Intended for Harm

by C. S. Lakin

  She looked down at the infant in her stroller. Barry was the one who’d thought of her name, that one night they were so roaring high, too much coke, had slung down a few drinks on top of that, one of those angry nights after a fight with Jake, after he learned of her pregnancy. She and Barry had fallen down laughing so hard, singing silly drunken songs after the gig, neither wanting to go home, Barry to his empty apartment and Leah to hers overfull. Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall, take one down and pass it around, which they did. Then they Danced by the Light of the Moon, or whatever it was called. And she started in on I’ve Been Working on the Railroad. All the live-long day. She asked him what a live-long day was and he told her it was a day you lived long enough to see to the end, but days never ended; they just rolled one into another, like a series of waves, smacking against your life over and over, wearing you down. When Barry got to the part in the song with “Dinah won’t you blow, Dinah won’t you blow your horn,” he emphasized the blow with a snort, sucking the line of coke up his nose and setting her off into paroxysms of laughter, making her clutch her plenty big belly, feeling the baby kick in response. She knew she carried a girl, a party girl. A girl light as air, free as the wind, unfettered, she would just float through life and light where she willed. Dinah. Won’t she blow, blow like the wind? The answer is blowing in the wind.

  She didn’t even remember Dinah’s arrival; she’d been so out of it. Drugs to counteract drugs. Then anesthesia for the C-section. Too weak to push, the baby too weak to want out. Who could blame her—so much safer and quieter in her womb. Leah could barely hold Dinah without her crying at her touch. Always fussing, startling. Refusing to nurse, would only take a bottle. The doctor told her cocaine babies were like that. Cocaine babies! Grouping her daughter in some generalized category, slapping a label on her. He urged her to go into rehab, like she couldn’t just stop if she wanted to. Where they erred was in thinking she’d want to stop, give up that part of her life that stimulated and inspired her, that made her feel creative, spontaneous, brilliant, unique. That made her feel. That made her.

  She felt someone take hold of the stroller.

  “You two go ahead, walk on the sand. I’ll take the baby. The boys want to ride the carousel.” Rebecca pointed at the painted horses gliding up and down, up and down, staring vacantly as children straddled them and jiggled their leather reins, telling them to go, go, go. As if the horses didn’t know they were fastened to a platform that went mindlessly around and around, thinking they were escaping to new lands when all they were doing was turning in circles, getting nowhere. This mindless carousel she was on.

  Jake took her hand and led her away from the pier, down the steps to the beach, scattering sandpipers as he went. A row of men sat at chessboards, deep in concentration. The oddness struck her, how they stared with such intensity at black-and-white squares, and pieces of carved wood, each piece holding significant power, made to follow specific rules. Move this way and this way only. A piece of wood that started as a tree, that stood for nothing but nature, then transformed into functionality, purpose.

  She kicked off her sandals and burrowed her toes in the hot sand, sensing Jake’s mood, as cold as ice, unaffected by the heat. They walked some yards, not speaking. In a jumble of seaweed covered with sand flies, Leah spotted a small piece of driftwood, thinking back to when she had met Jake, her drifting man, eyes grainy with wood, hair the color of bark. She handed him the wood.

  “This is you, Jake.”

  “Me. A piece of wood.” She noticed his flat tone, his lifeless eyes as he hefted it in his hand. He stopped and studied what once may have been a branch or piece of trunk. Too much time in the water to tell.

  “See, once this piece of wood had character and form. It belonged. Sap coursed through its veins, flowing with life. But then.”

  Jake looked into her eyes and she couldn’t read him. Nothing coursed behind those dull irises. He would blame her, say she had taken the axe to his girth, a cudgel to his limbs, a hacksaw to his branches. Let his lifeblood splurt out until he was drained. “But it wasn’t me,” she said, continuing her inner conversation aloud. He looked at her puzzled, trying to follow. “Life tosses you around and if you don’t have bow or a rudder, you are at the mercy of the sea, tumbling in the waves, unable to stop. What was once uniquely ridged is now smooth, soft, dull. Sometimes wood if it sits too long will get petrified. And when you’re petrified you turn to stone and find yourself stuck in the end of nowhere for eternity.”

