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January 11th ,1976.
Maggie dreamt of a child with several faces. The dream had plagued her sleep nearly every night for the past 7 months, and even though it wasn’t a nightmare per say it still had her startling awake most nights.
It progressed in almost the exact same way every time. She would wake up in a hospital, alone and disoriented. Sometimes she would be hooked up to various machinery, the purpose of which she never truly understood. Other times she woke up with a tube down her throat, or eyes that could no longer see. The most common variant of the dream, however, was the one in which she awoke with her lower body covered in crimson, despite feeling no pain.
This particular dream was one of the latter, and when she awoke, she felt cold and sticky, but otherwise perfectly normal. She couldn’t see a ceiling above her, only the yellow painted walls that stretched towards the sky, until they became undiscernible. Even so the entire room was lit with a bright, fluorescent light that made the back of her eyeballs hurt and her head throb. Closing her eyes, she called out for a doctor or a nurse, despite already knowing that nobody would show.
She felt dizzy, something close to carsickness, when she swung her legs out the side of the bed and sat up. An intense pull tugged at her chest, her dream compelling her to follow along with the set path as usual. Staggering a little she left her bed behind, shivering in disgust as her dress clung wetly to her legs. Absentmindedly she rubbed her abdomen.
Keeping track of how long it took her to reach a door proved difficult. In this version of the dream there were no windows in the walls around her, and the sickly, pale-yellow paint made her think of drowning in quicksand or getting lost in the desert. Perhaps Wentworth did have a point when he tried to discourage her from reading adventure novels before going to bed. The door manifested itself out of nowhere, causing her to stumble right through it and into the adjacent room. It gave her a feeling similar to being on a conveyor belt, like the dream was dreaming her and not the other way around.
The room was filled with unfamiliar figures. Their clothes identified them as a doctor and nurses, but their faces remained blank, and the more she tried to bring them into focus, the hazier they became, lacking any discernible features. They were completely still, frozen as if in a picture, and when she tentatively reached out to touch the arm of a nearby nurse, the figure simply vanished in a blot of darkness. A part of her had expected a scream or some other kind of reaction, but the nurse simply ceased to exist without any fanfare at all.
The silence hadn’t truly bothered her before when she was alone, but now that she was surrounded by the mannequin-like staff the silence seemed deafening in its unnatural stillness. Her right hand began to burn ever so slightly. Looking down she noted that it had become covered in sooth.
Her movements were jerky with nerves as she pushed forward, trying to avoid touching any of the other figures. The further she went, the stronger the feeling of someone watching her became. Fighting the urge to look back she kept going, finding it harder and harder to weave between the figures in the corridor. They seemed to be never ending, like the entirety of the hospital staff had gathered in this one, specific place and just kept pushing forwards regardless of how cramped the space became. Eventually she couldn’t find a way forward, not without touching more of the still figures, but the very thought of getting more sooth on her had alarm bells go off in her head. Finally looking back, she was met with the blank, featureless faces of the hospital staff. Despite their lack of eyes, every single one of them had turned their face towards her.
Panic made her stomach churn and she twisted around, ready to push forward between the two doctors blocking her way, when she instead was met with a dark void. The corridor before her had vanished, and instead she was staring into a vast nothingness that expanded ever further around her. Casting a glance over her shoulder, she saw how the void ate the remainder of the corridor behind her, including all the frozen staff. The sensation of relief made her sign deeply, though a voice in the back of her head reminded her that she was now simply faced with another kind of uncertainty.
Around her the repressive silence was gradually broken by a low, thumping noise. It sounded like a bass drum, only lower and irregular. It matched the throbbing in her head. A sudden glow from somewhere beneath her caught her attention. It was a thin string, or maybe a vein, that stretched forwards into the darkness before her. With every thump the glow from it got brighter, gradually fading back to a softer glow until the next thump made it bright once more. Not exactly a subtle hint, but given how badly she had slept the past months, she couldn’t blame her tired mind for being unimaginative.
