As Mad as a Hatter: A Short Story Collection

by Catherine Stovall

  I had to comfort the girl. I wanted her to have the love of her life back, and I believed in her crazy plan. “The rodeo just ended yesterday, they will be doing cleanup today. He probably won’t even make it to the boots until tonight. So many others left proof that they have done the same thing you are hoping he will. They all read the letter and left it there for him. They even encouraged him to come to you. Don’t give up, Lee. He still loves you. Even if it takes months, you will be together again.”

  The girl surprised me when she came around the counter to where I sat and hugged me in a tight, almost desperate embrace. “Thank you,” she whispered, the two words drowning in her tears.

  Releasing me, she stepped back, and I saw the hope again in her watery eyes. “If you hadn’t come today, I think I would have given up. Somehow, knowing so many people have touched that letter gives me hope he will too. Do you know what it is like to feel as if you’re missing a piece of yourself?”

  I thought back to a time when Gene and I had split up. The entire thing had been stupid and trivial, the two of us pushing each other away because we were angry over things neither of us could change. I cried more in those few weeks than ever in my life. Each night when I had laid down in our empty bed, I had felt as if a black hole was swallowing me. A desperate and painful need had nearly devoured me.

  When we had worked things out, I finally felt relief, and after, I knew I loved him more than anything. We were meant to be together, and I had forgotten that while blinded by the worries of life. The memories filled me with a sudden fear. I had let my love slip away again, just as I had then.

  Before I could answer her, there was a timid knock at the front door. Her body went ramrod straight and her hands began to shake. As my own heart hammered, I wondered how many times over the last few days had she gone through the same torment. How many times had she both hoped and feared the man she could not live without would be standing on the other side of the door.

  She seemed frozen in place by her own trepidations and excitement, so when the second knock came, I touched her arm and whispered, “I’ve got Annabelle. Go answer the door.”

  She only hesitated a second longer before she ran down the hall, her heart propelling her to where she could once more see him, touch him, and know he was hers again. I hoped beyond hope it was really him. The girl deserved a happy ending to her story.

  I heard a man’s voice. It sounded young and vibrant as he said her name with awe. In return, Lee gasped and cried out his. Tears of joy ran down my face as I scooped the toddler up in my arms. “Annabelle, are you ready to meet your daddy.” Her quizzical expression made me smile as we walked to the front of the house.

  Lee stood in the light of the doorway, a young man before her. Together, they looked like a picture perfect couple. He was taller, but not in an extreme way, just enough so that her head rested easily on his chest. Her small size made her look as if she were created to fit comfortably next to his lean and muscled frame. The sunshine highlighted them, seeming like a backdrop of heavenly light, and he wore the boots she had bought him. It seemed right that he did.

  Their tears mingled on their cheeks as they kissed and felt each other’s faces to ensure the vision before them was reality and not a dream. Whispered words of love became tangled in their affectionate embraces as they rejoiced. The scene was one of those rare moments in life that are so much like a movie that I, too, cried.

  Their reunion touched the part of me who had once been a young girl in love. My heart soared, and I felt a sudden desire to go home and kiss my husband the same way Lee kissed her Mark. I wanted to remember those feelings of fresh new love and the excitement of having something to look forward to, but I wanted it only with the man I had promised to love forever.

  Annabelle, looking confused, said the one word she knew would regain her mother from the stranger, “Mamma.”

  At the sound of her tiny voice, the couple turned toward the child and me. Mark’s face lit up, and I knew the image Lee must have seen in her mind when she wrote the description of her daughter in that letter. There was no doubt he had fathered the child, the deep sapphire of their glimmering eyes was too identical to not be from shared blood.

  The young man smiled as he cautiously approached, Lee at his side. I could see how badly he wanted to take the child and smother her in kisses as he had her mother. His voice full of awe, he reached out to take her tiny hand in his, “Annabelle, I’m your daddy.”

  Annabelle, a loving child, reached out her chubby little arms to him and allowed herself to be thoroughly snuggled by her mother and father. She giggled and jabbered as happy children do, and her overjoyed parents lavished her with even more affection.

  I didn’t leave my name or number. I didn’t even say goodbye. I slipped out the door and drove the short distance to my house with a smile beaming on my face for the first time in a long time. I didn’t worry about money. I didn’t care about the bills. I didn’t dread going home. I had spent so much time worrying about the things that did not matter, I had forgotten what did. Seeing Lee, Mark, and Annabelle together had reminded me of what a wonderful life I had.

  I rushed in the door, my heart beating fast and my whole being filled with a profound new outlook on life. I hugged my children to me, kissing their blonde locks and whispering words of love as I peered into their shocked little faces. Those expressions of surprise and joy made my heart ache as I thought of the time with them I had wasted in my unhappiness.

  “Darlene, are you okay,” the deep rumble of my husband’s voice made me turn.

  I went to him, wrapping my arms around his waist, and burying my head against his chest. I realized, as I listened to his heartbeat, I had been given a gift. Call it a miracle, the hand of God, or Fate, whatever it was, it had saved me. The strange and unlikely string of events that had led me to witness something that seemed like a storybook tale had brought me home a new woman.

