Watch Over Me

by Christa Parrish

  He woke on the bedroom floor, head propped on a pile of clean laundry, Silvia asleep on his chest. Sliding his hand beneath her cheek, damp with sweat and drool, he moved her to the small area rug in front of the dresser and covered her with a blanket. Then he twisted right, left, cracking his stiff back.

  He’d come out of the room only once last night. Abbi was in the basement; he heard the sewing machine, and she must have heard him walking, floorboards shifting beneath his weight. But she didn’t come up to him, and he grabbed the bottle she’d already prepared for the baby and went back to the crib room.

  Despite the hard bed, he had no nightmares. Hadn’t had any since Silvia came, at least not the kind with teeth, the half memory, half horror movies that made him scream and shake and hide in the bathroom, in the dry tub, waiting for Abbi to give up asking to come in. He’d stay there, too, curled up with the towels piled around him, staring at the night-light through the shower curtain, the one Abbi crafted by ironing layers of plastic grocery bags together. He’d always made sure he was back in bed before she woke, and then he started sleeping on the couch, or away from home—in his car, at work—so she wouldn’t hear him reliving things over and over again.

  He slept differently with the baby, though, never far enough down for the nightmares to find him. The sleep of a parent, always aware, waiting for a cry, or worse. The sleep of a soldier, with one eye open.

  Getting off the floor, he carried Silvia to the bedroom. Abbi lay in bed, back toward him, sheet covering half her face. He put the baby into the Moses basket and pushed the wicker gently against Abbi. He didn’t know if she was sleeping or not.

  He was still in his uniform pants. He changed into a fresh pair, shaved, and left the house and headed over to the closest fast-food joint—Burger King—and ordered two large hash browns and a coffee. He didn’t need to be at work for another forty-five minutes.

  He ate the first sleeve of potatoes, pouring them into his mouth, as he drove past Wesley’s house. Stopped, backed the Durango down the road and onto Wesley’s lawn. Getting out of the truck, he closed the door noiselessly. When he moved his hand, he saw his greasy fingerprints on the navy paint. Finally, he willed himself to the front door. Knocked. Renée Wesley opened, house robe buttoned to her neck, three bald poodles yapping at her feet. “Ben, you all right?”

  “Yeah. Is Wes . . . Ray around?”

  “Come in. Come in. Ray,” she shouted, “door’s for you. Can I get you some coffee? Something cold?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  Wesley lumbered into the room, suspenders over his undershirt, plush football-shaped slippers on his feet. He was a tree trunk of a man, chest as wide as a window, a soft layer of small-town monotony wrapped around his muscles. “I’m off today.”

  “I know,” Benjamin said.

  Wesley nodded. “Go check on that paper, Reenie.” She shuffled out, dogs following. “Want to sit?”

  “Let’s go outside.” Some things couldn’t be discussed in living rooms decorated with swags of plastic flowers and lace doilies on the armrests.

  In the driveway, Benjamin leaned back against the side of his car, hands in his pockets, mirror grinding against his ribs. He thought back to the day he found Silvia, to those kids, standing much the same way. “I’m not fine,” he said.

  “Don’t suppose you are.”

  “I don’t know what to do about it.”

  “You asking me?” Wesley snorted a quick, noisy puff of air from his nose. “Can’t go around ignoring it, pretending it’s not there. It finds its way out somehow. Mine in my anger. Yours in . . . what? No sleeping, no eating, from the looks of it. Probably more, since you’re standing here. Sometimes it chews its way through, like it did with my pops. He served in the second war, came home and never spoke a word of it to anyone, not even my mother. He’d watch The Longest Day and try to wipe the tears before we saw them. Drank cream for his ulcers, until they got so bad his stomach bled and all those sores turned to cancer. That’s how it got him. It gets everyone, I’m telling you.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Lost everything. You don’t want to go my way.”

  “And after that?”

  “Scratched my way out. I’m still scratching.”

  “That’s it?” Benjamin said, angry. He had expected solutions, not . . . whatever this was.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want . . . I want to know how to make it stop.”

