That Pale Host

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That Pale Host Page 8

by L. G. McCary


  “We’ll see you after Christmas!” Miss Colleen says.

  The rest of the parents mercifully retrieve their daughters and leave without saying anything to me except for the woman behind me. She pats my arms and winks.

  “Been there with big brother,” she whispers. She points to the little boy holding her hand, who looks to be about four. “Don’t be embarrassed.”

  I wish that made me feel better. I trudge toward where my daughter is still hiding behind the mats. Miss Colleen kneels next to her.

  “Rylie, can you please look at my face so I can talk to you?” she says.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Colleen,” I say.

  “Come here, Mama,” Colleen says. Her voice is gentle but firm. “Rylie, I’m very sad you didn’t participate tonight.”

  Rylie jumps up and runs to me for a hug.

  Miss Colleen watches her in my arms for a moment. “Rylie, were you scared to dance?”

  “I scared. I scared!”

  I snuggle Rylie close as she sniffs and hides her face. Poor baby.

  “I thought so. Stage fright,” Miss Colleen says to me with a sad smile. She gestures for me to turn Rylie to face her, which feels like a wrestling match.

  “It’s okay to be scared,” Miss Colleen says once Rylie looks at her. She nudges Rylie’s shoulder. “But is it ok to yell or throw a fit?”

  Rylie shakes her head and covers her eyes with her arm.

  “Next time you get scared, you can tell me or your mama, okay? But it’s not nice to your friends to yell and stomp your feet and make it hard for them to hear the music. Being scared is fine. Distracting everyone by misbehaving is not. Do you understand?”

  Rylie nods her head.

  “Can we try again next year, Rylie?” Colleen asks.

  Rylie doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t hide her face.

  “You’ll be brave next time,” I say, planting a kiss on her tear-stained cheek.

  “That’s right! Because we don’t give up, right? Keep, keep trying. Don’t give up!” her teacher chants the phrase I’ve heard many times in class.

  “Keep, keep twying,” Rylie says. She tries to make herself as small as possible in my arms.

  “This is just a speed bump,” Colleen says to me. “Happens all the time. Even my teenagers have freakouts.”

  “Thank you,” I say, but I can’t hide my embarrassment.

  I rejoin David in the hallway as the last other family walks out into the rainy parking lot.

  “Stage fright,” I whisper over Rylie’s head.

  He nods, but he doesn’t seem very sympathetic.

  “But she’s going to try again, right?” I say. “Right, Rylie? Keep, keep trying?”

  Rylie nods and reaches for David. “I want Daddy.”

  David kisses her forehead and smiles.

  “I’m going to get the car, okay? You wait with Mama.”

  “I want Daddy!” she cries as he heads out into the rain.

  “It’s okay, baby. He’ll be right back.” I heft her up against me again. She’s getting so heavy. She covers her face with her arms again. I catch a glimpse of my face in the lobby mirror. My ears are bright red, Rylie has tangled my hair on one side, and I look like I’m about to cry. Why is it always so obvious that I’m a mess inside?

  Another gust of cold hits me as the last family disappears into the parking lot. I am a little unsteady on my feet, but I can’t put Rylie down. I watch our reflection in the mirror and try to count to ten. Rylie’s ballerina bun is quickly turning into a ponytail.

  I need to get out of this studio. Now. Where is David? I breathe in through my nose and slowly out through my mouth, trying not to lose it. I need to be away from this room. The mirror seems to shimmer like a mirage. Blinking seems to make it worse, so I close my eyes.

  I’m about to have a panic attack or cry. Why isn’t the breathing technique helping? Where is David? The corner of the front desk gouges my ribs as I realize I’ve been backing away from the mirror.

  I force myself to open my eyes and see our car is at the door. I rush outside, covering Rylie’s head with the sleeve of my jacket. David takes her and shoos me into the front seat. I press my head into the back of my seat and wiggle my fingers and toes slowly. I am not going to freak out over a ballet recital. It’s ridiculous, and I’m not going to do it.