Following the string into the dark, she quickly lost any sense of direction. At one point she was sure that she had simply walked in a big circle, and the thought was enough to distance her from the dream to such an extent that the string completely vanished. Somewhere far away in her consciousness she felt the warm body next to her own move in the bed.
A harsh lunge in her stomach made the darkness and the string before her reappear with a forcefulness that made her nauseous. The light pulsed brighter now, as the thumping sped up. She had the odd thought that the void or something was angry with her. Beyond the darkness to her right, just barely illuminated by the glow, something big slid past her. She felt a gust of wind and droplets of water hit her face as it disappeared beyond her field of vision. She should feel scared, she would have felt scared normally, but instead she felt like someone had shoved her, urging her forwards insistently. She nearly stepped on a small, round plush toy, lying abandoned in the dark. Picking it up, she noted that a turtle’s shell adorned the front with tiny arms and legs sticking out from underneath it. The shell was a mixture of blues and greens, the colors shifting in a complicated, geometric pattern. Above it was a large, round head with a wide, smiling mouth and a pair of black pearls sewn on as eyes. The face had a childish quality to it; innocent and a bit crude. It didn’t match the intricate shell, but only seemed all the more loved because of it. A beloved children’s toy, somehow lost and abandoned here in the dark.
She couldn’t fight the urge she felt to hold onto it, placing it in the pocket on the front of her dress as she continued walking.
At this point the dream would jump, cut out like an old and scratched-up record. Seemingly manifesting from nothing at all, a white, unassuming hospital crib suddenly blocked her path. She thought it was empty at first, but then the bundle of blankets began to move. Maggie only hesitated for a moment before her curiosity took over, carefully pulling the blankets aside and lifting the infant to her chest. The dream didn’t offer any sort of reason nor sense behind it, but she just knew that the baby was hers.
He was small but healthy, wiggling around to get comfortable in her arms. Those were the only features of the baby, however, that remained fixed. The color of his hair kept changing, his eyes growing large and small, tilting inwards or outwards, his jawline stretching and growing shorter again. One second, he was the splitting image of Wentworth, then he changed again and now looked just like her mother.
With every second that ticked by, she saw her child cycle through a thousand different faces. He looked like the neighbors’ 11 year old son, then the local policeman, then briefly he switched to David Bowie, then a comedian she had only briefly seen on TV, and then back to Wentworth again. With every shift the baby would whimper and sob, twisting in discomfort.
Unsure of what exactly to do to sooth him, Maggie clutched her son tighter against her chest. She tried cooing and rocking back and forth, but it had little effect as the child was now openly crying. The little one’s weeping was so loud that it nearly drowned out the sound of thunder approaching in the distance. She thought nothing of it at first, focus completely on the baby in her arms. But then the rumbling got louder. It seemed to shift through the air, growing more frequent and deeper, until it seemed like the sound came from underneath the ground rather than from the sky. The growl made her spine feel stiff, her body instinctively reacting even before it tore her attention from the child.
She turned and looked back through the dark, at first unable to see anything through the encompassing void of nothingness. The trail of pulsing light was still visible behind her, but it failed to truly illuminate any more than just a few meters on each side. She swore she saw something move off to the right, just on the very edge of the light. It jerked and scuttled and seemed bulbous in the brief glance she had of it. Like a tall snowman, or something similarly build of stacked, round shapes. An upright caterpillar?
The shape reemerged a lot closer. This time the upper bulbous form floated above the rest, the mass below writhing and changing. She wouldn’t have noticed that the broken off body part was coming even closer still, if not for it finally entering the sphere of light. A balloon.
