Neither of us had spoken after the accident, except to answer policemen’s questions. And even then, we tried to get by with nods and shrugs. It was only when one of the officers forced my mother to tell him about the accident that I heard her voice, soft and flat, the voice of a stranger. She was coming home from the market, my mother said. She had just turned our corner when Charlie ran in front of the car. The dog that chased him raced out of the way, she told the policeman, who asked the same questions the following day, when my parents sat next to each other on the living room sofa. The dog ran to the side, my mother said again, but Charlie didn’t.
From my perch on the top step, I listened as my father explained that Charlie and I must have been playing outside when the Sparbers’ dog got loose. “Amy is…” my father paused to swallow tears. “She was a wonderful sister. As my wife told you, Amy was taking care of Charlie while she was at the store.” Another pause. “Do we really have to go over this again, officer? I’m sure you can see how hard this is for all of us.”
“Yes, of course,” the policeman said. “I’ll be out of your way as soon as I talk to your daughter.”
I took the stairs slowly, watching myself put one foot in front of the other. I had killed Charlie. I had done it with my mother. I shared the blame, claimed the lion’s share of guilt. But no one knew that. My father had given my excuse. “Yes,” I told the officer. “We had just gone outside when Charlie saw Zeus. He took off before I could stop him.”
No funeral. Just a burial with a rabbi. The Hebrew prayers sounded like crying. Uncle Ed, Aunt Helen, and Robin stood on one side of the grave, but I didn’t look at them. My father held on to my mother and me on the other side of the hole in the ground. He let go only to toss dirt onto the small casket and to hand the shovel to my mother, her face carved of stone. She barely scooped up anything, then passed the shovel to me. I saw myself drizzle earth onto Charlie’s coffin. “I love you, buddy.” My lips moved, but there was no sound.
After the burial, the world rolled on and left us behind. Each day I took a block from Charlie’s room and carried it to mine, where I’d cling to sleep. I slept to see Charlie in my dreams, and I slept to avoid my parents. We didn’t talk about the accident. We didn’t talk about anything—just spun cocoons of grief and disappeared inside them.
I didn’t reply to the note from Erin or the sympathy card from Donnie. How had they found out? Had Uncle Ed or Aunt Helen called them?
“You should write back to Erin,” my father told me. “Or you could call and make a date. I’ll drive you to visit her.” I didn’t want to explain why I couldn’t see Erin. I hadn’t told my father—hadn’t told anyone—that Charlie would be alive if I hadn’t gone to camp. The logic was simple: Without camp, I wouldn’t have been tempted to invade my mother’s past. And Charlie would still be here. So how could I visit Erin and talk about Rory, sing silly camp songs, and smile at Andy’s name? I didn’t even answer Andy’s letter, which came shortly after school started.
Tenth grade. Kids avoided me as if death were contagious. And if girls caught my eye, the pity in theirs made me eager to run. I stopped riding the school bus. The noise was too loud; the life, too much. So I walked every day by myself. One morning Danielle’s mother pulled up and offered me a ride. But I didn’t take it. Even in the cold, I wanted to walk. I needed to feel my feet slap the pavement. I needed to remember my body was alive.
My mother didn’t seem to care if I grabbed a coat when the weather turned cold. She didn’t say a word about what I wore or how I fixed my hair or if I ate the wrong things. She no longer noticed if I made my bed or made the honor roll.
But I noticed her. She stopped plumping pillows on the sofa. Even when people came to visit—neighbors stopping by with casseroles; Charlie’s speech therapist and two of his teachers from The Woodland Center—my mother didn’t care if I replaced the toilet paper, if the kitchen floor looked waxed, if her shoes matched her outfit. Sometimes she just shuffled around in a bathrobe and slippers, as if she’d forgotten to get dressed.
My father noticed too. One night when we sat at the kitchen table and tried to ignore Charlie’s place, Dad told us the accounting firm he worked for had opened a small office in New Haven. They needed one more man there, he said. So my father had volunteered. We were moving to Connecticut. “A new start,” he explained, tears shining in his eyes. “And for God’s sake, we need it.”
“Okay,” I said, because, really, what difference did it make where I lived?
Without a word, my mother got up to clear the pizza from the table.
“Sonia, a new start, Sonia,” my father said again. He stood to hug her. I watched my mother stiffen, the way she had with Uncle Ed. But this time, I understood why she froze. If my mother would let anyone in—even her husband—she might feel. And if she felt, she might finally break.
No outer world in; no inner world out. Everything in its place, including our grief.
We moved to Connecticut in March, to a two-bedroom house with a postage-stamp lawn. No need for a third bedroom when no one would fill it. No use for a yard when no one would play there. It didn’t matter that my new room was small. I’d packed only my clothes, a few letters I’d saved, and some photographs—a thin album of pictures I had snapped with Charlie’s camera and a few loose photos in an envelope. Before we moved, Erin sent me the picture she had taken on visiting day: Charlie and me at the campcraft area. I put it in the envelope, along with the photo of Charlie standing by the tower we’d built on the morning I left for camp.
Again my father urged me to call Erin. “I know you’d like to thank her for the picture,” he said, suggesting I might want to talk to her and hinting that I should. But after Charlie died, I started thinking that my father always believed he knew what I wanted, just like when he told us about Takawanda. “Of course you want to go to camp,” he had said. “Who wouldn’t want eight weeks by a lake in Maine?”
I don’t, I had tried to tell him. But my father hadn’t listened. If he would have heard me and not sent me to Takawanda, then Robin might never have teased me about my mother, and I wouldn’t have pulled out that stupid metal box. And then Charlie would still be alive. So even though my mother and I had killed him, my father shared the blame. He just didn’t know it—didn’t know much of anything, I decided after Charlie died.
I stopped agreeing with everything my father said, and I didn’t call Erin. The sound of her voice would have wormed through my heart. And if I felt, then I too might break. So I just sent a note, formal and stiff, and convinced myself that Mrs. Hollander would read the missing words. I counted on her to tell Erin that part of me had died with Charlie: the part that welcomed an arm on my shoulder; the part that knew how to love. Mrs. Hollander would realize I had shut myself down. She’d explain that to Erin, I wanted to believe. And then Erin would know why I couldn’t be her friend. Couldn’t be anyone’s friend, in fact. Just being was hard enough.
I packed one more thing for the new house: Charlie’s wooden blocks, safe in a carton with my name on it. My father didn’t ask where they were when he emptied Charlie’s room. Yet he had to see the naked shelves, where the rectangles, squares, and triangles belonged. But my father didn’t need an accounting of items, and my mother wouldn’t ask for one now. The requirement of perfection no longer ruled our lives.
Charlie’s blocks weren’t the only things missing from their assigned places. The week before we moved, I tucked my porcelain dogs and Russian dolls into a box marked “Salvation Army.” Then I threw Puppy into the trash.