Only Child(72)

“I don’t want to eat stupid soup!” I yelled.

Mommy got up fast and grabbed my bowl and hers, and she threw them in the sink. It made a loud crashing sound like the bowls got broken. Mommy turned around and leaned against the sink and closed her eyes. I looked at her. I didn’t know why she was standing there with her eyes closed like that, but then she opened them back up and looked at me.

“Fine. That’s fine. No soup, then,” she said with a quiet voice. “Listen, Zach. I’m sorry you’re so upset, I really am. But we have to try to make this work here, you and me. I can’t have you get so mad at me all the time, do you understand that? And I’ve made an appointment with Dr. Byrne for you for tomorrow. He’s very nice, you’ll see. You’ll like him, OK?”

“Can I go upstairs?” I asked. Mommy didn’t say anything. She only put her shoulders up and down and her face looked very tired. So I went upstairs and right in my hideout, and I switched Buzz on. Then I remembered that I left Miss Russell’s charm and Clancy downstairs in the bag I had at Aunt Mary’s, but I didn’t want to go back down to get them and see Mommy again. So I started chewing on the corner of Andy’s sleeping bag instead of Clancy’s ear. I did hard bites and my teeth made clicking sounds. I did it so hard because I didn’t want to start crying again.





[ 42 ]


    Alone at Last


There were four in the bed

And the little one said,

“Roll over! Roll over!”

So they all rolled over and one fell out.

There were three in the bed

And the little one said,

“Roll over! Roll over!”

So they all rolled over and one fell out.

There were two in the bed

And the little one said,

“Roll over! Roll over!”

So they all rolled over and one fell out.

There was one in the bed

And the little one said,

“Alone at last!”



“Ten in the Bed” is a song I learned in Mrs. C’s class in preschool, and it popped in my head when I was sitting in the kitchen the next morning. I was looking at the calendar in the kitchen again, and then the song played over and over in my head and it got really annoying. The calendar was still hanging there on the wall and I thought about how we started out with four people in our family—four people on the calendar. The calendar was still the same with the four rows, and no one changed it.

Then it was minus one person because Andy died, and then it was another minus one when Daddy left me here with just Mommy. I got out the marker from the drawer and I made lines to cross out Andy’s row and Daddy’s row. Then mine and Mommy’s rows were the only ones left. I was going to put the marker back in the drawer, but then I went back to the calendar and crossed out Mommy’s row, too. Because Mommy was also like a minus one. She was a minus one because she started acting mean, and it was like she disappeared from the family, too.

My friend Nicholas has a dog. His name is Terminator, but they call him Nate for short. His name is funny, because you think he’s this giant, dangerous dog with that name, Terminator, but he’s really small and has a squeaky bark that is not scary, only funny. Anyway, in their yard they have an invisible fence, and Terminator has a special collar. Every time he gets too close to the fence he gets an electrical shock so he won’t run away. Nicholas said that most dogs only get shocked one or two times and then they learn and don’t go close to the fence anymore, but Terminator wasn’t so smart maybe, because he still got shocked all the time. Sometimes we just watched him, and that wasn’t really a nice thing to do, but it was funny to watch how he got shocked and then he did his squeaky bark and ran away from the fence.

I thought about Terminator and the invisible fence, because it felt like now there was the same kind of fence in between me and Mommy. When I got close to Mommy it was like I got shocked from her meanness, and I still tried a few times, but then I got smarter than Terminator and I didn’t go close anymore. I didn’t actually want to be on Mommy’s side of the fence anymore anyway.

So that’s why Mommy was a minus one, too, and so I was the only one who was left from the four. My row was the only one on the calendar that wasn’t crossed out, but I didn’t need it because I didn’t have to remember anything on the days of the week. I wasn’t even doing anything, except staying home, and on Mondays now I had to go to Dr. Byrne. This morning Mommy took me for the first time. She didn’t come inside his office with me. She stayed in a chair outside in the waiting room. It was weird. They had a machine on in the waiting room that was making a loud sound like rain.

I didn’t want to go in Dr. Byrne’s office by myself at first, but he was actually nice, and his office didn’t look like a doctor’s office. It looked like a playroom. He had a bunch of toys everywhere and different-colored big pillows to sit on on the floor. He sat down on a big orange pillow and asked if I wanted to do Legos. They were the big baby kind, not the kind I use. But I did it with him anyway, and all we did was build Lego towers and see which one would crash down first. Then Dr. Byrne—he said I didn’t have to say Dr. Byrne to him, I could say Paul—said it was time to go, and did I want to come back next week, and so I said, “Sure.”

So that was going to be OK, going to Paul on Mondays if all he wanted to do was play Legos and I didn’t know how that was supposed to help me with my feelings. And I didn’t think I was going to need the calendar to remember to go there, so I took the marker and did scribble scrabble over the whole calendar.