by Teri Harman
“Tilly, is that you? Are you crying?”
“Parker, I …”
“What’s wrong?”
Matilda couldn’t say the words out loud. She bit her lower lip and pressed her eyes closed, Jetty’s words replaying in her mind, loud and damaging.
“Are you still there? Matilda?”
“I need your help,” she repeated.
“I’m coming.”
A few minutes later, Matilda heard a key turn in the front door. Numbly, she thought, I gave Parker a key when we were dating. He still has it.
“Matilda?” The front door closed. “Matilda!” There was panic in his voice. She listened as he hurried through the living room and checked the kitchen. Heavy footfalls on the stairs, running. “Tilly, answer me …”
He stood in the doorway of her room. She couldn’t look up from the letter. He rushed over to her, grabbed her by the shoulders. “Are you hurt?” His eyes scanned her body. She tried to shake her head. “What’s wrong?”
All she could do was lift the letter out to him. Confused, he looked at it and then back at her. She pushed it toward him. He took it, lowering his eyes to the words. Matilda dropped to her side, curling into the fetal position. She’d been sitting for hours and her legs were numb.
She listened to Parker breathe and read.
“Oh, Matilda … I’m so sorry.” He sat on the bed behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. She heard the paper drop into the box. Burn it. Frame it. “Talk to me. What are you feeling?”
Matilda closed her eyes. “She gave it to me.” Parker tensed, his grip on her shoulder wavering.
“What?”
“I see things that aren’t real.”
“What? What do you see?” he said, his voice cautious.
“Last night … Jetty. I saw Jetty in the living room.”
Parker was still for a moment and then he lay down behind her and pulled her against him. He didn’t speak for several minutes.
With the gate to her insanity open, Matilda went on, unable to stop. “The day Thea saw me in the yard, the day I came back, I woke up in the house and couldn’t remember six years. Six years! I thought it was the morning after we picked out our wedding cake. I can’t remember leaving or where I went, what I did. Who I knew. Nothing.”
“Nothing at all?” Parker asked, his voice close to her ear.
“Nothing.” Matilda waited to feel better, having finally told someone, but the feeling didn’t come. “I’m sick. Just like her.”
“So you don’t know how you got back to town? Or … how you got your scars?”
She shook her head against the bed. Parker went quiet again. She felt him thinking. “Are you scared of me?” she asked quietly.
“No, of course not.” His arm tightened around her.
“I am,” she said even quieter.
Parker lifted to his elbow to look at her. “I’m going to get Dr. Wells. Okay? You stay right here. We will fix it. Okay?”
She didn’t look at him. “Okay.”
“Will you be all right while I go?”
“Yes.”
He pushed off the bed. “Right back.”
Matilda listened to his hurried steps down the stairs. Had she been right to call him? Should she be relieved to have an answer to her delusions? She wasn’t. Part of her fought it. I’m not like my mom. I’m not sick.
To defy her, the typewriter keys clacked downstairs.
She sat up, breathless. Ran downstairs.
I’m here.
She laughed out loud at the sight of those words pulsing on the page, and felt delirious. She sat, shaking from head to toe.
Don’t …
But she did.
You’re not real, she typed and held her breath.
I am.
Who are you?
There was a long pause.
A writer. Who are you?
A reader. Who do you write to?
To you.
Matilda smiled, her hands quaking. You don’t know me.
Yes, I do. You are me. I am you. I know you read my words and feel what I feel. I write for you.
What do we do now? Matilda asked.
I’ll keep writing if you’ll keep reading.
The muscles in her stomach tightened. She closed her eyes. Your words are dangerous.
Will you risk it?
Matilda stared at the keys. “What am I doing?” she said aloud. “This isn’t real.” And yet, it felt like the most real thing she had ever experienced. But what crazy person didn’t think the voices were real? That was part of the sickness.
She rubbed her hands together over the keys. Henry’s face was in her head.
Henry? Is that you?
