Sounds Like Crazy (36 page)

He never asked me for help after that morning when I didn’t render it. I think he kept expecting it, though. One thing my parents never managed to beat out of us was hope. And maybe, given the chance, I would have come around.

Aiden was always so good to me. He said to me once,“Don’t try too hard to be like Sarah, Holly. She is not a very nice person right now. She will be, though, someday.”

At five years old Aiden knew that. And he was right.

I’d like to say that I was afraid of Sarah, but the truth is bigger than that. I wanted her to like me. I wanted her acceptance. Her approval. My brother, Aiden? He looked up to me. He was my buddy, my pal, my confidant. I didn’t need his approval.

Sarah didn’t like it when Aiden and I played with each other. This broke her viselike grip over both of us.This was a potential alliance of two wimps who could overthrow her tentative reign in the hallways downstairs if enough courage could be mustered. If she lost that power, what then?

I’ll never know because, to save myself, I would turn on Aiden like a screw twisting in clay if Sarah commanded it.

Aiden. His name eviscerated me. I had spent most of my life holding him at bay. Sarah tried to get me to talk about him. But I didn’t. I wouldn’t.When I was a senior in high school, I had to write an essay about my family for some English class. I got an A, but I didn’t show anyone. I hid it in a drawer. My mother found it. A family meeting was called to discuss the contents. Sarah came home for the weekend. That was the first and only time I ever slapped her.

Aiden. He dwelled in me like a wound so far beneath the surface that you forget about it until you bump the spot and the
pain radiates out and gains in strength like a tropical storm turned hurricane.

Aiden. I saw his smile in my mind’s eye. I heard him saying, “Hello,” always with the accent on the
lo
.

We were going to try to get to Narnia that day.We had it all planned out. Sarah had permission to go to a friend’s for a sleep-over. She wasn’t supposed to be home.

It was early afternoon; Aiden and I were in the living room playing with our Hot Wheels while we waited for Sarah to leave. We had a real drag race going, and for that brief period of time we forgot to keep watch on our surroundings.

We were moving freely around the orange tracks, shrieking and laughing with abandon.

“Look at the brats playing with their toys.”

We both froze and turned to see Sarah standing in the doorway. The sun from the opposite window shone directly on her face so I couldn’t see it when I looked at her.

Something came over me. Maybe it was power I felt because my red racer, gassing up at the pumps, was two laps ahead of Aiden’s blue sedan. I don’t know.

I turned to Aiden and said,“Don’t listen to her. Maybe she’ll go away.”

Sarah strolled into the room with her hands behind her back. She started to rub the edge of the orange tracks resting on the green shag with the toe of her white go-go boot.

“I was putting away laundry, Aiden.” Sarah smiled.“Hanging your clothes up in your closet.”

Aiden and I froze. The cars whizzed around for a couple of laps, and then mine went careening off the tracks.Aiden’s just ran out of gas and stalled on its way up the loop.

“Don’t stop what you are doing on my account,” said Sarah. Aiden’s car slid backward and flipped off the track.

We all sat there in a quiet standoff.

Breaking the silence, Sarah finally said, “What I have doesn’t concern your little drag race anyway.”

I stayed still. What did she have? I looked over at Aiden and watched while disbelief crept like insidious ivy up his face. He jumped up in front of her. His head was about as high as her chest. He looked so small and pitiful standing in front of Sarah. He tried to reach behind her but she spun out of his grasp. Her movement was filled with a promise to come back.And she came back.

Ignoring Aiden, Sarah looked directly at me. “Oh, yes,” she said, her voice an octave higher, heading toward her planned crescendo, “you might need this.” She pulled her hands from behind her back and shook out Aiden’s Narnia coat. Our escape coat. Our last hope.

I stared at the coat, then gaped at Sarah. She censured me with flashing eyes.Was I with her or with him?

Her challenge wrapped around me and choked my already wavering self-assurance. Aiden grabbed my arm. I shook him off, picked up my red racer, and moved away from him.

