Walking Backward (2 page)
So much for that theory.
Since Mom died, exactly one month ago, Sam has been staying up with me at night. If I’m doing something scary, like watching anything other than
Scooby-Doo
, he’ll sit in the basement with Dad. I don’t think it’s right for a four-year-old to hang out with a grown-up who thinks he’s building a time machine. But what do I know about kids just because I am one?
Sammy is screaming in terror right now. Cleo, our cat, was sleeping under the covers, and Sam just bounced on her. She’s fine, but he’s scared half to death.
I
missed a couple of journal days already, so Dr. Tierney will be disappointed. I don’t remember if I had any strong emotions. I know Sammy did— he had a fit in the bath last night.
I got his tub ready like Mom used to, with the bathmat and bubbles and toys. He sat down and started playing, but when he found a toy car under the suds, he went crazy—screaming and splashing and nearly drowning himself. He threw the car so hard he knocked over the toothbrush cup, and all our toothbrushes fell in the toilet. I got mad and started yelling, and I made him cry.
It’s the most awful feeling in the world, when you lose your temper and swear and make a four-year-old cry. What kind of person yells at a four-year-old kid? Mom only yelled at Sammy if he picked up one of the cats by the back leg. Dad saves his screams for life-and-death situations like playing on the road. What else could you possibly do when you’re only four that would be so bad you should be yelled at?
Actually, there are some rotten four-year-olds out there. There’s a kid at the park who hits other kids and throws sand in their faces and steals their toys. His name is Darren. At first I thought he was retarded, but then I realized that he likes to hurt people. Animals too. Once he ran after a squirrel with his plastic shovel, chasing it across the grass until it ran up a tree. He stared up after it and whacked the tree about a hundred times, shouting, “This is what I’ll do to you!” As if the squirrel might have been unclear about his intentions.
I can see how some four-year-olds might deserve to be yelled at. Or in Darren’s case, locked up. Darren’s mom just sits there, smoking and talking on her phone like she doesn’t care at all that her kid hits other kids and tries to kill helpless animals. Darren would have to chop off someone’s head to get her attention. Somebody should yell at him before he does that.
But I shouldn’t have yelled at Sammy last night. He’s a good boy. The only reason he freaked out was because I accidentally put a car in his bath.
Sammy has freaked out over cars ever since he learned how Mom died. He thinks the car killed her. We’ve explained a million times, but he doesn’t get it. He’s so afraid of cars he won’t even sit in one anymore. We should have lied and said Mom died bungee jumping or mountain climbing. Then he’d be afraid of extreme sports and he could still lead a normal life.
Being afraid of cars is very limiting in the modern world. We live in the suburbs, and everything is too far to walk to. I’m okay with my bike, but Sam with his training wheels goes about half a kilometer an hour. There’s a bus—which in Sam’s head doesn’t count as an evil car—but it only comes by our house once an hour. It comes more often during rush hour, but then it’s crowded with grown-ups who try to squeeze into a seat with us. As if kids don’t qualify for the one-person-per-seat rule. Somebody always looks at Sammy and asks, “Can’t he shove over a little?”
I’ve started wearing Mom’s old watch so we can catch the hourly bus if we need to. It’s not a girly watch. It’s the one she wore swimming. It’s black, with a timer I don’t know how to work. It looks good on me, and it’ll help us make the bus if we ever go anywhere.
Dad doesn’t take us anywhere because he’s emotionally absent, which is Dr. Tierney’s term for living in a daze. Dad is stuck in the first stage of grief, called denial and isolation. The next stages are anger, bargaining, and depression—I don’t want to see Dad go through those. Sammy combines all the stages into one emotional tornado. He zones out, he yells, he cries, he comes up with ideas to get Mom back, he yells some more, he cries some more, he zones out. It’s exhausting just watching him.
The last stage of grief is called acceptance. I can’t see any of us ever getting that far. But it would be nice if Dad came out of the basement once in a while and took us out to eat. We may be grieving, but we still have basic needs. Dr. Tierney says Dad will snap out of his daze eventually. I don’t think it helps to let him hide in the basement with delusions of time travel. But I haven’t gone to medical school to learn how to tell people it’s okay to neglect their children, so what do I know?
