Dread fills her like a shortness of breath when she stands in front of the structure. It’s a house made of broken bones.
(our scars identify us)
Bones cracked roughly, bones healed and showing the pale lightning bolt of the knitted seams, all thrown together in a jackstraw-profusion to resemble a cottage. Skulls of varying sizes make up the front steps. Tibias and fibulas build the walls, the porch railing, the floor.
(our skin is meant to be cut our hearts are meant to bleed our bones are made to be broken)
The folder Lisa had given her rests on the porch, the breeze teasing back the cover and, as Karen watches, scattering the pages. They’re all blank and the wind carries them away.
The house looms over her, staring at her with its eye socket windows.
(go in)
Roberts whispers on the wind.
(you came all this way go in set the example this is the place you’ve always used to escape)
She climbs the steps, her movements wobbly over the uneven surface. She fears the bones breaking under her, but this is a surface fear, covering the more primal core fear in her chest. She knows the bones won’t break.
But she fears the voice is right: this is a place of escape.
(you escaped your mother by coming here)
(after your marriage dissolved and your job left you escaped by cutting)
(now you can escape this way)
“Stop being so fucking cryptic,” she says aloud, but it’s all bluff. The voice is not being cryptic. The dread in her chest tells her so.
She reaches the door, which hangs slightly ajar, revealing a deep darkness beyond.
“I don’t want to step in there,” she says.
Roberts voice again, but it’s straight memory this time:
(you can show your child the pitfalls of going down the path you did or reacting the way you did)
(go to your son guide him)
She reaches out and pushes the door open. The floor is bare and gray. A mantel above a dead fireplace dominates the far wall. Kevin’s school portrait sits in the center, looking at her.
She remembers grabbing it from her desk before leaving work.
The dread’s not so much a shortness of breath now but a pressure against her chest, pushing the air she has out, refusing to allow fresh air in.
She steps into the house.
A creak echoes above and she looks up in time to see three women, dressed in white, come falling straight down out of the darkness, their long brunette hair trailing them. It’s a short descent, but it seems to last longer, allowing her eye to take in the beatific smiles, their empty eyes, the way they hold each other’s hands. The nooses.
She screams, but the snap of their necks is louder. She cringes and cowers back from where the bodies sway, thinking that this would wake her up, that her brain only ever deposits her here until she can’t take anymore and now the dream would fragment, that she would come to in her own bed and it would be early Tuesday morning, October 8th—
(less than two weeks until the hearing less than two weeks until nick gets kevin)
But it doesn’t happen. She falls against the door frame, the knobs of anonymous vertebrae pressing painfully against her shoulder muscles, and screams, and doesn’t wake up. The three women—
(it was two women and a man not three women)
—sway, grisly pendulums, but their hair—the same shade and length as Karen’s—obscuring their faces, thankfully. She has the idea that, even dead, they are still smiling. They have escaped—
(their pain)
—whatever it was they were running away from.
She straightens, wary of one of their feet touching her. She looks around, as if the suicides would alter the world somehow, but it hasn’t. The house of broken bones is still empty. Kevin’s picture is still on the mantel. The poisoned breeze continues to buffer the house.
Carefully, she edges around the bodies and goes to the mantel. She picks up Kevin’s photo and hugs it to her chest, turning away from the suicides as if protecting her son from the view.
Roberts’s voice:
(isn’t that what got you in trouble in the first place?)
As if shamed, she turns towards the bodies; they’ve turned on their ropes, their hair-covered faces now facing her.
She looks down at the portrait of Kevin. He’d hated the polo shirt she’d made him wear, even if it did make him look completely adorable. Still, in spite of that, he smiled in the photo.
She can’t remember the last time she’s seen him smile in the real world.
Her eyes water, her face growing hot. She’s never heard of crying in a dream, but here she is, doing so. She touches the glass as tears roll down her cheeks.
“What kind of mother am I?” she asks and there’s a lightness in her chest at finally articulating the thought that has always dogged her, even as her voice gets thicker and more choked. “How am I raising my son?”
Roberts:
(parents set the example)
(he will hopefully act differently than you did)
(go to your son guide him)
Karen looks up and around, finally settling on the three dead women. Her right arm burns, the way it did in the hour or so after she would cut.
(you hated cutting not because you feared getting caught but because you never could work up the nerve to finally escape)
She hugs Kevin’s photo to her chest.
(you’ve lost your job you’re going to lost your son)
This sends a shudder down the length of her.
(and soon you’ll have nothing but your acknowledgement of your own failure)
(you will be this place inside and out)
She hugs Kevin’s photo so tight she feels the glass front crack. This doesn’t stop her.
“I don’t want him to end up like me,” she says. “Not like me.”
(kevin not talking kevin not sleeping kevin looking at her with those bags under his eyes and an expression he shouldn’t be old enough to sustain)
She sobs. “Not like me. Not with one parent out of the picture and unable to talk and deal with the pain.”
Roberts:
(then guide him)
She closes her eyes. This is a dream, and doing this should knock her out of it, but this isn’t a regular dream, is it?
