Jada and Roman tracked mud in and out of the house, and that’s what it was now, not a slab but a house. They set up an elaborate potion-making factory in the kitchen. An inventory of buckets, cups, and paper plates loaded with a variety of soils, seeds, grass, leaves, and algae lined a bowed eight-foot two-by-ten. Baby-food jars of spiders, frogs, and a lone crawdad solidified their product line and made me worry a little about Jada’s latest reading list. Maybe she should back away from Harry Potter for a while.
Over supper sandwiches, we wandered through the rooms, silently imagining our future. The sofa here. The secretary desk there. My mom’s plant stand just here, with a stack of antique books angled on top and a mirror just behind it. We were all starting to feel very comfortable in the primitive structure. Trying it on like a second skin.
“Ready to try some plywood?” I asked, knowing it wasn’t going to be as easy or as much fun as the framing had been.
Drew and Hope nodded, believing just the opposite.
The walls looked like the hollow ribs of a ship, three-dimensional but not solid. The next step was nailing four-by-eight sheets of half-inch-thick plywood on the entire exterior to create a more solid, stable structure. The library wasn’t the most logical place to begin, and it was definitely not the easiest, since the slab was nearly eight feet off the ground. But I was a sucker for symbolism, so it was where we began, setting up two ten-foot ladders at the corner. Hope and I would have to carry the four-by-eight sheet of plywood up and hold it in place while Drew secured it with the nail gun.
“I’m set,” Drew said from nearly twenty feet over our heads. He was standing on a ladder inside the house, ready to lean over the top and pop nails in.
Hope and I made it halfway up the ladders, single-stepping like little kids, before my ladder started going down. “Drop it!” I yelled, and because we had already planned for this scenario, we launched the wood away from us and I jumped from my ladder as it fell over into the mud. “Crap. I’d give anything for solid ground out here.” The chunk of wood I’d propped the back corner of my ladder on to keep it out of the mud had sunk out of sight.
Three tries later, after sacrificing larger pieces of lumber for ladder stabilizers, we made it all the way up with the plywood. Drew stabilized it from the top, and after five minutes of “To the left. Now up. Wait. Maybe down a little? How does that look? Right. Just a little. Too much. Back left—but only a smidge,” Drew finally yelled, “That’s it! Hold it!” And he sank nails across the top and as far down as he could safely lean. “It’s harder than I thought it would be to hit the studs. I thought I could eyeball it, but I keep missing.” Judging from the frustration in his voice, if he’d been working alongside some friends instead of his mom, he would have peppered the statement with a half dozen curses.
“Just do the top and edges. That’ll hold it. We’ll figure out the middle,” I said, still holding tight to the plywood to keep from tipping sideways on my ladder.
“Got it. You can let go.” He disappeared behind our first solid wall.
Hope and I looked at each other, not moving. Letting go is always harder than you think it will be. When we finally climbed down and took a dozen steps back to admire our accomplishment, my stomach flipped over. The major ordeal had resulted in little more than a postage-stamp-size board on an enormous envelope. Hope and I sighed in harmony. No need to say it; we all knew this was going to be about as much fun as laying foundation block.
We walked around to the side of the house, by the unfinished garage, to get the next four-by-eight sheet, stopping beside Roman for a sample of the strength potion he’d mixed up for us. He zipped around after nom-nom-nomming an enormous bite from a green plastic shovel, throwing rocks into a puddle like they were boulders.
“Hershey likes it,” Jada said, offering some to the happy Lab. She lapped at the green-gray mud, tail wagging. “She’s going to be the strongest dog in history!”
“Any more and she’s going to puke in the car. That’s enough,” I said. Then, when Jada’s face fell toward a frown, I added, “If her powers become obvious, we’ll be overrun with people trying to steal your secret formula. Best to keep this potion a family secret.”
I held the shovel near my lips, nearly gagging at the moldy, rotten seafood smell, but I managed a string of eating noises. Hope was less convincing with her sample, but then we both made a huge show of lifting two sheets of wood like they were nothing. We made it around the corner before we had to dump one sheet off, prop it against the house, and then continue to the library corner for the next attempt.
