Petals of Rain

by Rica Keenum

  Chapter 9

  A Move in The Right Direction

  I am having one of those days in which there is too much and too little. Too much stress, too little sleep. Too many thoughts of J and the redhead unraveling in my brain like a spool of pulled thread. One thought stretches into another. I imagine them together on the nights when he worked late and I waited up with a warm dinner plate. Stupid, stupid me. I hate that it hurts. I want to be stronger than I am, smarter than I was. I have the feeling that my skin is a barbed wire fence and I want to crawl out of myself entirely.

  A child wails. It’s my child, my 8-year-old son KJ. He is experiencing a crisis worthy of high-pitched whining, tears and a fantastic display of anger. I follow the sound to the bedroom where 6-year-old Sym watches from the top bunk. It’s not his bed, but he’s no fool. It’s a small room and while toys can be flung, the safest place to hide from a rabid sibling is always the top bunk bed — depending, of course, on your mother’s willingness to respond to your screams. As a middle child, I know this from experience. Sym’s pleading eyes tell me he is the culprit and the crime he’s committed is worse than any territorial dispute that could arise. He’s willing to roll the dice.

  “What’s going on?” I say, taking the mom stance — hands on hips, chin jutting into the room. KJ can’t speak. His little face glistens like a new penny, tears tumbling down. He has a Darth Vader helmet at his feet, a Christmas gift from last year. He bends over, picks it up. It’s black and shiny, an electronic headpiece with flat eye screens and a grate for a mouth.

  “He wouldn’t let me play with it,” Sym pipes in from behind us, then slinks back into his corner.

  This supplies KJ with a jolt of outrage. “He pooped in my mask,” he hollers, thrusting the helmet in my face.

  I take the soiled toy, inspect it. “Where?”

  “Inside,” KJ says, “and I put it on my face.” More tears come with the word “face” as if it’s all too much to bear. His cheeks crumple and his eyes become sad little half-moons.

  He shoots Sym a look, to which Sym replies once more, “You wouldn’t let me play with it!”

  ***

  My kids are the kind of terrible that really isn’t terrible. But it’s damn sure memorable.

  Some Memories

  It was quiet. That should have been my first clue that something was amiss. I am 3 chapters in and it’s a page-turner. We spent the morning grocery shopping, which in itself is not a high-impact workout but if you wrangle two boys with four lanky arms vying for the marshmallows and Frosted Flakes, you end up winded. We followed the trip up with a visit to the library and now I’m in front of the window in my comfy chair with a cup of reheated coffee and this paperback. All is well until I see the neighbor from across the street making her way toward my house. Her neck is craned upward as if she’s inspecting the clouds for rain. It’s an odd posture, and when she drops her head back down to eye level, I see disappointment in her gaunt face. I’d like to pretend we’re not home, but she sees me leaning toward the window as she thumps up the steps and onto our porch. There are no hellos.

  “Are your boys allowed to play on the roof?” She stammers. She’s a hard woman with nicotine-stained fingertips and eyes like polished blades.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your boys are on the roof right now. I saw them from across the street.” She points to the spot where she witnessed the crime — her porch, where a plastic chair sits next to a matching table and loaded ashtray. “The older one told me it was okay because YOU said they could play up there.” I release the door and it bangs shut as I race upstairs. I take the steps three at a time and find KJ’s window wide open. The sheer curtain flutters against the sill and the outside spills in. Everything is sun kissed and smells like sticks and grass and leaves. It’s the kind of day I could inhale deeply. I shove my head out and hear KJ before I see him.

  “No, Symeon, Spiderman does this…” he says. I spot him on the flat part of the roof, wearing his Spiderman pajamas and a blanket he’s knotted at the neck like a cape. His bony fingers demonstrate the web-shooter method: forefingers, thumbs and pinkies firing. Sym stands beside him, cape-blanket sagging around his neck. His plump bottom lip pokes out as he fumbles with his fingers. He is shirtless and wearing a pair of cartoon boxer shorts. It’s pushing 60 degrees and the wind shows up in his hair, rippling every curl. It’s a long way down. I can see the ocean floor of everything, the sidewalk beside the house and the whole block if I stretch out my neck: the messy shrubs like tangled seaweed, the shingled roofs like dirty fish scales. There is the school and the stop sign on the corner where kids lump together until the traffic passes. I wonder how they’d look from here, like spinning tops or maybe confetti. There is the neighbor who thinks I’m a terrible mother. She’s back in her plastic chair with a cigarette in her hand. Smoke billows up, spreads out and glides into the blue afternoon.

