Summer 2007 (29 page)

“I still don’t understand,” Zia said.

The old woman was quiet for so long I didn’t think she
was going to explain. But she finally looked away from Zia, across the room,
her gaze seeing into the past rather than what lay in front of her.

“Donnie was a good boy,” she said. “Too good for this
world, I guess, because he was taken from it while he was still so young. I
knew he’d grow up to make me proud–at least I thought I did. My
eyesight’s bad now, sweetheart, but I think I was blinder back then, because I
never saw that he wouldn’t get the chance to grow up at all.”

Her gaze returned to Zia before Zia could speak.

“But you,” the old woman said. “Oh, I could see trouble
in you. You were too much like your father. Left to your own devices, I could
see you turning into a little hellion. That you could be as bad as he was, if
you were given half a chance. So I kept you busy–too busy to get into
trouble, I thought–but I didn’t do any better of a job raising you than I
did him.

“You were both taken so young and I can’t help but feel
that the blame for that lay with me.”

She fell silent, but I knew Zia wasn’t going to let it
go, even though we had what we needed.

The ghost boy’s mother
did
remember him.

She
had
loved him.

I’d fulfilled my part of the bargain and I wanted to
tell Zia to stop. I almost pushed open the closet door. I’d already lifted my
hand and laid my palm against the wood paneling, but Donald stopped me before I
could actually give it a push.

“I need to hear this,” he said. “I…I just really do.”

I let my hand fall back to my side.

“But why don’t you ever talk about Donnie?” Zia asked.
“Why is his room closed up and forgotten and mine’s like I just stepped out for
a soda?”

“When I let him die,” the old woman said, after another
long moment of silence, “all by himself, swelled up and choking from that bee
sting…” She shook her head. “I was so ashamed. There’s not a day goes by that I
don’t think about it…about him…but I keep it locked away inside. It’s my
terrible secret. Better to let the world not know that I ever had a son, than
that I let him die the way he did.”

“Except you didn’t kill him.”

“No. But I did neglect him. If I’d been here, instead of
driving you to some piano class or gym meet or whatever it was that day, he’d
still be alive.”

“So it’s my fault…”

“Oh no, honey. Don’t even think such a thing. I was the
one who made all the wrong choices. I was the one who thought he didn’t need
attention, but that you did. Except I was wrong about that, too. Look what
happened to Donnie. And look how you turned out before…before…”

“I died.”

She nodded. “You were a good girl. You were the best
daughter a mother could have had. I was so proud of you, of all you’d
achieved.”

“And my room…”

“I keep it and your memory alive because it’s the only
thing left in this world that can give me any pride. It’s the light that burns
into the darkness and lets me forget my shame. Not always. Not for long. But
even the few moments I can steal free of my shame are a blessed respite.”

She fell silent again, head bowed, unable to look at
what she thought was the ghost of her daughter.

Zia turned and glanced at where I was peering at her
from the crack I’d made with the closet door. I knew her well enough to know
what she was thinking. It was never hard. All I had to do was imagine I was in
her shoes, and consider what I would say or do or think.

I turned to Donald.

“Is there anything you want to tell your mother?” I
whispered.

He gave me a slow nod.

“Then just tell Zia and she’ll pass it on to your
mother.”

He gave me another nod, but he still didn’t speak.

“Donald?” I said.

“I don’t know what to say. I mean, there’s a million
things I could say, but none of them seem to matter anymore. She’s beating
herself up way more than any hurt I could have wished upon her.”

I reached out a comforting hand, but of course I
couldn’t touch him. Still, he understood the gesture. I think he even
appreciated it.

“And I don’t even wish it on her anymore,” he added.
“But then…while I feel bad about what she’s going through, at the same time, I
still feel hurt for the way she ignored me.”

I opened the door a little more, enough to catch Zia’s
eye. She inclined her head to show that she understood.

“I’ve talked to Donnie,” Zia said. “In the, you know.
The hereafter. Before he went on.”

The old woman lifted her head and looked Zia in the eye.

“You…you have?”

Zia nodded. “He understands, but he really wishes you’d
celebrate his life the way you do mine. It…hurts him to think that you never
think of him.”

“Oh, god, there’s not a day goes by that I don’t think
of him.”

“He knows that now.”

Zia gaze went back to me and I made a continuing motion
with my hand.

“And he wants,” she went on, then caught herself. “He
wanted you to know that he’ll always love you. That he never held you to blame
for what happened to him.”

The old woman put her arms around Zia.

“Oh, my boy,” she said. “My poor, poor boy.”

“He wants you to be happy,” Zia said. “We both do.”

The woman shook her head against Zia’s shoulder.

“I don’t even know the meaning of the word anymore,” she
said.

“Will you at least try?”

The old woman sat up and dabbed at her eyes with the
sleeve of her housecoat.

“How does one even begin?” she said.

“Well, sometimes, if you pretend you’re happy, you can
trick yourself into at least feeling better.”

“I don’t think I could do that.”

“Try by celebrating our lives,” Zia said. “Remember both
your children with love and joy. There’ll always be sadness, but try to
remember that it wasn’t always that way.”

“No,” the old woman said slowly. “You’re right. It
wasn’t. I don’t know if you can even remember, but we were once a happy family.
But then Ted left and I had to go back to work, and you children…you were
robbed of the life you should have had.”

