Jack & Jill (10 page)

I flicked the Bic, watched the sparks, ignited the flame, and quickly put it down when it occurred to me that I'd have gotten more satisfaction from burning the skin on my own fingers than the cigarette. I did, however, take a sip of the beer, and immediately grimaced. It tasted like the inside of an old shoe. I ran to the sink, spat out the rank liquid, rinsed out my mouth, gargled and then spat again. As I did so, a pulsing red light in the window above the sink caught my attention. At first my tired eyes mistook it for a
light outside, perhaps the glowing cherry of a watcher’s cigarette, but then I realized it was only the phone in the room behind me reflected in the glass, reminding me of the message.

I straightened, filled myself a glass of water, and went to the machine.

Thumbed the PLAY button.

After the phone's customary preamble telling me when the message had been recorded, an unfamiliar voice began to speak.

It was the police, and they'd called from my father's house after finding my number on his chair.

EIGH
TEEN

I dream.

I am in my father's house. The carpet is gone, replaced by long thick grass that dances in the breeze blowing through ragged, gaping holes in the walls. Outside, there is no neighborhood, only deep, impenetrable dark, though here, the ivy-covered walls glow with an ethereal viridescent light. The earth beneath the grass is loamy and wet; it squelches as I trod with bare, dirty feet through the rooms.

Rain taps with insistent fingers against the roof.

My father is not out there in the darkness, hooked hands ready to enter me and leave their filth inside. Even in sleep I know the days of hating and fearing him are over and that this will be the last dream of its kind. I am here to do what I refused to do in the waking world. I am here to see the body. This is the end of a long cruel journey, and I feel no apprehension now. I feel nothing. I am simply here.

As I navigate the hallway, from which long wet strips of wallpaper uncurl and slip to the floor and plaster rains in dust from the ceiling, the gras
s disappears and I find myself ankle-deep in brackish water. My breath plumes in the air before my face as I reach the stairs and, without hesitation, put my hand on a balustrade made from polished human bone. The steps themselves are made of cold, damp earth that chill my feet and numb my toes as I ascend.

Portraits hang askew on the wall, having
been clumsily nailed to it through both glass and frame. Each one shows a picture of my children at different ages, all in anachronistic black and white. Sam the newborn, screaming in panic after being tugged into this alien world like a fish on a hook. Jenny playing volleyball the first day of middle school, her face set with the same grim defiance she would master in later years. Sam on the front porch in an Ohio State University football shirt two sizes too big, arms akimbo, face-painted red and white, grinning at the novelty of it all. Jenny, sitting at the piano in music class, hands poised over the keys, the determination evident in her posture. She would quit trying to learn the instrument six months later, but no one would soon forget the tantrums that resulted during her attempts to prove she was smart enough to get it.

At the top of the stairs is a picture of Chris. We're at Niagara Falls
, where we spent our honeymoon. He is wearing a blue shirt and khaki pants. I am wearing a white low-cut top and jeans, and smiling. Whether or not Chris is smiling is unknown because the rusty nail used to affix the picture to the wall has been driven through his face.

I round the corner. Before me is my room. The door is open and there is a little girl sitti
ng on the bed, backlit by lurid-red neon light from a sign that hangs outside her window. She is dressed in her Sunday best, and twin trails of darkness run from her nose. Her head is bowed.

"Hello," I say, standing just short of the threshold to her room. I don't wish to disturb her, for the girl is disturbed enough, and
I know she considers adults creatures not to be trusted, even if this one is her future self.

She doesn't respond, but her right foot jumps, as if kicking at something unseen, then is still again.

"I'm sorry," I whisper, "that I didn't know how to save us."

With no response forthcoming from the girl, from me,
I move on.

Rainwater patters to the floor from cracks in the ceiling. It puddles here and there.

My brother's door is open too, and he is here also, sitting on the floor surrounded by toys. As I step inside, he looks up. There are dark circles beneath his eyes, and the side of his head is swollen, which pulls the flesh on his face taut, making it look like pictures I have seen of botched plastic surgeries.

He smiles crookedly at me. He is missing most of his teeth, and those that remain are stained with
old blood. "Did you come to play?" he asks.

I shake my head and feel sorrow swell in my chest.
God, I miss him.

"They turned the rocks a few days before," John tells me. It is a line that I've heard before, not from him,
but from our mother in the days after his death.

They turned the rocks a few days before. They must have.
Something they probably do before school starts. You children rolled down that hill hundreds of times and never got hurt. Someone must have done something.

"No," I tell John. "You know they didn't."

He looks at me, then away. "You know that now? The truth? I thought you quit listening."

"I'm learning how all over again."

"Good. And what does it tell you?" He places his hand on a toy dump truck and rolls it across the floor. There are little men with no faces inside the cab, moving.

"It tells me I did the right thing. The only thing I could do to help you."

"You hurt me. Even after you promised you wouldn't."

"I saved you, Jack."

He gives the truck a hard shove which sends it careening into the wall. "And what about what you're going to do? Who is that supposed to save? You? Or them?"

"I don
't know what I'm going to do yet."

He gives me a cold grin. "Then you aren't really
listening."

As he reaches for an old toy fire engine covered in
what appear to be thick wriggling black worms, I leave him there and go to find my father.

