Jack & Jill (2 page)

"You look like Hell," Chris said, shoving a cup of black coffee before me.

"
Morning to you too," I replied. I hadn't had a drink in eight years, but I remembered the hangovers vividly, and this felt like one. The golden sunlight streaming through the picture window behind my husband illuminated every speck of dust in the room and seared my brain, making my temples throb with the beginning of what promised to be a skull-splitting headache by noon. "Can we draw the blinds?"

"
Sure." Chris yanked the string, closing the Venetians mid-way. It narrowed the light into isotropic bars. Not nearly enough to force the pain into submission, but it would do for the time being. "Quite a song-and-dance routine you performed in bed last night." He settled down at the table close to me. There was an amused look on his face that belied the concern in his eyes. "The nightmare again, I’m guessing?"

I nod
ded, sipped at coffee that scalded my tongue. The pain was a welcome distraction and dissipated some of the fog.

"
This can't keep going on, babe. How many nights this week has it been that you’ve ended up Riverdancing yourself out of sleep?"

I shrug
ged, even though I knew exactly how many.

"
You may want to talk to someone."

Right now
I don't even want to talk to
you, I thought, and gave him a withering look. "About a dream? Suddenly we have the money for an overpriced shrink to try to analyze subconscious brain-junk? When did that happen?"

"
If it was just a dream, that would be something," he said, pausing to take a bite of his bagel. A dot of cream cheese clung to his lower lip. I remembered when I'd found that endearing, might even have kissed it away. Now I had to avert my gaze because I found it vaguely repulsive. "But it isn't. Nightmares aren't supposed to be persistent. And considering the content of yours, it's obvious you need to resolve something. Or have it resolved for you."

"You doing a correspondence course in psychotherapy now?
There's nothing to resolve. It's a nightmare, that's all."

"
One that's costing you your sleep."

"
I'm sure it's natural for cases of my kind." Although I hadn't described in length what had happened to me as a child, Chris knew I'd been abused, and that associated nightmares had plagued me for most of my life. His reaction had been somewhat typical. He'd wanted to track my father down and beat him to death. As a result, I had kept from him the fact that my father still lived in Mayberry, which was less than an hour from our old farmhouse.

"
Yeah, but that's just it. You're not a
case
anymore. Why not just go and get a prescription for sleeping pills or something?"

"
I tried that, remember?"

"
Hardcore
pills. Something that'll induce a temporary coma if it means you'll get some rest."

"
Sleeping's not the problem, Chris. Waking up is."

"
Well, I'm worried about you. You haven't had a good night's sleep in months. You're losing weight, you look run down, your moods are all over the place, and if you call off work one more time, they're going to fire you."

I wave
d a hand at him in disgust. "All right, Jesus. It's too early for this."
And what the fuck
, I asked myself,
qualifies you—a goddamn
bank teller
—to analyze or dictate how I deal with my dreams anyway?
It was an uncharitable thought, and I realized this, but simply being aware of the venom did nothing to drain it so I focused on my coffee.

"
Sorry." He sighed. "So what was the dream about last night?"

"
The usual. I really don't want to talk about it." Right at that moment, I was determined not to give the dream any more attention than it deserved. The light of morning should have been comforting, but it wasn't, no more than it would have changed the aesthetic appeal of roadkill.

Silence fell
between us.

If
I was honest with myself, I'd have admitted that he was right about the moods, of course, and the exhaustion. I was so tired I could hardly think straight anymore. Maybe therapy would have helped, but I doubt I'd have let it.

After what my father was doing to me and
John came out, among the strangers who'd come to our house armed with notepads, coloring books and fake smiles, was a child psychologist named Doctor Raymond Scott. The irony was that nobody had ever thought of my father as monster, because he didn't look like one. On the surface he'd been a kind, jack-of-all-trades and glad to let you borrow whatever tools you need type, a salt of the earth good 'ol boy who would stop to pick up a hitchhiker no matter how inadvisable it was to do so simply because he remembered what it had been like having to ride his thumb to work when he couldn't afford a car. A staunch Republican who'd said "Hell yeah!" to our invasion of foreign territories and festooned the back of his truck with Pro-War bumper stickers. A man who'd been good to his kids, a man with a benevolent face. No, it was madness to think he could do such terrible things. But he had. Conversely, Doctor Scott, the state-appointed Good Guy, had looked like just the kind of sicko who would lock himself into a bathroom with a small child and whisper sweet, soothing things to them as he caressed their flesh in ways his unnatural hunger could not quite aid him in disguising as tender. But he wasn’t.
He
was the Good Guy.

But then, to us, in those dark days
, everyone was a monster and everyone wore a mask to hide the fact. Adults could not be trusted.

"
Look," Chris said, putting his hand on my arm. "You deal with it however you see fit. I'm just concerned, that's all. I don't want you getting sick over this."

"
I know," I muttered. "I won't."

He rose and dumped
his cup and plate into the sink.
For me to take care of
, I thought, irritably.

"
Where are the kids?" I asked, if only to change the subject.

"
Bus picked them up about fifteen minutes ago. You just missed them. They said to tell you good morning, Mommy." He smiled as he said that, but I imagined there was a hint of accusation there too, as if he believed I should have been there to see my children off. Ordinarily I was, but lately, since the frequency of the nightmares had increased, things had been different.

"
Probably the bus that woke me," I said, by way of dismissal.

He
watched me carefully for a moment. Then: "Tell me what I can do to make this better for you, honey."