I can’t wait until I’m old enough to drive myself around. I love cars as much as Sammy hates them. I try not to think of the accident, of course. When I see a car like Mom’s—one of those Subaru Outbacks that old people drive—I get a chill like it might be her, only shorter with white hair and glasses. But I understand that it wasn’t the car that killed her. It was her crazy fear of snakes.
That sounds strange. How could a snake cause a car accident? You’d think maybe she swerved into a tree trying to avoid a snake or something. But no. The snake was actually inside the car, and she freaked out when she saw it. Mom had a snake phobia.
A couple of years ago, when we visited Toronto, there was a picture of a snake on the subway. Mom saw it and ran to another car. She opened the doors while the train was moving and took off, screaming, while Dad sat there, embarrassed, trying to keep me and Sammy in our seats. Mom waved at us from the next car. She calmed down once she got away from the picture.
Phobias are serious things. I’m glad I don’t have any. Snakes creep me out, but I wouldn’t run off a moving subway train to get away from one. And I wouldn’t drive off a highway into a tree if there was one in my car. I’d just pull over and get out.
We don’t know how the snake got inside Mom’s car. The trunk was open for a while, but we live in the suburbs, not the jungle, and garter snakes don’t climb trees and dangle down through sunroofs. So it’s a mystery where it came from.
A garden spider once came in through the sunroof. It was the size of my fist, with thick legs and a big abdomen marked like a face. I didn’t notice it at first because it blended so well into the upholstery. Mom was buckling Sammy into his booster chair beside me when Sam said, “Hey look! It’s a spider.” I thought he might have seen a daddy longlegs or something normal-sized. But no. There was a spider on steroids stretched on the back of the driver’s seat, dead center, six inches from Sammy’s knee.
Mom nearly had a heart attack. At first she was like, “Oh yeah? Where’s the spider, honey?” I could tell she was expecting the kind of little spider you see every day. She looked where Sam pointed, and she nearly jumped a foot. She was all, “Okay. Oh my god. Look at the size of it. Okay.” She went to get something to catch it in, because she never killed spiders or any kind of bug. She asked if Sammy wanted to stay in his seat—because he was already buckled in and everything—and he said, “Sure!” like it was the greatest thing to be strapped down next to a giant spider. This is the kid terrified of Chihuahuas and Batman. I was out of the car by then. There’s no way I would stay in a car with a spider that size.
Mom came back with a jar. As soon as she held it up, the spider jumped to the bottom of the glass. It must have been a very cool and frightening sight from Sammy’s point of view. He would have seen the spider make a leap straight for him, then stop in midair when it hit the glass. Mom slid a piece of cardboard over the jar, and the spider started scrambling around looking for a way out. She called me over and said, “Listen.” I could hear the spider’s legs on the glass as it moved. Really fast clicks,
tchicka-tchicka-tchick
, like a horror movie.
Mom kept the sunroof closed after that, so that’s not how the snake got in the car. The day she died, she had just driven home with groceries before she went out again, so she might have left the trunk open while she carried in the bags. But I don’t think a snake climbed inside. Snakes are afraid of cars. I figure someone put the snake there on purpose. Maybe they knew Mom had a phobia and they wanted her to crash the car, and it wasn’t an accident at all. That’s what the police thought at first. But they gave up trying to figure out who did it. They ruled it an accident. I’m still looking for a better answer.
It’s hard to explain to people about Mom’s phobia. Everyone thinks, “Why did she ram her car into a tree?” And the answer, “Because there was a snake in the car and she spazzed out,” isn’t a good answer. Sometimes I tell people the car went out of control because of mechanical difficulties. But it didn’t. She just drove into a tree.
I’m afraid she’ll get a Darwin Award for this. There’s a group called the Darwin Society that gives awards to people who die doing stupid things. Their stupidity caused their death, so it’s like natural selection. Of course, the dead person isn’t around to accept the award—but who would want an award for being incredibly stupid?
For example, a school bus broke down during an animal-safari field trip. The bus was like a cage that kept the visitors safe while tigers and baboons roamed free outside it. The class had been warned to stay in their seats and not to leave the vehicle for any reason. But the driver went out to fix the bus anyway. The tigers killed him. They went straight for his throat. He won a Darwin Award because that’s a stupid way to die.