  My heart doesn’t seem to care about what my brain is telling it. It keeps pounding as if it wants to jump out of my chest and run to the next county. I jump when David’s door shuts.

  “That was ridiculous,” David says to me, his voice low.

  “I don’t know what happened. She was so excited yesterday,” I whisper.

  I don’t want Rylie to hear. We should wait until we get home to talk about it.

  “Charlie, are you okay?”

  “Yes,” I say, lowering my head to my knees.

  “Then why are you leaning over like that?”

  “I’m upset,” I say. “Trying to calm down.” I am not panicking. I refuse to panic. I am just upset that my child hid her head behind a stack of practice mats with her hind end in the air like an ostrich.

  “I want to do ballet,” Rylie hollers from the back seat. I roll my eyes and look at David as we come to a stoplight.

  “You missed your chance, kiddo,” he answers blandly without taking his eyes off the road.

  “No!”

  I put my hand on David’s arm, trying to warn him not to respond. She’s asking for an excuse to throw a tantrum.

  “Too bad.”

  The tantrum begins. I cross my arms and shrink myself down into the seat, trying to focus on breathing slowly and ignoring the screaming and kicking in the back seat. David grips the steering wheel tighter and sighs loudly. I tried to tell him.

  It seems like ages, but we make it home. Rylie’s bun is now a messy ponytail. She’s also missing a shoe.

  “We’ll find it in the morning,” David hollers over her screaming.

  He carries our kicking and crying daughter inside while I collect my purse and Rylie’s shoe that I know I’ll forget about in the morning if I don’t find it now. When I finally make it inside, she is sniffling but willingly getting dressed for bed.

  “Good night, baby,” I say, kissing her wet pink cheek.

  “Night night, Mama. I sowwy,” she says as she grabs my neck and plants a teary kiss on my chin.

  I leave David to finish the rest of the bedtime routine and change into pajamas.

  “She said she had stage fright?” David asks as he walks into our room, pulling off his shirt.

  I nod.

  “She’s not scared of anything though,” he says. “You’ve seen her at church. She’s a daredevil.”

  “Colleen says it happens all the time. Even to teenagers.”

  David tosses his shirt in the hamper and stretches his arms over his head with a sigh.

  “It might be a funny story someday,” David says. “At least that’s what Mom would say.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been so embarrassed in my life,” I say. I shouldn’t be so upset. It’s a parent showcase, not Swan Lake.

  “I’m going to go play some games with the guys,” David says, pulling on a faded T-shirt. “They’re getting online about now.”

  “I’m sorry she didn’t dance for you,” I say. “She’s so good.”

  “I believe you,” David says.

  He pats my shoulder and disappears into the living room to kill zombies, leaving me alone in our bedroom. I curl up in a ball on my side of the bed.

  Twelve

  Rylie runs from one end of the playground to the other. I have been waiting for good weather so we could go to the park, and she could not be happier. My five-year-old follows the strips of black stuff from the edge of the monkey bars around obstacles and past the swinging bridge until she comes to a temporary victory stop next to the swings. She throws her hands in the air.

  “Yay! I did it!” she yells. She rushes off to the starting line agai
n. I’m tired merely watching her, but she completes the circuit a dozen times without stopping for breath.

  “Mommy, are you watching me?” she says, hands up in victory next to the swing. “I’m going to do it again now!” My shoulders are shaking with suppressed giggles. I’d hate for her to think I don’t take her races seriously.

  I’m trying to treasure these moments of just the two of us. It seems like yesterday she started ballet. This fall, she’s going to preschool two days a week at Fellowship Christian School with Missile.

  Her dark-blonde curls are flying behind her in a tangled mess. I may be forced to cut them if she won’t let me brush her hair more often or at least keep it in a ponytail. I hate to do it. Those curls are my last piece of her babyhood.

  “Mommy, can I have a drink?” She reaches for my water bottle and guzzles for a long minute. I realized a few days ago that her r’s don’t sound like w’s anymore, and it makes me sad. I miss her asking for a “dwink.”

  “We’re going to go home for lunch soon, sweetie,” I say before she disappears into the castle again.