Honey.
A word that had never bothered me before, but was like cold water dumped on my neck now. I felt compelled to point this out, but the sincerity of the love in his face dissuaded me. Later, maybe, if the sleep didn't blunt the edge, I'd ask him nicely never to say it again. And to start washing his own fucking dishes.

"
I just need to rest," I explained. "It comes in waves. Usually if I'm stressed."

"
What's stressing you?"

"
Nothing specific. Just a combination of little things. Work, mostly."

H
e approached me on a wave of Aqua Velva cologne that turned my stomach, and kissed me on the top of the head, the same way, I noted, that he kissed our children, as if we all required the same level of attentiveness to make our
owies
better.

"
Well, if I can help relieve any of that stress, you let me know."

"
Sure."

He
squeezed my shoulder, then went to the counter and scooped up his keys. "Well...I'm off. Try to take it easy today, okay?"

"
You know I will." I gave him a little finger-wave.

"
See you at six?"

"
You bet."

"
Love you."

"
You too."

Then
he was gone and the house settled around me, quiet and still. Expectant.

I wait
ed until I heard Chris's car pull out of the driveway, then went to the window and shut the blinds all the way.

Though it shouldn't
have been, the gloom was comforting.

After washing down some Advil with orange juice, I
retreated to the couch, grabbed the TV remote and killed the histrionic protestations of some bizarre-looking cartoon dinosaur as a caveman walloped him with a club.

I was
glad to be alone.

In minutes, I was
asleep.

THREE

I dream.

Downtown, and ragged shadows fly blackly across the facades of the buildings and the narrow potholed road that winds between them as if the street has become a screen for a monochromatic kaleidoscope. The cars parked on either side of me are empty and coated with a fine layer of dust or ash. I have fled the hill with no memory of my passage. There has been no discernible transition between locales. No memory of running. I am simply here, alone, and yet not.

For one, my father is following, though when I look back over my shoulder I see no sign of him on the hill. But I can feel him, can almost hear him talking to my
brother, chiding the vociferousness of the severed head when it should know by now the importance of silence.

Hush now, someone will hear.

For another, in every building there are people in the windows. Men, women, children, but they have their backs turned away from the street, away from me and the nightmare that is mine alone. They stand frozen in place, staring forward. I know they are not looking at anything, and that is the point, because looking at nothing means they're not looking at me, not bearing witness to the atrocity. And if they can’t see it, they can’t be responsible for whatever comes of it. I open my mouth to scream for their help, and only the wind emerges—an autumn wind that sends rust-colored leaves scratching along the gutters to be swallowed by storm drains that have curved into hungry smiles.

One of John's Matchbox cars, a red Corvette, trundles its way along the gutter to my right and overturns, wheels spinning uselessly when it collides with the barr
ier of a discarded rain-sodden Bible.

God sees all.
My father's words, echoing in my head.
And God approves.

The clouds are filthy,
carelessly painted on a sky pierced by the spires of twin churches.

It is to the nearest of these churches
—my church—that I run. My body jolts as my feet pound the fissured asphalt, the low whine of fear from my throat sounding like a distant car alarm to my ears. In the corner of my eye, I see that some of the cars are not empty after all. Hunched shadows rock back and forth in the passenger seats, like children impatiently awaiting drivers. I turn my head away, afraid to look directly upon them, and see a woman in the window of a bookstore. She is wearing a stained apron over a floral-print dress and the skin on her forearms is blanched with flour. Her hands are by her sides. I can't see her face, because like the others, she has her back to me, but I know by her costume and the slope of her neck, exposed beneath the cruel knot of a bun of steely gray hair, that she is my mother.

The ache in my heart at the sight of her does nothing to slow my progress.

Like the others, she has no help to offer.

Unlike the others, she knows it is expected of her, that it is her duty.

And still she looks away.

In another window, a rotund black-haired woman in a hideous dress stands flanked by four children of various ages. They are turned away, but she is not. Instead, she stares sadly at me, and mouths words I can't understan
d. Mrs. Farris, I realize, and I am stricken with self-pity and terror that threatens to drain the urgency from me.

But then a sound from somewhere behind infuses my flight anew. I risk a look over my shoulder and see my father yanking open the door of one of the cars. He no longer holds
John's head in his hooked hands. Now he holds only the car door as he bends down to peer in at the occupant. The cold gray light makes the plastic bag over his face look like a swatch of dirty cloud.

In the passenger seat the hunkered shadow bobs excitedly and screams with the sound of
discordant violins that never play the same tune twice.

I look away as that sound is rent into staccato rhythms by the monster's ministrations and focus on the church, which seems so tantalizingly close and
yet impossibly far away.

The dream skips mercifully and I am standing before the church. It towers over me in judgment, its spire appearing gelid
, like a black tentacle probing the bottomless depths of the sky. Over the massive doorway—surely big enough in the dream for God himself to enter—is a mosaic that in life depicts a haloed St. Peter looking appropriately mournful in his service to the Almighty, reading from a book with a cross emblazoned on the cover, as a tropical bird of some indeterminate breed looks impassively on. But, in adherence to the law of nightmare, the mosaic
does not show anything so benign now. Instead it depicts a crimson sun in the background, the thick lines radiating from the blood-red orb better suited to a cereal box illustration. In the foreground are figures that must represent John and me. We are facing each other, our hands raised, palms pressed together as if frozen in the act of playing pattycake. We are wearing clothes that might have been in fashion a hundred years before I was born. Our faces are smooth, featureless orbs like the faces of art-class mannequins. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. And between us and the sun stands a figure on a hill, a man with hooks for hands and a plastic bag over his head that is filled with red light. The shadow he casts, however, is not that of a man, but a crude diagonal X-shape that stops just short of the children, of us.