A huge, unkempt man emerged from the house, wearing a filthy pair of jeans and a stained white t-shirt. “Keep yer panties on, you ugly old bitch!”
“Aunt Rosie, Brandon took my doll and yanked her head off!”
“Yer doll looks better now! She was damned ugly!”
“You kids are worthless, shut yer stupid yaps and grab yer stuff out of the damned truck before I whip both yer asses!”
Lauren’s jaw dropped and she looked at Rita, who nodded affirmation. “Yep. You are hearing what you think you’re hearing.”
“Where did these people even come from?”
“Beats me. But I can’t wait to find out.”
“Wow. I wouldn’t go over there. I wouldn’t want to have to squeal like a pig.”
Rita and Lauren looked at one another and, in unison, burst out into hearty laughter. The noise stopped from the brown house across the street as the new family paused and looked over. The hatchet-faced woman searched until she and Lauren made eye contact; then the newcomer’s eyes narrowed.
“Oops, we’ve attracted attention,” Lauren said, thinking, here we go. She smiled and waggled her fingers. The other woman sniffed and turned away, carrying a box into her house.
“Pay them no mind. I think we’re going to have to adopt that attitude, dear. Those poor children, though,” Rita said.
“I know.” Hearing barking, Lauren checked her own back yard again. Mop had found her. He stood just behind the fence, smiling and panting. “I’ll have to go.” She chugged more of her iced tea, then stood and sighed. “You know, I’ll have to have a talk with that daughter of mine about spending more time with her dog.”
Rita offered a sympathetic smile and grabbed Lauren’s hand in her soft plump one and squeezed. “You hang in there, dear. Me, I have to take Bertram over to the sleep clinic in a little while. He’s having his testing done tonight.”
“Oh? Well, I hope they can find a way to help him.”
“Me too, believe me. I’m getting a bit tired of being up all night every night with his restlessness.”
“Thanks for the drink, Rita. I’ll talk with you later. Let me know what happens when you go over!”
“Oh, you bet I will. Take care!”
Lauren looked over her shoulder and waved.
In her back yard, she spent fifteen or twenty minutes throwing a stick for Mop; then she called him and they went inside. It was time for the evening meal.
Though Mike and Allison had been gone for seven months, Lauren was just now getting the hang of cooking for one. All of her dinner tonight came from the freezer. She tossed one pre-made hamburger patty unceremoniously in the frying pan and an individual vegetable cup in the microwave along with a plate of tater tots, setting the timer but not yet pushing “Start”. Junk, Lauren knew, but she had nothing thawed and didn’t feel like spending a lot of time on food. And, she thought to herself, Allie might be gone and I might be getting used to cooking for one, but I’m still eating from my kid’s personal menu.
In the living room Lauren tried to read a few pages of her current romance novel while she waited for her burger to cook. She set the book aside after reading the same paragraphs several times but absorbing nothing. She attributed her lack of concentration to the new neighbors’ noise, which she could still hear. She knew she wouldn’t finish reading the book, anyway; she found it boring and formulaic, just like all of the other romances she had read. It was time to switch to a deeper, more meaningful genre.
She went back to the kitchen, flipped her burger, and hit “Start” on the microwave. A few moments later, she carried her plate and a glass of Pepsi into the living room. There was no point in sitting at the kitchen table to eat. The kitchen was where families gathered. Lauren no longer had a family.
She sat through Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, then switched over to Netflix and tried to lose herself in a mindless horror flick. She was still unable to focus, however, so she put on reruns from a 90s sitcom.
She left her plate in the kitchen sink and sat on the back steps, watching while Mop did his last run and bathroom break of the evening. The sun had dropped well below the horizon line, and a dewy dusk had fallen. It would be chilly in the wee hours.
“Come on in, Mop!” She closed and locked the back door behind them, and, shutting lights off as she went, made her way through the first floor, closing windows and checking locks. She secured the front door last and climbed the stairs to the second floor. She brushed her teeth and changed for bed; then found herself in her daughter Allison’s room.
