Bones & All Read online

  A woman in a wheelchair was knitting a scarf with blunt-tipped plastic needles. The scarf seemed to go on for yards and yards, changing colors and folding itself into piles in her lap before disappearing into a large floral-patterned handbag on the floor beside her. She plowed on with competent, listless movements, not even looking at her needles as she knit. A scarf for a giant, or a scarf for nobody.

  Travis led me through a series of swinging doors and down a long corridor, and when we reached the door at the end of the hall he took a ring of keys from his belt. My father was locked inside three times over. My heart lodged itself in my throat.

  A man was sitting at a small padded table, his back to the door, and he didn’t turn as we entered. I caught sight of his bed before I saw his face: white pillow, white sheet, leather restraints hanging from the handlebars on either side, waiting for naptime. I ventured into the room, watching the profile of the man in the chair with each step.

  “There’s someone here to see you, Frank.” Travis spoke with exaggerated tenderness, as if my father were a small child. “Someone you’ve been waiting for, for a very long time, right?”

  The boy in the yearbook photo was long gone. My dad lifted his pale and watery eyes to my face, and I saw his gray-stubbled jaw and neck muscles straining. But he didn’t smile, and he didn’t speak.

  “Hi,” I whispered. “Hi, Dad.”

  Dad: another word in that imaginary language. As I spoke his eyes went wide, tears fell down the sides of his cheeks, and he worked his jaw more strenuously. His lips moved, but I couldn’t make out what he was trying to say. My heart clenched. He’ll never sing as he cooks our breakfast.

  “Can’t…” I began. “Can’t he speak?”

  “It’s the medication,” Travis said gently, coming from behind me with a chair. “Here. Why don’t you sit down?” I seated myself as the orderly laid a hand on my father’s. His other hand, his right, was under the padded table. “It’s okay, Frank. Rest easy. It’s okay.” To me he said, “In the beginning I told him it was too early to expect you, that you’d be much too young to make your way here on your own, but I don’t know that he understood.” He paused. “I have to say, I wasn’t expecting you for a good few years yet.”

  This man, whom I had only met a minute ago, knew who I was and why I was here. I didn’t know how to feel about that, so I just said, “I guess you’ve been working here a long time, then.”

  Travis gave me half a smile. “Time goes faster the older you get. Makes sense, I guess. A day becomes a smaller and smaller fraction of your life.”

  I looked at my father. “Can I touch him?”

  The attendant nodded. “Just briefly though. And give him space if he gets upset.”

  “Is he upset now?”

  “Not upset, no. Just overwhelmed.”

  I reached for his hand—as limp and clammy as I expected it to be—and I watched my father fix his eyes beyond my shoulder, where Travis was opening his bedside drawer. “There’s something he wants you to read,” the attendant said.

  I glanced back at my father, who was still looking anxiously after Travis. “How do you know?”

  “It was my very first week on the job, the night your father came to Bridewell. We’ve always felt like we’ve been walking this road together, haven’t we, Frank?”

  Frank nodded, or tried to.

  “How long has he lived here?”

  “Just about fourteen years.” Travis found what he was looking for and laid it on the table in front of me. In that first moment I was convinced the attendant had delivered my own journal. It was older, of course: a marbled black-and-white composition notebook, the cover yellowed with age, the pages inside crinkled from old spills. Horribly, horribly familiar.

  I looked to Travis, who now stood by the door like a sentinel. “Should I…?”

  The orderly nodded. “He wants you to read it. He wrote it for you.”

  I opened the notebook and found the first page covered in a masculine scrawl, just this side of legible. This was my father’s handwriting? I glanced up at him—his eyes were still wet with unshed tears—before I began to read.

  Hello there, little Yearly. I wish I knew your name, but I don’t even know if you are a boy or a girl. Man or woman, by the time you read this. If you read this. I want so badly for you to come, but I’m afraid of what you will think of me. I’m afraid you will hate me, and if you do I will understand. Maybe your mother will never tell you about me, and if that’s the case I know it is for the best.

  Still I will write, in case you come. Otherwise, by the time you get here, I am afraid I will not be able to answer your questions.

  I turned the page.

  I don’t remember my real parents. To this day I cannot even remember the name they gave me. The time I had with your mother is the only time that is still clear to me. Sometimes I wake up in this cold, empty place and feel happy in my heart, like she was in bed beside me all night long. I think I can smell her shampoo on the pillow, and bacon frying in the next room, and I hold on to that moment for as long as I can.

  Otherwise my memory is full of blanks, and I know that the longer I am here the less I will remember. But I am safe, little Yearly, and so are you.

  I felt a cold trickle down the length of my spine. My father didn’t know about me. It had never occurred to him.

  I often wondered why the Yearlys kept me. But I guess they couldn’t send me back without feeling they had gone back on a promise, and that would have made them bad people. No one, not even me, wants to think they are a bad person.

