“Only that it was some sort of accident on the farm.” He paused, before adding, “Your mother was an honest woman, but I got the feeling that was one of the rare lies she told. If I was a better reporter, I might have found out what really happened.”
For all his talk of poor reporting skills, Heekin had done an expert job of tracking down my uncle—or rather, never losing track of him in the first place. Before we got on the road, he had insisted we give him a call from a pay phone. When Howie heard my voice, he sounded surprised, and even more so when I told him I was on my way to see him. He stalled, suggesting we put it off until some other time. But I insisted. Even if he didn’t exactly agree, that’s how I made it sound to Heekin when I hung up. Now, after driving all that way, I felt anxious about the possibility that my uncle might not be there after all.
We moved at a crawl through the streets of a dreary neighborhood, squinting at the boarded windows of houses we passed, the shell of a scorched car, the minefields of shattered glass on the pavement that Heekin carefully navigated around. At last, we came to a stop outside a large building. As I looked at the chipped gray paint, the scramble of crooked letters above the row of glass doors, a strange feeling stirred inside me. It made me realize I’d seen this place before, but where?
“Are you okay, Sylvie?” Heekin asked.
I told him I just felt anxious about seeing my uncle again after so many months. “And, well, I don’t understand. After all these years, why—how did he end up here?”
“Those are questions your uncle can answer better than I can. And that’s what we came here for, isn’t it: so you can get answers?”
With that, Heekin pushed open his door. I did the same. We stepped out onto the sidewalk, desolate except for a bodega a few blocks away. Sirens wailed and faded until the air grew silent, thick with something menacing. I remembered the unexpected shyness I felt upon seeing my uncle that night in Ocala as some version of that feeling swooped down upon me now. There was little time for that, however, since Heekin was moving across the street, and I hurried to keep up. All the while, my gaze kept going to the scramble of crooked letters on the old marquee. We had come to the place I’d seen in one of the photos in my father’s desk drawer when Dot splashed about upstairs that long-ago night. This was the theater where he had spent his childhood, collecting tickets, sweeping floors, and seeing ghosts—his very first—amid the darkness inside.
Chapter 16
The Well
The morning after we returned from Ohio, I expected to walk downstairs and find my mother right where we left her, asleep on the living room sofa. But she was gone. In the late morning hours, my father explained, she must have managed to make it up the stairs and into their room, because he opened his eyes to find her in the bed next to his.
“Penny too?” I wanted to ask, but something in me already knew the answer.
For nearly a week after that, my mother remained sealed away in their bedroom. She did not appear in the mornings before we left for school. She did not appear in the evenings when we arrived home. Funny how that waitress had trouble envisioning “someone like her” being a mother, because during that time, I think all of us in our family realized how good a job she’d always done. It wasn’t just my father’s runny mashed potatoes or dried-out cube steaks; and it wasn’t just our unwashed clothes in an ever-growing heap by the machines. Those details felt insignificant compared to the off-kilter mood that permeated our house. I would not have been surprised to have found murky water sloshing in the basement corners, because that’s what we had become: a ship taking on the dark and icy sea, about to sink.
Still, my father and I tried. In the evenings, we sat with Rose at the kitchen table—my mother’s chair with her book of wallpaper swatches on top nothing short of a ghost among us—pretending the meal tasted as good as one she would have made from her recipes. To his credit, my father worked hard at keeping the conversation alive. Most often, that meant asking me about school, since my sister had become difficult to talk to. One night, as she was cutting into her sauceless chicken breast, my father took a stab at it anyway. “Rose?” he said. And when she kept cutting, not answering, he tried again, “Rose?”
My sister looked up. “What can I do for you?”
“What can you—” He put down his fork, rubbed his temples. “You can make an effort at some conversation over dinner—that’s what you can do. Haven’t you got anything to say for yourself?”
Rose slipped a piece of chicken between her lips and chewed. “I do, actually.”
“Okay, then. Go ahead.”
“Well,” she said with her mouth full. “I was just wondering when Mom is going to rise from the dead?”
“Rise from the— Rose, your mother is not dead. She’s ill.”
“If that’s the case, then maybe we should take her to a doctor. Or do we not believe in doctors anymore around here? Are we hoping that Jesus will magically—”
“For your information, we did take her to a doctor.”