Bathwater Blues: A Novel

by Abe Moss

  Exchange glances. Eyes curious. Eyes afraid.

  How old are you.

  Six.

  Change channel. Change channel. Change channel.

  How old are you.

  Nine.

  Downstairs is cold. No blanket.

  ✽✽✽

  Your mom isn’t feeling good. She’s upset. I don’t know why. She just is. She’s always upset these days. She doesn’t mean to be. You didn’t do anything wrong. She’s just upset. That’s all. Nothing to worry about. I love you very much. Of course I do. I’m not upset. I love you. You’re such a good girl. Come here. Give me a hug. Everything is all right. Okay.

  I’m sorry mommy isn’t being very nice. She’s not herself.

  ✽✽✽

  Your father’s not himself. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do anymore. I can’t think straight. You really annoy me sometimes. You can really get on my nerves. I need some time alone. He needs to be here more often. He should stay home with you more often. Why should it be me all the time. It’s draining, you know. Exhausting. I’m exhausted. Isn’t it your bedtime already.

  ✽✽✽

  I don’t want to go.

  I need to go, Addie. I can’t leave you here. You have to come with me.

  I don’t want to go.

  Why not. You’ll get to see Sarah again.

  I don’t want to go.

  Danny even asked me to bring you. Sarah wants to see you again. Don’t you like Sarah. Isn’t she your friend. I know she’s glad to have you as a friend. Danny told me so.

  But I don’t want to go.

  ✽✽✽

  Late. Getting sleepy. TV still on. Room black like nothing. Brightness hurts my eyes. Sleepy. Can’t sleep.

  Sarah is asleep.

  Footsteps. Above. Footsteps. Down the stairs.

  Out of the darkness. Danny.

  Where’s my dad.

  Sits on the sofa. In between. Can’t see Sarah. Sleeping. Heavy sigh.

  He’s beat. Taking a nap upstairs for a little while. Don’t worry.

  Pine scent. Forest scent. Earthy scent. Like daddy. But different. Cologne. But different.

  So what have you two been watching.

  Don’t look. Don’t speak. Not a word.

  I’m glad your dad gets to bring you along. Sarah really likes you.

  ✽✽✽

  Shouting. All the time. At each other. So many words. Loud words. But nothing gets said. Just shouting. I think they forgot. Just watch and listen. Or maybe don’t listen. Or maybe don’t watch. Doesn’t matter. They’ve forgotten.

  ✽✽✽

  You need to tell me. You have to. It’s for his own good. It’s for your own good, too. What does he say to you about me. What does he tell you. He lies to you. Do you know that. He lies to you about me. He lies about himself too. You love him so much, don’t you. You’re just a kid. You don’t know any better.

  I’m the enemy, I guess.

  ✽✽✽

  It’s important you never tell your mom about this. This is our secret. I told you before she wouldn’t like it. She doesn’t want us to have any fun. She wants us to stay there all day while she goes and does whatever it is she does. I think she’s… well, I don’t want to upset you. You just can’t tell her, all right. If she finds out then she might try to take you away from me. We don’t want that, do we. I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re my little girl.

  Let’s go for a ride.

  ✽✽✽

  Everyone forgets things that aren’t important to them. That’s why you can’t rely on promises. Everyone is bound to forget. Or maybe they never meant it at all.

  ✽✽✽

  You need to tell me. Where does he take you when I’m not here. You have to tell me. I’m not the bad guy here. I need to know. Your father is hurting himself. He could die, even. It’s only a matter of time. He might hurt you too. Be a big girl and tell me the truth. Oh great. Why are you crying again. It’s just a question. You cry about nothing sometimes. Here. It’s okay. Stop crying. Stop crying. It’s all right.

  Just tell me.

  ✽✽✽

  Doze off. TV still bright. Doze off.

  Flicker. Snap. Breathe. Smoky smell. Gray smoke in the dark. Strong smell. Hurts my nose. Familiar smell. Like an amusement park.