(i’m going deep into my own head)
Roberts comes on, stronger:
(set the example for him and escape being a failure karen the best escape you could ever hope for don’t you want that? to do right by your son finally before you lose him?)
She hears the flap of blank pages outside blowing away on the breeze. She hears the creak of the hanging ropes.
“I want that so very much,” she says. “I’m not a failure of a mother. I want him to do better than me.”
(then show him)
Karen opened her eyes as Roberts’s voice faded from the center of her head. She sat up in bed and checked the clock. Nearly five. She’d be getting up in a half-hour anyway.
She swung her feet over the side of her bed, but stayed there a moment, head hanging low, hair in front of her eyes. She often woke up completely unable to get back to sleep, but this felt different. It felt like those mornings you get up and something momentous was going to happen that day—Christmas morning, a birthday party, a vacation about to start. A lightness in her chest, a bounce in her step.
“I know what kind of mother I am,” she whispered.
Before she went downstairs, she adjusted Kevin’s blankets. He murmured, pulled them tighter around him.
The sun rising, she shook his shoulders, rousing him. He turned, but squeezed his eyes shut, fighting wakefulness.
“C’mon, hon,” she said. “Gotta get dressed, get your toys and comics together.”
That made his eyes open. “What?”
“No school today,” she said, still holding onto his shoulder. He was so small, the ball of it fit perfectly against the palm of your hand. �
��I already called you absent. Going to Lisa’s for a bit.”
He sat up in bed and she reluctantly let go. “Why? What’s up?”
“Surprise, kiddo,” she said, stepping back. “C’mon, hustle. Your clothes are on the dresser.”
He was still staring at her blearily as she left the room and went back downstairs.
The doorbell rang and Lisa jerked, spilling hot coffee onto the back of her hand.
“Motherfucker,” she hissed, setting the pot back in the machine and grabbing a dishtowel.
“If that’s a Jehovah’s Witness,” Mitch called down the steps, “it’s Federal law that we’re allowed to kill them and bury the body out back.”
Lisa tossed the dishtowel onto the counter and shook her hand as she made her way to the door. Against the glass, she saw the outlines of two people, one small and one feminine and her mind made an instant connection, but that connection was ludicrous on a Tuesday morning when it wasn’t even seven yet.
And then she opened the door to see Karen and Kevin, Karen smiling and Kevin looking completely confused, and decided that maybe the instant connection wasn’t so ludicrous, after all.
“Uh, good morning?” she said, holding the door.
“Can Kevin stay with you today?” Karen said. Her smile wasn’t the death-head’s grin, but, given her weight loss, it was a near thing.
“What?” It was the first thing that came to Lisa’s head.
“You know I wouldn’t ask if this wasn’t important,” Karen explained. She had her hand on Kevin’s neck, just holding it, and Lisa couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Karen touch her son that wasn’t some fervent grab, as if the kid would be ripped from her grasp at any moment.
“Hon?” Mitch called down the stairwell. “Who is it?”
“Karen and Kevin!” she called back, slightly turning her head towards the house, her eyes never leaving the two of them.
“What?” was Mitch’s reply. Exactly, Lisa thought.
She stepped aside. “Hey, Kev, go on in. Wanna talk to your mom a minute.”
Kevin walked in. Lisa stepped outside, closing the door behind her. “What the fuck is this?”
“I need a favor,” Karen said, the smile finally slipping from her face, leaving it emaciated and serious. “I’m sorry, but I was afraid you’d blow me off if I called.”
“Your goddamn right—it’s Tuesday fucking morning. I have work. So do you. So does Mitch. Shit, Kevin has school.”
“I need a few hours,” Karen said.
Lisa’s eyes narrowed. “What’s this about?”
Karen took a deep breath. “I’m afraid I’m going to lose him, Lisa. Nick’s going to convince the judge—”
Lisa blinked, her head shaking. “Whoa-whoa-whoa. Hold up. Didn’t you get my message yesterday? I found a lawyer and—”
Karen continued as if she hadn’t heard. “—so I only have so much time left before he’s gone, Lisa. I need that time before it’s too late.”
“You sound like a terminal cancer patient. Didn’t you hear me? I found you a lawyer and no judge—”
Karen’s eyes blazed, locking on hers. “I need to do this, Lisa.”
“Do what?” Lisa burst out. “You haven’t told me what the fuck you’re doing.”
“Setting an example,” Karen said. “I have fucked up a lot this past year—”
“Hey, wait—”
Karen shook her head. “—and I need to rectify as much as I can while I can.”
“What about work? What about school?”
“I called Kevin in absent,” Karen said. “And I punched a guy sexually harassing me in the dick yesterday before walking out.”
“What?”
“Lisa—please.” The fire in Karen’s eyes dwindled, but they continued to hold Lisa’s gaze.
Questions and comments and common goddamned sense swirled through Lisa’s head like a dust storm. The answer was obvious. The answer was no, get your ass to work, get Kevin to school, think logically for a moment and get your shit together or family court really will rule against you—
—But Karen wasn’t looking away, or down, or any of the things that Lisa had watched her friend do for the past year. As batshit insane as she was being right at this moment, this was the Karen that Lisa had met in community college three years ago, the Karen carving out a life for her and her son.
