Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee (20 page)

“Mommy had a mommy?” Barbie asks.

“Yes, and she loves you very much,” I say.

“Like an auntie?” Lola asks.

“Yes, just like that.”

“Why?” Barbie asks.

“She loves you because you're special,” I say. “Both of you. But if Grandma learns what happened to Mommy, she'll be sad. So I don't want to tell her. I'm going to tell her that Mommy fell into the river, and that's why she isn't here.” I've come up with this lie right this second. I hope it's a good one, because there's no going back.

“Mommy is by the river,” says Barbie.

“Yes, that's right!” I say.

“If Mommy didn't fall into the river, you have to stay here in the police car,” says Lola.

Where on earth did she get that from? “No, baby,” I say. “Nobody is going to keep me in the police car.” At least, I don't think they would. The police would understand that I had to do it, wouldn't they? That I didn't mean for her to die?

“It's okay,” says Lola. “Don't be sad.” She crawls across the backseat and hugs me. I have both girls in my arms now. My girls. I don't want to let them go. I don't want to give them away to Aunt Hannah and let them forget that I'm their mom. I never wanted this before, but I want it now. I squeeze them.

The door next to me opens.

“Are you ready?” the male cop asks.

I climb out of the car and pick up Barbie.

Lola crawls out on her own. I set Barbie down and take their hands. We walk like this down the driveway. I expect
Aunt Hannah to come running toward us, but she doesn't. She stands there holding my mom's hand, staring. Her face is white, and she almost shrinks back into my dad.

Lee comes around on my right side. She steps ahead of us. “Mom,” she says. “This is Lola, and this is Barbie.”

Aunt Hannah's hand shakes as she pulls away from my mom. She takes a step forward.

“This is your grandma,” I say.

“Mommy is by the river!” Barbie pipes.

Aunt Hannah shakes as she kneels down to be on Barbie's level. “Oh, is she?” she asks. She reaches out and runs a hand through Barbie's hair.

“Yes, and there are two sticks like this.” She makes a little cross symbol with her hand. “Because Daddy said this makes her go there.” She points up to the sky.

Aunt Hannah swallows. She pulls Barbie into a hug. She's still shaking—not just her hand, but all over.

“I'm so sorry,” I say. “I had to protect them. That was why I couldn't tell you. I wanted to tell you, every day.” I hear myself speaking, but it's not me. I don't know where me is. I don't even feel like I'm here. I'm watching Aunt Hannah hold on to Barbie, and she reaches out for Lola, and now I'm holding on to no one. Now it's just me, standing in a dark driveway in front of a police car. Dee is dead and Kyle is gone and Lola and Barbie are with their grandma, and it's all over. But
it
was everything I ever knew.

Stacie flips a card over.

“Miss!” I cry.

I take my turn and flip my cards. First one, then two. I didn't get a match either.

Stacie smiles. “Miss!”

She was pregnant already then, but none of us knew. She was still in there.

If we had only run then.

If we had tried again, together.

If . . .

I'm in my twin bed in my room in my mom's house. I wake up with the sun streaming in the window. I remember standing in the driveway, but that's all. What happened next, how I got inside, is all a loss. But I'm not the only one in the room. Lola and Barbie are here, too. They're lying on sleeping bags on the air bed.

Lola is awake and watching me.

“What happened last night, baby?” I ask.

She looks at me solemnly. “I knew you wouldn't remember,” she says.

“I got lost again,” I say.

She nods. “The grandma lady said she wanted us to come home with her, but she said she bet we wanted to stay with you. And we said yes. And she didn't ask about Mommy, so that's okay.”

“Oh. Thank you, baby,” I say.

Lola begins to cry. “I don't want you to stay in the police car.”

That wakes up Barbie. She doesn't know why we're crying, but she starts up, too.

I crawl out of bed and onto the air mattress. There's a hole somewhere, slowly letting all the air out. It settles and wheezes. “That's not going to happen,” I say. I hold them both. “Please don't worry. I'm here. Please don't cry.” I should never have said what I said in the car. Maybe they never would have said anything. Or maybe it's better that I told them, so now we can talk about it in the open and they won't worry in silence. I really don't know what's best for them. I don't know anything about being a mom. I don't know if I should tell them about how their dad will go to jail. Maybe it would be better to tell them now and let them be sad than to let them begin to feel better and then drop it on them. Maybe it's better to be very sad and then recover. Maybe I should ask Dr. Kayla. I'm their mom, though, no matter what. I do know, somewhere inside. I know that I will never let Kyle see them again, and waiting to tell them won't make it any better.

