#
I run to the back door when I get home, not wanting a second longer away from my baby Ella or my Paul. As I lift the blinds, Ella comes barrelling up the decking, smooshing her lips and hands against the sliding door. Teddy is also plastered between her body and the glass. I nudge her into stepping back so I can open the door without her tumbling.
Ella seems satisfied I’m here, and whatever caused her jumpiness at the door is gone. Paul sits by Ella while she attempts to make teddy play the deck planks like she does with her rainbow-colored xylophone.
I nod at Paul and he gets it. ‘It’ being that things are more okay than they were before, or okay for good—just okay in this moment and it’s enough. He cradles my face in his hands and brings me close. We lean against each other.
“For the naughty boy you can be, I’m so lucky to have you in my life, baby.” I stroke his lip. They’re my lips. I kiss them quickly. “I love that you married me just how I am, and gave us a baby to love. I don’t know what I’d do without our family.”
Paul smirks.
“I’m serious, Paul! For the record, you make sure you and Elly live long after I’m dead. I’m selfish and I can’t stand not being without you guys. Okay?”
He nods away my remark and presses his lips to mine.
That afternoon, Paul, Ella and I are sprawled over the decking, teaching teddy how to play xylophone. And it’s amazing. I’m fine with who I am and I now know it isn’t my job to make my mom love me if she doesn’t know how to. She’s the one missing out—living a life controlled by regret.
<<<>>>
A Note to the Reader
It’s been a couple of years since I first started writing about Katie back in August 2010. About a year later, October 2011, I started a blog called Novel Girl—a place to share book reviews, chats with authors, and writing tips. As of November 2012, this little blog of mine has over 600 followers. I’ve made amazing friends over this first year, many of those who started out as commenters or followers. I thank God you’ve stuck with me because y’all are soo awesome.
Novel Girl is a place for writers and readers to come together. I love sharing good books on the blog, or through Twitter or Facebook (find links to those in About the Author).
If you write a review of this book (yee-haw!) thank you and I’d love it if you shared the link with me via social media or Novel Girl. A self-published book’s success is dependent on book reviews, so your review counts!
Thank you for spending your time with my book.
Acknowledgements
To Kim Koning for reading this in early form and reminding me of the book I wanted to write.
To Lynn Williams for having keen reading eyes and picking up issues that have made this a book I couldn’t have created without you.
To Silviya Yordanova, cover designer extraordinaire—you have transformed the essence of this story on the cover and I can’t thank you enough for making it so stunning.
To Michelle Mazza for her unwavering support and also to her and Lauren McKellar for helping me the moment I needed them.
To the random tweeters who answered the strangest questions I threw out there purely for “research purposes”.
To those who have helped spread the word about this little book of mine—you know who you are and I’m pointing my literary finger at you right now. There are so many of you, and it’s amazing.
To Sandra, John, and Daniel—my parents and brother—for showing me what I know and for helping me turn into who I’ve become.
To Ashley Wellwood for sharing your life with me. I know how to write these stories because you love me.
About the Author
Rebecca Berto writes stories that straddle the line between Literary and Tear Your Heart Out. She gets a thrill when her readers are emotional when reading her stories, and gets even more of a kick when they tell her so. She’s strangely imaginative, spends too much time on her computer, and is certifiably crazy when she works on her stories.
Rebecca Berto lives in Melbourne, Australia with her partner and their doggy.
You can find Rebecca at:
Her website/blog, Novel Girl
Facebook profile or page
Twitter
Read an excerpt from Rebecca Berto’s second book in the Pulling Me Under series:
Pulling Me Under (A Novel)
Chapter One
My six-year-old daughter, Ella made my bowl of cereal this morning. She does most days. She measured the cereal, and poured the milk slowly so it didn’t arc out on the counter. Now she shoves in a spoon and pushes it my way. Pulling out another cereal bowl, she begins on hers.
