“No, baby, I can’t,” Lily told Joseph, placing her hand on the receiver. “I need to talk to your father.”
“Daddy,” Joseph yanked the receiver back and cried into the phone, “she won’t let us come over!”
Lily and Joseph wrestled over the phone, Joseph getting control of it long enough to ask, “She’s pulling on the phone, Daddy - what should I do?”
Joseph looked at his mother and said, “You don’t even know what it means to be a mother! You’re just a slut and no one will ever love you!”
Shocked, Lily instantly released her grip on the telephone.
“Come and get us, Daddy!” said Joseph, banging the receiver back into the cradle. He took Pierce’s hand and ran up to the second floor, slamming the door at the top of the stairs behind them. Lily heard the chain lock sliding into place.
She was paralyzed, stunned – first at the news, then at what Joseph had said to her, and finally at the recognition that Joe had supplied him with the words. She wriggled her toes and catapulted herself up the stairs, taking the steps three at a time.
Trying to open the locked door, she called, “Joseph - you let me up right this instant.”
“No! We want to go with my Daddy.”
“That is not going to happen, Joseph.”
“You’re not in charge - my Dad is the boss, and anyway he said we can go wherever we want and we want to go back to Trevi Way. Right, PJ? Don’t we want to go back to our old house to live?”
“Yes, I want to!” said Pierce. “I hate the lake – it took my cowboy hat!”
Lily took a deep breath. “Joseph, talk to me, honey - why are you doing this?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
“Because you kicked my Dad out into the street so you can go out and suck some other guy’s dick.”
“What did you say!? Open this door! Open this door!” Lily pounded on the locked door, and in her rage kept pounding and pounding, until all she knew was that she had to get the door open, with no recollection of why, with no plan for what she would do when she did. The outer edges of her fists grew red and swollen.
“Open this door!” she screamed. She finally stepped back, and with a swift kick she planted her foot against the door, popping the door latch from the frame and pulling the chain bracket from the wall. As she fell screaming in pain, Joseph stood staring at her, his mouth agape. Pierce started to cry. Lily sat, crying, holding her foot, reassuring Pierce that she was OK, as a set of headlights pulled into the driveway and shone in through the back door. Joseph stood staring at Lily until he heard the car horn, at which he stepped over Lily, grabbed Pierce by the wrist, and ran out into the dark calling, “Daddy!”
Lily remained lying on the landing. The pain in her foot paled in comparison to the agony she felt in her gut - as though Joe had taken a hunting knife, had sliced open her belly, and ripped her babies out from inside her. He was doing more than taking them from her house. He was teaching them to do to her what he could no longer do. This could not be happening. Images of her children flipped through her mind. The day she first held Joseph in her arms. The way he used to laugh when she put on her sunglasses. She must have taken them off and put them back on a thousand times in one day, just to hear the sound. The way Pierce used to hurl himself over the side of his crib, even before he was old enough to stand on his own, and how they had to cover the floor with pillows to protect him from getting hurt. She remembered how he used to sing the theme song from Winnie the Pooh incessantly, performing it in the grocery store, at church, anywhere he could find an audience. She thought of the winter nights they spent curled up in front of the fire in the family room, reading stories or watching Christmas specials on TV. She sobbed. Where were her sweet babies? Was this really happening? How could they do this to her?
She kept expecting them to come back, kept looking for the headlights to reappear in the driveway, kept imagining the tearful apologies, then making hot cocoa and cinnamon toast for their snack before tucking them safely into their beds. She could smell their hair, taste the salty skin of their brows on her lips. She couldn’t believe that this nightmare was unfolding before her, when just weeks ago she had so much hope.
Too drained and in too much pain to move from the spot from where she saw them leave, she just lay on the landing. Maybe if she didn’t move, she could keep life from going forward, like pressing “pause” on a movie. She could wait until she was ready, until she knew what to do next. Were they really gone? They had been her life all these years. Did she mean so little to them? Lily sobbed until she fell asleep.
She woke the next morning, hobbled to her bedroom and called Joe.
“I want to talk to the boys,” she said.
“Took you long enough to call,” he said.
“Put Joseph on the phone, Joe.” Her head was pounding, her foot was throbbing, and there was no way she was going to make it to work on time today. A scolding from Mrs. Windham-Childs would surely be called for. In her fragile state, Lily didn’t trust that she could handle it with restraint. Knowing that she could lose her job at Mrs. Windham-Childs’ whim, she would have to find a way to get there, and then a way to smile, and nod. She would cross that bridge when she came to it.
Lily heard muffled voices coming from the other end of the phone line.
“They’re having cereal and watching cartoons,” Joe said. “They don’t want to talk right now. I’ll have them call you after school.”
“What do you mean, ‘after school’?”
“I mean when they get home from school. Sam is going to hang out here today so she’ll be here when the school bus drops them off. I’ll have her ask them to call you then.”
“I am going to come and pick them up,” said Lily. “I’ll be there around five-thirty, after work.”
“We won’t be here,” said Joe. “We’re taking them out to Chuck E. Cheese for dinner tonight.”
“Joe, what are you doing? Why are you doing this to me?”