“There's something I need to tell you,” I say.

“Not going with grandma lady!” Barbie says.

That almost makes me smile. In fact, it almost makes me laugh. But instead, it pushes a fresh burst of tears out of my eyes. “It's not about Grandma,” I say. “It's about Daddy.”

They look up at me.

“Daddy is . . .” I almost say he's like Mommy now. That would be easier to explain, but it wouldn't be true. If I lie to them, they'll learn the truth sooner or later. “Daddy has to go away to jail,” I say instead. “He's done some bad things, and now he has to be punished. And he will get help, too. They will
patch him up and make him feel better.” I hope that's not true. I hope he's in pain every single second of every day.

“How long does he have to stay there?” Barbie asks.

“A long time,” I say. “A very, very, very long time.”

The girls cry quietly. I thought it would be worse than this. But maybe they don't quite understand yet.

“How would you like some breakfast?” I ask. “There are these things called pancakes. You'll love them.” My heart begins to race as I stand up. Pancakes are not good for you. But I can have them. I can smother them in syrup, and not even the real kind. I can cover them in Aunt Jemima corn syrup and wash it all down with chocolate milk. As I step out of the bedroom, the girls right behind me, I smile, and the smile grows as I head for the kitchen. I feel like I'm floating. My feet are barely touching the ground.

As we pass through the living room, Lola runs up to the TV and turns it on. Voices escape, pictures and lights. She turns it off again, then on.

“Let me!” Barbie says.

My mom is already in the kitchen.

I can't remember if I spoke to her last night. I can't remember what she said to me. My smile fades. My bare feet are cold against the kitchen floor.

Kyle is still out of our lives. Her look can't change that.

The TV goes on and off, on and off. The girls giggle as they play with it.

Mom looks at me. Her deep brown eyes stare from underneath her plucked eyebrows. She's wearing a dark blue
bathrobe and has a cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal, but it doesn't look like she's eaten any of it.

“I'm sorry,” I say.

She
looks
.

“I had to.”

“You were going to stay,” she says.

I look away. I look at the window over the sink, but it's dirty, and the glare from the morning sun flashes in my eyes. There's nowhere outside of this room to go to. Even my memories fail me.

“Do you know what I went through?” she asks. “Do you
know
?” She slams her fist down on the table. Milk and bran flakes fly. The bowl goes skittering across the table and comes to a stop in the uneven gap where the two sides meet.

“Yes,” I say.

“No,” she says. “You knew where they were. You knew they were safe.”

“I didn't know they were safe,” I say.

She turns her back on me and wraps her arms around her chest. She's shaking the way Aunt Hannah did.

“Mom, I'm sorry.”

“You could have told me,” she says. Her voice is barely a whisper now. “Did you think I wouldn't love them, too?”

“He said he'd kill them. If I ever told anyone. He was obsessed with these dolls, and he thought of Lola and Barbie and Dee like they were his . . . stuff.” But that doesn't explain it. It doesn't make any sense because it's crazy, but I have to make her understand. “He threatened Lola once. Someone came to
the cabin, and they might have found us, but . . .” I see the look in his eyes through the window, the hand over Lola's precious throat. “You wouldn't risk it if it was me,” I say. “You would have gone back, too, to save me.”

Mom turns around to face me. Tears roll down her face, and her jaw is set like she's so angry she wants to scream, but she grabs me and pulls me into a hug. It's so tight that she's squeezing the breath out. “Yes,” she says. “Yes. Yes. Yes. I would have done anything to save you.”

“Chel! Are we having panties?” Lola asks from the doorway. Barbie pushes in next to her.

“It's pancakes, honey,” I say. Mom is still squeezing me so tightly that it's hard to talk. “And yes, we are. Mom, do you want to help me make pancakes for the girls?”

She only eases up a little. “Yes,” she says. She keeps holding on.

“Mom, it's over,” I say. “There's nowhere else for me to go.”

She releases me, finally, and pulls out the cookbook with her pancakes-from-scratch recipe. A minute later, Dad gets up, and a minute after that, so does Jay.

