I know one thing, though. This isn’t what I was expecting. I take several steps back as your skin splits again.
I ate all the breadcrumbs, the you-thing says with a sneer and a flash of teeth. You’ll never find your way out. The woods are too dark.
Do you expect me to stay here after all this? I’ll need a huntsman to cut me out of your belly when you’re done, I say and I’m not sure if that’s an exaggeration or not.
Wrong story, you say.
I thought you said all the stories were the same story?
I never said that, you say.
I want to laugh but the ersatz sugar has drained the humor from my veins and for a long moment, I can’t remember what my own laughter even sounds like or if I’ve laughed since I’ve been here or if I’ve ever laughed at all.
How many stories will you tell before you realize they’re all the same story? I say.
Claws emerge from the tips of your fingers. My chest tightens, but I can’t move, as if my legs are fused together. I open my mouth to speak, to cry, but nothing emerges. My hands are shaking and inside I’m empty, a woman of bone and pain and little else, and there’s a hole inside me where the words should go.
Please, I finally whisper, hating the weakness of the word, hating the implication, hating myself most of all, for turning into the sort of person who says such a thing.
You say nothing, merely split again from wolf to you-thing to bear and back again. The oven kicks on with a whoosh of orange-blue flame. This can’t be the way this story ends, not with this cruelty.
A sharp pain wrenches my breath away, as if I’ve a thousand tiny chefs carving slices of carpaccio from my heart. The oven might be a kindness after all.
No, I say. No. This isn’t right.
You roar and the sound eclipses the ache inside me, but I don’t care if I get lost in the woods anymore. I’m tired and I’m hungry and I’ve had enough. I’m not a princess in need of rescue, nor a maiden without a voice, no matter how many times you’ve written me thus.
The End, I say, my voice sandpaper and stone.
Your eyes go wide. You can’t do that, you say.
You look like you want to say something else, but your shoulders hitch and your mouth opens, unhinging like a broken nutcracker. Out pours a kaleidoscope of spearmint rounds, caramels with cream centers, butterscotch bits, chocolate chips, candied orange slices, peanut butter cups, and lemon drops. The air fills with a cloying reek, a strange mix of sweetness and decay.
Then you change yet again, but instead of splitting into new, the pieces of you fold in. Each origami fold reveals a flicker of man, of beast, of man, as if you’ve told a hundred stories, crafted a hundred masks, and can’t find the truth inside your fiction.
The truth is that you can tell a lie a thousand times, but it still won’t make it true.
The air rushes around you, swirling in to claim the space you’re leaving behind. You roar again but it chokes off into a wheeze, you growl but it fades into a strange mewling, and you keep folding in, reducing.
There’s a sound of tearing, of something ripping free, and I feel it inside my chest. You fold in one last time and then there’s no you at all, only a scatter of blank pages seesawing to the floor. Cracks appear in the walls, in the floor, and all around me, the smell of burnt sugar and scorched pans.
I’ve no hidden wings and my hair isn’t long enough to braid into a rope, so I crawl out of your story and back into mine, tearing my hands and knees bloody. Even though I know my skin will heal in time, I’m afraid I’ll never wipe away the bitter taste of anise from my mouth.
There are no happy ever afters, not truly. Someone always has to pay a price.
Little Girl Blue, Come Cry Your Way Home
Jackson hears Brianna crying before he even opens the front door of their townhouse. The baby might only be three weeks old, but the cry isn’t anything he’s heard before and he doesn’t understand why Abby’s letting her sob like that. Panic oil-slicking his tongue, it takes him three tries to fit the key in the lock and two hard yanks to get it back out again once the door opens. He drops the packages of diapers and wipes, takes the stairs two at a time, and runs into the nursery, heart thumping a painful tattoo. Abby is holding Brianna close, whispering, “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”
“What is it? What’s wrong?” he says.
