by Dianne Dixon
Several minutes pass in silence.
Then Sierra says: “There’s a famous episode from an old TV show called The Twilight Zone. It’s about this woman who’s hideously ugly. Can’t even go out in public. Which is why she volunteers for this risky surgery, it’s her one chance to not look like a freak anymore. Her face is covered the whole time and all you see of the surgeons are their hands and arms. Then in the last scene, after the surgery, she’s lying there—miserable—because they’re telling her nothing’s changed, she’s still ugly. The camera tilts up to show the surgeons, and they’re all completely grotesque. Then the camera tilts down, to show the woman. She’s gorgeous—looks like she could be on the cover of Vogue.”
Livvi gives Sierra an uncertain glance.
And Sierra tells her: “What I’m saying is, you’re the beauty…and whoever raised you, they were the freaks.”
Livvi doesn’t have time to respond—her phone has begun to ring. It’s still on the ground near the spot where she and Sierra were sitting earlier. And Grace is dashing across the patio, calling out: “I’ll answer, I’ll answer!”
Before Livvi can stop her, Grace is picking up the phone and saying: “Hello?” After a quick beat, she’s frowning, insisting: “No. This is Livvi’s phone.”
Then she’s holding the phone out to Livvi, puzzled. “They want to talk to Olivia.”
Livvi takes the phone—her heart is hammering.
Something has gone unbelievably wrong. These calls always come late in the night. Never, ever, in the daytime.
Livvi is aware that all the color must be draining from her face. She can see the look of alarm in Grace, and in Sierra.
The voice at the other end of the phone is calmly informing her: “You’ve left me no choice. I’m here, Olivia.”
Livvi is shaking. “Where…?”
“I’m in your house.”
And Livvi’s skin begins to crawl—as if she has just brushed against a snake.
Her voice is strained and tight. “I have to go,” she tells Sierra. “I need for Grace to stay here with you for a while.”
“Is it about Mommy? Is Mommy mad at you?” Grace is full of apprehension.
Livvi can barely speak. “No,” she says. “It isn’t your mommy. It’s somebody else.”
***
The air in the room feels poisonous and stale. There’s a chill—a deadness—that has never been here before.
But, to her surprise, Livvi isn’t afraid. She’s defiant, ready for battle. The uppermost thing in her heart and mind is Grace. Livvi is prepared to do whatever it takes to keep Grace separated from this evil.
“How dare you come into my house?” she’s asking.
The answer is toneless, unapologetic. “Your door was unlocked.”
“How did you find out where I lived?”
A thin smile accompanies the reply. “I was brought here by the Lord, Olivia. He led me to a young man at my church who knows how to use the Internet.”
Livvi’s unwelcome visitor has been looking around the room, taking in every detail. Now the visitor’s flat, black gaze is coming to rest on Livvi. The same flat gaze that was in that other house, where the air was stale with the sour odor of boiled cabbage and the wintry funk of unwashed blankets. Where the nights were shattered by the rampage of demons.
“Get out,” Livvi tells Calista. “Or I’ll call the police.”
Calista is gazing down at her shoes, slowly shaking her head, as if she has been terribly wounded. “You always had a nasty disposition, Olivia.”
Calista, with her ink-black eyes and soap-white face, is fleshier than she was. Slightly wider and slower. She’s wearing a bulky, shapeless coat and rubbery, thick-soled shoes. While she’s crossing to the sofa, the soles of her shoes are squeaking on the rose-colored floor tiles. “I’ve been very afraid of coming here. And I was right to be afraid. May God forgive me for saying it, but you were an unpleasant, frightening girl, Olivia. And you’ve grown into a heartless and frightening woman.”
Now she’s sitting, stiffly—crowded against the arm of the sofa. Her hand going to her coat collar, meekly holding it closed over the base of her throat. As if she’s defenseless and this is her feeble attempt to protect herself.
The gesture—its stagey timidity—infuriates Livvi.
Calista’s hand remains on her coat collar. But her attention has been drawn to the pink pig and the little, pink-striped mittens lying on one of the sofa cushions.
