by Jess Lourey
There wasn’t time to scream.
The bone side of his arm pinned my neck, the tip of a wicked-looking hunting knife resting between my eyes. I blinked to make sense of it, to erase the double and triple view until it settled into a single blade. I’d never been attacked before, not so much as slapped.
I tried to swallow, but his arm didn’t allow for it.
None of this made sense.
The echo of laughter on the street seemed to grow closer and then fade.
He leaned in. “I’m going to hurt you.”
No shit, I thought before a crazy idea lit up my brain, a ridiculous image of me telling the editor who’d passed me over for a promotion that I’d finally landed a scoop: my own mugging. But was that what this was? A mugging? I blinked some more, the pain at the back of my skull exploding in red mushroom clouds. My eyelids were the only part of my body that seemed to be working.
I opened my mouth to yell for help. Only an ugly grunt escaped.
He scowled, and I spotted something green between his front teeth. I was too terrified to look into his eyes.
Think. There must be something I can do.
But my head was empty, wiped clean by terror. The blankness endured as he released me and I dropped to the grubby pavement, landing hard on my knees and soiling a new dress, but somehow I was grateful because I could finally breathe, jagged and deep, past the bruised, fragile chicken bones of my throat.
But there was no reprieve. He wrenched my head back, ripping out a clump of hair, and then struck me so hard across the cheek that I was blinded.
That was when I first thought of the baby.
And I resented it.
It was just a flash, the awful emotion—I have to protect two of us and it might cost me my life—so brief that I immediately buried it. My sight returned in silver bursts. I heard a wheezing exhalation and realized it was me. My attacker smacked me again on the other cheek before shifting behind me, his moves quick and certain.
I was on bended knee. I cried out as one ankle was punctured, and then the other. The long, wicked hunting knife. He’s stabbing my ankles. The sharpness of the pain woke me up. I scurried back against the brick, away from him, drew my knees to my chest on instinct, and huddled in the shadow of a rancid-smelling trash bin.
“Take my purse,” I croaked, holding it out. “There’s money in there. I won’t yell. Take it and go. I swear I won’t tell on you.”
I closed my eyes to demonstrate.
I see nothing.
He snatched my purse from my hand.
I whimpered. My eyes spasmed with the force of holding them shut. I promised myself that I would be true to my word, I’d be a good girl, I wouldn’t tell a soul, if only he’d leave me, let me be. But a soft thump at my feet forced my eyes open. My cheeks were already swelling, I could see them in the bottom of my field of vision, and blood made my ankles sticky.
No more than two minutes had passed since I’d left the grocery store.
The hook-nosed man was holding my wallet and had tossed the purse at my feet. His brown felt porkpie hat, even more outdated than his suit, rested on his head, unbothered. I focused on that detail.
“You holler, I’ll kill you.”
I put my hands over my mouth. I say nothing. Except I felt a scream rising, a burning howl that wouldn’t stop once it started. Mom, help me was the shape it took, but she’d been dead for months. I swallowed against it, but it fought back.
“I mean it,” he said. “You count to five hundred, and then you can leave. You tell anyone, I’ll find you. I swear it.”
He walked backward the way I’d entered the alley, toward the Red Owl, threading his way down the narrow walkway. I forced my neck to turn, made myself look away from him, to stare into the side alley he’d appeared from. My eyes grew dry, and still I didn’t blink.
Neither did I count.
I remained motionless, frozen in something like stasis, not wanting to face what’d just happened. The stifled scream was lodged sideways in my throat.
I don’t know how long I would have remained there, stunned and bleeding, if the alley cat hadn’t slunk out from behind a trash bin, rubbing against the unmolested part of my leg, purring.
He was orange and white.
I watched him from a great distance.
He looked soft.
Real.
I scooped him up and ran all the way to my apartment.
Where I found Deck. He held me, cleaned my wounds, promised he’d take me somewhere safe, said I could keep the cat, chuckled when I named him Slow Henry because he’d saved me, but late.