  “I almost gave up, Gene. I almost let us fall apart. I don’t care about money. I just care about us and the kids. I’m going to love you for the rest of my life, babe.”

  His hands had come up to gently rub my back, but after I spoke, he held me at arm’s length. “Honey, we both did. We have been buried beneath so much darkness that we forgot the light. I love you, and I always will.”

  His lips came down to meet mine, and we fell into a gentle passion that may not have held the heat of new love, but blossomed with the promise of one that is everlasting. The sound of the kids laughing and making noises about our display of affection caused us to break away, but the assurance of more to come shined in my husband’s eyes.

  I laughed aloud, blissfully happy despite my depleted bank account balance. “It’s so good to be back home.”

  

  Things worked out for us in the end. Gene’s business picked up, and my career flourished. Soon, money stopped being a problem. Long before that, I changed. I started loving the things in my life, both good and bad. I appreciated my husband, my children, my job, and even the beat-up Ford truck. I never saw the little family again, but I like to believe they lived a fairytale life after that day. I wish I could thank them for the clarity their story brought to my life. Because of them, my heart, much like Mark, drifted back home.

  A Photograph of Home

  I stood utterly alone in the empty house. The walls around me were dingy with years of cigarette smoke, the carpets were worn from the feet of many children and visitors, and layers of cobwebs hung like ghosts in the corners of the dark, wood paneled rooms. My heart sagged as I took in the bareness of a place I had once called home.

  The movers had left with the last of my parents’ possessions, and the family had gone. The silence seemed odd. The house had never known quiet, and the sudden lack of inhabitants somehow felt sacrilegious. Strange feelings tugged at the strings of my heart and threatened to open the floodgates holding back my tears.

  I had grown up in the house, my first true
home. I had taken for granted what it meant to me. Back then, it never seemed as precious, and sometimes, had been a cause for dread. My childhood had not been peaceful, full of riches, or by any means easy. The shabby appearance and need for repair I observed before me was proof of that. The withered structure had born witness to the uncountable struggles we had experienced over the years.

  I never thought the house would later become a haven of peace for me. Yet as I grew into my own, the simple three-bedroom building had become a promise of safety. The backyard had been the place of family reunions, holidays, and barbecues in my first years of adulthood. During that time in my life, good memories swept away the shadows lingering from the past, and a new light seemed to fill the rooms that always promised laughter.

  Farther down the twisted path I had walked through life, the house had offered much more than shelter beneath its leaky, sagging roof. Broken from my journeys, I had come back to its battered door, searching for not just a place to stay, but that old familiarity. Children in tow and needing family again, the house had provided protection from the outside world. Nestled into the safety of the people I loved, I had rebuilt myself and found the strength to move on again.

  As I walked from room to room, I sought anything left behind in the move. My mind could not concentrate on the task at hand. My thoughts fled back to the past. I trailed my fingertips down the hallway where our family pictures had once hung. I stood in the kitchen, tears streaming down my face, as I remembered helping my mother bake for the holidays as we sang old songs and laughed. Each step further into the emptiness, brought me closer to despair.

  Finally, I sank to the floor in my old bedroom, letting the tears and memories engulf me. The vivid recollections washed over me in waves without order. I found myself drowned by the mass of thoughts and images. My friends, siblings, accomplishments, and failures had all been a part of the house. The ghosts of other times and places called to me from long ago. The here and now ceased to exist as I mourned my childhood home.

  My best friend had lived next door since I was eleven. The room where I sat could tell a million tales of our secret hopes and fears. We used to sneak out through the back window. We ran wild back then and lived adventures most only dreamed. She and I had been inseparable as children. As adults, we had grown distant. We saw each other infrequently, both of us busy with individual and demanding lives.

  My oldest sister had moved far away many years before, but the room had been hers before it had become mine. I remembered sitting on the edge of her bed and listening to the stereo. Six years older than me, yet she had always taken the time to include me in her life. I felt my heart break a little more when I realized over a year had passed since we had last saw each other. She had once been a vital and necessary part of my life, but like the house I sat in, she had become barely more than a stranger.

  My brother had been the next to leave, but he never went far. The ties were simply too strong. I saw him in my mind as he had been in our youth, surrounded by the hordes of his friends, awkward teenage boys that trudged through our little house. I had learned to cook from those frequent visits. Always eager to impress my big brother, I had strived to make him proud. More often than not, they’d left me behind with little thanks, dirty dishes to wash, and a heart full of pride.

  The sister closest to my age and I had often sat in her room across the hall and talked about our dreams and aspirations. We both had known we would escape the one horse town and the confines of the house that had not felt like a home at the time. She and I had constructed such big plans for our uncertain futures. She made it out, but her dreams shifted and her aspirations fell to the side. She craved distance from her family and the jagged edged memories the old house had held. I missed her, but her choices were her own.