She felt strangely entranced by it. The thundering sound, that she had just determined to be emitting form the mass, had turned smoother, the sound chopped off in small, rolling bursts rather than a continuous string. When she listened closely, she swore she could hear words underneath it. An urging choir of
do it
do it
doitdoitdoit
She tore her hand back only seconds before she touched the balloon. She hadn’t been aware that she was even reaching towards it. The infant was crying louder than before. Horrified she realized that he had nearly slipped from her grasp while she reached for the balloon. Holding him so tightly she worried it was hurting him, she stumbled a few steps backwards. The begging, purring quality of the rumble instantly turned harsher until the ground shook with it.
The balloon didn’t follow her, but instead the rest of the mass seemed to lunge towards it, absorbing it once more with a sickening squelch.
The lunge brought it into the light. It was as if a piece of the darkness had torn itself loose from the rest, cutting off the light from the patch behind its looming form. Just like before it was bulging, a tall, swollen mass of dark that bled and oozed into the air around it. With each second more drops dripped from the wriggling form, drying into little flakes that floated upwards through the air.
How exactly she knew that it was sooth, the same kind that had burned her hand earlier, she couldn’t say. It was an instinctive type of knowledge, like a newborn knowing how to breath.
She was already running when the wall of sooth came for her and the baby.
She followed the vein of light in a panic, the rumbling sound from the thing behind her making her feel sick. Any true sense of time had left long ago, but for the aching heaviness in her body. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this tired in a dream before.
The air was filling with sooth, more and more blocking the path before her as she ran. It burned through the fabric of her dress and scorching her skin wherever it touched her. She didn’t dare look back. She tried to shield the infant with her arms and head as well as she could, but she honestly couldn’t tell if the burning flecks hit him. Fear of losing her balance struck her momentarily so fierce that it nearly caused her to actually loose her footing.
She ran into something warm. The impact knocked her to the ground, the floor feeling cold and clammy under her knees. Terror, confusion and wonder mixed and raced through her. She was left starring at the creature before her, clearly visible despite everything around them remaining the same kind of un-penetrative black.
At first she thought the face belonged to an old man. The skin was leathery, the dark eyes sunken, but the lines and wrinkles held within them such a profound sense of kindness that it nearly made her already tired and panicked self break down in tears. Then the face shifted and she realized with a start that it was a giant turtle.
The animal fixed its gaze behind her. She was still too scared to look back, knowing she would see the writhing mass getting closer. It was only a matter of time now, surely. The pain from her many burns were catching up to her, temporarily clearing her mind. The baby was still whimpering, but the absence of his broken crying admittedly worried her more. Her arms were throbbing in pain as she placed him on the ground. A single tuft of hair was fizzed and charred, but otherwise he seemed alright. It was admittedly difficult to determine for sure, since the child’s features were still shifting, but as far as she could tell, there were no obvious burns or bruises.
Behind her the hissing rumble came to halt. The stillness that followed might as well have been filled with screams. The air seemed to vibrate with a growing expectancy, like being on a rollercoaster seconds before the big drop. That unmistaken anticipation of a booming crescendo that is yet to come. The urge to look behind her grew, but still, she did not dare. Even the floating flecks of sooth had come to a halt in mid-air, the very space holding its breath.
Then a man started screaming. At least it sounded like a man at first, though the fury underneath it made it pierce through her in a way that no other sound ever had. It seemed to reverberate in her very bones, digging into her skull and tearing at her until her vision blurred from the pain. A violent need overtook her, an itching in her fingers to dig in and tear apart whatever she could get a hold of.
ENOUGH
The pain disappeared immediately. The voiceless word vibrated through her entire body, soothing like the familiar tunes of a music box. Relieve made her body sag, muscles heavy and tired from the ordeal.
SAFE
The voice assured her, a gentle mix of piano keys and bells forming syllables in a language she did not know, but somehow understood either way. Around her the darkness grew thinner, lighter. When the last remnants of fear washed away, she chanced a look back. The darkness was gone. Instead of sooth she saw the glimmer of distant stars.