That’s why I agreed to move to Lilydale, to restore the delicate fabric the mugger had shredded, that quivering cloth that made me believe I might not be as whole as other people, but at least I’d be safe in my own body.
I had no choice.
The lemon-yellow room.
My mouth snaps shut, lips sewn, teeth bolted. I do not want anyone to hear my screams, to come running. It wouldn’t be safe. They aren’t safe.
Was it just the one scream, the one that woke me? I close my eyes, measure my breath. Ragged but steady.
Listen.
I do. No floorboard creaks, no footsteps.
Think.
The effort feels like rusty nails dragging through my brain.
I am Joan Harken. I am a reporter. My baby is gone.
I weave something real from those three thoughts, summoning them from the fog, giving them shape and power (I am Joan Harken. I am a reporter. My baby is gone), until they are as solid as the bed I’m lying on.
Whose bed?
Yes, the room. I recognize it. I’ve been here before, inside these bright walls. Slept here? Visited? Remembering this bedroom is vital.
The knowledge is almost there, but when I try to squeeze, it escapes like a slippery silver fish between my fingers. I can’t concentrate enough to hold it, not over the driving primal drumbeat of . . .
I am Joan Harken. I am a reporter. My baby is gone.
It doesn’t make a difference where I am.
I have to save my baby.
I’m overcome by a desperate thirst, and my breasts are so swollen with milk that the flesh threatens to split, and it doesn’t matter because I finally understand what I must do.
I begin to sit up, slowly, but even that small effort is too much. I fall back into the pillow, my world narrowing to a pinhole, one thought echoing down.
Don’t scream this time. You don’t want them to come.
CHAPTER 6
I’m whistling as I look around the sparkling interior of the Schmidt house.
Our house.
In the almost week since we moved to Lilydale, I’ve scoured the interior from top to bottom, with the exception of the dirt basement I still can’t bring myself to enter. The lovely avocado-colored Amana fridge required only a soapy scrub down and a crisp orange box of Arm & Hammer to freshen it up. Once I stripped the horrible flowered contact paper from the oak cupboards and scoured their fronts, they suddenly appeared modern, gleaming against the white countertops. I couldn’t do much with the mustard-yellow linoleum, cracked at the edges and worn in high-traffic areas, but a coat of tangerine paint on the walls and the white lace curtains I discovered in a box in the corner of the attic have brightened the room immeasurably. Plus, the paint killed the musty odor I first noticed upon entering the house.
I also bought a can of paint remover at the downtown Ace Hardware and discovered, to my boundless delight, glorious maple crown molding in the dining room beneath the rust-colored paint that has covered it since the ’40s, according to Deck. He encourages my puttering. I love that he doesn’t mind me overhauling his childhood home, though he drew the line at me removing the hideous red-and-gold wallpaper in our bedroom.
He’ll come around.
In the meantime, I have plenty enough work to do chiseling through the paint sealing the windows shut and airing out the upstairs. I wouldn’t mind a full bath
room on the second floor—ours has only a sink and toilet—and once I’m working full-time at the newspaper, we should be able to afford it.
When I mention this to Deck, he frowns. “But you’re working constantly,” he says, indicating the dining room, which does look beautiful with the newly revealed crown molding.
His expression throws me off. I take his hand across the table, fumbling to explain something I assumed was a given. “When we decided to move here, you said I’d be able to work at the paper. I was full-time when we lived in Minneapolis.”
We’re eating dinner, one of a dozen casseroles that’s been dropped off since we moved in. Our freezer is at capacity, yet the women keep showing up with their hot dishes, like Lilydale is a regular old Mayfield and I’m June Cleaver. I’ve named this one Soothing Stomach Stew: rice, hamburger, onion, and cream of mushroom soup, all stirred together beneath a crushed potato chip topping. A few nights ago, we ate a nearly identical hot dish topped with cheese.
Deck cradles my hand. “Sure, but you didn’t have a baby then. Keeping a home is its own job. I’ve never seen you work so hard. Now let’s stop talking about the newspaper for tonight. I’m tired.”