Henry
Henry pushed back from his desk. This was too much. He ran his hands back through his hair and looked at his name typed on the page. Typed by someone else.
Who?
I’ve lost my mind, he thought. Did I just type that whole conversation?
No.
He’d seen the keys depressing, invisible hands at work. He rubbed his face, at a loss. He looked at the scars on his arms and felt a rush of fear. Seized by this fear, he snatched the typewriter off the desk and heaved it against the brick wall. It impacted with a loud metallic twang and crashed to the floor. Keys scatted everywhere, severed limbs. The ribbon lay tangled, an evisceration.
Henry blinked at the body of the machine, shocked at his own rage. He couldn’t look at what he’d done. It was awful, unforgiveable. He turned several times, looking around the apartment for an answer, for the right action.
Louis Winston’s book sat on the desk.
He grabbed it and fled.
Matilda
No reply came. The typewriter sat innocently quiet. After several minutes, Matilda, with a sad resignation, took the paper from the platen. She hid it away in the fairy tale book with the others. She put the typewriter up on the shelves as well, placing a few books around it like a fort. Hidden.
Parker opened the door just as she finished. He smiled hesitantly at her. Dr. Wells stepped in, black bag in hand. Matilda frowned at it, but then stopped herself. She wanted this to stop. She wanted to feel normal. She needed to. If medicine had helped her mom, it could help her. Maybe it would help her remember and cast out the darkness.
“Hello, Matilda,” the doctor said kindly.
“Can you fix this?” The words sounded desperate. I am desperate.
He walked to her, put a hand on her shoulder. “Yes. We are going to fix this.” He looked back at Parker. “Let’s sit and talk for a minute.”
Henry
Henry found himself outside of Matilda’s house. Winston’s book felt heavy in his hands. The garage was open, the funny orange car parked inside like a sleeping dog. There was another car behind it, a red Honda. He wondered who it belonged to.
He should leave.
But he didn’t. Instead, tiredly, he went into the garage and sat on the ground, leaning back against the front bumper, hidden from view of the house, and the other car. He opened A Thousand Sleepless Nights. He didn’t want to read it, but he felt he had to. And this felt like the right place to do it. He didn’t let himself wonder why it felt right.
The first words:
Time away from you, even one day, feels like a thousand sleepless nights. Exhausting, unending, unnatural. Come back to me. Let me sleep in your arms, breathe in your air, and be healed. I give myself to you, wholly. But will you take me?
The hot tears on his cheeks surprised him. Henry couldn’t remember the last time he had cried. He had stopped crying at a young age. It had always made him feel so weak and tended to enrage his foster parents. But now, he didn’t fight it.
He read on.
n
It was late afternoon when Henry finished the last page. He closed the book and stared up at the ragged wood of the garage ceiling. It was hot in the small space, musty and dusty. His back hurt from sitting so long. He looked down at the cover of
the book, the moon and mountains. Each word lingered inside him, like bees in a hive, buzzing. And each one made him think of the woman inside the house next to him. His hands were shaking. He blew out an uneven breath.
Go home, you idiot.
It’d taken him most of the day to get through the two hundred pages, a ridiculously long time. But it’d been difficult, like performing a complicated surgery. Many times, he found himself staring at one sentence for fifteen minutes, trying to decode the mystery he felt lived under it. No words had ever affected him like these.
He stood, unsteady on his numb legs. His ankle throbbed in the heavy boot cast and he wanted to rip it off. Matilda’s kitchen light was on. He felt like a thief in the night, like a crazed stalker. But instead of heading for home, he walked onto the grass. The red Honda was still in the driveway. Voices drifted out the screen door.
Matilda’s voice and … a man’s voice.
Red anger flashed to life inside Henry, rocket fuel and a match. He dropped the book. Before he knew it, he was through the back door and into the kitchen. A man had his arms around Matilda. Henry lost his mind.
