Neil Healdsburg — 1961 Loss and Longing

Neil

Healdsburg — 1961

Loss and Longing

Neil grows up in the sleepy town of Healdsburg, only a few miles west of the orphanage of the Sisters of Perpetual Memory. He’d been a happy carefree child, hair sandy as foxtails, eyes clear blue with a cloudless nature. But, after his discovery in the field, everything changes. There are some things that mark you forever, leaving a scar no one can see. Neil cannot forget the quiet white baby lying next to the charred body. It keeps him awake most nights. When he sleeps, it wakes him screaming.

His home, which has been happy, changes.

Ryan disappears the night Neil finds Aidan, leaving only space where once was laughter, space and the small greenhouse that Ryan has filled with orchids — flowers so alien and exotic, they look like they’ve dropped from another planet. On days too hot, or nights too cold to venture out, Neil sits with Ryan in the humid room, watching the moisture gather and the walls weep, listening to the life histories of orchids, more fantastic than fairy tales.

No one talks about Ryan’s disappearance. Neil can feel secrets lurking behind closed doors. He hears the house whisper in the night.

When Neil returns from school, he runs to the greenhouse. Surely Ryan must be there. It’s not possible that he’s really gone.

The greenhouse is empty; windows damp, shelves dirty and bare. It smells of decay. The only remnants of life are the fragments of sphagnum moss that litter the floor, disintegrating into dust with the slightest touch.

“I knew they’d just die anyway,” Alma says from behind Neil. “It’s better this way. Less stench. Less clean-up.

“Ryan spent way too much time and money on plants — plants you can’t eat and flowers you can’t pick,” Alma puts a hand on Neil’s shoulder.

“Here,” she says holding out a plate, “Have a cookie — chocolate chip — your favorite.”

Neil shakes off her hand and runs into the woods.

How can Ryan be gone? Ryan— so full of life and curiosity, he could tell you about plants, and bugs, and make them more interesting than any horror story. He could reveal the history behind history, opening doors into the past like a human time machine.

Alma called Ryan ‘a rolling stone,’ and ‘a heartbreaker’. Neil wonders if that means he had rolled a stone onto someone and crushed their heart, but he can’t imagine Ryan killing anyone. Ryan didn’t even like to step on bugs.

The ground beneath Neil’s feet has ruptured. An earthquake has cleaved a meadow into a chasm while he slept leaving him stranded on a precipice, lost and alone.

Neil’s father Joseph misses Ryan, his baby brother, almost as much as Neil. Ryan was the yang to Joseph’s yin. Joseph was sturdy and unimaginative, but Ryan had been a breeze, following fancies and desires wherever they blew him. Now Joseph feels off kilter, out of balance, adrift and confused in a isolated country.

A week later Ryan’s body, or rather pieces of it, is discovered in a field. Ryan is identifiable only by two gold fillings and the treads of his shoes.

Joseph begins drinking, trying to numb his soul, to forget and find respite. Each night he comes home later and later.

“Go find your father,” Alma says, pushing Neil out the door, even though it is nightfall and he is only seven, even though he has had no supper and is hungry. Neil does not protest. Their house smells of blood and fear. It is filled with unspoken words. Neil is happy to escape. He tracks Joseph to Jay’s, the only tavern in town. Soon Neil is almost as familiar a visitor there as Joseph.

“It’s your boy again, Jo,” says the bartender whenever he sees Neil, “Time to go now.”

Neil silently holds out his hand, leading his father home like a stray dog. Some nights Joseph sings his way home, some nights he is maudlin, but more and more often he refuses to leave the bar, drinking steadily and sullenly as a winter rain.

One night on his way to the tavern, the moon rises full and bright. Out of the woods rises a howl that tickles the hair on the back of Neil’s neck. Even though he is beneath a streetlamp and only a block from home, he feels as lost and hollow as if he is falling into nothingness. He races home, not looking to either side. Crashing into the house he burrows under his covers.

“What’s wrong?” Alma asks, “Did you find your father?” Neil does not answer, he cannot speak, he is shivering as violently as if he has malaria.

Alma takes him in her arms, “Oh my poor, poor baby,” she cries, “My sweet, little boy, how could I have sent you out into the night and the dark? Let mama kiss your fears away.” But her kisses burn like lies, and the next night she sends him out again.