The fall had come and in that last week of September the wind whipped through the trees with such haste that at times it pulled even the green, still-living leaves from their branches.
Karen was a nurse at a hospital across town and rode the bus to her irregular shifts. Her job and her single-motherhood meant that her son required an unusually long and various list of sitters to ensure reliable supervision at times when she had to work late evenings or early mornings. Lucas was nine and could be left at home for short periods of time after school, between the time when the school bus dropped him off six blocks away and when she would arrive home just in time to make him dinner, make him lunch for the next day and help him get ready for bed.
The bridge carried six lanes of traffic, including the buses on Karen’s route, at a height of about two hundred feet above the canal and the many old masonry structures that crowded along its shorelines. It ran half a mile in length, between adjacent hillsides, one of which was the hillside where Karen had lived for eight years. Her home, as with all of the homes along her part of her street, looked out from the hillside to the bridge and at the city beyond.
I"""""I
One summer morning that year Lucas had stood on the balcony of her bedroom in the morning sun looking over the canal at the city skyline, while she dressed for work. When he turned and noticed her watching him in the reflection of her dressing mirror, he asked, his voice pitched higher than the low din of traffic on the bridge coming in through the door: “When I’m a grownup, can I work in the city?”
“You can if you want,” she said. “You never know what you might want to do when you grow up.”
“I either want to be a soccer player or a bus driver. Maybe a soccer player first and then a bus driver.”
“A bus driver?”
“I think I would like driving. I would get a better bus than the other guys and then I could drive you to work.”
Karen smiled, thinking of how little a nine year old knows about the earning of wages, the tedium of driving or the aging of parents.
I"""""I
School had started again and the routine it offered simplified their lives. There were more activities after school and more weekend sleepovers that made childcare easier to manage.
One night, a Wednesday, when she had worked a day shift and when Lucas had no after-school activities, she arrived home to find the house empty. It was a safe neighborhood, as far as neighborhoods so near to the city could be, and she didn’t worry about Lucas riding his bike down the block or playing under one of the big old trees down the street that formed boy-sized tents with their needle-laden limbs. It wasn’t raining out. She wasn’t worried, or at least she wasn’t worried enough for it to overcome the rational assurances she had learned to give herself - which she assumed all mothers learned to give themselves - that everything was all right.
As she had trained herself to expect, Lucas returned home just before dark, running merely for the joy of it, as only young boys do. He ran through the door and up the stairs to his room. She heard him making the usual kinds of thumping and rattling noises in his room.
When he came down for dinner he seemed happy, but less talkative than usual; more contained within himself.
“How was school?”
“It was good. Ms. Chandler wasn’t there, so we had a substitute. The principal said we might have the substitute for the rest of the week.”
“Did you like her?”
Lucas looked surprised. “Who?” he asked.
“The substitute.”
“Oh. The substitute is a man. He was OK. Brad Carlson said he looked like a turtle and he kinda did.”
“You shouldn’t say things like that about people,” Karen said.
“I didn’t. Brad did.” Lucas took another large bite of food. “There’s a girl that lives down at the end of the street. I’ve never met her before but her name is Carmen. She lives in that house with the red door.”
“Oh really? Did she just move here?” Karen hadn’t noticed anyone moving, but there were rentals in the neighborhood and people could come and go so quickly sometimes.
“No, I think she has been here for a long time.”
I"""""I
A pair of weeks passed. Karen got a letter from Lucas’ school announcing that Ms. Chandler would not be returning to work for personal reasons and that the substitute would be staying on indefinitely. Otherwise, the little cycles of their lives continued and the days piled one upon another.
“Have you decided what you want to be for Halloween?” Karen asked, one night when Lucas came down for dinner.
“A soccer player,” Lucas said.
“Do you just want to wear your uniform, then?”
“No, I want to get a real jersey. I want to be a professional.”
“Well, we’ll have to see what we can find.”
“Carmen told me she doesn’t dress up for Halloween.”
It took Karen a moment to discover to whom Lucas was referring. “The new girl? When did you see her?”
“I told you, she’s not new, it’s just that I never met her before. I've been seeing her after school. I played at her house today.”
Karen felt a pang of something like annoyance at the nonchalance of Lucas’ reply, but she reminded herself that their neighborhood didn’t have a lot of children in it and that it was good for Lucas to meet anyone his own age that lived near enough that he could walk to see them.
“She seems really different, especially for a girl. I like hanging out with her.” Lucas offered. Maybe he sensed Karen’s ambivalence.
“How old is she?”
“She’s my age. I thought she was older, but she’s nine, too.” Lucas looked thoughtful for a moment, then added: “She’s not silly like the girls at my school, though. She’s just normal.”
“She doesn’t go to your school?”
“She said she goes to a private school.”
I"""""I
The next night, as Karen was coming around the corner at the end of the block she saw a woman advancing down the walk of the house four doors down from hers. The house where Lucas had played. The woman walked quickly. She opened the door with a key and went inside.
Happy to see someone pleasant looking and quite like herself enter the home, Karen was suddenly motivated to meet this woman, which she presumed to be Carmen’s mother. She went up the walk and knocked on the door.
