D Gillespie - The Toy Thief

“Tell me what?”

He had a beard. It had been a few months since I had come by to visit, and I was shocked by how old he looked, like an honest-to-God man, the years just piling up like dominoes. There were even patches of gray in his whiskers. How the hell had it come to this?

“Dad,” I said quietly, refusing to look at him.

“Dead?” he asked. If it had come from anyone else, it would have sounded cold, but from Andy, the single word spoke volumes. Apprehension. Fear. Pain. And most of all, the stark realization that he didn’t even have to ask the question to know the answer.

“Yes.”

Dad had never been to see Andy, not a single time. I never talked much about him when I visited, mainly because I didn’t want to flaunt my relationship with Dad in his face. It seemed too harsh to mention him, like Andy telling me how much fun he and Mom had. It might have been true, but that didn’t make it a good thing to say.

“How?”

“Heart,” I said, and Andy laughed a bit.

“Could have guessed that. Too many cheeseburgers.”

“He never was much of a chef.”

“He had his moments,” Andy said. “Grilled cheese.”

“Yeah,” I said with a smile. “Good grilled cheese.”

Andy rested his head against the glass, his eyes drifting closed. He looked like he had something he wanted to say, but it was hard to get it out. Finally, he lifted his eyes to mine. “Did he… ever say much about me?”

I stared at him. It was the first time he had ever asked me anything about Dad.

“Do you really want to know the answer to that?” I asked him.

He let that marinate for a minute.

“Yeah,” he said finally.

“He did. He talked about how much it hurt to think about you. About how he was never disappointed in you. Just in himself.”

“I wish I could have told him,” he said. “About what happened. About… everything from that summer. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so disappointed.”

“You won’t believe me,” I said, regret twisting my stomach, “but I almost did tell him. More than once, actually. I couldn’t stand it. The thought of you, stuck in here while I was out there. Living.”

He glanced down at my right hand. “Probably not the life you wanted.”

I stood up and gazed down at him. “It could be worse. We both know that. It could have been either of us in a cave. Any life I have, I owe it to you. I wish Dad had known that.”

“When’s the funeral?” he asked.

“Friday.”

He nodded, his face suddenly working into a grimace as he wrestled with the weight of what I had just told him. He didn’t say anything, so I started to lower the phone back onto the cradle. A light tap on the glass made me pick it up again.

“Do you still have my old stuff?” he asked.

“I got a couple of boxes.”

He nodded. “One of them’s got a tin lunchbox. It’s the Ghostbusters one Dad got me when I was, I dunno, five or six.”

“I remember that one,” I said with a grin.

“Inside it, I got a couple old things. Baseball cards and shit like that. Somewhere in there, wrapped up in a bandanna, is that Superman. You remember the one?” he asked.

“I think so,” I said, the words catching in my throat.

“Find it. Take it with you tomorrow, and if you get the chance, slip it into Dad’s pocket.”

He wiped a tear from the side of his nose before setting the receiver down. He walked away without another word.

I was up early on Tuesday morning, earlier than I could ever remember getting up on a weekday. Thankfully, Dad was caught in his own morning rush, too busy to notice much of anything we did. There had been times in the past when I looked at the live-and-let-live policy in our house as a negative thing, another symptom of our odd family, but on that morning, I saw it as a blessing. Regardless of all the forces moving against us, I had a more pragmatic problem to deal with. The Toy Thief was gone now, and all that remained was a body left to rot in our bathroom.

Dad never used the middle bathroom, but he did stop and check on me and Andy on his way out. Some days, he had to drag us out of bed himself, but we were pretty self-sufficient once our eyes were open. I knew that this problem wouldn’t wait, and that school had to be on the back burner today. With that in mind, I prepared myself mentally and stumbled into the kitchen. I heard the fridge open.

“There she is,” Dad said in his usual tone. Out of the three of us, he was the only morning person.

“Hey,” I moaned.

“You all right?” he asked as he popped a frozen sausage biscuit into the microwave.

“Sick,” I said.

He frowned. “Doctor?” he asked.

“Maybe not,” I replied. “Just out in the rain too long yesterday. Probably just need some rest.”

He nodded.

“Andy up yet?” he asked.

“Haven’t seen him.” I reached into the fridge and poured a glass of orange juice, never making eye contact, when I added, “He might need to rest some too.”

There was a long pause, but I refused to look back. Instead, I took a long sip from my juice, making sure that everything looked just as it should. Another day. Just a sick daughter and an exhausted son. Nothing to be worried about.

“Did he tell you that?” he said, an edge of suspicion in his voice.

I finally turned around, my brows creased. “No. He’s just usually up by now. I know yesterday was a rough day for him.”

I was on the attack, but subtly so, and I kept my tone in check. Dad wouldn’t be suspicious if I got snippy, but he might if I didn’t get snippy at all. This was me we were talking about.

“School’s pretty much done anyway. Everybody’s just floating this week. I’m sure it’s the same for Andy too. Even the teachers got one foot out the door.”

Dad chewed on it and finally said, “Fine. Keep an eye on him. We need to sit down and talk when I get home from work.” He pulled his breakfast from the microwave and pecked me on the cheek. “Be good.”

I sat at the counter, sipping my juice, never looking up at him until the door shut behind me. I heard his truck start up, and I dashed to the window just in time to see him pull away into the rising sun of a clear day. I took a deep breath and readied myself before I pushed open the door of the bathroom.

The door creaked open, and I expected the smell to knock me down. I had left the frosted window cracked the night before, just in case, but now I wondered if it had been necessary. For a long while, I stood there, watching the shower curtain and listening to the sounds of robins chirping outside the window.

“Okay,” I whispered with my eyes closed. “You can do this.”

I reached for the curtain and pulled it back, hoping that maybe last night had just been some awful dream. I knew at once that it hadn’t been. He was still there, still leaned back into the corner of the tub, his pink eyes dry and cracked, his lips pulled back strangely over his teeth. His mouth looked as if he had died in the desert while searching for water, so dry and desiccated. That awful burned hand still rested on the edge of the tub, gripping it as if it might get away from him otherwise. In the other hand, close to his sunken chest, he held the bear. I stood there, staring, wondering if I could smell anything rotten or if I just thought I did. No. Nothing yet. Just the familiar scent of burned flesh, not unlike a barbecue. The realization made me kneel down to the toilet and retch up the few sips of orange juice in my gut.

I slumped back against the wall, and once the world stopped spinning, my mind went back to more pragmatic things. I… we… had to get him out of here. We had all day to do it, but I didn’t have the slightest inkling as to how we could ever hope to accomplish this task. He was bigger than either me or Andy, and even though he was as thin as a rail, I figured he probably weighed more than he looked. I spent a moment or two trying to make a plan. Then I realized I was getting ahead of myself. The first thing to do was to show Andy.