by Pamela Crane
‘Hey, Harp. You okay?’ Lane sat beside me, blood speckling his scrubs, and held his hand out for a drag.
I passed the cigarette over to him, nodding at the bloodstains dotting his clothes. ‘Tough day at work?’
Lane took a drag and coughed. ‘Mm, smooth.’
I chuckled. ‘Shut up. I should have warned you that they’re an old pack.’
‘No, Betty White is old. This is archaic.’ He handed the cig back to me.
I gestured to his clothes. ‘You kill someone?’
He glanced down at his shirt, as if only just now noticing it. ‘I didn’t have a change of clothes in my work locker. I need to catch up on laundry.’
‘Isn’t that Candace’s job? You know, since she’s home all day doing nothing.’
‘It’s not a big deal for me to do it.’
‘You know how I feel about that. Anyway, I washed your clothes so you don’t need to. What happened at work?’
‘Eh, same old, same old. One of my patients fell and cracked her skull on the floor. Lost a lot of blood, but she’s okay. I’m more concerned about you, though. You don’t smoke.’
‘I do today. I don’t know what to do with myself anymore, Lane. I feel so alone.’
Wrapping an arm around me, he hugged me into his side. ‘You’re not alone. I’m always here for you.’
I straightened and pulled away from him. ‘Not anymore, Lane. We both know it. You’ve got your wife who needs you. There’s not enough of you for the both of us.’
He nudged me with his shoulder. ‘That’s ridiculous. You and I are a package deal. Our lives will always twist around each other; we’re twins separated by a year. Besides, I can be a husband and a brother at the same time. Millions of people do it every day.’
‘Not really, Lane. Not the kind of brother who shows up to help his sister frame her husband’s suicide as a murder.’ I sucked in a long draw and exhaled a puff of smoke. ‘But I’m done asking for favors. I’m going to find my own apartment, something small and affordable, get a job, and get out of your hair.’
‘No you’re not. You’ve only been here for a little over a week. You’re going to stay as long as you need to, Harp. Give yourself time to heal. The baby isn’t due for months. There’s no rush for you to leave.’
We both knew it was time, though Lane would never admit it.
‘I do have one last favor to ask, though.’
‘Anything,’ he said.
‘I just need a hug from my brother.’
Lane took the cigarette from my fingers and put it out on the patio floor. Lifting me up with him, he hugged me, a hug so enveloping and warm that it wrapped me in love. It was the hug of two little children who couldn’t bear to be separated by even a sliver of space. It felt safe to be a child for once and not always the adult. I closed my eyes to relish it to the fullest. When I opened them, there stood Candace, jaw clenched and eyes narrowly watching us from the kitchen window.
I jolted and stepped back. Candace slowly drifted out of sight.
‘I’ve been meaning to ask you. Have you been taking your meds?’ Lane asked.
Not this again. ‘I don’t need them anymore.’
‘You know that’s not how it works. You have to keep taking them consistently.’
‘I don’t like how they make me feel. Like the walking dead.’
‘Then the dosage needs to be adjusted. But don’t just stop taking them. I’ll go with you, if you want. We can talk to the doctor together. I’m very familiar with this stuff, you know. It’s what I do for a living.’
I nodded, wordlessly following him into the house where, like a good girl, I would take my medicine to silence the wailing inside my head. I checked the time. Bedtime at last! I found Jackson coloring at the coffee table while Elise watched reruns of Scooby-Doo. I remembered fondly watching the show as a kid myself on Saturday mornings. How times had changed. Kids these days had instant access to everything they wanted, while us old folks had to wait until the weekend for our favorite shows. And God forbid a child sit through a commercial!
Glancing over Jackson’s shoulder, I expected to find an explosion of creativity the way Before Jackson used to be. Before Jackson would create a flurry of scribbles and scissor cuts as he turned an elephant into an elf. Instead, I found the entire page colored black with red squiggles. I thought of death and blood. What else would have crossed a mother’s mind at such an image?
‘Hey, buddy, whatcha’ drawing?’ I asked warily.
‘It’s dirt.’
Oh, that wasn’t so bad.