“What’s the matter, Lil? You don’t like being kicked out of your house, being left all by yourself? It ain’t so great, is it?”
“Joe, those boys belong with me. I’m their mother.”
“And I’m their father,” bellowed Joe. “They want to be here, in their own home.”
“But I would have stayed there with them at the house – you made me leave. You can’t just go buy that house and get a girlfriend, steal my children and then pretend like I don’t exist.” Lily’s foot was still throbbing. “You can’t do that!”
“I got news for you, little Miss Want-To-Have-My-Own-Life. I already did that.” Joe lowered his voice. His whisper had a dark, baleful quality to it that sent shivers down Lily’s spine. “You can make this all go away anytime you want, Lil,” he hissed. “All you gotta do is come home. Otherwise, you can just forget about getting the boys back. You call me back when you’re ready to come home. Until then, the boys are staying with me.”
Mechanically, Lily hung up the phone. Home. Wherever that was.
With each passing day, Pierce and Joseph became more securely nestled back into their routine of school, street hockey, and indifference. Samantha and her daughter moved out of their apartment and moved into the house on Trevi Way. The boys visited Lily on Saturdays for a few hours, doing so begrudgingly. But since Joe worked weekends and Saturdays were Samantha’s “me” time, they had no choice in the matter. To make up for this and other assorted inconveniences, Joe lavished the boys with gifts and privileges. He bought the latest new video game system, complete with a library of the hottest games. He put in a swimming pool.
Lily moved numbly through her life, which had become an endless stream of work, tearful support group meetings, coffee, and cigarettes. She’d retrieved the little brown bottle that her doctor had given her from the back of the closet several times, yet it remained unopened - the one personal victory she could claim.
The lake house was eerily empty, especially at night. The
moonlight that had so recently charmed her and ignited a sense of humility and gratitude now cast spooky shadows around every room. It terrified Lily to know that she was there alone, with no neighbors to call on, her only protection a dog that didn’t bark.
Spring on the lake might have been viewed as beautiful by most standards, but no matter where Lily was in the house, she was surrounded by windows, each one reinforcing the sense of isolation she felt in the vistas of endless sea and sky they offered.
She watched one evening as a storm made its way across the water, wishing that life’s own tempests were as predictable. Still, would you want to know that a disaster was coming if you were powerless to avert it? Wouldn’t it be better to abide in blissful ignorance and be caught unaware than to pace and wring your hands, counting down the hours until your doom?
When the storm hit the shore, the wild sea breeze twisted itself about the house, sending drafts and sprays of rain in through every door and rattling every window, like a thousand angry demons furiously knocking, sending Lily dashing from room to room, staying the window frames with wedges she had fashioned from the flaps of cardboard torn from the unpacked boxes that still laid about. As she pounded a wedge in between the frames of her bedroom window, she noticed the headlights of a car slowly approaching. The car stopped. Lily crouched, lowering herself so that only her eyes peeked over the window sill. The high beams flicked on, and then off again, and then the car crawled away down the street. Lily grabbed the chair from the desk in Joseph’s room and hooked it under the knob of the back door. She returned five times to make sure it was securely wedged in place.
Occasionally at night, as she stood in the kitchen washing dishes, or just as she was locking up before going to bed, she would catch sight of a car moving slowly past. She couldn’t be certain of whether it was the same car every time. It may well have been some lost soul searching for the pier or the frozen custard stand, or maybe even just a young couple looking for a quiet spot to park and make out. Just the same, Lily kept the chair in the back hall and secured it under the door knob whenever she was home. Even if someone could get past the barricade, the noise would be enough to wake the dead, giving Lily plenty of time to run out the front.
The first week in June, Lily received a brown eight-and-a-half by eleven envelope in the mail, with an official seal as the return address. Inside was a Family Court document. For this, she needed no interpreter - Joe was petitioning her for child support.
“Are you serious?” Lily screamed at Joe when she finally got him to answer his phone. “Child support?”
“I’m entitled,” he said. “The kids are living with me, and that means I’m entitled to like twenty-five percent of your income to help pay for stuff.”
“Help pay for video games, and your summer vacation, and your new swimming pool? Joe - I barely make enough to live on. Your salary is quadruple mine.”
“Why should I get penalized for being successful?” he asked. “I have that money coming to me.”
“Joe... please don’t do this,” Lily said. “I’m begging you. I don’t have money for a lawyer, and I don’t know how I’ll survive if I have to pay you child support - I’ll have to go out and get another job.”
“I guess maybe you shoulda thought about that before you left us.” Joe sniffed. “By the way,” he added, “The kids want their dog back.”
The trip down Trevi Way seemed endless. As she passed each house, Lily recalled the faces with whom she once shared this neighborhood. The twins with the speech impediment, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the guy who spent every waking moment cultivating his front lawn - they were all still there. She was the only one missing. Only none of them seemed to notice either. Lily was glad that Donna’s car was absent from her driveway. She couldn’t handle seeing her now.
Wishes pawed at the door of her carrier as Lily approached the house.
“Yes, girl,” said Lily. “I know you can’t wait to get back there either.”
