Hold Me Close(94)
“What’s going on, Mom?” Polly looked up from her phone, where she’d been busily trying to beat the next level of her favorite game.
Effie rolled down her window to say to the woman standing on the sidewalk, her dog on a leash, “What’s happening?”
“Guy died,” the woman said, all too eager to share the information. No shame at all. Sort of gleeful, actually. “Guess his daughter came in to check on him when she hadn’t heard from him in a few days, found him dead.”
“Gross,” Polly said.
Effie looked at her daughter, who’d been made immune to the random deaths of strangers by too much violence on television. Or something. “How did he die?”
“Stroke, I think someone said.” The woman shrugged. “He was pretty old, and it was a shame, to tell you the truth, that his children left him alone so much. The house was in total neglect.”
“How long have you lived in this neighborhood?” Effie asked.
The woman looked surprised and a little affronted. “Five years. Why?”
Effie rolled up her window and drove on without replying. Polly’s phone bleated and beeped. She finished the level and turned to her mother.
“Mom.”
“Yeah, Wog. What?”
“Mom, was that the house?”
Startled, Effie twisted to look at Polly. Her fingers gripped the wheel hard enough to hurt. “Why do you ask me that?”
“I know it was close to Nana’s house. And this isn’t the way to the mall.” Polly looked solemn. “And...I saw a picture of it on the internet, when I was looking at that stuff I wasn’t supposed to see. I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t look again after you said not to.”
Effie swallowed and concentrated on the road ahead, mindful of what had happened the last time she hadn’t been paying attention. She’d barely gotten over the bruises. “Yes. That was the house. I shouldn’t have taken you past it.”
Polly looked behind them. “He’s dead now. Doesn’t that make you feel better?”
With a small gasp, Effie pulled to the side of the road and slammed the car into Park. She turned to take Polly by the front of her puffy winter coat. “Don’t you ever say such a thing! Wishing someone dead is wrong, Polly.”
Polly didn’t flinch, though when Effie let go, she did shift a little toward the window. “Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry. I just...” Effie drew in a deep breath to keep her voice from shaking. “It’s complicated, Pollywog. It’s hard and it hurts and... I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Polly reached to hug her. “Don’t cry, Mama. It’s okay. I mean, maybe you can be okay now, right?”
Effie clung for a moment to her daughter before pulling herself together by sheer force of will. Traffic passed them, going too fast. A car horn blared a complaint. She’d be lucky if they didn’t get clipped.
She put on a smile for her kid. “Yes, honey. Now I can be okay.”
* * *
Of course she was not okay.
How many times had she dreamed, literally, of Daddy’s death? She’d fought nightmares for years about throttling him, watching his face go blue and then his tongue, black, lolling out of his mouth. She’d dreamed about the fire, the three of them burning to death while Daddy laughed. She’d dreamed of watching him carve Sheila into tiny pieces and forcing her and Heath to eat them. Years of horrible dreams, and yet now that he truly was dead, all she could think of was that she’d never had the chance to confront him.
Worse, the local news hadn’t mentioned even a word of it. No coverage of the ambulance or police car’s flashing lights, no quotes from smug, self-righteous neighbors. Nothing on the television, nothing even on the websites.
Nothing on the forum.
Effie had ignored this forum for years. Even her curiosity about what they were saying about her latest works had not been enough to prompt her to dive into what she thought was a cesspool of almost-salacious voyeurism. She had a log-in, though. Ancient, tied to an old email address she hadn’t used in forever. She knew the password, had no trouble recalling that. It was, of course, thelosthours.
That f*cking forum where the freaks hung out dissecting every tiny thing that had happened to her and Heath in that basement, and not a single thread had appeared about Daddy’s death. There were posts about his time in prison and his release, information about the house itself and who’d owned it all that time. Nothing about him dying in it.
Days, a week, another week passed. Still nothing.
Nothing anywhere. She scoured the local newspaper’s site for an obituary, a notice about a funeral service, a memorial. Something, anything to note that the man who’d changed her entire life had passed on, and someone, anyone other than she herself to notice. But nobody seemed to.
She called Heath. “He’s dead. And nobody cares. Nobody notices. It’s like he didn’t exist.”
She filled the rest of the message with silence, praying that somehow he’d pick up the phone, but of course that wasn’t how voice mail worked. He didn’t call her back. He was the only person who could possibly understand why this upset her so much, and she’d lost him.
If Daddy didn’t exist, Effie thought, if what happened to them together didn’t exist, then...did she?