I AM HERE
Turning back towards the infinite creature, she was met with an imploring gaze. The turtle had silently lowered its head towards her; gentle, deep eyes looking into her very core. Had it been anyone else in any other circumstance the feeling might have awoken a new twinge of fear within her. The turtle blinked once, it’s gaze lowering to the infant on the ground between her hands.
I AM HERE
it repeated, the air and silence that followed taking on an urging edge.
“I don’t understand,” Maggie whispered.
I AM. HERE.
“You…” she mumbled, following the turtle’s gaze onto the newborn. Still changing, but for the first time since she had picked him up, calm. Then it hit her. With a flurry she dove for her pocket, happy to find that the toy she had picked up earlier was still there. Carefully she tugged the edge of the baby’s blanket to the side, placing the small toy turtle next to him.
The child’s appearance shifted once, twice, but then his hair turned dark and curly, his left eye a gentle blue and the right a deep brown, and finally the transformations stopped.
I AM HERE
The turtle hummed, the air around her taking on a pleasant sensation of satisfaction.
Then she woke up.
April 8th, 1981 - 5 years old.
Maggie startled awake in the middle of the night.
Behind her in bed, her husband was snoring idly, one arm thrown around her waist and chest pressed against her back. A cold shudder rushed through her body as she tried to find her bearings. Her heart felt heavy as it drummed against the inside of her ribcage, but what exactly had woken her up so suddenly wasn’t apparent. The bedroom was dark and cool as usual, the heavy curtains drawn and only a thin scattering of light from the lamppost outside snuck its way inside around the curtain’s edge.
Wentworth’s presence helped calm her. The sweaty sensation of his body pressed tightly against her back ought to have been unpleasant, but after a decade of marriage and even longer being sweethearts, Maggie had learned to savor the feeling. With a sigh she burred her face back into her pillow, inhaling deeply the scent that had come to be known to her simply as ´home´.
Just as she was about to drift off to sleep once more, the muffled sound of a sob reached her. Eyes flying open she sat straight up in bed, jostling Wentworth in the process.
“Wha-?” he mumbled with a groan, still half asleep and disoriented.
“Richie,” she explained, leaning down and placing a firm kiss on his cheek before getting out of bed. It had the desired effect, and obviously confident that Maggie could handle it, Wentworth rolled onto his back with a small, contented huff and promptly started snoring again.
Out in the hallway the sound of sniffles got louder. The sound gripped firmly at her heart and tugged until she had no choice but to instinctively follow it. She had never contemplated on the question of a ‘worst sound’ but right in that moment the sound of her child in distress seemed like the obvious and only correct answer. Every muffled croak threatened to break something deep within her very soul, and the desperation she had briefly felt upon waking up returned with a sense of urgency that nearly made her stumble.
“Darling? Mon puce?” she called carefully as she reached the door at the opposite end of the hall, painted blue and with big letters in a childish scrawl proclaiming Richie’s Room in white. Unwillingly she held her breath as she opened the door and stepped into her child’s bedroom.
Maggie Tozier’s little Richard, or “Richie” as Wentworth had immediately decided to nickname him, was an easy child. So maybe some of the kindergarten teachers and some of the other parents in town disagreed, but as Maggie would tell her son a few years later, she did not give “a rat’s wrinkly ass.” As far as Maggie Tozier was concerned there were only two things that held any importance: A smile on her boy's face and a kind heart in his chest.
Which was why her heart broke seeing her 5-year-old child curled into a ball on his bed.
“Richie?” She received a weak sound in reply, her son trying to hide his face away underneath his pillow. Carefully she stepped fully inside his room, as she narrowly avoided stepping on a few LEGOs and a plastic dinosaur.
“Did Tessa go to space again?” she asked as she sat down on the edge of the bed, referring to the plastic t-rex.
“Yeah…” came the muffled reply from underneath the pillow, “but the pirates won this time.”
“Oh no, not the pirates!” she gasped in theatrical horror. This made her little Richie giggle, and after a moment his little hands let go of the pillow and let it drop to the floor.