When the woman opened the door it was obvious to Karen that she had been crying. They were both caught off guard at seeing the other for the first time under these circumstances.
“Oh,” said Karen, “I am sorry if this is a bad time.”
The woman looked as though she was trying to muster a response, but what came out of her mouth from behind the hand that wiped at the tears was a soft sound like “yeah.” Karen looked into the house. She could make out the edge of a refrigerator through a doorway, with drawings in Crayon held up by magnets. On a sideboard in the hallway, she could see pictures of a little girl, but it was too dim to see much of her features. She was blond. She had curls.
“I am sorry for dropping by like this, but I live next door. My name is Karen. I just wanted to thank you for letting my son play over here after school.”
The woman’s expression changed and for just a moment it looked as though she forgot about whatever it was that was causing the tears. Then the old expression returned. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean.”
“Lucas, that’s my son,” Karen tried to explain. “He told me and I just wanted to thank you. I work and its nice...”
“Look, I don’t know what you mean, and I don’t want to be rude, but,” her words caught in her throat. “Now is really not a good time.”
Karen wanted to say more. She wanted to finish the conversation, but not knowing how to continue without risking offense, she simply said “ok” and took a step back, off of the welcome mat, a signal that it was all right for the other woman to close the door.
When Lucas got home that evening, Karen asked him about Carmen’s mother.
“She didn’t know anything about you playing over there.”
“Well, her mother hasn’t been home when I’ve been there. Carmen doesn’t want me there when her mother is home. She says her mother wouldn’t want us playing together.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I don’t think you should play over there, then. If you want to play with her she can come over here.”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just don’t know if she’ll like that.”
“Well, it isn’t up to her.”
I"""""I
Time passes so slowly in childhood. Weeks to a child are as months to adults. A few days later Lucas asked if he could go play at Carmen’s.
“Why don’t you call her and ask her if she wants to come over here?” Karen asked.
Lucas said nothing.
“Lucas?”
“She said she doesn’t want to.”
“When did you talk to her?”
“I saw her on my way home.”
“And she said she doesn’t want to come over?”
“Yes,” Lucas said. His eyes played along the floor.
“Well, she doesn’t sound very nice, if she’ll only see you on her terms. Friends are supposed to compromise with each other. They’re supposed to meet in the middle.”
“I don’t know.”
“Lucas, I am not trying to be mean, but I don’t want you to go over there anymore until I have met her and talked to her mother. This situation is worrying me a little bit.”
“You don’t need to worry.”
“I do need to worry. I’m your mother.”
I"""""I
The next afternoon traffic on the bridge was worse than usual, but Karen hardly noticed. A lone police car blocked the left lane. She was deeply and pleasantly engaged in her book.
She was home and still reading, when she heard a knock at her door. Walking down the hallway she couldn’t see anyone through the glass at the top of the door. Her only thought was: had Lucas forgotten his key?
But no one could be seen through the panes of glass in the top of the door because the person who knocked had stood off to the side. It was a police officer in uniform.
Not seeing Lucas there, as she had anticipated, and seeing instead a police officer, Karen felt the nastiest little breath of dread. Another officer stood on the walk, at the base of the steps.
“Hello?” she said.
“Ms. Hayes?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a son, ma’am?”
“Yes, where is he?”
The officer did not answer and she saw on his face a look of sympathy. She did not want him to look that way. She wanted him to look hard, impartial.
“Do you know what your son was wearing today?”
“Has something happened?
“Ms. Hayes, that’s what we are trying to find out. We need to know what he was wearing this morning.”
“He was wearing his blue coat with a hood when he went to school this morning. He had...black jeans, I think.”
The one who was speaking, standing on the covered porch, exchanged a glance with the other officer, who was still standing below on the walk. The concrete beneath his feet was wet and covered with thick leaves which had already been compacted to the pavement and perforated in places by the action of human feet.
“Ms. Hayes, we believe there may have been an accident involving your son. We would like you to come down to the medical examiner’s office. We can drive you.”
He’s not at the hospital, Karen thought. In her worst dreams it was always the hospital, but they were not telling her that he was in the hospital. At the medical examiner’s office there were no mattresses on the beds and no sheets, either.
"What?” The word felt squeezed from her.
“It was the bridge, ma’am. A motorist reported seeing him climb over the railing. We’re trying to confirm that. He may have been trying to get a better look at something. Unfortunately, a child doesn’t always understand the danger in things.”
The physical act of crying was not an act at all; her will had been ripped from her. It was an involuntary contraction of muscles and activation of glands. It was something that was happening to her.
“Was he alone?”
“Excuse me, ma’am?”
“Was he alone?”
“We think so, Ms. Hayes. Was there someone who might have been with him?”
“I...Sometimes, he plays with a neighbor girl.”
She thought she saw the expression of the older of the two change, perceptibly but momentarily, to a look of unease. Was it distrust? Whatever it was, just as he could recover the younger officer replied: “Well, we don’t know of any other children at the scene.”
The scene. The phrase seemed so terrible - so bleak and objective - that Karen lost whatever grip she had otherwise had on her composure. She asked to be excused and then she closed the door.