She picked up the framed photograph from Allie’s dresser, then lay back against the pillows on Allie’s neatly made bed, Mop stretched out beside her. This was the same photograph that sat on the shelf in the living room.
She examined their faces, Michael’s and Allie’s, tracing the edges with her finger. They looked so much alike: dark brown eyes with matching hair, fair skin.
“Allie,” she said firmly, “You have got to spend more time with Mop. And Michael, I fell in the toilet again because you left the toilet seat up. No, I know I left it up when I was cleaning; it wasn’t really you, but . . .” Her voice broke and rose in pitch. “You both need to learn to be more responsible, do you hear?” She held the picture frame against her chest as her body started shaking. “I miss you so much,” she sobbed. “I just want you back!”
She cried until she couldn’t anymore, and fell asleep on Allie’s bed.
* * *
In the dream, she was back at Parkhurst Middle School. She and Michael were late dropping Allie off that morning. Lauren stayed in the car while Mike walked Allie into the school to sign her in. They hadn’t yet reached the double doors when the shooting began.
“POP, POP, POP!”
“What the?” Lauren looked in her rearview, then the side mirrors. She saw the boy with the gun run past Mike and Allie, who lay on the cement walk. He ran into the school.
“Oh, my God.” She gripped the door handle. “Oh my God!” she screamed, and pushed the car door open. Leaving it yawning wide, she ran, her heartbeat echoing in her ears.
Michael lay still, his eyes closed. Dark red blood pooled around his head on the sidewalk; there was a bloody hole in his forehead. Allie was moving and groaning. A bright patch of red spread across the material that covered her small chest, staining her pretty dress; her white dress with the frilly bib and apron, printed everywhere with the colored outlines of baby giraffes: dark blue, bright red, yellow, green. Lauren dropped to the ground beside Allison, fear pulling her heart from her chest into her throat.
“Allie?”
“Mommy! I feel . . . weird . . .” She coughed a little, and blood overflowed from the corner of her mouth and ran down her cheek, dripping onto the white cement sidewalk.
Lauren grabbed her daughter’s hand and moved so that Allie’s head lay on her lap. “Mommy’s here, Allie, Mommy’s here, and you’re going to be just fine.” Allison was going to die, though. Hot tears ran in stinging streams from Lauren’s eyes and bathed her cheeks.
She offered her little girl a watery smile. “It feels weird right now, but you’ll be just fine.”
“Mommy?”
“Mommy’s here, honey.”
“Mommy . . .”
“I’m here, baby, I’m here.”
But her baby had drawn her final breath. She closed her eyes for the last time on the first day of spring, beneath the clear blue sunlit sky.
There was no closure. The boy with the gun had shot himself after killing five and wounding thirteen. Two of the dead were Lauren’s husband and daughter. The three others included two students and a teacher. Of the wounded, ten were children, two were teachers, and one was a custodian.
The nightmare never ended.
It repeated itself through Lauren’s dreams and remained with her throughout each day. It seemed that nothing could erase the images of the blood from her memory, the blood that spread across her daughter’s frilly bib and on the white ce
ment beneath her husband’s head.
Except for Mop. Her daughter’s dog, the English shepherd had been with them since he was a puppy. Lauren began paying extra attention to him; he was the last remaining member of her family, an extension of her baby girl.
* * *
Lauren woke abruptly from her fitful sleep. She moved, and the sensation of the picture frame sliding away from her brought her to a fuller awareness.
She recognized the steel guitar of country music, a deep, throbbing bass in the background. The music was accompanied by people shouting and singing drunkenly. She got up from Allie’s bed and shuffled down the hall to the window next to the stairs, which looked out onto the street.
“Uggghhhh,” she groaned. The newcomers’ house blazed with light, while the other surrounding houses had long since gone dark.
“No matter,” she told Mop, who had padded down the hall at her heels. “White noise, buddy.” She glanced at her digital clock and saw that it was nearly 1:00 a.m. “Damn. Good thing it’s Saturday,” she said to the dog, who wagged her tail and gave her hand a brief lick. “Let’s go.”