“Sorry I woke you up…”
“Oh mon puce, it’s okay. Did you have a bad dream?”
A nod.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
A shake that gradually morphed into a stiff nod after a few seconds.
“Tell me,” she urged gently, grabbing the pillow from the floor and placing it back underneath her child’s head before she snuggled down next to him.
“It’s stupid…”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I don’t think Stan wanna be friends with me anymore,” Richie mumbled in a rush. His body and face visibly fell like it had taken a huge amount of energy to keep the words from slipping out, and now that it wasn’t necessary anymore the sadness fully hit. A choked sob escaped from him again as tears started welling up in his mismatched eyes.
Carefully Maggie guided his face to look up at her, wiping away the tears with her thumb.
It had been a bit of a shock if she had to be completely honest. She imagined what the little life that was growing underneath her heart would look like for nearly 8 months, but the possibility of heterochromia hadn’t occurred to her. The midwife had tried to assure her; one could never fully count on the color of an infant’s eyes, certainly not for the first few months, and it was likely that the blue eye would slowly morph and end up matching the brown.
As soon as she was certain her baby was perfectly happy and healthy, however, Maggie found his mismatching eyes rather romantic. She had always jokingly said that she hoped their child would be a miniature Wentworth, while her husband had said that he wished for a miniature Maggie. It was a silly and embarrassing thought, one she would never say out loud, but in some way, it seemed like the universe had granted them both their wish all at once.
“Why do you think that?”
“When I was sick, he played with a boy named Billy,” her child sniffled, “and today he said that he wanted us all to play together tomorrow.”
“I see. Well, that doesn’t necessarily mean that he doesn’t want to be your friend anymore, puce,” she cooed, scooping him further into her arms until his small face was buried against her neck.
“But what if Bill is more fun than me?”
“Well, if that is the case then you will have a lot of fun playing with him and Stan tomorrow. Try not to worry, love. Friends come and go, that is just how it is, but you and Stanley? You two have something special.”
“You really think so?”
“Mhmm.”
“… Hey, mom?”
“Yes?”
“Will you sing for me? The one grandma likes?”
Maggie had to bite the inside of her cheek to hold back a chuckle. Just how many 5-year-olds asked their mothers to sing Edith Piaf, she wondered. “Yes, but before I do… Will you promise me, that if you have another nightmare, you will come and get me? Even if you need to wake us, I really want you to come to either me or your dad.”
“Okay, mom.”
“Thank you. My sweet, darling boy.” Pressing a kiss to her son’s forehead and stroking his back, she tried her best to recall the words of the song. It had been too long since they last visited her parents.
“Des yeux qui font baisser les miens…”
June 2nd,1986 - 10 years old
Taking a large sip from her coffee, Maggie relaxed against the couch with a sigh.
She had gone to check on Richie and his friends in the basement, only to find the four boys curled up close together and fast asleep in front of the TV.
It had originally been Wentworth’s idea to create a little den for their son and his friends down in the basement. She had been unsure at first, worried that if anything happened, she wouldn’t be able to hear the children. Richie had been quick to assure her though, immediately excited about the prospect of getting what was essentially a second bedroom to play in. Admittedly, it had been quite amusing to watch from the sidelines as her husband spend several weeks trying to get the heating working properly. Though she did not appreciate the various swears that had now been added to their child’s vocabulary as a result.
Andrea Uris had surprised her when the normally quiet and reserved woman had practically burst though their front door with her arms full of blankets and pillows for the den, all of them carefully and elegantly crocheted in various shades of blue. There was a certain something in her eyes, that Maggie hadn’t seen since the boys’ first day of kindergarten.
It was pure coincidence that the teacher had decided to place the children in alphabetical order, meaning that Richie Tozier had been placed next to Stanley Uris. At first both boys were silent and shy, but then Stan had gotten the hiccups, and Richie was immediately off trying various ways to cure him. When he finally managed to make Stanley laugh so hard that chocolate milk poured from the boy’s nose, Andrea and Maggie had shared a glance from across the classroom. Her son had gained his first friend that day, soon followed by Bill Denbrough and little Eddie Kaspbrak.
