100 Malicious Little Mysteries

The Way It’s Supposed To Be by Elsin Ann Graffam

We had so much fun. I don’t remember about when I was real little, but I’m ten now and I know we had a good time, just the two of us, ever since my father went away.

Mom had his picture on the mantel and she talked about him all the time — how he loved me so much and what he was like and stuff. My Dad was a great guy, on the football team at college and everything. Then he was a stockbroker and married to Mom. Mom was glad he bought stocks for us because that meant she didn’t have to go out to work and leave me when he went away.

I was three when he went away and I don’t remember him. I tried to when I was little, but I just couldn’t. But it was okay. He was sort of alive to me in the picture. Mom would say, “Daddy would be so proud to know you had all A’s on your report card,” and I’d look at his picture there on the mantel, and he’d be smiling, happy for me. I bet you didn’t know that pictures could smile, did you? Well, they can.

People called Mom a widow and I didn’t find out until last year what that meant. Dad was an old man. He’s got gray hair in the picture and that means you’re old. Mom doesn’t have gray hair. She’s young. And pretty. She’s got a lot of fluffy blonde hair around her face and big blue eyes. She’s the most beautiful lady in the whole world.

I’ll never leave my mother. The other guys, you know, they say they’re going down to Florida and dig for treasure or go overseas and look for monsters in some lake. They can’t wait to leave home. But not me.

I can’t tell them that. I told Billy Earle once that I’d never leave Mom and he laughed at me. But they can’t understand. They don’t have a Mom like mine. All their mothers have lines between their eyes. That means they frown a lot. My mother never frowns. She’s the nicest person on earth. I’ll never leave her. I told that to Dad a year ago and he looked down at me from the mantel and said, “You’re a good boy, Glenn.”

Maybe the guys don’t understand, but Dad does.

Everything was real neat until Mr. Knott came along. One night last summer I woke up because I thought the TV was on too loud. I went into the living room to tell Mom to turn it down, and there was a man sitting on the sofa. Mom jumped when she saw me.

“Is anything wrong?” I asked her.

“No, everything is wonderful,” she said.

I didn’t like Mr. Knott. He was old and he had a big nose.

“Who is he?” I asked her.

She said, “This is Mr. Knott and he’s my friend.”

I went back to bed but I couldn’t sleep. I thought I was the only friend Mom had. I hoped with all my might that Mom would never see him again. But she did. He was over a lot. Mom would say, “Come on, Glenn, just say hello to Mr. Knott.”

When my tenth birthday came last October, I shut my eyes real tight when I blew out the candles, and I wished that Mr. Knott would go away and never come back. But it didn’t work.

After a while the lady down the street came to babysit me. Mom would go out with Mr. Knott. I’d lie down on my bed the whole time they were away, thinking maybe I’d die of sadness and then Mom would be sorry for what she did. But I never died and Mom kept on seeing Mr. Knott.

Once they were away for a whole weekend. Mom kissed me good-bye that Saturday morning and hugged me real tight. But I didn’t care — nothing mattered any more, not after that rotten old man came along. I wanted more than anything else for it to stay that way, just the two of us. Mom and me. The way it’s supposed to be.

“Surprise!” Mr. Knott said to me that Sunday night when he and Mom got home. “Your mother and I were married yesterday morning,” he said.

Mom said, “That’s right, Glenn. I didn’t want to tell because we were afraid you wouldn’t understand. We’re going to be so happy!”

We, we, we! Only the “we” wasn’t Mom and me, it was Mom and that old man.

You don’t die from crying, or I’d be dead now. I never said a word to him, or looked at him. Mom and he would talk and I’d feel like I was in a deep dark hole. The more days that went by, the deeper and darker that hole got. It was blacker than night there.

Dad didn’t like it any more than I did. Sometimes I’d stand in front of the fireplace and look at his picture on the mantel, and you know what? He was crying. Big tears came down the glass in the frame. They made a puddle on the mantel.

One night when I was talking to Dad, the puddle ran over and made spots on the rug. Mom came in the room just then and asked me what I was doing.

“Look!” I said. “Dad’s crying because you married that man! See?”

She looked at me funny and left the room. Right after that I heard Mom and Mr. Knott arguing. It was the first time in my life I ever heard my mother yell.

The next day I got home from school and threw my books on the sofa. Something was wrong. I looked around the room. Then I saw it. Or, I mean, I didn’t see it. There was a blank space where Dad’s picture should have been.

“Mom!” I yelled. “Where is it?!”

“Where is what?” she asked. As if she didn’t know!

“My Dad’s picture is gone!”

And she said, “Well, Mr. Knott thought it was a good idea to put it away since he is your father now.”

I banged my head against the mantel and yelled that Mr. Knott was not my father, I had only one real father and he was the man in the picture.

Mom said, “Glenn, you’re old enough to realize that a lady needs a husband. Your father has been dead for six and a half years. I was all alone. Now I have somebody to love me. Mr. Knott is my husband and the sooner you accept that the better off we’ll all be!”

And she had frown marks between her eyes.

That night the babysitter came over. Mom and Mr. Knott went to the movies. I was glad they were gone. I snuck into Mom’s room and opened the top drawer of her dresser. I knew it would be there. I was right.

I took it out and looked at it. In the little bit of light from the hall, Dad’s face was more alive than ever. His eyes looked right into mine and he told me exactly what to do.

That was five days ago. I’m out of that dark hole now. Things are fine again. It’s just Mom and me, the way it’s supposed to be.

Some cops came and talked to me after they took the body away. Mom was crying. “Don’t worry,” the biggest cop said to her. “They can’t touch the boy. He’s too young to know what he did.”

Mom shook her head until her hair was flying and she said something I don’t understand to the cop.

“That’s exactly,” she cried, “what they told me six and a half years ago!”