Not long before, by this lake, a young boy had disappeared. They brought the kids from the group home there on weekends sometimes. Maybe they still do. This boy didn’t get back on the bus at the end of the day. Sometimes I gave myself pleasant chills, imagining what happened to him. Maybe he chased a pretty red bird, or a deer, until he was out of sight of the crowds, by the deeper reaches of the lake. When he stumbled and fell into the cold there was no one to hear his cries. Or he wandered under the vast green canopy of the forest, until all his mind became green and he faded into the dappled light and became something else, something other than a boy. But he probably just hitched a ride back into the city. He was trouble, everyone said so.
‘Here, Teddy.’ Mommy’s touch was soft on my head, but I gasped and started as if she had hit me. She put something into my hand and after a moment of sun blindness I saw what it was. The little cat seemed to arch her back in pleasure against my palm.
The rush of gladness was so strong it actually felt like pain. I stroked her with a finger. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘kitty, kitten!’
‘Do you like it?’ I could hear the smile in Mommy’s voice.
‘I love her,’ I said. ‘I’ll take care of her so good.’ Worry ran through my enjoyment like a vein. ‘Was it expensive?’ I knew that we were poor right now, and I knew I wasn’t supposed to know.
‘It is all right,’ she said. ‘Do not worry about that, for goodness’ sake. Are you going to name her?’
‘She’s called Olivia,’ I said. To me the name was classy and mysterious, exactly right for the wooden cat.
This small extravagance seemed to lift everyone up. I played with Olivia and I didn’t care any more what other people thought about us. Mommy hummed, and even Daddy smiled and did his funny walks, pretending to trip over his own shoelaces and fall down in the sand.
Mommy’s rule was always to get the most out of a trip, so we dawdled until almost everyone else had gone. The shadows lengthened and the hills began to eat the sun. Bats were darting through the dusk by the time we left. The car was a furnace, holding all the heat of the day. Daddy had to cover the scalding seats with a towel before I could sit down in back. I put Olivia carefully in my pants pocket.
‘I will drive,’ Mommy said gently to Daddy. ‘You did it this morning. Fair is fair.’
Daddy touched her face and said, ‘You are a queen among women.’
She smiled. Her eyes still held that distant look. It was years later that I noticed she never let Daddy drive after noon, after he started drinking from the coffee Thermos and doing the funny walks.
The car rumbled through the coming night and I felt happy. Everything was gentle, inside me and out. Only children can feel that kind of safety; I know that now. I must have drifted off because waking was like a slap to the head, shocking and sudden.
‘Are we home?’ I asked.
‘No,’ Mommy said.
I raised my head sleepily and looked out. By the beam of the headlights I saw that we were pulled over on the side of a dirt road. There were no people or sidewalk or other cars. Great ferns like ostrich feathers grazed the windscreen. Beyond that were the sounds and scents of trees talking, night insects making sounds like tick, tick, tick.
‘Did we break down?’ I asked.
Mommy turned around and looked at me. ‘Get out, Teddy.’
‘What are you doing?’ The tone in Daddy’s voice was fear, although I could not have named it so, at the time. All I knew then was that it made me feel disgusted with him.
‘Go back to sleep.’ To me she said, ‘Teddy. Now, please.’
Outside the car the air felt solid, like wet cotton on my cheek. I felt small in the rolling dark. But another part of me thought it was exciting, to be in the forest at night with Mommy. She never did things the way other people did them. She took my hand and led me away from the car, from the light, into the trees. Her pale dress looked like it was suspended in the dark. She was like a sea creature floating across the ocean floor.
In the forest, even familiar things were strange. The constant wet patter of the night became the chilly drip of a dungeon. The creak of tree branches was the shifting of giant, scaly limbs. The snagging pull of a twig was bony fingers grasping at my sleeve – the fingers, maybe, of something that had once been a child, who wandered into the green light and never returned. I began to be scared. I squeezed Mommy’s hand. She squeezed back.
‘I am going to show you something important, Teddy.’ She sounded normal, as if she were telling me what was in my sandwich that day, and I felt better. As my eyes adjusted, everything seemed to glow in the half-dark, as if the air itself held light.
We stopped beneath a towering fir tree. ‘This will do,’ she said. In the distance, through the crackling branches, I could still see the faint beam of our headlamps.
‘I bought you that cat today,’ Mommy said. I nodded. ‘Do you love it?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘How much?’
‘I love it more than I love … ice cream,’ I said. I couldn’t think how to explain my feelings for the little wooden cat.
‘Do you love it more than you want Daddy to get a job?’ she asked. ‘Tell the truth.’
I thought about it. ‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘I do.’
‘You know the little girl I look after at the hospital, who has cancer? Do
