Cauchemar

by Alexandra Grigorescu

Jacob braided wicker with quick fingers, his face calm and concentrated. At each errant chirp, his eyes scanned over the nests.

  “Anyways, you’ll be fine here, little bear,” Sarah Anne said as she stood up and walked over to her brother. Her fingertips hovered over his head.

  Jacob turned suddenly and grasped Sarah Anne’s thigh with one large hand under the hem of her white cotton shorts. Hannah took a step forward then stopped.

  “Stay,” Jacob said. A private look passed between the siblings.

  “We’re going to get some ice cream,” Sarah Anne said, pulling his fingers from her skin one by one. As soon as she was free, she trotted quickly toward the house. Hannah followed, sparing a backward glance for Jacob. He sat surrounded by wicker, his fingers lost between the wet red of his lips. His eyes, however, were lucid. Predatory.

  In those days, Sarah Anne’s great pastime was ice cream in the uneven shade by the river. Hannah watched as Sarah Anne licked the last bead of frothy ice cream from her hand.

  “He breaks everyone’s heart,” she said. Her cherry-red toes bobbed in and out of the murk. “The other day, he turns to my parents and says, ‘I’m sorry I won’t be able to take care of you when you’re old, because I can’t have a job.’”

  Hannah swallowed hard, a chunk of cookie dough still lodged somewhere in her chest.

  “That’s the worst part, I think. It’s bad enough to be wrong in the head, but somehow so much worse to know it.” She rolled up the cuffs of her shorts and rubbed the gooseflesh down. “As my mother always says, ‘It is what it is.’”

  “She sounds easygoing.”

  White birds swooped lazily from the willows. It was one of those beautiful moments, when Hannah could almost believe in the church of nature, in the holiness of light seeping through holes in the canopy as if God himself was punching through from above.

  “Not when she’s sober. My mother drinks,” Sarah Anne said, and shrugged. “I figure I’ll have that to look forward to. It runs in families, I’ve heard.” Sarah Anne swallowed the last bite of her cone, arcing her neck back and gulping it down. “Do you want to go for a swim?”

  Hannah shook her head.

  “Come on,” Sarah Anne goaded, standing up. She lifted her camisole up, flashing a sweet little potbelly ballooning from her ribs. “I’m bored, and too warm.” Hannah could see the bright red lines of Jacob’s fingers still on Sarah Anne’s thigh.

  “You have goosebumps,” Hannah said, around a mouthful of ice cream.

  “And you never take your clothes off. What are you hiding under there?” Sarah Anne tugged at Hannah’s cotton shirt. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

  Sarah Anne pulled off her top and Hannah stared at her training bra, edged in white cotton lace, supporting two budding mounds. Hannah turned away, crossing her arms over a flat, unremarkable chest. “Suit yourself,” Sarah Anne said.

  Hannah listened to the stubborn shedding of clothes, the muffled whine when Sarah Anne touched a toe to the water, and then the loud splash. She glanced over her shoulder and stifled a gasp. Two more unmistakable hand spans, purple fading to a hurt yellow, marred Sarah Anne’s back like wings.

  Sarah Anne was frowning into the depths of the water. “What do you suppose is down there?”

  “Lots of things. Garbage, clothes, vengeful spirits.” Hannah leaned over the edge of the water and grabbed Sarah Anne’s shoulders with a harsh “boo,” but the other girl barely reacted.

  “Do you really think there are spirits? That might leave the swamp?”

  Hannah had seen women laughing as they walked on swamp water from her bedroom window. Men pulling fishing lures from their cheeks. A stark white alligator, following her always.

  “There’s bones, too,” Hannah said, then clamped her mouth shut.

  Sarah Anne made a sound of disgust. “What kind of bones?”

  Hannah stood up and brushed off her pants. “Gator skulls, mostly. Birds and lizards. Maybe a horse skull or two.”

  Sarah Anne’s face blanched and she moved carefully back toward the bank, her palms skimming the murky water’s surface. “I had a horse once,” she murmured.

  “Have you ever seen a horse skull?”

  Sarah Anne shook her head.