Abby turns toward him, eyes as wide and wild as a snake-startled horse. “I don’t know. She started crying and now she won’t stop. I fed her, I changed her diaper, and I don’t know what’s wrong.” Her voice is thready, tremulous.
“Want me to try?”
Abby nods. He puts Brianna against his chest, rubbing her back as he gently bounces her up and down. Funny how eight pounds can feel as light as hope and as heavy as rage. “Hey, sweet face. It’s okay. Everything is okay now.”
Abby picks up something from the floor—the baby monitor, the small device that usually sits on her nightstand. Her face creases into a strange expression. “I brought it in with me and dropped it,” she says, the words flat.
The minutes tick by and Brianna’s cries don’t let up. He catches himself when his bounces get less gentle and he tries rocking her side to side. Tears continue to spill from her eyes, each one a silent accusation. “Why don’t you call the doctor?” he asks.
“Do you think we should? What if it’s just gas?”
“Better to call and find out it’s nothing, right? She’s never cried like this before, has she?”
Abby shakes her head. “Okay. Okay then.”
Several hours later, they’re home with a diagnosis of colic and assurances it will go away on its own by the time Brianna is three or four months old. Jackson watches Abby rock their still-crying baby, his chest tightening. Is this their fault? Did their genetic blending gift Brianna with this? He scrubs his face with his hands. Dumb-ass. The doctor said there was no known cause. Lots of babies had it. It wasn’t their fault, just bad luck.
Brianna’s cries begin to hitch and soften. He and Abby exchange a hopeful look. Slowly the baby’s eyelids flutter shut and the tension in Jackson’s shoulders bleeds away. Abby carries her upstairs, and when she doesn’t come back down, he heads up to find Brianna in her crib and Abby in their bed, fully clothed and sound asleep, the baby monitor gripped in one hand.
He tries to fall asleep, but instead, stares wide-awake at the shadows on the ceiling while the minutes drag by. The monitor crackles with static and he jumps. Brianna’s cries fill the room and Abby is out of bed and near the door before he can kick off the sheets.
* * *
“Do her eyes look different to you?” Jackson asks.
“What?”
From his end of the sofa, where he’s sitting with Brianna on her back, stretched out along his upper thighs, he fixes Abby with a look. She’s busy fiddling with the baby monitor, turning it over and over, her face pensive. Thankfully, she has the volume turned low. This time of night, Brianna is wearing out, her cries not quite as ear-splitting, but he doesn’t need to hear her in stereo.
“Her eyes. Do they look different to you?”
“What? No, of course not.”
“You didn’t even look.”
“Trust me, I see them all day long.”
“Right, but you can see them here in the light and they look different.” They look lighter, but that isn’t all. There’s something else, something he can’t put his finger on, no matter how close he looks.
Abby scoots over, peeks at Brianna, and says, “They look the same to me,” before moving back to her end of the sofa.
“You know you can put that thing upstairs.” He nods toward the monitor. “She’s right here with us.”
“I know that. I can hear her.” She gets up, clips the monitor to her waistband, and extends her arms. “I want to feed her, then put her to bed.”
“It’s a little early, isn’t it? And didn’t she just eat?”
Abby barks a laugh. “My boobs say it’s time.�
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He hands over the baby with a wry grin. “Who am I to argue with your boobs. Feed away.”
* * *
At the end of the day, Jackson’s boss stops by his cubicle, leaning against the half-wall with the air of a man unable to stand on his own. An act, Jackson knows, never mind the deep grooves in Charles’s face and the sagging skin beneath shrewd eyes. The man ran several miles each day with a near-religious fervor. “How’s fatherhood treating you?”
“Colic is another word for hell.”
“You look like hell yourself.” Charles laughs to soften the words. “With kids, it’s always something. Just wait until she’s a teenager. These days will seem like cake.”
Jackson groans and after Charles leaves, he inputs numbers into a spreadsheet until they blur into nonsense. His co-workers file out, and he texts Abby to say he has to work late, but he closes the spreadsheet and rests his head on folded forearms. Brianna was up most of the night and although Abby did her best, he didn’t get much sleep.