They both hug me. Dad goes first. He wraps me in his arms, and as my face presses into his chest, I realize that he feels like Dad, even though he's gained weight, even though things have changed. The arms are familiar, the aftershave, even his breath.

“I'm so sorry,” Jay says as he hugs me, too. His arms are bony, the opposite of Dad's, but it still feels right to have them around me.

“
I'm
sorry,” I say.

“Amy, you have nothing to be sorry for,” Dad says. He puts a hand on my shoulder, while Jay only half releases me.

“Let me help!” Lola says.

“
I
want to,” Barbie puts in.

“Well, of course,” Mom says. I hear the clatter of a bowl, the plop of a bag of flour on the counter.

“Thank you, Grandma Patty,” says Lola.

“Grandma Patty, well, that's very nice. I like that,” Mom says.

“That's what you call a mommy's mommy, right?”

Dad grips my shoulder tighter, and I need him and Jay both, because Lola just said she knows that I'm her mommy, too, and I was so afraid they'd forget that. I was so afraid they'd realize I wasn't.

“Yes, and this is your Grandpa Lon,” I say, wiping my eyes. “And your Uncle Jay.”

Jay lets me go and kneels down in front of both girls, who somehow are already covered in flour. “A lot was going on last night,” he says. “I didn't get to give you a hug. Can I give you a hug now?”

Lola reaches her arms out, and then Barbie scoots past her, and Jay envelopes them.

“Thank you,” he says. “I'm very glad you've come home.” He looks up at me, and I know he means me, too, and I nod. I never had the courage to dream that this day would happen, and now that it's here, I'm overwhelmed. I have to sit down and let the others make the pancakes and absorb their voices,
the girls and my mom and my dad and Jay all together—this perfect, amazing, impossible day.

We eat pancakes, and I pour as much syrup on them as I want, and Lola and Barbie love them. I close my eyes and savor the taste of Aunt Jemima's corn syrup and the feeling of my family around me, and I stay
here
and feel it.

“IT'S NOT EASY
to keep all that inside,” Dr. Kayla says, a few days later. Her long, dark hair is pulled back, and it makes her look younger. “I wish I had been able to help you.”

“I'm sorry,” I say. These are the two words I know now.

“There's no need to apologize,” she says. “I only hope that now you can tell me everything that happened so I can help you.”

Everything that happened. She has no idea what she's asking. There's a lump in my throat and a rock in my stomach. If I can tell anyone the whole truth, it's her. She's been on my side this whole time. She wants to help me, and she may be the only one who really can. But it seems like she likes me, and how will she ever keep liking me if she knows?

“A lot of things happened,” I say.

“I can tell that something's bothering you,” she says. “Some specific thing that you've been wanting to say. Amy, this man is in jail. He will never be able to hurt you again.”

But as long as I remember, he gets to hurt me. As long as I remember, I have to hurt her. I think about what Dr. Kayla told me before, about memory. How I'm hurting because I remember too much. If I don't tell her, this will never stop.

I jump in front of them. I grab the lamp.

Crunch.

Pieces of the lamp are falling. Dee is falling.

“I'm having trouble with my memory,” I say. “This one thing.” But that makes it sound like nothing, and it's everything. I can't look at her while I say it, while I try to somehow start to explain. “Something I remember two different ways.”

Kyle is behind Barbie, holding Lola.

Or he's in front, and they're behind him.

Kyle's dark orange cargo pants.

“What is that?” she asks.

“You can't tell anyone what I say here, right?” I ask. “Not my mom or the police or anyone?” I know she can't, but I need to hear it from her mouth right now. Because I'm not ready to tell my family, and I don't know if I ever will be.

“That's right,” she says. “I will never tell anyone what you tell me, and I have told you the exceptions.”

“I don't want to hurt myself or anyone else,” I say.

“Okay,” she says. And now it's time. Now we'll see if she hates me.

“It's what I already did.”

She waits.

“I killed Dee,” I say. “I mean, he killed Dee. I killed Stacie.”

She waits.

“No, it was Dee. She was only one person. I killed her.”

Dr. Kayla sits back in her seat. Her mouth drops open a little ways. She did not expect me to say that.

“You can't tell anyone,” I say. I shouldn't have said it, but I did. I said the words, and now I want to say everything.

