Painful Truths

by Brian Spangler

“Mom, what are you doing here?” I asked, searching around her, trying to figure out how she could be standing in the doorway.

  “Amy, I need to fix this,” she repeated as she stepped into the room. “For you, Amy. I need to fix this.”

  “The station wagon?” I asked, confused. Her figure rocked side to side and stepped back and forth in a nervous do-si-do.

  “The car!” she yelled. “And what I hid inside it! What we did! All of it!”

  I sat up as she continued to stammer, saying words I couldn’t understand. She shuffled in and out of the doorway, scraping her bare feet against the floor. She’d come with an urgency—an anxiety and terror—I hadn’t seen before. I could smell the danger on her and was instantly afraid. I cowered against the bed, but had nowhere to run.

  A razor-blue flash exploded, lighting her face like a Polaroid. And in the roll of thunder that followed, the hairs on my arms stood on end. Fear ran through me so deep I could feel it in my bones. Her hair hung wet against her head and face. Black mascara ran from her eyes, leaving dark, streaky tears. She wore a nightgown that clung wet to her skin—the outline of her breasts told me she wore nothing beneath it. Her lips were blue from the cold, and her breath came in heavy rasps that mixed in with the tempo of water dripping onto the floor. She stood in a puddle of rainwater. I could tell from her posture that she had something hidden behind her back.

  “What are you doing here?” I repeated, straining to see what was in her hands.

  She said nothing and stepped closer, nudging her thigh against the bed. Her arms stayed tucked away.

  My heart rose into my throat. I reached behind me, searching for Nerd’s burner phone. It wasn’t there. I turned around, desperate to find the phone, ignoring the pain. I lifted the pillow and heard my mother’s feet dragging over the wet floor. I braced, knowing what she was capable of, and plunged my hand into the pillowcase.

  “Mom?” I asked, wanting her to say something.

  I closed my fingers around the phone, gripped the plastic. My lungs filled with hot air, and when I spun back my mother pressed her finger to my lips. My mind screamed for me to swing wide, to throw everything I had into crushing the phone against the side of her head.

  I froze.

  “Shush,” she whispered, swiping at the rain dripping into her eyes.

  I brought the phone to rest in my lap. She glanced down at it, ignored it, and leaned forward to touch the side of my face. Her fingers had pruned and were as cold as ice.

  “Amy, I was wrong in doing what I did to those men, for taking you. I wish I could take it back. I wish I could take it all back.”

  I didn’t move—couldn’t move. A strange calm came into my mother’s eyes as she let out a sigh. I blinked, thinking my fever was playing with my mind. It wasn’t. For a moment, I no longer saw a killer. I saw my mother—and dread and guilt.

  “Oh Mom,” I said. “There you are.”

  Her face cramped, a cry coming with the shake of her head. “I’m so sorry for who I am and for what I’ve done.” I brushed away the wet on her face as she forced a smile—the kind a mother gives to comfort their own children while hiding troubles. “My baby girl.”

  “It’ll be okay,” I tried to assure her, meeting her eyes, returning the smile, and wanting to make everything right. “We can talk to Steve about the station wagon—make up a story about someone else using it. He can help us—”

  My mother shook her head again and waved her hand, cutting me off. “Amy, don’t you understand? There should never have been an us.”

  She leaned back and brought around her other arm. I didn’t flinch or brace myself. I knew she wouldn’t hurt me. In her fingers, she held an envelope with Steve’s name scrawled on the front—the blue ink ran as if tearfully, staining the paper.

  “Use this,” she said, laying the envelope on my bed.

  “What is it?” I asked, touching the wet paper.

  She struck like a poised snake, slapping the top of my hand and taking my wrist between her fingers. She squeezed with a viselike pinch until I pulled away.

  “It’s not for you. Give it to your husband.”

  “Mom, what is it?” I demanded.

  “I told you, I know how to fix this.”

  Her face emptied and she put her cold lips to mine before standing to leave.

  “Momma, don’t go,” I said, insisting. I reached up to take her arm. She swung around, batting at my hand impatiently as she moved to the window.

