Liar, Liar

The flashing lights sprayed blue and red bruises around our living room. I huddled behind the couch in my nightgown. A man and woman in crisp blue uniforms hefted a black bag onto a stretcher, pushed levers, and lifted the bed like Mom did with her ironing board. Blood smeared the lady’s name tag, but I’d seen it when she came in. It said Glenda. The name of the good witch. The good witch come to clean up after the bad.

Two men in regular clothes stood in the kitchen doorway writing in little notebooks. One pointed to a dark stain on the recliner. His mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear what he said. The hoarse cackle still filled my head and drowned out everything.

A lady rushed in and scanned the room. She spotted me. Her jaw dropped before she caught herself and closed it. She started toward me, crouching down and holding out a hand while whispering hushing sounds—like when you’re trying to catch a scared animal. That’s how they always treated me. Like a scared, stupid animal.

She knelt and said some stuff I still couldn’t hear. Her hand took mine, and she tried to pull me up. My legs wouldn’t work. I tipped over. She wasn’t a big lady, but she scooped me up and carried me out to a car, still shushing.

I don’t remember much of the ride or being brought into the police station. They sat me in a gray little room with a table and a paper cup of apple juice. I felt a little better. Nothing could hide there.

One of the regular-clothes men came in and pulled a chair closer. He sat and bent down to catch my eye. The cackle had faded.

His voice was deep and soft. “Your name is Lizzie, right?”

I nodded.

“Can you tell me what happened, Lizzie?”

I swallowed. “The bad witch came again.”

His face turned mad, and he shook his head. “Lizzie, we don’t have time for games. You need to tell us what happened.”

“It’s not a game. She…she came again a-a-and killed my mom.”

The muscle in his jaw tensed. “Fine. I’ll play along. Who is the witch? How’d she kill her?”

“I-I don’t know who she is. She just comes…when I get mad. She has long talons on her hands. She,” I sniffled back a sob, “she stuck them in my mom’s neck.”

He sat back and sighed. “Lizzie, we know you did it. You’ll be in less trouble if you just tell the truth and explain what happened.”

Like it had before, my chest tightened as if someone gave me a big bear hug. I closed my eyes and tried to will it away, but my skin flushed hot. I told myself she wouldn’t come now—there was no way she could get in without everyone seeing. She only came when she couldn’t get caught.

Even the witch blames it all on me. After she killed Mom, I asked her why.

The witch cackled. “You wished she would die, didn’t you?”

I had…but I didn’t mean it. I couldn’t help being angry when Mom accused me of lying about what happened when Mrs. Jackson, my teacher, died. Mom said I had to quit making stuff up so they could catch the real killer. I told her I wasn’t making it up. Being mad just happens. I can’t help it.

The regular-clothes man slammed a hand on the table and made me jump.

“Listen, I have a lot of work to do. If you aren’t going to tell the truth, you’ll just go straight to jail.”

I wanted to yell but kept my voice quiet. “I’m not lying. Don’t call me a liar.”

“Don’t lie, and I won’t have to.”

My throat closed up. The anger went from calm to boiling. I shook my head and told it to go away…but it never listened anymore. Just like the witch.

The last thing I remember is her head rising behind the man, her hair covered in moss and green slime, wrinkled hands coming up, talons curling in toward his neck, slicing through the skin. The cackle had returned.

 

Now I sit in a cold room made of cushioned walls.

I shudder and scrunch my shoulders up over my ears as best I can with the jacket on, but the noise comes from inside me, and I can’t shut it out. How she makes me hear it when she’s not even around puzzles me—but then again, all of it does.

Dried blood covers my face and hair, and little pieces flake off when I move. I don’t know how so much blood got on me. I wasn’t close enough. Another puzzle.

More regular-clothes men had come into the little gray room. I huddled in the corner. The original regular-clothes man sprawled on the floor, a pool of red-black spreading under him. They had pointed guns at me and yelled and ran around acting crazy. A lady put a white jacket on me that wraps my arms around my back, and they led me down a bunch of hallways until we got to this room.

It’s not fair. They all keep calling me a liar.

The door opens, and a man in a white uniform starts in.

“Damn, I forgot the sedative.” He turns back, tells two men in white doctor coats he’ll return in a minute, and rushes off.

The white coats stand just outside the cushion room in a bare, gray hallway.

One of the white-coat men says to the other, “It’s a severe psychosis. She seems to really believe someone else is doing it. But all the evidence points to her.”

“Well,” the other says, “some kids are just great liars.”

The anger swells up faster every time. Now, it comes in an instant.

The thing with moss and green slime appears behind the white-coat men in the hallway. She slinks toward them.

I try to yell, to warn them, but only a hoarse cackle comes out.

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Image courtesy of Victor Habbick at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Last Christmas

Early Christmas morning, Edward kissed Helen’s hand, just as he had on their honeymoon fifty-four years earlier, and laid it back on her chest. His thumb brushed the heart-shaped birthmark on the side of her throat. For a painful second, he believed his eyes when they told him her faint lashes had fluttered on her cheek. He knew it wasn’t so.

