The Survivors (32 page)

“No,” she said, “like a dream. We don't see ourselves but we see as if we're looking through our eyes. Are you ready for another try? This time move forward, after the board games.”

Her hand waved. My eyes followed, and the images flashed.

“There.” She lowered her hand. “Eyes closed. Tell me what you saw.”

“We were playing
Life
—the game. We had an argument. I couldn't catch what we said, but I wanted the fighting to stop. We decided to play hide-and-seek instead. That part was very clear. Scottie wanted to be it, but I said no. I'd be it that first time. That's why he was the one in the closet, not me.”

“Relax, Cal. That all happened a long time ago.”

A car went by on the street; something squeaked in the house. I was suddenly having trouble concentrating, keeping my attention on her voice.

“Relax,” Rubin repeated. “You had no idea what was coming that night. There was no danger.”

I nodded. “We were only playing, like always.”

“That's right. Now, are you ready for another set? Move forward again, to hide-and-seek.”

I opened my eyes, began to follow her hand. In my mind I saw the hallway in the old house. The others shut the lights out, and I moved toward my parents' bedroom.

My hands began to tingle.

“Cal, what's going on?” I felt a tap in my palm. “Your eyes stopped moving. Were you having an episode?”

My body was tense, and there was sweat in the small of my back. I knew I was in Felix's parlor and why I was there, and, though my hands were still tingling, the sensation was fading.

“I was about to go in my parents' room. I froze up, that's all.”

“It's safe in the bedroom. Nothing bad happened there. It was all outside, right? Just think that as you let the memories come.”

Her hand began to move. I concentrated, telling myself,
It's all right. You want to do this
.

I was at the bedroom door. Something was holding me back, like a voice warning me not to go in. I pushed through that feeling and stepped over the threshold. Everything was normal. I could see the pattern in the rug. One of the nightstand drawers was open slightly. There were rain spatters on the window; the trees outside were tossing in the wind. I laid my head against the wall and started to count. Down the hall I could hear laughter. Thud, thud, thud. Closet doors. I counted, fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven. Then the mewing sound. Brookey the cat, but Brookey was dead.

“No, that's not Brookey.”

“Cal. Cal, it's OK.” I blinked a few times. Rubin was leaning in front of me. “Close your eyes. Tell me what it was.”

I took a long breath. I was trembling slightly. “I was in the bedroom, counting. You know, hide-and-seek. I got to the fifties, and I heard a sound. I thought it was our cat, but it really was my mother crying.”

“Did you see her?”

“I didn't get that far. I blocked up when I heard her.”

“OK, this time concentrate on other sounds. Was there anything else?”

“The wind. There was a storm.”

“Think about that.”

“And my brothers and Scottie. They were laughing.”

“Good. Those will help. Try not to focus on your mother's crying. The other sounds instead. Ready? We're almost there.”

I nodded again.

Her hand moved. My eyes knew the pattern now. I thought of the wind and the trees. Counting, listening for the laughter.

“Wait.” I stopped her hand. “They can't laugh. They're already dead. The closet doors slamming weren't doors but shots.”

She didn't really understand me, but she patted my shoulder. “It's all right. Whatever went on in the rest of the house doesn't matter. Stay with the bedroom and the view out the window. That's the picture we need. Outside. When you see your mother with the gun.”

We started again. The view through the window, the counting in my head. Then the crying sound again.
That's not Brookey. Brookey's dead
.

“Damn,” I said. “I blocked at the same place, just before she stepped out.”

“Try again. It's only a matter of being relaxed enough. Keep telling yourself that.” She patted my shoulder once more. “And I've got all day.”

We did try again. And again after that. I got closer, enough to see a flash of my mother, down off the porch in the yard, cold with no sweater, her hair streaming in the wind. But as hard as I tried, I couldn't get to the gun. It was such a strange thing because that image came to me so often—usually when it was the last thing I wanted to think about. Now that I really wanted to see it, it was just out of reach.

Rubin massaged the backs of my hands. “Maybe we should stop. You've made good progress.”

“No, I want to get through this.”

She pointed at my shirt, where faint stains of sweat were beginning to show. “You need to completely let go, and I'm not sure you can. Another day—”

“Let's try a few more times. Please?”

“Close your eyes,” she said. She massaged from my wrists to my shoulders and spoke into my ear, very softly. I was at Felix's house. It was safe there. My friends were with me, just in the other room.

She told me to open my eyes. Her hand was already waving. “Start as far along as you can. Your mother coming off the porch. Begin now.”

Fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight . . . I could see her at the bottom of the steps, moving into the yard. She was wearing a skirt. That was something she rarely did, put on a skirt. She turned. The image was very clear now, everything moving in real time. She glanced up and saw me. No smile. As her eyes dropped, she patted the air.
Get down, Davie. Stay quiet
. She said something, but it was carried away by the wind. She was staring at the porch, right below me. Her hand. There it was. The gun—black, large. Up. Up to her head. The crying was back. I tried to shut it out but it was too much. Brookey, only Brookey is dead.

BANG.

I was sure that sound was real, right next to me in the chair, but all I could see was my mother falling, the gun clutched in her hand. I stared at her, then crawled back from the window. I bumped the bed, went flat on my back and wiggled underneath. It was dark under there and closed in. Ow. Something sharp on my wrist.

“Cal! Cal!” The voice came from a long way away. Someone started slapping my palm. Harder and harder. “Cal, come back to me! Open your eyes!” The voice faded away.

