Where the Broken Lie
Derek Rempfer
Copyright © 2012 Author Name
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-938750-14-4
The book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without the permission of the publisher. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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DEDICATION
To all of you I love.
For all of you I miss.
Today
I see half the beauty I used to see and twice as much despair.
I’ve got twice as much ambivalence and half as much of care.
I hear half your words of sympathy, but none of them console.
I’ve got half a heart and half a mind and half of me is hole.
This cross is twice as heavy, but I’m feeling half as strong.
Today is half of yesterday, but the nights are twice as long.
I’m stumbling through the darkness only half way in control.
I’ve got half a heart and half a mind and half of me is hole.
I burn with twice the rage and I’m only half forgiving.
I’ve got twice as many children, only half of them are living.
I have twice the faith I used to have but pray with half a soul,
Cause it’s hard to feel complete when only half of you is whole.
Lost
Sometimes lost is just a word. Other times it’s life changing. It’s the sharp edge of forever.
“KA-TIE! KA-TIE! KA-TIE COOO-PERRR!”
“What about the park—has anybody checked at the park?”
“Yes, they checked the park. She’s not there.”
“What about Ike’s? Anybody look up there?”
“Ike’s closed two hours ago.”
“Well maybe she got locked inside somehow. Somebody should go check.”
At some point, I fell asleep on the living room couch, which was where I was when Mom nudged me awake in the early darkness of the next morning. She didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. A mother can tell her child a lot of things with just a look.
And my mother’s look told me that Katie Cooper was dead.
There were things inside me once that are gone forever now, replaced by something harder. It started that day. Katie Cooper’s death was the day I started to die, and Ethan’s death is what finished me off.
I walk into the room where my only son lies in an open casket. It is the second hardest thing I will ever have to do.
Tammy couldn’t bring herself to see him like this, so I come here on my own, which I actually prefer. I can be selfish with my pain. Wrap myself up in it without having to be strong for anyone else. It will be our final moment as father and son.
I have never hyperventilated before, but this must be what it feels like. My chest heaves, my stomach swells, and I can’t catch my breath. Swallowed screams cut my throat.
I edge toward him.
Ethan’s face is as bruised and battered as it had been at the hospital two nights earlier. He will never heal. There is nothing for me to do but say goodbye. I stand over him and cry. My tears fall onto his face and I rub them into his skin so that a part of me is buried within him.
I kiss him one last time and stroke his hair. I tell him I love him. And then I turn and walk out of that room where my only son lies in an open casket. It’s the hardest thing I will ever have to do.
I will never heal—old Tucker is every bit as dead as his son.
Who the hell am I now?
The answer to that question, perhaps, can be found in Willow Grove.
There’s an old couple that lives in an old house in a little town in the Midwest. The old couple are my grandparents and the house is my childhood home, which Grandpa and Grandma bought back into the Gaines family when my mom remarried. The town—Willow Grove, Illinois—is where I attended my first day of kindergarten, my last day of high school, and all school days in between. I have walked its sidewalks as a son and as a father. On its streets, I have pulled my Radio Flyer and driven my Dodge Caravan. In its open fields, I have lain. The town remembers me and, like a lonely old man, it reminds me of my forgotten stories whenever I visit. I have gone back to this place more times than I have left it, and it will probably always be this way, for my childhood still lives and breathes in the green grasses and the tall trees of this—my hometown.
It’s the first Saturday of May, and the mid-spring air warms my skin. The citizens of Willow Grove are planting flowers, painting shutters, riding bikes. As I drive through town, I recognize faces, but I don’t wave. Try to not even look, but can’t help myself. The Abbot’s house, once pea green, is now sweet-corn yellow. The Huber’s driveway is freshly blacktopped. A few other changes here and there, but mainly everything is the same as ever.
Old Man Keller rolls down the middle of Fourth Street on his Cub Cadet as if he owns the road, and I suppose an argument can be made that he does. That old lawn tractor has probably logged more hours on these streets than any other vehicle in town history. He has been mowing lawns in this town since he was a kid, back when lawn mowing was a much quieter whirring and snippy activity, and when the Old Man doesn’t have a lawn to mow, he rides around town on that old tractor.
He stops his Cub Cadet in its tracks and waves for me to slow down.
“How you doin’, Tuck?” he yells over a sputtering engine.
“All right, I guess. How about you, Alvin?”
“Good, good, doin’ good. Well, I heard you might be coming back for a stay. It’ll be nice seeing you around.”
I’ve spent too many years in Willow Grove to be surprised by Old Man Keller knowing about my visit.
“Yep. See you around,” I say, pulling away.
Nice enough old guy, Keller, but I sure can’t imagine living his grass-mowing life. His wife is a nurse at the county hospital so cutting grass in the summer and plowing snow in the winter probably paid enough for the Old Man and the Old Woman. I often wonder what kind of thoughts the Old Man has riding atop that tractor. Plenty of time for thinking, that’s for sure. At some point, you’ve got to figure he asked the good Lord what his life’s purpose was and the answer he got back was Cut the grass, Alvin.