The second sheet was a little easier, but only because it covered half of a window and Drew could hang out the larger opening to help us. Sheet number three was as slow and painful as the first had been. By the time it was up, we were all ready to go home. I had been up in the night long enough to be fully exhausted. I didn’t bother telling the kids that it would get easier or go faster next time, because they wouldn’t believe it any more than I did. It was slow, hard work. Period.
Tools and supplies loaded in the shed, and cooler, kids, and slightly ill-looking dog loaded in the car, we pulled down the long potholed driveway.
No one looked back.
We moved bedtime back an hour to pile up in front of the television with a movie and popcorn. Roman and Jada fell asleep almost immediately. I managed to eat my share of popcorn before I started dozing, but Hope and Drew were wide awake when the credits rolled. Well, their eyes were open, even if their bodies were noodle-limp with exhaustion.
I got up and turned off the television. “Get some sleep. Another big day of school tomorrow!” My attempt at cheer sounded more like mockery. They yawned, mumbled, and dragged their feet up the stairs, Drew’s feet hitting as silently as a ninja’s and Hope’s like an elephant.
Jada was too heavy for me to lug up, so I pulled Roman’s Winnie the Pooh blanket to her chin, turned out the lamp, and lifted Roman, intending to carry him to my bed. Only because I was too tired to go all the way up the stairs, I thought. But I reminded myself about the honesty pledge and admitted that it was because I was afraid. That was enough to make me stubbornly carry him up to his own bed after all. Fear wasn’t in charge of my actions anymore.
That was still sort of a lie, but it was the truth I was working toward, so I let it slide.
I climbed into bed feeling very alone. “Help me, Benjamin,” I whispered, closing my eyes almost tight enough to hold back the tears. “Help me find sleep.”
As soon as I relaxed my muscles enough to sink deep into the mattress, like I was being pressed into a pad of Play-Doh, he was there, sitting cross-legged with his eyes closed, mouth closed, and mind open. He wasn’t smiling, and I wasn’t sure my impression of him smiling the night before was right anymore. Maybe it had been a warning, a grimace. But he wasn’t there to share facial expressions that predicted the future. He meant for me to forget the future and the past and be right there in that single moment to find peace.
I did my best to throw the well-fortified walls of my mind down, to relax and be so fully myself that I became no one and everyone. I don’t know how much of that I accomplished, or even how accurate my guess of his intention was, but somewhere along the line I had stopped questioning his existence. It didn’t feel odd or embarrassing to know he was waiting in this meditation world. It felt natural and real. I drifted out, growing large enough to hold the whole house, then the country, the earth, and nearly large enough for the whole universe to fit inside me before I drifted to sleep.
The kids didn’t make a sound all night, and neither did my dreams. They were silent shadow movies with neither a benevolent nor a malevolent intent. Benjamin was never part of my dreams; they were a place he sent me alone. I faced them like I did the day, with my chin raised in a false bravado that was becoming more and more the real thing.
–14–
Fall
Loyalty Won’t Save You
I left work early to get new brakes on my car an
d made it home before the kids. Being in the house all by myself was a fantasy that almost never came true. Having Hope and Drew in elementary school and Jada in kindergarten made for a noisy life. I was smiling right up until I opened the car door and heard the god-awful noise. It was a hellacious animal cry, somewhere between a whine and a scream. It was the sound I imagined a forest animal caught in a bear trap might make. But it wasn’t in the forest; it was coming from behind my house.
Sometimes I felt ridiculous, even paranoid for being afraid of Adam years after our divorce. I wondered if he had left a paranoia seed in my mind, sending me on my own path toward insanity. But then on an ordinary day I would come home before the kids and find a note, or a knife, or hear the pained scream of an animal, and know the paranoia was justified. He was never far enough away.
