MD + EG
BJ luvs GG
Red Sox Rule!
Yaz!
Don’t Squeeze the Charmin! (I still don’t know what that one means.)
The chalk drawings were here when Mom and Dad bought the house. I think of them as fossils of people who lived here before us. People who chose to spend time in this basement.
Clearly lunatics.
The small room in the back has a concrete floor. It has a furnace, a water heater, and an old furnace-like thing that is gigantic and reddish-brown. Dad once told me that it’s an old coal furnace. It has an iron door on the front that looks like a mouth and two old dials that look like eyes. We call it Robo because it looks like the oldest, stupidest robot ever invented. Robo stares at me when I enter the small room. I feel a little bad for him even though he’s not actually a robot, and even if he was a robot, robots don’t need anyone feeling bad for them either because they’re just machines.
Still, I can’t help it. Sometimes fake things can feel as real as real things.
I look behind Robo and the furnace and the water heater. It’s the only place down here where my mom could be. I find some copper pipes, a shovel and a screwdriver.
My mother would never fit inside Robo, but I decide to check anyway. I feel like I need to rule out all possibilities, just like the cops say on TV. I swing open his mouth. It screeches on its hinges. Robo is black inside. I lean forward and peek in. It smells like a rusty forest fire. A bloody forest fire. I exhale, and the sound of my breath echoes in his belly.
I lean in. I stick my whole head inside Robo’s mouth. It’s the bravest thing I’ve done in a while.
No Mom.
As I pull my head back out, I notice the shovel again. It looks new. The screwdriver, too. I’ve never seen either one before, but I don’t come down here often. Only on dares from Charlie and Dad when Dad was not dead. I turn and look back into the big room. I look at the dirt floor. It looks just like it has always looked, but I’ve never really paid attention to the floor before. If the other mother did something terrible to Mom, she could’ve buried Mom here under the dirt floor.
That is what I am thinking now. Mom is buried under the basement floor. I don’t believe it really happened, but I try to imagine it happening because it’s possible.
Imagining the possible—especially when it’s terrible—is something I do a lot.
When we flew to Florida three years ago, I imagined what it would be like if the plane crashed. I tried to picture all the different ways that the plane might hit the ground or break up in the sky. Belly first. Nose first. Water landing. Crashing into a mountain. I tried to envision those oxygen masks falling and the people screaming and praying just before impact. I didn’t think it would happen, but I wanted to know what it would be like if it did.
I wanted to be prepared.
I guess I’m as much of a Boy Scout as Charlie.
I hate the unknown. I’d rather know all the terrible maybes than ignore them or pretend that they will never happen. I like to predict the possibilities. Also, I have a hard time not thinking of something. I can’t put things out of my mind like Mom and Mrs. Newfang constantly tell me to do. I perseverate, which means getting stuck in a loop like that movie Groundhog Day. The same movie plays over and over again in my mind. Since I can’t stop it from playing, I focus on it instead. I stare right at it. It’s kind of like daring it to continue.
I do this with the good possibilities, too. Not just plane crashes and missing mothers. Like imagining having sex with Sarah Flaherty. It will never happen, but it’s still nice to imagine.
I know what you’re supposed to do in sex, but I don’t know anything about the girl parts in real life. We saw pictures in health class, but no girl looks like a pencil drawing under her underwear.
Jeff’s big brother says that girl parts are complicated, but the girl will help when you have sex, so you don’t really need to know what’s going on down there. “She’ll guide you,” he said. But I hate looking dumb and not knowing stuff, and I would really hate to look dumb while I’m naked. That seems like the worst part of sex: the nakedness. I wouldn’t mind the girl being naked, but there’s no way I want to be naked. I don’t even like being naked by myself.
I don’t have to worry about any of that, though, because it’s impossible for someone like me to have sex with someone like Sarah Flaherty.
But this buried-in-the-basement idea is possible. If you can replace someone so perfectly and fool everyone in the house except me, you could probably bury a person in the basement.
I get the shivers. The basement is scarier than it has ever been. I walk to the stairs. I try to walk slowly and calmly, but the closer I get to the first step, the faster I walk. I am running by the time I start climbing the stairs. Something is going to reach between the wooden steps and grab my ankle so I lift my feet high and pump my elbows. I know that running is the worst thing you can do in a situation like this. People who walk up the basement stairs are never in danger of being dragged back down. Only scared people get caught by scary things. But I can’t help it. It is a basement with yellow lights and a dirt floor and maybe my mom buried underneath.
I slam the door when I get to the top.
Sunlight. Just like that, it’s another world. Like everything in the basement is a million miles away in an instant. There is no way my mom is buried in the basement. That would be crazy. This whole other mother thing is crazy. I’m imagining the whole thing. Kids might believe in magic, and believing in magic might not make them crazy, but that doesn’t make the magic real.
I almost believe this. Then I find the other mother is in the kitchen, washing the pan that she used to make eggs. Still not Mom. Not even close.
“You all set?” she asks me.
“What?”
“You need anything?” she asks. “For fishing?”
“No,” I say. “Thank you.”
Charlie looks at me when I say “Thank you.” It occurs to me that I would never say this to my real mother. I need to be careful. Act normal.
“Okay, then,” she says. “Be safe.”
My real mother would never say that, either. It’s like we are dancing with words. Trying to see what fits with what.
“Thanks,” I say.
Charlie looks again. Eyebrows scrunched. It’s his way of saying, What the fuck is going on here?
I grab Charlie’s book from his hand and walk to the door. Grabbing Charlie’s book is the best way to get him moving. Like getting a dog to follow by waving a bone.
If we had a dog, I bet he would know that this is not my real mother. Dogs can sense those kinds of things. They can sniff out drugs in suitcases and dead people buried in basements.
When I get back to the driveway, Julia is standing beside Sarah Flaherty. The two are straddling their bikes. Sarah Flaherty is in my driveway. A pickle bucket is hanging off Sarah’s handlebar.
“Sarah’s coming with us!” Julia says.
“I hope it’s okay?” Sarah says.
“Yuck!” Charlie shouts, running to catch up to me. “Fishing’s supposed to be for boys!”
“Shut up,” I say. I turn and throw The Zombie Survival Guide at him. It hits him on the chest.
“If it’s going to be a problem…” Sarah says.