Heart and Home

by Jennifer Melzer

  “Jan?” Footsteps clamored hurriedly up the stairs, pausing halfway.

  “Are you all right, Dad?”

  “What the hell happened up here?”

  “I don’t know,” my shoulders dropped down into the terrycloth and I began to fool with the belt around my waist. “Did you break something?”

  “No, I thought you broke something.”

  “I’m in the tub,” I reminded him. “It almost sounded like something broke through a window.”

  I listened to his steps comb the remainder of the stairs, and then clomp down the hallway. I heard him check my bedroom first, and then he doubled back toward the room he and my mother shared for more than a quarter of a century. His footsteps moved backward and the door closed again, then I heard him open the door to my mother’s sewing room.

  “What the hell?”

  “Dad? What is it?” I waited, but he didn’t answer, nor did he seem to move. “Dad?”

  He still hadn’t answered by the time I pulled open the door and stepped out into the hallway. Dull and yellowed light leaked into the hallway from the sewing room and staggered through his thick shadow.

  “Daddy?”

  I was almost behind him before he turned quickly and said, “Don’t take another step.”

  “What happened?”

  “Damned if I know,” he shook his head. “The mirror on the back of that vanity… Looks like it just shattered.” I tried to peer in over his shoulder, shards of light catching in the broken glass strewn all over the last quilt she’d been working on. “Go on back to your bath before you cut your feet all up. I’ll take care of the mess.”

  “How did it fall?”

  “I don’t know, Janice,” there was tension in his voice. “Don’t worry about it now, just finish up your bath and let me clean up.”

  I stood in the hallway for a moment and watched him try to make sense out of it. I realized he wasn’t going to budge while I stood there, so I slipped back into the bathroom and closed the door. I sat down on the edge of the tub, still wrapped in my bathrobe, and listened to him mutter under his breath as he tiptoed through the broken glass. From time to time pieces of it crunched under his shoes.

  The entire incident brought the stress back and I lowered my forehead into my hand to massage the tension away. After a few moments I realized nothing was powerful enough to take the edge off of that day. I’d be better off just going to bed and hoping for a better start on tomorrow, so I reached back to let the water out of the tub and filled my lungs with the fragrant steam one last time.

  I released the breath as I turned to stand up, but a startled scream caught in my throat as soon as I saw it. Drawn into the steam on the bathroom mirror were the letters YATS.

  I clamped my hand over my mouth and nearly gagged on my own strangled cry. It hadn’t been there before. I would have noticed it while poking around with my face, but then the mirror hadn’t steamed over fully until I’d opened up the door into the hallway. Perhaps the air temperature difference caused the mirror to really steam over, and that was why I hadn’t seen it, but who would write on the bathroom mirror?

  Ignoring my upbringing and the thousands of times my father told me not to clear off the mirror with my bare hands, I reached out and smudged my palm across the letters. My skin squeaked against the glass until the mirror was clear and I could only see my face. Wide-eyed and frantic, I shook my head at myself and then bent down to retrieve my clothing from the floor.

  Dad was just coming out of the sewing room when I opened up the bathroom door to step out into the hallway.

  “Stay outta there tonight,” he said. “It’s a real mess.”

  “Okay,” I swallowed and was grateful that he couldn’t hear the thump of my heart. “Did you figure out what happened?”

  “No, but I’ll take care of it tomorrow. I’m just not in the mood to mess with it now.”

  “I can clean it up. I don’t mind.”

  “Nonsense,” he flapped his hand at me. “Don’t worry about it.”

  It wasn’t really him I was worried about, I realized. It was me. My day had just gone from really depressing to downright insane. After the shattered vanity mirror, I couldn’t tell him about the writing in the steam. He’d have me committed before morning. On the inside, however, I was dying to figure it all out.

  He headed toward the steps. “I’ll probably turn in soon, so if you need anything, you’ll have to fetch it yourself.”