She recovers a little bit, but she stumbles over her words. “What happened, Amy?”

I look away from her, because I don't want to see it, when her shock and confusion turn to hate. “That's what I'm not sure I remember right. I know that Kyle finally told Dee he wanted to marry her, and he showed her the dress, and she went crazy. And she hurt Barbie. She pulled a big clump of her hair out. She hurt Lola, too. And she was so mad. She was coming for us.” I stop. I'm looking at the corner of her wooden desk, the dust-filled indent on the top.

“By
us
you mean you and the girls?”

“Yes, but Kyle might have been in front of them.”

“Why does that matter?” Dr. Kayla asks.

“Because . . .” Here is what I haven't said even to myself. Here is where I think about those times when Kyle played with the babies, when he took care of them, when he smiled, when it almost felt like things were normal. Those times when I forget to be angry and sad. “What if I wanted to protect
him
?”

“Do you think that's what you wanted?”

“No.” I know that. With my heart and my soul and my mind, I know I never did anything to help Kyle unless it was
to help them. But . . . “I didn't
want
to protect him, but what if I
did
?”

“You acted to protect Lola and Barbie,” Dr. Kayla says. “I can see that.”

“You can?” I look up at her, and I try to find the hate in her face, but it isn't there. Her eyes are wet, and she grabs a tissue from her desk.

“Amy, now that you've told me about the girls, I can see why you did everything. You were faced with the most difficult choices, and you always did what you thought would protect them.”

“I did.” It's true. It really is.

“You will have to learn to forgive yourself,” she says. “You acted solely out of love.”

I reach out and take a tissue from the box and watch Dr. Kayla dab her eyes. This is the first time she's cried in front of me. I'm pretty sure she's not supposed to. She's supposed to be objective and distant. But now I can tell she doesn't hate me, not just from her words. I can tell that she cares about me as a person.

“There's one very important thing that you haven't recognized, Amy,” Dr. Kayla says. “You told me that Dee was coming for
you and the girls
. You have a right to protect yourself, too.”

I stare at her. Never in all this time did I once think of that.

“When we're in danger, we act to protect ourselves,” she says, “and that's okay. It is okay to survive.”

“I don't know if that's true,” I say.

“It is true,” she says. “It's not just okay, it's good. Amy, it's good that you're here today, that you're alive, and that you will be able to live a long, full life.”

I let the tears fill my eyes. It's
good
that I'm here. It doesn't feel good.

“It's good that you're here because you deserve a life like anyone else,” she says. “But also, there are many people who love you and are very glad that you came back.”

“I keep thinking about it,” I say. “I want to stop thinking about it. But I don't want to forget her. Even the bad times, I don't want to forget, because sometimes they were all we had.” Even when she was screaming, even when she was drinking soap, even that last minute, when she was pulling out Barbie's hair. That was all Dee, and I'll never be able to see her again.

“We'll work on helping you deal with this,” Dr. Kayla says. “We'll keep working until we have a solution.”

I swallow and wipe my eyes and blow my nose, and then I stare out the window and watch the people walking across the parking lot and the trees across the street swaying in the wind and a man walking his dog down the sidewalk. And then I tell Dr. Kayla all the details—about the dress, and about the wedding, and about what happened when Kyle told her. I tell her more about the girls, more about Stacie, everything I've been afraid to tell. I know that here in this room alone with Dr. Kayla, I'm safe. He can't hurt me, and neither can anybody else.

•   •   •

There is a street in Grey Wood that separates the town from the country. On one side of the street, there are blocks divided into neat squares, and houses all lined up in rows, and spots at regular intervals for parks and schools. On the other side of the street, grass grows long, and buildings look like they were dropped there, and there's a sign to the freeway and then a two-lane road that goes into the trees, where there are houses with land attached and sheep and cows.

Kyle James Parsons grew up out there, past the edges of the neat squares, in a small house with a lot of land attached. This is what the police tell me, and what I learn from the paper as the days go by. When his parents were alive, he lived fifteen minutes from where we lived. He grew up here and went to Grey Wood High School, home of the Otters. But after ninth grade, he dropped out. He worked at the Toy Castle in Portland until seven years ago, when they fired him, and that's the last job he ever had. They tell me that he spent time in foster care because his parents are dead, and I just nod. That was one thing he told me.

