A memory ran through my mind. Woolworth’s, the day before camp. The cashier punches the wrong key. My mother asks her name. “Anna,” she says softly, fearful this customer will tell the manager to fire her. But my mother says only, “I’m sorry, dear,” in a voice so soft I don’t recognize it.
Now I knew the truth. There was room for only one child in my mother’s heart. A baby in Germany. Such a little girl filled all the space my mother had for love the way Charlie filled all the space in our house. I couldn’t squeeze in beside Anna. I couldn’t replace her—no matter what I did, no matter how I tried.
I stuffed the cards back into the spot from where I had pulled them. Everything in its place, and a place for every thing. Where was my place, I wondered as I shoved my father’s notes all the way in so their edges rested perfectly on the bottom of the metal box.
That’s when I found the three old photos—two in polished silver frames—buried under papers in the back of the box. I held each to the light, studied them as if I had the power to decipher the past.
The first framed picture gave me Anna: a toddler in a white dress sitting on her mother’s lap. My mother, of course, but not the Mom I knew. Anna’s mother looks like a movie star, with a smile as wide as the ocean she would cross. Anna rests her tiny hand in her mother’s, our mother’s. What could this little girl know about the war that would roll over her family like a bulldozer? And how long after this picture was taken until this photo became all my mother had left of her child?
The second picture: a framed portrait of my mother and Kurt, I guessed. He stands next to her, arm around her waist. Her leading man in a dark suit, the kind my father hated wearing. My mother’s other life: Mom and Kurt and Anna. That’s all she wanted, I thought as I gazed at the man who never made it to Paris. Then I held again the picture of the perfect toddler who claimed my mother’s heart.
A third photo curled at scalloped edges, its sepia image creased but not faded. A man all alone, I saw, as handsome as Kurt, but different somehow. Not a stiff handsome but a confident one. A jacket drapes over the man’s arm, as if announcing he doesn’t need a suit for his image—he’s handsome enough without it. I wondered who he was as I flipped the photo over. No inscription, no name. And whom did he remind me of? It hit me with a jolt. That self-assurance. The intensity of his gaze. The photo made me think of a James Dean magazine picture Patsy had shown me. And it made me think of someone else too. Although it wasn’t a picture of Uncle Ed, it was his face I saw as I studied the photograph.
Yet even more than the ghosts of that day, what happened next haunts me still. Though I have relived this story a hundred times, searching for ways to erase my guilt, I find only one truth—a simple fact: I didn’t hear Charlie’s bus. Not then. Not while I looked again at the picture of Anna and my mother. Anna, that child I could never be. I outlined her face, traced her arm to my mother’s hand.
I don’t know how long the minibus driver waited for someone to come out. How many times did he lean on the horn until I dropped the photo and raced to my brother?
The bus pulled away as Charlie’s feet hit the curb. I ran toward him. “Come on, buddy,” I yelled, my voice too loud. The metal box. The photographs. I had to put them back before my mother got home. “Come on!” I shouted, grabbing Charlie’s hand. “Let’s go!” I pulled him toward the house.
“No!” Charlie cried, struggling to free himself. “No!”
I picked him up and ran with him in my arms. “Go upstairs,” I ordered when I put Charlie down inside the front door. “I’ll be up in a minute.” No scream. No answer. I didn’t wait for him to move.
Back in my parents’ room, I stuffed the pictures into their spot, slammed the lid, pushed the metal box into hiding. The shoes. Brown heels. Navy pumps. What next? White flats, slippers, moccasins. Black shoes. Tan ones.
I turned off the light, closed the closet. No car. No Mom.
“Hey, buddy, I’m sorry,” I called, sprinting upstairs. “Charlie, I’m sorry.” I raced to his room. Where was he? “Charlie!” Into my room. Empty. “Where are you?” No answer. “I’m sorry, Charlie. Where are you?”
Downstairs again. The front door was open. “Charlie! Charlie!” Outside. Into the street. “Charlie! Where are you?”
Nothing. Then barking. Loud. Ferocious. Zeus, the Sparbers’ black Lab. I saw all three in an instant: the dog; Charlie; my mother.
Her car took the corner as Zeus chased Charlie down the block.
“Charlie! Look out, Charlie!”
The screech of tires. A thumping sound: metal on bone. His body flew to the sidewalk.
“CHARLIE!”
Chapter 19
How Was This Possible?
“CHARLIE!”
I cried his name, knelt over his body. Such a tiny boy, legs bent like a rag doll’s. “No! Charlie!”
Sirens and red lights. Police cars. An ambulance. An officer pulled me up and wrestled me to the other side of the street. “No! Let me go! That’s my brother. Charlie!”
“I know, miss. I’m sorry.”
Another policeman grabbed my arm. He led me to my mother, sitting on the curb. She was missing a shoe. Her foot rested on a bright green leaf. It’s strange what I remember, what I choose to forget. My mother’s purse was open, her wallet on the ground next to it. She didn’t speak, not even when the officer tried to hand her driver’s license back. He placed it under the wallet. My mother didn’t notice. Her head stayed down, hands over her mouth.
“Charlie! Charlie!” I called. But my words were a whisper. My voice was dead. Only my tears told me I was alive.
Someone gave me paper cups. Water—for me, for my mother. I saw her from the corner of my eye. She lifted her cup in slow motion, as if trying to figure out what it was. Water dripped on her skirt, the green one from visiting day. The cup fell from her hand. But my mother didn’t move.
A policeman stood in front of her. She didn’t see the paramedics pack their gear without trying to stuff life back into Charlie. But I did. I watched as if my eyes were no longer part of my body. I saw it from somewhere high above as I looked down on my mother and me, looked down on my brother on the sidewalk across the street.
How was this possible, this movie I watched from the sky? One minute a boy—my brother, my Charlie. Then nothing.
The ambulance moved away. No sirens now. No noise. An officer said something about a tow truck. I think he asked my mother where her husband was.
I don’t remember walking down the block, walking home. What I recall is watching myself in Charlie’s room, on Charlie’s bed. I sat there turning wooden blocks on my lap. I turned them and turned them till my fingers were numb. Rectangle. Square. Triangle. Rectangle. Square. Triangle.
We buried him that Sunday. The night before, my father handed me a pill. “To help you sleep, honey. Doctor Stein says you and your mother need to rest.” I nodded, though I didn’t need help sleeping. Charlie lived in my dreams. All Saturday afternoon I had stayed in my room and slept, pulling Puppy to my face as if I were a little girl again.
I took the pill from Dad’s shaking hand. How could he go on as if it mattered if we ate, if we slept? Sure, I’d heard my father crying that whole night after Charlie died. But the next morning, he focused on taking care of my mother and me.