Samantha was outside scurrying about, buzzing in and out of the garage, setting up tables and display racks, pounding a “Garage Sale” sign into the ground. Lily pulled off to the side of the road, parking her car along with her desire to scream and shout, hoping that she could use this opportunity to capture Samantha’s feminine sympathies and avert the swiftly approaching child support hearing.
“Hi,” Lily said as she walked up the driveway. She unclipped Wishes’ leash from her collar and watched as the dog darted into the garage and slipped into the backyard through the doggie door Lily had put in when she was a puppy. Tufts of purple flowers poked their heads out from among the weeds that had all but overtaken the lavender in the front garden.
“The boys are down the street playing,” said Samantha. Her long wavy brown hair was artfully streaked with blond, and pulled back with a rhinestone barrette that matched the decorative stones on her sandals. A pair of pink framed sunglasses were perched atop her head.
“I was hoping we could talk,” said Lily.
“So talk,” said Samantha. She lowered her sunglasses onto her nose, and busied herself straightening items on the long folding table.
“It’s about this child support thing,” said Lily. “As you know, Joe makes a lot more money than I do, and I have the rent, food, gas, utilities – well, you know what it takes to run a home.” Lily smiled her best Windham-Childs smile.
Samantha clumsily balanced a pricing gun between long acrylic fingernails. She shot out a label and stuck it to Pierce’s old playpen.
“I expect lots of people here very soon - what’s your point?” Samantha pulled a stray sticker from her thumbnail, and flicked it to the ground.
“Well, I was hoping that we could talk about this - you know, mom-to-mom? I’m sure you can appreciate how difficult this has been for me, and I was hoping, well, that we could come to some sort of an agreement outside of the courts, you know? Maybe I can spare a few dollars a week, and we can just work that out between us.”
“Look,” said Samantha, removing her sunglasses and turning to look at Lily. “It’s not my fault you don’t want your kids - why should I suffer because of it?”
“I don’t want my kids? Is that what he told you? I do want my kids - more than you know. In fact I’ll take them back home with me right now. I would love nothing more. Where are they? Go get them.”
“Sure, now that there’s money involved you want them back – Joe told me all about you. No way you’re getting those kids. They mean everything to Joey, and they are staying right here with us.”
“But you don’t need my money, Samantha - I wasn’t working at all before the separation... you guys have so much. You have this nice house, Joe makes good money, and I’m sure your ex is giving you something...”
Samantha threw the pricing gun down onto the table, and placed her hands on her hips. “What my ex does or doesn’t do is none of your goddamn business. Do you have any idea how expensive it is to take care of this family? I’m spending three hundred bucks a week on groceries, fifty bucks on gas, then there’s the trips to the mall, the movies, having their friends over, going to the amusement park - that costs a lot of money, and all you have to worry about is taking care of yourself. Must be nice, that’s all I can say.”
Lily and Samantha stood staring at each other for a moment. Lily surveyed the items on the table – things that had been stashed in the crawl space and that Joe had put into storage during the separation. Clothes the boys had outgrown, room vaporizers that had been replaced by better ones, baby toys that Lily had always meant to clean and donate. Fragments of her life, available at bargain prices.
Was that all that was left now? Memories of moldy playpens, grimy toys, and the driveways and houses that she used to pass? She wanted to move her feet, but they were lead, weighted in place. Her mind searched for something to say that would bridge the gap between them, that would soften Samantha’s heart, that would express the sorrow and fear that Lily had carried around with her since the boys lef
t that night. But how could she find words to explain a pain so visceral, so vile, as that caused by watching your children step over your lame body, and then being forced to pay their father money for having taught them how? It was no use. There were no words to say. At least none that Samantha would hear. How could she ever hear them, and then stay here? Lily turned to go back to her car. “That’s my old breast pump,” she said, pointing to a box on the table.
“You want it?” Samantha called after her. “It’s two bucks.”
Lily held the newly issued court order in her hand as she sat with her back against the massive trunk of the ancient oak tree, her tear-soaked T-shirt the only indication of how long she’d been sitting there, lost in her sorrow. Her life had given her many painful memories, but most of them had faded, over time. Through distance and self-examination she had been able to achieve a philosophical position on most things. But the memory of losing her children would never fade; this she knew. It was a sorrow that would live inside her, slicing her open with every recollection, twisting her gut into a pool of bile. It would be with her tomorrow as immediately as it was with her today, as it had been with her at the moment it had happened. And when was that moment, precisely? Was it when Joseph and Pierce walked out the door? Was it when the cowboy hat finally succumbed to the pull of the chill lake water? Or was it further back, on that day when Lily succumbed to passion in the arms of another man, irrevocably changing her? But didn’t that yet have its own cause? Was the fatal moment then when Lily and Joe were married? And what causes and conditions led to that? Maybe it was when Iris moved away. Or when James left. Or maybe it was all because of Dolores. Yet even those events were preceded by others. Like when her mother left, or when Henry cornered her in the chicken coop. As she meandered through the maze of cause and effect, tracing each tragedy back to the one that bred it, Lily discovered her one fatal error: She had come into this world.
[Iris and Lily 01.0 - 03.0] The Complete Series Page 127
