by Paul Pen
She was coming to remake the bed.
And she was going to find him uncovered.
Rick edged to the far left of the mattress, the side to which the sheet had moved. He stretched his bound hand and managed to pinch the material.
Rose was coming up the stairs.
He pulled with all the strength he was able to concentrate in two fingers. The grip he had proved insufficient to pull the sheet onto him. Rick’s wriggling moved the headboard. The bolt scraped the wall, spitting out plaster.
Seeing the young man uncovered, Rose shielded her face with her arms. She guessed he’d freed himself from the sheet. And from the rope. And that he’d lain in wait to leap on her like a coyote. She relaxed her defensive posture when she understood how ridiculous the idea was. With his injuries, Rick wouldn’t even be able to sit up on the mattress. Nor could he have moved the sheet by himself, sedated as he was. Rose traced the trajectory a current of air would take from the broken window to the bed. Elmer must have loosened the sheet in the night, and the draft must have blown it off Rick.
Rose went and stood beside him.
His breathing was slow and steady. The pills had taken effect. His bruised body was sinking into the mattress as if he’d fallen from a great height. Rose picked up the sheet from the floor and discarded it in a ball near the bed. With the palm of her hand, she checked the state of the bottom sheet, feeling around the body, the waist, between his legs. He hadn’t wet it or soiled it. No need to change it. The appearance of some of the bandages that covered his wounds had worsened. Some of his injuries hurt just looking at them. Rose unfolded one of the sheets she’d brought. She spread it out, clean and perfumed, over Rick’s body. Even over his face. It was a relief to see the bruises and fractures disappear under the fabric.
“Forgive me,” she whispered to herself.
She proceeded to tuck in the sheet, going around the bed from one bedside table to the other. Then she folded the end covering his face down over his chest. She stretched the sheet as much as possible before securing it under the mattress.
That was when she saw the pills.
Two intact Dormepams trapped under the pillow. Just then, a third one crunched under the sole of her shoes.
Rose screamed even before Rick jerked his body in the bed. The sheet escaped from between her fingers, as if it had been snatched from her. The headboard hit the wall. She heard a loud bang followed by a crash as something collapsed. Rose didn’t understand what was happening until a rock hit her shoulder.
Melissa’s shelf was coming down.
On top of her.
The board hit her head, and a screw was driven into her back. The corner of a stone struck her on the back of the head. The pain made her dizzy, and she collapsed beside the bed. On her knees, she hunched her shoulders to protect herself from the rocks that rained down on her. The lampshade crumpled. A lightbulb exploded. Medicine boxes were crushed. When the pitcher fell onto the floor, the water soaked her feet, but the glass didn’t break.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to do,” Rose sputtered.
She shook her head, trying to clear her mind. The blow to the back of her skull had made her entire spine vibrate. It felt slack, like the strings on Edelweiss’s guitar when she loosened the tuning pegs. She couldn’t get up. She rested her hands on the floor. In that animal pose she fixed her eyes on Rick, who was looking at her from the bed, spitting as he breathed. He was laughing and then screaming. Screaming and then laughing. The rocks had fallen on him as well. One of the biggest ones was balancing on the edge of the mattress, above Rose.
“Don’t you dare.”
Rick stretched the fingers of his right hand.
He made just enough contact with the stone to knock it off.
It fell on one of Rose’s vertebrae. A gelatinous crunch traveled down her spine. Her legs went numb. Her pelvis reeled until her hip collapsed to one side. Rose massaged her thighs, her calves, her knees.
“No, no, no, no, no . . .” She saw her fingers knead the flesh, but felt nothing.
On the bed, Rick’s eyes, and his mouth, opened wide. He seemed as shocked as he was satisfied at the outcome of his attack. He twisted his neck, writhed on the mattress. Rose grabbed hold of the bedframe and pulled herself up until she reached his foot.
When she used it as a handgrip to sit up, his ankle made a crunching sound.
Rick’s scream reverberated against the windowpane. A distant echo reproduced it among the rocks out on the land.