  “I know my way around this house probably better than you do,” I laughed.

  “Good,” he nodded. “Then if I need anything, I’ll know exactly who to turn to.”

  “Goodnight, Dad.”

  “Night.”

  He disappeared down the stairs and I stood there in the hallway for a few moments trying to pull myself together.

  Chapter Six

  Steam billowed into the air and began to fill the room. It soaked the fabric of my nightgown so it felt heavy on my frame and clung to me as I walked. I turned away from the bathtub and leaned my body across the sink to watch the mirror cloud over. Behind the silver coat of moisture, my blurred reflection followed the contour of my every movement. I paused, but the murky image in the mirror still moved. I jerked backward with a startled cry, as one by one the letters YATS formed in the steam. In the brief clarity of the letter A, a familiar eye peered out at me like sunlit honey.

  When I sat up against the stifling darkness with a gasp, I wasn’t sure where I was. Gripped in a haze of confusion, I scanned my streetlamp lit surroundings until the furniture began to take familiar shape. The dream clung like loose fabric to the edges of my staggering consciousness, my quickened heart rate the only real evidence that I’d been having a nightmare. I raked my hands through my hair with a strangled sigh, and untucked myself from the blankets just as a rumble of thunder sounded somewhere in the distance.

  Even as a kid I had not liked getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. Then it was fear of the bogeyman that made me reluctant, but as I grew older plain old-fashioned laziness became my excuse. With the strands of nightmare still clinging like old cobwebs to my mind, it was a combination of both fear and laziness that made me dread leaving my bedroom.

  Dull orange light spilled into the hallway from the nightlight that had been plugged in behind the bathroom sink for as long as I could remember. I followed the familiar path and avoided the mirror, no doubt a result of the dream I could now barely remember. I convinced myself long before going to bed that whatever I’d seen in the mirror was the product of some childish prank. My mother was socially active. Maybe one of her friends’ children wrote on the mirror during a visit, and no one ever cleaned it off. It didn’t matter that on top of being incredibly active, my mother was also an astute housekeeper.

  Anything was better than the scenario that originally popped into my mind, but there was no doubt the strange experience sparked my active imagination, leading me headlong into nightmare.

  On my way back to the bedroom I paused to listen to my father’s snoring at the end of the hallway. As annoying as it had been growing up down the hall from a master log-sawer, it now provided a sense of comfort. He was all I had left, and it was up to me to take care of him. If only I vested more interest in them to begin with I might have been able to prevent my mother’s death somehow.

  It sounded ridiculous, and I knew it, but I wanted to believe that there was something I could have done to stop it. Since there was no way to change what was done, I would do everything in my power to hold onto my father. I wasn’t going to lose them both so easily.

  I closed my bedroom door behind me, and crawled back into the bed, drawing the quilt up just below my chin. Rain splattered the windows, and the play of light on the ceiling moved droplets like rolling shadows through the reflection of my curtains. Heavy eyelids dropped over my vision, and I felt myself slowly drift away, until something thudded loudly against the window. I shot upward as my eyes flew opened. One thud turne
d into another, and then there were a few at once until a steady downpour of hail battered at the roof and siding like determined soldiers, the thunder their cannon fire.

  Flopping over in the bed, I faced the wall and listened to the thunder grow closer as the hail drummed an almost angry beat upon the roof and windows. Sure, it stormed in Pittsburgh, some real doozies, but I’d grown so accustomed to all the other sounds in my apartment building the silence of the house made everything sound like it was being broadcast through an amplifier.

  Earlier in the week sleep was an escape from my mother’s death, all the funeral preparations and the visitors popping by with condolences and dishes of baked macaroni and cheese had been exhausting. At the end of every night I’d practically fallen into a coma, but all of that was over now and there was nothing left to hide from.