  “No! I don’t want to!”

  I don’t want to either. If I wasn’t starving and worried about sunburns, we’d stay here all day. Just the two of us.

  “Rylie, I think we should have a smoothie with our lunch. What do you think?”

  “No! I’m not going to have lunch! I’m going to run a race again!” She ducks under the swinging bridge and runs as far from my chair as the fence allows. “I’m not going home!”

  “But Mama is hungry! We have to go home before my tummy monster starts growling!”

  She’s not buying it, and I don’t feel like fighting this battle. She will tire, and her own tummy monster will growl.

  A shudder runs down my spine, and I look over my shoulder. There’s no one around this time of day. The windows of the houses across the street are all empty and quiet, but I can’t resist searching them for eyes.

  I rub my fists against my temples and count like Darren taught me. The sky is scrubbed clean from the light rain last night, the flowers are springing up, bright with color, and some birds are arguing in the tree behind us. But I’m still miserable.

  I’m usually able to slow down and take control of my thoughts before they overwhelm me. It’s taken a long time to feel like I’m not always on the verge of losing it. I still have trouble when David isn’t home. I found the source of the creaking in our bedroom fan, and that helped some. David pointed out yesterday how little I’d been home. I get out of the house as much as possible. Bible study. Wandering the mall. Taking Rylie to the park. Grocery shopping. More wandering the mall. More Bible study. Sometimes I make a sack lunch to save some money.

  I have to admit that I’m avoiding the house. How stupid is that? I’m afraid of my own house. Every time I turn around, something startles me. I’ll go for weeks, even a month without an incident, and then a shadow will move while I’m on my way to bed. Last time, I could have sworn I saw a second set of eyes in the mirror behind me after my shower. And then there are those flashes of blue at the corner of my eye. It’s almost always blue. My eye exam was perfectly normal, so it’s not something wrong with my retinas. I shudder again.

  I’ve got to get out of that house. That’s the solution. We need to move! Why didn’t I think of this before? I’ve never seen any moving shadows or creepy faceless eyes anywhere but our little personal haunted house. I am so sick of the creaking, the annoying shadows from the tree in the back yard, and the constant power outages when it storms. It’s hindering my progress, as Darren might say.

  A thought sends every other plan for the day scampering into the back of my mind. I’m going to look for open houses and listings online. Why didn’t I see this before? If I can get us moved to a different house, it will all go away. No more shadows that look like hands, no more fuzzy outlines behind me in the mirror.

  “Mommy, I’m hungry.”

  The tummy monster has attacked her.

  “You are? What should we feed your tummy monster today?”

  “Peanut butter and jelly!”

  “Sounds delicious, Rylie-Girl. Let’s go home.”

  “I want a smoothie.”

  “Then we’ll have to make a smoothie.”

  “Don’t forget! Pinkie square!”

  “What did you say?” Her face is so serious that I know I shouldn’t laugh.

  “Pinkie square!”

  “You mean pinkie ‘swear?’”

  “Pinkie square!” She crooks her little pinkie and points at the flat of her knuckle. “See? Pinkie square!”

  I can’t help it. The laughter bubbles over, and she frowns at me.

  “Mama, no!” she yells indignantly. “No laughing! It’s not funny!”

  “I’m sorry, baby,” I say, biting back giggles. “Okay, yes, I pinkie square. I won’t forget your smoothie.”

  We head home to lunch and chores in my creepy house. I know I’m acting a little weird, because David looks worried about me when he gets home. I can’t help it. I don’t know how he’ll take this idea of moving, and my mind keeps running scenarios of different ways to convince him.

  “So I was thinking,” I say over the bubbles and dirty dishes in the sink, “maybe we should start looking around at some other houses.”

  “You mean moving?” David sets his glass in the dishwasher. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. We’re kind of outgrowing this house.”

  “I thought you loved it here.”

  “I guess.” Love? I am terrified of this house. “It’s kind of creepy, though. All the creaking at night. Reminds me of a—”

  “Creepy?”