  A deadly idea ticked inside me—a frantic warning.

  “Mom! What are you doing?” I yelled. I leaned over the edge of the bed, my heart walloping and a pulse racing in my gut. “Mom!”

  A flash of light framed her form in the window, making a shapely silhouette. She turned her head to one side briefly, as if listening to my plea, but then placed her hands on the lip of the window’s sill.

  “I know how to make this right,” she muttered, throwing the giant window upward in one swift heave. The air became laden with rain and filled the room with a cold wind.

  I screamed, understanding what she intended to do.

  “Mom!” I begged, sliding from the bed until my hands reached the floor. Blood rushed in my ears. I gripped the wet tile with a grunt, pulling myself down.

  “I’m doing what I should’ve done when your father found out,” she screamed over the storm, climbing up on the sill and perching herself on the ledge. “I broke your father’s heart, you know. It killed him. Especially when I kept doing it. When I kept taking you with me.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. My heart broke, crushed by the idea that my father had known.

  “I told you! I know how to fix this,” she repeated and swung her legs until they were outside the window.

  “No, Mom. Wait!” I shouted, pleading, my voice breaking. “Someone help me!” I fell from the bed, slamming onto my side. My belly tore open, and pain knifed my insides. I cried out as a wet gush warmed around my middle. My mother inched over the sill and leaned forward. I ignored the bleeding and slid toward her.

  “Oh my!” I heard from behind me, followed by the pummel of footsteps. “Ma’am, please come down from there. Please come inside!”

  “I love you, Amy,” my mother said, her face filled with a contentedness I’d never seen. I got up onto my elbows and then my hands, my bare legs sliding in a slippery mix of warm and cold. My gut pulsed as I bled onto the floor.

  “Please, Momma!” I begged, taking hold of her nightgown in my fingers. “Please!”

  “This’ll make it right,” she exclaimed as she turned away from me.

  “No!” I yelled as I clutched a handful of her nightgown. “We need you! I need you!”

  I gasped for air, the residual burn of a lightning flash in my eyes. I tightened my grip on the wet fabric, but it slipped from my fingers. The world came to a sudden stop as my mother jumped from the window. I flinched as I heard the sound of her nightgown flutter against the wind. It passed over the sill like a sheet falling from a bed. I could only stare at the space where she’d been a moment before, the rain beating down onto my head and face, mixing with tears I thought I’d never shed. A long silence came. I waited, knowing it would end with the faraway sound of her body crashing onto the pavement nine floors below. But it was what I didn’t hear that told me she wanted this, that maybe she needed this. I never heard her scream.

  The sound of a man hollering came through the window, telling me what I already knew.

  My mother was dead.

  A scream came next, and then another. Thin voices called out, asking if the woman on the street might still be alive. I listened to the click-clack of shoes on the pavement, the growing chatter of strangers running to help. I fell onto my chest and laid on the tiled floor, absorbing the cold like a sponge.

  I’d become numb, but felt the touch of fingers pressing my side. I winced, and then felt nothing. The room turned gray, and the voices in my ears hummed a jumble of words. I ignored them, fading instead
and welcoming the black intrusion. I closed my eyes and searched the darkness. I found the faces of my dead parents. I could hear my mother’s voice like a record, playing what she said to me over and over.

  My father knew.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE HAZY SUNSHINE AND the heaps of ruddy clouds told me the coming day was going to be a scorcher: a mid-summer swelter. I lifted my foot at the touch of water on my toes and wished I had worn a different style dress shoe. The grass was crisp with morning dew, the acres of green turning steely-white, save for the narrow footpaths that had begun to open up from those who’d gathered. It wasn’t humid or muggy yet, but the air was stock-still, and my skin had already begun to feel clammy. I’d sweat soon. And from the quick look of those dressed in black, the sun would make sure we’d all sweat today.

