Jack & Jill (3 page)

With the sound of a tree falling, the church door opens and there is blackness inside.

Unable to take my eyes from the strange mosaic, despite the Stygian darkness before me and the prickling of the hairs on the back of my neck that tells me my father has been standing behind me all along, perhaps looking with equal curiosity at the scene above the door, I hurry inside.

In the womb of the church I am blind as
the door slams shut.

FOUR

Sam, my nine-year-old woke me.

"
Mommy!"

Behind him stood
my eldest child Jenny, looking sullen, her book bag like a sleeping dog at her feet.

"
Hi," I murmured and sat up. My neck ached from sleeping without a pillow and I winced as I worked out the kinks. "Time's it?"

"
Four-thirty," Jenny droned. "Why were you sleeping?"

"
Why not?" I asked, unappreciative of her attitude before I'd had a chance to prepare for it.

"
It's
day
time." She folded her arms, looking much like her father did when he disapproved of something I'd done. As he did often. Daddy's little girl.

"
I haven't been sleeping well."

"
That's because you stay up too late."

I rub
bed a hand over my face and felt the slimy wetness of drool on my chin.
Beautiful
. Fragmented images and emotions from the nightmare clung like cobwebs to my brain. My head throbbed. "Jenny, don't you have homework?"

"
I
don't!" Sam enthused and gave me a delighted grin. "Teacher was out sick! We had a substitute."

I ga
ve him as much of a smile as I could muster and tousled his light blond hair. "That's good. You want to watch some TV?"

"
Uh-huh. S'why I woke you."

Amused, I nod
ded and handed him the remote. "Knock yourself out, kiddo. But keep it down, okay? Mommy's head hurts."

"
Mommy's head
always
hurts," Jenny mumbled.

She had
n't moved from the door. I frowned at her. "What's with the attitude?"

She shrugged
. "What's with
your
attitude?"

I close
d my eyes briefly. Wished Chris was here to deal with this shit. "Are you going to tell me what's wrong or am I supposed to guess?"

"
Why? It's not like you care."

"
Why would you say that? Of course I do." Despite wanting nothing more than another lethally strong cup of coffee and maybe a long walk to clear my head, I patted the seat next to me. "Come here."

She shook
her head, bit her lip. "I want Dad."

"
He's not here. Won't be for a while yet."

"
I don't care. I want him."

"
I'm here. You can talk to me."

"No."
The hurt in her eyes was astounding, and worrying.

"
Jenny..." I started to say, but then Sam cut in, one small forefinger pointed in accusation at his sister.

"
You're crying," he announced, beaming. "Big baby!"

"
Shut
up
, you little retard," Jenny screamed and crossed the distance between her and her brother with blinding speed, her arm jerked back, palm raised in preparation to strike him. She was trembling, and I knew that if that blow met its target, it was going to hurt. As her hand came down in a vicious arc, I intercepted it, grabbing her wrist a little too hard. Sam scooted backward, no longer afraid of his sister's violence toward him, but of whatever dynamic my preventing it would cause.

Jenny glared
at me, her fourteen-year-old face contorted with a mixture of agony and rage, the latter being the predominant emotion. "Let me
go!
I
hate
you. I want
Daddy!
" She jerked in my grip, struggling to pull away from me, her feet digging into the carpet.

"
Jenny, stop," Sam said quietly, alarmed by her temper.

"
I understand you're upset about something," I told her, as calmly as I could despite the sudden and terrifying urge to slap her. "But don't you dare hit your brother. Don't you dare hit Sam."

"
Don't hit your
favorite
you mean. Let. Me.
GO!
" She gave one last ferocious yank and I relinquished my grip on her, noting as I did so the bleached bloodless ring I'd left around her wrist as she staggered away from me and wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve. Her eyes were red from weeping and narrowed with hostility as she scooped up her backpack.

"
Jenny—"

Sh
e tugged open the door to the stairs—"Go to Hell"—and slammed it behind her hard enough to rattle the windows.

I stare
d after her for a moment. So did Sam. Then we looked at each other.

"
She was bleeding," my son told me in a tone that suggested that it was a secret, one on many levels he didn't understand, and therefore assumed was not good.

"
What?"

"
There was blood coming out. From..." Embarrassed, aware that he was revealing something that didn’t make much sense to him, he swallowed and pointed down at the crotch of his corduroy pants. "From down there."

My skin went cold, even as my face warmed
with embarrassment and shame. "Oh."

"
They made fun of her on the bus," Sam said, and in the same breath added, "Do you want to watch TV with me?"

Upstairs, Jenny slammed
the door to her room no less violently than she had the downstairs one. I listened to her footsteps, then the strained protestations of the springs as she tossed herself upon the bed.

"
Sure," I told Sam. He sat beside me on the sofa and leaned his head against my arm.

On the TV
screen, anime characters squared off against each other.

"
Why are their eyes so big?" I asked, in an effort to escape a reality that had abruptly become just as hostile and confusing as the nightmare.

