I Love You Also, I Promise

fiction by Sophia Quinto

Henry fell into the river and it was your fault.

This is what I’m thinking about:

Rain plink-plunking off the bicycle, on its side in the dirt. Water beading on the shiny red metal; drops swelling and slipping to the ground. The back tire rotating slowly in the wind, squeaking twice with every interval. Snails inching out from under rocks to soak the summer rain up into their fat, spongy bodies; they are replenished by the same water that killed Henry.

The snails are puzzled by the bicycle, a new landmark in their habitat. But, as with sprouting bushes and resurfaced stones, they will grow used to it and trace paths into the dirt around it. Vines will weave through its spokes until the tire can’t turn. Furry animals will gnaw at the seat until the polyester stuffing spills out and dissolves into the earth like it belongs there.

The bike will become a part of the forest. It will exist for the trees and the dirt and the snails, not for Henry, because Henry threw it to the ground and raced to the riverbank, chasing you, and fell in.

Sometimes I wish it was you who died. I will never tell you that; it’s a wicked, twisted thought. But.

You are just a boy. Nine years old. You have pink cheeks and skinned knees. When you laugh, flowers bloom and the sun brightens and I wonder how anything on Earth could be so beautiful. You play in the forest with imaginary pirates and ghosts and dragons, you chase your friends through the trees shouting I’m gonna get you I’m gonna get you!

until you all collapse in a giggly dogpile. You need your dolphin-shaped night light and your stuffed calico cat Albie smushed under your chin to fall asleep. You are loud and sweet and funny and alive.

But if it had been you and not your brother, I wouldn’t blame the son I had left. I would look at him and think Oh, my poor darling who has lost his big brother. I look at you and I am horrified. I look at you and I think I hate you I hate you I hate you I wish it was you and then I pinch the skin on the back of my hand hard because a mother isn’t supposed to think like that.

But I do. I do, in the dead of night, when you and the animals and God are asleep and I can’t swat the thoughts away with something to do. I lie there and I hate you and I hate that I do. I love you also, I promise.

“Mom, I saw Henry!” you say.

I scream at you. I cry. I threaten to throw my beer bottle at your head for making such a sick, disgusting joke. You don’t move. You’re standing in the doorway, gasping for breath, clutching the doorframe like it’s the only thing keeping you standing.

“I saw Henry,” you say. “I really did.”

You are not sorry enough. You tell me you are. You cry at night and whisper that you are sorry so very sorry. You tell me you wish you hadn’t been so selfish, so careless.

But I see you walking home from school with your friends, smiling and shoving and shouting, and I wonder why you get to feel any happiness at all. I see you giggling at cartoons on Saturday mornings and I wonder how you can find anything funny in a world where Henry is dead. I see you bike away from our house, and I know you are heading for the creek that stems from the river because you come back with stringy, wet hair and a sunburnt face. I wonder how you could go near the river again when you know that its water filled your brother’s tiny lungs.

But I guess I’m glad you’re having such a fun summer.

When you lead me down to the river, we don’t pass the bicycle.

You’ve made a new trail in the six months since then. You’ve hacked away branches and shrubs, tied purple ribbons around specific trees so you don’t get lost, shuffled your shoes over rough patches and brushed away pine needles to make a path.

Does it make you feel better, I wonder, to follow a different trail to the river than the one your brother followed to his death?

Something is wrong with you, I think as I watch the back of your head bobbing in front of me. Your friends have a sick sense of humor and wanted to see your crazy, shut-in mother in daylight. Your brain can’t process his death, so it made you think you saw your brother in the shadows. Something. Something is wrong with you.

But, for some reason, I can’t help but follow.

When we get there, the riverbank is empty. You splutter and look around, peeking behind trees and squinting your eyes, searching the far shore. I feel sick for you. Your naiveté disgusts me. I want to grab you by the collar of your shirt and shake you until I can see in your eyes that you understand: your brother is gone.

But I don’t do that. Instead, I watch you suffer inside your little-boy-mind that can’t make sense of the truth. I watch the grief seep into you again when you realize that Henry is not a ghost, that he was not on the other side of the river, that you are stupid. You are so fucking stupid. I tell you this, and you stare at me with wide eyes, mouth gaping.

Your dad doesn’t call me anymore, and that’s your fault, too. He blames me for what you did.

When I told him what happened, he cried and cried like someone he loved died, even though he hadn’t seen Henry since he was a baby. Henry was not his son, he was mine. Mine only.

But you belong to both of us, and I hate that part of you that’s his. You even look more like him than Henry did, with your big, triangular eyebrows. Sometimes I can see your father’s face in yours, especially when you’re mad at me.

You still call him. I know you do. Your voice sounds different when you’re on the phone with your dad than when you’re talking to anyone else. More desperate, more polite. You want him to like you so badly, to come back for you and whisk you away from your sad, mean mother and your quiet, empty house.

