Chapter 3
The sunlight streams through the cracks in our bedroom drapes, landing on my face. I wince. There aren’t any clocks in our house--I’ve thrown them all out--but I guess there’s no getting rid of the harshest clock of all. I must have slept in again.
Joshua’s side of the bed is perfect. I could tell myself that he was just being considerate; that he’d made his side up this morning. But I know the truth. He never came to bed.
A sparkling river of light weaves along the burgundy velvet covers. I trace it with my eyes until it stops abruptly at the edge of the bed, where a familiar-looking older woman sits, facing away from me.
I yelp and bolt upright.
The woman doesn’t acknowledge me. She’s elegant, her silver hair is a loose cap of waves ending just above the delicate gold chain around her neck. Her sleek black dress covers everything below the neck but her hands. Her posture is abrasively natural; the set of her shoulders demanding her right to belong anywhere.
I clear my throat. Loudly.
She turns slowly to face me, her mossy green eyes calm and collected. The yellow fleck in her right iris flashes in the sunlight. My mother. Hanging by the chain around her neck is a small, gold cross, swaying back and forth gently. A tiny figure of a woman hangs suspended from it, her form twisted in agony. The polished metal face of the figurine seems to turn toward me. “Please...,” I could swear I hear it whisper, its face contorted and body writhing, “end...this.” Quickly, I look back at my mother’s face, hoping my expression hadn’t betrayed what I’d just seen. The corner of my mother’s cherry red mouth quirks up as our eyes meet.
At the sound of a creak coming from the hallway, she turns away. Finally, this old house is pulling its weight again, creak-wise. Another woman walks into the room. She's a bit older than my mother. And she's magnificent. By her severe hair, tailored suit, vicious heels, and the way she carries herself, she's clearly some type of professional. A very expensive professional.
Horrified, I draw the covers up close to my face. Is this some kind of intervention? Or, worse, am I about to be institutionalized? My mother swore she'd never let that happen again. I’ve been stable for years. I just need my medication. She knows that. And where is Joshua? My mind reels as I consider how shrewd it would be to take advantage of a person’s vulnerability before they’re fully awake.
“Please…” My voice comes out rough and gravelly. “I can’t live in an institution. I’d rather die. I won’t bother anyone here, I promise. In fact, I won’t do a single thing. I'll just mind my own business and get old. That’s it, I swear.”
My mother’s amused grin broadens, as if I’d said something funny. The other woman doesn’t even spare me a glance as she walks decisively to my mother, leans over her, cups both hands to her ear, and whispers something.
After a few seconds, my mother clears her throat and turns to me. “It is old age, not death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life’s parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.”
My heart stumbles over a beat as I take in that last line. But something else is nagging at me, flickering at the edge of thought. My head feels thick and sticky. I grit my teeth and shake my head back and forth in frustration.
“Wait. Death...does away with time? But I shouldn’t let myself get old?” I straighten up, glaring. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? I should just kill myself? Is that how you’re saying I can avoid the hospital? Even if I manage to ‘do away with time’ like you say, that’s no guarantee that I’ll be with Evy. So...thanks, but no thanks. I don’t want your infinity. Not without her.”
My mother leans close and grabs my hand, her eyes filled with an intensity that verges on desperation. “Theia, don’t you get it? You have her. Just like you have me. Open your eyes.” Panic spreads across my mother’s face as soon as the words are out. She darts a glance at the woman standing over her, whose face is now a mask of contempt.
The woman grabs my mother’s shoulder in a talon’s grip.
“Oh,” I whisper, dread lacing through my insides like black, oily tar. “I remember now. Mom...you died.”
My mother’s eyes widen and she shakes her head as though fighting some unseen force. Her image becomes distorted, twisting as it shrinks. She spins counter clockwise, faster and faster, until all that’s left is a tiny, whirling circle hovering a foot above my bed. The spinning stutters to a halt and a little disk plops inertly onto the blanket.
Hands flying to my mouth, I stare at the smooth, flat jewel. A black dot lies at the center of the translucent gray disk encircled by a black snake biting its tail. “Mom?!” I finally manage to whisper as I turn toward the woman. “What happened to her?”
Crossing her arms, the woman glares daggers at the remains of my mother. If she can hear me, she shows no sign. The hallway creaks again and this time, it’s the woman’s turn to look scared. A slight man with an unruly mop of dusty brown curls and a small book tucked under his arm storms into the room. His old fashioned, tattered suit looks like something straight out of a play set in early 20th century England.
He looks around, disoriented, until his eyes finally land on the woman. He grabs her by the hair, and shoves a small book in front of her face. She bucks against him, eyes rolling.
The man pulls her tighter. She gasps as he jerks her face toward the dusty, open pages. Eyes watering, she blinks to clear them before squinting at the text.
“The sense--aaa!” She shrieks as he yanks her hair. “The sense of the world must lie outside the world!” The line tumbles out of her in a desperate rush.