  I look down again at my wayward superheroes. They are far from the edge of the roof so there’s no chance they’ll plummet to the ground. I allow them another few seconds to savor the penthouse views, and then I’ll give them hell.

  Another memory

  How does KJ know the bro code? He is a scrawny grade-schooler who ties his shoes with loops like Dumbo’s ears. And while he protects his brother, he is quick to pimp him out too.

  “Ask Mom for ice cream,” he whispers. Or “Put these cookies down your shirt.” Or “Tell her you did it — it was an accident!”

  One Monday, post-weekend-wrestling-match-gone-wrong, KJ’s teacher inquires about the purple ring around his eye. The right answer would have been: This is where the wall interfered when my brother rocketed me off his back. But that was not the option he chose. Instead, he replied without hesitation, “My mom punched me in the face.”

  After school, the doorbell rings. I glance through the peephole and see a woman with hair like whipped potatoes wearing a wool blazer and clutching a briefcase. I wonder what she’s selling. I almost don’t answer but I’m curious.

  She is Beverly with a business card or a badge. I’m not sure which because she is nudging her way inside and telling me she’s with CPS, child protective services. The boys are blabbering on kitchen chairs, bent over a table snaked with cars.

  “Nooo! This is the fastest car, Sym,” KJ says, replacing a blue car with a black car in their lineup.

  Beverly tells me she needs to chat with KJ alone and asks where they can talk. I point her to the living room and watch them leave the kitchen. I am willing my ears to hear, pinching my eyes shut and listening with force. I’ve crept as close to the living room as I can get and I lean against the wall, angling my head toward their voices like a radar gun.

  “Vroooom,” Sym hollers from the table, happy to lead the crew in KJ’s absence.

  As I watch Sym’s chubby feet slap the chair legs, it occurs to me that KJ may be wearing holey socks. I can’t explain the sock situation in this house. It’s a mystery even to me. Socks get washed, put on feet and the shoes go on. But they often return with stinky toes punched out, like worms after a storm. I’m biting my hand now, wondering if KJ’s toes are on display as Beverly takes notes with her heavy brass pen. And I don’t know yet what he’s told his teacher, but I assume the black eye is the reason for this visit. Now if my son can just tell her how it happened…

  It’s like she’s buying the house. When they return from their chat, Beverly stomps into every room, her chunky black pumps click on the floor as she opens the pantry, examines the food then moves on. She writes it all down, flushes the toilets. They gurgle and groan. She smiles.

  “Okay,” she finally says, scribbling a few more notes before lowering her clipboard and looking me in the eye. She tells me what happened at school, how the teacher had to report it because she’s required to; it’s protocol.

  “I see the artwork on the refrigerator,” she says, pointing to the messy watercolor handprint. I almost blurt out I didn't do it, that my art is much better than that,
but she continues. “We look for this kind of stuff. The race car bed, the pantry full of snacks, the toys — all signs of a good home. I’ll have to come back again but don’t be concerned. It’s all routine.”

  I walk her to the door and just as it shuts I hear KJ roar from the kitchen, “Mom, Sym said he wants dinner nowwwww.”

  I watch Beverly duck into her little white car. This would be the best time to punch KJ in the face.

  ***

  It will be just us now, the boys and me. No dad in proximity. The out-of-state moving service charges per square foot. It’s a number so high I have to lean in and cock my head. “Excuse me?” I say, because I can’t believe my ears. But it’s slightly cheaper than starting over with all new furniture. And besides, I am in no mood to sell what I’ve got, to host a garage sale and haggle with strangers who clip coupons for sport and already have too many toasters and bed frames. So I decide to sell just a few items that take up space. A woman and her husband respond to my Craigslist posting and come over to test out my treadmill. They ask why I’m getting rid of the thing when I’ve told them I use it almost daily. “I’m moving to Florida,” I say, as if it’s a dream come true, as if I’ve got a beach house waiting, a couple of friends already slathering tanning oil on their shoulders, cheering, “She’ll be here by this time next week,” and sipping margaritas in the sun.