But I know him better than you do. He won’t come back for you, no matter how polite you are or how much you complain about me. Because he is awful and because you killed Henry. How could he love you after something like that?

You and I don’t talk anymore, either. You avoid the house all day. I sit on the recliner, sleeping or staring at the TV, only seeing the face of my Henry in every sweet-faced child in every back-to-school-season commercial.

Every night, you come home late and tell me that you were with your friends and you had a good time. I say, “That’s nice; there’s bread and peanut butter in the pantry.” I don’t ask why you look as bad as you do, and you probably do the same for me. Your cheeks become gaunt and your eyes vacant, and still I don’t ask. Sometimes it feels like it was both of you who died.

August 4th. Five weeks since you first thought you saw the ghost of your brother. Five weeks since I told you you were stupid and watched your face crumple. This is when it happens.

You have been going to the river, but your friends have not. You have been lying to me.

I finally left the house this morning to get groceries. I couldn’t force myself to eat what was left in the pantry: canned beets, stale bread that thunked when tapped against the counter, and one rotting sweet potato. So I tied my greasy hair into a knot, threw a sweatshirt over my Doritos-stained T shirt, and stepped outside.

The sunlight stung deep into my eyes for the first time in weeks, and it felt good, in a nostalgic sort of way. My bones were heavy and my shoulders ached, but now I had all the air in the world to stretch into. I reached my fingertips towards the sky like a child and marveled at how close to the clouds they could get if I just tried. But most of all: the smell of pine trees. I’ve missed the smell of pine trees.

It was wonderful to get out of the house. To run errands like a person with nothing more important to worry about, to wander the familiar aisles and remember a time when it was all so easy. I didn’t think about Henry. I thought only about what food we needed and which brands were cheapest and which damn aisle would rice cakes be in because they’re not a cracker and they’re not a chip.

It was wonderful until I saw your friend Taylor’s mom. She waved me down, and I put on my best smile and let her hug me. She offered me her condolences and said she missed seeing me at Little League games. I wanted to change the subject, so I glanced in her Cheez-it-and-Oreo-filled cart and I said, “Picking up snacks for our hungry boys?”

Her eyebrows scrunched upwards and toward each other, like caterpillars kissing, and she told me that she hasn’t seen you since the end of June.

“June?” I said. “What do you mean you haven’t seen him since June?”

And she said, “Only the Martin boys have been coming over. I figured you both were taking some time for yourselves.”

I couldn’t look at her ugly caterpillar eyebrows anymore, so I said, “Oh, yes, right, we are. Just said that out of habit, I guess. Well, it was great to see you, great catching up. Tell Taylor we said hi, would you?” and then I walked away.

I’m home now. I shove a new bag of Doritos behind a box of raisin bran so you won ’t find it, and I don’t tell you what Taylor’s mom told me.

You have been lying to me. The last time you lied was when you told me you saw Henry at the river, and I think back to that now. The foggy, glazed look in your eyes. The low, flat tone of your voice. Have you been like that since that day? Longer? I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore, but I’m going to find out.

The next day, after you leave, I follow your new path to the river. I run, and the insides of my sweatshirt sleeves bead with sweat. I slow only when I see you, crouching on the bank, right at the end of your trail. You’re laughing at something, the kind of laugh that suggests you’re with someone and you’re only laughing because the other person is.

I press myself against a tree and crane my neck.

Henry. Oh God, Henry.

My tongue goes dry, pastes itself to the roof of my mouth. My knees lock, imprison me where I stand. My eyes blink blink blink but they cannot blink away Henry, sitting next to you on the riverbank, swinging his legs over the water. He’s wearing the clothes he was wearing that day: a Fair Isle knit sweater, your old jeans, and his bumblebee rain boots with smiling bumblebee faces on the toes. It wasn’t even raining that day; he just loved those boots so much.

Henry doesn’t look like himself. His skin is a sickly shade of green, his lips a purplish-blue. Dark patches underline his eyes, pinkish-gray foam borders his mouth and leaks from his nose. His eyes are clouded with fog, and I can’t make out the rich green behind it. His hair is soaking wet, plastered to his forehead like he’s just gone swimming. Like he’s come from the water.

But still, it is him. It is inexplicably, undeniably him. The ghost of my beautiful, darling Henry in his bumblebee rain boots. He looks to his left, past your head, right at me, and smiles.

Mommy.

He’s too far away for me to hear his low whisper, but, somehow, I do. His voice is carried to me on the breeze; it threads through my ears like a needle through a button hole, it lays siege to my brain and it is all I can hear.

Mommy, you’re here! How sweet he sounds.

Mommy, you found me! How excited he is.

Mommy, come join me! He turns to face the water. He jumps in.

