Walking Backward (12 page)
Simpson’s mom was happy to have me over. She showed me the insides of her kitchen cupboards. Mom used to do that kind of thing, like show me pillows she’d bought for the couch. I’d say, “Mom, I don’t care about stuff like that.” She’d say, “Josh, I don’t care about the attack and defense powers of every
World of Warcraft
hero you ever made, but I still listen politely because it’s important to you.” That’s true— except they’re not actually heroes, they’re just characters, but the principle’s the same. I told Simpson’s mom her cupboards were awesome.
Dad’s trying to peek at my journal right now. He’s faking a stretch, but his eyes are glued to my book. He must have seen the capital
M
, so he knows I’m writing something about Mom. I smiled like it was all good, but he’s still trying to peek. I haven’t looked at his journal since that one time. I probably should, to find out if he’s still so sad. I hope not. At least he knows it wasn’t me who put the snake in Mom’s car. And it probably wasn’t Sammy either.
Sam had a great day today. I haven’t seen him so happy in ages. Finally he had some kids to play with. Some of them wanted to steal his toys, but I kept watch. I also stopped Sam from giving all his boats away. That’s the kind of thing he does, thinking everybody’s his friend when really they’re total strangers.
After the boats, we tried flying Sam’s kites, but there wasn’t enough wind, and Sammy kept tripping over people when he ran down the beach for takeoff power. We switched to sand castles. Again I was amazed at Sammy’s awesome packing skills. Not only did he bring his buckets and shovels, but he brought all his little Pokémon figures too. We made a huge sand coliseum, with Pokémon battles in the center and a Pokémon audience around the sides. Two little five-year-olds helped us build it. They must have been neglected children or something, because their parents went to the canteen for an hour while the kids played with us. Sammy was a totally normal boy with them.
Now we’re at our campsite sitting at the picnic table with our journals, using our arms to shield the pages from each other. It’s not like we were all having strong emotions. Dad writes in his journal after supper every day, so we’re sticking with his schedule. “Taking advantage of the light,” Dad called it.
I peeked in Sam’s journal, and it looks like he’s drawing space stuff. Madame Denis said Space is the September theme for her class. I thought that was amazing, because every other kindergarten teacher I know does Apples in September. Not that I actually know any kindergarten teachers, but every year in September I’d see pictures of apples on display outside the kindergarten classes. Madame Denis sounds like a real trailblazer.
It’s good for Sam to put his mind on something besides snakes and dying. Space is an excellent subject. Mom liked space—Sam told Madame Denis that about five thousand times after she said it was their theme.
Once when Mom took us to the Museum of Science and Technology, we went on the Mission to Mars simulator ride three times in a row. We liked it so much the first time that we bought tickets for the next show. It was just as much fun the second time, so we bought more tickets. It wasn’t as much fun the third time. The museum was almost empty that day, so we had to save Mars by ourselves, just me and Sammy and Mom. We held hands and screamed and giggled—except by the third time we were forcing the screams because, really, twice was enough.
Mom used to stargaze through a telescope on the back deck until she left it out one night last fall and somebody stole it. Two summers ago she bought me a Star Tracker to teach me the constellations. It came with a book, a cd and a set of binoculars. You’re supposed to read the book first, then go out at night with the binoculars and a Walkman to find the constellations. You wear headphones while you search the sky. It seemed kind of dangerous to me, since you can’t see or hear anyone on Earth who might be sneaking up on you.
I only tried the Star Tracker for ten minutes. The constellations were too hard to find. They should have connected the stars into simple geometric shapes instead of imagining fancy drawings of guys carrying water buckets that are impossible to see. I only remember the two bears. They don’t look like bears, but they’re easy to find because they contain the dippers, which actually look like dippers. Karen was impressed when I showed her those constellations back in the spring.
Mom’s favorite thing in the night sky was the moon. She always said, “Look at that moon,” every time it was full. She said if you loved someone far away, you could look up at the moon and think about them looking at it too, and feel closer to them. I have no idea what she was talking about when she said that, because as far as I know all the people she loved were right in our house.