He said the same thing last night and the night before. But I swallow the spike of resentment right along with the salty hot dish, both of them thudding in my belly. I smile to mask my discomfort and try a different tack. I must relax him so I can convince him to let me work. I didn’t need his approval in Minneapolis, but here . . . he’s made clear the paper won’t hire me without his and Ronald’s endorsement. Said that’s just how small towns work.
“I had a lovely conversation with Dorothy next door,” I lie, smiling even wider, so wide that my lips creak. “Such a gracious lady.”
Deck’s shoulders relax. Good. I can come at this sideways. “I so much love living here,” I continue. “It’s everything you promised, so calm.”
Here it comes, the question that will allow me to lead him back to talking about the newspaper. “Why, I bet there hasn’t been a single crime ever committed here, not a dangerous one, just like you promised, not one that would put a reporter in danger. Has there been?”
His face puckers for a moment and then relaxes. “I suppose the Paulie Aandeg kidnapping is the closest thing to news we’ve had.”
The room shrinks and my breath expands. I didn’t expect such a powerful answer. A real story. “Paulie Aandeg?”
“He disappeared on his first day of kindergarten.”
“When was that?”
He glances at his wristwatch as if it might tell the story. “Decades ago.”
Disappointment settles like a gray scarf over my shoulders. Any story there has already been told. “They never found him?”
“Never,” Deck says, patting my hand. “But don’t you worry. There’s always news to cover, and Dad and I’ll get you a spot at the Gazette real soon.”
“Thanks, honey,” I say, pinning a smile on my face. But Deck is staring at his hot dish, his expression tight again, and I find myself wondering what made him move away from Lilydale in the first place.
CHAPTER 7
The next day, I hop right back on the house-overhaul wagon, tackling something I’ve been putting off since we moved in: the garden. I don’t know a weed from a wisteria, but I decide to begin by trimming the gawky shrubs lining the front walkway. They scratch me every time I come and go through the front door. While I’m at first intimidated by the project, once I track down a dull pruning clipper in the garage and begin snipping, I find I genuinely enjoy the work. The May sun is warm on my bare shoulders, and the sweet purple-honey smell of lilacs floats through the neighborhood.
I even find myself humming.
Ursula would flip her wig if she saw me now. As domestic as Aunt Bee.
My college roommate and best friend in the world was miserable when I told her I was moving, said it’d be the end of me, that I’d become a baby machine. Today, working in the earth and shined on by the sun, I can think of worse things.
I trot out the aqua-colored mower Ronald dropped off and trim our tiny yard. Without deciding to, I realize I’m making up stories for the infant, surely no larger than a peach pit in my belly. Beautiful Baby helping his momma to work, growing strong in her tummy. We’re going to be best friends, aren’t we?
I’m delighted by the positive feelings.
I didn’t plan to get pregnant, didn’t expect to keep it once I found out I was, almost didn’t tell Deck. But in the end, I spilled. It was something my mom had hammered into me one night: a good woman is a responsible woman.
When she told me that, we were in my favorite apartment in all our travels, a one-bedroom over Ralph’s Diner. Mom waited tables just below. I could pop down for an icy-cold Coke and french fries whenever I wanted, on the house.
“A perk of being the prettiest girl in town and the daughter of my best waitress,” Ralph would say with a wink.
We lived there four months, but then Ralph showed up at our door, just up the stairs, his face tight with worry, voice low and urgent, but I still heard it. “I got a call from the IRS, Frances. They said there’s something off with your information, that I might be audited because of it. I’m sure it’s just a mistake, I told ’em. I’m telling you the same thing. What say we get this straightened out?”
Mom smiled, patted his arm. Frances Harken was a beautiful woman. A chocolate-eyed redhead, she styled her hair just like Rita Hayworth. Got whistled at all the time. “Don’t worry, Ralph. I’ll dig out the paperwork and get it to you tomorrow. That okay?”
His relief was comical. “Sure it is, Frances. We’ll get it all straightened out tomorrow.”
She’d started packing before his footsteps reached the bottom floor.