‘What are these?’ I pointed to a red squiggle.
‘The worms.’
‘Worms?’
‘Yeah, like the ones eating Daddy in the ground.’
My chest tightened and I moved to hug Jackson from behind. But my arms wouldn’t obey. I couldn’t touch my own son. What child considered the worms ravaging his father’s corpse? He scared me; the child I had borne – part me, part Ben – was untouchable. Every maternal bone in my body yearned to wrap myself around my tiny boy, but my muscles tensed and grew defiant and rigid. Instead, I placed my hand on his shoulder. Yes, I could handle that.
‘Jackson, why would you want to draw that?’
‘I dunno.’ He shrugged, as if I had asked what he wanted for a snack.
‘Do you think about this kind of stuff a lot?’
He nodded, shifting away from me. He always shuffled out of reach. Away from physical contact. It was becoming as worrisome as my inability to touch him. The mother in me yearned to close the gap between me and my son; but the mother in me also couldn’t because of what he had done. The one thing I couldn’t forgive him for.
‘Sweetie, why won’t you let me touch you?’
‘I dunno.’
The same two words he used to answer every question. I knelt down, meeting him eye-to-eye. ‘Please talk to me. I don’t know how to fix it if I don’t know what you’re thinking. Are you upset with me?’
He peered at me with eyes that had seen too much, robbed of all innocence. ‘I guess.’
‘Why, bud? I’m trying my best.’
‘Because you’re the reason Daddy’s dead.’ His voice was thin, like a strand of silk choking me.
‘Why do you say that? I loved your father.’
And I did. More than anything.
‘No you didn’t. Or else Daddy would still be alive.’
I felt the pierce of grief all over again.
‘You think I killed Daddy?’
‘Yeah. It’s why the policeman keeps coming to talk to you, isn’t it?’
I hadn’t realized Jackson was paying such close attention. How could I explain a murder investigation in a way a six-year-old child would understand?
‘No, bud, the policeman is just trying to figure out who did it.’
‘Will the person who killed Daddy come after me next? Is that why we have to live here, to hide?’
Oh no. The conversation was unraveling faster than I knew how to handle. I couldn’t tell Jackson that his father had committed suicide. But thinking his father was murdered wasn’t any better. How long had my son been fearing for his life?
‘No, sweetie, it wasn’t like that. No one is after us.’
‘Then why did you force us to live here? I hate it here. I miss Daddy. I wanna go home!’ Throwing down the black crayon that had been clutched between his stubby little fingers, Jackson jumped up and ran upstairs, leaving me alone with my heartbreak.
I wanted to chase after him, squeeze him until he giggled like we used to. I love you the size of a peanut, I used to say and he’d laugh. I love you the size of the ocean, I’d amend, but he’d shake his head and say, Bigger! Tickling him, I’d compare my love to the moon, the earth, the sun … and at last to the ever-expanding universe, because that was our love. Ever expanding. Endless. Our whispers would float through the night-lighted bedroom while his spider legs wrapped around my waist.
I missed my boy who wore superhero u
nderwear, who chewed his bottom lip in concentration, who moved in a whirlwind of motion, who laughed endlessly at his own fart jokes. Where did my son go, and what sad creature had taken over his body? His flame had been extinguished too soon, his passion and zest for adventure and color gone before it had fully arrived.
After several breaths, I headed upstairs, readying myself for a conversation with the son who blamed me for his father’s death, who thought a killer was after us. I needed to set things right with him before he recklessly pieced more faulty bits together. His bedroom door was shut when I got there, and when I jiggled the handle it was locked.
‘Jackson,’ I spoke against the wood, where curls of white paint flaked off. ‘Can we please talk?’
The doorknobs in the house were outdated glass, lacking modern safety features. Kids back in the day could lock themselves in and you’d have to bust the whole door down to get through.
I knocked lightly. ‘Please unlock the door, or I’m going to have to take it down.’
A moment later I heard the approach of footsteps, then the click of the lock. When he opened the door, I smelled the faint scent of smoke.
‘What’s going on in here? Why do I smell smoke?’