  “I can’t say it does. It just gets less.” Wesley opened the screen door to his house; it squeaked, bounced closed behind him. He pressed his spongy face into the screening, looking woven, distorted, monstrous. “Patil.”

  Benjamin waited.

  “You go home and tell Abbi that this ain’t her fault.”

  “She knows that.”

  “Tell her anyway.”

  She stood in front of the stove, arm stretched long, awkward, wooden spoon stirring the pot, unable to get closer because of the bulge at her middle. Silvia slept in the sling, and from the side Abbi looked pregnant, her hand resting on the lump, pushing the baby back from the gas flame. Benjamin came beside her, peered at the curried vegetables simmering and tinged yellow with spiciness. “The cauliflower was going bad,” she said. “I had to use it.”

  “Smells fine.”

  “Do you want her? She fell asleep maybe ten minutes ago.”

  “No. She looks good on you.”

  She didn’t respond, kept stirring, mushing the potatoes with the back of the spoon, trying hard not to look at him. He reached around, his hand covering the one she protected Silvia with, his fingers slipping between hers. “It’s not you,” he said.

  The stirring stopped, her eyes still on the stove top, her nose growing pink, like a tomato in time-lapse photography. She rubbed her eye with the inside of her wrist, sniffled, and scraped the spoon around the side of the pot. “The curry,” she said. “I think I put in too much.”

  “It’s perfect.” He took two dishes from the draining rack. “I’ll set the table.”

  Chapter SEVENTEEN

  Abbi knelt in the hole in her backyard, packing vases and pots into the sawdust and manure lining the bottom, and then sat on the edge and rolled out. She emptied boxes of Epsom salt over the bundles. After wiping the grit from her right eye with her shoulder, she lugged a sledgehammer from the shed and swung it at the wood pallets piled near the hole. The feedstore had given them to her for free; she needed only to haul them away. She’d crammed most of them in the back of her Volvo and tied the rest to the top.

  The brittle wood splintered, pieces bouncing off at her ankles, but she continued to whack away, directing her frustration at the pallets. Using a rake and shovel, she scooped the pallet fragments into a wheelbarrow and, when she’d finished gently lining the hole with the larger pieces, dumped the scraps over them, stuffing wads of newsprint in the cracks. She went inside, leaving Silvia napping in the basket outside, and rummaged through the junk drawer until she found a butane lighter. Flicked the button. Again. No flame. She dropped it on the kitchen counter and continued to dig, pulled out a book of matches. Back at the hole, she lit the newspapers and stood watching until the wood ignited and the flames rose up.

  She carried Silvia’s basket with her, set her in the hallway outside the bathroom, and showered with the door open. After drying, she dressed in a tank top and recycled sari skirt and flopped onto the bed, legs spread on the cool sheets, arms stretched over her head. Her muscles ached, but in a good way, and she sighed in contented exertion. She turned her head toward the nightstand; Benjamin had left his socks there again.

  Things were better between them, and worse. She saw him looking at her sometimes, a little bit like he used to look at her before the war. He said good night and good morning now, kissed her cheek when he returned from work, touched her in safe places—stroked her index finger with his, tugged her hair—still, he was touching her. But the small victories only magnified the hours
between, when he wasn’t Benjamin, but a ghost of himself, and made Abbi crave more than he seemed able to give.

  She heard pounding outside the house, a woman’s voice shouting and banging against the front door, the picture window in the living room. Abbi jumped up to answer the door, ignoring Silvia, who woke at the noise and screamed. Janet was gasping on the patio step. “There’s a fire in your backyard,” she said.

  “I want it there,” Abbi told her. “I’m sorry. I should have let you know.”

  “Are you burning trash?”

  “Pottery. I’m firing . . . Oh, just come in while I get the baby.”

  Abbi gathered the infant from the basket, shushing and bouncing her until she started to hiccup and the blotches on her face dissolved. Then she carried Silvia back to Janet and said, “I’ll show you,” and they crossed through the kitchen and outside, standing away from the fire, the flames already beginning to burn down. “I’m pit-firing some of the pottery.”

  “Not your floral ones?”

  “Gosh, no. I’m just playing around with this. I fire my good stuff in the kiln.”