“You have a child…?” For a moment, Calista’s mouth is slack, her eyes vacant. As if she’s being faced with something unnatural—beyond comprehension. Her tone is hushed, offended, as she says: “You? You have been blessed with a child?”
Calista is reaching for Grace’s pink-striped mittens.
Before she can pick them up—Livvi has hit her. Hard enough to snap Calista’s head back against the sofa. And send her eyes rolling in their sockets.
“Don’t touch anything belonging to people I love,” Livvi hisses. “Don’t bring your wickedness anywhere near them—or me.”
Calista, reeling from Livvi’s blow, is shrieking: “When I married your father, he told me your mother ran away and he never explained why. But now I think I understand. Her leaving had nothing to with him. It was because of you. The minute she laid eyes on you, your mother must have sensed what a dreadful creature she’d brought into the world.”
For a moment the hurt of that statement paralyzes Livvi, crushes her. And her only thought is to plead with Calista to leave.
But then Livvi sees Grace’s pink pig and is reminded of how little Grace is. How innocent and vulnerable. Livvi is thinking about the tender feelings of protectiveness she has toward Grace. And she is wondering how, when she was just a little girl, innocent and vulnerable, Calista could have done such unspeakable things to her.
Livvi is remembering…a time when she is barely eight years old. Being “taught a lesson” because she’s afraid of the huge, lunging German Shepherd that Calista has brought home as a pet, from the pound. She’s locked in the toolshed with the dog. Its roaring barks, shaking the walls. Her terror so intense that her nose is starting to bleed. Her dress and socks are soaked with sweat and Calista is outside the door telling her, “Dogs can smell fear—that’s when they attack. The sooner you decide to stop being afraid, the better.” And the fear is surging. Spurting a trail of pee down her leg. While everything around her is swimming. And going black.
In thinking about it now, Livvi is wondering where her father was during the countless times she was terrorized by Calista. She’s realizing that he must have been where he so often was. Off, by himself. Roaming the hills. Mute and blank-faced.
When Livvi turns her attention back to Calista, she’s baffled. “Why?” she’s asking. “I was just a little girl. How could you have been so cruel to me?”
Calista stares Livvi down and tells her: “I was never cruel. I gave you discipline. Spare the rod, spoil the child. And God knows, in the years you had been alone with your father, you’d been spared the rod long enough.”
For the first time, Livvi is seeing the staggering depth of Calista’s arrogance. Seeing how nastily, boneheadedly stupid she is. And it’s wiping away Livvi’s fear of her. It’s altering Livvi’s pain. Turning it into outrage.
Livvi is seething as she’s telling Calista: “My father had spared me from a lot more than the rod, and you knew it.” Her voice is a growl as she adds: “I was a motherless little girl who’d been spared from ever having a storybook read to me. Or ever being hugged. Or tucked into bed…even once…with a good night kiss.” Livvi’s voice is a furious whisper as she says: “And your answer to that was discipline…? You were a pair of monsters. You. And my father.”
“For so long, I prayed. I begged the Lord not to let me die an old maid,” Calista says. “I begged him to give me a husband and a home.”
Calista seems to be talking to herself, not to Livvi, as she murmurs: “The Lord refused me. He left me wander
ing in the desert. Then one morning, at work, while I was cleaning the church office, I looked up and your father was in the entryway. You were outside waiting by the edge of the road. That was the one and only time your father ever darkened the door of a church. He said he wanted to talk to the pastor because he needed to find a good woman willing to take on the raising of a little girl—he was alone and he needed a wife. It was the answer to my prayer. I told your father I was who he was looking for. A week later, we were married.”
Calista is staring into mid-distance. Lost in thought. “I was ready to give myself to him in every way, but he hardly ever touched me. Only at night. Sometimes. And he would never look at me, never call my name. Do you know that in all these years, he hasn’t kissed me? Not once.”