  Eyes closed, the vision of her grave site was incredibly clear. I could hear Pastor Crane’s sermon and swimming dizziness twirled me in its arms. A nauseated numbness hummed in my skull and I felt like I was fainting all over again, only this time when I fell my body reacted with a waking spasm. The hail pounded on, or maybe that was my heartbeat in my ears. Either way, I had a feeling it was going to be a long and restless night.

  By the time my body jerked awake in mid-fall for the third time, I threw the blankets aside and reached for the lamp on the bedside table. In the light the hail seemed less urgent, but I knew that if I tried to sleep again that same scene would just play again and again. I slipped into my bathrobe and tugged on a pair of socks. I crept quietly down the stairs and turned on the kitchen light. After routing through the refrigerator and arranging the week’s donated contents half a dozen ways, I finally found the milk. I was glad to find that she still kept a can of cocoa powder among the spices on the lazy Susan in the corner cabinet. I took down my mother’s favorite mug and mixed the cocoa powder with sugar then set the milk to simmer in a pan on the stove top.

  While I waited for the milk to warm, I turned around and pressed my lower back into the counter. The kitchen still looked like it had the day I left, decorated in dark greens and brilliant yellows to accommodate the sunflower theme. Sunflower dish towels and pot holders matched the border that lined the wainscoting and there were almost a dozen different sunflower magnets plastered across the refrigerator. She always tried to bring as much of the outdoors as she could into the house, especially flowers.

  “This way I can have the warmth of a good garden even in the dead of winter,” she explained when I stuck my nose up at her sunflower obsessed plan.

  Now I appreciated the choice, especially while the hail and thunder battered at the window behind me. The kitchen itself was bright and comforting, like a good garden. The liquid in the pan softly sizzled, so I turned back to check on it, but instead my attention was drawn to the window as a flash of lightning illuminated the backyard. A series of chills rippled through me as I realized that it wasn’t the lightning that caught my attention, so much as the figure that stood in the middle of the yard, just about twenty feet from the house.

  I swallowed and licked my lower lip, not sure what I should do. If it was a burglar, and they saw me I certainly didn’t want them to know I saw them too. Dad always kept a flashlight in the last drawer on the left beside the refrigerator. I whipped open the drawer and took out the flashlight, then managed to turn off the overhead light. Total darkness made me feel blind at first, and then the orange and blue flame flickering underneath the pan of milk came into being. I clicked the flashlight on and moved to turn off the burner, being sure to keep the light away from the window.

  Burner off, I moved the pan to the back of the stove and edged my way toward the window. I turned the flashlight downward and hovered just at the corner, where I hoped I wouldn’t be seen during the next flash of lightning. Part of me wanted to believe I was just seeing things. Maybe Mom put a statue in the garden I hadn’t noticed. One of the neighbors might have even chased their dog into the yard.

  A scream caught in the back of my throat when the next strobe of light brought on the reality of was clearly a face right outside the window, almost as if whoever it was wanted to let me know they’d caught me watching them.

  My heart thudded as I staggered backwards, and skittered like a crab across the floor. I barreled up the staircase two steps at a time with the flashlight still in hand, and I didn’t stop until I stood outside Dad’s bedroom door gasping to catch my breath. I shined the light toward the empty stairway gulping air into my lungs. As it started to slow, the rhythm of his snores rose up against the pound of my heart, until finally his breathing was all I could hear.

  That was when reason kicked in.

  What was I going to say to him?

  “Uh, hey, Dad, I saw the boogey man in the backyard just now. Can you come down and have a look?”

  He’d have me locked up for sure. Flashes of lightning poked out from under his door and the door to my mother’s sewing room. I was momentarily tempted to sneak into her sewing room to see if I could catch another glimpse of whoever I’d seen from the kitchen, but the greater part of me didn’t want to in the end and besides Dad hadn’t finished cleaning up in there anyway.