  My mother would have liked her funeral. It was early in the day—the earliest time we could schedule the burial. Simple and modest, she’d call it. But nothing was simple after the police released the letter she’d written to Steve: a detailed confession of the murders. In the days that followed, in the days I needed to recover, it seemed as though the only thing I could find on television were pictures of my mother and the men we killed. The murders were better than thirty years old, yet the press treated the story as though it had happened yesterday. And I supposed for some, it had just happened yesterday. They were here too. Here to see the murderer of their loved ones put into the ground.

  From the corner of my eye, I found a few of the victim’s families gathering. I saw a news truck approaching from behind them too. The truck slowed with the side door opening and spilled the news crew onto the pavement like a broken egg. I gave them a scowl, but they didn’t see me—not from such a distance. The press hounded us in the days that followed my mother’s death, and I’d hoped the funeral’s early hour would keep their attendance to a quiet few. But hope is just another four-letter word that can be empty and meaningless. Two more vans pulled in behind the first, spilling their crews too. I’d been wrong about the early hour. The press never sleep.

  A chirrup erupted from the surrounding trees—the perched birds singing and chatting, becoming more active as the late morning grew long. Michael took notice of the tweeting and gripped my hand. He squeezed my fingers, and I saw a pained loss of innocence in his expression. I regretted bringing him and hated seeing a piece of his childhood slip away. But he’d insisted—even pleaded with us to come. His gaze darted back to where we were headed, and then around to the hills and flats that made up the cemetery. He’d never been to a graveyard, let alone a funeral. I gently tugged on his arm and raised my brow, indicating the long stretch of parked cars, asking silently if he wanted to wait inside. He shook his head and faced his grandmother’s gravesite, walking on with me. He choked back a fresh tear. We continued until we were gathered with the small group that had come to say good-bye. My son wasn’t a child anymore.

  Michael pointed. I followed his gaze past the gleam of wet grass to a small group of men and women standing like statues. The families of the dead men looked like churchgoers: their arms crossed in front of them, sleeves cuffed above the elbows, wearing thick black bands around their biceps in remembrance of those they’d lost. An older woman—a mother of one of the men, I suspected—gave me a short nod as if to make sure I saw her. I had. And instinctively, I stepped in front of Michael, putting myself between them and my son—I would risk nothing.

  An onslaught of camera clicks began to rival the chattering birds when I moved to block Michael. Steve came around the other side of me, catching on to what I was trying to do. I glanced over my husband’s broad shoulders to find the family members and the woman who’d acknowledged me. She was walking away, helped along by a younger man. Maybe she was satisfied. Maybe all she wanted was to be seen or to have seen someone put into the ground. I scanned the others, but their figures remained as still as the memorial statues atop some of the graves. I wondered if they would leave too. They didn’t give any indication that they would. I saw questions and curiosity beaming from their eyes. I put my hand on my mother’s casket, ready to see this burial through. I ignored the curious stares and focused on the one task I had to finish that day: to bury my mother.

  Sunlight skipped off the steel-blue casket, and I shielded my face. I could see that only a handful of her friends had come to wish her farewell. A handful. Their wrinkled faces were just altered images I had in my mind of people I recognized from when I was a child. Steve told me he’d tried to keep my mother’s confession out of the press, but the story was too big—“national big,” he’d said. The break in the decades-old case had made the news and was posted online, went viral. Even Nerd had tried to quash it, but couldn’t stop the spread. Surely more of her friends would have attended if the press hadn’t revealed what she’d done.

  A sudden pang of emotion nagged at me—I saw her body perched in the window and the look on her face just before she jumped. I shook it off, telling myself that I shouldn’t feel anything, not for her. But seeing so few at her graveside hit me, and I felt an unexpected sadness. I leaned into Michael’s shoulder, my legs weak. Blood rushed, pounding, into my head. I tried to focus and to gather myself.

  “Mom?” Michael whispered, his voice sounding concerned as he took my weight.

  He’d certainly never seen me like this. The wispy sound of shoes shuffled against the grass, and I felt a hand take my other arm. I shrank back to wordlessly thank Steve. But the grip was light and delicate. I opened my eyes to find Nerd at my side.