  Jake shook his head. “Leah, I don’t understand you. Just what are you trying to say?”

  Leah knew it was no use. They had passed each other ages ago. She could only see him far off in the distance, and he could barely make her out. Even her signal flags, now specks on the horizon, would be indecipherable so many leagues away. One said Save Me. The other said Flying Free. She didn’t even know which one was hoisted now—or if both flew, flapping unfurled in an easterly wind, entangling with each other, vying for dominance.

  From this distance she could only watch Jake’s mouth move. She could tell he was speaking but she shook her head, I don’t understand. You’re too far away. She turned her back to him and waded out into the water up to her knees. Spindrift flew off the tops of the small waves like torn lace; her bare knees tingled from the salt. She stood there, eyes closed, replaying chords in her mind, seeing the frets of her guitar, hearing song issue from her mouth under hot bright lights, her mouth on Barry’s, feeling the coke numb her nose and throat, sending her soaring.

  She lifted her arms like wings, preparing to take flight, tired of being grounded and longing for air to buoy her up, up, and away in my beautiful balloon. “We could float among the stars together, you and I, for we can fly.” Somewhere out there, the Hawaiian Islands rose up out of the water like a strand of gems, sparkling under a tropical sun, a place that never turned gray or cold or inhospitable. “We can sing a song and sail along the silver sky, for we can fly, we can fly.”

  “Leah, come on. We should head back.”

  She wrenched her gaze from the horizon line, that line of demarcation, the deadline, the line you dared cross over and once you did there was no turning back. Took one more step and you fell off the edge of the world. Beware—there be dragons.

  Jake took her arm and led her out of the water. Her footprints followed, and she stopped and watched the sea foam erase them in slow, persistent effort until there was nothing left to show she had ventured into the sea, or that she even had left a chunk of herself out there floating, caught on the tide and current, heading for Hawaii where it would wash onto a beach and wait for her.

  I’m coming. Wait.

  1978

  How Deep Is Your Love?

  I know your eyes in the morning sun

  I feel you touch me in the pouring rain

  And the moment that you wander far from me

  I wanna feel you in my arms again

  And you come to me on a summer breeze

  Keep me warm in your love and then softly leave

  And it’s me you need to show

  How deep is your love

  I really need to learn

  ’Cause we’re living in a world of fools

  Breaking us down

  When they all should let us be

  We belong to you and me

  I believe in you

  You know the door to my very soul

  You’re the light in my deepest darkest hour

  You’re my savior when I fall

  And you may not think

  I care for you

  When you know down inside

  That I really do

  And it’s me you need to show

  How deep is your love?

  —Bee Gees

  Jake cracked open the bathroom door and peeked inside. Leah lay mostly submerged in the tub; tendrils of steam twisted around the smoke from the incense and candles burning on the tile ledge, making the room humid and smoky. The tape deck pl
ayed Carole King. Jake was glad Leah seemed relaxed, an almost smile on her face.

  “Do you want me to add more hot water? You’ve been in there for ages.” Jake sighed; she seemed to spend every spare minute in that tub.

  Leah hummed along with the song—a sultry, sad tune that made Jake want to replace it with a cheerier tape—barely audible, shaking her head. “I’ll be out soon.”

  Jake returned to the kitchen where Reuben sat hunched over, writing large letters carefully inside the lines dotting his paper. Levi colored beside him, filling in Mickey Mouse’s ears with a forest-green crayon that he gripped awkwardly, swatches of green jumping outside the broad black lines. He could hear Simon moving about in the bedroom, and Dinah lay in her playpen, tugging on the quilted stars dangling from her mobile. He stood in the center of the kitchen reveling in the uncanny moment of quiet, such a rarity in their house.

