The Falls by Eric Walters Page B

me.”
    â€œI better get going. I’ll give you a call tomorrow.”

 
Chapter Eleven
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    I CAME INTO THE HOUSE as quietly as possible, and the house was as quiet as me. There was no TV or radio. No voices. Maybe my mother was out, or maybe she was just having a nap. She’d gotten into the habit of taking an afternoon nap when she pulled a late shift, and now she took one most days, even when she wasn’t working. It was so quiet that I could hear the clock ticking from the other room. I couldn’t remember ever hearing that before. I usually came in with a lot of noise and then threw on the TV or radio or my CD player. I liked background noise. It made it seem like I wasn’t alone in the house . . . was I alone now?
    I opened the cupboard under the sink and grabbed a bag of potatoes. I pulled out five and put them in the sink. I wasn’t completely sure what I was going to make for supper but I knew it would involve potatoes—it always involved potatoes. I took the peeler out of the drawer and started peeling.
    It was strange. Usually I looked forward to the days my mother was off work, but today I wanted some more time to pass before I saw her again. I didn’t want to talk about what had happened anymore—although there were things that still needed to be said. Actually, I didn’t know whichwas worse, talking about difficult things or being in the same room and leaving them alive but unspoken.
    We used to have tons of times like that back when my mother was drinking. It was like having an elephant in the room. Nobody wanted to talk about it, and we both just hoped it would get up and leave by itself—or at least not trample us. There were lots of things we were both thinking but neither of us mentioned. Things like where she’d been when she’d left me alone all night. Why there was no money for a school field trip but there was money for booze. Why the fridge could be empty except for a new twelve-pack of beer. Things like me finding her passed out on the floor and helping get her into bed. Like the TV or stereo or some of my toys suddenly disappearing while I was at school. Like us having to disappear in the middle of the night, throwing our stuff in the back of a truck, helped by men I didn’t know and would never see again. Just like I’d never see the kids I’d played with, or my school, or what I’d left behind in my desk, or the friends I’d made, or . . . a shudder went through my entire body. Maybe the elephant had left the room but I could still clearly picture it.
    I hadn’t thought about not thinking about things in a long time.
    It was five years since my mother had stopped drinking, so it was maybe three years since I hadn’t worried every single day. Now it was just some days, or really only little parts of some days. Even then, when the worry did creep in, I didn’t always know what it was about right away.
    The worry would start as a tiny spot in the back of my brain and then it would start to spread. Had I locked the front door when I left? Had I turned off the burner on the stove? Was the toaster unplugged? Was there some assignment at school that was due today? It was like knowing that something was wrong but not being able to put my finger on it. And that feeling got bigger and bigger until there was no spot that it didn’t fill. It was like a buzzing that got louder and louder and louder.
    Lots of times the worrying was about my mother. Worrying about her became a habit. Where was she, was she okay, was she in trouble? Actually, where was she now? Was she sleeping?
    I had to go upstairs to gather the dirty clothes to put in a load of laundry. I could check on her then, see if she was asleep. I really needed to do all that laundry. There was no point in putting it off. The sooner it was done, the quicker another piece of evidence would be eliminated.
    I finished the last of the