A Good and Happy Child (34 page)

258

J u s t i n E v a n s

“George!” she exclaimed, coming to me without a word to the others. She knelt down, stroked my hair, examining me. Her face was drawn with worry. I saw her nose twitch; she turned and saw the bucket. Sniffed again. Then she stood.

“What happened here?” she said. “Is that vomit? Did you do that?” she said to me.

I nodded.

She knelt again. “What happened?”

“I didn’t feel well.”

“Why didn’t you come home?”

I said nothing.

She stood again, hands on hips, and looked around at the others.

“What have you been doing?”

Uncle Freddie ground his jaw. Tom Harris sat glumly. Clarissa adopted that same, odd, look-at-the-wall response that she had in Richard’s office.

“Someone answer me!”

“We made a mistake,” said Tom Harris dully. “One that Paul would never have made.”

“
Don’t you use him,
” hissed my mother. Then, with growing apprehension and anger: “My God, you’ve been doing some ritual. Did you perform an exorcism on my son?”

“Not a successful one.”

Tom Harris’s joking did not help. My mother grabbed my wrist—

tight—and yanked me to my feet.

“Come on.”

She marched me across the living room until we reached the threshold between the twilit living room and burrowlike kitchen. Then she turned and addressed the three of them.

“If I see, or hear of,
any of you
near him again . . . I’m calling the police.” Her mouth tightened into a white ring of anger. I could feel her hands trembling.“And if you don’t believe me, try me.”

“Joan . . .” began Tom Harris.

a g o o d a n d h a p p y c h i l d

259

“I’m sure the police would love to get their hands on a couple of
bachelor
college professors who find little boys at church,” she said, voice shrilling, “to take to their houses in the county.”

She waited for this to sink in. The three of them sank back into their defeated slump. This seemed to frustrate my mother even more.

“Do you hear me?” she shouted. “I don’t want you near him!” Her breath came quickly. “Our friendship is over!” Tom Harris put his head in his hands. Still, no one spoke.
“Do you hear me?”

My mother did not even look at me in the car. We pulled up Kurt’s drive. She got out of the car and walked into the house without me, without a word.

I sat for a moment. Snow dusted the dead leaves and saplings around Kurt’s drive, and the tree trunks stood gray, cold, and dry. I unbuckled my seat belt and followed my mother into the house. The sound of a TV football game erupted from the back den. But another, closer sound drew my attention. I followed it into the kitchen. My mother leaned against the counter, weeping. A tear dripped onto the tile with a little splat.

“Did you know how worried I was?” she said to me, her face a shadow in the weak winter light coming through the windows. “Don’t you know what I thought had happened?” She wiped her eyes. “We thought you . . .” she shook her head. Then broke out crying again.

“Thought I what?” I asked.

“People who are unhappy, taking medication . . . sometimes they kill themselves, George.”

She ripped off a paper towel and wiped her face.

“Oh Christ,” she said, heaving a ragged breath. “You don’t know what I went through today.”

I stood watching her, dumbstruck.

“Is that why you wanted to go to church?” she said finally. “So you could meet with them? Or did they take you?”

260

J u s t i n E v a n s

“They didn’t
take
me,” I said, defensively.

“Then why did you go?” The anger returned. “I told you that
I didn’t want you seeing them!
Why did you do that?”

“ ’Cause,” I said sulkily.

“What?”

“Because they’re the only ones who believe me,” I said, louder.

“Believe you?” repeated my mother, incredulous. “Honey, I’ve listened to everything you’ve told me. I, I brought you to Richard. I took you to the hospital . . .”

“Yeah, thanks a lot.”

“
Do you think this is easy for me?
” she erupted.

“They know what it is, Mom! What it
really
is.”

“Don’t you say it,” she said warningly. “They put that in your head!”

“It’s a demon, Mom. The door to our shower smashed
by itself
!

What other proof do you need?” I shouted. “They have to help me before I go to Forest Glen. Otherwise I’ll be stuck there . . . with
this.
”

I pointed to my head. “
Possessed.
”

“Oh, God, honey,” she cried. “Do you know what you sound like?”

“What—
crazy
?” I challenged.

