Work Text:
Mom didn’t know and Dad didn’t know. They kept saying so. There had been a lot of running up and down the stairs and in and out of the back door.
But Mom just didn’t know, and Dad didn’t know either.
Down the hall, baby Mary screeched as if she was being eaten by a monster.
After a while Steve, lying flat in his bed and getting mad because he’d been woken up and his head was achey-sleepy, figured out that the screeching was going from cranky, to angry, to really, really, sad. The cranky screeching he was used to, and could even sleep through if he put the pillow over his head. This new screeching was louder, like an alarm siren, and made his fingers buzz.
It was more than he could stand. Something about the tone of it tickled the back of his throat, made tears prick, sharp, in his eyes.
Mom and Dad didn’t know where the thing was that would help.
Perhaps it was Lilly Bear. Mary went through phases when the only friend she wanted near her was Lilly Bear.
But, no. Steve had seen Mary throw Lilly Bear out of her cot when she was being put to bed. And just before he went to bed himself and was allowed to join Mom in looking in on his little sister, he’d seen Mom pick Lilly Bear off the floor and tuck her back in.
“I checked the car,” Steve heard Dad say in his slowed-down, calm way. He sounded as if he was not going to be calm and slowed-down for much longer.
Mom’s voice was crackly with tension and that weird worry-mad mix she did.
“It has to be somewhere. You absolutely sure it’s not in there with her?”
In the background the wave of Mary’s screeching rose once again. There was a muffled thumping that Steve knew was her crashing her feet on the end of the cot. She’d hurt herself if she kept doing that. Someone needed to go pick her up, walk her round for awhile.
“Go see to her,” his Dad said, almost as if he’d heard the inside of Steve’s head. “I’ll take another sweep round. We’ve tried the usual places, I’ll try the unusual ones.”
“Or you could go see to her,” Mom came right back, which would have made Steve giggle if he hadn’t felt so churned up.
He didn’t know how they’d worked it out, could just hear one of them in Mary’s room and the funny sound Mary’s voice made when she was swept up out of the cot. There were footsteps downstairs as well.
Steve sat up in his bed.
Apart from when Lilly Bear was in favor, there was only one other thing that could keep Mary sweet.
Blankie. That must be what they were looking for.
“Ugh, nasty old thing,” as Mom sometimes said with a sigh.
It was old and blue and knitted, like a fishing net Steve always thought, with angly edges and a Mary smell. Sometimes it was kicked down the bottom of the cot where it couldn’t be seen. Mom would take it away to wash sometimes and Mary always knew when it wasn’t there and complained, very loudly. When it wasn’t being stomped by her kicky little feet, Mary dragged it round with her and sucked one corner wound round two fingers.
Steve didn’t have anything like Blankie. He just had Cat, which was sleek and black and sat up on the shelf next to him looking as new and perfect as the day Aunt Deb had given it him. Steve used to carry Cat around by one ear when he was really little but he liked him neat and guarding his bed now, not all squashy and squishy from being in it. He didn’t need that.
“Oh baby, shush shush shush, pleeeease,” he heard Mom saying through the awful screeching and then her shouting, “John! Anything? She’s going to make herself sick again if she goes on like this.”
“Nothing!”
They weren’t keeping their voices down, and Steve knew why that was.
He was a Good Boy. He drove Mom and Dad crazy with his mad running around and bouncing from one thing to another all day long, same as he drove most of the First Grade teachers at school crazy. He knew he drove them crazy because once after a meeting at school Mom and Dad had taken him to see a doctor woman who asked him questions, made him play in a glass room, and then talked about medicine which seemed to make Mom and Dad crazier than ever.
He was a Good Boy Sleeper though. That’s what he knew they called him. They’d given him a gold star sticker on the fridge chart for staying in his bed.
Once he'd fallen asleep he didn’t wake up unless Mary was really sicky or extra loud, or unless Mom was in a mood and crash-slammed a door. And even then they didn’t know he’d been awake because he didn’t tell them.
But anyhow. Good Boy Sleeper who stayed in his bed or not, Steve needed to help out in this situation. If he didn’t he’d be awake for hours and hours until they finally got Mary off to sleep, and the thought of being too tired to do stuff tomorrow gave him a panicky feeling.
Steve clambered out of bed, decided. He marched across the room to his bedroom door, walked straight out and along to Mary’s room.
“Mom!” he announced as he walked in, and she whirled around, Mary in her arms, and looked at him as if he’d done something, unforgivably, wrong. He felt a moment of doubt, and then plowed on. “Mom, I know wh-“
“Steve!” she said. Her eyes were wide, her face creasing as Mary struggled and wailed against her. “No! Go back to bed!”
“But, Mom-
“No, Steve! It’s not like you to be naughty like this. Go back to bed. Now!”
The sharpness of her tone stung him, made his tummy hurt. Mom was tired, stretched, cross with herself as much as him. Mary screeched and screeched as if she was going to explode. Steve didn’t know how she could keep going with it. Her little face was red, her blondey hair plastered against her head.