She turned her box fan up to its highest setting so the calming noise would cancel the racket outside, then pulled back the covers and slipped into her own bed.
The next morning, the young widow woke from a dreamless sleep, sniffling in the stuffy room. The double layers of blackout curtains that covered the windows revealed no hint of daylight, but Lauren assumed that it was past dawn because she was overwarm, which usually foretold of a sunny day. She stretched and yawned, catching Mop’s eye. The English shepherd sat on the floor beside the bed, staring at her.
“I see you,” Lauren reassured her canine companion. She sat up, threw back the blankets, swung her feet to the side of the bed and planted them on the floor. The glowing blue digits on her clock read 8:17. “After eight o’clock!” She exclaimed. “No wonder you look so sullen! We’re late getting up.” She used her cell phone to check the weather. “And it’s already almost seventy degrees!”
Mop stood and wagged his tail as his human pulled on a pair of sweats and struggled into a bra, using a complicated method to don it beneath her t-shirt. He followed her to the side window, smiling eagerly with his wide, toothy grin as she pulled the curtains and blinds and opened the window wide to let in the fresh morning air. The dog sniffed as Lauren inhaled deeply.
She followed suit with her front bedroom window and stood for a moment, looking at the brown house opposite her own. The moving van was still parked in the street. Why they hadn’t parked in their driveway was beyond her. Their yard was littered with toys, belongings, and furniture. Good thing for them that it didn’t rain, she thought. Just looking over there was enough to bring on a severe headache.
Lauren turned away. “Ready, boy?” Smiling, his big pink tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, Mop extended his front legs, chest to the carpet, rear-end in the air. “Good idea,” his human agreed. “A yoga workout is definitely in order.”
She padded down the hallway to the bathroom in her slippers; then she and Mop headed downstairs. Lauren exchanged slippers for flip-flops and let Mop out the back door. As was her habit, she checked her backyard gate latch to make sure it was secure, then returned to the kitchen, leaving the screen door propped so that Mop could freely use the doggie door.
In the living room, Lauren slipped her favorite yoga workout video into the DVD player and unrolled her mat. Soon, she was relaxing into beginning Savasana.
About half an hour later, she was planted firmly into the Warrior I pose when a barrage of barking sounded outside. Lauren cut her focus, but remained in the pose, listening. Sounds like Mop. But Mop is shut in the back yard.
More barking.
Come to think of it, she hadn’t heard Mop come back in from his morning ablutions to eat his breakfast crunchies. But she might have been too relaxed to notice whether he had come in.
Lauren sighed and slowly reversed out of the pose. At least I almost finished the workout.
Brakes squealed in the street.
Now, Lauren ran through the kitchen and down the back steps in her bare feet. Finding the gate standing ajar, she ran through it and up the driveway toward the street. Relief washed through her when she saw Rita Williams, steering Mop by the collar, waddling in her direction.
“What happened?” Lauren kneeled in front of her daughter’s dog.
Rita’s lips were set in a thin red line. She jerked her head toward the street. “I saw the little girl open your gate and run away with this fool on her heels.”
“What was with the car brakes I just heard?”
“Mop was just bounding his merry way across the street and very nearly got hit. But I got him for you, dear!”
“Thank you!” Lauren wrapped her arms around the wayward canine. “You bad boy, you don’t just run after any old thing that comes through the gate!” she chided him.
“At least he’s okay. Maybe it’s time to get a lock for your gate.”
Lauren frowned and looked across the street. “Yeah. Maybe it is.”
The two women exchanged brief pleasantries and a promise to get together later, and Lauren led Mop into the kitchen, closing the screen door.
“Now you’re grounded,” she told him. As she ushered him into his kennel, a loud banging sounded from the front door. “What now?”
She opened the door to a scrawny middle-aged woman with dull brown eyes and a hooked nose set in the middle of her bony face. She sported a stiffly unkempt jet-black mullet, a torn, dirty t-shirt, and faded leggings. Upon seeing the lady of the house, the woman launched into a tirade, shaking her fist.