But I don’t think it’s all that stupid. Imagine being stuck in a bus full of noisy kids for god knows how long, listening to them fight and cry and sing, “I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves.” The driver would want to leave just to get away from them. I’m surprised he tried to fix the bus instead of just making a run for it.
But that’s the kind of thing you get a Darwin Award for. Driving into a tree because there’s a snake in your car would probably qualify.
My best friend Simpson went on an animal-safari trip with his family once. He said it was awesome. He said you’d have to be an idiot to get out of your car.
Simpson lives two streets over from me, but he’s moving in a few days. His dad moved out a long time ago, and his mom just found a new house for them. It’s in another subdivision, with its own junior high school. That’s a harsh blow, because Simpson has been my best friend since kindergarten. I have a lot of friends, but none as close as him. Even if he sucks at piercing, there’s no way I’d let any of my other friends even try to do my eyebrow. His new place is so far away it would take a very long time to bike there. Dad is so wrapped up in his time machine he’ll never drive me. So not only will Simpson be gone from my school, he’ll be gone from my whole life. That sucks.
At least school will be somewhere to go. I’m bored. If Mom were here, she’d drive us to sports camps and take us on camping weekends. Or she’d come home like it was a normal day, but then after dinner she’d walk into my room and say, “Hey, Josh, I bought you a new game that gets high user ratings.” Or she’d finish her work and ask, “Anyone want to play Clue?” which we played for Kit Kat sticks. Sammy always went on Mom’s team and gave away half her cards. Dad took it very seriously and hid his checklist under the table while he ticked off weapons. It was fun. Mom was a good person to have in the family because without her, we’re all just locked in our rooms trying to drum up strong feelings to write about.
I just heard hysterical mewing, so I peeked into Sammy’s room. He snuck into the storage cubby at the back of his closet and found his old baby clothes. He has them spread across his bed and he’s putting them on the cats. They don’t like it, and it’s degrading and everything, but man, they look cute. Cleo is trying to keep her dignity in teddy bear overalls and a bonnet. Charlie is wearing blue velvet pants and a matching jacket. He looks like he’s begging to be put out of his misery. I have to get the camera.
It’ll be good to start at a new school with teachers who never knew Mom, so they won’t ask about her or tell me how sorry they are. I wish we’d move to the subdivision with Simpson, because I’m tired of condolences from our neighbors. I never said two words to any of them in my life, but now they all talk to me. Especially Mr. Smitts next door. He used to snowblow our driveway for no good reason, and he’d bring us
DVDS
he’d rented that weren’t due back yet. He’s retired and needs things to do, Mom always said. Now he talks to me every time I see him. On my way to the park, he’ll be sitting on his porch and he’ll call out, “Josh, you are a good boy! You take good care of your little brother! Your mother in Heaven is proud of you!” On our way back he yells out the exact same thing, like I might not have heard him the first time.
He was at Mom’s funeral, so I guess he saw me freak out. That’s something I can’t explain, even though Dr. Tierney has asked me to explain it. Mom told me once that she wanted to be cremated. Dad hated that thought, and so did Aunt Laura—but I don’t know why she was involved in the conversation when I wasn’t. A son is more important than a sister. Grandma and Grandpa don’t like cremation either. So they all decided to bury Mom, even though she didn’t want to be buried.
Something weird happened inside me when the earth hit her coffin. I suddenly felt sure she wanted out. I knew she wasn’t alive. That used to happen to people sometimes—everyone thought they were dead but they weren’t, so they got buried alive—but that never happens anymore. Machines check your vital signs after you die. And with Mom crashing into a tree at high speed, it was pretty obvious she was dead. But I still wanted to stop them from burying her. So I freaked out.
The worst thing is how much it scared Sammy. He’s attached to me like a barnacle, so to see me spaz out at Mom’s grave shook him up something awful. I still catch him spying on me sometimes, like I can’t be trusted. It must have been embarrassing for Dad. He said no, not at all, it was just sad. Dad can be nice when he’s not hiding in the basement.
There were so many people at Mom’s funeral I don’t even know who was there, so when I pass someone and they smile at me, I wonder if they’re remembering how I freaked out on Mom’s grave. Karen was there—she’s sort of my girlfriend, or at least she used to be. She left the funeral early, but not so early that she missed me jumping on Mom’s coffin and trying to scratch it open. God, I can’t believe I did that.