J.T. Warren - Remains

It got better. I mean, we all started talking again and after a while it was almost like nothing had happened at home. I knew it was different, though. I knew mom and dad were aware I wasn’t perfect. I knew they felt like they’d gotten a dud.

School was tense after the fight, too. O’Mally was in the PE class just before mine, so we passed each other a lot. He’d sneer and sometimes flinch at me like he was about to swing. I ducked and walked quicker. I didn’t know what else to do. More fights happened that year at school with O’Mally and eventually he disappeared. Everyone kept saying he’d gotten sent to reform school. I didn’t care. He was gone and that’s all that mattered.

Mom in the background snaps me back to the moment, as Dad’s waiting to hear what I’m going to say. She just keeps repeating “Albert, make him come home” in a hurried whisper.

“Your mother would like to speak to you,” Dad said, and I hear his hand go over the phone. I can also hear her in the background telling him over and over again that she doesn’t like talking on the phone, and just to tell me to come home for Thanksgiving dinner.

I knew she wasn’t going to talk. She’s never liked the telephone. They make her nervous for some reason. My father and I used to laugh about it in that way two people make fun of someone they both love. There were times when the phone would ring and though she’d be sitting in the kitchen inches from that phone, I’d have to come down from upstairs to answer, to take a message. Then she’d tell dad what she wanted him to say for her when he called them back. .

In the background, I heard their tug of war. I could see them in my head: he with his hand over the phone, trying to hand it to her, her with a grimace of pain and disgust, backing away as if the phone was some monster. The whole time her mouthing the word no, and shaking her head.

I closed my eyes. “I’ll be home,” I heard myself say.

The night after the phone call, I dreamed of a casket coming up out of the ground. It slid up slowly, the soil moving away from it in long streams, as if someone was under it, pushing gently. When it came up to the surface, it slowly levered over and laid down. I moved closer without wanting to and inside I could hear a knocking. Someone wanted out. I will never know why, but I kept yelling through the closed lid “You can’t come out, You can’t come out.” I remember being terrified that whoever it was wouldn’t hear me and would come out anyway. What would happen to the world if they did? Just then I turned away and I could tell out of the corner of my eye that the casket flew open. Millions of Polaroids came flying out, swarming like bees. They swarmed all over me, and before they stung me to death, I could see a little boy in each one of them. I woke up that next morning in a cold sweat. It was still dark outside and I made coffee.

I didn’t tell anybody how I always checked every carton of milk for the ‘missing’ notices. I never saw Randy’s. I would look into each and every face, though. I would read the birth date and subtract the date they went missing, thinking about how old they were now, and how long it’d been since the date they’d gone missing. If I found one that had been born on the day I was looking, I’d sing happy birthday in my head for a little while.

That’s when I knew I needed to see a psychologist. I found Dr. Bledsoe in the phone book. He had the least colorful advertisement. I figured that’s what I wanted: just the nuts and bolts, no frills. I don’t want to be sitting across from some guy telling me that deep down I wanted to do…things…with my mother. I wager most people fear that that’s what a psychologist will tell them. And maybe most people do get told that, I wonder. I’ve been seeing Dr. Bledsoe for almost a year now. He says “we’re making progress.” I hope he’s right.

On our very first session I told him about Randy for about thirty minutes and then he started asking me questions. Had me flustered: this disappearance didn’t have anything to do with me; it had happened to Randy. Dr. Bledsoe was asking me about my mom and my dad, lots of strange questions, but when I told him that he said “Do you know how a computer works?” and I lied and he said, “There’s a processor, a hard drive with programs on it, and something that gives it power, makes it go. Can we agree on that basic idea?” and I nodded.

“Mike, do you think that you could be like that computer?” Dr. Bledsoe asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I think that maybe we all are, and I’ll tell you something else. I think that maybe your power supply is fine. It seems to me your processor is working right. What we have to do,” he said, “is get at some of that faulty programming on your hard drive.”

I felt stupid because I’d never thought of it that way. I kept going back every week after that. He says we’re making progress. The reason I’m thinking about this is, if I’m going home this week, I need to cancel my appointment, and he’s going to ask me why, and then I’m going to tell him. I’ll start talking and he’ll say, “Mike, why don’t you come in today?” and I will. I’ll feel better, but it’s sort of like surgery: you know you’ll feel better later, but the right now is pretty scary.

I suppose I should see him before I go, but I don’t want to. He’ll ask questions about my parents and why I don’t want to go to visit them and from there it only gets worse. “Why did you give up football?” or “Why do you think it is you can’t sleep at night unless there is a light on?” As if I have any idea why.

“What about your sisters?” he’d ask. I didn’t know what he meant. I didn’t think about them much. We didn’t speak much. They weren’t missing like Randy. They weren’t dead. “How do you get along with your sisters?”

“Everyone says that I was probably adopted or something. I don’t act like Sarah.”

“What about your other sister?” he asked that session. The heater in his office had broken down and I had to keep my coat on. I remember that was a cold day.

“I don’t know where she’s at. We haven’t heard from her in a long time.”

“Why not?” he asked. She’d run off was the answer, but still I didn’t know what to say. I thought it’d sound stupid if I said it; as if I’d lost my car keys and didn’t bother to look for them.

I’d have to call Sarah before I left. She would probably be packing at that moment, too. Often, when we were little, even though we didn’t act anything alike, we’d often do the same things at the same time. Somehow, in the back of my head, I knew she was packing right now.

Then I’d have to call Susan. She was hoping we could have Thanksgiving dinner together, and then make love. I wouldn’t have minded that, either. Making love to Susan is the only time I get to relax and not think. Sometimes I hate thinking. I had a friend once who was a student at the University, and all he did was think. I have no idea how he lived. Susan is that way, too.

When I first met her, Susan was still an undergraduate. The park has a small man-made lake at the center. Jogging trails follow the outskirts of it. I had been sitting on a bench near there when she came walking up and sat down. She pulled a book out of her purse and started reading. I was amazed. She was so comfortable with herself she could just sit there and read sitting next to a total stranger out in public. I tried not to let her see me staring sidelong. I was amazed.

After a time, she put her finger in as a place marker and said “You could just say ‘hi’ instead of staring, you know,” and I smiled. Susan was the picture of pretty. We talked all day about that book, or, I should say, she did. I listened. It was something by a Russian guy. I’ve never known anything about literature. She told me the story and how much she loved it. She re-read the book every year at the change from autumn to winter. She said it made her feel like she was home again. I thought that was a little weird, considering how the main character molests a young girl in it, but I didn’t ask. I just wanted her to keep talking.