With one hand, the man flips through his book and shoves it in her face again. This time she doesn’t hesitate. “There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical …Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
He pulls her around to face him and raises his brows expectantly. She lowers her eyes and gives the barest of nods. It’s probably all she can manage, considering his grip on her. He shakes his head in disgust and shoves her toward the door. Cringing, she scurries back into the hallway.
The disheveled man stares, transfixed, at the small, round jewel that my mother left behind. It’s sparkling now in that same stream of sunlight that first woke me. He reaches for it--no...he reaches inside it--and pulls out a translucent, miniature replica of my townhome, complete with the twisted, half-dead tree growing out front.
He grins, spreading his arms wide in a dramatic flourish. The replica balloons out until it perfectly overlays my actual bedroom. I gag as the sour stench of sickness and urine fills the room. A greasy layer of dust coates almost every surface and thick drapes block out any light. An old wheelchair sits in front of a haphazard pile of medical equipment that takes up the better part of the room.
The strange man is gone.
A low moan drifts from somewhere outside my bedroom. I get up, peer out into the hallway and squint through the darkness. For a second, I wonder if it’s actually night but no...the hall windows are all blocked by...is that cardboard? Whatever it is, I can make out a vague halo of sunlight around its edges. A shuffling sound comes from below. I follow the noise downstairs.
Sitting behind the desk in Joshua’s office is an obese woman wearing a stained gray sweatshirt. Her face is...strange. But not strange in that it’s remarkable, but rather the opposite. Somehow each of her features manage to be so indistinct that they’re impossible to remember long enough to cobble together a sense of what she looks like, except that she looks exhausted. She’s sorting frantically through a huge stack of papers. The moaning starts up again, followed by a pathetic, “Help…” The woman drops the papers and cradles her head in her hands.
“Evegale!” she yells, massaging her scalp with fingers like shiny pink sausages. “If I don’t get these bills paid right now, the bank will literally take our home! Do you want that? Go help your goddamned father!”
“Coming!” The fluty voice is muffled, but I’d recognize it anywhere. My Evy.
Throwing the kitchen door open, Evy bounds--bounds! It seems like forever since she could get around without her wheelchair, much less move like this--toward me. Her face is a blur, as though it’s moving too fast for eyes to catch hold of. I throw my hands up defensively just before she collides into me. But the impact never happens. Instead, she passes right through me, leaving golden honey warmth in her wake.
Grabbing the bannister, she swings her momentum around and takes the stairs three at a time, her tangled black mane flying behind her.
“Wait!” I call out. But my voice is the softest whisper. I try to run after her but my body moves like it’s stuck in molasses. As I make my painstakingly slow ascent, I look up to see, not the ceiling, but the walls of the house repeating and stretching on and on, finally disappearing into the shadows high overhead.
When I finally make it to the top of the stairs, I find myself once again on the first floor. Only it’s completely different. Everything is immaculate and glows with soft, warm light.
The sweet aroma of baking fills the hallway, as does the happy sound of humming. A glistening sheen covers the wood floors and stair railing. No longer Joshua’s office, the front room looks just as it had during my childhood. Tightly packed rows of bookshelves and displays crowd the room.
“There you are!” The voice makes me jump.
I turn to see Joshua standing in the hallway,holding a tray of cookies and beaming at me. My heart thuds heavily as he walks quickly toward me. But just like Evy, he passes straight through me.
“You’ve been here so long I thought you might like a cookie. They’re fresh out of the oven but fair warning, my wife’s favorite word to describe my baking was ‘confusing.’”
The fiery-haired woman behind me doesn’t even bother looking up from her book, Much Ado About Nothing. She shakes her head and absently waves him away.
“Fair enough.” Joshua says, popping a cookie into his own mouth. He winces just slightly as he bites down before heading back the way he came. I follow him into the kitchen. A boy in his mid teens with an unruly head of black curls slumps over the table, sketching. “You’re getting better.” Joshua says, setting the tray of cookies beside the drawing. “That looks just like her.”
The boy grabs a cookie, takes a bite, and grimaces. “Still with the bitter almond? We talked about this. You promised to try something normal like peanut butter or chocolate chip, remember?” He glances sidelong at Joshua. “Sorry. I mean, thanks. And, um, I know you think it’s weird that I keep drawing her. I realize that getting it right won’t make any difference. I just...I just want to remember. That’s all.” His ears and neck flush red when he sees Joshua’s lifted eyebrows.
“You think I don’t get it? Trust me, son, I do. More than you know.”
I’m suddenly nervous to look over the boy’s shoulder. Is it her? Bracing myself, I look. But the dark-haired woman, whoever she is, has no face at all. Or rather, her face is a smooth oval, every feature smudged out. My breaths are coming in rapid and shallow. I feel sick.
“Adam?” Joshua says, wincing and clutching at his own abdomen.
“Yeah?”
“You won’t have the chance to remember anything if you don’t mark the calendar.” He looks intently at the boy.
“Oh! Right.”