I run to the shore so fast that I skid on the gravelly dirt and have to grab onto you so I don’t fall. “What are you doing?” I yell, my nails digging into your shoulder.

You don’t look surprised to see me. You don’t make a move to save your brother. You point a steadfast finger toward the churning water, where Henry’s hair is waving in the current. His face is upturned, and he smiles at me again, his lips peeling back to reveal that all of his teeth are rimmed by black.

His shiny little baby teeth, rotting. His sparkly green eyes, dimmed. I turn away; I can’t look at him like this.

But his voice. His voice, in my head, in every part of me, sounds exactly the same.

Don’t worry, Mommy! It won’t hurt me. I’m part of the water.

I missed you, Mommy! Come back to me.

I ask you what’s going on. I beg you to tell me if this is real, if I am imagining him or if you really do see him there, if you do hear his voice. His sweet, lilting voice.

“I can’t hear what he’s saying to you,” you say, looking up at me with foggy eyes. “But he’s there. And I can hear what he’s saying to me.”

I ask you what that is.

“He’s been waiting for you.” A smile plays at your lips. “And now you’re here. We can be together again.”

My stomach claws its way up my throat and forces itself out; sour vomit-smell clouds around us. You watch me wipe the spit from my lip without judgment, without anything.

This is what I’m thinking about:

Bundling Henry into my arms and carrying him home with his head resting against my chest so he can feel my heartbeat. Plopping him in front of the fireplace and warming his little toes, kissing each one as I pull off his little socks. Watching the pink return to his cheeks, the green to his eyes. Making him hot chocolate with extra marshmallows in his favorite cat-pattern mug. Drawing him a bath and watching him splash his duckies around in the soap bubbles, gently massaging his sweet baby shampoo into his hair and swirling the ends into a curlicue on the top of his head. Smoothing back his hair to kiss his forehead before bed, singing him a lullaby and watching his eyelids slump. Hugging him close and breathing in his pine-tree smell. Smelling it forever.

No, Mommy. We can’t do that.

W-what? Henry, baby, what do you mean? I don’t know if I’m speaking or thinking, but he answers me.

I am part of the river now. I am the water.

I want to take you home, baby.

Can’t you see? I am home! We are all home. Here!

The river took you from me. It isn’t what I want to say, not to his face, but it’ s what he hears, what he responds to.

No, I am here. We can be together again. All of us! Can you see it, Mommy?

I can see it.

My boys, each holding onto one of my hands as we float on our backs down an endless river, our faces turned up toward the sun. My boys, swimming and swirling and soaring through the water, bubbles swarming around their propelling feet. My boys, as much a part of each water molecule as me, so that we are always together, as the water turns to salt to fresh and back again.

My boys, safe in my arms. Together.

You edge closer to the river. Together.

Henry reaches out a pale arm from the white crests. Together.

You move to take it. Together.

You’re going to jump in. Together. But.

But it’s not real, it can’t be. But I notice the way Henry is looking at you, like he’ s hungry, like he wants to tear you apart, like he’s not your brother who loves you at all. But the current is strong and you’re so small and I know what happens to little boys who fall into rivers.

But, that day, I heard your screams as you came running to tell me that Henry had fallen. I saw the bicycle on the path, tipped over and abandoned. I felt, standing on the riverbank, that he was gone. Swallowed by the water. Smashed into the rocks. Tangled in the river’s mad, desperate rush to get to the ocean. That’s where he is now. I know this to be true as anything. The voice and its poison words bleed from my ears until I can’t hear him. I will never hear him again. He fell in the river and water filled his lungs and he died. He’s not here.

But you are.

I grab your arm.

Your head whips around, and your eyes are foggier than before; I can’t even tell where you’re looking. You wrench your arm from my grip, and the cold wind shocks the skin on the palm of my now empty hand.

“Wait,” I say. “Please.” You’re balancing on the fragile, crumbly dirt of the drop-off, and all I can do is plead. I know that you won’t believe me, that you can’t trust me. Not anymore. I have forced you here, to the river’s edge.

“Henry forgives me, Mom,” you whisper. “Henry still loves me.”

It is not Henry. It is the river, it is the wind, it is all the evil things in the world coming for you because you believe this is what you deserve. Because I have broken you, it can weave you a glossy, distorted promise of salvation. It is a lie, but I no longer think you ’re stupid for believing it. You’re not stupid. You’re hurting and you’re confused and you ’re a little boy.

I know that Henry is dead, and I know that death is final. If even I could consider that this apparition is actually Henry, I cannot imagine how it has warped your little mind. It, which tells you that the water won’t drown you, that I will never stop blaming you —for I know this is what it must be hissing in your ear—, it is not Henry. It is not, not ever. And I have not been your mother for a long time, but I can be again. I can stop you from falling.