  Doze again.

  Look at him. Still sitting. Still breathing. Smoking. Nostrils flare. Suck the gray smoke in.

  Where’s my dad.

  Another puff. Another breath. Gray smoke fills the dark.

  Probably still sleeping. Like you should be. I’m surprised you’re awake.

  Say nothing. Lay back down. Close my eyes.

  Couch makes funny sounds. Moving around.

  Try to sleep. Keep eyes closed. Smoke is too strong.

  The fingers come tapping.

  ✽✽✽

  I can tell what’s going on. Why you’re acting so funny. There’s a reason for it. I know. Why are you protecting him. Why do you hate me so much. That doesn’t matter. I think I know what’s going on. Daddy’s got some new friends, huh. He lied to you. They’re old friends, not new friends.

  Don’t help him, Addie.

  ✽✽✽

  Please don’t cry. No. It’s not scary. It’s not scary. Don’t cry. Just this last time, okay. Just one more time and then never again. I need you to come with me. It’ll be all right. You’ll have fun. Yes you will. It won’t be for long. Just this one last time. Sarah will be there. You like her. Mom doesn’t need to know. Just this last time.

  I promise.

  ✽✽✽

  Whatever you’re doing, it has to stop. I’ve let it go on way too long. How could you. You’re hurting me. You’re hurting her. How long has this been going on. How many years. It’s no wonder, then. Don’t you know I love you. I need you. Stop this. Can’t you do it for me.

  ✽✽✽

  Sleepover. Something fun. Not fun.

  Square house. More houses. Neighbors. Other children outside.

  Car door. Car door.

  The dirt is grass now.

  Inside.

  Sarah doesn’t talk. Never does. Not much.

  Dolls out of the chest. Sarah doesn’t play.

  Then the dark comes. Bedtime. Put us to bed. Sleeping bag on the floor. Next to Sarah’s bed. Climb inside.

  Too dark, Sarah says.

  Nightlight. Dim in the corner. Red. Red like strawberries.

  How’s that.

  Danny leaves.

  Can’t sleep. Nervous. Quiet. Sarah snores. Dim red light not dim enough. Strong as a stoplight.

  Are you awake.

  Sarah doesn’t move. Alone on the floor.

  Scattered toys under the bed. Shoes.

  Can’t sleep.

  Footsteps. Down the hall. Someone stands in the doorway. Watching.

  ✽✽✽

  From six to seven. Eight. Nine. That’s three.

  ✽✽✽

  You think you’re special, I bet. You think he’s the best, don’t you. You do, I bet. He doesn’t love you. You can keep his secrets but that doesn’t mean he loves you. Hate me all you want. You’ve got nobody. God, what I wouldn’t give. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was you. Things used to be different, you know. Before you. One little mistake and everything changes. I'm paying dearly, I know. You just keep crying. Needy little thing. Keep at it if it makes you feel better. I don’t feel anything at all.

  Your big hero will be home any minute now.

  ✽✽✽

  Nobody hears us. Maybe the toys. Under Sarah’s bed. Frightened toys. Dolls with big eyes. Cat’s eyes. Glowing red. Strawberry red, bright and shiny.

  Sarah isn’t asleep. Blinks eyes. She sees. Rolls over.

  The toys watch and listen.

  ✽✽✽

  Never again.

  I promise.

  ✽✽✽

  Six. Seven. Eight. Nine.

  My, how you’ve grown.

&nb
sp; Again and again and again.

  ✽✽✽

  I don’t care what you do anymore. It’s not my problem. I’ll stay here and do my thing, you go and do yours. If that’s what makes you happy. Take her with you for all I care. Because I don’t. I can hardly stand to look at either of you.

  I just wish you’d be here more. With me.

  ✽✽✽

  We can’t do this. Not anymore. It’s just not… I don’t think it’s right. I know, you’ve been very good to me. You’ve given me a good deal, I know. But I can’t anymore.

