by Melhoff, D.
Peter lowered his voice. “Then he did it. Sort of. The sons came back, but they…Well, they weren’t the same. And not just bad to look at either. They were bad to be around. They had to be taken out.” He paused. “It’s safe in certain conditions—for children, mostly, and if anyone deserves a second chance, it’s them—but it’s something the rest of the world can’t handle. That’s why the rules were set.”
The snap of a metal clasp made Camilla jump. It was followed by the whoosh of the kitchen window and Moira sticking her head out directly above them. “Dinner in ten.”
Camilla checked Peter’s watch. It was half past seven, and the sun was beginning to set.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You haven’t eaten anything all day. Come now,” Moira insisted.
“Go ahead,” Camilla whispered to Peter. “I’m good.”
“We’re good, mom.”
“Suit yourselves.” Moira sniffed, adding, “I used to sit there all night too, you know, waiting to let them in. Then I realized to hell with it; I brought them all the way back from the dead, the least they can do is take ten more steps and ring my bloody doorbell.”
Moira’s head sucked back inside the house, and the window slammed shut. It was just Peter and Camilla again, alone with Mother Nature and her thunderstorm.
Peter put his arm around Camilla and curled her in farther from the wind; she lifted her legs up on the bench and rested her ear against his shoulder. A thousand other questions were spinning through her head, but they would have to wait for later. At the moment, this quiet embrace was infinitely more important.
The two of them stayed that way for over an hour, watching the sky drench the courtyard until the weight of the whole day and the hypnotic sounds of wind and raindrops pulled Camilla’s eyelids together and brought her rest. How many hours passed then, she didn’t know. Dreamless, she slept a pitch-black sleep, the sounds of the constant rain and thunder steady rhythms with her dosing heartbeat.
No images of children.
No images of corpses.
No images of her mother in the Avalon Park stateroom. Just black, soundless sleep.
And later that night it wasn’t a flash of lightning that woke Camilla—nor the boom of the thunder, nor Peter stirring at her shoulder.
It was the familiar sound of soft, swishing pond water.
14
Burning Up
The first ring was followed immediately by a second, then the speaker clicked straight to voice mail: “You have reached the Avalon Park Center for Psychiatric Care. Our reception hours are between nine a.m. and four thirty p.m. Monday through Thursday, and ten a.m. to three p.m. Friday and Saturday. If you wish to leave your name and number, we will return your call as soon as—”
Camilla hurried to nudge the phone out from under her chin. Her hands were covered in something blue and sticky—her elbows were blue too, as well as a loose streak of pinned-up hair—and the gooey substance continued sloshing over the edge of the mixer as she raced across the kitchen for the telephone cradle by the far door.
Both the phone and the oven timer bleeped as she wrestled the handset onto the hook. Great, another one-second message. Makes me seem nervous.
“Camilla? You in there?” Peter came into the kitchen, dressed in a warm autumn peacoat. He passed through the doorframe and froze point-blank at the sight of the room. “Jesus,” his lips wobbled.
The cupboards (all of them) were hanging wide open, and a mountain of Pampered Chef measuring cups had avalanched across the glossy sheen of the Swiffer-clean kitchen tiles. The counters were covered in a sticky afterbirth of egg whites, water, and flour—so much flour—from whence two sets of powdery paw prints wove a trail straight to the pink, sandpaper tongues of Prim and Proper, happily licking spilled milk off the floor and purring louder than the Indy 500 starting line.
Camilla had gone to fill up the sink but was now standing, stone-still, with her eyes on the enormous tree in the backyard. She was completely zoned out, and not for the first time that morning.
Peter placed a hand on her shoulder and immediately removed it, massaging a glob of sticky blue icing between his fingertips. “Umm…” he whispered. “Hi. How you doing?”
“Oh,” she said, her trance breaking. “Good. I’m baking.”
“I can see that. And smell it.”