  Janet peeked over at the shed. “You’re still making those?”

  “Not as often as I’d like. But, yeah.”

  “I wasn’t sure. You haven’t shown me anything new . . . in a while.”

  “It’s been a bit hectic around here.”

  “Oh, I know,” Janet said. “I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I just like seeing them.”

  Abbi scuffed the toe of her sandal in the grass, crushed green blades sticking to the cork. When Janet first learned she was a potter, she had been fascinated by Abbi’s work, and Abbi enjoyed having someone with whom to share her creations. But she had pulled away from that, too, especially as it became harder to pretend everything was hunky-dory in her life. She didn’t have the energy to play happy, even for the short time it took to show off a vase. But she said, “I have a few pieces in there now,” because as much as she’d been trying to avoid her neighbor, she was tired of speaking to walls. She had Genelise, but phone conversations weren’t the same as face-to-face, and anyone she was face-to-face with lately—Benjamin, Matthew, Silvia—didn’t talk back.

  She missed Lauren.

  How long had it been since they’d spoken? Thirteen months, at least. After three years rooming together in college, after she introduced Abbi to Benjamin, after their double wedding, after spending some part of every day together while Benjamin and Stephen were deployed, flinching at ringing telephones, watching CNN hours upon hours, waiting for e-mails or letters—after all that—Lauren’s absence left a huge void.

  Not by Abbi’s choice. She had stayed by Lauren’s side through it all. It had been easy, too, when she could go home and feel Benjamin next to her in bed. And Lauren made it easy; she didn’t mope or hide, spending weeks in her pajamas with the shades drawn or crying each time she saw a news segment on Afghanistan. She acted . . . normal.

  Until one day, after Abbi asked her to go out for a movie, Lauren said, “I can’t.”

  “Okay, we can do it tomorrow.”

  “No, I can’t. I just can’t do this. Anymore.”

  “What? Do what?”

  “See you.”

  “Lauren, whatever I did, I’m sorry. I would never—”

  “You didn’t do anything. Not really.”

  “Not really? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “When I see you, I think of Stephen. I think how Ben’s still here, and Stephen . . . He isn’t.”

  “So then, what? You’re blaming me for Ben being alive? How is that my fault?”

  Lauren lowered her head. “It’s not.”

  “Then what—?”

  “It’s God. I see you, and I get so angry at God for taking him. I don’t want to feel like this. I can’t.”

  “Laur—”

  “Don’t call me. I’ll . . . give you a ring when I’m ready.”

  And Abbi had listened, praying—still praying—her friend would call.

  She unlatched the door, hand unsteady with her memories, and stepped inside, watched the flecks of dust hovering, suspended, in the stream of light pouring in through the lone window. Reaching down, she plugged the standing lamp into the orange extension cord that ran from the outlet at the back of the house, and then flicked it on. More light, more dust. More shadows. “Here.”

  A metal utility shelf climbed one wall, ceramic pieces in various stages of completion on the shelves. Janet looked at the finished ones.

  “I love this,” she said, picking a vase from the top shelf, there because of its height, nearly two feet tall and shaped like a long lily bud, the tips starting to open, each petal curling back and stamped with tiny floral vines. An earthy green glaze dripped from the top down to a smooth rust-colored finish. A thin, dark ruffle of clay grew up and surrounded the bottom half of the flower. “Oh, and this one.” She pointed to a pitcher, the handle twisting like a tree branch and ending in a cluster of leaves, each one hand-sculpted with realistic detail. “Have you sold any lately?”

  “Most people aren’t paying two seventy-five for some clay and paint.”

  “And how many hours of your time? Fifteen? Twenty? They’re worth it.”

  “I guess.” Silvia’s head bobbed against Abbi’s shoulder; the infant sucked on her fist and squeaked with frustration. “I have to go in and feed her,” she told Janet.

  “I don’t mind sitting and chatting over a bottle,” Janet said. “If you don’t mind.”

  “If you want. Grab that jar on the stump there, will you? It’s sun tea.”

  Inside, she tried to prepare a bottle one-handed and dropped it. It bounced off the corner of the counter and broke. She brushed the glass shards beneath the counter with her feet; she’d sweep them later. Now she needed to feed Silvia, who wailed with hunger.