He jolts upright to a stiff neck, a small puddle of drool, and the sound of a vacuum cleaner. “Shit, shit, shit,” he mutters. It’s just shy of eight o’clock and the half-dozen messages from Abby range from Coming home soon? to Your dinner’s in the fridge to Hello??? He texts a hasty Sorry. Charles pulled us into an emergency mtg. Left my phone at my desk to which she responds Fine. The lie mixes with guilt on his tongue, but Charles is known for spur of the moment, end of the day meetings and sometimes, they run for several hours.
Still, he drives well over the speed limit, giving cursory checks for cops, and races through yellow lights that turn red before he’s through the intersections. Abby’s in the living room, the shadows beneath her eyes a dusky purple and her eyes filled with recrimination. Through the baby monitor, Brianna’s cries are low and plaintive.
An hour later, Jackson turns in for the night, but the nap works against him. From the way she’s breathing, he can tell Abby isn’t asleep either, but she’s on her side, facing away. Definitely still angry. The monitor crackles, the sound stretching out longer than it seems it should, long enough for him to wonder if it’s broken, then Brianna cries, and Abby stumbles from the room like an extra in a zombie movie.
He wakes in the middle of the night in an empty bed, the sheets on Abby’s side cool to the touch. He hears a low, rhythmic creak coming from the baby monitor, and it takes a few seconds for him to identify the sound: the rocking chair in Brianna’s room. Abby is whispering, soft and low.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. Everything will be okay. I won’t do it again.”
He frowns in the dark, unable to make sense of her words and too foggy headed to try.
* * *
“I feel so helpless,” Jackson says, standing in the hallway outside Brianna’s room. Her arpeggio cries are sometimes softer, sometimes louder, but always insistent, the moments of silence and contentment few and far between. While taking out the trash, he mentioned to his elderly neighbor that the baby had colic—better that she know over hearing her cry and thinking they were abusing or neglecting her—and she suggested a bit of whiskey.
“For the baby or for us?”
She grinned. “Both.”
“I tried to balance the checkbook today,” Abby says. “And it was impossible, I couldn’t concentrate, so I put her in the stroller and took her around the block.” She cups her elbows in her palms.
“And?”
“What do you think?”
“In a few months, it’ll be better.”
Abby half-laughs, half-sobs. Runs her fingers over the baby monitor clipped to the waistband of her pants.
“You don’t have to carry that around all the time,” he says, gentling his words.
She shrugs. Doesn’t meet his eyes. Finally, she says, “I know.”
“Do you think the static’s normal?”
“What?”
“The static from the monitor. Right before it picks up her cries, there’s static and it sounds weird.”
She blinks rapidly, her fingers drifting to the monitor again. “No, it works fine. That’s just interference or something.”
“All right, if you think so. Hey, what did you mean last night, you wouldn’t do it again?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I heard you through the monitor when you were feeding Brianna. You told her you were sorry and you wouldn’t do it again.”
She waves one hand. “Oh, that. It was nothing. I moved and my nipple popped out of her mouth.” She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes and the shape is off. It’s too small and too tight. He lets it go, not wanting to provoke an argument. They’re both way too tired for that.
* * *
While Abby’s in the shower, he scoops a crying Brianna from her crib and holds her at arm’s length, angling her so the light strikes her face. Her tiny fists and feet flail; her cries rise and fall and rise again.
But he’s right about her eyes. They are different, no doubt about it. The blue isn’t nearly as deep, but it’s not just that. She looks … afraid. His cheeks burn and even though the water’s still running, he glances over both shoulders. Of course the baby’s scared with the way he’s holding her. In a few years, she’ll probably love it, especially if he lifts her overhead, but babies like to be wrapped up tight and held close. That’s what the nurses said at the hospital.
He tucks her into the crook of his arm, wipes her tear-streaked cheeks, and whispers, “It’s okay, Daddy’s got you. It’s okay.”