I stare at my pre-made meal, willing myself to take a mouthful and mumble, “Mmm, this is so, so wonderfully scrumptious!” But I can’t. I feel sick. I can’t face any food this morning, just like every moment of every day for longer than I can count anymore.
Instead, I look at the stupid painting on the wall behind Ella. It has fire-truck red petals, and kryptonite green leaves, picked up for a third of the original price at a discount home store by the man I killed. My husband, Paul.
These days, the painting hangs on its wall, all smug, and sucking color so this room and everything we stand in is a gray abyss, void of anything.
Ella twirls her spoon in her cereal and mumbles, “Mommy?”
“Yes, darling?”
She points to my bowl. “I’m not hungry much too.”
“You sure?”
“Yup.”
“And Mommy?”
“Yes, darling?”
She pokes a clump of cereal and it bobs under the milk. It floats back up. “Do you miss Daddy?”
Acid rises in my throat, and I realize it feels like chlorine when it stings my nose as I gasp. I rub my nose, and the stinging dissipates.
Maybe I could say Daddy died sometime in the last three months as my mom constantly reminds me. Or I see him nightly. Both are true.
Leaning over the counter, I still can’t see what face Ella is making. Her shoulders hunch over her bowl, her face shadowed behind blonde ringlets. Paul’s face would hide behind those same types of tight, blonde curls too. He’d look through his hair, if he let it grow too long, and that’s what I hate remembering. I hate it because my daughter is still a mini-Paul as she always has been. Those little ribbons of silky hair of hers that I used to wrap around my fingers and braid down her head until a single ringlet hung beneath her hair tie.
Why does her face look like it’s full of hurt? Six-year-olds aren’t meant to understand ‘hurt’.
Why did she go quiet so quickly? Did I buy the wrong brand of cereal?
Rubbing my forehead, I walk to the garbage can. I flip open the lid, and my hair falls in the way. I hold it back in a messy bun—not that wavy hair like mine needs to be messed further—and tie it with an elastic on my wrist. Peering back in the garbage, I see a cereal box on top. The label is just as I thought. Of course, I wouldn’t have bought a no-name brand. She hates that.
“Ella,” I say, resting against a counter on the opposite side of the kitchen, which means there’s still only little more than an arm-span between us. “Are you okay?”
She huffs, writing-off another of my answers.
An old memory of us forms. I do what I used to do naturally then. I bundle my fingers and brush her cheeks. As my fingers slip from her face, I trace her chin, remembering how I used to pinch it to tease her.
Ella looks up and says, “Nana asked if I wanted to stay at hers more.”
Okay, random. I steady myself by locking my hands on the counter. “Oh, really?” Count: one, two. “How come?”
“Nana loves me. She says she misses me.”
Ella never lets the ‘proper’ brand get soggy. I don’t know why I think that. The cereal doesn’t matter anymore now that my mom wants to take my daughter away from me. I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s just like her to pressure me to abort Ella when I was pregnant and then spend the next six years of her
life admiring her. I used to feel sorry for Mom that she had several miscarriages and stillborns after my birth. Nowadays, I’m done caring about anything besides my girl, Ella. Just because I had Ella at twenty-three, and my mom had me at forty doesn’t give her any right to control my family. I’m sure that’s her plan. That word—‘plan’—makes my nerves jolt as if someone has hacked off their ends. My daughter is all I have left. All.
I lost Paul. If I lose her too …
So that’s what’s bothering Ella. Is it the thought she won’t be staying here much, or because she thinks she’s to blame about Paul, and therefore the reason I’m always distant?
My arms tuck into each other, around my ribs, then untuck and re-tuck before I speak. God, aren’t I starting off well? Just stay still. “She sees you every week.”
Ella shrugs, inspects her bowl, pushes it away.
Being winter, it’s gray outside, gray inside. That color-sucker hanging on the wall isn’t helping either. Everything is watered down.
“Did she,” I clear my throat, and continue, “did Nana say something else? Has she spoken to anyone on the phone about keeping you there more?”