It’s as if Calista is gazing into the past—seeing a detail she hadn’t noticed before. “I was an innocent bride in a house where you took up all the space. Your father’s thoughts…his few words…his every waking moment. They must’ve all belonged to you. But I accepted it, accepted you, as the cross that the Lord—for some reason—was asking me to bear.” Her tone is sticky with self-pity.
And Livvi, finished with Calista’s spite and stupidity, tells her: “Get out of here, before I hit you again.”
Calista jumps up from the sofa. Edging around behind it—making a show of attempting to shield herself from Livvi. While she’s whining: “I never wanted to come here in the first place. You forced me to. I could’ve told you on the phone what I’m here to tell you now, but every time I called, you wouldn’t listen.”
Livvi is worried that this conversation is going on too long, and that Grace will come back before it’s over. She wants Calista gone, quickly. “What is it you’re here to talk about?”
“Your father.”
“I’m not going to discuss my father with you.”
“For whatever your hateful reasons, you haven’t spoken to him since the day you went away to college. You’ve left that man abandoned for nine years, Olivia. You’ve broken his heart.”
Livvi’s reply comes from a place of loss and grief. “I wish he’d had a heart to break.”
“He gave you life, Olivia. He’s the only father you will ever have.”
Livvi is recalling that turning-point morning in Santa Ynez. Her father’s fingers digging into her hair as he is lifting her off the ground. Letting the full weight of her body hang from her scalp.
“Your father wants to see you,” Calista is saying.
“I don’t care.” The sound of heartbreak is in Livvi’s voice.
And in Calista’s there is smugness, a bitter sort of triumph. As if she’s finding pleasure in the pain she’s inflicting. As she announces: “Your father is dying.”
Livvi’s response is guttural—an almost inaudible moan.
“This is what I was calling to tell you, all those nights, when you were hanging up on me…”
The rest of Calista’s rant is garbled. Muffled. Like it’s coming from miles away. Livvi is trying to picture herself at her father’s side—one last time. Trying to picture what it might be like. But all she can see is a little girl hiding, in a faded nightgown. Waiting. On that cold winter morning. For the love that never came.
And Calista is telling her: “Your father is in New Jersey, where you were born, and where his home was when he was young. He’d been in Santa Ynez since you were a baby, since just after the two of you were deserted by your mother. And when the doctors told him the end was near he wanted to go back to where he, and you, began.”
Calista is moving out from behind the sofa. A torrent of words rolling out of her—loud and dramatic—like a hell-fire sermon from a backwoods preacher. “Your father is a proud, proud man, Olivia. He knows how you’ve hardened your heart against him. It would destroy him to have to beg you to come. That’s why I was forced to wait until the nighttime to call. Why I had to keep my voice as quiet as I could—why I whispered. We live in a small apartment. I didn’t want him to hear, didn’t want him to know, that even when a soul in need is crying out to you, you don’t care enough to listen.”
“Save your breath,” Livvi tells her. “My mother abandoned me to my father, who was an overeducated, uncaring madman. My father abandoned me to you, a Bible-thumping witch. And you—when I was just a little girl and you thought you were going to have a baby—you threw me away with a single sentence. You told me, ‘From now on, Olivia, you’ll be on your own.’”
Livvi has walked to the front door and opened it wide. “I feel the same way about you and my father as you used to feel about me—I don’t have time for you.”
As Calista is walking past Livvi, on her way to the door, she’s glancing back at Grace’s little pink-striped mittens. And she’s reminding Livvi: “You were his child, his blood.” Then she mutters: “No matter what you remember about him—what you believe about him—he loved you.”
All Livvi says is: “Go away.”
“He doesn’t have much time, Olivia. I am on an eleven o’clock flight. I’m asking if you’ll come with me. Tonight.”
Livvi shakes her head. She can’t speak. She’s throttled with tears, and mourning.
“If not tonight, then when?” Calista asks.
“I’m not sure. I don’t know.”
