‘No,’ I said. Surely I couldn’t. That would make me a mean, mean boy.
She put a cool hand on my shoulder. ‘Tell me the truth,’ she said.
My throat felt like it was full of knives. I gave a single nod. ‘I love the kitty more,’ I said.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘You are an honest child. Now take it out of your pocket. Put it on the ground right there.’
I laid her gently on a patch of moss at the foot of the tree. I could hardly bear to let go of her, even for a moment.
‘Now, back to the car. We are going home.’ Mommy held out her hand.
I made to pick Olivia up, but Mommy’s fingers were like a cuff about my wrist. ‘No,’ she said. ‘That stays here.’
‘Why?’ I whispered. I thought of how cold and alone she would be, here in the dark, how the rain would wet her and rot her, how squirrels would chew her beautiful head.
‘It is practice,’ Mommy said. ‘You will thank me in the end. Everything in life is a rehearsal for loss. Only the smart people know it.’
She pulled me back through the forest towards the car. The world was a dark blur. I was crying so hard, my heart felt like it would burst in my chest.
‘I want you to feel the power of it,’ she said. ‘Of walking away from something you love. Doesn’t it make you feel strong?’
The spiny stars of the headlights drew closer and I heard the car door slam. My father smelled of what I thought was plum pudding and sweat. He held me tightly. ‘Where did you go?’ he asked Mommy. ‘What’s going on? He’s crying.’ Daddy turned my face this way and that, looking for hurt.
‘No need for hysterics,’ Mommy said with a little of the nurse. ‘We tried to find an owl. They nest round here. Then he dropped that cat key ring and we could not find it in the dark. Therefore, the waterworks.’
‘Oh, kiddo,’ said my father. ‘No big deal, huh?’ His arms were no comfort.
I never asked for a kitty again. I told myself I didn’t want one any more. If I loved her I might have to leave her in the woods. Or one day she’d die, which was almost the same thing.
So it was many years before it happened that Mommy began to prepare me for her departure. I understand her better, now. Now I’m a parent I know how afraid you get for your child. Sometimes when I think about Lauren I feel almost see-through with fear, like a pane of glass.
When we got home Mommy put me in the bath and gently checked me all over. She found a scratch on my calf where I leaked out red. She drew the flesh back together with two neat sutures from her kit. Breaking me, then mending me, over and over – that was my mother.
The next day Mommy set up the bird tables in the yard. She put up six wire feeders to attract the smaller birds. She hung them high from poles so the squirrels couldn’t steal. She put out cheese for the ground feeders, wooden hutches filled with grain, plastic tubes to dispense sunflower seeds, balls of fat dangling from string, a block of rock salt.
‘Birds are the descendants of giants,’ Mommy said. ‘Once they ruled the earth. When things got bad they made themselves small and agile and learned to live in treetops. The birds are a lesson in endurance. These are real, wild animals, Teddy – better than a key ring.’
At first I was afraid to feed or watch them. ‘Are you going to take them away from me?’ I asked her.
She said, surprised, ‘How could I? They do not belong to you.’ I saw that she was showing me something that was safe to love.
All that was before the thing with the mouse, of course – before Mommy began to be afraid of me. Now the Murderer has taken the birds away, even though Mommy said that it couldn’t be done.
I had to stop because I’m getting upset.
All that happened fifteen years before Little Girl With Popsicle disappeared from that same beach on the lake. The lake, Little Girl With Popsicle, the Bird Murderer. I don’t like to think that all these things are connected, but events have a way of echoing through. Maybe there are secrets in that story after all. No more recording memories. I didn’t like that.
Dee
It happened on the second day of vacation. Dad took a couple of wrong turns on the drive up from Portland, but when they smelled water in the air they knew they were back on track.
Dee remembers the fine details best; the popsicle in Lulu’s hand leaking sticky green onto her fingers, the drag of the wooden stick on her own purple tongue. There was sand in her shoes, and sand in her shorts, which she didn’t like. There was another girl on a neighbouring blanket of about her age and they caught one another’s eye. The other girl rolled her eyes and stuck a finger down her throat, gagging. Dee giggled. Families were so embarrassing.
Lulu came to Dee. The straps on her white flip-flops were twisted up. ‘Please help, Dee Dee.’ Both sisters had their mother’s eyes; brown, shot through with muddy green, wide and black-lashed. Dee felt the familiar, helpless recognition, on looking into Lulu’s eyes. She knew herself to be the lesser version.
‘Sure,’ Dee said. ‘You big baby.’
Lulu squawked and hit her on the head, but Dee untwisted the straps and put the white flip-flops on her feet anyway, and made the moose face, and then they were friends again. Dee took her to the water fountain to drink, but Lulu didn’t like it because the water tasted like pencils.
‘Let’s read minds,’ Lulu said. It was her new thing that summer. Last year it had