"
I guess so they can see better," Sam explained. His voice thrummed through my arm. "Do people in Japan really have eyes that big?"

"
No,” I told him, and mustered a fragile smile. “They don't."

FIVE

"Jesus Christ, Gillian, you could have been a little more sensitive." Chris was livid, and stalked around the kitchen, yanking at his tie and rubbing at his chin. He had spent the last hour upstairs with our daughter, and I gathered it had not gone well.

"
Yeah, I would have been if I'd known," I protested. "But I'm not psychic. All I could see was that something was bothering her and she was acting like a brat about it."

"
Wouldn't you in her place?"

"
Chris, I didn't
know
she'd had her period."

"
Well you should have. It's your job to look out for these things. I mean, didn't you ever talk to her about this kind of stuff?"

"
Of course I did, but it doesn't seem to have made much of a difference. Today she was all about you. Shut me out completely."

Chris
stopped pacing, his cheeks flushed. "And why do you think that is?"

"
How the hell should I know? Maybe because you coddle her so much she automatically assumes I'm the asshole of the house."

"
Yeah, well sometimes I think maybe she's right."

It
was a low blow and one I knew he didn't mean. Even outside of temper, my husband had always been a talk first, think later kind of guy. Indeed, regret softened some of the steel in his eyes a moment later. But the damage had been done, and given my exhaustion and much maligned moods, combined with the guilt at how I had treated Jenny, it was all the excuse I needed to let free some frustration of my own.

"
Maybe if you were here more instead of going to The Copper Lounge after work every day for those whiskeys you think I don't know about with those dead-end losers you call your friends, you'd have been here to deal with it yourself."

"
At least those 'losers'—who incidentally you know less than nothing about—have wives who are capable of more than just sitting around gobbling pills and sleeping all day." His laugh was completely devoid of mirth. "Oh, I try to understand. You're having nightmares. Fine. But if it's such a problem, then do something about it instead of whining and moping around and making me and the children suffer as a result."

He resumed pacing
. "You want to know what I think? I think it suits you to be so fucking miserable all the time. That way you can wallow in self-pity maybe because you feel you're not getting enough sympathy from anyone else."

"
That's bullshit."

"
It is? Really? Well maybe we've had enough of putting up with you acting like a ghost around here, Gillian. One of us has to work, and right now that's me. How am I supposed to do that if I know the kids aren't being looked after?"

He stopped right in front of where I sa
t at the table with my hands balled into fists.

"
You dropped the ball today, honey. Big time. Jenny and Sam need you. I need you. And I just don't think it's fair that we should have to keep paying the price for something your father did to you twenty years ag—"

Teeth bared, I got up off the chair, my face inches away from his
. Startled, he staggered back a step.

"
And what the fuck would you know about any of that other than what I've chosen to tell you, huh? Not a goddamn thing. I don't talk to you about it because forced empty sympathy is exactly what I don't want and about all you'd be capable of."

He raised
his hands in a placating gesture and turned his face away, grimacing as if it was my breath and not the words they carried he found offensive.

"
We didn't all have perfect picket-fence
Home & Garden
childhoods, Chris. Sorry that you feel so fucking put out by that, or by the fact that I'm currently not perceptive enough to read our children's minds in order to save you from having to get your hands dirty."

"
Okay, I'm sorry," he said quietly, and not entirely sincerely. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that, but Jesus, calm down."

"
Yeah, sure you're sorry, you fucking pious prick. To you normality is when I'm handling everything and your role is relegated to undermining my laws and vilifying me so you come out the hero, but when you're called upon to actually
act
like a parent, it's an inconvenience to you. And one that has to be blamed on someone. So why not me, right? The weak one. Well fuck
you
." On the last word, I grabbed a steak knife from the table and flung it the length of the room. It struck the arm of a rocking chair, chipping the wood, and clattered to the floor. That chair, and the matching ottoman, had been a wedding present to us from Chris's mother. The sentimental attachment he felt toward that ugly piece of furniture was as strong as an umbilicus, and I'd just scored it with a knife.

I put my palms on the table and close
d my eyes. A vein in my throat pulsed. I heard a clicking in my ears and realized I was grinding my teeth. Through them passed the words: "It wasn't my fault."

I wasn't
quite sure to which incident I referred.

"
Nothing ever is," Chris mumbled as he walked away.

"
What?" I yelled, though I'd heard him perfectly. "What did you say?"

But
he was already gone, headed upstairs no doubt to commiserate with our daughter on what a terrible mother I was.

When I notice
d Sam's wide, frightened eyes watching me from over the coffee table in the living room, his face pallid and drawn in the blue-white glow from the muted television, I was no longer convinced they weren't right.

SIX

I awoke with a start to a voice calling my name. "What?"

It took
me a moment to realize where I was. In the living room, which was dark but for the glow from the TV. Sam was curled up on my lap, snoring, his head against my breast. I raised my head. My mouth tasted rank from the three cups of coffee I'd had while trying to downplay the argument to Sam, who'd chosen to feign understanding as long as I agreed to watch
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy
with him.