  I had three square meals a day and a warm, clean bed, but I was so unhappy because I could not escape the ghost of Tom. Sometimes they spoke of him as my older brother (on her bad days Mother Yearly set a fourth place at the dinner table), and other times they called me Tom. But most of the time I was what I was, an unsatisfactory replacement. If Tom were here he’d show you how to ride your bike. Tom would have gotten straight As. Tom would have gone to Harvard or Stanford. Tom rescued broken birds. Tom would have been a veterinarian, a doctor, or maybe a lawyer or an engineer, a Somebody, unlike YOU, Frank, who will only amount to a Nobody.

  Even when I slept I wasn’t free of Tom. Sometimes I dreamed I was awake, and he would ooze down out of the ceiling and perch on the dresser with red glowing eyes and his pointer fingers pulling at the sides of his mouth and his long, thin tongue flicking like a snake’s.

  Even during the day I could not shake the feeling that someone was watching me. At school sometimes I would look out the window and see a man in a red flannel shirt leaning against the fence, and he was looking right at me. Waiting for me. I never saw him when I was outside, but I was always afraid I might.

  I left the Yearlys as soon as I finished high school, and I wanted to go to college but I never got there. When you have no money it is easy to tell yourself you will go to college once you get yourself a job and save up enough for tuition. Then all of a sudden you look in the shaving mirror one morning and know that if you went now the kids in your class would laugh and call you “old-timer.” I hope you go to college. I don’t know that it would have made a difference in my life, but I feel sure it will make a difference in yours.

  In this blank white room of dead bolts and restraining belts, college seemed more impossible than ever. I glanced at Travis. “My ten minutes must be almost up.”

  He paused to think, then nodded. “I’ll be right back.”

  Now I can tell you about Janelle.

  I had many jobs in many places. I didn’t have trouble making new friends, but sometimes they turned out not to be friends after all and when I found out they had lied or cheated me I could never seem to walk away.

  When I was 22 I got a job as a forest ranger (I shuddered) at Laskin National Park. My job was mostly to patrol the campsites to make sure no one was dumping trash or cutting their own firewood. Janelle sat at the gate shack window taking entrance fees, and on my first day I came in and we talked and even
then, just laughing over the inflatable woman in a red wig sitting in the passenger seat of a single man’s car, I knew I would always love her. Your mother is a beautiful woman, but there is so much more to her than looks. The good thing about park jobs is that there is plenty of free time to go swimming or hiking (or if you are working, it is easy to sneak away). I admit that neither of us worked as hard as we could have.

  Travis came quietly back into the room. “Dr. Worth is in the north wing with another patient,” he said. “It’s safe for you to stay a little while longer.” He rested a large white hand on Frank’s shoulder. “Ready to show her the pictures?” My father dipped his chin, and Travis produced a second object from the bedside drawer, a little leather photo album stamped in gold leaf: OUR PERFECT SUMMER. On the inside cover, in my mother’s handwriting, I saw J.S. + F.Y. printed inside a neat red heart, and 1980 beneath.

  Silently I turned the pages. Mama on a wooded trail in a crisp green jumpsuit uniform, her long golden legs shod in sturdy hiking boots. Mama, peaches and cream, long before she’d ever had to color her hair in the bathtub. Mama on horseback. Mama laughing over a hot fudge sundae, the camera lens reflected in the diving spoon. Mama, before I ruined her life.

  When the summer was over we arranged to stay at one of the caretaker’s cabins on Plover Lake, and the rich people paid us to sweep their porches and make sure their pipes didn’t freeze. We had friends we had made in the rangers, Sam and Flip and Robby, and on Thursday nights they would come over for drinks and poker and we played in front of the woodstove. One time the lake froze solid and we drove Flip’s truck out to the center just for the heck of it. It was dangerous, but we got a thrill. When we came back inside, Janelle had grilled cheese and hot cocoa ready for us. Your mother was never much of a cook, but when she did cook it hit the spot.

  In the spring her parents came out for the wedding. They tried their best to be nice to me, but they didn’t like that they hadn’t been able to get to know me before I asked her. Whenever Janelle’s mother smiled at me it seemed like she had pasted it on, and I was afraid she suspected my secret. But they are good people, and I hope you are close to them now.

  Your mother didn’t know my secret before we got married. She knew there was something I kept from her, but she kept loving me like it didn’t matter if I ever told her or not, so I thought maybe I would never have to.

  If you ever come here I know what you will ask me. Why did I let myself fall in love with her? What could have made me think that I was good enough for her, that the bad thing wouldn’t matter?

  Then again, maybe you are old enough now that you have fallen in love yourself. If that is the case then you must already know how I would answer.

  For a second I could see myself several years older, frying up bacon and eggs for Lee with a belly as round as the moon. As soon as I saw it, I knew it would never happen.

  I wish I could have been a good father for you. A real dad. When Janelle told me she was going to have you I promised myself that I would be, that your childhood would be nothing like mine. Your mama was always a happy person, but while she was pregnant with you she was even happier. She used to sing lullabies all through the day like you were already born.

  The breath caught in my throat as I read those lines. Mama had wanted me. For a little while at least, I had made her happy.