“Mom?” I’d been on the couch, doing homework. I didn’t want to move, didn’t want to leave the icy Cokes and the french fries and being the prettiest girl in town.
“We don’t have a choice this time, Joan,” she said, her voice wavering. “Ralph’s a stand-up man, and I’m not going to get him in trouble. A good woman is a responsible woman.”
Well, I’d been neither good nor responsible the night I’d gotten pregnant, so I decided to start by coming clean to Deck.
“I’m late.”
By that time, he and I already lived together. I don’t think I would have taken that leap so soon—I’d never lived with a man—if Mom hadn’t died a few short months earlier, a bottle redhead by that time but still so beautiful, even as the cancer gobbled her up from the lungs out.
Deck’s building was past its prime, his apartment a faded one-bedroom. Still, I’d moved in, and despite its shabbiness, I grew to love it because it was ours. My favorite place in the world was the breakfast nook off the kitchen, just big enough for a chipped table and two garage-sale chairs. Every Saturday morning, we shared our coffee there, smiling at each other over steaming cups, planning our day just like an honest-to-god couple.
That’s where we were when I decided to spill the beans about the late period. I appreciated that he didn’t crack a low-hanging joke, didn’t waste time with, “What do you mean, late? Breakfast just started.”
He didn’t propose, either, not right there on the spot. I didn’t think I would have wanted that. Well, I was okay that he didn’t. I was a modern woman, after all.
Instead, his eyes tightened at the corners. It reminded me of his expression when he was talking about his boss, who regularly cheated him out of commissions, except this time his eyes were squeezed because he was happy.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
I nodded. “I think so. You don’t need to worry, though. Ursula knows someone who can take care of it. It doesn’t need to be a big deal at all. Just a bump in the road, easily corrected.”
Ursula had had two abortions. She said it was no worse than a bad period. If I didn’t think too hard about it, I wasn’t terrified at all. Not even sad.
“A bump in the road?” Deck asked. His voice was ri
sing. I thought he was about to yell, but instead a laugh erupted from his mouth, a guffaw so immense it bounced off the walls and echoed through my ears. “The Gobbler!”
It took me a few seconds. When I got it, I smiled, and the smile turned to laughter to match Deck’s. The Gobbler. Deck’d squired me away to the themed hotel one state over the month before. The Gobbler was shaped like a turkey—he said that wasn’t unusual for Wisconsin—and the rooms contained wall-to-wall shag carpeting, heart-shaped beds, and mirrors nailed to the ceiling. I hadn’t been able to stop giggling at the cheesy place. Deck had other plans, though, plans that involved champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries and a passion so combustible that I’d forgotten to remind him to wear a condom.
“We’re gonna have a baby,” Deck said, the laugh gone, his jaw rock solid.
“I guess we are,” I replied. It’s what he wanted.
And here I am, living in postcard-perfect Lilydale, finally at peace with that decision. Not just at peace. Thrilled. The smell of cut grass, the warmth of the sun on my skin, the feeling of tending to my home for my baby. It’s overpowering. The sense of satisfaction is so strong that I want to share it with someone.
I’ll bring Deck lunch. Surely he’ll have half an hour to eat with his “wife” and hear her blather about yard work. I smile at the joke. Deck and I’ve taken to calling ourselves Mister and Missus when we’re alone, laughing at the idea of it, at the thought of the harmless wool we’re pulling over the town’s eyes.
A shower is in order before I embark on the ten-minute walk downtown. Once clean, I towel off and wander upstairs to don a short-sleeve white blouse with a Peter Pan collar and grape-colored cotton knit capris. I decide to leave my hair in its ponytail. I’ve wanted to cut it short ever since I spotted Mia Farrow’s scandalous pixie cut on the front cover of last August’s Vogue. The courage has never found me, though, and Lilydale certainly isn’t the place to adopt a statement hairstyle.
I head out toward Schmidt Insurance, which is nestled in the middle of Lilydale’s busiest street—I chuckle at the thought of any place in Lilydale being considered busy—with Little John’s bar anchoring one corner and Tuck’s Cafe the other.