I"""""I
And of course, when she did accept their ride, it was him on the table.
Halloween came and went. Co-workers from the hospital still called. She discovered the irony that the law allowed you special leave when a child was sick, but didn’t assure that your job would be protected when your child was dead. Likewise, she noted that although she hated the new silence, she didn’t want anyone around her, except the one person who could no longer provide sounds of living in her home.
His father had never met Lucas and could not share the mental wound that manifested itself as a real physical pain in her gut. Her own mother was gone, too. As the weeks passed she slumped toward the realization that only a couple of people, whom she didn’t even know, had any recent memories of Lucas and that only they might offer some hope of an answer to the impossibly vast and nagging questions with which she’d been left. It was on that basis that one day she walked down the street to the house she’d been carefully ignoring and knocked on the door the same way she had only a few weeks before under such uncannily different circumstances.
When the same woman answered the door it was as though the world had been subjected to a bizarre mirror effect. Now it was the woman on the porch whose face was tortured and damp.
“Do you remember me?” Karen asked.
“Yes.” From the woman’s expression and tone of voice it was evident what she knew. Karen imagined the accident was probably the subject of a lot of uneasy conversation in the neighborhood. “Would you like to come in?”
She introduced herself this time. She was Cynthia. She was sorry for what had happened. She heated water and made tea. This time Karen could see Carmen’s pictures on the sideboard. She could see that Carmen was a lovely little girl with wide, guileless eyes and at seeing the pictures Karen wanted more than ever to meet her.
“The last few weeks have gone so slowly,” Karen said. “Thank you for inviting me in.”
“Somehow, I guess it makes sense that you would come here.”
“I am glad you feel that way. I felt more than a little unsure of myself. I felt uncertain about coming here. I find that I second guess myself a lot, now. Working at a hospital I saw so many people coming to terms with loss that now I find myself questioning everything I do, wondering if it’s genuine and wondering whether maybe I am playing out some little scene I’ve scripted out of bits of other peoples’ lives.”
Cynthia looked thoughtful. “I’m hesitant to say this, but what happened to your son has had me feeling...” She paused, trying to muster something. “It’s had me feeling more connected to people. I guess its from suddenly being faced with events in someone else’s life. I hope you don’t mind me saying that.”
“I don’t," Karen said. Both women were still and silent for several beats. "I regret not letting Lucas come over here, now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told him he couldn’t come play over here. Now that I’ve had time to be honest with myself, I wonder whether it was my own jealousy that bothered me. He liked Carmen a lot, I think.”
Cynthia looked dubious.
“I’ve offended you. I’m sorry,” Karen offered.
“I don’t think they knew each other,” Cynthia responded, with strange conviction.
“They did. I think they both wanted it to be a secret. They played together, though. Lucas talked about her.”
Cynthia's gaze became steady and probing.
“Karen, I don’t know what your son heard or how he heard it, and I guess it doesn’t matter. I have no idea what he told you, but Lucas did not know my daughter.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Because my daughter Carmen died eight years ago last week.”
“No, you don’t understand. My son has been playing with someone in this house. It must be your other daughter, that one, there,” Karen said, pointing to the picture on the wall.
“Ms. Hayes, I don’t have any children anymore. I had a daughter. Only one. And now I have Carmen’s room with all her things. I have photographs and I have things that she made for me and I have memories, but I have no daughter. My daughter died. She was hit by a car in the street in front of this house on the day before her tenth birthday and that was eight years ago last month.”
“That isn’t possible.”
“It is, Karen. It’s the truth and until now, it’s why I thought you came over here today. Now, I’m not sure why you’re here, except there has obviously been some mistake.”
Suddenly the edges of the room seemed to recede away from Karen, but through the window across from her the bridge was visible through the dark limbs of the trees, now stripped of all their leaves. As she watched, the wind slid across the shining wet surface of the elevated roadway and pulled a fine mist of fallen rain from the guardrails. From where she sat the bridge seemed closer than her own house. It was closer than ever before.
I"""""I
Time still passed slowly. It seemed to be dark all the time. She kept the shades down on the front of the house to block the view through the empty trees. Even with the blinds closed she could hear the roar of the bridge.
When Karen fell asleep she had dreams of someone knocking at her door. No one came to visit. She slept less and tried to stay busy.
It was almost two weeks after the day at Cynthia's house. Karen was cleaning. As she pulled out the refrigerator on its little hidden wheels to clean behind it, she found an envelope that had fallen from the counter. From the postmark she knew it had to be from a pile that Lucas had brought in that last day. When she noticed the writing in pencil on the outside of the envelope - the handwriting unmistakeably belonging to her dead son - she felt her body react. It was as though an electric current had been applied to her hands. It ran through her and she was paralyzed by it.
When she recovered the presence of mind to finally read the note - to make out what the words said and interpret their meaning - despite it being only two lines, she had to read it three times before she understood it. And even once she could connect the words together into something complete, she worried she might never understand its significance, each possible interpretation being in some ways more terrible than the other.
It read: “Mom, I’m going to play with Carmen. Please don’t be upset.”
(c) 2011
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