“Hershey?” I yelled, tears coming even though I didn’t know for sure if the noise was her or some wild creature. I ran to the side door of the garage, wondering if it was safe and worried that the sound of my heart would announce me even over the animal shriek. I held back a sob when the scream grew louder. It was on my back porch, and since Hershey hadn’t come to greet me, I knew it had to be her.
I pulled the back door wide and was standing on the concrete slab before I realized I should have grabbed a weapon, at least a knife.
Hershey was on her back, thrashing wildly from side to side like she had a thousand times before on a hot day when she found a shady spot of tall, cool grass. Her feet were taped together with clear packing tape. Back paw to back, and front to front. Her jaw was taped shut, too, a cellophane muzzle of packing tape, but she’d worked it open enough to make that noise, that god-awful noise.
“Shhhhh,” I said, kneeling beside her and looking for wounds. The sidewalk was bloody but I couldn’t see where it was coming from. “It’s okay, I’m here, girl. I’ll get you out. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t leave you. I’m sorry.” I was bawling. Snot, tears, and sobs like I don’t think I’d ever cried before. I ran back inside and grabbed a steak knife, then returned to Hershey, trying to calm her so I wouldn’t take gouges of her hide when I sawed at the tape.
Scissors would have been better, but one of the kids had forgotten to return them to the drawer. “How many times? How many damn times have I told them to put things away? You never know when you’ll need them. When an emergency like—”
I started laughing. “An emergency like what? Like when a crazy man tortures your family pet with packing tape? That sort of emergency? Is that what my kids are supposed to plan for? Is that why I should yell at them about the damn scissors in the junk drawer?” Hershey’s mouth was free even though the tape was still stuck across the top of her muzzle and under her lower jaw. But she could open it freely now and had quieted to a pitiful, high-pitched whine, intermittent, like she only had the strength to make the sound on every other exhale.
Her front feet were separated, but I’d nicked her with the knife on the inside of her right foot. It wasn’t bad, but I would put some antibiotic cream on it. When the back feet were finally cut apart, she rolled over on her side, head in my lap, licking my hands while I rubbed her ears and spoke a million platitudes and promises.
I kissed the top of her head a dozen times, leaving a puddle of tears and snot. Her back was rubbed raw, the hair stuck in the smears of blood on the rough concrete. It wasn’t as bad as I had thought it might be when I first saw the blood. Her spine was raw and would take some time to heal. There was no way to hide it from the kids, but there was no way in hell I would tell them the truth. God no. This was too horrible to tell anyone. I felt horribly ashamed.
I took my phone out and took pictures. I hadn’t thought to take any when I had first seen her and didn’t regret that even now. It would have been inhumane to delay even a second to get her out of the tape.
“Jesus! Oh, Jesus!” I wiped a hand over my face, trying to process why anyone, how anyone—no, how Adam—had done this.
I went inside for supplies, meaning to leave Hershey on the porch and come back out to clean her up. But she stayed at my side, her left shoulder pressed against my right leg. We walked to my bathroom like that, with me bent over to keep a hand on her rib cage, rubbing and patting in comfort.
Baby oil released the worst of the tape, but not without leaving bare patches. Her muzzle was the worst, where she had torn clumps of hair out working to open it before I arrived. She sat patiently, big yellow-green eyes on me the whole time. When I washed her back and applied antibiotic cream, she panted and moved her feet in a tiny dance, barely lifting them high enough for the nails to click against the tile. But she didn’t try to get away, and she didn’t whimper. She was safe with me, and she knew it.
Even when she had calmed down and eaten a bowl of kibble and drunk two bowls of water, my hands were still shaking and I had only just stopped crying. The kids would be home any minute and my head was pounding. I crawled on the sofa with an ice-cold washcloth on my swollen eyes. Hershey lay on the floor next to me, my hand draped over her.
When the door opened, Jada yelled, “We’re home! We’re home everyone!” A silly habit she had almost outgrown now that she was in kindergarten.
I smiled from under my mask.