  Hannah had. The day she’d first met Christobelle, she’d seen one hanging on the wall. Hannah only had to see it once, half-lit by the dim light sliding through filmy white curtains, to have nightmares for weeks. “You don’t know what you’re looking at, at first. There are holes for eyes and ears, but the rest is smooth like an anteater’s face. The mouth and nose look like a beetle’s jaw.”

  Sarah Anne splashed her. “Enough. Help me out.”

  Hannah offered her hand, resisting the brief urge to let go once Sarah Anne was braced against the muddy bank.

  “You’re so weird,” Sarah Anne added, as she put her clothes back on.

  Hannah averted her eyes, secretly pleased, and looked out over the bayou. What she didn’t say was that she dreamt vivid dreams of human skulls lodged beneath several layers of mud and silt. Worked into the curve of a discarded tire, wedged under a rock by the tide or a strong boot. Whole skeletons could be constructed from what lay under the water—a humerus too small, too young, for wide shoulders, and tibias too long for frail knees. Somewhere down the factory line, a gator skull would fit perfectly into the hook and eye of a strong, lean spine.

  “Hey, snap out of it.” Sarah Anne’s shirt was see-through where her wet bra touched it.

  “Okay,” Hannah said, and took a deep breath. “You have bruises on your back.”

  Sarah Anne gave her a flat look. “Jacob’s strong. He doesn’t know his own strength.” Her fingers traced another faded curve of fingerprints between the dip of her breasts as though adjusting a necklace. Then she smiled slyly. “I knew you were a perv, checking out my body.”

  Hannah laughed. “If your mother could see you now.”

  Sarah Anne shrugged. “I’d say it was your bad influence.” Her face was unreadable, her rosebud mouth as still as plaster.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  Hannah placed slices of apple into a glass dish and sprinkled them with ground cloves. Every few seconds, she’d dip her face close to the fruit and sniff deeply. The smell of licorice and star anise was wafting from somewhere in the kitchen, below it the sure, sweet scent of something rotting.

  “Something’s spoiled,” she muttered to herself and heard Callum stir over his pile of scattered papers on the table behind her.

  They’d been circling each other warily. The previous night was still vivid in Hannah’s mind. Every so often, she’d tried to understand his side of it, tried to put herself in his skin, but found she couldn’t. And yet, if she searched herself, she knew her love for him was strong as ever, although cowed.

  Throughout the day, she’d stood outside whichever room he was in, about to speak her mind. But what would she say? How would she explain that the sense of safety and succor that he’d given her was gone? He might tell her to grow up. Worse, he might be right.

  “I’m thinking of selling the apartment,” Callum said tentatively. “It’d give us some extra cash, to get ready for the baby.”

  Hannah slid the dish of fruit compote into the oven, then rubbed her swollen belly. She was still amazed at the firmness she felt there, and how the skin stretched to accommodate it. “You should.”

  “I could plant a pear tree out back here, and we could make jam. You could sell jars of it, if you wanted.” They sounded like the words of a man gingerly trying to create a glossy vision of the future.

  “I like oranges better. Besides, orange trees will grow better out here.”

  “Oranges, then. So, I’ll be living here? Unless you’d rather I get myself a nice big appliance box and put down some blankets, park myself somewhere under an awning in town.”r />
  “Haven’t you already been living here?” Hannah asked, breaking open an egg. Yolk oozed out through the serrated crack. “I could’ve sworn you have.” The image of Callum and Leah together flashed in her mind like a rogue reel spliced into a film.

  “I was also thinking about some additions to the house. Maybe add a little wooden wraparound porch? We could stick some rocking chairs out front and be proper Southern old-timers.”

  How many times had she wanted a place to read in the shade? She had a pleasing vision of herself in an apron, bending over as she served him sweet tea, but she wasn’t ready to give ground. She tried to summon up the trust that had come so easily just days before, but found only a meanness that worried her.

  “Have you given any more thought to what we talked about last night? Marriage, I mean?”

  Hannah carefully worked a mound of fresh, ripe mozzarella against the grater. “As a concept?”