  He mouthed the words, “I got you.”

  I almost didn’t recognize him. His hair was combed straight back again—a touch of Mr. C’s handiwork, maybe—and the scruff of whiskers had been cleaned from his chin. I found his boyish eyes and saw compassion in them. I lost it then.

  I almost killed him, I thought absently, remembering the blood vessels erupting in the whites of his eyes when I tried to strangle him. But on this day, he was here and holding my arm and helping. He was devoted to me, and I knew I’d never question his loyalty again.

  “Thank you, Brian,” I told him as Steve motioned to take my other hand. Brian said nothing, but nodded and then dipped his chin as he stepped back to join the others. My breath came in small gasps. I held back my emotion until Steve was next to me. With my son and my husband next to me, I said good-bye to my mother.

  ***

  Dreams are a funny thing. There’s no predicting them, no planning them, and no way to express preferences for them either. They are what they are: a mindless jumble of thoughts strung together. I used to think that. But after killing the homeless man, my dreams had become more. They were a window I could look through to see an unremembered past. A past I wished had stayed forgotten.

  That day, I saw who my father had really been. We stood at my mother’s grave, her ceremony coming to a close. The few friends who attended placed roses upon her casket. My thoughts became lost in the small parade of people filing by her body one at a time. In the quiet of that moment, I discovered that I didn’t need my dreams to teach me things anymore.

  In my bubble of grief, protected by the arms of Steve and Michael, I found every memory. The suddenness of seeing them overwhelmed me like a blind man whose sight had been miraculously restored. Only this was no miracle. I didn’t jump up and down in celebration. Instead, I clutched the arms of my men and cowered, shutting my eyes while begging the darkness to hide what I didn’t want to see. But there was no hiding from the memories anymore. And, like my mother’s life, my dreams of her ended.

  I turned my face up to the sky. The brightness shone through my eyelids as if a giant lightbulb had been turned on. I saw everything for exactly what it was. I saw my father’s face alight, and heard him telling me it would be okay, that he was sorry she’d done that again. And I could smell our old station wagon, the scant odors of the night, and the stench of death covering my bare arms and legs and clothes. We’d carried a body just hours before, and the redolence wou
ld stay with me for days.

  “Come on, my baby girl,” my father said.

  I felt his large hands beneath me, cradling me, picking me up from the seat next to my mother. My skin felt sticky and it peeled away from the vinyl as he lifted me out of the station wagon. Darkness shrouded our movements like a secret, but there was just enough light to show me the outline of his face above my eyes. And in the setting moonlight, I could see a gleam of wet perched on the end of his chin.

  “How could you? Why won’t you stop?” he cried, but kept his voice to a whisper for fear of waking our neighbors. “And why do you keep taking Amy? What kind of monster are you?”

  My mother whipped her head around, a tempered evilness in her face. She told him to shut his mouth.

  He said nothing, but grumbled a few words. She gave him a that’s-what-I-thought look that ended the exchange. She slammed the station wagon’s door. My father jumped at the loudness and glared back at her, his expression pleading for her to be quiet. The first of the morning birds called back a reply to them, and I peered to the east side of our house to see the faint colors creeping over the horizon’s soft lip.

  I curled up in my bed, my feet sliding against the bedsheets as I fell in and out of a light sleep. My mother had come in to sit next to me like she sometimes did, the mattress sagging and my small body easing toward her. From their bedroom, I heard my father’s stifled cries. I wondered if he would leave again.

  Will he take me with him this time?

  My mother told me how sorry she was and promised that it would be the very last time. The morning crept through my window—a glint of honey light cutting the dark and catching my mother’s face.

  “That was the last time. I’ll never take you again,” she said, but her eyes lied.

  She cast hopeful glances toward her bedroom door, lifting her voice loud enough for my father to be able to hear the apologies. And though I was young, I could tell she wasn’t at all sorry. She was only trying to calm him down, to soothe his anger with promises—and then with something more when the bedroom doors were closed. Our walls were thin.