  “Here, let me hold her,” Janet said.

  “Yeah, okay.” Abbi gave her the baby and filled another bottle with formula. Janet took it and sat at the table, Silvia tucked in a cradle hold; she talked to the baby as she fed her, voice lilting and effortless. Abbi poured two glasses of the warm herbal tea and added ice. “It’s unsweetened. Do you want sugar? Or, I have agave.”

  “No, I like it like this.” Janet burped Silvia, shifted her to the other arm. “Hi, little girl. Yes, hello. You’re so hungry, aren’t you? Drink up. That’s right. Drink up and grow big and strong.”

  Abbi never spoke to Silvia like that. She talked to her about practical things—how to sew a diaper, how to peel an avocado, giving step-by-step instructions, more to fill the silence than anything else.

  She wasn’t sure she’d ever get the hang of the mothering thing. “You’re good at that.”

  “Lots of practice. You remember, I have nine younger brothers and sisters.”

  “Are you and Silas still trying to have a baby?” Janet had two stepsons from her husband’s first marriage, and Abbi knew she longed for a baby; the request had been on the prayer list at the church since Abbi and Benjamin started attending. Probably longer.

  Janet tightened. “If God chooses to bless us.” The woman shifted Silvia to her lap, squeezing her cheeks between her forefinger and thumb as she held her in a sitting position and slapped her back. After the baby burped, Janet wiped away a trickle of formula from the corner of Silvia’s mouth and asked, “Diaper?”

  “I’ll do it,” Abbi said, ducking around the corner into the living room to the basket filled with clean prefolds by the couch. She shook one open, grabbed Silvia by her armpits, and laid her on the kitchen table, pushing aside the glasses and napkins. She twisted and pinned and pulled up the diaper cover; her fingers tangled between Silvia’s skin and the fabric, not yet nimble despite the daily practice. The baby peered up at her, smiled and kicked her legs. Abbi pulled the elastic band from her ponytail and shook her hair free over the baby’s bare tummy. Silvia drew a scratchy, high-pitched breath. Her laugh.

  “You don’t see many of those anymore,” Jane
t said. “My mother always used cloth diapers. She said it was because she was frugal.”

  “Huh.”

  “She always put them out on the clothesline. Said the sun bleached all the stains out better than Clorox. But you probably know that, since you hang yours.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know, I wouldn’t mind watching her a bit, if you ever need a sitter.”

  “Thanks for the offer, but I have a local boy here a couple afternoons a week. Giving me a break.”

  Though Matthew hadn’t come Saturday to mow, or yesterday. Abbi would have been worried, but she’d seen him biking last night, in the distance, while she jogged. Her and Benjamin’s fight had probably scared him away. She didn’t want to police his comings and goings, but she hadn’t realized how much she would miss his coming, even when she used him only as another pair of arms for Silvia so she could finally brush her teeth.

  “I’m right next door. I could do that for you. Every day, even.”

  “I appreciate that. I really do. But Matt . . . he needs the money.”

  “What does he know about babies?”

  Abbi looked at her. “What do you know about him?”

  “His mother was in jail.”

  “Hmm.” Abbi wasn’t surprised. There had to be a good reason for him to be living with his aunt and her own four kids.

  “For drugs,” Janet said, unplucked brows wrinkling.

  “Okay.”

  “I just mean . . .”

  “I know what you mean,” Abbi said. What’s wrong with these people? And she winced as her judgmental spirit reared up inside her.

  “Well,” Janet said. She shimmied from the chair, sideways so as not to move it. “Well. Thanks for the tea.”

  The pit fire had burned out during the night, and by midmorning the ashes, though they still held enough heat to stick to the bottom of Abbi’s sandals, were cool enough to allow her to ease into the hole and unload her pottery. Janet hung socks in mismatched pairs on the rusted clothes tree cemented in the center of her own backyard, steeling glances Abbi’s way. Rolling each piece from the hole, she climbed out on her knees and one hand, her other arm tight around Silvia, who was wrapped against her chest. Sweat burned her eyes.