The newspaper says his sister, Felicity, died of the flu at age seven, when Kyle was nine. And when Kyle was ten, his parents died of accidental poisoning. The paper doesn't say what they were poisoned with or how exactly it happened. It doesn't say that Kyle was suspected. It doesn't give me any clues about how Kyle the doll-loving parent murderer came to be Kyle the kidnapper and rapist and father and man-child. But what can a reporter tell
me
? I'm the person who knows Kyle best in the
world, and I can't explain how he came to be. All I can explain is that it's good for him to be in jail, and it would be better if the police had killed him.

The fact that Kyle is in jail and I came back with two children is all over the papers and the TV, too. There are pictures of me getting out of the car in our driveway, but the newspaper has blocked out the kids' faces. I suppose I should be grateful that someone is trying to protect the girls, but when I see their little bodies without faces, I think of dolls. That's why, when Aunt Hannah comes over with papers to apply for birth certificates for the girls, I tell her to put down Barbie's name as Barbara. Aunt Hannah says that Lola is short for Dolores, so we put that down for her. Dolores and Barbara Springfield, because that was Dee's last name.

“We don't have to put these names down at all,” Aunt Hannah says.

“I don't want to confuse them,” I say. In front of me is a lined sheet of paper with space for me to write out my affidavit, since I'm the only person besides Kyle who knows when they were born and who their parents are. Whatever I write here will be the truth as far as the world knows. All the things Kyle did to make them and the pain they caused Dee and the moments when I washed the blood off of them and they first cried and looked up at me, all boil down to this little piece of paper. And I'm about to tell the world they aren't mine, that they're more related to Aunt Hannah than me. But I write the truth. I'm not sure of the exact dates, but I write what I
remember. And how I know who the parents are. Then I push the paper back across the table.

“We have to take it to a notary,” Aunt Hannah says.

“Okay.”

“Amy . . .” She sets her hands on the papers. It's as if her hands want to ball into fists and crumple the papers up, but the papers are too important, so she smoothes them and smoothes them.

“You want them,” I say. Right now, the girls are with my mom and dad. They are at the park a few blocks from our house, playing on the slide and the jungle gym. They went for the first time a few days ago, and they loved it. It was an amazing new thing. Life is a series of amazing new things for them now. Maybe it won't be so bad for them. Maybe they'll enjoy new things and not miss the old things.

“I want what's best for them,” she says. She smoothes and smoothes. “I know what it takes to raise children. I have a stable home to give them. You need to go to high school and then to college. You deserve to have your own life.”

“I know what it takes, too,” I say. “After five years, I know.”

She nods.

“Teenagers have kids all the time,” I say.

“There's another way we could do it,” she says.

I wait.

“You could come live with us. That way, the kids would still have you, but I would be their legal guardian.”

“What about my mom and Jay?” I ask. I don't know if I can
leave my mom again, after what I did, trying to go back. But what Aunt Hannah is offering is the best thing I could imagine. She's not going to take them away from me. I can't process this fully. She's giving me a way to be with them.

“We live in the same town,” she says. “You and the girls could come over whenever you want. Even stay here some nights.”

“Yes,” I say. All of a sudden, the tension breaks. I burst into a smile and into tears. “Yes yes yes yes.”

Aunt Hannah reaches one hand out and takes one of mine. Our hands lay clasped on the cold table. “I'm sorry for how I treated you when I didn't know,” she says.

“It's okay,” I say. “I'm sorry I couldn't tell you. I wanted to.”

“I know. They are precious. They're lucky to have you.”

I guess they're lucky to have Aunt Hannah, too. She's changed since I came back with the girls. It seems like she's gained weight in just a few days, and her cheeks are a better color, and the way she sits—even though she's nervous, she's sitting taller. The girls have given her something to live for in place of Dee. They've given her a new hope. And now that I know I'm going to live with them, I have hope, too.

“I'm going to work through my issues,” I say. “I'm working with Dr. Kayla.”

“I know. I'm seeing somebody, too,” she says. “When you lose a child . . . but I guess you understand that now.” She looks up, right into my eyes. “Please, tell me what happened to my baby.”

“Dee fell and hit her head,” I say. I've thought about this every minute since I came back from seeing Dr. Kayla, about
whether I should tell Aunt Hannah the truth. But I'm not ready, and she's not ready. I just can't.