With the addition of an old TV and two armchairs, plus a fold-out mattress and a few boardgames that Zach Denbrough brought over, the den had been ready for the boys.
Standing in the doorway, she had allowed herself a moment to simply look at them all. It had been close to 11 o’clock, the last scenes of Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark flickering on the TV and all four boys sound asleep. They had somehow managed to squeeze into one armchair, arms and legs thrown akimbo as they snuggled close. As silently as possible she had found the fold-out mattress and set it up in the corner, figuring that it couldn’t be long before one or more of the boys awoke from their awkward positions and would need a proper place to sleep.
Once pillows and blankets had been arranged, she tip toed back around to the armchair and pressed a kiss against each of the four boys’ foreheads. It was an odd feeling, being so grateful towards three 10-year-olds, but she was truly happy that her child had managed to find a group of friends that made him so happy. Wentworth would sometimes tease her about how much she cared for them all: ‘A mother of four in spirit,’ he would chuckle. She couldn’t help it though. Seeing how much they meant to her son, how close a bond the four shared? it triggered all her protective instincts.
It was especially true for little Eddie Kaspbrak, who looked so much like Frank that it made her chest clench. They didn’t talk much about it, but she recognized the hurt and protectiveness in Wentworth whenever he glanced upon the child of his dead best friend. Witnessing from a distance how Sonia became more and more twisted didn’t ease the pain.
No, all four boys would always have a home underneath their roof, with everything that entailed.
Gentle hands slid along her shoulders, carefully massaging the muscles in her upper back.
“Hi there, beautiful,” Wentworth hummed, standing behind the couch and looking at her with a look so tender than it made her melt further against the pillows. “Have I told you how much I love you today?”
“You might have mentioned it once or twice,” she giggled.
“Good.”
For a moment they simply remained like that, smiling at each other in a way that surely made them both look like utter idiots.
“Dance with me?”
“We have no music.”
“Yes we do,” Wentworth said with a wink, making his way to the front of the couch. The cheeky grin on his face reminded Maggie of when they were young; two stupid high schoolers head-over-ass in love with each other. That exact grin had caused her to come along on so many stupid ventures in the past. It still did occasionally.
Shaking her head in amusement she took the hand offered to her without a second of hesitation, her husband bringing her close to his chest right there between the couch and the coffee table. “There’s no room,” she laughed.
“There is plenty of room,” Wentworth simply said, both arms engulfing her in an embrace. They didn’t as much dance as they simply swayed, arms around each other and faces tugged close. Wentworth was humming softly under his breath, tune slightly off key and the melody near impossible to recognize, but absolutely perfect even so.
“The boys all good?” he mumbled against her hair.
“Yeah,” she sighed, snuggling closer and allowing herself to get lost in the feeling of safety and warmth. “They are all tuckered out.”
“Cute little rascals.”
“They remind me of us, you know? When we were kids.”
“Yeah. Of course, we were a lot stupider, but I will admit that they do have us beat when it comes to being loud.”
Snickering Maggie pushed playfully against her husband’s chest before bringing him close yet again. “I do believe that your son deserves most of the credit for that achievement.”
“Must be from your side of the family,” he shrugged with faux innocence, face twisting to keep back a laugh.
Comfortable silence settled between them for a while. They kept swaying even when Wentworth eventually stopped butchering songs, occasionally knocking into each other on purpose in a playful wrestling match that never truly began.
“Mags, I…” A frown had appeared on her husband’s forehead when she leaned back to meet his gaze.
“Love? What’s the matter?”
“I’m sorry we never managed to get another baby,” he mumbled, stopping their gentle swaying. “I know you always wanted a big family.”
“Oh darling. I have you and Richie,” she said firmly, one hand sliding up from around his neck to instead cup his cheek. “That is all I ever wanted. All I need. I love you.”
