I'm Right Here

Jack’s mother stood in the kitchen, smoking a cigarette wedged between the prongs of a plastic fork—she didn’t like her hands to smell—as Jack helped his father move out. His father was wearing bermuda shorts and flip-flops, both of which were recent developments. His mom was wearing a light pink bathrobe which was not a recent development but an old one, as he rarely saw her in anything else.

When they finished loading up, Jack’s father gave him a hug and then climbed into his truck, backing smoothly out of the driveway, smiling and waving like he was only taking off for a short trip. It was September, and one of the first cool days of the season. There were few clouds in the afternoon sky. A very nice day, his dad had called it.

“Thanks for the help, son!” he yelled.

Jack stuffed his hands deep into his pockets as he watched that white pickup truck—the same he’d been taken to school in every Friday—pull out onto their street, Azalea Road, and then drive away. Jack’s thirteenth birthday was in two days. He wondered if anyone would remember this.

Jack felt like his feet were lifting off the ground, which was a feeling he used to get a lot when he was even younger, and he would put rocks in his pockets to weigh himself down, to keep himself from floating. In third grade, he did this almost every day until he spent the summer with his grandma—his mother’s mother, Grandma Sue, the mean one; his dad’s mother was nice and also dead. Grandma Sue sewed all Jack’s pockets shut, saying she was tired of all that racket in the dryer.

When Jack could no longer see or hear his dad’s truck, he went back inside and looked around at all the spaces his father had left: an empty closet in the hallway, a missing crockpot in the cupboard, and the blank walls where his posters of fireflies had hung. Gone from the mantle were the round stones they’d painted like animals and his dad’s glass-framed baseball cards. All that was left was a photo of the three of them in front of a wooden sign that read Welcome to the Great Smoky Mountains—the fog surrounding their smiling faces—and beside that, a cracked ceramic bunny where they kept the ashes of Jack’s sister.

When Jack was eight, he’d taken the bunny to the porch with a small hammer, thinking it a piggy bank. But as the body broke, instead of pennies or quarters, gray ash poured into a small mound, some of it falling between the slats of the porch and down to the cold ground below where they once found an abandoned litter of kittens. His mother had walked out then to find him staring at the back of his hand where some of the dust had landed. At first she said nothing, then she screamed. Jack knew he had done something very bad, but he hadn’t yet known why. His mom had gone inside and come back with a broom, crying while she swept up what was left, pouring palmfuls of ash into a plastic baggie.

When she was done, she stood still and looked at him and said, “Why, Jack, why?” He tilted his hand and watched the dust slide off. “I was looking for money.”

“For what? For what?” she said, pinching the Ziploc closed.

He didn’t know why she was saying everything twice. He shrugged, “A skateboard?”

She’d shaken her head again and walked inside with the broken bunny and the bag of ashes. Jack had opened and closed his lips, thinking he’d gotten some in his mouth. Then he pressed his lips together and swallowed. At times, he thought of this, how he’d once eaten some of his dead sister.

His sister’s name had been Daisy. She died three years before Jack was born, and had only lived for seven months. Not long ago, Jack found a box in the shed with her name on it. There were photos and a baby journal, and a small silk bag with a curl of blond hair. In the pictures, Jack’s parents seemed like different, but familiar people. In one photo, his mother played a violin, while his father held a baby. The baby was beautiful and small and fragile-looking. She had milk-white, pearly skin, and her wide-set eyes were a murky green like marble, or moss, or like the reflection of trees in water. Jack put the box back, never saying anything to his parents, but he never stopped thinking of her little face, of the seriousness in her eyes. He had a feeling that somehow his sister had been, would have been, much smarter than him.

Sometime after discovering the box, Jack and his dad had gone fishing. While they sat in a small metal boat with their knees touching each other on a nearby lake on a gray-skied day, Jack had asked his father what it was like to lose Daisy. His dad had paused, stared at the sky and said, “For six weeks after Daisy died, your mother sat in the baby’s nursery staring into the ceiling fan while I removed one piece of furniture at a time, until she was sitting in the middle of an empty room. Then she moved to the porch and started smoking again.” Before Jack could ask anything else, he felt a tug on his line. “You got something!” his father had said, suddenly animated. Jack had watched his father’s face closely as he reeled in the fish, unhooked it and plopped it in a cooler. But whatever Jack was looking for, he couldn’t find.

“Is he gone?” Jack’s mother asked, loading another cigarette into her fork.

“Yeah,” Jack said, walking up the carpeted steps, two at a time. At the top, he turned and went into the office, which had once been Daisy’s room. It was empty again. He flipped the fan on and lay on the floor to watch it. The blades were a blur. He focused on one and followed it with his eyes, until it seemed like the only one that mattered, until he became partial to that one blade going around and around and around. He hoped that when it stopped, he’d be able to remember which one it was he watched. But when he got up and turned it off, they all looked the same. So he walked out and headed back downstairs.