  We hadn’t told anybody, but we knew you were on the way and we wanted to save up as much as we could, so Janelle got a job at a hotel up on Whippoorwill Lake. She was at work one night when Robby came over. He had had a lot to drink, and he said things he should not have said, things about your mother’s body. He said she wasn’t the sweet, innocent girl I thought she was. I knew he was lying, but I also knew I could never think of our perfect summer again without hearing his ugly words.

  I told him to leave, but he wouldn’t. I told him I would hurt him, but he just laughed. It is so very hard to find out what someone you have called a friend really thinks of you.

  I could have written this.

  Then the unthinkable happened. Your mother came home early from work.

  No matter how many times I told her I would never ever hurt her, not even if we fought, I don’t know that she truly believed me. From that night until the night I left, I could feel her love for me but also her fear. I want to believe it was not her fear that kept her with me, but maybe I am lying to myself. It is a relief that I will never know for sure.

  One night when your mama was eight months pregnant, we had an argument. Janelle wanted to move back to Pennsylvania, but I told her I wanted our baby to grow up loving those woods and hills and rivers as much as we did. The fight was about more than where to live though. I knew she wanted to be near her parents because she was afraid. I told her this, and she raised her voice as she moved away from me. I saw the terror in her eyes. I left the cabin to think things over. Janelle never laughed anymore, and I knew why.

  I tried to remember Mama’s laugh, and I couldn’t do it. But she had loved me. She had.

  There were a few blank pages, and then:

  I want to be good for you, little Yearly, but I can’t. I can only be honest. Now I will tell you everything.

  The first thing I remember is being very small beside a big long bus at the edge of a gas station. A man had me by the hand and he was leading me into a restroom behind the gas pumps. I don’t remember his face, but he locked me in with him and he was trying to get me to do something bad but I did something much worse. I ate him.

  I am so very sorry for the pain and shock this will cause you. I don’t know if there is anyone else like me in the world. I know there are people in the world who eat other people the way an ordinary person eats a steak or a hamburger. That is not what I did. I was only a little boy, but even with my milk teeth I ground his bones down to nothing, and the more I ate the hungrier I got.

  Your mother had a way of making me forget I was a monster even after she found out what I did. She made me feel like I could live a good life and be an honest man, and that was only one reason why I loved her.

  I did not want to leave you. But I had to because even though I knew I would never hurt you or your mother, I also knew that I could never be completely sure of it. The only reason I did not write to her was because I was so afraid she would not write back. I am very sorry for this now, but it is too late.

  She was my sunshine. It is the worst pain of my life to know that I will never see her again.

  More blank pages, and when the writing appeared again it was much bigger and more childlike.

  On the first of each month they celebrate all the birthdays on the ward that happen that month, and there is always a vanilla sheet cake and a game of bingo. I never knew my birthday, so the Yearlys made it January 1st. If I knew your birthday I would ask Travis to remind me when it comes. That way I could picture what you might be doing to celebrate it. Travis says it is April 1, 1991, so I think you are almost nine now. I wish I knew if you were a girl or a boy because it is hard to picture you, not knowing that.

  There was a space, and then one more line at the bottom of the page:

  Travis is my friend. He is the only one here who knows me.

  I looked up at the attendant. “Have you read any of this?”

  He cleared his throat, but he didn’t look away. “Parts of it.”

  “He … he showed you? He wanted you to see it?”

  Travis nodded.

  I felt myself hardening toward him. He’d had no right to read this, when my father was clearly not in his right mind. “Why?” I asked. “Why did he let you see it?”

  “I’m sorry if you feel I violated your privacy,” he replied kindly, and I had to soften. “He was anxious for me to read it. He needed someone to understand, you know?”

  I nodded and turned back to the notebook. More blank pages, and then:

  I can’t keep hold of my thoughts. I have one, and it is gone in the time it takes to pick up the pencil. They won’t let me write with a pen, on
ly dull pencils. I think they must pay someone to lick the pencil tips before they let me have them.

  There is one good thing about forgetting. Their faces are gone. I can’t remember them anymore. When I fall asleep now it is only blackness.

  But I take your mother’s picture out of the drawer and look at it when I am in bed, as soon as I wake up and right before I go to sleep. This way I will not forget her face. It pains me to look because I know I will never see her again, but I look anyway because if I forget her face then I know there will be nothing left of me.

  And on the next page, in waxy blue-violet:

  Today they took my pencils away.

  There were many more blank pages, and I began to think there was nothing more to read. Then there was a page in bright red crayon, the handwriting so messy I could hardly make it out.

  Today I ruined the hand I write with.

  HAND IS GONE

  GONE

  GONE

  I glanced up, my heart in my throat. My father’s eyes were closed, and I couldn’t tell if he’d fallen asleep.

  “What did he mean?” I said to Travis. “What did he mean, he ruined his hand?”

  Slowly, with eyes still shut, my father withdrew his left hand until it fell into his lap to shield the right. I watched the way his face crumpled, like a sheet of paper spoiled by a single typo. Travis looked at the floor.

  I turned the page, and another, and another. The rest of the notebook was filled with one word, over and over in every color in the Crayola box:

  Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle Janelle