The kids made the expected fuss when they saw the dog, and I sat up on the sofa, keeping the washcloth over my eyes. “She’s just fine,” I told them. “Got into a little scrape. I cleaned her up and we’ll keep an eye on it until she heals.” The washcloth trick wasn’t going to work for long, and I wanted to be honest with my kids. But this time, oh God, this time was different. This time lies were going to have to do. “Give me twenty minutes to close my eyes, try to get rid of this headache. Then I’ll start supper. Do your homework!” I tried to sound enthusiastic, but just sounded forced. My voice was hoarse and my nose was stuffy.
Hershey followed me to my bedroom and stayed next to my bed while I tried to get myself together.
After a few minutes, I started feeling weak and helpless and that pissed me off. “I can’t just climb in bed with a cold washcloth on my head like some victimized woman in a black-and-white film,” I said, tossing the washcloth and sitting up. I took a hot shower with Hershey sitting outside the foggy doors, eyes never wavering from me while I washed away the last of my tears. I was done crying. No more of that nonsense for me. This was my last straw, so to speak, and I felt a surge of power with the hot water.
I stretched my shoulder muscles under the steamy spray, hands clasped and reaching for the ceiling. “It’s time to move forward. Reach for my dreams.”
Hope and I made breakfast for supper. Eggs fried over easy with a side of toast and bacon had been my comfort food since I was a little girl. We added waffles to the menu, with my secret ingredient of almond extract in the batter. I always made the kids leave the room or turn away when I added it, banging around in the cabinets and knocking jars together like it was a complicated process and a long list of secrets. Waffles had never appealed to me much, but making them always put a smile on my face. Our waffle maker made four heart-shaped waffles, and no one on the planet can make heart-shaped food for their kids without it bringing a smile. Even better, instead of it beeping, singing lovebirds chirped when the waffles were perfectly crisp on the outside but just a step past doughy on the inside. I had dropped the waffle maker in soapy water years ago, meaning only to spot-wash it, and ever since the lovebirds had squawked a terrible, shrill noise that the kids never tired of imitating and I never tired of hearing.
While we consumed too much syrup, butter, and bacon, no one asked for the details of Hershey’s injuries. They could see that I was at the edge of breaking. Even though I had put makeup on my red nose and under my eyes, it was obvious I’d been crying. And I was not one for frivolous crying. They had a general idea that it was something terrible, and Hope and Drew, at least, had no doubt who had done it. Maybe it was a survival mechanism in their own minds that warned them not to ask more, a little voice that warned that they k
new all it was safe to know without taking a trip down looney lane.
It didn’t help to remind myself that I had known he would keep coming back, that I should be prepared, that nothing he did was surprising or unexpected. I wanted him locked up. I wanted someone to protect me. But there was no place for him to go, no cure for what drove him, and no one to protect us but Karma.
I went out to fill the bird feeder while the girls did the dishes. I smiled every time I looked at the kids. Yes, I was aware that I was smiling far too much considering the circumstances. I wasn’t sure if it was a fake-it-till-you-make-it mind-set, or if lunacy was already tugging at my fingertips, calling me a step closer, just one more step.
My hands were shaking so badly that I spilled a waterfall of sunflower seeds over the side. The squirrels would be pleased. I brushed seeds from my pant leg and walked toward the door.
Something caught my eye on the little table between our lounge chairs, the one for holding a tall cold drink on a long hot day. What do you know, there was a cup there, too. A clear glass mug half filled with cloudy water and chilled with a dead, white mouse.
Something was written on the mug with a black marker, but it was smeared and melting away. Fingerprints! I thought. They could get fingerprints from those smears. The idea almost made me laugh. It wasn’t as though there were any question about who had been there.
I took a step closer, making out a few letters but intentionally trying not to read any words. The mouse wasn’t solid white after all; it had black spots. No. It had words written on it in black marker, just like the mug. His tiny front paws were stretched up, like he was reaching toward the sky, inches from escape. His eyes were open and those little paws were still.
Rise--How a House Built a Family Page 17