Rather than cross the railroad tracks that divide the town, I slow to a stop when I reach them and take long looks each way, wondering where those trains ever come from and where they ever go. The trains never stop in Willow Grove, they just roar through. It was along these tracks that Katie Cooper’s body had been found so many years ago.
As my eyes linger on the empty landscape of rock and weed, gruesome images of blood and flesh play in my mind, fabricated long ago to fit with the stories I had heard. Katie’s half-naked body lying in the tall grass, a cluster of interested crows cawing from the telephone wires above. Her eyes open wide in a dead stare and her mouth agape, framed by blood-crusted lips. Those green eyes had looked into mine countless times. Those pretty lips had kissed my cheek just once.
Off in the distance, a single light flickers like a solitary star. Perhaps it’s Katie or Ethan. Who knows? The light grows larger, moves toward me. Loud bells ding-ding-ding, and the crossing gates lower. I let my foot off the brake and ro
ll off the tracks, just under one of the gate’s falling arms.
I slow my car to a stop on the blacktop driveway that had just been a mess of grass and gravel when I had lived here. And even from here I can see that the stairs leading up to the second-story sun porch thirst for paint and would easily soak up two or three coats.
It’s such a warm secret of a room, that sun porch. Grandma once told me that this house had served as the home and office of the town doctor many years ago. The story goes that the doctor had a daughter who had contracted tuberculosis and was unable to leave her bed, much less the house. The doctor had the sun porch built so his little girl could spend her waking (and dying) hours nearer to the outdoors she so loved and missed. I didn’t hear that story until many years after I’d moved out of the house, and I’m glad because it would have made the room something other than it was for me.
The little girl supposedly died in that room, but you couldn’t feel it. You didn’t feel the hopelessness of the little girl who died in that room. You felt the love of the father who built it. Surely it was a desperate and helpless love at the time, but not anymore. Now it’s simply love in its purest form. Still, I can see the mourning father defiantly pouring his heart, his soul, and all things earthly into providing his dying child a warm room closer to the heavens but still within his reach. Like some sort of desperate compromise offered to God with knee bent and fist raised.
May this room stand forever.
Such a beautiful place, this home. I’m beginning to feel connected to something for the first time in weeks.
Inside, Grandma and Grandpa are sitting in the living room, doing what they do: her knitting in her chair and him reading a magazine with a hooked fish on the cover. The television isn’t on, but the local news blares from the kitchen radio. Savory smells float in from the kitchen.
Grandma puts her knitting to the side and greets me with a hug. “I was beginning to wonder if you was lost.”
“Hi, Grandma.” I bend to kiss her. “No, not lost, just taking a look around, you know. Those back stairs could use some paint.”
“Yep, it’s on your list,” she says.
“List?”
Grandpa rises with one strong hand extended, the other clasped on my shoulder. “Oh, she’s got a whole list of things for you to do.” He tips back in an exaggerated manner and looks up at me as if he’s staring at a California Redwood. “My goodness, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to having to look up at you, Tuck. At least I’m still better looking.”
“No arguments there,” I say, enduring Grandpa’s overly firm handshake. “So what’s this list about, Grandma?”
“Your list of chores,” she says. “You didn’t think you was going to board here for free, did you, Tuck?”
She laughs, and it’s her laugh. High pitched and bursting, as if she’s gotten a love pinch on the behind. That’s how Grandma Gaines always laughs. As if something inside her can’t be contained.
“No, I suppose not, Grandma. So I’m painting the back stairs, what else do you have planned for me?”
“One thing at a time, dear. One thing at a time.”
… so Tucker is back in Willow Grove. Not for the first time, of course, but it had been a while. And it always made him nervous. Even now. Seeing Tucker meant being reminded of Katie Cooper and everything that happened back then. That overplayed nightmare memory still so fresh in his mind and in the collective mind of Willow Grove …
The next morning, with Grandma knitting and Grandpa tinkering with something in the garage, I go off on my own. I’m worn out from chasing my racing thoughts, so I try to walk away from them instead.
I don’t get far.
I stop in the middle of Madison Street and quietly watch as a man I once knew weeds his flower garden. On hands and knees, clawing and scratching at earth with a harnessed vigor, he tosses the flower killers over his shoulder with something like ruthlessness. At least that’s how I see it. To most, an old man tending his garden represents peaceful nurturing. But when I see Howard Cooper, I remember his beautiful daughter lying inside an open casket with her hands folded unnaturally across her chest, which I really did see. And I see her violent death, which I did not see but imagined a thousand times.