And, besides, what if she gave the obvious answer? Did she really think that Karen would listen? That Kevin would go to school and she would go to her temp job and everything would be rosy and good? Whoops, sorry, momentary lapse in judgment there?
Thinking tilted in Lisa’s head; it was too early with too much too fast, but what finally settled her was the answer to the question: who else did Karen have?
She sighed. “Fine. Okay. I’ll take a day off work.”
Every muscle in Karen’s face seemed to loosen. “Thank you. It won’t be the whole day, I promise. Maybe not even beyond lunch.”
“Are you going to tell me what this is beyond ‘setting an example’ or whatever it is the hell you’re doing?”
“You’ll see,” Karen said, already going to her car—skipping to her car. “I’ll call you in a few hours.”
Lisa stood on the stoop and watched Karen back out of Lisa’s stub of a driveway and pull away, tooting her horn once.
She never said goodbye to Kevin, Lisa thought.
A worm of disquiet burrowed into her heart, turned her guts into a mild churn. Something was most definitely rotten in Denmark—
—and Karen had saddled her with Kevin, meaning she was unable to do anything about it without involving the boy.
“Goddammit,” she muttered, and stepped back into the house. Kevin was in the living room; she could hear him channel surfing.
“Hey, hon!” she called up the stairs. “We’re parents for a day!”
“What?” came Mitch’s reply.
Exactly, Lisa thought again, and went to call off work.
(i should be at work now)
She shook off the thought, turning on the television for noise—Bryant Gumbel was talking about the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings—and going into the kitchen. The green light on the answering machine blinked rapidly, which meant there was more than one message.
(didn’t you get my message yesterday?)
Who was the other message from?
She almost went to listen to it, then switched directions and went to the junk drawer beside the fridge, pulling out a legal pad and a pen. A calendar hung from the fridge door, one of those nature scene ones; October’s was, predictably, a pumpkin patch. Lisa had circled the twenty-first and wrote HEARING in the center.
Less than two weeks away.
Karen went to the kitchen table and sat down. She almost got up again—there was still coffee in the pot and she found herself craving some—but didn’t. If she started stalling now, she’d continue stalling and what needed done wouldn’t get done. And didn’t she want to get it done?
(then go to him set an example)
That light feeling of Christmas morning when you know it’s all going to be goodness and joy to come.
Karen started to write and proceeded to write for the next three hours. The phone rang periodically, but she ignored it, lost in what she was trying to say. No one left messages.
Each page she finished she tore away and set into rough stacks. By the end there were three: one to Lisa, one to Nick, and one to Kevin. Kevin’s was the thickest stack. Of course it was.
She didn’t want him to miss the point of what she was doing.
Lisa had cable and thank Christ for that; Kevin could wile away the morning watching Nickelodeon while Lisa paced in the kitchen, turning the situation around and around in her head.
Not that it got her anywhere. She wished she hadn’t told Mitch to go to work, that she would handle it. She needed someone to bounce her thoughts and speculations off of. Of course, that would entail her explaining what the fuck had been
going on for a month and she hadn’t gone beyond “I’m helping Karen through things.” She hadn’t wanted to get into Karen’s things with Mitch; it felt gossipy.
Now she wished she had.
She carried the cordless with her, would periodically call Karen’s apartment because she couldn’t imagine where else the fucking woman could go, and of course it rang straight to the answering machine.
Once, while the theme music to Eureeka’s Castle played, she debated calling Nick. Get a hold, woman, she thought, but how dire fucking straits it was that she would consider that.
Jesus, kiddo, what’re you doing? Lisa thought.
And then, just before noon, the phone rang in her hand and she nearly dropped the goddamn thing.
She clicked the TALK button. “Hello?”
Karen’s voice: “How’s Kevin?” Lisa heard a lot of ambient noise in the background, as if Karen was calling from the side of a roadway.
Lisa turned away from the kitchen doorway. “Where the fuck are you?” she stage-whispered. “What the fuck is going on? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Karen said, the second word nearly lost in what sounded like an eighteen-wheeler speeding by. “Is Kevin all right?”
“He’s watching Nick Jr. and I’m contemplating firebombing the network headquarters,” Lisa said. “Talk to me, woman. Where are you?”
“Harmarville,” Karen said, simply, as if the answer should be self-evident. “Get Kevin and come here.”
“Come where?” Lisa hissed.
“You’ll know. Just follow the route to St. Jude’s; you’ll see my car before you see me.”
“What the fuck—”
A distorted sigh. “I’d tell you and you’d freak. Just trust me, Lisa. This one time.”
Like I haven’t been trusting you all a-fucking-long? Lisa shouted in her head. What she said was, “Karen—”
A click.
Karen had hung up.
Lisa pulled the phone away and stared at it, as if willing it to ring again. The phone dumped her back into the dah-dah-dah of an open line.
Bones are Made to be Broken Page 36