She shook her head, bit her lip, trying to maintain control. “Listen . . . George . . . when your father wrote that book, he meant it, he believed it, but it was
commentary, criticism.
He didn’t believe demons were things you could reach out and touch, that actually
enter
you.”

“Mom,” I began.

“You don’t have a demon, George,” she said. “It’s not possible. They’re not real.”

“That’s where you’re wrong!” I shouted, raising a finger and pointing at her like a prosecutor. “Dad and Tom Harris helped the church when people were possessed by demons. And Daddy had
visions.
A vision of evil,” I said. “That’s why he went to Central America.”

She stood back, as if I’d slapped her.

“Who told you that about your father?”

a g o o d a n d h a p p y c h i l d

261

“They did,” I pouted. “Tom Harris and them.”

She did not correct my redneck grammar. “What else did they say?”

“They said he went away, because he wanted to do good. Because he had a vision that told him to help people against evil.”

My mother’s eyes moved away into the middle distance. I watched as she stood mesmerized by some internal videotape, her expression flickering, absorbing and responding to the images on a fast-forward screen.

Abruptly the fight drained out of her. Her face transformed from an angry pucker to a mask of sadness.

“That’s not why your father went away,” she said at last, her tone low and even. “He went away because of me.”

I waited. My heart pounded in my chest.

“We were having problems when he left. I . . . I didn’t see any reason to tell you before.”

Having problems?

“I know where Tom Harris and Uncle Freddie get their story,” she continued, quietly. “Your father did have a vision. He had a few. But . . .” her voice trailed away. “That’s not the reason he went.” She smiled bitterly. “His vision of evil was me.”

“Mom,” I said, the anger melting away, seeing her dejection. “No. How could that be?”

She remained silent, the pained smile still on her face.

“It was nothing bad, though, was it? Your problems?” I pleaded.

“You weren’t going to get divorced, were you?”

“Your father and I loved each other very much, George,” she said.

“When he died it was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I’ve suffered more than even you know, Georgie. There’s one thing I want you to understand.” She knelt down, coming close to me in the dark.

“Parents do things,” she said, “because they have stories in their own lives. Those stories have nothing to do with the children. The shitty thing is, the children have to suffer because of it. And it’s not fair.”

She reached out to me. I knew that the hand she extended would be warm and soft, and that she ached to embrace me, to reassure me, to
262

J u s t i n E v a n s

make up, to restart a cheery evening the way only my mother could, with a lilt in her voice, a suggestion that we all eat ice cream or watch TV or do something silly.

“George,” she said. “Please come here.” Her voice thickened.

“Honey, I’m sorry that all this had to happen to you.”

“What do you mean?” I said, puzzled.

She opened her mouth to speak. But at that moment the room flooded with yellow light and noise as Kurt emerged from his den, striding toward us, football game and lamplight following him along with a cloud of scotch fumes.

“Everything okay now, guys?” came his low, appealing voice. He put his hand on my mother’s shoulder.

Seeing them together, I recoiled. Something instinctive came over me. I took two steps back.

“Honey?” came my mother’s voice.

I turned and ran.

I pounded up the stairs, down the dark corridor, into the only lighted room on the second floor. I slammed the door behind me, pressed my back to it, sank down onto the floor.

I closed my eyes. The voices in my mind rose to a roar—
my father
and mother had problems; my father wouldn’t have gone away if it weren’t
for their problems; there are no such things as demons; my mother says it
has nothing to do with me
—until I gave vent to them in a howl,
Rrrrrrrrrrrra,
punctuated by my pounding the floor with both hands. The noise died, tinnily, in the little room in which I squatted. For the first time, I noticed where I was.

I had stumbled into the spare room—a nooklike study, an afterthought with a slanted ceiling—tucked in between the main rooms on Kurt’s second floor. A small chest stood in one corner. The floor had no rug. The only reason it stood open, with the light on, I realized, was that Kurt had been storing boxes there—the ones he and my mother spent the day packing at Piggott Street. There were three large cardboard boxes in the center of the room: one filled with my clothes and school textbooks; a g o o d a n d h a p p y c h i l d

263

another with my mother’s work clothes; a third with items from my mother’s desk—picture frames, correspondence rubber-banded together, manila folders with my mother’s neat penciled cursive on the tabs. Our things from home. I hung my head over one cardboard box and sniffed: must and dampness, with the faintest whiff of my mother’s perfume, and clean clothes from the dryer. Home. I curled myself around the box, pressing it to me like a teddy bear on a stormy night. I had been lying there for some time when I heard noises in the hall. The door bumped my back. I scrambled to my feet.