  “Don’t be evasive,” he said quietly. She felt him behind her, his breath as slight as a butterfly’s wings, and as strong as a gale. “I know we’ve been quick about everything, and I know I fucked up, but I want to know it’s something we can talk about. Unless it isn’t.”

  Hannah drifted, almost feeling the veil, edged in white rosebuds, outlining her satin-clad, rounded body. She imagined Callum standing tall and anxious in a penguin suit, beaming when he saw her. Her ring finger tingled, and she let it slip against the edge of the grater. “How can you ask me that right now? After what happened?” The words tumbled out.

  “I’m so sorry. It shouldn’t have happened and you have to know it won’t ever again. Hannah, I’d take it back in a second.”

  The sizzle of the oil was deafening. She watched the egg solidify, and touched her stomach again. A deep, self-sufficient strength would be necessary to raise a child alone. Mae had it, but she couldn’t count on having inherited it.

  “Of course we can talk about it,” she said, through gritted teeth. “I guess we should, eventually, for when the baby comes.” The concept was still abstract for her.

  He rested his chin on her shoulder and she smelled grappa, pungent and rich, on his breath. She wondered how much he drank, and how often, and remembered the drummer’s words.

  “Good. I just wanted to venture. Poke around a bit,” he said, tapping the side of her head, “in this busy head of yours.”

  Callum’s eyes were milky from a week of post-midnight shows, and she’d spied him massaging his head with a grimace. She wondered how often he’d snuck away with Leah when Hannah hadn’t been around to stop him.

  “This busy head is filled with some unpleasant images,” she said. “It’ll take awhile to erase them.”

  “I know,” he said, and squeezed her waist. “However long it takes. You just have to keep talking to me.”

  She turned her face so it rested against his. It felt so simple to turn a bit more, run her lips over his soft beard. “Poke away,” she whispered, inching her hips back. He rolled his head back and she watched his neck working, valves closing and veins pumping like a hydraulic machine.

  He lowered his eyes abruptly and looked beyond her. “The omelet’s burning.”

  “Shit,” she muttered, flicking the stove off. “Can you take the ice cream out of the freezer? It’s a weird dinner, I know.” She squeezed her legs together, dampening frustration.

  “One day, we’ll stop burning food, I promise.” His lips on the small of her back made her whole body convulse. She broke out in goosebumps. “I can take the ice cream out,” he conceded, and lifted her skirt.

  The next day, affection came easier, at least outwardly. The day after, Callum skipped a show, and massaged her feet as they sat on the couch and played cards. Time healed wounds, Hannah realized, or at least scabbed them. The trust was still gnarled, like a tree grown wrong after a lightning strike, but it held. With each day, Callum’s small kindnesses warmed her heart and even coaxed her into returning them.

  “I can go get groceries,” Callum said, his head hidden under the kitchen sink. “Just let me tighten up these pipes.”

  Hannah shook her head. “I’m stuck in this house all day, every day, while you get to sail the whole damn South. Let me.”

  “You’re supposed to lie supine while I feed you grapes and fan you with palm leaves.”

  “Nine months of that sounds like prison. I need to get out a bit.”

  “Want me to come with?” he asked, sitting up.

  Hannah gathered her purse against her chest in answer. Callum’s sleeves were pushed high over his elbows, his face flushed. A Band-Aid dangled from one of his toes. “No. I want to come back to this, to you looking just like you do now.”

  But the closer she looked, the wearier he seemed. Bruised half-moons hung from his eyes, and even his lips were white-tinged and parched. Serves you right, she thought, thinking of them moving against Leah’s iridescent mouth, then regretted it.

  “Have you been sleeping okay?” she asked.

  He scratched his arm. “Not the best, no. I’ve been having bad dreams.”

  “What about?”

  “Oh, you know,” he said lightly. “Losing you.”

  “You haven’t yet,” she said, and kissed him gently on the forehead.

  The back of the house sloped quickly onto marshlands, while a saunter out the front door showed woods, broken up by the occasional road or grassy clearing. Beyond the miles of trees and wet sod were other houses that valued their privacy and wanted for little. They grew what they could and took the boat into town for what they could not. The small stretches of crops were well camouflaged by the greenery, but fat Creole tomatoes winked through wire cages, and she spied the copper hue of sweet potatoes, unearthed by some animal, under green leaves.