“You better keep that mangy fleabaga yers on yer own sidea the street! Damn near bit my niece! Next time it happens, I’ma shoot it!”
For a moment, all that Lauren could do was stand there, dumb with shock, staring at her mousy neighbor. Then she gathered herself, smiled brightly, and said, “Really? I’m sorry. What was your name again? I didn’t catch it when you introduced yourself.”
The woman looked confused for a moment. “Uh . . . Rosalie Preacher.”
“Rosalie. What a lovely name! First of all, Rosalie,” Lauren said in a calm, even voice, “Pounding on your new neighbor’s door and threatening to shoot her dog on your first day in the new neighborhood is not exactly the best way to make a good first impression.” The other woman started to interrupt, but Lauren held up her hand.
“Secondly, I have it on good authority that your niece came over here to my yard and unlatched my gate, letting my daughter’s dog out. Thirdly, my daughter’s dog nearly got hit by a car because of your negligence.” Lauren stopped to give her neighbor a chance to speak.
“That didn’t happen! That’s a lie! Who said that?”
“Someone that I trust, who’s never threatened to shoot my dog! I strongly suggest that you keep your family on your side of the street and out of my yard. And if I were you I would not touch one whisker on that dog, or there is going to be a big problem. Now, Rosie, I would appreciate it if you would take yourself off of my porch and get back where you belong.” She turned and pulled the screen door open.
“Of all the -” Rosalie spluttered. “Listen, you-”
“No, you listen, because I’m not saying this again. Get off my porch. Leave Allie’s dog alone. And if you ever choose to speak to me again, maybe you should think about being a little more civil.” Lauren stood and stared at the scrawny, birdlike woman, who stared back, her mouth working noiselessly. Then she simply gave up and walked away, down the steps and back across the street.
In the kitchen, Lauren let Mop out of his kennel. “Well,” she told him, “That went well! It’s a good thing I did my yoga workout before she came. I really kept my cool, considering she threatened to shoot you. The nerve!”
She suddenly felt drained. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, and all she wanted to do was go back to bed.
Glancing out the kitchen window, she saw Rita walking
across the driveway. She opened the door before the older woman had a chance to knock.
“Hello, dear! I heard the little woman making a big noise over here. Are you all right?”
Lauren sighed and held the door open so that Rita could step into the kitchen. “I’m not my best. I had a rough night. I was just trying to have a nice, relaxing Saturday.”
“Is there anything I can do? Have you even eaten yet this morning? Or had coffee? How about I fix you some brunch.” She put a hand on Lauren’s arm and guided her to the kitchen table. “Sit down.”
Mop ran up to Rita eagerly and received a hearty petting and baby talk, then he settled down on his giant pillow in the corner of the kitchen while Rita bustled around, opening and closing the cupboards and fridge, clattering pans and dishware.
Lauren leaned back limply in her chair. “I swear, Rita, I don’t know what I would do without you. You’re always helping me. Cooking. Cleaning. Watching my back. I give so little in return.”
Rita flapped her plump, pale hand. “Honey, I don’t know what I’d do without you. I’m bored as hell over there. Bert’s always puttering in the garage or watching sports. Retirement isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Actually, it sucks. I don’t go to BINGO or have book club or any of that kind of stuff. You’re like the daughter I never had, and you need me. You’ve been through hell, and I’m happy to be here for someone. I need to be needed, so it works out perfectly.” She poured pancake batter into a hot, greased pan. Then she poured two cups of coffee from the freshly brewed pot and handed one to Lauren, who sipped it gratefully.
“This is so much better than when I make it,” she commented. “I don’t get it. Same coffee. Same water. Same coffee pot.”
“So, like I said, I heard what little Miss New over there had to say. But you were remarkably quiet.”
Lauren shrugged. “I was feeling pretty mellow, but I told her off, anyway. She told me her niece didn’t come over here, called you a liar, pretty much. Then she threatened to shoot Mop.”
Blood and Bone: A Smattering of Unease Page 13