“I love you too,” he breathed, leaning into her touch.
They met in a deep kiss, lips parted and slotted together warmly. It made her instantly feel lightheaded, her heart making a happy little flutter in her chest. How long had it been just the two of them? Friends since childhood, sweethearts since high school, then two years of marriage on their own and now ten as a family of three. She never got tired of kissing him, the goofy boy with glasses who turned into the man with the bushy mustache and laughter lines around his eyes. Her first and deepest love, only rivaled by her love for the child they made together.
“Yowza! I just woke up and you are already being gross!”
Startling apart they both turned to find their son mid yawn standing in the doorway to the basement. Wentworth was the first to break out of his trance, snickering as he let go of Maggie. He held both hands up, fingers curled into claws as he took comically large steps towards their offspring, knees nearly knocking against the floor.
“Daaaaaad,” Richie snickered, failing to sound too annoyed with his father’s antics. His voice did sound hoarse though. Maggie hadn’t paid attention to it, but now that she looked closely at his face, the puffiness around his eyes stuck out like a sore thumb. Had their son been crying?
Wentworth seemed to have noticed the same thing, because when he pounced on their child, his movement immediately turned gentle rather than teasing, scooping their boy up and cradling him close.
“I’m too old for this, dad,” Richie complained, but despite his words he still allowed his father to half drag and half carry him to the couch.
“Trouble sleeping, champ?” Wentworth asked as he placed Richie into Maggie’s waiting arms. Richie gave a weak shrug as he was tucked against his mother’s side; “I don’t really remember.”
“That’s okay, mon puce,” Maggie cooed, stroking his back as he got settled. “Is there anything we can do? Anything you need?”
“I just wanna sit here a while.”
Wentworth joined them on the couch, throwing his arm around Maggie and pressing close until both parents had created a protective cocoon around their child. They remained seated in comfortable silence for a while, until Richie finally spoke up again.
“Tell me how you met.”
“Again? You must have heard that story a thousand times already.”
“I still want to hear it.”
“Alright then,” Wentworth tightened his grip around them, hugging them firmly before moving back a bit in his seat to give himself more room.
“There I was!” he began, his voice deep and bellowing in a perfect imitation of a newscaster, “last day of summer, 9 years old, and I was risking my life in a quest to rescue a kitten-.”
Maggie had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from snickering. It had been her second day of living in Derry since her parents moved from Vancouver. She had been observing a group of kids playing at Bassey park, silently hoping that one of them would notice her and invite her to join. She had been too scared to approach, afraid that the other children would make fun of her Canadian accent or, even worse, perhaps not even understand her. When none of the other children acknowledged her, however, she ended up picking a direction at random and just walking, trying to find something else to do. It didn’t take long before the Kenduskeag cut her off, and she was left to follow the canal as it crept through Derry.
Eventually she reached a bridge and noticed a boy playing with something in the grass. Sneaking closer she saw that it was a litter of kittens. As she stood and tried to gather enough courage to make her presence known, one of the kittens crept away and got too close to the bank. As the tiny creature slipped into the murky water, both children had jumped into action.
“-I managed to get a hold of it, but the ground was muddy and slippery, and just as I was about to go under, there she was! An actual angel. She was the most beautiful girl that I had ever seen,” Wentworth sighed wistfully, shooting Maggie a warm look. “She grabbed my arm and dragged me and the kitten back up on the grass. Of course, I was mortified. A girl had just witnessed me make an absolute ass of myself and had to save me from drowning! A pretty girl! and now I was soaked, cold and shivering all over. The kitten was alright though, and that was the important thing. So I sucked it up, gathered my wounded pride and ran all the way home as fast as I could. Far as I remember I didn’t even thank you, Mags.”
“You didn’t,” she mused, enjoying her husband’s dramatization.
“But that was okay, right?” Wentworth implored their son, “it wasn’t like I was ever going to see her again, I thought. Oh, how wrong I was!”
