UNRAVELED

Cheryl White sits on the floor in her missing son’s bedroom eating Hershey's Kisses and drinking black coffee, searching through his things again—the same things she searched through the night before, and the night before that—as if the moment she leaves, something will change after she shuts the door. Every day she returns, hoping to find that change, the missing clue that might finally explain why her son, Ryan, disappeared without a word, without a trace.

Every day since, she unravels like a threadbare sweater as does her husband, David, who sips coffee straight from the pot she refills throughout the day and into the night. Both have grown used to bitterness that nothing will wash down. After work, David clings to the TV, the newspaper, and his chipped coffee mug. Sometimes, the rising and falling of his chest is the only proof Cheryl has that he's still breathing.

Pain and guilt both connect and divide Cheryl and David. She watches him from the kitchen sometimes, wondering if he feels like a needle is pricking him over and over, deeper and deeper. He wears a strong front, but Cheryl knows the truth—he's unraveling, too. One thin nerve at a time.

"You were too hard on him," she had said, her jaw set .

"And you were too lenient." She remembers how his complexion reddened. “So, who will we blame today?"

Cheryl takes the empty mug from David and carries it to the kitchen, where scattered chips and pretzels crunch beneath her feet and stick to the spills Cheryl ignores. Dirty dishes clutter the counters. A loaf of bread lies open, its end piece peeking from torn cellophane, dropping crumbs. Jars of mayo and mustard wait alongside.

She pours David's coffee without glancing at the mess. Steam fogs her glasses. She removes them and sets them beside the mug. "Open your eyes," her glasses say. "Wake up," the mug says.

Some late mornings, Cheryl forces herself out of bed, feet smacking the floor like anchors hurled overboard. She slogs into the kitchen, shielding her eyes against screaming bright lights, “Go back to bed!” Other mornings, she doesn’t rise at all, and the house smells of fresh coffee and bacon, like they have a maid Cheryl doesn’t remember hiring.

When she does rise early, she often finds her daughter, Rainer, at the counter buttering her toast—looking older than her eighteen years. Ryan’s age when he vanished.

"Where's your father?" Cheryl manages.

"He left over an hour ago," Rainer says, concentrating on her toast. "But how would you know that?"

Since Ryan's disappearance, Cheryl mourns the child she lost and forgets the one she still has. In turn, Rainer finds boys who are solid and alive, who touch and hold her, reminding her she is solid and alive, too.

Sometimes, in the early hours, Cheryl hears the back door click open and shut. Rainer has been out all night, doing who knows what, with who knows who. Cheryl lies in bed, eyes wide, listening for the creak of Rainer's return, for the whisper of approaching cars, footsteps on gravel. Soon, David’s snores interrupt the silence.

Ryan hated it when Cheryl entered his room uninvited. She thinks about the day she did just that. Purple Rain played in the background. His lava lamp cast molten orange swirls against the walls. Once Cheryl's eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw Ryan in the corner, whirling in a silky dress that flared below his waist, spinning in front of his mirror. Eyes closed. Head back. Arms raised. Long giraffe legs kicking the air gently, sultrily, as if someone were watching.

She should have left quietly. But instead, she shouted his name. Ryan froze, music still blaring, his back to her, the mirror reflecting his mortified face.

She flipped on the light. "What the hell, Ryan. Why are you wearing… that dress?” She touched his lips. “Is that lipstick? Open your eyes and look at me!"

But he wouldn’t. His eyes clenched tighter as tears welled. His red lips quivered. She snatched the tube from his dresser. “My lipstick—the one I accused Rainer of taking. No wonder she’s mad at me."

She clasped his arm, tightening her trip as she rubbed the lipstick from his mouth. The color bled across his chin and palm, smeared like The Joker—only dressed in drag.

“Why are you doing this?” she yelled.

He still wouldn’t look at her.

“Ryan, what's wrong with you?”

He sank to his knees, sobbing. Cheryl knelt beside him.

“Look, whatever it is, we’ll get through it. You'll be …Ryan again.”

Finally, he met her eyes. “No, Mom! This is me. Who I’ve always been. This,” he pointed to the dress, to his face, “is Ryan. Whether you and Dad like it or not.”

She had drawn back her hand and slapped him before realizing what she was doing. Tears and snot streaked his smeared lipstick. He rubbed his cheek and refused to look at her.