“Be quiet,” Rose said.
But she knew her daughters would’ve heard it. Even if they were near Melissa’s cacti. Iris’s voice confirmed they had.
“Mom!”
She still sounded far away. Rose let go of Rick’s foot. Lying on the floor, she dug her fingers into her thighs. They provoked a flash of pain. A warm tingling sensation spread through her legs, restoring feeling in them.
“Mom!”
The voice was approaching fast. Rose lifted the weight of her body, gripping the mattress. She pounced on Rick, who was still screaming. She tried to shut him up with her hands, but he bit her. Rose took the two pills from under the pillow and sneaked them between his open lips. When he choked, she took the opportunity to cover his mouth. He spattered her with snot when he coughed through his nose. But finally, he swallowed.
“Mom! What is it?”
Iris asked the question from the porch, but didn’t stop to wait for an answer. She came into the house. Her footsteps grew louder as she climbed the stairs. Her fists pounded the door.
“Mom? Mom!”
Rose squeezed Rick’s jaw. She smothered his face with her chest.
“Everything’s fine, honey.”
“Rick?”
He convulsed, and the springs squeaked. Rose lay on top of him, crushing torn tissue.
“I’m changing the sheets,” Rose improvised. “He has some pain, that’s why he yelled.”
The handle shook but the door remained closed. Rick’s jerking began to subside. The pain or the tranquilizer was subduing him.
“Are you OK?”
“Yes, honey.”
“Let me in? Can I see him?”
Rick’s resistance waned until it disappeared completely.
“What did I tell you yesterday? Get back to the twins.”
Iris stayed at the door for a few seconds before leaving. When she got herself off him, Rose checked that Rick was still breathing. She wasn’t sure which alternative she preferred.
He was alive.
The rest of the girls reached the porch.
“Mommy!”
“Mommy!”
“It’s OK,” Iris said.
Rose sat on the bed, waiting for the pins and needles to leave her legs. She looked at the destruction around her with a hand on her forehead. With her hair wet with sweat and stuck to her face, she left the room. She locked the door and put the key in her apron pocket.
Mom came out onto the porch, gathering her hair in a ponytail that she then released. Melissa noticed rings of sweat at the neck of her blouse and under her arms.
“This heat, it’s making me sweat,” she said when she realized her daughter was looking at her.
One of her shoulders seemed lower than the other. A recent graze, as red as her cheeks were, ran down her arm. She hid it behind her back. “Why’re you staring at me like that?”
Sitting on the steps, her back against the handrail, Melissa shrugged. Mom also had bruises on her legs.
“What’s the matter with Rick?” Iris asked.
Daisy and Dahlia were clinging to her waist, taking refuge behind her legs.
“We’re scared,” they said.
“Everything’s fine, girls.” Mom sought out the twins’ hands and pulled to get them out from behind their shield. “He has some pain. And I needed to move him to change the sheets. I would’ve been more worried if he hadn’t screamed.”
“But is he all right?” Concern furrowed Iris’s face, disfiguring it. �
�Is he conscious?”
Mom wet her lips.
“He hasn’t woken up yet.” She looked to the horizon, shaking her head. “He hasn’t said anything since he’s been in that bed.”
Melissa felt an urge to escape, to run up the road until her shoes disintegrated. To pop up anywhere else, at any other moment. To go back in time by three days, to when Mom didn’t lie like she did now. Or at least when Melissa wasn’t aware of it. She hugged her knees and bit her forearm.
“But is he getting better?” Iris was insistent.
“I’m doing my best.”
With a deep sigh, Melissa looked at the silhouettes of Needles, Pins, and Thorns. She needed to speak to them.
“He’s going to end up stealing our pictures,” Daisy said.
“He’s going to end up stealing our pictures,” said Dahlia.
“Nobody’s going to steal anything.” Mom pinched their noses. “Do you know what it’s the perfect day for?”
The twins held hands, anticipating the suggestion that Mom was going to make.