I was under the bed. Safe in the shadows. My arm hurt, but I lay completely still. The wind moaned outside. And other sounds. Inside the house. Creaking on the stairs. Boys laughing.

“Cal! Damn it, Cal, come on!”

“Yeah,” I mumbled. My mouth was parched and cottony. “'M'all right.”

My eyes opened suddenly, pried wide. Felix stared at me.

I was lying on the floor, and I sat up groggily. “Whoa, too fast.” I lay back down.

The red lights were gone, and the blinds were open. “Where's Dr. Rubin?” I said.

“Gone. I sent her home.” He lifted my arm and felt for my pulse.

“What time is it?”

“Almost four.”

“Three hours gone. That's some kind of record. It is Saturday still, right?”

“If it wasn't, you'd be in a hospital.”

That made me smile. “I think I can get up now.”

He backed away, and I clambered onto the couch. Pictures flashed in my mind, like snippets of a dream. I closed my eyes and tried to grab them. Wind in the trees. Raindrops. Counting. Then under the bed with my arm impaled above me on the springs. A droplet of blood dripped off my elbow. With that single flash of memory, it all spun together, as perfect and clear as a day at the movies.

I opened my eyes. Felix was squatting in front of me, and when he saw the look on my face, it startled him so much he toppled backward onto the seat of his pants.

“I need to talk to Scottie,” I said.

THIRTY-THREE

S
cottie was in the back garden, dozing on a plastic chaise lounge. Coop was curled up next to him. It was a mild day, with the first tinge of fall in the air. I stood at the back door enjoying the peacefulness before I went to join them. Coop lifted his head and that woke Scottie.

“Hey, you're all right!”

He looked ready to jump up and hug me, so I waved for him to stay put. There were a couple of chairs by the chaise, and I sat in one.

“Felix kicked me out,” Scottie said. “He said it was my fault you had your blackout.”

“Why your fault?”

“I dropped a book, sort of on purpose. You kept getting stuck at that spot just before your mother had the gun.”

“I thought I heard you guys sneaking into the hall to listen. That was pretty good timing with the book. Like the real gunshot.”

Coop got up and laid his head next to Scottie's hand. Scottie began to scratch his ears. “So . . . did you remember anything?”

“You and Ron and Alan laughing. I remember hearing that—after my mother shot herself.”

Scottie spun toward me. “You're sure?”

“That isn't all. I remember my mother falling, and I crawled under the bed. I could hear you laughing then. You were still OK. Then I heard a noise on the stairs. Creaking as someone came up. And then—”

“The three shots,” he said. “That couldn't have been your mom.”

“I don't see how, no.”

We stared at each other. His Orioles cap was askew with his hair sticking out in spikes underneath. The sun slanted under the brim, making him squint hard. The way I was feeling, I probably looked as sketchy as he did.

“After my session with Dr. Rubin, I remembered the gunshots, too,” he said. “First the one in the living room. We were in Alan's bedroom then and thought that was the front door, your dad leaving. That must have been when he was shot. Then we started hide-and-seek. We slammed the bedroom doors so you'd be confused about where we were. We all got in the closet at the head of the stairs, and I heard the second shot. It was faint, but I know I heard it. That was your mother in the backyard. Ron and Alan were fooling around, so I never heard anyone coming up the stairs. The door suddenly opened, he poked the gun in—”

“He?” I said.

“It was too dark to see. Just a hand and the gun.” He made a pistol out of his finger and thumb. “It could have been anybody.”

“Why didn't you tell me before about what you remembered?”

“Dr. Rubin said I shouldn't. I told her about you. She said if I let you know all the things I remembered, it could ruin your memories. Taint them—that's the word she used.”

“And that's exactly what happened.”

We looked around. Felix was standing a few yards up the garden path.

“Eavesdropping must be contagious,” he said, taking the empty chair.

He'd brought three cans of root beer with him, and he tossed us ours. “I heard what she told you, Cal. ‘Concentrate on other sounds.' She planted the idea that there
were
other sounds—laughter and gunshots and whatever your mind wanted to make up. Scottie had already told you about your brother's striped shirt, making it seem like her whole voodoo shtick worked.”

I cracked open the can and took a drink. Part of my brain—the educated part—told me he might be right. The rest of me said he was dead wrong.

“Felix, I want you to listen for a while. Let us talk this out.”

He could tell I wasn't going to be argued out of it, so he slouched back and nodded for us to go ahead.

I said, “Somebody came to the house while we were all upstairs. They must have gotten hold of the gun my mother bought. They shot my father and took her to the backyard.”

“That lines up with what I remember,” Scottie said. “But one thing doesn't make sense. Why did your mom shoot herself? Her own kids were in the house. They needed protecting.”

“Maybe, somehow, that's what she thought she was doing,” I said.

Felix had his legs splayed out in front of him, and he wagged his feet while he stared at the ground. “If somebody had already killed your dad, she might have known she wasn't going to get out alive.”

“OK,” I said. “Maybe she made a deal. She'd shoot herself, make it look like a murder/suicide. The person with the gun promised to leave the children alone. Upstairs, they hadn't seen anything. They weren't any threat.”

It made perfect sense with what I'd seen. Those lost words of hers, carried away on the wind, could have been spoken to someone standing on the porch. And the way she patted the air.
Get down, Davie
. Don't let him see you.

One insight, and years of fog lifted.

“Sure, that's it.” I didn't even try to keep the relief out of my voice. “But the gunman wasn't going to leave anyone alive. He came upstairs. There were three sons in the family, three in the closet. He never thought of looking for a fourth.”