Still Life with Plums (23 page)

“How come she didn’t take you?”

“I didn’t want to go.” She hated lying.

Jack scratched his jaw. “Look, Chloe. I’ve got some work to do out here, so why don’t you go back inside.”

“Can I help?”

“Nope. Elf work. Strictly confidential.” He started sifting through the wood pile for a particular piece. “Go on, now.”

She plodded toward the door and paused. “Jack?”

“Yeah?” he said without looking.

She wanted so badly to tell him something, anything, but couldn’t link the thoughts to words. “Nothing.” She slipped the wood scrap in her pocket and left.

Chloe sat on the couch facing the tree that dripped silver, gold, orange, red, blue. Packages spilled from beneath it labeled
Sarah
and
Chloe
. To the side was the birdhouse wound with aluminum foil, a red bow taped to the top. Chloe listened to Jack’s sawing and banging. Inside her something was being built too. She didn’t know what but it grew with each pound of the hammer, each pull of the saw.

The sun slid from the sky, straining every hint of color from the room. Chloe slipped down to plug in the tree. She lay on the floor looking at light slivers reflected on the ceiling. Suddenly the lathe sliced through the darkness outside and in. Chloe caught and echoed its rhythm with her high, unsteady hum. She wondered if Jack was humming, too. A truck rattled down their street, shaking windows, vibrating the tree. Light fragments shivered on the ceiling, then steadied. Chloe scooted toward the tree and slid her foot between packages to feel its rough trunk. Pressing her foot against bark, she gave a slight nudge that shivered the fragments again. Tapping lightly she matched the shiver to her song and the lathe’s. Faster or slower, she tapped to keep pace, until she wasn’t keeping pace any longer. Her own song grew louder and louder as she banged the tree harder.
The ceiling rippled with light waves of color. The tree wobbled back and forth, ornaments clinking, some dropping. Each time it rocked toward her, Chloe held out her arms, not to protect, but to embrace the spiky branches should they fall.

“What the hell are you doing!” The overhead light flipped on. “What the
hell
are you doing!” Her mother wrenched her upright by the arm. “Where’s Jack?”

“Out back.”

“Good.” Sarah wiped at makeup smudged around her eyes. “Look, I’ve got a place lined up, so get ready.”

Chloe didn’t move.

“Go on,” Sarah said. “We have to hurry.”

Chloe looked around the room. “But I thought we were going to—”

“What! Stay here?” She let out a laugh. “Jack’s just another guy. That’s all he ever was,” she said, though she couldn’t look at her daughter.

Chloe paused, then nudged a present with her toe. “What about Christmas?”

“Don’t
worry
about Christmas,” Sarah said. “We’ll take the whole damn thing with us!” She went to the front closet and yanked Chloe’s jacket from a hanger. “Here. Go get Jack’s room. I’ll take care of all this.”

Numbly, mechanically, Chloe trudged down the hall. In Jack’s room, her eyes roamed from one shiny object to the next. There was his pocket knife, wrist watch, tie pin centered with a real diamond. She slid them into her coat pocket and heaved the coin jar to her stomach with both hands.

In the living room, her mother ripped open presents, shoving their contents into a green lawn bag. She held up the Amateur Wood Carving Kit. “Cool, huh? It’s for you.” She crammed it inside. Lying
sideways was the birdhouse only partially unwrapped. Sarah saw Chloe eye the gift. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just too heavy to take.” Chloe still stared at the sturdy house. “It’s real nice, though. Thanks, honey. Now hurry and get the stuff in the kitchen.”

Chloe did not move.

Sarah said, “Go on.”

“But what about—”

“Santa? Oh, don’t worry. I got Santa’s shit, too,” and grinning, she patted the bag.

“No! It’s—”

“What! What the hell more do you want? We got Christmas!”

Chloe stood rigid for several seconds, then threw down the coin jar, scattering Kennedy half dollars and glinting state quarters and glass shards across the floor. She held her mother’s startled stare then bolted to the kitchen.

“Don’t you dare!” Sarah said, giving chase.

Chloe scrambled for the back door yelling, “I don’t want to go! I don’t want to go!”

The lathe abruptly stopped and Jack bellowed from the garage, “Chloe?”

Sarah lunged and caught her daughter around the waist.

“No!” Chloe screamed, stretching, fingertips just grazing the doorknob before Sarah jerked her back.

Yanking her daughter through the house, Sarah scooped up her suitcase and lugged it and Chloe out the front door, down the steps, onto icy concrete. Holding tight, she dragged them too fast down the street. Chloe stumbled and scrambled to steady herself, but her mother would not stop until they were three blocks away. Spinning to face her, for the first time in her life Sarah slapped Chloe across the face, splitting her lip. Chloe staggered backward and fell against gnarled roots.

“Never again, do you hear me? Don’t you
ever
run from me again.”

Chloe stood, cupping her mouth, gritting her teeth to keep from crying. Sarah again grabbed the suitcase and Chloe’s wrist, pulling them several streets farther to a black Lincoln parked in a boarded up Chevron station.

Sarah opened the back door, pushing Chloe and the suitcase inside. The man behind the wheel twisted around. Beneath the dome light he saw blood spilling from Chloe’s lip, red welts outlining her jaw.

“What happened to her?”

Sarah got in and slammed the door. “Jack. Couldn’t catch me, so he beat on my child.”

The man turned back around to start the car. “Bastard,” he snarled. “Ought to kick his ass.”

They drove down Jack’s street toward the new man’s place. Jack’s Christmas tree flickered in the front window; bright blobs of tinsel shimmered in colored light. Beside it stood Jack, mouth open, hands on his hips, looking down at the wreckage on the floor. Chloe craned to watch him angle smaller and smaller until they turned the corner and he was gone.

She sat rigid in the back seat, looking straight at her mother who already nuzzled the new man’s neck. Chloe pressed her back into cold vinyl. The blood on her tongue tasted metallic. A hammer. A chisel. Jack’s lathe. She licked her lip and closed her eyes tight. Shoving hands into pockets she felt Jack’s stolen treasures. She reached over, rolled down the window just a crack, and slipped them outside one by one. The only thing she kept was the smooth wood scrap she’d found in the garage. Slowly she turned it over and over in her palm, forming calluses. She didn’t know she was humming until her mother reached back and pinched her knee. But she did not stop.

MARIE MANILLA, a West Virginia native, is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her stories have appeared in
The Chicago Tribune, Prairie Schooner, Mississippi Review, Calyx Journal, Kestrel, Portland Review, GSU Review
, and other journals. She is the author of the upcoming novel
Shrapnel
, a winner of the Fred Bonnie Award for Best First Novel.