“It’s the perfect day for having a picnic, in the shade of those big rocks out there.”
Daisy and Dahlia jumped up and down to celebrate Mom’s idea. They repeated a memorized sequence of gestures in perfect synchrony.
Melissa made her pencil move faster. She wanted to finish drawing the lizard before it escaped. She’d outlined the head, the body’s arc, the position of the legs. When she looked down to reproduce the curve of the tail on paper, she heard the reptile run off into the bushes. It didn’t matter, she could finish the rest from memory. She brought the pencil tip to the bottom of the page, where the corner of the picnic blanket was. She shaded the red checks and touched up the contours of the stacked paper plates, the remains of the chicken. She brought out the shine on the pitcher of agua de Jamaica. She perfected the texture of the used napkins, the chewed bones. She added detail to the Aztec sun embroidered on the apron Mom had taken off before they ate. She also improved the brim of the hat her mother wore over her face as she lay in the sun taking a nap. She ignored the bruises on her legs.
She depicted the twins climbing the rock, as they were doing now. They were scaling it and then jumping down as if they were flying. Melissa made the most of another leap to capture the shape of their hair. Next she moved the pencil to the figure of Iris, who’d resumed her reading after lunch. She’d sketched her sitting against a rock, using the knee of a bent leg as a lectern for her book. She looked at her again now, to give more expression to the intensity of her features as she concentrated on the page, but Iris was getting up. She was coming toward her. Melissa made sure the documents from Rick’s folder were well hidden among the back pages of the sketchbook.
“Hey.” Iris gathered up her skirt before sitting down. “How’s it looking?”
Melissa moved her hand away and blew off graphite dust. Her sister let out a sigh of wonder.
“I’m not even going to bother joking that you can’t draw. This is amazing.” She peered at the drawing with a finger in her mouth. “Shame I got up before you finished. If I’d known I cut such a beautiful and captivating figure, I wouldn’t have moved.”
“I just need to add that pimple on your chin . . .”
Iris elbowed her. “Don’t you dare.” She grabbed the butt end of the pencil. “Can you finish me from memory?”
Melissa quickly added the profile of Iris’s nose to the sketch.
“You know me to a T,” said Iris. “It looks lovely. Anyone would almost wish they could live in the drawing, play with those little girls, lie next to the woman in the hat and take a nap. Or flirt with that refined lady who’s enjoying her book so much, I bet she’s a very smart young woman.”
She paused, waiting for a laugh. Not receiving it, she pointed at the place in the drawing that Melissa would’ve occupied during lunch.
“But it’s a shame you’re missing.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Melissa screwed up her face, shrugged her shoulders. “I’m always missing.”
“There you go again. Please don’t start with one of those depressing interpretations of your drawings. Don’t tell me the desert represents the void of the soul, or that the rocks are really monsters that keep the girls imprisoned.”
Hearing that, Melissa drove the pencil into the paper with such force that the tip snapped.
“All right, all right. Don’t get mad. Your drawings are your drawings. But I wish you were able to enjoy their beauty. And not just because of how they look on paper but because of the reality they portray.” Iris lifted Melissa’s chin, forcing her to look at what was in front of her and not down at her drawing. “Sometimes I don’t know why I’m in such a hurry to grow up, why I daydream about escaping from here in Rick’s arms. I wonder whether there really will be a moment in life that’s better than this one. Edelweiss dying has taught me that nothing is eternal, and I’m afraid that time will separate the rest of us, too, that we’re going to start losing one another . . .” Iris smiled, her gaze lost among the cacti. “Maybe the best thing would be to stop time and stay in a perfect afternoon like this forever, become one of your drawings.”
Melissa turned the pages toward the front of the sketchbook, taking care not to let Rick’s cuttings fall out.
“Then I’d rather time had stopped here.” She showed her sister an old drawing.
“When Edelweiss was here.” Iris understood. “Me, too.”
Melissa went to correct a detail on Edelweiss’s dress. When she held the broken tip of the pencil near the paper, Iris snatched it from her.