Richie was still giggling and following along with his father’s story despite knowing every word of it by now. Maggie had started school the day after, and as luck would have it, Wentworth and Frank Kaspbrak had made such a ruckus that day, that the teacher decided to place the new girl in the seat between them.
“We became friends,” Wentworth chuckled, his theatrics fizzling out as he got caught in the memories. “The more time I spent with your mother, the more I fell in love with her. Of course, it took me a while to realize that that was what I was feeling. I knew I thought she was pretty but, love? Love is a much more serious matter. Remember that kiddo,” Wentworth told Richie with a wink, his mind once again fully present, “love is important. No matter what it might or might not become, it must be cherished.”
A weighted silence settled comfortably around them for a time, all three Toziers lost in their own thoughts. Eventually Wentworth got back up to make cups of warm milk, leaving Maggie and Richie curled up on the couch.
“Hey, mom?”
“Yes, mon puce?”
“How did you know that you were in love with dad?”
“Oh, that is a complex question. I think I was… 15, when I first had the thought that ‘I wouldn’t mind being with him forever’. From then on it was all too easy.”
“How?”
“Being with your dad, made me feel happy. I don’t mean the normal kind of happy, like when you get an extra scoop of ice cream, I mean- How can I put this… I was happy because I knew that I made your dad happy. Every time I made him smile or laugh, I wished that he would always feel like that. It’s difficult to explain properly, but I think that is the closest I can get.”
“So being in love is… wanting to make somebody happy?”
“Simply put, yes. When you love someone, you love every single little part about them. Even the parts they might hate themselves. And it becomes like a… like a mission, to keep them safe and happy.”
“Like how I want Stan and Bill and Eddie to be happy?”
“Yes. Friendship is also love. Being in love is a little different though, mainly because you also want to kiss the other person.”
“Oh so-… I think I get it.”
Maggie’s finger had gotten tangled up in her son’s curls as they spoke. It made Richie snicker when she tried to detangle it only to make the tangles even worse. She had a sense that there was something more her son wanted to ask, but then Wentworth returned with three cups of steaming milk and soon their son went back downstairs to rejoin his friends.
August 30th, 1989 – 13 years old.
She had gotten up for a glass of water when she noticed the light coming from the basement. The clock in the kitchen displayed that it was about four in the morning, so surely everyone had to be asleep.
Figuring that Richie had simply forgot to turn off the lights the last time he left the den, she walked over and opened the door swiftly, only to freeze in her tracks. She couldn’t see anyone from on top the stairs, but she instantly recognized the sound of crying.
“Richie?” she called out softly.
The crying stopped.
“Not right now.” Richie’s voice sounded strained, the words forced out through a series of sniffles. Maggie only paused for a moment before she walked the rest of the way down the stairs. She had to make sure that he was alright.
Since the rest of the house was covered in darkness the light coming from the basement had been like a beacon when she stood in the kitchen. Once at the bottom of the stairs, however, she realized that it was only a single lamp. Richie was huddled next to an armchair in the far corner, back leaning against the side with his long legs folded up towards his chest.
“Is everything okay, sweetheart?”
“I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Did something happen? Or was it a nightmare?”
“No! Nothing happened! Just go away!”
“Richie-“
“Get out!”
Maggie was rooted to the spot from the shock of Richie’s outburst. She had never seen her son like this before. Sad? Yes. Distraught? Never to this degree. She had her suspicions that her son was dealing with bullies at school, but lately he had seemed so genuinely happy with the new friends he had made. Something serious must have shaken him and shaken him badly at that. How could she help? There had to be something she could do.
Noticing her hesitating made Richie snap.
“Fucking go!”
Seeing him like this broke her heart. But that wasn’t his burden to shoulder along with whatever hardships he was already going through.
Defeated she nodded, more to herself than to him, and walked back upstairs. As soon as the door fell shut behind her, she could hear his crying pick up again.