I dashed past him into the room, as Jackson wrapped his short arms halfway around my waist, begging me to stop. I charged through his tiny bodily blockage.
‘Please don’t be mad, Mommy!’
Behind his bed, in a cheap plastic – and meltable! – garbage can, I found the remnants of a photograph burning to ash.
‘What is this?’ I screeched, blowing it out. ‘You could have burned the whole house down! Was that you who set off the fire alarm last week?’
Jackson broke into tears, muttering something about ghosts visiting him in his dreams. I picked up what was left of the photograph; only half of our smiling faces were intact, but I recognized the image immediately. The day was still fresh in my mind. Taken a year and a half ago, it was one of the last pictures of our family whole and happy. In this perfect moment on a nature hike at the Cape Fear River Trail, we had no idea what horror was to come.
‘Calm down, honey.’ In a pile at the bottom of the garbage can were other pictures, some depicting people I didn’t recognize. ‘Why are you burning these?’
He caught his breath before speaking, his words quivering with his body. ‘The ghost told me to.’
‘What ghost? The old lady who died here?’
He nodded. ‘She told me if I burned the pictures I wouldn’t have to remember Daddy anymore.’
‘Why would you want to forget Daddy?’
‘Because it makes me sad.’
‘Oh honey.’ I pivoted him toward me, his body stiff and unwieldy, and held his hands. They were the only part of him I could hold. ‘It’s okay to be sad. You’ll always remember him, and you should. It’s good to remember the people we love. Daddy is just waiting on the other side for us, so you don’t need to be sad. We’ll see him again in heaven someday.’
We stood together in angsty solitude, his fingers locked in the grooves of my knuckles. Eventually he wilted onto the floor, and I lifted him into bed, pushing aside Elise’s notebook and Nancy Drew mystery she was in the middle of reading. My mother had lent Elise a copy she had grown up on, the cover cartoony and faded. After settling Jackson in, I kissed his forehead, my lips warm against his cool skin.
‘It’s going to be okay, bud.’ I clung to the promise that it would, fighting against the probability that it wouldn’t.
Grabbing Elise’s notebook, the lined page that it was open to had two words on it. A username and password. More specifically, my Facebook username and password. How had she even found that? And more importantly, why?
‘Do you know why Elise has my Facebook login information, Jackson?’
‘She got it off your phone to talk to a boy she likes.’
‘What boy?’ My little girl was into boys already? When had I missed this? I was a worse mother than I thought, oblivious that my daughter was growing up and I couldn’t see it beyond my own self-importance.
‘I dunno.’
Any boy on Facebook would be too old for her. We hadn’t even had the birds and the bees conversation yet. Was she even ready for that? Or was I?
I set the notebook down, tucking the bedspread around Jackson’s tiny frame. ‘Do you know if Elise ever posted anything?’
He chewed his bottom lip in thought. Ben used to do the same thing. ‘I know she let Miss Aubrey post something that day she was babysitting, ’cause they wouldn’t let me see.’
‘Was that the day I went out shopping with Aunt Candace?’
He nodded. ‘Before you left. I remember ’cause it made Elise cry real bad but Miss Aubrey couldn’t delete it before you left.’
Shoot. I had been wrong. I had been so certain it was Candace, so quick to blame. I felt horrible about my accusation. Even worse that Elise knew and was afraid to tell me – about the post, about the boy crush, about everything going on in her life, apparently.
Once Jackson had drifted off, I remembered that Elise was still watching television, so I headed down the hallway toward the stairs, passing the bathroom. Behind the door I heard sobs – but not a child’s sobs. A grown woman’s.
‘Candace?’ I whispered to the closed door. ‘Are you okay?’
I knocked softly, unsure if I should intrude. It went quiet within, except for a gasp and the shuffle of feet. A moment later, the shower turned on and drowned out her weeping. A hard pass to my question.
‘Mommy?’
I whipped around at the sound of a faint voice and found Jackson standing in his doorway. Hadn’t he just fallen asleep?
‘Yes, sweetie?’
His gaze burned with intensity. ‘We’re not going to see Daddy in heaven. I don’t think God’ll let us in.’
