For a few months, I’ve had a story rolling around in my head, and it won’t leave. I didn’t want to write it down, I had other ideas. This one felt incomplete, so I pushed it to the rear of my thoughts. It kept resurfacing, and each time it does, it has grown. Every time I think about it, the tale gets deeper, the faces become more clear, the events more precise, but these faces and events are presented in two separate ways, completely different. It flips unexpectedly from past and present tense, it’s confusing and jumbled, but, it’s there, explicitly so since I saw The Lovely Bones last week, and I can’t rid myself out it. So I’ll put it out there, as is, no editing or proof reading. Just stream of consciousness out there:
he disappeared in july. the last anyone saw, he was running around sycamore park with his border collie, toffee. toffee showed up at home after the street lamps were on, clawing at the front door. without caleb.
every saturday at 11am, like clockwork, my mom used to go two doors down, to his mom’s house. she’d make me play outside. if i had to pee, i had to hold it, she’d tell me before we left that i couldn’t come inside with her, so i’d better get it all out then.
mrs. lieber would stand in the door, behind the glass, a kerchief up to her nose, eyes red and swollen, watching me. it was awkward. she used to always say caleb and i could be twins. everybody said that, really. i think it was because we went to the same barber, and our birthdays were only a week apart, but the same blue eyes and blonde hair and lanky builds probably had a bit to do with it. i felt like now, now that she didn’t get to watch caleb play anymore, i was some sort of part time replacement. really, i think that’s why my mom always made me come with her. i hated it.
after those teenagers playing truth or dare in the swamp found caleb’s body, i didn’t have to go to mrs. leiber’s house with my mom anymore. she still visited, but i was free. i guess knowing he was dead made seeing his double a bad thing, instead of a good one. it was awful of me, but i was glad they’d finally found his corpse, so i could get on with my life and enjoy my saturdays again, no longer having to spend them in my dead best friend’s backyard, playing with my dead best friends dog, being watched by my dead best friend’s sobbing mom.
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no one knew what happened to my boy. there were dozens of people in sycamore park, everyone knew him, how could no one know where he had gone off to? how could so many people be so goddamn stupid and blind? if it were their child, they would remember more, they would think harder. not their son, just mine. not their problem, just mine. the police said everyone saw him playing fetch with toffee one second, but saw neither of them the next. how is that possible? how can no one have thought that was strange?
oh, i wished dogs could speak. toffee carried a pained look in his eyes from the time he came home that first night, like he knew where caleb is, and would have loved to tell me, but couldn’t. he was the last to see him. he sees me cry, and lays his snout sideways on my knee, in comfort. i want to kick him, for not bringing home my boy, but i see he misses him as much as i do. it’s not his fault. i don’t blame him. i blame myself, for trusting that this small town wouldn’t swallow my son whole. i blame caleb, for not being careful, for not staying safe.
emily comes over every weekend, she brings tea. she used to bring bradley and he would play outside, kicking the grass or wrestling with toffee. i’d stand at the backdoor, watching him while his mother tried to pretend things were normal, gossiping about the neighborhood. sometimes i’d catch glimpses of caleb in bradley’s sandy brown hair, shining in the sun, or in those wide blue eyes. they looked so much alike, they had since they were toddlers. dr. cross, the pediatrician, to call them the doppelganger boys and the nickname spread throughout town. they ran with the same purposed gait, their lips curled to the right in the same smile. it was hard to see caleb, but wonderful at the same time. it bored into the gaping hole left by caleb’s absence, making it bigger, but filling it up at the same time.
bradley stopped accompanying his mom on her visits soon after they found caleb. i think emily thought maybe seeing her son would crush me now, but i wished she still brought him. her visits are tedious without him, i tire of her trying to bring a sense of normalcy to my life. nothing will ever be normal again.
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Listening to: Journey – Send Her My Love
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Love it.
Wow.
I haven’t seen the movie, but your story is so powerful. You’re incredibly talented!