“Henry is dead.” I step toward you. You stumble back, toward the water, like the words shot forward on the wind and pushed you in the chest. “Henry is gone. He’s not here.”

“No.” You shake your head, chew your lip, but you don’t sound as certain as before. “He’s part of the river. I can be, too.” You thrust your hand out to grab the ghost’ s. “Together,” you say.

“Henry is dead.” Another step. “And I blamed you.” Another step. “But it’s not your fault.”

“W-what?” Your pupils press forward through the fog in your eyes, and, for the first time in months, you’re listening to me. You’re understanding me. I’m making sense. Your hand falls to your side, and the roar of the river gets louder. Angrier. Violent.

For the first time in months, I look in your eyes and I know you. I know what’s true. I know what’s not. I know what gives the ghost power over you, and I know what will take it away. I know what you need to hear more than Henry forgiving you, what you’ve been needing to hear for a long, long time. I know what I need to say more than you ’re so fucking stupid and I hate you I wish it was you.

I sink to my knees, so we’re eye-to-eye, and I press my hands into your little shaking shoulders. “It’s not your fault, baby,” I say. “It’s mine.”

You promised to watch and entertain your brother in the woods for a couple hours in exchange for a ticket to an MLB game. You were going to go with Taylor and his mom, and you were so excited. Don’t stray too far, I told you. Keep him in sight, I told you. Be careful in the creek, he’s still too short, I told you. But you were too busy texting your friends to listen to me. I know now that you were telling them to meet you in the forest.

Stay in the clearing, you said to Henry. Then you disappeared to play more mature games with your friends. Henry wanted to be you so badly. And you told him to go ride his kiddie bike with the kiddie training wheels while your friends snickered behind you.

This made him more determined. So determined to tag you and be involved that he ran too fast, too far and fell into the river. I thought that you were so awful for what you did. And, in a way, you were. Nine-year-old boys are awful to their little brothers, and I knew this.

I knew this when I made you watch Henry. I knew this when I gave you that job, but I’d wanted to take a bubble bath and drink a glass of wine and have a moment to myself so badly that I’d convinced myself you were ready. I wish I could take it back, but I can’t. I’ m sorry.

Henry fell into the river and it was my fault. It’s not your fault, it couldn’t have been your fault because you are nine years old and I am your mother. I don’t hate you, I could never hate you. I love you only, I promise.

The ghost starts to sink into the murk.

I’m sorry, Henry.

I am not Henry, the ghost hisses in its own low, gravelly voice. It bares its black baby teeth at me.

I know.

The dark swaths of water wrap around its face, bleed into its eyes and through its ears until I can’t make out what is it and what is river. Before it disappears, it sticks its tongue out at me, pouting because I won. I won, and it’s gone, and you’re still here. The river keeps rushing out to sea.

“Come away from the water, Benny,” I tell you. My voice shakes and wanes in the wind, but I have never felt louder. I stand up and back away; you have to come to me on your own.

You blink blink blink, look bewildered to find yourself at the edge of the river, your arm stretched toward the water. You gently pull it to your chest, like it isn’t your own and you’re trying to coax it back to you. Your eyes slowly travel up to mine; in them, I see anger and resentment. In them, I see you are afraid. You’re so afraid. But you ’re also relieved, I can tell, about what I said when you were still entranced by the ghost. You heard me, over everything else, and you came back.

I reach out my hand, fingers splayed. You stare at it, and you start to cry.

“Come on, baby,” I say. “Let’s go home.”

This is what I’m thinking about:

Drawing you a bath and making you hot chocolate without marshmallows because you don’t like them. Tucking you under your comforter and smushing Albie under your chin. Curling next to you on your bed, hugging you and breathing in the pine-tree smell of your hair. Telling you all the things I’ve been thinking about over the last few months, listening to you when you do the same. Then lying there quietly while you fall asleep, knowing that when you wake up, I’ll hug you again.

Talking more and more and more in the days to come, until I know how much I hurt you and you know how sorry I am, until I know how I can make things better and you know that I will try. I will do anything.

But we’re not there yet.

Right now, we’re walking and sunlight is falling around us through the breaks in the leaves. Right now, birds are singing around us because nothing is wrong in their simple, little lives. Right now, you’re here and I’m here and Henry is not, and maybe someday the weight of that won’t be so heavy. For now, it is.

Maybe someday, we’ll talk and laugh about all the cute, funny things he used to do, like wearing his rainboots even when it wasn’t raining because he wanted to have bumblebee faces smiling up at him at all times. For now, we won’t.

Maybe someday, I’ll once again feel the full, brilliant sunshine of you. For now, you are quiet and scared and sad, but you’re no longer wavering on the edge of a riverbank, your knees bent to jump.

Right now, you’re holding my hand, and that’s a start.