He looked at the now half-empty bookshelf and with two fingers, pushed the books that had fallen over back upright. Then grabbed The Encyclopedia of Insects, and flipped to the front where his dad had signed it: To Jack, my bug-boy for his 8th birthday. He closed the book and put it back. “Mom,” Jack said. “I think I’m gonna walk to the bookstore.”

“Okay,” his mother said from the couch. She put her feet up on the mirror-topped coffee table and turned on the TV. He looked at the back of her head, blonde-gray hair matted like a nest. He didn’t want to think what he was thinking.

“Will you pick up some food while you’re out?” she said. “KFC or whatever. There’s money in the drawer.”

“Sure,” he said, going to the kitchen and grabbing cash from the drawer where they also kept rubber bands, utility bills, and chip clips. Then he walked back through the living room, pulling his jacket off the coat rack and walked out, letting the screen door slam behind him.

Jack walked through the neighborhood, passing yards lined with plastic bags full of leaves. He thought this was stupid. All the trees would lose their leaves. No sense in running around, trying to pick it all up while it all kept falling. But people couldn’t just leave things the way they were. Like his dad, who had just left to start another family after two tries at this one. How many chances did one person get to make the life they wanted?

In the distance, there was the groaning hum of a lawn-mower. Jack had always hated this kind of noise. He couldn’t explain why or how but they made him sick. Once in preschool, he’d thrown up during circle time because of a loud leaf-blower outside the window. It was like that sound had whirred up inside his body, making him feel like he was the one that had been blown about. His parents were called, and when his dad picked him up, they went to a park and looked at the grass. His dad didn’t ask him any questions. They just sat there and watched ants crawl up stems. Jack liked bugs because they were small, and because when he watched them closely, everything else was easy to tune out. He used to wish he was one; insects never had to explain themselves. Jack was always being asked, “Why are you doing that?” or “What’s wrong with you?” and he didn’t know the answer to either of those questions.

Eventually, his parents took him to a lady who told them his senses were overactive. She said it was like a neurological “traffic jam,” which made Jack imagine a pile-up of cars in his brain. He could hear all their honking and smell the fumes. He had to shake his head around fast to get them all out of there. When he did this, the therapist gave his mother a look like: see. But Jack wanted to tell the lady that she was the one who had put the cars in his head.

Jack continued walking, his eyes following the power lines above. No birds rested on them. And though he knew they weren’t telephone wires, he imagined voices anyway, traveling along the lines. If one snapped, all the unfinished phrases would spill out: people talking about coffee orders or traffic or whether or not they loved each other.

He passed the Episcopal church, where in autumn, people took pictures in the pumpkin patch. He remembered when his family had attempted photos—all wearing earth-toned sweaters and smiling for a camera. But just before the priest had taken the photo, his mother had suddenly started crying. The priest had asked if everything was all right and at the same time, his mother had said no, and his father had said yes.

Now, there was a teenaged girl sitting on the steps, reading. She had long, strawberry-blonde hair and a gap between her teeth. The evening light made her face glow gold. He knew the teeth part because he’d met her at the bookstore. She worked there. She helped him once when he went looking for a book on butterflies. Jack and his dad used to drive out to the middle of the woods and catch them in jars just long enough to know their Latin name, then open the lid and watch them flutter away. “You like butterflies?” Jack had said to her that day in the shop, just to have a thing to say. “Sure,” she’d said, “but I like moths better. Their beauty is underrated.” Jack thought he’d like to know someone who would say things like that.

He thought he would approach her now and talk to her, but before he could make his way over, she stood and started walking away. She hadn’t seen him.

The sun was setting, the tall pine trees turning black against a pink sky. Jack didn’t want to watch the sun sink all the way—it made him anxious to see the day turn to night, even if it was beautiful. So, he followed the girl.

She walked with her hands in her pockets, her hair tucked into a green peacoat, unaware of Jack. He knew he should say something, but at this point thought it would be weird. He felt he should stop following her, but found he couldn’t. He would just see where she lived, and then he would go back home.

Jack followed the girl into a neighborhood of wood-slatted houses with wraparound porches and seasonal flags, pictures of flowers and butterflies leftover from summer still waving in the wind. The girl was right about moths, Jack thought. They were underrated.

After rounding a corner, the girl walked up the steps of a gray house, where warm lamplight leaked from the windows. Jack stopped across the street and from behind some trees, watched. Through the glass of her front door, he could see her take off her coat and then disappear into a hallway. At first, Jack just stood there at the woods’ edge, staring at her door. Then he looked at the ground, reached down and picked up two rocks. He put one in each pocket and felt a little better. He crossed the street, went behind the girl’s house, and sat in the grass with his back against the siding. He didn’t know what he was doing there, but he didn’t want to leave. He banged the back of his head lightly against the house and wiped tears from his eyes. The sky grew dark as he listened to the sound of Snow-Tree crickets, counting the seconds between chirps like his father had taught him to determine the temperature: the further apart, the colder. Tonight, they were soft and slow like paced breaths.

