Welcome to Night Vale

Chapter 37

Jackie knocked on her mother’s door. After a moment, it opened.

“Hello, dear. Come in.” Her mother turned and walked back to the kitchen, and Jackie limped after her. She tenderly sat down across from the woman she did not recognize.

“Mom,” she tried calling her. “Mom, it’s been a rough couple days. Let’s start there. I can’t work anymore. And if I’m not working then I’m not sure who I am. Maybe that’s not healthy. Probably isn’t. But it’s all I’ve done as far back as I can remember. Which. Okay. Memory. Wanna talk about that in a moment.

“But I’ve been trying to figure all this out. Feels like running up a slide while other people are trying to slide down it.”

Jackie picked up one of the perfect, wax-looking apples. She sniffed it. It was real.

“I’ve been spending some time lately with Diane Crayton. Not like that, but. You know, Diane? Does stuff with the PTA? Works at that office no one is sure what they do? Anyway, Diane and I got into this thing where we didn’t like each other. But I think I was wrong about that. I think I’m wrong about a lot of things.

“My car got hit, and the other person just drove away. And I think that other person was Diane’s kid, who’s missing now and I sympathize with him. I do. But my body feels as wrecked as my car. I can’t move right and I feel slow and tired.

“I understand that kid. Sometimes you need to run away. I feel bad because I said that to Diane, but it’s true. I’m sorry, Mom. You probably feel different, but I think maybe he’s right to leave. Diane cares so much for him. It’s not other people that hurt us, but what we feel about them.”

Her mother didn’t respond. She wasn’t even looking at Jackie. Her eyes rested on the ceiling.

“It got me thinking about what you said to me. And I don’t. I don’t remember my childhood. I don’t think I’ve ever been in this house. I don’t know who you are. I don’t remember ever being any other age than what I am now, and I don’t remember doing anything but what I’ve been doing. I’m not normal, am I? I mean, I understand that many things in Night Vale aren’t what they are in other places, but, even for Night Vale, I don’t think I’m normal.”

Her mother took the apple from her and put it back in the bowl. She stood.

“Let’s step out into the backyard, shall we?”

They did. Her mother put a hand on her arm.

“Jackie, what I want you to understand, about both me and Diane, is this. It’s not easy raising a child in Night Vale. Things go strange often. There are literal monsters here. Most towns don’t have literal monsters, I think, but we do.

“You were my baby. But babies become children, and they go to elementary schools that indoctrinate them on how to overthrow governments, and they get interested in boys and girls, or they don’t, and anyway they change. They go to high schools, where they learn dangerous things. They grow into adults, and become dangerous things.

“But none of that is as difficult as the main thing. We all know it, but most of you don’t spend any time thinking about the consequences of it. Time doesn’t work in Night Vale.

“You were a child, and then you were a teenager, and then you were old enough that I thought it might be time for you to run my pawnshop for me. Just some days. Just sometimes. I could use the time off, after running it for years while also raising a child on my own.

“I taught you how pawning an item works. ‘Pawnshops in Night Vale work like this,’ I said. I showed you the hand washing, and the chanting, and the dying for a little while, and how to write out a ticket. I showed you how to bury the doors at night so they wouldn’t get stolen. I showed you this and then you started running the shop on your own, and I was so proud.

“But time doesn’t work in Night Vale. And so one day I woke up to find you had run that shop for decades. Centuries, even. I’m not sure. You held on to the pawnshop but let go of me. I happened to offer eleven dollars to the first customer we helped together, and in the years of being nineteen you forgot that moment between us and only retained the offer of eleven dollars as a meaningless, unchangeable ritual. People in town couldn’t remember a time when you weren’t the one running the store. But I could. Because, from my point of view, you’ve only been running it a couple months. It’s all so fresh for me. The course of your life is so linear. But meanwhile you. It had been so long for you that you’d forgotten me, and forgotten the house you moved out of last month. Your entire childhood, gone for everyone but me. All those years spent with me. All those years I gave up everything to spend with you.”

Her mother was crying. Jackie suddenly remembered that her mother’s name was Lucinda. Lucinda was crying. Jackie was crying too, but wiping it away as quickly as it came, even now uncomfortable with the feeling of it.

“Dear, be kind to the mothers of Night Vale. Have pity on us. It’ll be no easier for Diane. Things go strange here. Your children forget you, and the courses of their lives get frozen. Or they change shapes every day, and they think that just because they look completely different you won’t be able to recognize them. But you always will. You always know your child, even when your child doesn’t know you.

“Maybe Josh thinks it’s right to run away. Maybe you do too. But all I know is Diane is in the same place I am. We don’t have our children. We have the faint, distorted echoes of our children that this town sent back to us.”

Jackie took Lucinda into her arms, not sure of what she could say but sure that a gesture would say it as well as any stuttered cliché. Her mother cried, but not into Jackie, still turned away from her, and Jackie started to feel as though it was her mother comforting her. Maybe Jackie needed comfort.

Jackie looked up, eyes bleary, to see that Troy was standing there, watching them. His face was not expressionless, but his expression conveyed little. Lucinda did not seem surprised to see him. Her expression also conveyed little. Jackie’s expression conveyed anger and confusion, mostly with her eyes and eyebrows. Troy was already gone again.

“Who is that man, Mom? Why is he in your backyard?”

Her mother waved in the direction where Troy had been standing like she was waving off a fly or a small surveillance drone.

“Don’t worry about him. Come, let’s go inside. That’s just your father.”