Camilla sniffed—suddenly her eyes popped. She seized an oven mitt from the island and gripped the handle of the stove, yanking it open to unleash a billow of thick, tarry smoke into the room. She batted one arm frantically in front of her face and stuck the other inside the maw of the Kenmore dragon, bringing out a pan of what looked like volcanic rock.
“No-ho-ho-ho,” she whimpered and stuck her bottom lip a mile out.
Peter shook his head. “Isn’t baking—”
“Shh,” she hushed, signaling him to keep his voice down.
“Sorry,” he whispered back, “but isn’t baking supposed to be like chemistry? And aren’t you supposed to be good at science?”
“That’s—no.” Camilla frowned, annoyed that her chemistry background was suddenly par with a housewife’s kitchen skills. “The only periodic table a stay-at-home mom knows about is the one she sets for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
“That’s sexist.”
“Please.”
Peter walked around the island—Prim and Proper barely fidgeting as he grazed by—and dipped his pinky into the icing. “But seriously,” he said, licking his finger, “what’s going on? And why are we whispering?”
“Do you want your mom to walk in right now?”
“Point taken.”
“Anyway,” she said as she glanced down at the charred cake, “I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d make something for Todd and bring it over this afternoon.”
“You mean…” Peter scanned the counters: the icing and the eggshells, the milk and the flour, the sprinkles and the candles. He threw his head back and let out a laugh that filled the room.
“Shh!”
“You were baking him a…a what? A welcome-back-to-life cake?”
“Is there something wrong with that?” She planted a fist on her hip. “He’s got double the birthdays now. And I mean, what’s a birthday without a cake?” Then, off Peter’s look, “OK, smart-ass. What would you get him?”
“I don’t know…nothing? A case of beer?”
“Nothing it is,” Camilla said. She stomped the pedal of the garbage can and dumped her brick of chocolate and brimstone inside.
“Good. Don’t want to kill the poor guy twice.”
She frowned again. Why do I have a bad feeling this is just the start of the murder jokes? She slid her pan into the sink and massaged the tired bags underneath her eyes. “How was he, by the way?”
“Glad to be home.”
“And alive, I assume?”
Peter shrugged. “They usually don’t know they checked out in the first place. I heard it’s like waking up from a good sleep.”
“And his parents?”
“Better than a lot I’ve seen. They cried, of course—that’s nothing new—but people calm down fairly quickly when they start thinking about the alternative. Same with Todd. And you know what, it turns out he’s not such a bad guy, so far as wedding crashers go. Seemed pretty nice, given the circumstances.”
If a child goes bad, it must be abolished. The third rule flashed through Camilla’s head with the image of Todd’s face rising out of the pond. She saw his wet figure stumbling closer, coming at her for revenge with outstretched arms and dark, deep-set eyes, and she felt a sudden tightness take over her chest.
No! He didn’t come at me. He didn’t even remember who I was. Get a hold of yourself—
“Camilla? Everything OK?”
“Sorry.” She blinked back. Her eyes trailed to the clock on the oven and noticed that it was already seven a.m. As if on cue, a creak echoed from upstairs as the sound of footsteps thumped over the floorboards in somebody’s bedr
oom. Shit. She scrambled to flip off the tap water and frantically began piling dishes into the sink. Even as she attacked the abominable mess, something kept gnawing away at the back of her mind.
“What if…” she said, chewing over the thought as she rung out the muddy suds from an old S.O.S. pad, “what if things do go bad?”
“They won’t,” Peter assured her, just as he had all throughout the night.
“You’re sure he’s not…different?”
“Apart from the new scar, no. And so what if he can’t play skins or go shirtless at the lake now? He’s fine.”
Camilla breathed a sigh of relief. She spooned out a bowl of icing into the trash and wiped her nose on a clear patch of her shoulder. Only one question remained.
She spied the entrances to the kitchen and the window above the sink—all clear—and listened again for the noises up on the second floor. The creaking footsteps had been replaced by the steady gush of hot water hitting a shower drain.
“What did you tell them?”