She said the moon reminded her of how special the Earth is. It has waterfalls and salt flats and oceans and forests, and plants and animals, and colors and noise, instead of just being a cold rock falling through space without making a sound.
In grade five, I did my science project on the moon. I learned about the different forces pulling it toward the Earth and away from the Earth at the same time, just as the Earth is pulled toward the sun and away from the sun at the same time, so everything keeps going around and around. It’s pretty amazing. When I made my display, Simpson asked me, “Why doesn’t everything just fall through space?” I told him, “Everything
is
falling through space, man. It’s just that some things are falling together.”
It feels like our lives are like that too. Like we’re all falling through space and being pulled in different directions. In our family, Mom was the sun, and the three of us were planets, and we were safe because even though we were pulled away, Mom swung us back with her gravity. She kept us together and happy, not terrified or even noticing that we were falling through endless space. When she died, we were left hurtling through emptiness. There was a real danger that we might shoot off in our own directions—Dad falling one way and Sammy falling another, and me left alone and spinning. For a while it felt like we were lost.
But now I think the three of us are circling each other. Even if we are hurtling through the universe, and even if there is no sun to swing us back, I don’t think we’re going to fly apart from each other. Maybe we’ll be pulled closer together. We felt closer today, when Sam and I buried Dad in the sand. Even now, hiding our journals from each other, it feels like we’re closer.
Today was a beautiful day. Sammy took imaginary pictures just about every second.
Snap
,
snap
,
snap
.
I
t’s Sunday, and we’re going home early and I’m writing this in the car. I don’t even want to write it down, but I’m afraid I’ll remember it wrong later if I don’t. I know I’ll remember it forever. I just might remember it wrong.
Sammy came with me to check out the campsites last night. We took our new flashlights because it was nearly dark. People were playing their radios so loud, the noise traveled over the whole campground. We swung our lights in time to the music. A song came on with a lonely drumbeat. Someone screamed like it was her favorite song in the world, and she turned the radio up even louder. That sad drum followed me and Sammy past dozens of campsites where couples drank beer, and friends talked around fires, and mothers sat at tables wiping their kids’ faces. We walked by all of them to that lonely beat, swinging our lights.
We saw Karen and her mom with another woman and a boy I didn’t recognize. They were sitting around a campfire drinking Coke from cans. I stopped walking when I saw them. I felt really sad. I hadn’t noticed I was sad before, because it had been such a great day. But when I saw Karen, I knew that somewhere deep down I’d been sad all day, ever since I saw her mom on the beach and the girl in the water who wouldn’t wave back.
Karen didn’t run away this time. Maybe her mom told her to get a grip. Or maybe she didn’t want to spaz out in front of the boy—who turned out to be her cousin. She stood up and came for a walk with me and Sammy. That stupid drum song was still going on, drifting over the trees down the road all the way to the beach.
The beach was bright, even though the sun had just set and it was only a half moon. We turned off our flashlights and took off our shoes and walked in the wet sand. It was cold and slimy, and it creeped me out.
I did all the talking, because Karen didn’t have anything to say. Sammy talked to Mom off to the side with his toy. I told Karen about the Darwin Awards and how funny some of them are, and how I was waiting to find out if Mom was going to get one.
I told her about Dad building a time machine like he was smarter than Albert Einstein. Sammy said, “Daddy’s smarter than everyone.” He told Karen that Dad went to his soccer game and his team was going to win the tournament.
Karen didn’t say anything. She looked at Sammy like he was the saddest thing in the world, when really he was happy as can be at that moment, thumping down the beach with his Power Ranger. She whispered to me, “Is he okay?” I said, “I don’t know.”
I told her about the mourning practices of different faiths, and how I wish we were Jewish because it’s such an organized religion. I told her about the Hindu belief that too much mourning is bad for the dead person’s reincarnation. I told her that Japanese Buddhists say their forty-nine days are not over if they don’t understand how the person they loved died. I said we were doing okay, me and Sammy and Dad, but our forty-nine days are not over.