“Hey, buddy, hey,” came the gentler voice of Dad, and he felt a hand on his head. “Whatcha doing out of bed? You need to go hop back between the sheets. That’s what would help us most.”
Steve took a deep breath, wondering how on earth they were going to be able to hear him, never mind actually listen to what he was saying, over all the racket. Mom’s face became that cloud of fury he didn’t like much.
So he didn’t say a word.
He let Dad steer him to his bedroom door, stand there watching him as he climbed obediently back under the sheets and lay down.
“Good boy,” Dad said. “That’s what we need. Go to sleep, Steve.”
The room became darker again as Dad pushed the door almost shut.
Steve lay quietly for a few minutes. His head didn’t feel sleepy anymore and his mind was racing.
If he’d been given the chance - if Mary hadn’t been screeching quite so badly - he would have told them that her blankie was probably sitting under a tree on what they called Dolphin beach because that was the shape of it. They’d been there with the babysitter earlier, just before Mom came home. The babysitter liked taking them there because the sidewalk was smooth along the backs of the houses on that part of their street and there was a ramp on to the sand so she didn’t have to do much except park the buggy in the sand at the bottom. Steve knew how to get there much quicker by walking along the shore from their house but he wasn’t allowed to because there were mangrove trees in the way and you had to swing over deep water.
Steve sat up in bed again.
He pushed back the quilt, put his bare feet on the carpet. Mary’s screeching had dropped to a steady, rhythmic, grizzle. This didn’t necessarily mean she was going to drop off to sleep, Steve knew. It might only be what Uncle Joe called Mary ‘resting her voice for a few.’
Careful to be absolutely silent, he put on a zip-through hoodie, tucked a little torch into one pocket, and slid into his slippahs.
Then he climbed out of the window, also something he was strictly forbidden to do.
They’d ask him later if he hadn’t been frightened, going off into the deep dark on his own.
He hadn’t.
Down the garden, past the chairs, on to the seashore. Until he couldn’t hear Mary anymore.
There was a cool breeze and he needed the torch as soon as he was away from the house and the night covered everything up. He kept the beam steady, lighting up the path he was taking. When he heard a strange wild animal noise a little way away the hair stood up on the back of his neck but he didn't stop. He had to be careful on the rocks, treading in the places he knew would be less slippery. The first tree was two houses along. Steve switched off the torch, pocketed it, and used the light from the back room of the house at the top of the beach. He climbed up on to the lower branch, shimmied along it where it grew out over the water.
Then he was past the tree and trotting along the next beach. His own house seemed a long way behind him now. He hoped that the big, fierce dog in the fourth house along wasn’t going to come racing out of the house and attack him. Steve was not fond of dogs. He took off his slippahs and galloped along that stretch of shoreline, splashing in the shallows and leaping, safe, on to the next rocky outcrop. His feet curled over the uneven, hard surface. Tippy toe, tippy toe, up over the rocks and on to the sand again. One more big tree to go.
It was the one you had to get your balance on real careful. You had to stand on the thick branch which was quite high up and get a hold of some foliage above you. Swing yourself over. Just strong enough to make the opposite branch without falling in the water.
Not that Steve was scared of falling in the water.
His heart did beat a little faster and harder when he was standing on the thick branch. He’d left his slippahs and the torch on the coarse rock and sand below, just in case they got wet, so it was pretty dark. The branch he needed to get to was just a dim, dark shadow and it was hard to judge how far away it was.
Steve had never felt his heart thundering the way it was right now. It was almost in his throat, but he somehow didn’t mind the feeling and his head felt super-clear, like he’d been dunking it in a bucket of ice.
All he knew was he needed to be quick.
The jump was clean, like the ones he did when they played pirates in the big kids gymnasium. Kind of scary because it was dark, but kind of cool, too. Once he’d made the landing he scooted along the second, lower branch and jumped to the beach. Then it was a quick sprint up the shingle, which hurt his feet, towards the little sandy area. And to the tree where the babysitter and Mary had sat while Steve had been swinging on the bars next to the ramp.
It took a while to locate the blanket but eventually he spotted a lump of gray. The thing was rucked up, muddy, and damp, some way from where it had been left.
Triumphant, Steve caught it up.
He glanced through to the road where a car’s headlights had just swept around the corner, and it reminded him how far from home he was. And, for the first time, he wondered what might happen if Mom or Dad was to discover he was no longer in his room.
Sudden guilt rocked him.
But still, he told himself, he’d done what he came to do. He had Blankie!
And after all, he’d only been out for a really little while.
Going back took longer though.
Jumping between the branches didn’t go so smoothly because he had the blanket under one arm. And it was always harder jumping up than down. You had to grab on instead of landing, and he lost his grip. Ended up in the water. It was up to his chest but then his feet went from under him on the rocks and suddenly he was out of his depth and his leg hurt where he'd scraped it going in. The blanket floated away from him. It took him a while to get it back, like, really quite a little while. And then it was real tricky to get it up on to the branch.
He managed, but he was badly out of breath from the effort.
It seemed very, very dark then.
And the water seemed very, very cold.