“That he slipped on his way to the packaging room. I showed up a minute later because I didn’t want the Sun printing my brother’s wedding pictures. You weren’t there.”
Another sigh of relief. “Thank you.”
“That’s the truth now. Don’t worry about any other version.”
Camilla leaned in and kissed him. I won’t. I won’t worry about any other version, and I won’t dwell on Todd anymore. If I never see him again, that’s probably best for the both of us.
She rested her head on Peter’s chest and hugged him tightly. No one else in the world cared about her enough to shoulder such a great amount of suspicion and accept responsibility for something like this. He had trusted her with the family’s secret and taken on an enormous risk in covering her dirty tracks; he was a good man, and she was incredibly thankful to get to spend the rest of her life with him.
“I love you,” she said. It was the first time Camilla had said it to him—to any man—which was a little backward, seeing as the two of them were already engaged. The texture of the words would take getting used to, and she hoped they didn’t sound as awkward to his ears as they did to hers.
“Love you too,” he said. They kissed, then his bottom lip curled into a pout of his own.
“What?”
“I don’t wanna do yard work. It’s gutter week.”
“Well I don’t feel like cleaning this kitchen. Tradesies?”
Above them, the sound of the second floor shower stopped.
“On second thought…” Peter backed toward the patio door. “I think I could use some fresh air. Good luck.”
“Beat it.” She batted him away, diving her hands into the soapy dishwater. “And P.S., don’t fall or break your neck out there. I swear I can’t see a loose shoelace, let alone a twenty-foot ladder, without sweating bullets today.”
Peter snickered, doing up his peacoat and jerking the door handle. “Perfect,” he shot back, “our kids won’t be able to leave their cribs until they’re eighteen.” He flashed a wink and ducked out onto the patio, throwing a wave over his shoulder while he skipped down the porch steps two at a time and took off into the yard.
The smile on Camilla’s face vanished.
She peeked through the curtains and placed a hand over the flat of her stomach, watching Peter head for the tool shed. The terrible sinking feeling had nestled back in its pitted place.
Just when all the cards felt like they’d finally been laid on the table, she remembered the one that was still hidden in her lap—still waiting to be played. Waiting to change the game.
15
St. Teresa’s
While Laura and Lucas were away on their two-day honeymoon at the Dawson Inn (a romantic lovers’ retreat with running water and ten—yes, ten!—TV stations), Camilla was put in charge of holding down the reception desk. Laura had tidied it up before she left, making sure all the right forms were easily accessible and assembling the pens and staples and paperclips like well-prepared paratroopers in their slide-out compartments.
Camilla sat quietly in the heavy oak chair, staring at the front door, and literally twiddled her thumbs. She felt like she’d been double demoted, from embalmer to secretary to guard dog. I’m a certified funeral tech, I shouldn’t be wasting my time taking phone messages.
She shifted her eyes to the old-fashioned rotary on the glossy plane of the desk. It hadn’t rung once. There wasn’t a single paper on the in/out tray either, and not a speck of dust on the neatly typed labels of the rolodex or the silvery surface of the Tensor lamp.
She looked at the clock—10:05 a.m.—and then at the phone again. You have reached the Avalon Park Center for Psychiatric Care. Our reception hours are between nine a.m. and four thirty p.m.
She reached over and picked up the receiver, then immediately put it down.
It’s 12:05 where she is. They’re probably out to lunch. She caught herself and giggled. Isn’t that the perfect answering message? “You’ve reached the Avalon Park Center for Psychiatric Care. Sorry, we’re all out to lunch. Phone again never.”
Her hand pulled away from the phone. Now wasn’t a good time. No, she had to be patient. After all, what if she was on the line and missed a call for the funeral home? Or worse, what if Moira walked in and found her gabbing away on their long-distance plan without (heaven forbid) using a toll-free number? No, it would just have to wait. Her mom didn’t need to know she was engaged right this particular nanosecond anyway.
Depending on which mom it is today, she might not even care.