‘Why would you think that?’
‘Because I know you killed Daddy, just like I killed my sister.’
I couldn’t deny it, because I knew he was right. Some sins are unforgiveable.
Chapter 16
Candace
When you need to laugh, let me be your joker.
When you need to cry, let me be your shoulder.
When you need to yell, let me be your endless sky.
When you need to fall, let me be the arms to catch you.
‘Candace? Are you okay?’
I ignored the muffled question and subsequent rap of Harper’s knuckles on the bathroom door. She didn’t deserve to know why I cried. She would have judged me for it anyway. A grown woman crying from a bad dream. Only for me it wasn’t just a dream; I had relived one of the worst parts of my life. Harper wouldn’t understand; hell, even I didn’t understand it sometimes, how I let myself steep in the abuse, then again subconsciously chose to relive it.
In this moment I was glad for the inches of wood that separated us. I turned on the shower to make her go away. Staring my reflection down, I watched streaks of tears cut a snail’s trail through my makeup. I rested my hand on the mirror and leaned against it, the steam from the running water slowly spreading across the glass. Soon I began disappearing, the mist taking my shoulders, then neck, then finally my face. Then I was gone in the haze, merely a faceless shape.
Ever since I discovered I was pregnant, I couldn’t stop crying. Over every sappy commercial. Over the growing pile of laundry. Over a text message from Lane saying he was held up at the hospital. Over an argument with my sister-in-law who hated me. The saddest part was that I wanted her to like me, and I wanted to like her back. It was an unexpected want because, up until now, I had hated her from afar, eager to wedge distance between us. She was the competition, after all. But I empathized with her struggle against grief. We shared those same tears, that same loss, the same heartbreak. Kindred, anguished souls. Initially, I thought we could heal each other. They say to keep your friends close but your enemies closer. What happens when you want your enemy to become your friend?
After all the other
pregnancies, and all the subsequent miscarriages, I had never experienced this part of pregnancy. It was like my sensations were heightened to superhuman capacity – my feelings, my sense of smell, my voracious hunger. Everything except for my physical strength, which felt sapped, like my body had been drained of all its lifeblood, leaving me limp and helpless and hungry and nauseous. How could I be both sick to my stomach and yet starving? Pregnancy hormones made no sense whatsoever.
Along with the unexplained weeping came anger. My rage became flesh. Sometimes I could visualize wrapping my fingers around a neck and squeezing the life out of the person. Harper had been my target audience for that whimsy. Countless nights I had crushed her throat to shut up the nagging and the criticism, imagining watching her eyes bulge until I choked out her words. The images slipped into my dreams. Then I’d awaken loathing myself for the hatred I couldn’t contain.
The dreams were another thing altogether. Some nights they featured strange sexual fantasies with my best friend from high school, a short, pimply, plump girl who looked just like you’d expect a girl named ‘Enid’ to look. Other nights were plagued with nightmares about losing the baby, me reaching down between my legs, my groin soaked in blood. All of it was so horrifyingly graphic. The wild cards were the flashbacks in time. I never knew what I was going to get, whether nostalgic or traumatic. The recurring theme of my pregnancy dreams tended toward reliving my worst experiences, scratchy sandpaper memories. Like the one I couldn’t shake out of my head.
After undressing, I felt the shower water running hot and stepped inside. The water sluiced down my back, and I sobbed until I didn’t know what was water and what was tears. Little streams of sorrow circled the drain, then were gone.
I closed my eyes as the water ran over my face, and let the memory wash over me … praying it would circle the drain and disappear with my tears.
***
I flinched as the front door slammed shut behind my love, now my hate, while my tears dripped on the yellowed linoleum floor. Noah had left, and knowing him, he wouldn’t be back for hours. Grime formed in the crease near my bare toes where the wall met the baseboard. This was my corner, where the dust and hair and grease settled into the edges of the kitchen. And me – the dirtiest of them all. This corner was my hiding place when Noah’s fists got riled up. Not that I could hide from him, but at least it protected me from the fullness of his wrath. Noah usually gave up when I cowered in the corner with a kitchen chair blocking me in and him out.