He manages to elicit a few smiles and a funny little pursed lip expression that reminds him of a British comedian he saw a couple years back. He kisses her tiny fingers and her tiny nose, his chest tight. How can he possibly love someone this much?
“To the moon and all the way back home again,” he says.
He’s just beginning to relax when she starts crying again.
* * *
When he gets home from work, Abby, dressed in jeans and tennis shoes, is waiting in the kitchen, jingling her keys in one hand, and after a quick peck on the check, she grabs her purse. “We need diapers.”
“I would’ve picked them up on my way home.”
“I know, but I need to get out of the house. I won’t be gone long, and I just fed her so she’ll be fine for a little while.”
“Was today a bad one?”
“You can hear her, can’t you? And she isn’t nearly as loud now as she was earlier.” Her face creases and she blinks away the glitter of tears.
He nods. He’s pretty sure the neighbors two blocks away can hear her, too. Whiskey might not be such a terrible idea. For all three of them.
Another peck on the cheek and she’s out the door. It’s only when the car pulls away that he realizes he can’t hear the telltale echo of Brianna’s cries and the baby monitor is nowhere in sight. As ridiculous as it seems, he suspects Abby took it with her. Truth be told, he’s glad. He’d just turn it off anyway. It’s not like they need it.
Upstairs, he lifts Brianna to his shoulder. “Come on. sweet face, give Daddy a little break. There’s no reason to cry. Everything is okay. Daddy had a long day and he’s tired, so maybe his girl can smile instead? Just for a little bit? I know you can.”
He tries singing to her, rocking back and forth the way Abby does, dancing around, making silly faces, blowing raspberries, all with the same result. Finally, an ache firmly nestled in his temple, he places her back in her crib, shutting her bedroom door behind him. It helps, a little.
* * *
Charles calls him into the office for an after-hours meeting, and he sends Abby a message, but she doesn’t respond. Fortunately, the meeting doesn’t run very long.
Abby’s asleep on the sofa and Brianna must be as well because the house is quiet. He breathes a sigh of relief. Maybe it’s only a momentary peace—unless the colic is over, a thought too precarious to grasp too long—but he’ll take it.
He brushes a stray lock of hair away from Abby’s cheek and
her eyelids twitch. “Hi, honey. I’m going to change, but I promise, I’ll be quiet.”
She murmurs something indistinct.
He slips off his shoes before ascending the stairs and tiptoes down the hallway. At this rate, he could moonlight as a cat burglar. Even in their bedroom with the door shut, he keeps as quiet as possible. Abby says it’s better to be as noisy as normal so Brianna will get used to it, but he’d rather not run the risk.
Once changed into jeans and a t-shirt, he peeks in Brianna’s room, but he can’t see the baby. His fingers tighten on the doorframe. Brianna’s too small to wriggle around much and—
“Jackson,” Abby calls out from behind, her voice thin and bird-chirp high, and as he turns to look, Brianna lets loose with a sudden, keening wail.
He rushes over to the crib, hoists Brianna to his chest. “It’s okay, it’s all okay,” he whispers into her hair.
Abby runs into the room, the monitor in hand.
“Is she—”
“She’s fine. A wet diaper, that’s all. Can you shut that thing off? Hearing her cry is bad enough. We don’t need to hear her through that, too.”
* * *
Abby comes down in her pajamas, her freshly washed hair wrapped in a towel, Brianna’s cries echoing from the monitor in her hand.
“Tell me you didn’t take that in the bathroom with you,” Jackson says.
Her cheeks pinken but she doesn’t deny it.
“But I was with her. I told you I was putting her down. Don’t you trust me?”
“I know, and of course I trust you. I just like having it near. It makes me feel better, hearing her. And I told you that before.”
He lets loose with a bitter laugh. “We can hear her fine without it, all the neighbors can hear her, and hell, she can probably hear it, too.”
Cry Your Way Home Page 18