  The floorboards creaked under my careful steps as I snuck back to my bedroom. I paused at the top of the stairs, shining the flashlight down them again. There was nothing there, no shadow lurking just around the corner, no movement to catch my eye. I slipped into my room and closed the door. I locked it too, and then sat down on the edge of the bed. I turned off the flashlight and laid it on my bedside table before I crawled back into bed, and drew myself sitting into the corner. It was ridiculous and I felt all of five years old, but I knew what I’d seen. While I couldn’t make out any features in the face, I definitely saw someone right there against the window.

  I hugged my pillow tight and rested my cheek against the wall while the hail continued to pound away at the house.

  *****

  “Janice?” A tentative voice followed a gentle rap. “Janice, it’s time to get up and get ready for church.”

  Groggy and disoriented, my head throbbed like the aftermath of a hangover. I wiped the drool from the corner of my mouth and pushed off the wall I’d cuddled up to. My neck ached from falling asleep sitting upright, and that ache throbbed through my head awfully.

  He knocked a little louder then, and said, “Jannie, come on. Church starts in an hour.”

  Church? My father had never been an enthusiastic churchgoer, often worming his way out of attending on Sunday mornings while my mother drug me off to Sunday School, and then made me sit stiffly beside her while Pastor Crane preached the Sunday morning service. As I’d mentioned to Pastor Crane, I really hadn’t set foot in a church since I’d left Sonesville. My mother’s funeral service had been the first, and I had no intention of making a Sunday morning habit of it just because I was back in town.

  “I don’t go to church anymore, Dad.” I scooted down into the sheets and drew the blankets up under my chin to warm away the morning’s chill.

  “Well, everyone will be expecting to see you there.” He added, “I’ll take you out for brunch after.”

  Since when did he care about keeping up appearances, especially when it came to church? Had my mom made him go after I left, dressing him up each Sunday and dragging him along beside her? I lifted a hand to my forehead and massaged the creases in my brow before moving my fingers along the stiffness of my own neck.

  “I want to get there before all the good seats are taken,” he urged.

  “Good seats?” I muttered. “What have you done with my father?”

  “Coffee’s on,” came his reply.

  “Oh, all right!” I supposed there was only one way to find out what the aliens did with my father, and after all, it was only one Sunday. Brunch would give me a chance to talk to Dad about several things, like the bizarre person I’d seen in the back yard, and of course my need to return to my job and the city. I hadn’t even mentioned that I was planning to lea
ve that afternoon, but I was sure he wouldn’t be surprised. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

  I felt even number as I filed into church. Everyone had their eye on me, as though they were trying to determine whether or not I would pass out like I did at the funeral. I managed to smile at everyone I made eye contact with, but on the inside it felt like a nightmare. Unfortunately there was no waking from it, especially every time we were expected to rise with our hymnals to sing our praises unto the Lord. I kept glancing sidelong at my father, waiting for tentacles to sprout from his ears and prove that the man who forced me out of bed and drug me off to church was indeed a clever body snatcher and not my father.

  “. . . and while many of us have felt the burden of sorrow in our hearts this last week at having lost one of the most treasured members of our congregation, let us rejoice in the knowledge that our lord and savior, Jesus Christ, passed on to us when he said, ‘I am the resurrection, and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall have everlasting life.’ Let us pray.”

  On instinct, I lowered my head and closed my eyes as Pastor Crane’s voice reached out, “Dear Lord, we ask that you join us here today and offer your comfort to the family and loved ones of Chandra McCarty, who has passed now into your care ...”

  Eight years without prayer, and suddenly I was on some kind of involuntary binge. Almost defiantly, I opened my eyes just a little and glanced around at all the lowered heads.

  Amber sat near the front beside her husband, whom I didn’t recognize and wondered if he was from one of the neighboring towns. Her mother was there, the children nestled in between them watching Pastor Crane and fidgeting impatiently. The whole scene was familiar, reminiscent of my youth, but altered by the fact that I wasn’t one of those squirming children anymore.