104. My Son

Aunt Alice seems permanently distracted, lost, always wondering where she happens to be. Mom picked her up and brought her over for dinner. This is the first time, and judging by how Aunt Alice is acting, it’s probably the last. She doesn’t eat much, barely responds to the things Mom says, and glances at me like I’m one of her mannequins.

After dinner, as Mom is cleaning up and I’m sitting on the couch across from Aunt Alice watching Wheel of Fortune, Mom makes a suggestion.

“Why don’t you show Aunt Alice the locket you found?”

I nod and go upstairs to get it. It’s in my little assortment of strange things I’ve found around Solitary. I bring it to her and then sit on the sofa next to her.

“I found this the other day. We were wondering if you know who this baby might be.”

I show her the locket in my hand and see her slow eyes move toward it.

I expect more of the same—the distant glance, the half-deaf ears, the barely spoken words.

But it’s like someone switched an on button. She blinks and then keeps blinking as if she’s thawing out.

“Indigo,” she says.

She hasn’t even taken it from my hand.

Bingo for Indigo.

Mom walks into the room, surprised that Aunt Alice said the name so quickly.

“Aunt Alice—have you seen this before?” Mom nudges for me to open the piece.

I do, and then something crazy happens to Aunt Alice.

She looks … scared?

No, not scared. Mesmerized. Shocked.

“Aunt Alice?”

“Where did you find this?” she asks Mom.

“Chris found it. In the Corner Nook.”

Bony, spotted fingers take the locket in their grip and bring it up to her eyes.

“Aunt Alice, do you—”

Mom stops talking because she sees the tears coming down Aunt Alice’s face.

If I didn’t see them myself I’d never in a million years believe in them. I thought that Aunt Alice didn’t have enough of her left to feel whatever it is that she’s feeling.

Mom glances at me, and I look as amazed as she does, and then it hits me.

Indigo. It’s her baby.

“Alice?” Mom says.

I bet she’s not going to say anymore. I bet that this is going to be one of those many Solitary back stories that we never end up hearing—-

“Indigo was the son I gave birth to many years ago.”

She’s still looking at the picture inside the locket. Yet she also seems more awake, more there than she has since she walked through that door.

“You had a son?”

“A vile thing,” she says, shaking her head and almost spitting out the words. The tears are gone now. “A wicked thing.”

“Your … son?”

Aunt Alice strokes the locket and shakes her head.

“What do you mean?” Mom asks.

“What happened?” I ask.

“He’s old enough to know,” she says, looking at me. “He’s older than I was when it happened.”

“When what happened?”

“When that monster of a man called my father took me outside in the shadows of the towering stone and took away my innocence. Took away whatever good I had left in me. Leaving me with nothing but a hole. A hole and this. This.” Her shaking hand holds up the necklace.

Mom looks over at me in shock and surprise. She can’t say anything. I don’t have anything to say.

Kinner.

Something that Aunt Alice once said comes to mind. Something about Uncle Robert and me and hope. About putting an end to hope.

No.

I feel something deep inside. Not fear. It’s fearful, but it’s more like a sickening feel, a feeling of diving into something heavy and dark and wanting to go back up to the surface as fast as possible.

Aunt Alice starts rocking like a crazy person. She’s holding the locket like she’s rocking a child.

It’s an awful sight.

“I replaced evil with evil,” she says.

Mom looks pale as she says “It’s okay, you don’t have to—”

“I killed him.”

Mom knew it was coming and didn’t want it spoken out loud. Maybe she didn’t want me to hear it.

It horrifies yet somehow doesn’t surprise.

“I took him back to the place it happened. I took the baby back to that awful bridge, and I left him there. I let them have it. I let the baby go.”

Mom puts a hand over her mouth, and I see her eyes full of tears. She shakes her head.

“You can’t live with something like that,” Aunt Alice says. “Don’t matter if you didn’t know any better or if you were young and dumb. Don’t matter a bit. You take that with you the rest of your life. It eats away at you like a bird. Chipping away. Day. Night. Day. Night.”

Her aged Southern drawl is slow and haunting.

I don’t want to hear anymore.

“I thought it’d appease ’em, but it just got ’em more riled up.”

“Who? Who are you talking about?” Mom asks.

“Chris knows.” Aunt Alice looks at me and smiles to reveal her missing teeth.

Just like her missing mind.

I shake my head and act like I don’t have a clue, but yeah, I think I know the “them” she’s talking about.

“Heaven got no place for a baby killer,” Aunt Alice says, shutting the locket and then, surprisingly, giving it back to me. “Maybe you can give this to Indigo one day. I’d take it all back now, everything I done. I know that now.”

Mom wipes her eyes and then glances at me. There’s nothing to say. Nothing to do. At least not with Aunt Alice.

“I’m so sorry,” Mom eventually says, taking Aunt Alice’s hand in her own.

“Y’all think I’m the crazy woman with the house full of mannequins,” Aunt Alice says. “But I’d rather spend my days and nights around a family of fake faces than have to constantly see the face of the little one I let go.”

For a moment, maybe a whole minute, maybe an hour, I just sit there frozen in place. Unable to move or speak or do anything. And I think Mom is the same.

A house with a phony family to avoid the ghost of the real one haunting her.

My heart aches. Really and truly. It burns, and I need something to douse the stinging flames.

I’ve come to realize there is only one who can do that. Over and over and over again.