.” Daddy’s face looked very sad when he said that, and I could feel a lump coming in my throat.

“Do you think it’s too late to think about it, because Andy’s dead and he’s not going to know about it now? Or do you think he can feel it or something? Now?” I asked.

“I don’t think it’s too late. I think it’s…amazing you’re thinking about it at all. You’re a very special kid, Zach,” Daddy said.

“I should make a page for sympathy, I think,” I said.

“That’s a good idea,” Daddy answered.

“What color do you think it should be?”

“Oh, that’s a tough one,” Daddy said. “It’s a good feeling, right? So I’m thinking a light color…How about white? White is…”

“Like clean or something?”

“Yes, clean. Pure. It’s a pure feeling,” Daddy said.

“What’s pure?” I asked.

“Well…clean…honest. Not selfish, maybe?”

“OK, white. That’s easy, all I need is the piece of paper. I’ll go get it.” I ducked out of the hideout and got a piece of paper from my room and went back inside. I found the tape and put up the sympathy page. We leaned our backs against the wall and looked at the new page on the wall with the other feelings pages.

“That’s a lot of feelings,” I said.

“Yeah. But you were right. It does help to look at them separated. That was smart of you,” Daddy said, and I smiled because it made me feel good when he said it and I thought that the third secret of happiness was working, and I felt a little bit happy now.





[ 35 ]


    Back to School


MOMMY CAME BACK from New York City, but like a new version of her. The version she started to change into when she got mad when Charlie and his wife came to our house and it was like she got poked with a stick like the snake at school. But now she was like all of that new version, and nothing was left from her old self. She walked in our house with high heels, she never took them off, and she talked on the phone all the time. She was doing more interviews on the phone, and she talked to other people she called “survivors.” Every time she put down the phone for a second it started to ring again.

At first I tried to spy on her and listen when she talked on the phone. It wasn’t real spying because she wasn’t trying to keep her talking a secret. She was talking loud on the phone, right in the kitchen or wherever in the house. She saw I was listening and she didn’t say I couldn’t. So it wasn’t technically spying, except it didn’t feel like a good thing to listen, but then it turned into that I didn’t want to listen anymore. All Mommy talked about was Charlie and his wife, and that it was their fault what happened. She said all the same things over and over again. It got boring to listen to, and it was starting to give me a mad feeling, too.

The next morning, when I was waiting in the hallway for Daddy to come down and then we were going to do our school drive, I heard Mommy getting done with a phone call in the kitchen. Then she came in the hallway and she said, “OK, that was the last one for this morning,” and she smiled at me, but I didn’t smile back.

“You’re not having very good sympathy,” I said to Mommy.

Mommy’s smile went away, and she looked at me with a hard face, making her eyes small. Daddy came down the stairs behind me. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Mommy said, and her voice matched the hardness of her face.

“It means that you are not trying to feel the sympathy for Charlie and his wife. You are not trying to feel their feelings with them,” I explained to her.

“Damn right I’m not,” Mommy said.

“Come on, Melissa,” Daddy said.

“No, I’m not going to COME ON,” Mommy said, and she looked at us in a mad way. “Aren’t you two a great little team now? What feelings am I not feeling with them, Zach?” Mommy asked like she was making fun of me.

I didn’t look at Mommy, and I didn’t give her an answer. I pretended like I had to tie my shoes again, even though they were tied good already.

“Well, you’re right about one thing, Zach. I don’t give a damn about their feelings,” Mommy said, and then she went back in the kitchen. I kept looking at my shoes, but they looked all blurry from the tears that came in my eyes from how Mommy talked to me. Like she didn’t even love me anymore.