He stands, and he’s not as tall as he once was. He takes off his cap and reveals what few hairs the years had left him with. From a side pocket of his overalls, he pulls out a red handkerchief and uses it to wipe his brow and his near-bald head. He turns in my direction and squints at me as hard as one might squint at the sun. I want to call out to him but can’t decide whether I should refer to him as Mr. Cooper or Howard. It would be silly for me to call him Mr. Cooper, so I quickly rehearse saying, “Howard” under my breath. I should call him Howard. I’m a grown man, after all.
“Hi, Mr. Cooper,” I say.
“Well, I’ll be,” he says with a smile that crept in from a memory. He tosses his gloves on the ground and waves me over.
“It’s good to see you, Mr. Cooper.”
“It’s good to be seen.”
He keeps his eyes on me but sends his voice inside the house. “Mother, come on out here in the garden. I want to show you how things have grown.”
I smile and look down where I see a feather laying at my feet. No, not at my feet. On my feet. My breath catches in my throat and I feel my smile fade.
Mr. Cooper puts his hand on my back and walks me toward his house. But not before I bend down and pick up that feather.
A month after losing Ethan, Tammy and I were desperate to find some sort of meaning in his death. The universe owed us something it didn’t seem willing to pay. And as the universe consistently fell short of our expectations, we consistently lowered them.
In our never-ending quest for signs and wonders, Tammy and I had visited Lady Denise, a local psychic. She lived out in the country in a two-story farmhouse shingled in an uninspired brown. The roof was checkered with missing tiles and had a slight left-to-right downward slant. The house was surrounded by several small shacks and a large hay barn that at one time must have been proud with red but now stood gray and humbled. The gravel driveway curved around to the back of the house where we saw any variety of animals wandering the yard. Cats, chickens, a pig, wild turkeys, goats, geese, and even llamas. On the far side of the lot was a kennel that housed two chesty Rottweilers who seemed ready to dispel us of any “bark worse than bite” notions we might have had.
We got out of the car and walked toward the house where the front door swung loose from its top hinge. Invisible chimes jingled, and the gentle wind softly proclaimed. The dogs stopped barking and Lady Denise suddenly appeared before us in the doorway with a black lab at her side.
“Oh, hi. I’m Tucker Gaines, and this is my wife, Tammy. I called yesterday.”
She was barefoot and dressed in blue jeans and a white t-shirt. She had long white-blonde hair, bright red fingernails and toenails, and contradicted the image of a psychic I had in my head.
“Have a seat at the table,” she said with a welcoming gesture. “I’m going to get something to drink. Can I get you anything?”
“No, thank you,” Tammy and I both said.
We moved to the dining room where a tabby cat slinked over and curled itself around my leg. The house was cluttered and gave me an uneasy feeling that kept me from sitting down or touching anything. The rooms felt old, and rays of sunlight exposed the dust that hung in the air. On one light-blue dining room wall hung a painting of a close-eyed Virgin Mary holding a baby and resting on a cloud surrounded by an army of angels.
The front door slammed shut behind us. We spun around to see that Lady Denise had somehow crept back into the room without our noticing and was already sitting on the opposite side of the dining room table, a half-empty glass of lemonade in front of her.
“You are being followed,” she informed us without smile or sinister. “Please, have a seat.”
Suddenly, I felt silly and sinful. What was I really expecting to happe
n here? I glanced around for a crystal ball.
There was nothing dramatic in our forty-five minutes with Lady Denise, but it did bring us peace somehow. She had a quiet, soothing manner and commanded trust when she spoke. Probably because the things she spoke were things we wanted to hear. As we were leaving, Lady Denise put her hand on my left wrist and, eyes bright with conviction, told me to watch for feathers.
“Feathers will be Ethan’s way of letting you know he is with you.”
“Thank you for this,” I said awkwardly. “How much do we owe you?”
“Nothing. I don’t charge for grief counseling. It’s my way of giving thanks for my gifts.”
One evening a week later, I sat alone in my basement dizzy on vodka. Any sense of peace and acceptance that Lady Denise had managed to instill in me was long gone. Her words and comfort diluted with drink until they lost all potency. A sudden fury welled up from inside me and I began punching the pillow I had been clutching. When my rage burned out, I tossed the pillow to the floor and sat back against the couch. Then, right in front of my face, one perfect tiny white pillow-feather drifted down and landed in my open palm as soft and as light as an answered prayer.
Mrs. Cooper pours me lemonade from a glass pitcher. Her dark auburn hair has thin streaks of gray, which run exactly where you would paint them were you the painter. She puts the pitcher down on a small wrought iron table and tucks some of that lovely hair behind her ears the same way her daughter used to. The same way my daughter does now. The same way every little girl ever has. The corners of Betty Cooper’s mouth used to curl upward in a beautiful Mona Lisa sort of way, and I used to wonder what secrets must be hidden away in there. I say that they used to curl upward because I notice while eating her cookies and drinking her lemonade that they don’t anymore. There’s a stormy torment that clouds her face these days. She’s every bit the small town beauty she had been years back, but behind her glassy green eyes there is a sadness that had not always been there. A gentle anguish where there had once been a flowing peace.
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