Ted Bannerman
Today is the anniversary of Little Girl With Popsicle. It happened by the lake, eleven years ago – she was there, and then she wasn’t. So it’s already a bad day when I discover that there is a Murderer among us.
Olivia lands heavily on my stomach first thing, making high-pitched sounds like clockwork. If there’s anything better than a cat on the bed, I don’t know about it. I fuss over her because when Lauren arrives later she will vanish. My daughter and my cat won’t be in the same room.
‘I’m up!’ I say. ‘It’s your turn to make breakfast.’ She looks at me with those yellow-green eyes then pads away. She finds a disc of sun, flings herself down and blinks in my direction. Cats don’t get jokes.
I fetch the newspaper from the front step. I like the local because it has a rare bird alert – you can write in if you see something special, like a northern flicker or a Siberian accentor. Even this early, the dim air is as warm as soup. The street feels even quieter than usual. Hushed, like it’s remembering.
When I see the front page my stomach goes into curls and knots. There she is. I forgot it was today. I’m not so good with time.
They always use the same picture. Her eyes are big in the shadow of her hat brim, the fingers clenched on the stick as if she thinks someone might take it away from her. Her hair lies wet and sheeny on her skull, short as a boy’s. She has been swimming, but no one is wrapping her in a fluffy towel to dry her. I don’t like that. She might catch cold. They don’t print the other picture, the one of me. They got in big trouble for that. Though not big enough if you ask me.
She was six. Everyone was upset. We have a problem with that around here, especially by the lake, so things happened fast. The police searched the houses of everyone in the county who might hurt children.
I wasn’t allowed to wait inside while they did it, so I stood out on the steps. It was summer, bright and hot as the surface of a star. My skin burned slowly as the afternoon wore on. I listened as they pushed back the ugly blue rug in the living room, tore up the floorboards and knocked a hole in the wall in the back of my closet because they thought it sounded hollow. Dogs went all over my yard, my bedroom, everything. I knew what kind of dogs they were. They had the white trees of death in their eyes. A thin man with a camera came and took pictures as I stood there. I didn’t think to stop him.
‘No picture, no story,’ he said to me as he left. I didn’t know what that meant but he waved goodbye in a cheerful way so I waved back.
‘What is it, Mr Bannerman?’ The woman detective looked like a possum. Very tired.
‘Nothing.’ I was shaking.Got to be quiet, Little Teddy.My teeth made little clicks like I was cold, but I was so hot.
‘You were yelling my name. And the word “green”, I believe.’
‘I must have been thinking about this story I made up when Iwas a kid, about the lost boys who turned into green things, at the lake.’ She gave me a look. I knew it well. I get that look all the time. I held tight to the trunk of the little oak in the front yard. The tree lent me its strength. Was there something to tell? If so it hovered just over the edge of my thoughts.
‘Mr Bannerman, is this your only residence? No other property around here? No hunting cabin, nothing like that?’ She wiped sweat off her top lip. Care pressed down on her, like an anvil on her back.
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, no, no.’ She wouldn’t understand about the weekend place.
The police went away in the end. They had to, because I was at the 7-Eleven all afternoon and everyone says so. The security tape says so. What I used to do there was: I sat outside on the sidewalk by the sliding doors. When they parted with a whoosh and released people in a blast of cold air, I asked for candy. Sometimes if they had it they gave it to me, and sometimes they even bought it for me. Mommy would have been ashamed if she knew but I loved candy so much. I never went near the lake or Little Girl With Popsicle.
When they finally finished and let me back in the house I could smell them all over. Traces of cologne, sweat, squeaky rubber and chemicals. I was upset that they’d seen my precious things, like the picture of Mommy and Daddy. The photograph was fading even then, their features growing pale. They were leaving me, vanishing into white. Then there was the broken music box on the mantel – Mommy brought it from her faraway home. The music box didn’t play. I broke it the same day I smashed the Russian dolls, the day of the thing with the mouse. The little ballerina was snapped from her stem, felled and dead. Maybe I felt worst about her. (I call her Eloise. I don’t know why; she just looks like an Eloise.) I heard Mommy’s beautiful voice in my ear.You take everything from me, Theodore. Take, take, take.
Those people had looked at all my stuff with their eyes and thoughts and the house didn’t feel like mine any more.
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply to calm myself. When I opened them again the Russian doll smiled fatly back. Beside her sat the music box. Eloise the ballerina stood proud and upright, arms perfect and poised above her head. Mommy and Daddy smiled down from the photograph. My beautiful orange rug was like soft pills underfoot.
I felt better right away. Everything was OK. I was home.
Olivia’s head butted my palm. I laughed and picked her up. That made me feel even better. But overhead in the attic, the green boys stirred.
The next day I was in the newspaper. The headline was suspect’sHOUSE SEARCHED. And there I was, standing in front of the house. They searched other houses but the article made it sound like it was just mine and I guess those people were smart enough to cover their faces.No picture, no story.They put my photograph right alongside the one of Little Girl With Popsicle, which was a story in itself.
The picture didn’t show the name of the street but people must have recognised it, I guess. Rocks and bricks came through the windows. So many. As soon as I replaced a pane another rock came through. I felt like I was going crazy. It happened so many times that I gave up and nailed plywood over the windows. It slowed them down. Not as much fun throwing rocks when there’s nothing to break. I stopped going out during the day. That was a bad time.
I put Little Girl With Popsicle – the newspaper with her picture in it, I mean – in the closet under the stairs. I bend down to put it at the bottom of the pile. It’s then that I see it on the shelf, half hidden behind the tower of newsprint – the tape recorder.
I recognise it immediately. It’s Mommy’s. I take the machine off the shelf. Touching it makes me feel strange, like someone’s whispering nearby, just below the level of my hearing.
There’s a tape already in the machine, part used – about half of one side has been recorded. It’s old, with a striped yellow-and-black label. Her faded formal handwriting.Notes.
I don’t listen to the tape. I know what’s on it. She always spoke her notes aloud. Her voice had a slight hitch around the consonants; she couldn’t quite get rid of it. You could hear the sea in her voice. She was born far away, Mommy, under a dark star.
I think,Just leave it there, forget I’ve seen it.
I ate a pickle and now I feel a lot better. After all, that stuff happened a long time ago. The light is growing and it’s going to be a beautiful day. The birds will be arriving. Each morning they pour out of the forest and descend on my back yard. Yellowthroats, kinglets, buntings, red crossbills, sparrows, blackbirds, city pigeons. It’s crowded and beautiful. I love to watch it. I made the peephole just the right size in just the right place in the plywood – I can see the whole back yard. I make sure the feeders are always full up and that there’s water. Birds can suffer in this hot weather.