Sarah had done it, sundered the tentative bridge between my brother and me. But that wasn’t enough. She wanted more.

“Come on, you little baby,” she hissed at Aiden, “don’t you want this?” Eyes flashing, power restored.

Aiden whimpered. I sat in the corner. My thumb and forefinger gripped the red car and rolled it back and forth across the carpet.

“Guess,” Sarah said, yanking an arm so hard it hung from the coat like a loose limb.

“You.” She ripped at the other arm with such force it was completely severed.

Aiden burst like a dam.

“Don’t.” Her index finger dragged down the inside lining.

“Want.” Sarah found fresh material and pulled her finger down again.

“This.” She crumpled what was left of the coat and dropped it on the floor.

“Stop it! Stop it!” Aiden screamed, hiding his face in the crooks of both elbows while his hands reached around to cover his ears.

If you took away the scream, hiding his face like this was how Aiden responded every morning when my mother tried to beat the bed-wetting out of him, every time my parents had one of their loud arguments in front of us, and probably the nights when my father smoked cigarettes and drank whiskey in his room because Aiden had yelled, “Daddy, not Holly. Please not Holly,” to stop him from delivering the beating my mother demanded I receive for whatever minor transgression I’d committed that day. Sometimes I wondered if getting my father to spank me for any stupid thing was her way of making the punishments equal in our house, because I didn’t get the morning bed-wetting beating Sarah and Aiden got.

My mother walked in just as the coat touched the floor. Her stolid gaze swept over us like a cop’s flashlight in a dark alley. Her eyes passed me first, Aiden second, and then came to rest on the wrecked coat.

Aiden lay on his side whispering, “Aslan, please, Aslan.”

“What is going on here?” my mother said abruptly.

“Nothing,” Sarah said. “They are playing. Holly’s winning. And, as usual, Aiden is crying.” Sarah tilted her head to the right and lazily met my mother’s stare. “Oh, and I found another one of those filthy coats.” She pointed to the floor.

“I thought I told you to throw those out,” my mother barked at Aiden and me as she picked up the coat.

Sarah sauntered past me to the stairs. As she went down, her fingers danced on the green shag carpet lying flat underneath the railing. Before Sarah’s head dropped below floor level, she stuck out her tongue.

My mother turned and left the room.

“Do you want to keep playing, Holly?” Aiden asked.

“No,” I said, kicking the tracks.

“Okay,” he said. “Well, good-bye.”

“Good-bye.” I didn’t look up. He left the room.

 

About an hour later, I heard Sarah telling my mother she was leaving to go to her friend’s. Her friend was just across the street and up the block. Sarah was old enough to cross without an adult. Aiden and I were not.

When she left, Sarah opened the front door enough to squeeze out and then shut it with a soft click. I waited just around the corner so I heard it anyway.

I opened the door in time to see her look to the left, right, and then dart across the street. I threw open the front door and ran right after her. I passed Aiden, who stood in the front yard. “Holly,” he called after me.

I didn’t look back. I ran into the street without looking left or right.

I heard a horn honk. The beeps came in rapid succession. I stopped. Everything around me slowed. I turned. The black car crawled toward me. I stood glued to the asphalt.

The staccato horn beeps had changed to one long groan. I felt like I had cardboard over my ears, dulling the sound.

I stood there.

The car inched forward. The colors around me faded. All I could see was the black monster creeping closer.

I stood there.

I heard a sound like nails raking across a chalkboard. It mixed with the scream of the honking horn. A bitter smell pricked at the inside of my nose like a thousand little needles. I knew I should move but my feet were stuck.

The car fishtailed toward me. My mouth opened but the scream I wanted to release stayed stuck somewhere in my throat. I turned to see Sarah on the opposite side of the street. Her face was ashen, her eyes as big as plates. She waved her hands and yelled. Her words sounded like static on a radio.

Then something slammed into my back, knocking me into the air. I hit the sidewalk with a thud accompanied by a loud crunching sound.

Sarah screamed, “
No!
”

I was lying on the sidewalk, still on my back.