  They had looked at many rental houses near his work. At first Leah protested. The San Fernando Valley was even farther from the beach, but Jake insisted on living close to his job so if he had to jet home, he could be there in minutes. They must have checked out a dozen houses situated between Victory and Vanowen, but what swayed her was the oversized bathtub and the acre of enclosed yard with a fountain in the middle of the pavestone patio. Jake was glad for Woodley Avenue Park only three blocks away. And he could leave Leah the car, and bike to work, if need be. With a shopping center just down the street, Leah rarely needed a car. It had been a smart move, although since signing the lease his mother had stopped speaking to him.

  She had stayed three months after Dinah’s birth, holed up in a small motel a mile from where they lived, and in that time had found them “the perfect house to rent” in Windsor, only three blocks from her home. She’d already paid first and last before she deigned to tell him about it. She had hoped to surprise them when they showed up, tired and easily persuaded from the long drive in a U-Haul, California to Colorado, aiming for the first of November, to beat the snows and icy roads. She’d had it all worked out, although never consulted him with her plans. They parted with angry words and his mother said a few things to Leah—well, in front of Leah but directed at him, which was even worse. He told her he was grateful for all her help, but he drew a line. He had no recourse but to drag her luggage out of the car and call a taxi. When her ride pulled up, he turned and walked back into the house, didn’t even say good-bye. The memory of it made his gut hurt.

  They’d finally found a doctor Leah would listen to, and the meds he gave her evened her out, although she griped about feeling listless and uncreative. She still smoked, but kept it to outdoors and when the children were asleep or preoccupied, playing on the swings or digging in the sandbox. And Jake monitored her drinking, checked cupboards and places likely to hide a bottle of scotch, and was glad so far he hadn’t made any discoveries. That didn’t mean she wasn’t buying alcohol while he was at work, polishing off a bottle and tossing it in a trash bin at the park or in the shopping center. There was no way he could tell, other than study her face and breath when he came home. And it would be wrong to enlist Reuben as tattletale. Jake wanted to trust her, trust her promises and reassurances, believe that vow she’d claimed to have made. But there was something off-kilter, unhinged, in the way she went through each day. Maybe it was the medication, but Jake did not rest easy, kept a watchful eye on her, the way he watched his children, knowing they could step into trouble any moment, unaware of so many life’s dangers looming around every corner. Sharp objects, hot liquids, concrete that scraped and chairs that toppled. Undertow and riptide. Always something.

  He heard Leah walking around the bathroom. Then he smelled smoke.

  He ran into Simon and Reuben’s bedroom as a billow of smoke wafted into the hallway. Small flames chewed the corner of the chenille bedspread, more smoldering than lit, flickering orange and red, and there was Simon standing beside it, mesmerized, a plastic lighter in his hand.

  “Simon! Give me that!” Jake yanked the lighter out of his son’s tight grip and pushed him away from the bed, knocking him over. Simon screamed as he landed hard on the wood floor, as Jake grabbed edges of the bedspread and smothered out the flames, the strangling caustic smell burning his nostrils and eyes, smoke already hovering in a ghostly gray mass above his head, snug against the ceiling.

  Reuben ran partway into the room. “Get out,” Jake ordered, although Reuben didn’t move. Not until Leah came crashing in wearing her bathrobe, pushing Reuben out of her way.

  “Where’d you get this?” he demanded of Simon, who leapt at Leah and clung to her. Jake glared at Leah. “What’s a five-year-old doing with your lighter? You can’t leave things like this around.”

  Leah wrapped her arms around Simon, who kept up his howling and rubbing one knee. “I don’t leave them around. He must have gone in my purse.”

  “Well, the kids see you light up. What do you expect? You smoke around them; it fascinates them. Kids want to imitate their parents.” Jake waved his arm, beating back smoke as he made for the window, unlocked the latch and slid it open. Cool spring air wafted in and the smoke in the room swirled, leaned toward escape.

  Jake stomped back to where Leah stood comforting Simon, stroking his hair, cooing at him. He fumed, feeling his rage grow as hot as the flame he’d just extinguished. “Quit coddling him! He needs to be punished, not comforted. Simon, get over here!”