Karen started to cry, and she told me she’d put the snake in Mom’s car. I thought she must be joking. But she wasn’t. She said she was sorry, she never knew Mom was afraid of snakes. She cried so hard I could barely understand her. She said she’d been coming over to my house to show me a snake she’d caught— probably to throw it at me, but she didn’t say that— and she’d seen me leaving the house with Mom. Mom had her keys in her hand, so Karen thought she was about to drive me to soccer practice. She dumped the snake on the passenger seat of Mom’s car to scare me when I sat down. But I didn’t get in the car. I always skipped Saturday practice. I biked over to the Dungeon to play cards instead.
So the snake wasn’t hiding under Mom’s seat for days. It was only there for ten seconds before Mom got in the car, and then ten minutes until she hit the highway and saw it.
I didn’t have anything to say to Karen when she told me that. She was crying and saying she was sorry. She was really crying her guts out. But when she tried to hug me, I didn’t want to touch her. I wanted her to get away from me. Mostly I was confused, like I couldn’t understand what she was saying. For one thing, I didn’t remember leaving the house at the same time as Mom. I thought I was home with Sammy all day. But no, I biked to the Dungeon. On the way back I met Simpson on the bike path, and he came over to my place. When we rode in, Dad asked Simpson if he would please go home because he had something important to tell me. I’d forgotten all that. That whole morning had disappeared from my head.
That’s why I want to write about Karen’s “prank” before we get home and I forget what happened last night. I don’t want to remember it wrong, like I remembered the morning Mom died. I was sure I remembered sitting in the living room, watching Mom walk out the door—just the way Sammy described her—in her red sundress, her purse falling to her elbow, her hair bouncing off her shoulder, with only a smidgeon of her cheek showing as she walked away from us. But I didn’t see her like that. I left the house with her. I saw her face. She looked happy. I remember it clearly now, how she smiled at me and squeezed my hand before she walked to her car.
I even remember biking up the street and waving hello to Karen as I rode past her. She waved back and shouted, “Aren’t you getting a ride to practice?” I just blew her a kiss.
I wish so badly that I’d gotten a ride to soccer practice. Or that Karen had run back to Mom’s car and taken out the snake. Or I wish she’d never put the snake in the car in the first place. How could she not have known about Mom’s phobia? We were friends since grade two! But even if she didn’t know, what kind of person puts a snake in someone’s car? I could see a fake snake—and maybe even a fake one would have scared Mom to death—but a real snake? That’s a terrible prank to pull. You’d have to be an idiot not to know that was dangerous.
What’s funny about putting a snake in someone’s car? It’s not very funny now. That’s what I said to Karen on the beach. She said, “I thought it would be funny.” I said, “It’s not very funny now.”
Then she ran away, probably back to her campfire.
I don’t know how long Sammy and I stayed on the beach after that. It was like another freakish time warp. I smashed all the garbage cans with a piece of driftwood. Then I threw the barbecue grates as far as I could into the lake. I picked up every stupid cigarette butt I could find in the sand and ripped them into tiny bits of fluff I wanted to cram down Karen’s throat. Sammy grabbed me and said, “Don’t cry, Josh, don’t cry,” until I didn’t know what to do. We started to build a sand castle, and eventually Dad came and found us.
Then I yelled at Dad, even though he hadn’t done anything wrong. I was just so mad. I yelled that traveling backward in time is impossible and he was an idiot for not knowing that. “Why would you want to time travel anyway?” I yelled. “Wherever you are, you’ll always hide from me and Sammy. You’ve never joined in with us ever in your life! You just waited for Mom to raise us.” That was really mean and not actually true, because he’d just let us bury him in the sand and he’d cooked us burgers.
Dad said I was wrong. He said he’d do anything we wanted. Sammy said, “You won’t make the Mommy Book.” Then Dad said, “Making scrapbooks about your mother is just another way of trying to go back in time.” I called him an asshole if he couldn’t see the difference between hiding in your basement and sharing stories about someone you love. And I don’t usually swear, at least not at home.
I smashed the castle and accidentally kicked sand in Dad’s eye. He screamed and swore. I thought we might actually have to go to the hospital, but he had some eyewash in the car. Which is weird, since he forgot the flashlights. I guess he keeps a first-aid kit in his glove compartment.