Jack was staring at the ground in front of him when a square of yellow light appeared in the grass. He watched as a shadow moved across it, and the sound of a cello began reverberating through the wall. He pulled his legs in, wrapping his arms around them, and rested his chin on his knees to listen. He hoped the girl wouldn’t look out to see him. The deep sounds swelled and sometimes, as the girl’s fingers slid along, the strings screeched and moaned. Those in-between sounds had always been Jack’s favorite. They made him think of some sort of animal, like one that didn’t exist but could. Heonce tried explaining this to his dad, who responded that it didn’t make much sense, but that it was a beautiful idea. Jack’s chest tightened to think of him, of how he wouldn’t be at home, sitting in his chair, staring through a magnifying glass at some insect, telling him to come here, come take a look at this.

He didn’t want to think about it. So he closed his eyes and thought instead of animals—animals with voices like violins, bears with growls like steel guitars, and as all the wild whirled inside his head, Jack fell asleep.

When he opened his eyes, the sky was black; the stars like clear pegs in a Lite-Brite. The music had stopped. He stood, feeling the back of his pants which were damp with dew. He looked around to see if he’d been seen, but there was no one. He was alone in the quiet and cold. He wished he would have talked to the girl. He felt like if he thought about her hard enough, she’d know to come out and meet him. He’d show her the moths that pollinate the night-blooming flowers. Then, without thinking about what he was doing, he walked to the front of the house and up the steps, touched the cold knob, turned it, and walked in.

Inside, it smelled clean and warm, like laundry and candles. On the table was a shallow bowl with a large Magnolia flower in it. The lamp was still on, but there was only the hushed sound of people sleeping. Jack walked down a hallway and peered into a room on the left, where the girl was asleep in a white iron bed, her hair strewn across the pillow. She looked like a painting. Jack pushed the door open and stepped toward her. For a moment, being so close gave him the feeling that he knew her better than he did. It made him want to reach out and touch her face, but as he watched his own arm extend, he quickly pulled it back, suddenly scared. In the dark, he couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed. Also, he didn’t mean to be here, in this girl’s room, who he just now remembered was named Emma.

Jack stood there, trying to breathe quietly, and thought of the time a man had broken into his family’s house and stolen all the pictures off the walls. He’d always wondered what that man had been thinking; if he thought the frames were worth something, or if he had just liked the look of them. Then Jack reminded himself that this was not something that had actually happened, but was a lie he told in class when they played a game called Two Truths and a Lie, where people had to guess which out of three statements was a false one. Everyone had believed that one to be true, and so sometimes he remembered it that way.

The girl’s arms rose above her head, and Jack’s heart rate quickened, his face and body getting hot. He wanted to run, but he was too far in. Everything happens for a reason, his nice grandmother used to say. The one that was dead. Jack looked out the window at the moon and then down at the floor at the cello case. He took two careful steps toward it, reached down, and picked it up more easily than he thought he’d be able to. He backed out of Emma’s room, moving with a steady pace and stopping only once in the kitchen, which was cute and cozy with a window nook and plants on shelves beside pictures of Emma when she was a toddler—white blonde hair in a too-big baseball cap. Then he turned, walking quickly through the living room and out the front door, closing it quietly, the lock sliding smoothly into place.

He couldn't believe how easy it was to do such a thing. The thought scared him. As he crossed the street, he half hoped to be caught. He wanted someone to say hey, what do you think you’re doing, but everything was silent. Jack looked up; the streetlights seemed to be watching him. He made a gun with his free hand and pretended to shoot them out.

As he walked toward the woods, Jack stared at the moon. It was not quite full, making it easier to imagine its sphere-ness. Once again, he felt like he was floating. When he’d walked far enough into the woods, he sat down on the ground and opened the case, running his hands along the cello. He thought about how he’d once read a poem that described cellos as being shaped like women. This had made Jack imagine a cello with a woman’s head. He didn’t like this image. He picked up the bow and started to move it slowly across the strings. It didn’t sound good, but he liked doing it. He wondered if the girl could sense it being played, seemed like a thing a musician might feel.

He then thought about how, a week ago, he’d woken in the night and gone downstairs for some water and had seen his mother standing in the dark in front of the mantle. She was cradling the long-since replaced bunny in her arms. Jack had watched her rock it back and forth as she quietly hummed. Then she’d put it back and picked up the Smokey Mountain picture. “Mom?” Jack had said. But she hadn’t looked up at him. She just stared at the picture and whispered, “I’m right here.” Then she’d gone to the couch and lay down, and Jack had tiptoed back upstairs.

He wondered if his mother was awake now, looking out the window, waiting for him, thinking he too had left her.

Jack suddenly felt all the weight of his body return. He put the cello back in its case, dropped it in Emma’s front yard and ran all the way home. At first, just thinking it hard in his mind, and then repeating the words out loud as he ran so his mother might hear him, “I’m right here, I’m right here, I’m right here.”