  “That’s exciting!” the woman exclaims. She’s in her forties, newly diagnosed with MS. It’s the reason they are treadmill shopping, her husband told me on the phone.

  “Yes,” I say, “it is.”

  This woman has an incurable disease, so I don’t heap my half-pint misery on her by telling her the whole story — the part about the home I rented sight unseen in a city I’ve only visited on the internet. Braver people might find that riveting, but for me, it’s just plain terrifying. I don’t say my real goal is to put 1,200 miles between my ex-husband and me. To give myself that much space to think and breathe and move untethered.

  It’s been four years since our divorce, and I can’t adjust to single motherhood with him in close range. Blame it on too many Leave It to Beaver episodes, but I couldn’t see us being whole without him. I could bake rigatoni with cheese until it bubbled and browned, but I couldn’t get the boys to stop flinging dinner off their forks, launching noodles at one another. J could, with a look, with sturdy shoulders that didn’t slump like mine. Every evening I tried to conjure his dad magic, but I simply did not have it. And if by chance he appeared at bedtime, I was reminded of this. He could swoop in and make a sporting event of our evening fiasco. If the boys were whining about undressing, he’d have them racing to peel off their socks and shimmy out of school clothes in record time. And just like that, all my frustrations vanished. I appreciated his help, but it didn’t come free.

  Within a few years of our divorce, J had lost his job, the house, his mistress. One night his car spun out on black ice then flipped into a ditch on the side of the highway. He kicked his way out through the windshield and later realized his insurance had lapsed. He’d lost his car too. These events happened like some eerie karmic explosion, sending him lumbering back in my life as if struck by an epiphany. Since I aspired to repair our family, we agreed to counseling. We spent hopeful nights making plans. I thought the glue of more time might hold us together for good. But time is no glue, and after 13 years I finally realized I’d given him too much.

  I had imagined living in the Sunshine State, leaving all my winter storms behind, the ice of everything. I called my mother often, and despite the ways she failed me, I longed to be near her. You only get one mother, imperfections and all.

  “I’m wearing flip-flops today,” she teased after she’d moved to Florida. “I bet you’re wearing boots.”

  When she sent me photos of a rental house in her neighborhood, I mentally began to pack. If I stayed in Wisconsin, I was sure J would be back at my door in a week, a month or a year, lamenting his mistakes. He’d come with a new blueprint for our family. There were so many blueprints. Even as he rolled them out, I’d see the bitter end. But I couldn’t trust my memory to recall how the past had been, to remind me that his charm was a mirage.

  “I feel I’m losing myself,” I tell a friend over coffee one afternoon. I imagine a flower dropping its petals — less of me every day. The newness of a life without J scares me, and my desire to give our boys the nuclear family dynamic keeps thrusting me back to him. But now, in a moment of clarity, I break the news. “I’m moving to Florida.”

  Florida

  We are bickering over boxes in our sunny living room. “Who took the hammer?” I bellow, taking a step forward and landing on the rusty claw buried beneath clumps of packing paper.

  “I need the hammer,” KJ declares, waving his skinny brown arm in the air.

  “You absolutely do not need the hammer,” I say.

  “But I want to hang this.” He unrolls a glossy Lord of the Rings poster and holds it up, smiling. I notice the neat stack of his collectibles and clothing, which he has already found and unpacked. This child is methodical, my door-knob-polishing, storage-bin-stacking son. On the opposite end of the gene pool, young slovenly Sym makes a splash. They are eleven and nine, and their new school is right across the street.

  Sym has emptied the contents of a large box on the carpet and climbed inside. Fashioning weapons out of wads of packing tape, he tosses the sticky bombs in the air and mimics the sounds of a blast, “Peowww, peowww.”

  In a few days, he’ll be settled in with accidental science projects under his bed: food-crusted plates and juice-stained cups, which eventually will become public housing for various insects. We had talked about Florida bugs, about palmetto bugs so big they could bitch slap a dog.