The reality was, Camilla had four or five mothers—all in the same body. Diana Carleton was Avalon’s first confirmed case of Dissociative Identity Disorder since the fall of 1992, when the previous patient with DID had to be transitioned to another facility after stabbing an orderly with a pair of crinkle-cut scissors at crafts time. But luckily—if there was any luck to be had living with such a debilitating disease—the same symptoms that awarded you a public exorcism only a century ago now earned you a warm bed with a stateroom view and three square meals a day, thanks in no small part to something much more powerful than divine providence: the holy trinity of disability insurance, alimony, and Canadian healthcare.
Diana’s personalities had no knowledge of one other. It was like there were multiple people stuck inside one vessel, each with her own set of memories and idiosyncrasies. Only one of them was in control at any given time, but the vehicle changed drivers often and without warning. Some days she was distant and comatose, other days she’d start launching swearwords like Shrike missiles and need to be sedated. Her stranger identities included a little boy who called himself Scotty, as well as an old swami who communicated in a throaty language that no one else could understand. It was sad and frightening for anybody to witness, let alone her own daughter.
Camilla opened the bottom desk drawer to try and busy herself, but it was completely bare. She leaned over and checked the wastebasket— zilch. Not even a tissue. Somebody give Laura some Valium. Geez.
With no distractions, Camilla’s mind wandered back to her mother.
I wonder how bad it’s getting.
Their relationship wasn’t always as rocky as it had been during the last four years, but that wasn’t saying much. When you’re five years old and your mother stops making your grilled cheese to tell you she doesn’t know who you are, then screams to get out of her ‘fucking kitchen’, you learn how to fend for yourself pretty quick. Ever since she could remember, Camilla had dressed herself and walked fourteen blocks to school, through back alleys and demolition sites, to hide her lack of supervision, and little did her ignorant parents know, it was clever moves like that which kept them under the radar of Child Protection Services for so long.
Camilla’s eyes were on the receiver again.
Suddenly she was glad that it wasn’t ringing. Very glad. A call to this desk meant ten-to-one that somebody had just bit the big one, and in all likelihood, their loved one would be inc
onsolable. That, Camilla cringed, is another heap of emotional baggage I’d rather not handle right now. I’ll take the boredom, thank you very much.
She leaned back and stared up at the stained-glass cupola in the ceiling, studying how the sunlight colored the tall, circular dome. It was just as pretty as the evening she first arrived.
She began counting the individual panels of glass. It reminded her of going to church when she was little, around ages five and six, before things got really bad with her mom (Diana had always insisted on Sunday morning services if she was in the right frame of mind). Everyone else would be paying attention to the sermon or the scripture readings—or pretending to, at least—while Camilla counted the pieces of glass that made up the large window behind St. Teresa’s front altar. Occasionally she became so lost in the individual building blocks that when she sat back and took in the whole again, the geometry of the glass and the waves of Sunday morning light would suddenly overwhelm her all at once. It was physics at its most beautiful.
She blinked slower and slower.
Eighty-eight, eighty-nine…
Even slower.
Ninety…ninety-one…
In the distance, she swore she heard a hymn start playing as her eyelids came together and sealed off the quiet lobby.
When she opened her eyes again, she was sitting in the back of St. Teresa’s church.
Her shiny black buckle shoes dangled over the edge of a wooden pew, and her mother was perched beside her, dressed in a pair of skin-tone leggings underneath a blue paisley skirt.
She looked up at the sanctuary.
There was a row of children sitting on the steps to the altar. In front of them was the oldest, frailest woman she’d ever seen. The elder was sharing a lesson about Moses with the help of her theological assistant—a tattered mouse puppet, which had clearly seen better days. It wasn’t a friendly looking animal, or a furry one either. It had a gray dishcloth for a body and a small rubber head with two beady black eyes and a plastic mouth. The old lady was as quiet as a church mouse herself—about as fragile as a communion wafer too—and as she spoke, her soft words were muffled by the $100,000 sound system that every church seems to own, yet none have ever learned how to properly operate.