  Just before my own child was born, my parents brought another child into the world. Our baby sister had come to the house wrapped in pink blankets and more love than a single child had ever known. The birth of that baby was the catalyst of our lives. Her very existence had seemed a miracle in itself, and to see my parents gifted with such a blessing after what seemed eons of struggle, humbled my young soul.

  We all had held our weddings in the backyard, just beyond the living room windows. We said our vows of love beneath the boughs of the trees we had climbed years before. We danced our first songs on the lawn our father had tended, and the music would always remind us of those days and our home. The house, always a backdrop in the photos and memories, had outlasted some of the unions formed in its shadow.

  Each of us had brought our newborn children home to that rickety abode to be welcomed to the world as their grandparents lavished them with love. I could never forget our father, strong and fierce, on his hands and knees with my first born perched upon his back. I could never repay my mother for the sleepless nights and unfailing ability to calm a screaming baby or bring down a raging fever.

  The heart of the house lied within the strength of the bond between our mother and father. Many years of their marriage had been spent inside the walls of the house that would soon be no more. They had never been perfect, but they had strived to give their children better than what they had known. Their endless support had never wavered, even in the darkest hour. I always knew, no matter what time of day or night, they would leave a light on in case one of us returned.

  Departing from my sabbatical into the history I shared with the house, I blinked my tear filled eyes and stared at the doorway where I had once marked my growth. I thought to myself, This was once my home, but without the family within its walls, it has become faded, broken, and empty. I felt pain and sorrow I could never describe. Adequate words do not exist to paint the picture in another’s mind of the unbearable grief that losing my home caused me. It seemed, I too, was becoming an empty shell.

  The tears eventually began to run out, and the memories faded. I dried my eyes and stood from the floor. My heart weighed heavy, and I told myself to stop acting like a child. The house was only a building, but it felt differently to me. In my heart of hearts, I had always believed the house breathed, cried, rejoiced, and fought when we had. It had seemed alive and as much a part of the family as any of us, pieces of ourselves had been given to create its soul.

  I made my way through all the rooms, reliving a thousand little moments I had previously forgotten. At last, I entered the bedroom that had belonged to my parents. Gone was the bed where they had lain, gone were the knick knacks their children had given them through the years, and gone were my parents from the place where their love had always bloomed.

  They had lived and loved for many years in the house we called home. My father had worked hard to make extra money as his calloused hands bled on the broken parts of broken cars. My mother’s back had bent with the strain of raising a family and bringing a paycheck home. They were not perfect, nor were they always the best role models. However, they had taught us life lessons other children would never learn. Our father taught us to have pride, to be strong, and to face adversity. Our mother taught us forgiveness, acceptance, and fortitude.

  Our lessons had often come from the house itself. There had been no steps in our family, except the ones leading to the front door. Blood was blood, but everyone had been welcomed there with open arms and open hearts. In the garden, we had learned about pruning the weeds from the crops, as we would later prune the unhealthy things from our lives. In our father’s garage, we had gained knowledge about not fixing what wasn’t broken. Tools in hand, we discovered there were few things in life that couldn’t be repaired. The lessons that old home and our family had taught us could fill a book of their own.

  I snapped back from my memories, shaking hands wiping tear stained cheeks, and proceeded on my quest. Everything was in order, nothing seemed to be left behind, and I knew I needed to go. It was time to say my goodbye to the old friend who had offered me shelter and safe harbor from the world. As I turned to the bedroom door, something caught my eye. A small sliver of paper hi
ding in the top of the closet, the edge barely visible, tempted me to look closer.

  I climbed on the lower shelf and reached for the object, almost completely concealed by shadow and dust. I cursed the cobwebs that covered my hand as I fought the urge to squeal and shake my limbs in protest to the sticky feeling on my flesh.

  My determination proved worthwhile once I climbed back down and was able to see what I had claimed. To my surprise, I realized it was not paper I held, it was an old Polaroid. I blew the dust from its face, and I found my solace at last. All the sadness of leaving behind my childhood home did not fade, but my heart lightened.

  The picture had been taken on a sunny, summer day, not too long after we had moved in. The family, gathered together in its entirety before the youngest was born, smiled up at me from the faded image. Standing together, like I hadn't seen in almost a decade, the people in the photo seemed familiar strangers to me.

  My mother and father beamed at the camera, unwaveringly happy for a frozen second of time. The four of us kids had gathered in front of them, all in a row by height and age. How happy we had been, all of us standing in the drive, our new home behind us. I couldn’t recall who took the picture or why. I only knew I would always be grateful to them for doing so. The single photograph soothed my weary soul more than anything else could have.

  Smiling to myself, with fresh tears on my face, I tucked the picture back into the closet and walked away. I couldn’t leave the house with only the ghosts of the past to wander its halls. It seemed wrong not to allow the memento of the family who had spent decades under its roof to stay there within its heart.

  I could’ve taken the Polaroid with me, kept the image preserved between panes of glass, and made copies for my siblings to have. Instead, I chose to leave it as a final thank you for the years of service the old house had provided to my loved ones and me. The photograph of my home may have been left behind, but it would forever be in my heart.