Twenty-Four

We had a half day, because of a teacher inservice, and there were still a couple of hours before I was due at the call center. So, instead of heading home, I walked to the cemetery. I could remember visiting it when we were kids, placing flowers on our “mother’s” grave on Mother’s Day, but it had been years since I’d been there.

When my father died, he was cremated. His ashes sat in an urn in his old room. There had been no procession to the cemetery. That had all happened six years before, and it had been at least that long since we’d been to the cemetery. Probably even longer than that. I didn’t know what drew me to the place now.

A short stone wall topped by an iron fence surrounded the small graveyard. The big iron gate was standing open when I got there. Large towering elm trees lined the perimeter, with a few more in the center. Their leaves had long since been shed, and their bare branches looked dark and menacing against the pale gray sky. It was cold out, but it felt even colder as I stepped through the gates. It was a bleak and creepy place. I wondered if this was why we’d stopped coming here.

I had a vague idea of where her grave was, but I couldn’t remember for sure. I wandered in what I thought was the general direction, stumbling over the frozen, uneven ground. Each marker I passed represented a dead Shallow Pond resident, and I wondered about these people who had lived and died in this sad town. Had they been born and raised here? Had fate brought them here? Had fate kept them here against their wishes? I imagined three more headstones that would someday join the others here. The three strange Bunting sisters who would be buried along with their secret. It felt weird to think about, but I was spared these morbid thoughts when the familiar name caught my attention.

Susie Bunting. I stared at the engraved name on the smooth marble surface. Below her name it read, Beloved wife and mother. I stared at the epitaph without really seeing it. There was something weird about this tombstone, and it took me a few minutes to realize what it was. There were no dates. I glanced around. All the other markers I saw had birth and death dates. Many only had a name followed by the dates, which were the sole bits of information about these other Shallow Pond residents. But how old was Susie Bunting when she died? Too young was all I knew, since there was no indication on her tombstone of how young she’d been.

Staring at the tombstone, I noticed something else. The surface of the stone where the epitaph was carved was rougher than the rest of the stone. It didn’t have that smooth, polished look. I wondered if the stone was defective, or if the person carving it had made a mistake. My father had been pretty good about pinching his pennies, but I tried to imagine the grief-stricken man Annie had described agreeing to use a defective tombstone for his wife’s grave if he could get it for half price. No, the rough area of the stone was no accident. It had probably contained her birth and death dates initially, but then my father realized that those dates would be inconsistent with the ages of her “children.” He must have had the dates removed and replaced with the inaccurate phrase Beloved wife and mother. To keep his secret—our secret—safe.

I wondered how many of the things I’d taken for granted in my life were also part of the carefully created illusion. Is that what we were doing in Shallow Pond? Had we come to this town in the middle of nowhere because no one knew us, no one could question where we’d come from or who our mother really was? Did I actually have family out there somewhere? Grandparents? Aunts and uncles? Cousins? I’d always been told that there were no living relatives, but now I realized how unlikely this was. Either my family was the unhealthiest, most ill-fated family of all time or my father had broken off ties with relatives on both sides to keep his secret safe.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized it must be true. It probably wouldn’t be that hard to track them down, but what would I do then? How could I explain who I was? I imagined finding my grandparents—no, they wouldn’t really be my grandparents. They were more like my parents, though that wasn’t quite true either. What would happen if
I located them … if I found Susie’s parents and showed up
on their doorstep, looking like the carbon copy of the daughter they’d lost so many years ago? They would have a heart attack, for sure, but then what? They would want an explanation, and if I told them everything, they could very easily go to the authorities. Those creepy men in the white coats would become more than just the shadowy figures in a bad nightmare.

I reached my hand out and ran my fingers over the carved letters on the cold stone. It was the closest I could get to knowing her, this mysterious woman who was and wasn’t the same person I was. She was dead, had been dead for a long time, but in some ways she wasn’t. She still lived on in the three of us, more so than someone lived on through their actual children. We weren’t simply offspring but younger versions of her. I wished I’d had the chance to know her, that she hadn’t died so young … but then, if she hadn’t died, I wouldn’t exist. It was a weird, dizzying feeling. I took a step back from the stone.

“Babie?”

I jumped at the sound of my name in the quiet cemetery. For one brief moment I thought the voice was in my head, that somehow Susie, alive through my own DNA, our shared DNA, was talking to me from beyond the grave. Then I turned and saw a figure a few rows away. He waved, and I recognized Cameron Schaeffer.

I wondered how long he’d been there. I began to step quickly away from Susie’s grave, as though just my presence there would tip him off to the great big secret. As I walked over to Cameron, I saw the headstone in front of him—his father. There were a bunch of different Schaeffers in the surrounding area. Apparently quite a few of them had lived
and died in Shallow Pond over the years. Cameron had escaped for a little bit, but now he was back in this town that had claimed the lives of so many of his relatives.

“Your mother?” he asked. I nodded. He pointed toward his father’s marker. “Today was his birthday.” His eyes were dry, but red as if he had been crying earlier.

