“I don’t know what I am. I don’t quite think I’m a man. But I don’t think I’m a monster either. I don’t know what I am.”
He let his eyes drift back down to his lap. Then he said the last words I ever heard him speak.
“All I know is, Andy’s dead.”
I tried to talk to him after that, but he wouldn’t say another word. I watched him the rest of that night, keeping as close an eye on him as I could while still taking care of Andrew. But I was only one person, just a girl. Girls get tired.
When Andy got into his car and drove several miles away before killing himself, I like to think he did it for us. He wouldn’t have wanted me to find him like that, his eyes glazed, a pair of empty bottles on the floorboard, whiskey and pills. They’d given him the prescription when he got out. Said it would help him sleep.
Once, in the early days after he got out of jail, he told me that he had never left that cave, and he was right of course. All those years later, he was still in there, still locked in that cage. Then again, another part of me thinks he was already dead on his feet long ago. The moment my mom left, she took a good part of him with her. The pictures showed that. The Thief took a bit more, and jail a bit more. The sleeping pills just finished the job.
That was about three years ago now. It scared the hell out of me at first, the idea of taking care of Andrew all by myself. Then I remembered the few months we had already spent together, the two of us like awkward roommates, me single-handedly taking care of the baby, and I knew it would all work out. He’s a sweet kid, running around now, rough and rambunctious, but with a quiet streak that surprises you. I’ve never told him to call me Mom, because I never wanted to be anyone’s mom, and it just felt wrong to try and make him do something like that. The questions are coming though. I can feel it.
He doesn’t ask about his dad, but you can see him working it all out now and then. I showed him some pictures, hoping to put him at ease, to make him feel just like everyone else at daycare – the mom, dad, grandparents, all of it. One of those quiet spells came over him then, and before I knew it, he had sneaked off and I couldn’t find him for a half-hour or so. I finally found him under the cabinet in one of the bathrooms, tucked back in there like an animal or something. Just like a cat.
That was how we first found Memphis. He’d been hiding in the shed out back, desperate and tiny, ribs showing through his short fur. I fished him out with a can of tuna, parsed out a piece at a time. He was rough from the start, always skittish. The kind of cat you couldn’t quite trust not to eat your food whenever you left the room. Still, he was the best damn cat I’d ever had. He lived to be fifteen, and he was just as mean as ever on the day he died. Some people might hate a cat like that, but I think we understood each other. Maybe that’s why I was able to coax Andrew out just the same way.
Just this year, a few months after he turned four, I took him to the Trails. We live on the other side of town now, and I don’t have much reason to go back to the old stomping grounds. The whole place was built up, sliced into small lots where the Trails used to be. We drove around the new subdivision, crisscrossing our way through each of the different side streets, my hands shaking a bit on the steering wheel.
“This place,” I told Andrew. “They called this the Trails.”
“What’s trails?”
“It’s… hard to explain. It was like, woods. Forest. With all these little paths cut in it.”
“Why?”
I laughed. That was his new favorite word.
“It just was, baby.”
I tried to mentally pinpoint the landmarks I had known, based on the houses that rested in the same spots. A two-story house of dark red brick was probably the place where we stumbled onto Barnett. A little roundabout marked the spot with the tree etched in pentagrams. If only these people knew. This side of town has changed so much, especially since we left. Did we take the bad parts with us? Or was it the Thief?
Bit of both, if I had to guess.
We drove to the far side of the neighborhood and found it fenced off, the chain link hidden behind a wall of greenery, much less offensive to the eye. There was a small turnaround in front of the gate, and I stopped there, almost certain that someone would ask me to leave. I didn’t care. Even if a cop showed up, I was going in.
“What’s this?” Andrew asked.
“Just a place I want to see, baby. Just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.”
I pulled back the chain around the gate, enough for him to shimmy through, and I slipped in behind him. It was lovely back there, just as it had been before, that last time I’d seen it. I’d never come back before then. For most of my adult life I couldn’t have even imagined setting foot here. But there I was again, a woman grown, awestruck by the place, by how small it all looked, how the spans between tree lines seemed so very close. I thought once more of Andy, who had taken one last trip back this way. It had been in the dead of night then, and I wondered if the moon had been out for that last stroll.
The quarry came into view, wide and lovely and silent. For all its beauty, it was an ominous place, the sort of place where a hand might shoot up from below and drag you down into the angular, man-made caverns, and to the wild caves beyond.
“Careful,” I said, pulling Andrew far away from the edge.
“What is it?”
“A quarry.”
“Why?”
“Just is.”
I stood there for a while, feeling afraid and very small, like every choice I’d ever made had been wrong, if for no other reason than it had brought me here.
Mom was dead.
Dad was dead.
Andy was dead.
Had I ever done anything right?
“Look!”
I scanned the horizon and saw it. A heron, tall and thin, was gliding across the glassy water as silent as a water skimmer. She rose up, tipping her blue-gray wings before landing on the top of the wall across from us.
“Birdy!”
She alighted on a patch of green, and I noticed how much everything had changed over the years. The burned yellow of that summer had turned now. Trees poked up through the sides of the quarry. Wildflowers painted the field on both sides pink and yellow.
This whole place was alive. It didn’t remember the horrible things that had happened here. Those were all so far in the past, and the only thing left for nature to do was get on with living. I was alive too, and so was the boy at my side. We all had Andy to thank for that. Somehow, I managed a smile, and Andrew and I walked back, holding hands.
That’s almost all there is to tell. I did end up keeping the bear. After it was all said and done, I found it sitting there on the floor, right where the Thief had dropped it. I wanted to burn it the second I saw it, to pretend like that moment, and all the moments after, were just a bad dream, something I could forget seconds after it ended. But I couldn’t do it then, and I still can’t do it now. I threw the bear into a plastic bag and tossed it in the closet. I thought about it every night when I lay down, obsessing over it, changing it into something warped and obscene, something forever tainted. Then, when I finally worked up the nerve to pull the bag out and peer in, all I saw were cotton, buttons, the same metal clasp.
I took it out, washed it by hand once, twice, three times, and once all the dirt and grime were washed away, I saw it for what it was: a simple gesture, a gift given by a woman and man who loved me very much. I still have it. It’s threadbare and worn, but I keep it in a box in my closet. Every once in a while I take it out, just to make sure it’s still there, that it hasn’t vanished in the night. Every time, I consider giving it to Andrew, but I never have. This toy means a lot to me, the good and the horribly bad, and there’s no reason to put my own messed-up shit on him. He’s still so young. His own little dysfunctions are still waiting out there for him to go find.