Adam walks over to the calendar that hangs exactly where mine does on my pantry door, except their calendar isn’t covered by an old heavy coat like mine has been the last few months. The month displayed is December, the year, 1999. Even the picture is the same: The False Mirror, a painting of an eye with cloud-speckled sky where the iris should be. That picture was the whole reason I’d picked the calendar. I’m standing so close behind him that the wild, stray strands of his dark hair tickle my nose. On the last date, he scrawls the words BE READY.
Suddenly, he turns around, his moss-green eyes locking to mine with so much intensity that I feel like I’m drowning in them. Evy’s eyes.
A low rumbling sounds from his abdomen and he doubles over in pain but manages, with obvious effort, to stand upright again, his expression pleading for help. A far off wail comes from somewhere deep below and the floor begins to shake. The boy’s eyes widen, the bright yellow fleck inside his right iris flashing. “Please…” he whispers. Without thinking, I wrap him up in a fierce hug, just before the tiles beneath us collapse and inky blackness swallows us both.
My eyes snap open and I wince, blinking tentatively. It feels like somebody packed them with fiberglass while I slept. Predawn light glows innocuously behind the curtains. I don’t dare look at Joshua’s side to see if he ever came to bed. Instead, I reach toward it and grope blindly with my right hand. The velvet covers and cotton sheets are a twisted pile. Of course, that was a given; I can’t remember the last time the bed was made. But the pile on his side is cold. And in the exact shape it was yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that.
I swallow a sudden, thick lump in my throat and gather all of the covers around myself like a robe. I slide to the edge of the bed, dragging the blankets with me. At least now the covers won’t be the same shape tomorrow morning. That’s something, I guess. The sun isn’t even up yet, and already I’ve done more than I sometimes manage with a full day.
My teeth chatter and my nose is numb from cold. Our old furnace hardly touches the chill upstairs. Joshua always burns a log in our bedroom fireplace at night and in the morning to take the edge off during the winter. But the fireplace is cold and dark.
Trying to put off leaving the bed’s warmth, I study the black and white painting hanging above the bed. The frame is filled with a huge eye staring off into the distance. A lithe, pale girl with long dark hair leans out of its great, gaping pupil as though it’s not really a pupil at all, but a cave. The top half of her face is covered with a blindfold. Her rosebud mouth quirks into a sardonic grin, as though she’s just realized the punchline to a joke no one else has heard.
The girl is dipping a large, intricately carved chalice into a reservoir of tears inside the lower rim of the eye. Bright yellow light--the only area with color in the painting--blooms where the chalice comes into contact with the tears. The girl’s humor and ease are a jarring contrast against the eye’s fear and sadness.
It’s unnerving, thinking how long ago it was that Joshua painted it--all the way back when I’d first realized I was pregnant. Seventeen years seems like such a long time. Like it should be long enough to feel remote. Faraway. Why does it feel so close? I was never going to keep that baby, of course. It’s hard now to believe how young we were. Practically kids ourselves. That fact, alone, made abortion the only responsible choice, even without considering my history or the various medications I was taking.
To this day, Joshua still can’t explain what came over him. For a week straight, he painted. Nothing like it has happened before or since. He refused to eat. He couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even get him to look at me. Only when the painting was finished did he return to his old self.
Harvesting Meaning. That’s what he called it. The moment I saw it, I knew I had to keep the baby, though I still can’t say what it was about it that changed my mind. I only know that once I saw it, the disastrous mistake growing inside me became the most precious thing in the whole world.
I sigh, shaking my head. Wrapping the blankets tighter around myself, I slide out of bed. The floorboards are icy against my bare feet as I pad across the room, along the hallway, down the stairs. I poke my head into Joshua’s study. He’s asleep in his old, beat-up armchair again, curled away from me.
I want...I don’t know what I want. For a second, I think I want to go to him. But that’s not it. What I really want is for him to forget how broken I am. I want to forget too. Then, maybe we could be happy.
I trudge past his office toward the kitchen. As I push through the wooden swinging door with the words ‘Employees Only’ carved into it, I consider the possibility that Joshua is right about it being time to take the old door down; the bookstore did close almost twenty years ago. And who has a door in front of their kitchen these days, anyway?
I shuffle across the black and white tiles toward the coffee machine. With one hand clutching the blankets tight around myself, I dump the store-brand grounds into the filter and pour tap water into the machine’s basin.
The blessed aroma fills the room almost instantly. I lean against the cracked ceramic tile countertop and wrap the trailing end of the blankets beneath my cold feet as I wait for the pot to fill.
Without really thinking, I glance at the broad coat hanging on the nail I haphazardly hammered into the door about a foot above the calendar. My heartbeat quickens and my icy palms turn clammy. But it was just a stupid dream. I know that.
Holding my breath, I shuffle towards it, being careful to keep the blankets beneath my feet. I shove the coat aside and flip to the month of December.
On the 31st day of the month, scrawled in Joshua’s handwriting is a single word: Remember.
Chapter 4