  His son only buried his head deeper into Leah’s belly. Jake grabbed Simon’s arm and tried to pull him away from her, but she held fast.

  “He didn’t know what he was doing,” Leah protested. “Look at him—he’s scared.”

  “Yeah, scared I’m going to spank him. And I am, so give him over!”

  “No.”

  “Leah!”

  “No, Jake. I won’t let you hurt him. Spanking is barbaric. We can just give him a time-out.”

  “A time-out? For God’s sake, Leah, how many time-outs has he had over the last couple of years? He’s always getting into trouble, pushing the limits, causing destruction to anything he can get his hands on. And you just encourage him by turning a blind eye. This has to stop. You let him get away with everything, your special child who can do no wrong.”

  “You just don’t understand him, Jake. He’s sensitive; he has an overactive imagination and needs to express himself—”

  “By setting his room on fire? You gotta be—Simon, shut up! Stop that screeching.” Jake wrenched Simon from her and pulled him into the hallway. He shut his ears to Leah’s yelling, dragged Simon into the yard, slamming the door to the living room behind him. Before Leah could reach him, he had Simon’s pants down and gave his son sharp, strong spanks.

  Simon screamed for all the neighbors to hear. Jake gritted his teeth and kept going, feeling strength grow with each wide swing of his arm, pouring his anger and frustration out through the palm of his hand, which grew hot from friction. Recalled the sting of the leather belt his father had used on him more times than he could count, made his hand into that belt.

  “Jake, that’s enough!” Leah grasped his hand midair, on the downswing. He lurched off balance and Simon stumbled out of his grip.

  With eyes seared with fury, his son planted his feet on solid ground, pushed his thick black hair out of his green eyes, eyes that mirrored his mother’s in not just color but attack. Reuben and Levi tumbled out of the house, watched Simon sobbing into Leah’s bathrobe.

  Simon seethed as he stood shaking alongside his mother. “I hate you!”

  Reuben and Levi stood agape as the words minced the air. Jake saw tears in Reuben’s eyes. He looked down at his own hand—pink, swollen, hurting. He had never lifted a hand to any of his children before. He had promised himself he never would.

  He felt Leah’s eyes bear down on him as he moved past her, as he gently pushed Reuben out of the way, where he stood blocking the door, as Levi’s puzzled gaze followed him into the house. Acrid smoke tainted the air, the furniture, the whole house. He knew t
he odor would fade slowly, but who knew how long the taint on his heart would linger?

  Heat sizzled the asphalt. Plumes of shimmering heat, waving like translucent sheaves of wheat in a concrete field, rose up like incense from the road. Offerings to the god of traffic, Leah thought—a noxious-smelling, smog-infused aroma to appease a god who took pleasure in dust and diesel and carbon monoxide fumes.

  Leah wiped sweat from her forehead and neck. She was stuck on the 405, heading to a doctor’s appointment for Dinah. Another specialist. And this one over the hill, miring her in lunch-hour traffic. Not that there wasn’t traffic all the time, every freeway. “LA is a great big freeway. Put a thousand down and buy a part . . .” She checked her watch. They were going to be late, way late. At this pace, it would be another half hour just getting to the Wilshire exit, and they still had to continue on to Pico.

  Sun glinted off the metal from the cars around her, making her squint. She pushed the air conditioning to High, but it still blew out only lukewarm air. Dinah’s pathetic high-pitched whine sounded like nails screeching the surface of a chalkboard. And Levi struggled in his car seat, no doubt just as claustrophobic as Leah was beginning to feel, in this small car crammed to the gills with hot, hungry, complaining children.

  “Mommy,” Reuben said, “when are we going to be there?”

  “I don’t know, honey. Maybe never.”

  “Never?” Simon’s voice went into hysteria mode.

  Leah blew out a breath but it only made the hot air around her swirl. “In a little while. Just sit back, look out the windows. Or play with your trucks.”