Ella fiddles with a button on her school dress, making the same shape around it over and over. I wonder what she’s thinking about. Has my mom made her think I’m one of ‘those’ people? Geez, I’m not a dependent addict. Just trying to forget what I did to Paul.
“Do I get to see him again?” Ella says.
I clutch my chest, and suck in a breath. She’s waiting for an answer to her daddy coming home.
Mom’s voice interrupts my thoughts, automatically translating what she knows Ella means: “Are you going to realize Paul’s dead, Katie?”
My throat won’t clear. I drink a glass of water but it only tightens, then burns as if bleach has been poured down. Weirdly, it tastes like chlorine.
Always the chlorine.
I slap the glass on the counter and gag like I breathed in alcohol through a wet cloth, which triggers memories of Paul’s face with the froth around his mouth, the blood spurting over him as if Mount Vesuvius has erupted from inside my husband.
“Are you dead, Mommy?” Ella pokes my arm over the counter.
I’ll give her what she needs and hope it’s enough to satisfy her. “Do you want me to make a new bowl?” It’s possible she’s sick of her breakfast. Possible my mom only has good intentions. Though not likely. “I think I know what you’ll like,” I say and wink. “I’ll make some toast with peanut butter and jelly instead.”
“Not hungry.”
Draining the milk down the sink, I’m transfixed by the mush clogged at the drain. “But you need to eat.”
Ella’s voice rises an octave. “You still not answering me!”
I have an urge to correct her grammar, but that’s not the point. She’s clued in to something dangerous.
“Ella—what do you want me to explain? We’ve been through this.”
Her cheeks puff up and her eyebrows scrunch together. “I’m still confused.”
“That’s because this is a grown-ups topic. Don’t worry so much.”
Her voice speeds up. Someone pressed fast forward—surely. “Is Daddy okay?”
“We’re all fine. Just fine.”
“Daddy never said that. He said ‘fine’ is a fat lie. He said fat lies will make me ugly like a toad. Do you want to be a toad?”
Shaking my head, I say, “Why do you say that, darling?”
“Daddy told me when people say they’re fine they mean they’re sad. But you don’t frown, so I confused.”
“Well, I like toads so I don’t mind being one, and I am fine. Now, hurry, darling.”
“Please … Tell me the story about the spider pole.”
Why a story? Why now? Can’t this wait, like, twenty years or so?
The spider pole. She means the Eiffel Tower ornament Paul had specially designed and engraved for me during our trip to Paris.
“Daddy bought that for me. You know that,” I say, smiling because I’m proud my words aren’t falling apart.
Surprisingly, Ella is frowning.
“Is everything okay, darling?”
“You’re mad at me from last night. I won’t touch the swirly one again.”
What a fool I am! She’s six; not stupid. And I stood proud. Why didn’t I notice her knotting her hands together? I wonder how long they’ve looked slick, if her mind is twisting, deducing some sort of meaning from my words.
Ella’s school-dress buttons and collar change color. They’re business-shirt blue and only three buttons are done up because Paul was lifeless, gone, by the time I got to him but Ella’s not really here and maybe Paul is.
I dig my nails into the laminate, until I want to scream from the pressure of my bending nails. Okay, so I’m still here.
Seeing the confused look on Ella reminds me of the trouble I’m in. We should be happy, not worrying about the past. Mom shouldn’t be plotting to take my daughter from me.
When I was growing up, Mom was obvious in her clues about her hatred for me—cutting up my sweaters, a slap to the cheek the first time she caught me kissing Paul. She even tried to keep me away from Ella’s first birthday party, so I’d miss cutting the cake and blowing out the candles. Asking Ella to stay over is about as obvious a hint as I’ll need.
“What did I do?” Ella’s voice breaks, and it sounds as if she choked on her last word.
She doesn’t deserve this. She deserves a mother who will pull her into her chest at times like this. Cry about how sad they both are. Ugh, I hate myself. Why can’t I do this?