Sarah screamed, “
No!
” over and over. Her hands covered her ears as if she were trying to block out her own cries.

I sat up.

The front door of our house popped open like a vertical jack-in-the-box top. Uncle Dan shot out and ran toward the street. My mother followed a few seconds behind him.

My uncle’s pace slowed to a jog, and then he stopped short of the front bumper of the car. I couldn’t see his face.The driver of the car opened his door slowly.Then he stepped around this obstacle and advanced toward my uncle right as my mother hit the ground, sliding on her knees.

I didn’t understand. I was on the sidewalk.

I sat there gasping for air.Why were they standing there talking? What was she doing? I wanted to yell,
I’m over here
, but the words wouldn’t come out. I waited for them to find me. I became angrier by the second. Uncle Dan and the man whispered to each other at the open car door. I couldn’t see my mother.

I pushed myself up off the ground and stood there with my
arms akimbo. They still didn’t notice me. I gave up and walked toward the car. In front of it, a pool of thick burgundy liquid spread across the asphalt. My mother crawled around in it, pinching at bits on the ground and holding them up to the sunlight. Guttural sobs heaved from her throat.

My heart beat a dull thud in my chest. I watched my mother open her fist, drop one of the bits in it, and then snap it closed again.

I took three steps forward. A few feet from my mother was a red Converse sneaker lying sideways like it had been kicked off.

I held up my hands, palms flat, trying to block the image before me. I couldn’t.

My heart beat faster. I closed my eyes and took two more steps. I touched the warm metal side of the car. The sharp corner over the headlight dug into my palm.

My heartbeat lodged in my throat. I opened my eyes.

His leg was twisted at an odd angle. His sock covered in blood. His head like the hamburger I poked at in the store.

I started to hyperventilate.

I knew where I had to go.

I ran.

I yanked open the front door. She always threw clothes away in the laundry room. I bounced off the wall when I tried to make the turn.Where was it? Where?

I saw it on top of the wastebasket.

I grabbed all the pieces and ran to my father’s closet. I pushed back the hanging clothes, then shoved the boxes aside, making a space so I could reach the wall.

I crouched there on my knees and slipped on the dismembered sleeve and then the rest of the coat. I pressed my hands against the wall and begged. I pleaded. I scratched the wall until my fingers were bloody. I importuned until my throat was raw.

Nothing.

I finally curled up in a ball and started banging my head against the wall.

I woke up the next day with a pillow under my head and a blanket covering me. My uncle sat next to me, his back against the wall and his knees bent. He must have heard me stir. He turned to look at me. His face was etched with grief, wearier than I’d ever seen it.

“Aiden?”

My uncle shook his head.

Inside my head I saw an underfed-looking man in a white robe. He comforted the small boy next to him. I couldn’t see the face, but I could see the shoes. I blinked my eyes and saw my uncle looking down at me.

I turned toward the wall. It held the bloody marks from my supplications. Anger raged inside me. I knew then that there was no God. If there were, he would have listened to me. He would have saved my brother.At that moment, I turned my back on that wall, those pleas, and the one who would not answer them, and forgot all of it.

Until now.

H
olly?” Milton said softly.

I opened my eyes slowly and concentrated on the white ceiling, breathing and counting as I had learned from the Silent One. I repeated this about five times as the sharp edge of impatience increased around me. I was lying on the couch. My hair was soaked from the tears that spilled over.

I closed my eyes, pressed my balled hands into the couch cushion, and then pushed myself up.

“Did you know?” I said to the ceiling.

“Sarah told me about it years ago, before we started our work together.”

Of course she did. It hadn’t occurred to me. “You never said anything, though.”

“I knew you would tell me in your own time.”

I sat there with my eyes closed so tight, spots of light floated behind my lids. Someone had told me once that those spots were angels. I hadn’t closed my eyes tight enough to usher in those ethereal specks since the day Aiden died. I listened to the clock
tick and wondered if they were happy to find the door open again.

Milton’s slacks scraped the chair fabric as he changed positions.
I guess it’s time.