“It happens,” Zia said–a touch too
matter-of-factly for the ghost of a dead girl, I thought, but the old woman
didn’t appear to notice.

“It’s time for me to go, Mama,” Zia added. “Will you let
me go?”

“Can’t you stay just a little longer?”

“No,” Zia said. “Let me walk you back to your bed.”

She got up and the two of them left the room, the old
woman leaning on Zia.

“I’m going to wake up in the morning,” I heard the old
woman say from the hall, “and this will all have just been a dream.”

“Not if you don’t want it to,” Zia told her. “You’ve got
a strong will. Look how long you kept me from moving on. You can remember
this–everything we’ve talked about–for what it really was. And if
you try hard, you can be happy again…”

* * *

Donald and I waited in the bedroom until Zia returned.

“Is she asleep?” I asked.

Zia nodded. “I think all of this exhausted her.” She
turned to Donald. “So how do you feel now?”

“I feel strange,” he said. “Like there’s something
tugging at me…trying to pull me away.”

“That’s because it’s time for you to move on,” I told
him.

“I guess.”

“You’re remembered now,” Zia said. “That’s what was
holding you back before.”

He gave a slow nod. “Listening to her…it didn’t make me
feel a whole lot better. I mean, I understand now, but…”

“Life’s not very tidy,” Zia said, “so I suppose there’s
no reason for death to be any different.”

“I…”

He was harder to hear. I gave him a careful study and
realized he’d grown much more insubstantial.

“It’s hard to hold on,” he said. “To stay here.”

“Then don’t,” Zia told him.

I nodded. “Just let go.”

“But I’m…scared.”

Zia and I looked at each other.

“We were here at the beginning of things,” she said,
turning back to him, “before Raven pulled the world out of that old pot of his.
We’ve been in the great beyond that lies on the other side of the long ago.
It’s…”

She looked at me.

“It’s very peaceful there,” I finished for her.

“I don’t want to go to Hell,” he said. “What if I go to
Hell?”

His voice was very faint now and I could hardly make him
out in the gloom of the room.

“You won’t go to Hell,” I said.

I didn’t know if there was a Heaven or a Hell or
what
lay on the other side of living. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. But there was
no reason to tell him that. He wanted certainty.

“Hell’s for bad people,” I told him, “and you’re just a
poor kid who got stung by a bee.”

I saw the fading remnants of his mouth moving, but I
couldn’t make out the words. And then he was gone.

I looked at Zia.

“I don’t feel any better,” I said. “Did we help him?”

“I don’t know. We must have. We did what he wanted.”

“I suppose.”

“And he’s gone on now.”

She linked her arm in mine and walked me into the
between.

“I had this idea for a store,” she said.

“I know. Where you don’t sell anything. Instead people
just bring you stuff.”

She nodded. “It was a pretty dumb idea.”

“It wasn’t that bad. I’ve had worse.”

“I know you have.”

We stepped out of the between onto the fire escape
outside the apartment. I looked across the city. Dawn was still a long way off,
but everywhere I could see the lights of the city, the headlights of cars
moving between the tall canyons of the buildings.

“I think we need to go somewhere and make a big happy
noise,” Zia said. “We have to go mad and dance and sing and do cartwheels along
the telephone wires like we’re famous trapeze artists.”

“Because..?”

“Because it’s better than feeling sad.”

So we did.

And later we returned to the Rookery and woke up all the
cousins until every blackbird in every tree was part of our loud croaking and
raspy chorus. I saw Lucius open the window of his library and look out. When he
saw Zia and I, leading the cacophony from our high perch in one of the old oak
trees in the backyard, he just shook his head and closed the window again.

But not before I saw him smile to himself.

* * *

I went back to the old woman’s apartment a few weeks
later to see if the ghost boy was really gone. I meant to go sooner, but
something distracting always seemed to come up before I could actually get
going.

Zia might tell me about a hoard of Mardi Gras beads
she’d found in a dumpster and then off we’d have to go to collect them all,
bringing them back to the Rookery where we festooned the trees with them until
Lucius finally asked us to take them down, his voice polite, but firm, the way
it always got when he felt we’d gone the step too far.

Or Chlöe might call us into the house because she’d made
us each a sugar pie, big fat pies with much more filling than crust, because we
liked the filling the best. We didn’t even need the crust, except then it would
just be pudding, which we also liked, but it wasn’t pie, now was it?

Once we had to go into the far away to help our friend
Jilly, because we promised we would if she ever called us. So when she did, we
went to her. That promise had never been like a chain dangling from our feet
when we flew, but it still felt good to be done with it.

But finally I remembered the ghost boy and managed to
not get distracted before I could make my way to his mother’s apartment. When I
got there, they were both gone, the old woman and her dead son. Instead, there
was a young man I didn’t recognize sitting in the kitchen when I stepped out of
the between. He was in the middle of spooning ice cream into a bowl.

“Do you want some?” he asked.

He was one of those people who didn’t seem the least bit
surprised to find me appearing out of thin air in the middle of his kitchen.
Tomorrow morning, he probably wouldn’t even remember I’d been here.

“What flavour is it?” I asked.

“Chocolate swirl with bits of Oreo cookies mixed in.”

“I’d love some,” I told him and got myself a bowl from
the cupboard.

He filled my bowl with a generous helping and we both
spent a few moments enjoying the ice cream. I looked down the hall as I ate and
saw all the cardboard boxes. My gaze went back to the young man’s face.