At twenty-nine, I shouldn’t be waking every day to this. I’d once thought widows only existed when people turned sixty. Sure, I still have the brown hair, some type of wave to it, and a slim frame, but I’m a shell with rotting insides.
My daughter’s sobs fade, as if I’m being sucked away into a tunnel. The gray walls churn as if I’m in a kaleidoscope. Fire-truck red and kryptonite green colors blur together to a spot in the distance. The end of the house is gone, replaced with a tunnel sucking me out of the kitchen. A choking, sobbing sound across the counter fades further.
Why are Ella’s sobs fading? The noise sounds like it’s insulated through the walls of another room compared to the compartments in my closet.
Closet.
My mind is in my body from last night when I found Ella’s fingers skimming along the circle she made of Paul’s ties. For minutes, I stood behind her in the doorway of my closet. It had been the first time I’d been in my master bedroom in three months.
Ella bopped on her knees, her feet tucked away under her bum. She’d laid out all of her favorite colors. One with Disney’s Tasmanian Devil printed on it, another in Cadbury purple. Thirteen or so more lay around the circle. Her favorite tie had a pink and blue swirl twisting down its length.
She stroked each tie once, her voice a steady hum. When she brushed the swirly tie, her hum reached a staccato and stopped. She picked it up in the same manner as her favorite teddy bear named Elly, the one I made her for her first birthday, and stroked it against her chest.
Outside, the Melbourne rain had progressed from gentle taps on the windows to angry thumps, making me jump.
“Oh, Daddy,” Ella mumbled. “Can I really have it?”
A flash of me from months ago rushed to her side, knowing to fold her legs and prop her in my lap as we sat together. That me plucked all her fingers, and Ella chuckled and snorted simultaneously.
Instead? I said, “No. Ella. Out.”
She spun around at the same time as a clap of lighting shook the carpet under our feet. She squealed and clamped her arms by her side, her back ramrod straight. “I want the swirly one. M-my teddy needs it.”
I held myself up on the doorjamb of the closet, my arm easily blocking out the bed and the far side of the room where no one had scrubbed out the stain completely. “No more. You’re not allowed there. No one is.” My lip shook almost too much to choke ou
t words. I knew there was no way to calm down from one of these episodes. “How could you … do this? You know how naughty … to come here.”
Even I couldn’t go in the master bedroom.
The crumpled sheets can’t move. Leave the stains. Everything must remain the same. I don’t straighten my hair anymore, sleep with a pile of pillows, or wear my comfortable jeans. No one can be here so nothing will change.
I’ve ruined enough.
What if Ella found the box under the bed? If she went through it? Not yet. Maybe not ever. I promised myself I couldn’t look under the bed. Too much finality in looking through that box.
Paul’s bloody body, dotted with partially digested chunks of his breakfast was suddenly in front of me. Then his dead body multiplied, replicating behind me, to my left, right. He was a cage. I was the prisoner. His blood stained the floor red, causing my breath to stagger. My head spun, the sickening chunks and lifeless body of the man I would have given my life for blurred. Flailing, my hands found nothing to grasp. I tripped up, only catching myself a moment before I nose-planted the carpet.
Shaking my mind back to present-time me, I think, I know too much.
I hate.
I hate Paul for leaving me to fend for myself against my mom when he knows I can’t do it by myself.
I hate him for being selfish and thinking I can live without him.
Most of all, I hate me for hating him since it’s my fault he isn’t here now.
Ella? She wants to know. Something. Will he come back? Does he love her?
My mom used to say things like “It’s your fault, Katie. You hear me, Katie? You ruined my tummy, Katie.” Then Mom would come close enough to smell the fear coating my skin. Always, I’d gasp and try to run away. She’d grab my wrist and yank me back. Her voice was low and steady. Low so I wouldn’t get lost in her hysteria; steady so my mind would store this information forever. “You killed your brothers and sisters. They didn’t make it out of my belly because you jinxed me. You know that, right?”
Precise (Pulling Me Under) Page 7