  The path to the main road was easy to find amidst the yellowing grass, and she touched the landmarks as she passed them. An old cypress with a deep gash in its side, a toppled fence with neon piping tied around the fence posts, a fallen tree that had been hollowed out by wildlife.

  She thought of the first time Mae had led her up the trail, holding her hand, Hannah’s eyes fixed on the backs of Mae’s taut calves. Bold yellow flashed between the green then as now, and Mae had taught her how to spot Cercosporidium blight on Leyland cypress trees.

  “Blight is right,” Mae had said, stroking the rotting wood. “It becomes pandemic. The fungi travels through airborne spores and affects the lower branches first.” Wherever her fingers touched, the sickly yellow needles fell like rain.

  Almost immediately, she thought of the last time she’d crossed the fence for Mae, and felt an irrational pinch of panic for Callum.

  A branch cracked to her left and she jumped.

  “Just me,” Martha said, her braid flipping back as she pulled a canoe down the wooded slope. “Can you help me put this in the water?” Martha dropped the rope and fit the paddle into the hull.

  Hannah took a step forward, then eyed the exposed roots. She rubbed her belly. “I’m not sure I should.”

  Martha’s eyes widened as she followed the movement of Hannah’s hand. “Since when?”

  “About three months.”

  Martha stepped forward, her arms extended, and Hannah sunk gratefully into the older woman’s arms. They’d always been a poor substitute for Mae’s, but Martha knew where to circle her palm to ease the knots in someone’s back. She cupped Hannah’s head as though supporting a baby’s, and Hannah smelled fish and ginger on the woman’s neck.

  “Sweet child. Congratulations.” She pulled back and pursed her lips. “Who’s the father? I hope you know.”

  Hannah blushed. The woman had known her all her life, and had steered Hannah in her straight-talking, fisherman’s way. She found that she feared Martha’s anger, which was legendary for being so rarely seen. It was solemn, unbending, and filled with that worst of adult feelings: disappoi
ntment.

  “The father’s Callum. You would’ve met him at Mae’s funeral. He ferried people over.” Hannah bit her lip.

  Martha raised her eyebrows but only said, “That was fast.”

  “Would she be cross with me?” Hannah asked.

  Martha shook her head, chuckling. “No, child. You’ve got to be careful who you let into your life, but he’s handsome and looks to be strong-armed. There are far worse ways to make a living in the bush than driving a boat. You just make sure he’s got an even temperament. I cooled real fast on my ex after a few months of his ups and downs.” Martha winked at her. “Good for you, but why are you out in the woods where you could trip on any damn thing?”

  “I insisted.”

  “Do me a favor, honey.” Martha leant in. “Insist less. Come on, this can stay here for a bit. I’ll walk you back.”

  “We need some things for dinner,” Hannah said. “Please, I want to go.”

  Martha looked sideways at her, then sighed. “Far be it for me to try and tell you what to do. You’re nearly a mother yourself now, and I remember how restless I was in those final months, being trapped in the house. Be careful and be back before dark.” She gathered the rope in a fist and hoisted the paddle under her other arm. “Mind me, child.”

  Hannah nodded and waved. She stood in place until the red canoe was swallowed by the general green.

  When she reached the road, the sky was darkening. Hannah had the sense of being watched, although she knew to expect the eyes of birds and crickets and maybe even young bears that couldn’t help but mark her passage. She whistled softly under her breath to distract herself, some half-remembered playground rhyme. The wind picked up as if in answer and bent the trees down toward her. She glimpsed it then, a swipe of white in the dark woods.

  Hannah whistled louder and fixed her eyes on the road ahead, walking faster. In the silence between breaths, she heard a tree groan. Look ahead, she commanded herself but her shoulders trembled with the effort. The road seemed to lengthen before her.

  There was a noise behind her, like teeth chattering, like a tongue clapping against the roof of its mouth. The sound was sucked from the woods until all Hannah could hear was the clicking.