The old man
is in his room, though much like the rest of the house, it looks nothing like it did when I visited it in the real world. Instead, it has been decorated to resemble a parlor in a funeral home. All white-marble columns and mortuary light. At the far end of the room sits a slab draped in red velvet, and atop that slab is an oak coffin, the lid open wide to reveal the body resting within.

Despite the certainty that there is nothing to fear anymore, I nevertheless feel a twinge of discomfort
and an unexpected pang of loss when I enter the room.

My father is dressed in a black suit. A handkerchief the color of fresh blood pokes like a tongue from the breast pocket.
In a curious reversal, death has made him appear younger, though I suspect this might be attributable to the mortician's cosmetology skills, or perhaps the natural effect of being freed from the burden of life and, perhaps, the guilt. His hair has been neatly slicked back, his bushy eyebrows plucked and smoothened, and the red veins across his nose are gone.

As I place my hands on the edge of the coffin, I find myself wishing, even in this subconscious construct, that things had been different, that he had been my father in more than just title. Mostly, I wish he'd loved me and John like all good fathers love their children.

"I tried," he says then, and opens his eyes. "Every day I tried."

Slowly, his gaze moves to where I stand looking down upon him.

"Every day I promised myself I would stop. Sometimes, when I was sure your mother was asleep, I would confess to her, and beg for her forgiveness because I didn't have the guts to beg my children, or to seek help. But I tried."

"So you knew?" I asked him.
"You knew something was wrong with you?"

"Of course.
I even confessed everything to Father Garrety, and you know what he said? He said, 'Seek counsel with Our Lord and Savior. He's the only one who can help you now.' How I wish it had been that simple."

"You could have gone for help."

"And risk having the whole town know?"

"
They ended up knowing anyway, and might at least have given you some credit for trying to set right what was wrong with you. Some things are a little more important than pride. Your children, for one."

"I know, but I was weak." He closes his eyes. "In so many ways. And I'm sorry."

When he says nothing for a long time, I reach out and place my hand on his. His skin is cold.

"That's all I ever wanted to hear you say. Just to have you say it and know you meant it. It would have changed so many things between us. Not everything, not enough, bu
t it would have made a difference."

When he speaks again, it is without opening his eyes. "But will you
believe it? When you wake and have to accept that it's your words that are coming from my mouth, will it be enough?"

"I don't know."

He is silent then, just a dead body in a box, and all of it a dream.

As I head downstairs, I glance into the children's rooms. My younger self is sitting at a desk with her back to me, unmoving. John is playing with his G.I. Joe. The soldier is doing a victory dance over the corpse of a Barbie doll. I am struck with the unreasonable urge to bid them goodbye, for I know I will never see them again, not like this at least, but I don't
. This is nothing more than a dream, a fabrication, a mental assemblage of sequences designed to reconcile fractured pieces of my history so that I am capable of having a future.

No more words are needed.

I start down the stairs.

And stop.

My feet begin to sink into the mud.

A figure wades slowly through the water in the hall, stopping when he reaches the foot of the stairs. He is quivering, perhaps from the cold, more likely from excitement, the thrill of having trapped his quarry, and he raises his head to look at me as I stand frozen, spotlighted by the naked bulb above my head.
He raises his arm, extending the rusted clothes hanger hook he has for a hand. A raindrop hits it, explodes and spatters the bag he wears over his head.

"I've done something I'm not proud of, honey," my husband says, as his grin crinkles the plastic.

NINETEEN

The headache was there to greet me in the morning, as were Chris and the kids. Chris made breakfast for
me in what I took as a pathetic attempt to start making amends for his treachery. He needn't have bothered; my appetite was gone. I did, however, accept the coffee he placed before me.

"You get any sleep?" he asked.

I answered him with a look.

"You should take a nap later."

I noted then that he was dressed in a sweater and jeans. Also, he hadn't shaved. His jaw was shadowed with stubble, which only accentuated the hungover look.

"Thought you were going to work today?" I asked, my voice raspy and raw.

He looked at the kids, as if to gauge how much attention they were paying us before he answered. Jenny was intent on an issue of
Entertainment Weekly
and, naturally, listening to her iPod; Sam was studying whatever was written on the back of the Rice Krispies box as he slurped cereal from his spoon.

"I thought it
would be better if I stayed at home," Chris said. "Give us a chance to talk."

"I don't much
feel like talking," I told him, “which shouldn’t come as a surprise.”

He nodded his understanding. "Baby steps, then."

The rumble of an old engine followed by a loud pneumatic hiss from outside signified the arrival of the school bus. Chris seemed glad of the distraction, however brief it proved to be, and set about corralling the kids, unplugging one of Jenny's earbuds—much to her annoyance—to let her know it was time to leave. Sam was already off his chair and slinging on his book bag.

"C'mon, hurry," Chris said. "Before Mr. Jessop takes off." For some inexplicable reason, our district's bus driver gave the children a grace period of thirty seconds to appear on the porch or he'd leave without them. It was a process that had necessitated our driving the kids to school on many occasions, and the registering of more than one complaint
from inconvenienced parents. I'd even spoken to Jessop—who was not nearly as cantankerous as his behavior and the testimony of the children suggested—and his defense was that to wait any longer meant that all the children would be late and therefore marked as tardy by their teachers, and he'd rather not have such a thing on his conscience.