“Get away from her!” he yelled as he grabbed the shorter man by the shoulders. Matilda screamed. Henry’s arm swung on its own, smashing into the hard jaw of this other man.
“Henry!” Matilda yelled.
The man fell to the floor, cradling his face. There was blood on Henry’s knuckles. Mine or his?
“What are you doing?” Matilda stepped in front of him, her face wide open and angry.
“I … I don’t know.” His hand hurt badly. He looked past her to the man on the floor. What did I do?
Matilda looked at him with pinched eyes and then turned away. “Parker? Are you okay?”
Seeing her go to him brought some of Henry’s craziness back. He reached for her, pulling her away. “Did he hurt you?” Henry asked Matilda.
“What are you talking about!” She pushed away from him. “Are you crazy? That’s Parker. A friend! And you punched him. Why did you do that?” She exhaled forcibly. “What are you doing here?” She looked at the back door and then at him.
A heavy wave of embarrassment crashed down on him. “Matilda, I’m so sorry.”
She shook her head. “Just get out!”
The man on the floor managed to stumble to his feet, his hand on his bleeding jaw. His eyes were narrowed, watching the exchange. “Tilly?” he mumbled. “What’s going on?”
Matilda, with her eyes still on Henry, said, “I have no idea.” Then something softened in her eyes and she stepped closer to Henry. “Are you all right?” she asked quietly. She took another step closer and lifted a warm hand to wipe a tear from his cheek. He hadn’t known he was still crying.
Henry met her eyes, wanting to disappear. But her hand on his cheek. He pressed his hand on top of hers, holding it firmly against his skin.
The man—Parker—stepped closer and Henry felt another flash of anger. Matilda pulled away. Henry balled his fists, holding back the unwarranted rage. “I think you should leave,” Parker said.
Henry pressed his teeth together and kept his eyes on Matilda, ignoring Parker. His cheek throbbed where she’d touched him. “Are you okay?” he asked her.
She blinked, confused. “I’m fine.”
Henry searched her face, involuntarily stepping closer. Words filled his head. He wanted to kiss her more than he wanted to breathe. Parker moved to block her. Henry humbly retreated. He looked away from her, hurting deep inside. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled as he turned. Then he went out the back door. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he added to himself as he hurried down the driveway, Winston’s book locked in his hand.
Matilda
Henry was gone. Matilda stared at the back door, her heart racing. Her hand was tingling, wet with Henry’s tears. She wanted him to come back. But that wasn’t how she should feel. She should feel angry or … maybe, pleased. Angry for the intrusion and violence, but warmed by the display of feeling from this man she couldn’t stop thinking about. A betraying feeling snaked from the back of her mind. What if my feelings for him aren’t real either? What if it’s part of my inherited sickness?
Matilda thought of the typewriter.
Parker stood beside her, bleeding. She went to the sink and soaked a towel in cold water.
But Henry’s actions weren’t imagined.
What just happened?
“Here,” she moved back to Parker, “let me see.”
Parker dropped his hand. His jaw was red and severely swollen. She pressed the towel to an inch long cut. “Press that hard.” Parker obeyed. He watched her closely as she went to the freezer and filled a plastic baggie with ice.
“Who was that?” he finally asked.
“Henry.”
“Henry who?”
“Henry Craig. The new editor of the newspaper.”
Parker’s eyes widened. “And why did he punch me?”
Matilda shrugged and looked at the back door.
“Were you expecting him?”
“No.”
Parker frowned, winced. “Then why was he here?”
“You better get back to Thea. I promised her I wouldn’t steal her husband.” She tried to smile. “Tell her I’m sorry about your jaw.”
“Tilly?”
“Thanks for coming when I called, Parker. I really appreciate it. And I’m sorry to have burdened you with this huge problem. And I’m sorry for … whatever it is that just happened.”
He sighed, shaking his head. “I’ve never been punched before. Hurts more than I expected.”
“Yeah. The cut doesn’t look too deep. I don’t think you need stitches.”