  She’s my little girl.

  ✽✽✽

  So many last times. Can’t count them on my fingers. This is the last time. Last time was also the last time. Maybe next time.

  ✽✽✽

  I’m so sorry, Addie. I can’t say it enough. I love you so much. I hope you know that. I haven’t been feeling very well. I’m trying to feel better, though. I want you to understand that. Okay? I love you so much. I haven’t been a very good father. I’m working on it. Do you love me? I hope so. I care about you. I’m going to do better by you from now on. I don’t ever want you to be sad again. Can you be happy for me? Don’t be sad anymore.

  We’re never going to see him again. I promise.

  ✽✽✽

  All is gray. Blurry quick. Floating by. Hard to grasp. Hard to remember.

  I don’t mind. I don’t mind.

  Black spaces. Black times. Don’t look back.

  Put it behind. Put it behind.

  ✽✽✽

  There’s something wrong with you. Always has been. I don’t know what we did to make you the way you are. It wasn’t me. I know I had nothing to do with it. I almost feel sorry for you. But I don’t.

  I think you get it from your father.

  SIDE EFFECTS

  PART FOUR

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Visionless, holding her breath, Addie saw a burst of light before her, starry points reaching out, blooming into what she recognized as daylight burning down on her from the clear blue sky. She sat upright, gasping.

  A commotion of feet scuffed toward her and a thick cotton towel unfurled at her side. She climbed from the tub and got to her feet in the dirt beside it, turned her back into the towel which Nuala wrapped around her shoulders.

  “It’s done,” she said. “You’re all done.”

  Addie only stood quietly, catching her breath. Hands took hold of her and turned her around until she faced Nuala’s optimistic, beaming face.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Addie shook her head.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Do you need to lie down?”

  “I think so.”

  Nuala escorted her through the field back to the property. Joanna walked with them but didn’t make any inquiries or comments. Once Addie looked back. She looked at the tub, the water getting warmer still under the rising sun.

  Nothing could have… I wasn’t ready…

  Back inside the guesthouse, Nuala sat Addie at the kitchen table and brought her a glass of water. She gulped it down.

  “You take the rest of the day to relax and absorb what you saw, okay?”

  Addie nodded. Nuala left.

  Joanna stopped next to the kitchen table on her way toward the front door.

  “I know how I felt after. When you’re done thinking everything over… you can come talk to me if you want.”

  Then she also left, Meatball at her heels. Addie remained sitting at the table for a long while. There were moments when she thought about what she saw, and then moments when she thought about nothing at all. It was almost as though her mind didn’t want her thinking about it for too long. She’d play the images and the words over in her head, and when she got hung up on one instance or another suddenly her mind detached and she found herself staring off into space without a single care at all. She couldn’t focus.

  So finally she left the kitchen and went to her room. She lay down, closed her eyes. It wasn’t long before she didn’t have to think about any of it at all.

  ✽✽✽

  Except that wasn’t true. During her nap she dreamed of it again and again. The same haunting words played over the vibrant scenes, the voices loud and smothering like from an overhead speaker. When she awoke she was soaked with sweat.

  She left her room and found the others in the kitchen. Joanna helped Nuala set the table. Lyle was leaning against the kitchen counter. He started when she entered the room, quickly averted his eyes.

  The windows were filled with dying gray light.

  “Hey!” Nuala said. “I was about to come get you. You want to sit and eat?”

  The desire to avoid Lyle called to her, like a small withered creature waving its tired arms in the back of her mind, desperate to gain her attention, but she didn’t give in, and her eyes didn’t wander in his direction at all when she accepted the invitation.

  They took their seats and ate.

  “Did you have a good nap?” Nuala asked.

  “Kind of,” she lied. She didn’t feel rested at all.

  “Did you have dreams about it?” Joanna asked. “I did. For a few nights after, I did. They stopped, though.”