Livvi is revisiting a list of dreams and promises written in a child’s careful cursive…Someday I’ll have a birthday party with people and singing…someday I’ll wear pink ballet shoes and have a friend who thinks I’m nice…and when I’m grown, I won’t hit, especially with a wooden hairbrush, because the hurt never stops, even after the bruises go.
And Livvi says: “I still remember my father too well—I remember the things that he let happen in his house. I’m not ready to see him. If I ever am, it’ll be a long, long time from now.”
The look that Calista gives Livvi is as dark as the floor of an open grave.
“In a matter of weeks, Olivia, your father may no longer exist.”
Micah
Boston, Massachusetts ~ 2012
It wasn’t until the moment at the top of the stairs, on the third floor of her house, when she was gripping the handle of the closed door, that Micah realized she still wasn’t ready. The opening of that door would, in essence, be the opening of a grave. And it required a courage she still hadn’t found.
This is why Micah walked away. Down the stairs and out of the house. Without thinking. Without remembering to take a coat. With no plan other than to buy time—find enough strength to face the woman waiting behind the closed door.
After almost two hours Micah is still walking, still roaming the streets of Boston. Thinking about the woman, the crimes of the past. And about what punishments the future might hold.
Micah is halfway down a historic Beacon Hill side street, a cobblestone lane only a few feet wide. Lined with red-bricked, black-shuttered houses and streetlights that look like old-fashioned gas lamps. An early afternoon November wind has begun to blow, causing the temperature (which is probably in the mid-fifties) to feel more like forty. Micah has been steadily picking up her pace—intent on trying to keep warm and get home as soon as possible. But she’s coming to an abrupt stop. Surprised at where she is. Wondering if this is an accident, or if she has brought herself here as the result of an unconscious plan.
This place has profound significance for Micah.
Once, a long time ago, she spent an hour in the house that’s directly across the street. An hour that throughout her life, every time she has thought of it, has troubled her.
Although Micah is uncomfortably cold, she’s continuing to stand in the blowing November wind. Looking at the house. Remembering what happened there—the brief conversation that permanently altered the course of her life.
While Micah is recalling the details of that conversation, she’s also hearing the sounds of echoing footsteps. A man, casually well-dressed and carrying a stylish canvas shopping bag, is rounding the corner at the top of the block.
He and Micah are
on opposite sides of the street. But the street is so narrow that they’re only a few feet apart as he’s stopping and staring at her.
He’s in his early thirties and astonishingly handsome. His eyes are golden brown—the same lustrous color as his hair. His body, which is in perfect proportion to his height, is strong and lean. Everything about him, from the way he’s dressed to the way he’s holding the canvas bag, seems artless and unassuming.
“Are you lost?” he’s asking.
Micah shakes her head no. In spite of how cold she is, and how preoccupied, she’s keenly aware of what an incredibly attractive man he is.
He looks up and down the empty street. “Then you must be a tourist.”
“Why a tourist?”
“This is Acorn Street, the picture on millions of postcards. It’s the most photographed street in Boston.”
Micah gives an ironic grin. “I’m aware of that.” She has crossed her arms and hunched her shoulders. Her teeth are chattering a little.
“Are you in some kind of trouble? Do you need help?”
“I’m okay,” Micah tells him. “A long time ago I knew someone who lived in the house you’re standing in front of. He managed a rock band. His name was Miles Gidney. I was just—”
“You knew my father?” The man is surprised, clearly intrigued. “I’m Eric,” he says. “My dad hasn’t lived here since the nineties. He went to Italy and bought a villa.”
The way this man, Eric, is scrutinizing her is something Micah’s accustomed to. It’s the standard male reaction to her face and figure.
“You look…” He seems to be searching for the right word.
There’s no question in Micah’s mind that it will be something like “beautiful” or “sexy” or “unbelievable.”
It comes as a shock when she hears “…cold and alone.”
He’s unlocking the door to the house, observing Micah’s lack of a coat (and her shivering) with concern and sympathy, holding up the canvas shopping bag, saying: “I have a good Pinot Noir, fresh bread, and a couple of interesting cheeses. Come in for a few minutes. Have something to eat, get warm.”