  “Sometimes it feels a little...” the next word oozes off my tongue like acid, “Haunted. Or something.”

  “Haunted?” David laughs out loud. “Since when do you believe in ghosts?”

  “It’s so creepy when I’m home alone with Rylie!” I say. “And the power going out during storms.”

  “Okay, you’re right about that. We need to get that fixed. I’ll get Casey to come help me this weekend,” David says.

  “No. No, I...” I scrub at stuck-on lasagna. I need a sandblaster. “I think it’s getting a little small for us. And I don’t like being here all by myself when you’re gone.”

  “Why don’t you show me some of these creepy spots in the house, and I’ll see if I can fix them.”

  “I was joking, David.”

  He raises an eyebrow at me. “Didn’t sound like it.”

  “Yes, I was. Mostly.”

  “I’ll bet I can fix it. I’ll get out my ghostbuster kit.”

  “You’re making fun of me now.” I give him a face, but he laughs.

  “You need to quit watching scary movies.”

  “Fine.” I scratch at a burnt piece of pasta on the corner of the pan. “I’m serious about moving, though. I’d like two sinks in our bathroom, and I don’t like the guest bedroom. It’s hot in there all summer.”

  “Yes, but why all of a sudden?”

  “I don’t know. Feels like the right time, I guess.”

  He leans against the counter and frowns. “I am pretty happy here,” he says.

  “Well, I’m not. I think we need something bigger.” My pan is clean. I set it in the dish rack and my gloves next to the sink. He regards me for a moment. I can tell by the look on his face that he’s not convinced.

  “I guess I’ll think about it,” he answers slowly.

  “There are some great houses closer to church!”

  “We’d have to specify no ghosts with the agent,” he says, tickling my ribs.

  “Very funny,” I glare at him, and he kisses me as if it’s a peace offering.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I won’t tease you anymore.”

  “Pinkie square?”

  “Pinkie what?”

  “It’s pinkie square, according to Rylie.” I show him my “square” pinkie, and he snorts.

  “Alright yeah, I pinki
e square that I won’t tease you anymore.”

  “Good.”

  “Can you pinkie circle? Or pinkie triangle?” He gets that mischievous look that Rylie inherited. “I’ve got it: pinkie dodecagon!”

  “I’m not the authority on these things.” I laugh. “You’ll have to ask Rylie.”

  He pulls me close and kisses my neck.

  “She’s asleep. I’ll ask her tomorrow,” he murmurs.

  “Want to watch a movie?” I ask.

  “Actually, no.”

  “Oh.”

  Thirteen

  “I shouldn’t have volunteered for this,” I mutter to David over the cluttered kitchen countertop. He gives me a look and shakes his head.

  “It’s great, Charlie. Your food is great, and everyone is having a good time.”

  I wish I could agree. I rearrange bottles of soda, a stack of napkins, and mason jars filled with utensils for the hundredth time and check the clock above the oven. Tori and Greg should have been here by now. Renee and Casey are sitting outside on our patio, chatting with the new couple, Yvonne and Reuben. Their four kids are playing with Rylie and Liana in the back yard. Their middle daughter, Hannah, is in Sunday school with Rylie. I hope they’re getting along. They seem to be.

  “I don’t know if I have enough food without...”

  “Tori is coming.” David pats my hand. “She texted you, right?”

  “Yes. Twenty minutes ago.”

  “Then she’ll be here any minute. I’m going to check the grill.” He heads toward the patio door. “They’ll be here. Relax.” In a moment, he’s outside chatting with the other guys.

  I know these people. They know us. Why am I still so miserable? The salad sits covered in plastic wrap on the counter. Renee’s brownies are next to the sink. I avoid looking at the blank spot on the counter where Tori’s hashbrown casserole and veggie tray are supposed to go.

  Thank goodness, the doorbell. I race to the front door and yank it open. Tori and Greg are standing empty-handed.

  “Hi!” Greg says. “Sorry, I was late getting home from work.”

  Why is he lying? Tori told me she was going to have to stop for the veggie tray. I plaster a polite smile on my face anyway.

 

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