  Once or twice Addie made the mistake of looking in Lyle’s direction and their eyes met. There was something about his that bothered her, a heaviness on his brow. Each time she let herself look at him his eyes filled with it, a sad eagerness.

  He wants forgiveness, she thought. He’s desperate for it.

  “Do you know how Bud’s doing?” Addie asked.

  “He’s still resting...” Nuala’s eyes moved nervously over the table. “He won’t be joining us for some time. At least not here. It’ll be a week or so before the doctor will let him walk.”

  Addie couldn’t eat much. She pushed her food around her plate, took small bites here and there. Nuala spoke, and Joanna spoke, and there were moments when her attention caught bits and pieces of their conversation, but mostly she couldn’t help fading in and out of thought.

  The visions swelled up and she flipped through them repeatedly like a rapid-fire slideshow, letting the imagery overtake her, and she forgot for whole minutes that she even sat at the table with the others, with a plate of food before her. She was frozen in an empty space with nothing but red-lit smoke, and whispering lips to guide her through it…

  Then her heart quickened its beat. Nuala’s voice, distant as it already was, began to echo unintelligibly. She closed her eyes. Tried to focus. Her breathing thinned to the point of almost being held. The pounding of her heart pulsed through her fingers wrapped around the fork, which grew slippery in her grip. She stuck her tongue to the roof of her dry mouth, tried to take a full breath and failed.

  “Do you not have an appetite?” Nuala asked.

  These words were the first in several minutes that Addie actually heard and she lifted her dumb gaze from the table.

  “Can I see him?” Addie blurted. “I need to see him.”

  “I’m sure Bud is asleep by now, resting like he should—”

  “No, not Bud. The doctor. I don’t want to wait for his letter. I need to see him now.”

  “Oh.” Nuala glanced at the others’ plates, down at her own. “Well… I’ll have to see whether or not he’s busy at the moment…”

  Addie pressed a hand to her chest, up to her throat. “I can hardly breathe…” She stood from her seat. “Please… I need to see him…”

  Nuala gave the others an apologetic look and stood from the table. “If you two will excuse us…”

  Nuala led Addie out onto the porch. Night had come.

  “Is this a medical emergency?”

  Addie shook her head. “No… I don’t know.” She took a deep breath, couldn’t take a full one. “I just need to talk to him. I’ll be miserable until I do. I’m having trouble breathing…”

  Nuala took her to the doctor’s. They stepped inside, shut the door behind them. She told Addie to wait while she left upstairs. Af
ter a minute she returned alone.

  “He wasn’t in his room. Let me check the cellar…”

  There was a door hidden in the corner of the room in shadow, a door Addie didn’t recall ever seeing before. Nuala opened it and there was an orange light coming from deep inside. She disappeared down the stairs into the warm, throbbing glow. The doctor must have had a torch lit somewhere at the bottom, Addie thought. Then, after a couple minutes more, Nuala returned up the stairs.

  Except, no… it wasn’t Nuala. Addie expected her to return alone, to say the doctor wouldn’t see her. But Nuala didn’t come back. Instead it was the doctor who rose into view, his lumpy head bobbing up one step at a time. He closed the cellar door behind him. Addie hesitated.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you…”

  The doctor gestured toward the upstairs. Mixed with doubt, Addie led the way this time, up to the upstairs hallway where they both shuffled down its length to the doorway at its very end. The guest bedroom where she knew Bud rested was shut.

  Once inside the doctor’s room, the doctor closed the door behind them, showed Addie to a second chair beside the desk, and then took his own seat at the typewriter. He fit a sheet of paper into its carriage and his fingers began striking the keys. When he paused, Addie read.

  Do you wish to talk about your turn in the bath?

  Addie took another deep breath and found she could almost fill her lungs.

  “I’m guessing no one sees anything they want to see…” The doctor only waited. He never turned his bagged head in her direction, only sat facing the typewriter. “I almost want to question the truthfulness of what I saw, but I already know. I’m just having a hard time believing it, I guess.”