Neither of them spoke.

Cheryl snatched the lipstick and left the room, slamming the door behind her.

That night, when Cheryl told David, whatever warmth remained between father and son iced over like Montana in January.

After that, whenever Ryan shut his door, David stormed up the stairs and banged on it.

"Open the door, Ryan, or I'll take this goddamn door off the hinges. In this house—"

Ryan threw the door open, pushed past him. “You can have your fucking house.”

Downstairs, Cheryl chased him. “Where are you going?”

“What do you care?"

From that point on, Cheryl’s pleas and David’s demands seemed to crush Ryan. Had Ryan tired of the questions? From hiding and having to choose between them and being himself?

Cheryl leans against the windowpane in Ryan's room. Her warm breath clouds the glass, blurring her view. She pulls away and watches the circle of fog fade, the world outside sharpening again.

Sometimes, that’s what it takes—distance to see clearly.

But distance never blurs guilt. It waits, pacing behind the glass.

Not long after Ryan's disappearance, the Merricks moved in across the street with their teenage son, whose black, wavy hair and dark eyes reminded Cheryl of Ryan. So did their toddler grandson, who visited often.

Cheryl would cross over and crouch behind the Merricks’ Dodge truck, watching the boys tumble and chase each other. The older one guided the younger and their laughter twisted in her chest. She stored the moment inside the hole Ryan left behind.

Then she heard Mrs. Merrick dashing from the house, calling sharply, calling the boys inside. Her eyes met Cheryl’s across the distance, saying: Why can’t you move on?

It was a fair question.

Earlier this year, Brittany Addison learned to ride without training wheels and now pedals up and down the street, ponytail flapping behind her. Rainer used to babysit her. Most of the time, she brought Brittany to the house when the Addisons went out. Cheryl watched how Rainer changed her and rocked her to sleep. Sometimes Ryan watched with them, Brittany curled in his lap. When she got fussy and Rainer had to find something to placate her, Ryan cooed and danced with baby Brittany until her cries softened into giggles.

Family mattered then.

Cheryl is leaving Walgreens when she hears a child calling Ryan’s name.

She freezes.

She hears it again and scans the lot until she spots the daycare and hurries toward the chain-link fence, dropping her bag as she reaches it. She presses her face against the cold metal.

“Ryan,” she calls. Once. Then again.

Cheryl's fingers twist in the wire as she whispers his name like a prayer unraveling on the wind.

When the police arrive, she can't explain. She just stares.

David handles everything at the station. He tells them about Ryan. About Cheryl not coping well. He says he’s tried to get her help, but you can’t help someone who isn’t ready.

“Cheryl just needs more time,” he says. “It’s been hard on her… losing a son like that.”

He thanks them for their understanding. He’s practiced. He plays the part well—well enough to keep what little pride he has left.

In the car, icy air pours from the vents. Cheryl reaches for it.

“You okay?” David asks.

“As good as can be. You?”

“I just want things normal again.”

“Normal? Without Ryan.”

“Other couples manage after losing a child.”

Cheryl turns to him. “We didn’t lose him.”

“Of course we did.” David grips the wheel.

“He was gay, David. We tried to make him someone he wasn’t.”

“It was that gender shit on TV.”

Cheryl shakes her head. "Rainer knew. I knew. You knew. We just didn’t want to …know.”

David opens his mouth to reply—but adjusts the rearview mirror instead.

Silence hardens between them. The blinker ticks like a metronome marking their days.

Rainer tells her father what she needs, when she needs it, where she’s going, and what her plans are. Cheryl learns of them by stealing them through Rainer’s closed door. That’s how she discovers the apartment and Auburn University in the fall. Cheryl hears things like, “I live in a cemetery,” and “Why couldn’t they have let him just… be?”

She also learns that her daughter hates yellow.

When Rainer was fourteen, she chose yellow for her room. Cheryl and Rainer painted the walls, and Ryan meticulously handled the pearl-white trim. Yellow was happy then.

Rainer tells Macy, “It’s not as happy as you think.” And when she starts crying, Cheryl almost knocks but no longer trusts her instincts.

Four days after graduating from Milken High, Rainer packs her things to move to Montgomery, Alabama, with Macy. Cheryl stands in the yard near Rainer and David, but not with them.