When he tried to reach something to hold on to his body suddenly felt heavy and the water went over his head. Steve tasted salt, felt it burning his eyes. He broke the surface, panicking a little. Wishing, just for a moment, that he’d never come.
He couldn’t get a hand-hold on anything and in any case the big branch above was too high. Each time he tried he seemed to go under further, but now finding a way out was more important than wishing he'd never come. Treading water, annoyed at himself, he waited a moment or two to get calm. And then pushed up again with a loud huff, reached higher and harder for the branch.
“See,” he panted as he got a firm hold. “It’s easy.” He swung himself up out of the water, clung on with his legs, like a monkey. Slowly worked himself right way up, straddling the branch. He nearly laughed it was so wild – him, out here on a tree branch over the ocean, soaking wet, in the middle of the night! He toyed with the brief thought that this was precisely the kind of thing that would land him back in the glass playroom. Which would really pretty much suck. But then he shrugged off the notion as something he couldn't afford to deal with right now.
It took a few moments for him to feel steady enough to maneuver himself off the branch.
Back on the sand his legs felt wobbly. The scrape on his shin stung, and he was beginning to shiver.
Steve picked up the torch, slid his chilled feet back into the slippahs. Then he set off at a much slower pace along the shoreline. By the time he was coming up the beach at home his teeth were clacking. He couldn’t hear any screeching though.
The chairs seemed more lit up than they’d been when he passed them on his way out. So did the terrace.
In fact, his heart sank when he saw that the doors were wide open and all the lights were on downstairs. His footsteps grew slower and slower. Mom was sitting in one of the easy chairs almost folded in two, weeping. There was a uniformed policeman standing by the chair. Steve guessed he'd been gone longer than he thought.
It felt as if he was moving in slow motion as he came on to the terrace. He saw his father, cellphone clamped to his ear, turn and catch sight of him.
“Oh my God!” Dad said. His face looked different to usual. Like he was sick.
Mom's head snapped up. Although she could get worked up over stuff, Steve wasn't used to seeing her cry. But there were actual tears running down her face, her nose was red, and she stared at him as if she didn’t quite know who he was.
“Hey, Mom,” Steve said, the lights hurting his eyes. “I just went to get Mary’s blanket.”
Mom and Dad didn’t seem to be able to speak for the longest time. And then Dad came back to life.
“It’s OK,” he said into his phone, scrubbing a hand over his head in a jerky way. “Joe, it’s OK, we got him.”
Steve blinked at Duke Lukela, the young policeman from where Dad worked.
“Hey, Steve,” Duke said. He seemed to be the only normal one. “Good job with the blanket.”
Steve held it out, sodden, and smelling of the ocean. “Did Mary go to sleep?” he asked, and then thought he might need to sit down.
He got a little rocket from Dad. About climbing out of the window. And leaving the house alone without telling them. And then a way, way bigger rocket from Mom, although most of it he couldn’t understand because she was cry-shouting at him. It only stopped because Mary began screeching again.
They made him take a hot shower, and then when he was in a clean t-shirt and sleep-shorts, he had to drink hot milk in bed.
Dad came in to ruffle his hair and said, “Son, you’ll be the death of me,” which Steve didn't quite understand, and then he was alone with Mom.
And when Mom had asked him over and over if he was warm yet, and fussed with the bedcovers and asked him if he wanted her to stay until he fell asleep, and he told her absolutely no, she sat down next to him. Quiet at last.
“Never, never, do anything like that again, do you hear me? Never. I can’t lose my little man, I can’t.”
Her voice was trembly as if she was going to cry again. Although there was still a hint of the rocket in there, too.
“Sorry,” Steve said, “I’m sorry.” There were hot tears standing standing in his eyes, but that was mostly because his leg burned where he’d scraped it. He mostly got why Mom was crying and mad, even though he wasn't actually dead or lost, and Mary had her blankie back. Before the shower he'd suggested they put it in the tumble dryer and Dad and Duke Lukela had both laughed. They put it in, though.
Mom shook her head at him, as if he was a mystery, stroked some of his wet hair back.
“Is Mary asleep?” he asked, to distract her.
Mom laugh-hiccupped. “Yes. That nasty, smelly, blanket is next to her and she’s sleeping tight. Lilly Bear’s in the huddle too.”
Steve considered. His head was getting awful achy-sleepy again.
"Get some sleep," she said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.
“’Night, Mom,” he whispered on a long yawn, clutching at her sleeve and then letting go again.
Mom paused a long time before she whispered back, “’Night, Stevie.”
He didn’t like being called Stevie but figured he’d let her off tonight as her voice was still trembly. She stroked his hair again before she left.
Steve rolled over and listened to the peace for a moment or two. Mom and Dad’s voices in their bedroom sounded low, quieter than they usually were.
His mind was busy still, but that was normal. He could still hear the cool sound of his feet slapping along the shore in the night. The sound of the wind. He could smell the ocean.
Tomorrow he’d go swimming.
But then again, maybe not.
Almost without thinking Steve reached out through the dark, tipped Cat off the shelf. He laid the side of his cheek against the soft, perfect fur, and closed his eyes.