I thought of the day I went ice fishing with Cameron. It felt like a million years ago. That was back when my biggest problem had been assuming I was the illegitimate child of Cameron and Annie. If only that was my problem. I’d felt a special bond with Cameron that afternoon, but like everything in my life, it was nothing but a fantasy. My whole life was one big lie, like the blatant beloved mother line on Susie’s headstone.

“I hate coming here,” Cameron said. “I come out here thin-
king I’ll be able to connect with him somehow, but he’s not here.” I nodded because I didn’t know what to say. “Where do you think they are?”

The obvious answer was in the ground, but I knew what he meant. Down there, buried in their coffins, those were simply cadavers. They were just the husks left behind after death. What did happen to the people? Did I believe in some sort of afterlife? Was Cameron’s dad in heaven? Was Susie? Could she be? Or was she inside of us somehow? Had our creation somehow gone and stolen her away from death, as my father had so desperately hoped?

“Maybe they’re just gone,” I said. It sounded bleak, so I said, “Maybe they’re finally free.” I wished it was true, but I didn’t believe it. Cameron nodded, as if he thought this was a valid possibility.

“Hey,” he said, as if suddenly snapping out of his grief. “I know it’s been a few years since I was a teenager, but this does seem like a weird place to spend an afternoon. Are you one of those goth kids or something?”

“I just needed to think about some things,” I said.

“Well, I mean, with the hair and the hanging out in graveyards and all, people might get the wrong impression.”

“I don’t really care what anyone in this town thinks,” I said.

“Amen to that.” Cameron laughed. He smiled at me, and I could see how my sister had fallen for him all those years ago. Well, how both my sisters had fallen for him. “It’s cold as hell out here, isn’t it?” he said.

It was my turn to laugh. It seemed pretty gutsy to refer to hell in a place like this.

“I’m freezing,” I admitted.

“Did you walk down here?” he asked. I nodded. “God, you’re crazy. But you’re a Bunting. It pretty much goes without saying. Come on, I’ll give you a lift.”

As soon as I got in his car, it hit me. I was sitting beside Cameron just as Gracie did when she went out with him, and as Annie had done before her. I thought about what Annie had said, about people belonging together. Was there some indefinable thing that drew two people together? Was there some pull that existed between us and Cameron Schaeffer? Perhaps he was powerless to resist Gracie. And me? I suddenly shifted in the seat, moving an imperceptible inch or so away from Cameron as he started up the car and cranked up the heater.

Gracie said my father hated Cameron, and now that made sense. How could he not hate Cameron? Because we were not just his daughters—we weren’t really his daughters at all. It was like Cameron was dating his wife. The thought was disturbing, and like so many of my thoughts of late, it made me a bit dizzy.

“Are you headed home?” Cameron asked.

“I’ve got a volunteer thing I have to do. You can drop me off at the municipal building.”

“You graduate this year?” he asked as he pulled out of the parking lot.

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure you aren’t secretly some goth chick? You’ve got the whole apathetic thing down to a T. Man, when I was your age I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of this town. You are going to college, right?”

A week before, I would have known exactly how to an-swer the question, but now everything was different. “I’m not sure,” I said.

“Don’t let Gracie talk you out of it,” he said. “She thinks she’s not smart enough for college, but that’s crap.”

“It’s not that,” I said. “I just don’t want to get my hopes up.” I knew Cameron would hear it as my concern about getting into a school, not my conviction that fate would prevent me from ever leaving this town.

“Jesus. Listen to you. You have to think positively. You won’t get anywhere with a negative attitude like that.”

“Says the guy who is unemployed and back living with his mother at age twenty-six.”

“Ouch.” He turned and gave me a smirk to show he wasn’t really wounded. Unfortunately, he took his eyes off the road. It was only for a second, but the car ahead of him came to a halt and when he turned back to the road, there wasn’t enough time to stop. He swore and slammed on the brakes. They squealed, and we smacked into the car in front of us hard enough to put a dent in its bumper.

We both sat there for a moment, too shocked to breathe. Cameron recovered first. “Babie, are you okay?”

I nodded.

“Crap,” he said.

I amended that to double-crap when I saw who stepped out of the car we’d hit. He was off-duty and dressed in jeans and a ski jacket, but I recognized Officer Hantz right away. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who recognized him, because Cameron began to curse quietly beneath his breath. He opened his window.

“I think I hit some black ice,” he said.

“Cameron,” Officer Hantz said, looking into the car. Then he glanced over at me and his expression darkened. “Barbara.”

“I was driving Babie over to the municipal building,” Cameron said.

Officer Hantz nodded like he didn’t entirely believe this, so I added, “I’m volunteering. At the call center.”

“Speed limit here is twenty-five,” Hantz said.

“I know. Like I said, I think there must have been some ice. I couldn’t stop in time.”

Hantz glanced at his car with its dented bumper. It wasn’t that bad. He seemed to be considering the situation.

“We don’t have to report this,” he said. “I can send you a bill for the repairs.”

“Thank you,” Cameron said. “Thank you so much.”