She didn’t just lose Ryan. She lost Rainer, too.

David loads Rainer’s things into the U-Haul. He hugs his daughter and opens the car door for her. Rainer waves as she backs into the street.

Cheryl turns toward the house. She can only handle the guilt of failing one child at a time.

On nights David works late, Cheryl knows he’s in someone else's arms. She pretends not to see David’s lover. Who is she to judge him for needing someone to love him back? He loses himself in desire. Cheryl loses herself in memory. Every night, he returns to a dark house to unmade beds, dust-covered furniture, and an empty kitchen of uncooked meals. But never a wife.

David doesn't know that Cheryl has seen him go into Ryan's room after he thought she'd fallen asleep. Through the crack he'd left in the door, she watched him touch Ryan's things, the baseball cards he'd collected for Ryan and the Nintendo controller Ryan used to beat David every time they played. And hearing David's soft cries, she walked away to give him time with his son.

Cheryl accepts David's pity. Just like he accepts hers.

It keeps them a family.

In Ryan’s room, the turquoise lava lamp casts amoebic shapes on the walls. His aquarium bubbles softly. When Ryan comes home, Cheryl will show him how she kept everything the same. She’ll tell him she cared for his fish, preserved his space.

They will sit together at the table. And if he wants to wear a fucking dress, he can—because by God, that’s what families do.

Hearing herself shout it aloud, she almost believes it.

Almost.

Cheryl strolls the grocery store’s long, narrow aisles, selecting Ryan’s favorites: cream of chicken soup, Sugar Frosted Flakes, Vienna sausages, Hershey’s Kisses. She doesn’t care what anyone thinks about her extra seventy pounds or the coarse gray hair growing into thin, split ends past her shoulders.

Every year on Ryan’s birthday, she celebrates alone in his room with his photo albums and a bag of Hershey’s Kisses. She places a kiss on her tongue and lets it melt before swallowing. This quiets the voices in her head.

Flipping through the album, she stops at a photo of herself pushing Ryan on a playground swing. Their first house had been only a few blocks from the park. After work, David would walk with them—his camera in hand. Ryan would hold Cheryl’s hand until he spotted his favorite swing.

“Push me, Mama,” Ryan squealed.

She pushed him higher. He always wanted to touch the sky.

David circled them with his camera, snapping pictures. Cheryl laughed and pushed Ryan higher, as if he really might touch the sky.

She traces Ryan’s face in the photo—curly black hair, narrow brown eyes—trying to see where he lost himself.

Or did they lose him because he found himself?

Besides Ryan’s room, the park is Cheryl’s favorite place where children’s laughter competes with the honks and coos of geese and pigeons. Toddlers dart between swings, slides, and sandboxes, kicking up dust. Cheryl watches little boys with black, wavy hair. She studies their mothers. If they seem distracted, she creeps closer.

The noise doesn’t grate on her nerves like it once did—back when she sent her own kids outside for being too loud.

Cheryl drives to a playground on Cleveland Avenue, where mothers watch less closely. She sits in the sandbox with children, pushes them on swings, catches them at the bottom of silvery slides.

Through dark sunglasses, she notices how hard it is for them to climb to the top. Sliding down is easy. Climbing back up wears you out.

She favors boys with black hair. Sometimes she imagines putting one in the back seat of her car. She knows she never would—but the thought frightens her.

Is this how it happens?

An older woman sits nearby reading a thick novel. A little boy colors beside her.

“I got outside the lines again,” he whines. “I don’t want to color anymore.”

The woman closes her book. “Try a new page.”

“Why do I have to stay in the lines?”

“You don’t,” she says gently. “Color how you want.”

“What color should I do his antennas?”

“I like blue.”

“I like purple.”

“Then purple it is,” she says, kissing the top of his head.

Cheryl swallows. Tears fall anyway. A sudden energy surges through her. She hurries to her car, adjusts the mirror, backs out.

At the trashcan near the exit, she stops. Rolls down the window. Drops the half-empty bag of Hershey’s Kisses inside. She keeps seven in her lap—just in case. Her stomach rolls as she unwraps one. It melts on her tongue.

The voices urge her to turn back. To count the kisses. To unravel.

She grips the wheel until they quiet. Then she shifts gears, merges onto the highway, pursuing the last golden light breaking across the sky.