“Don’t move, don’t move,” said Kurt, poking his head into the room. A bead of sweat swam down his nose. “I need to . . . I just . . .”

He took in the clutter. “Okay, you’re going to have to move.”

“What are you doing?”

“Straining my back,” he deadpanned. “I’m bringing this cot in here for you to sleep on.”

He nudged the door open with a shoulder and dragged in the oldest, heaviest iron bed frame I had ever seen—two giant metal jaws with a mattress sandwiched inside.

“You’re bringing that for me?”

“You didn’t think I was going to keep you on the sofa, did you?”

he grunted, as he tugged the monster past me.

“I didn’t think you’d want us here anymore.”

“What?” Kurt wiped his brow with a forearm. “Why would you say something like that, George?”

“Because we’re too much trouble. Because I run away. And my mom yells.”

“If you think that’s yelling, you haven’t seen yelling,” he said. “My mom used to drink schnapps in her bedroom, come down at three in the afternoon in a nightgown screaming murder and police.” He grasped each half of the frame with his thick, sandy hands and squeezed the two together until they creaked. The latch came loose.
264

J u s t i n E v a n s

“My big brother would carry her back upstairs in his arms. Like a bride over the threshold. Catch this, for me, would you? It’s heavy,” he warned, lowering one half toward me.

“Did you come from a bad neighborhood?” I asked, with such earnestness that Kurt burst out laughing.

“Court End, in Richmond,” he said. “One of the worst for lady drunks.”

I caught the frame and lowered it carefully to the floor.

“Attaboy,” he said.

“Was your mom mean to you?”

Kurt leaned toward me, tugging at the skin by his right eye, indicating what looked like a long pockmark. “See that?” he said. “Diamond ring.”

“You’re kidding,” I said suspiciously. Kurt shrugged.

“Gotta move these, too, if you’re going to sleep here,” he said, seeing the cardboard boxes. “Whew. Mind if I sit down?”

He eased himself to the floor and let out a sigh.

“You know, it’s one of the best things about growing up, when you realize you’re pretty much as smart as anybody. Learn to trust what you think. Listen to the voice in here.” He tapped his chest. “Your mom says you ran away to see your friends, because they believe in demons. I guess that means you believe in demons, too.”

I nodded slowly—cautiously.

“Okay,” he said. “Just be sure it’s you who believes it.” I watched him. His shrewd eyes drilled back into me—no redness or vagueness despite the whiff of scotch. “Not them. Not your dad.” His eyes did not move from mine. “Not your mother, either. Though I know she doesn’t believe in that stuff.”

“She doesn’t believe in anything,” I said, and added: “She’s a liberal.”

Kurt’s mouth twitched in a smile.

“George,” he said. “Christian. Liberal, or whatever. They’re not camps. Not teams. You don’t need to pick a side.”

I considered this. Sometimes, hearing Uncle Freddie talk—even a g o o d a n d h a p p y c h i l d

265

reading my father’s book—you did begin to think there were teams; and that it was vital for you to choose the right one. I looked at Kurt with renewed interest.

“You can be your own side,” he continued. “Or we can be a team. When everyone else gets a little too wound up. You know what I mean?

Too excited. You just pull me aside, we’ll watch a ball game. Go for a drive in the country. That’s what I love about this place,” he said, grinning a lopsided grin. “Get out in the car, take that turn you never took before, end up finding a spot that looks out over the whole valley . . . with sunshine pushing through the clouds.” He splayed his fingers and made a swooping motion. “That’s what I do when I get upset: client yells at me . . . my brother got real sick last year. Clears your head.” He nodded, gently, to himself. “The side you pick doesn’t have to be your mom, or your dad, or your dad’s friends. It can be . . . just you. That’s part of growing up, into a man.”