“Will he come back? I mean, I don’t want to leave you alone if … is he safe? Should I call over to the sheriff’s office? I really don’t understand …”
“We sort of …” She didn’t know how to explain it.
“Are you dating him? ’Cause that felt like a jealous boyfriend. And how you touched him …”
Matilda shook her head. “No. We hardly know each other.” Something pulled taut deep in her gut. “But there is something.”
Parker lifted his eyebrows expectantly.
Matilda said nothing. She took the bloody towel from him and went to the washer in the mudroom. When she came back Parker still looked dubious. “I’m fine, really.” She took a bandage from the cupboard. Parker lowered the ice, watching her closely, the worry and concern on his face making her uncomfortable.
Bandage in place, Parker said quietly, “I can stay. It’s been a rough day. Thea will understand.”
“Thanks, but no. Really. I don’t want to screw up your life too.” She looked at his swollen face and thought of the burden of her mother’s secret she’d thrown on him. And how she’d abandoned him a month before their wedding. “Any more than I already have, that is. Why are you even still talking to me?” She tried to smile.
Parker met her eyes with a significant expression. He opened his mouth to respond, then shut it. He shrugged. “I’m a glutton for punishment.”
Matilda felt that was not what he’d meant to say. She watched him, sensing something. “What is it?”
Parker stood. “Good night, Tilly.”
“Wait—what is it?”
Parker sighed heavily. After a long moment, he answered, “This isn’t the first time I’ve been injured because of you.”
Matilda blinked in surprise. “What do you mean?”
Parker adjusted the ice bag. The kitchen was so quiet. “About a year after you left—the day I got your note, actually—I got drunk. Really drunk. I’ve never been that drunk … before or since. I was so angry at those four completely inadequate words. ‘Parker, I’m sorry. Matilda.’ ” He shook his head. “And I was still so scared for you.” His gaze flicked to her then away. “At first, that note made it all seem worse, you know? I wanted to feel relief, but I was still so confused, so hurt. I knew you were alive but I still didn’t know why you
’d left.” He adjusted the ice pack again, wincing as it moved against his swollen face. “So I stopped thinking and started drinking. Finally, Billy—down at The Quarry—took my keys. It pissed me off so I stormed out to walk home. Or try, anyway.” He paused to take a breath. “Somehow I ended up down by the Neosho.”
“The river? That’s two miles out of town.” Matilda felt suddenly cold in the warm kitchen.
Parker nodded. “I fell in.”
A shiver moved down Matilda’s body. “Parker, I …” Sorry didn’t cut it.
“I got pretty banged up, nearly drowned. Luckily, Billy had followed me in his car, worried. He pulled me out.”
Matilda leaned against the island, her legs suddenly weak and heavy. How could I just leave and not care? How could I be that selfish, that stupid? She rubbed at her forehead, lost for words.
Finally, Parker broke the silence. “I don’t blame you.”
“You should. It’s my fault.”
“Not really. I chose to get drunk. I could have handled it better.”
“I could have not left like that. I could have called the next day, explained. I could have …” The fridge clicked on, humming loudly. Matilda wanted to cry, wanted to be punished for her selfishness, even if she couldn’t remember it. Perhaps this was the punishment. “That was so wrong. I was hurting about Jetty, but I shouldn’t have done that to you.” She dared a look at Parker, who watched her closely.
He only shook his head. “Maybe that was the beginning of you being sick. Maybe Jetty’s death brought it on. Maybe it wasn’t really your choice.”
Matilda nodded. Maybe that was true. It’d be a convenient (but still terrifying) way to explain everything. Yet something about it didn’t sit well with her. “I shouldn’t have called you tonight,” she added. “That was selfish too. I can’t keep burdening you with my problems.”
Parker lowered the ice. Matilda winced at the ugly sight underneath. He said, “I can take it.”
“But why?”
“Because I still love you.”
Matilda frowned. “Parker …”