  “Forget about Goldilocks,” I told him. “If you don’t clean your room in Florida, a giant cockroach will steal your bed.”

  He’ll believe it when he sees it, he says.

  When the quiet of evening descends, I saunter into their shared room while they sleep. The curtains are parted and the backyard stretches out to the road. There is so much open space and the trees are husky and graceful, with moss tangled up like wild hair. I can see the whole sky, rolled out like a clean silk sheet and unencumbered by city lights, apartment complexes or corporate buildings. This is not Milwaukee. Out here there is nothing but me, my sons, the sky. The door is cracked just enough to allow a vein of light in from the hall. It settles on their faces, their silky eyelashes and dreamy open mouths. I listen to the sounds of their sleep as the ceiling fan spins overhead. My mind spins too.

  When I was an 18-year-old girl, life was cold, so I picked up a husband and put him on like an overcoat. But now I am a 32-year-old woman and it’s time to strip down, set myself free. I have to find out who I can be without J — without even the possibility of him.

  ***

  I can’t write. I mean, it’s physically possible but I am creatively defunct. This is a problem because if I don’t write, we don’t eat. Plus, there’s no child support. It’s what I agreed to so J would allow me to take the boys out of state. He was in arrears already and more than happy to oblige under these terms. I thought I had a handle on freelancing. Prior to moving, I’d worked myself up to full-time writing. I started with some college courses online and I learned the basics: How to write a query letter, hook a reader with a compelling lede, show versus tell. Then I got my first clip when a small magazine published a story I’d written about hospital work. The brown envelope came in the mail with a thank-you letter and a copy of the story in shiny ink.

  “Look boys,” I said. “Here’s my name!” I marveled at the sight of it — my name on a page in a magazine. A writer. Soon after, I landed a freelance gig for a large media company. For two years, I wrote online content whenever I peeled off my scrubs. I left the healthcare facility and rushed home to tap at my keyboard. In the early mornings or late into the night, I researched and wrote health articles about medications, symptoms, fad diets. I told peo
ple how to cure athlete's foot, about the stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and how to whip up a meal plan for the cabbage soup diet. I knew it wasn’t serious journalism, but I was working under real editors, working toward something. I was learning how to turn a phrase. It was thrilling and nerve-racking at once. It was tilling my creative soil, plucking word-seeds from my brain and planting ideas on the page. I wondered if I could grow something beautiful one day. Something memorable — a book.

  I’d always loved wordplay and poetry and library day at school when I was a kid. On Tuesdays, I could check out Nancy Drew mysteries or Beverly Cleary books. While my siblings rode bikes in summer or watched cartoons in the living room, I hovered over my paperbacks like a honey bee sucking nectar. Inspired by my favorite authors, I fashioned my own books from cardboard and wrapping paper and presented them to my grandmother, who fawned over all my creations. When I was 11 years old, my school essay garnered an award. I was selected to attend a conference at the Milwaukee Art Museum where successful authors spoke about their careers to a crowd of budding writers. I imagined myself on the stage wearing something writerly: a tailored pantsuit, a pair of expensive heels. I’d be addressing the crowds one day. I’d be an author.

  I look around now at our little Florida home and there is nothing left to unpack. There are no curtains to hang, beds to make, towels to stack on fresh shelves. There is no more frenzied pace to keep me from the business of living my new life. Every bit of work is done now, yet there is so much to do. I have everything to do.

  The clock blinks and the silence in my mind bumps around with fear. If I can’t awaken my brain, I will have to find alternate work. I imagine myself in a food-stained apron, pouring coffee into cheap porcelain mugs. Will work for tips.

  ***

  Routine — I decide that’s what I need. All the pros have some sort of ritual in which they partake, a means to rouse the muse. After the boys leave for school, I sip coffee in my pink flowery mug near the window. I try to make it meaningful, to decode the banter of the neighborhood birds as if it held some esoteric insights. My notebook sits idly beside me with yesterday’s assignments unexplored. A blank doc is open on my computer, but it mocks me, mirroring the space in my head. No words or ideas come to me, and I fear they are gone forever. Where are my words?