“Leave it. It’s perfect as it is. Don’t change anything.”
Iris was still holding Melissa’s pencil when Daisy’s scream startled them both. Iris saw Dahlia stumble as she leapt from the top of a rock. Trying to find her balance, she trod on Mom’s belly and fell to one side on the checkered picnic blanket, knocking over the stack of plates. Chicken bones went flying across the fabric. The pitcher spilled its contents, soaking everything with red liquid, including Mom’s apron. Dahlia skidded through the dirt on her hands before coming to a stop.
Iris ran to tend to her, but Mom was there first.
“Let’s see, open your hands.”
Dahlia was sitting on the ground, crying.
“Open them,” Mom insisted, kneeling beside her.
Daisy joined the group the moment her twin sister unfolded her fingers. Mom blew at the sand on her palms. Some grit remained stuck to the bright pink skinned parts.
“It’s nothing.”
“That’s what happens when you think you’re a lizard.” Iris ruffled her hair. “Do you really think you can run around among the rocks like they do?”
“You’re not a lizard,” Daisy said, wagging her index finger.
Dahlia sobbed.
“Leave her be,” Mom said.
Iris tried to tidy up the mess on the blanket. She got her hands and knees wet as she crawled over the material. A piece of chicken skin stuck to her elbow. She made a face as she picked it off.
“We’ll need to soak that blanket right away,” said Mom, still blowing on Dahlia’s hand. “Take it to the sink. And bring me the iodine when you come back. It’s in the downstairs bathroom.”
“No!” Dahlia kicked, trying to get free. “Iodine stings!”
“It stings because it cures.” Mom kissed her hand.
Iris brought the corners of the wet blanket together in its center. She lifted it, forming a sack. The cutlery clinked against the pitcher as she hung it over her back. She arched her spine when the wetness passed through the material of her dress to her skin.
“Who in their right mind . . . ?” Mom said.
Iris stuck out her tongue.
Then she turned to Melissa. “Don’t draw me like this. I’d rather be the sensual young woman reading a book.”
She walked back to the house, quickening her pace as the wetness spread over the back of her dress. She dumped the sack near the kitchen sink with
a final thrust of her lower back. She regained her breath leaning against the counter, her hands at her chest. She wasn’t sure whether her heart was beating so hard because of the effort or because she’d realized she was alone in the house with Rick. She could stand at the door to his room, hear him breathing, even if only for a minute. Say something to him through the crack to see if she could wake him.
She opened up the picnic blanket and took out the pitcher. She removed the plates. The sooner she left this to soak, the longer she could spend at the door. She waved the blanket in the air to shake off the chicken remains. Several bones, a whole wing, fell onto the floor.
And so did Mom’s apron.
The Aztec sun looked up at Iris from between her feet.
Unable to believe what it could mean, she checked its pocket with the toe of her shoe. She felt something hard. She made the blanket into a ball, put it in the sink, and turned on the water. She knelt over the apron and, with her fingers, confirmed that the hard object in the pocket was a key. Iris took it out. She inspected it, her mouth open.
And she ran upstairs with it.
Being able to kiss Rick in the light of the day would be like announcing their love to the world, leaving the shadowy realm of secrets to nurture their romance like a flower in the open air. She even felt a sense of loss for the nocturnal liaisons that would no longer be theirs.
Outside the locked door, she tidied her hair, curved the material at her neckline. She was embarrassed to let him see her like this, her dress all stained at the back, but Rick would understand the urgency of her visit. She couldn’t stay long because she had to take the iodine out to Dahlia.
She inserted the key in the lock.
She went into the room.
The first thing she saw was Melissa’s stones scattered across the floor, their eyes looking up at her at strange angles. Some of the eyes had come unstuck. Then she noticed the shelf, collapsed on one side. It had scraped the wall on the way down and destroyed whatever had been on the bedside table. She recognized pieces of curved glass from a lightbulb, and the lamp’s cracked base. The pitcher was on the floor.