“Just slow it down, and watch where you’re going. Barbara, I’m headed over to the station anyway. I can drop you off at the call center.” It was only another couple of blocks to the municipal building. It seemed silly to get into Officer Hantz’s car when we were almost there.

“It’s not that far,” I said. “Cameron can drive me.”

“No,” Cameron said. “It’s okay. You should ride with Officer Hantz.” The two of them stared at each other, and I got the feeling a silent conversation was taking place that I was not privy to.

It was not until I was in Officer Hantz’s car that I remembered about Cameron being on the Megan’s Law website. Apparently finding out you’re a clone and that your whole life has been a lie can make you forget minor details like that. Besides, I’d pretty much come to the conclusion that Cameron’s appearance on the website was more of a misunderstanding than anything else. But misunderstanding or not, maybe Officer Hantz didn’t trust Cameron.

“Do you spend a lot of time with Cameron Schaeffer?” he asked. He watched Cameron in his rearview mirror and waited for him to drive away.

“No,” I said, and then because I thought it would somehow help Cameron’s reputation, I said, “He’s dating my sister.”

“You might want—well—it would probably be better if you didn’t spend much time with him.”

The call center was quiet.

“Weekday afternoons usually aren’t too busy,” Danielle told us. “Sometimes people just call to chat. We’ll get more calls later on tonight.”

Danielle stayed on the line while Meg chatted with an older woman whose husband was terminally ill. It wasn’t a domestic violence situation or any sort of crisis, just someone who needed to talk to another human being. Each call was anonymous. I imagined calling the hotline myself. Had they ever had someone call to say they were the product of some genetic experiment and needed reassurance that they were not a complete and total freak of nature? My guess was probably not.

Later in the afternoon, I had my own opportunity to take a call with Danielle listening in.

“I don’t know what to do,” said the woman on the other end. Her voice was weak and shaky. “It’s not that I don’t care for him, but I’m not in love with him. Does that make sense?”

“Sure,” I said.

“But he says that doesn’t make any sense, that I must be confused because if I care for him then I must be in love with him. I told him I need time and space to think about it, but he thinks the only reason I need space is because I have another boyfriend.”

“This is your boyfriend?” I asked.

“Ex-boyfriend.” She sighed. “He just doesn’t seem to understand.”

“Has he hurt you?”

“No, nothing like that. But he follows me around wherever I go. If I don’t let him in the house, he breaks in.”

“Are you at your house right now?”

“Yeah,” she said. “But he’s not here right now. Not yet, anyway.”

“Do you have anywhere you could go?” I asked. “A friend’s house or a relative’s? We have a shelter if you need a place to stay.”

“I guess I could go to my friend’s house.”

Danielle scribbled something on a notepad and held it up to me.

“It would probably be a good idea to file for a protection from abuse order,” I said.

“He isn’t abusive,” the woman said quickly.

“It doesn’t just mean physical abuse. He’s harassing you and breaking into your home—that’s a form of abuse.”

The line went quiet. Was she still there?

“Are you there?” I asked. I didn’t hear anything. I looked at Danielle in alarm.

“He says he only does those things because he loves me, because he can’t live without me. He thinks I’m being unfair.”

Danielle scratched out another note for me.

“Why don’t you go and stay at your friend’s house to-night? Can you call us back when you get there?”

“Okay,” the woman said.

“Then we can talk with you about what is involved in filing a protection order.”

“Okay. I’ll do that. Thanks.”

She hung up. I hung up my own phone and took a deep breath.

“You did a good job,” Danielle said to me.

I didn’t feel like I’d done a good job, though. I felt shaky. I didn’t know anything about this woman’s boyfriend, but for some reason the picture that had leaped immediately to my mind was the picture of my father that hung on our living room wall.

This woman’s boyfriend had passed the point of love, to something darker and uglier. It was no longer love; it was obsession. I thought of Annie’s late-night story. She said we were born of love, but that wasn’t really true. We were born of obsession. Just like that woman’s boyfriend, my father had been unable to say goodbye, unable to let go. In response, he created us.

Meg caught up with me as we were getting ready to leave. I had been doing what I could to avoid her, as much as I could avoid her while being in the same small room as her.

“He loves you, you know,” she said.

“Who?” I honestly didn’t know who she was talking about.

“Zach. Is there someone else I should know about?”

“No.” I paused. “You two really aren’t … ?”

“A couple? Nah, I meant what I said. I’d kind of prefer to not be with a guy who was into someone else. Call me crazy. Anyway, I kind of got back together with my ex.”

“I’m not really who he wants,” I said. It hurt to say the words out loud, but as I said them I felt sure I was right. I thought of what he’d said in the park. He wanted me to tell him the truth, but if I did, he would only run away screaming.

“Trust me, you are,” Meg said. “I could give you a ride over to his place.”

I thought of the way it had felt to kiss Zach. I wanted to feel that again—it might just be enough to escape this ugly world for a little while. It was selfish, but I wanted that.

“You know where he lives?”

“It’s not like that,” she said. “My aunt is his landlady. So, what do you say?”

“Okay,” I said.