 

His Helen was gone and had been for an hour. He sat talking to her after her final soft exhalation of breath, holding her hand and ignoring the way her skin lost its warmth as the minutes passed.

With tears spilling from his rheumy eyes, he explained all those days he’d risen in the morning with dark circles betraying a sleepless night.

“You always believed my excuse of insomnia—didn’t you? I was too embarrassed to tell you why I didn’t sleep…. I would lie next to you, watching the slow rise and fall of your chest on nights when the moon was full, watching your lashes flutter against your cheek while you dreamed. In the quiet, I watched you sleep, still unable to believe, after five years or ten or forty, that you had chosen me and loved me despite my bad habits and big nose and quiet ways. I never got over that disbelief, and I studied you at night to memorize the line of your jaw, the slight upturn of your nose, the precise color of your lips—afraid one day you might come to your senses and find a man without so many faults. You were too loyal for that, I know, but I watched you sleep just the same.”

Now he would have to face the nights with only the memory engraved by thousands of moonlit hours.

Edward grabbed his cane and pushed himself up from the bedside chair. The dull ache in his knees flared brighter, his hands seemed to tremble more, the color of the sunrise appeared muted and flat as he shuffled from the hospital room. Nurses offered condolences, but he hardly heard them. He made his way down to the lobby, aware that the sharp antiseptic smell had vanished from the hallways. Reaching the bus stop, he lit his pipe, but the tobacco had no flavor. Helen had taken the essence of everything with her.

 

He went through the motions of life: rising in the morning, eating at the proper times, and keeping the house neat. But the days held no meaning, and the moon illuminated nothing. More and more, Edward sat in his easy chair, staring at nothing, with no one to notice.

On a Sunday, as Edward walked home from the bus stop with his small bag of groceries in one hand and his cane in the other—going through the motions—he was woolgathering, wondering how long he would have to endure his faded imitation of life before death would finally embrace him. A weak whimper interrupted his thoughts. He paused on the sidewalk and tilted his head, thinking the noise might have come from his own lips. The cry came again, from a solitary lilac bush growing wild at the park’s edge.

He bent to see deeper into the thick shadows. Curled in the dirt, a patch of darkness whimpered again. Edward lowered himself, pushing away the pain and stiffness, until he kneeled beside the bush and parted the profusion of heart-shaped leaves. An Irish Setter puppy peered back at him. The animal trembled and whined, shrinking back.

“Here, pup,” Edward whispered. He tried to suppress the palsied tremor in his hand and held it out to the puppy.

The dog watched him with wary eyes for several minutes, gaze darting for an escape. It started to lean forward, pulled back, started toward him again. Edward kept his hand out and waited. Inching toward him, the setter stretched its neck out, and ventured a nervous lick at his hand. He let it sniff until it came out further. The puppy wagged its tail as it slinked into the gap between Edward’s legs and huddled there. The perfume of lilac came to him then, overwhelming in its dizzying sweetness.

The pup wore no collar. Edward carried it home, and made it a small bed, and cooked some food for it, grumbling that he didn’t want the burden. He told himself he had no business keeping a dog and would find her another home. He scanned the paper for days and checked the neighborhood for flyers. In case someone called, he left his name and number with the dog pound, but the phone stayed silent.

 

On the fourth day, as he sat in his easy chair and the dog lay at his feet, he felt her eyes on him. He resisted the urge to meet her gaze. Her head lay on her paws and she crept closer and closer. He wouldn’t give in. Soon she lifted her head, slow and sneaky, until it touched the hand resting on the chair’s arm. She nuzzled it and insinuated her head under it. Edward sighed and let his hand smooth the silky hair, then scratched her ear. As his hand drifted lower, she lifted her chin, asking for more. Her head tipped back, exposing her throat. For the first time, he noticed a tiny white patch there. Shaped like a heart. His resistance melted away, tears dampened her hair, and he named her Ellie.

He chastised her for getting on the bed and nosing through the trash. Ellie followed him around the house and sat patiently by the door when she needed to go out. They went on walks, neighborhood children begged to play with Ellie, and she obliged. Edward and Ellie watched old movies on Saturday nights, with her in the spot beside his chair and his hand resting on her head. She lay next to his bed every night. When he woke, he would find her soulful gaze on him, watching.

The color seeped back into the sunset. Food tasted better, and his pipe, left in its stand on the mantel for ages, found its way back into his shirt pocket. Smells returned, sounds became richer once more. Ellie brought the essence of everything back to him.

 
Early Christmas morning, Ellie snuck onto the bed with Edward. Her big dark eyes watched him sleep. And when the last soft breath left his lips, she licked his hand as it lay on his chest.

On Christmas Morning

He claps his hands, his face suffused with joy, and runs off to write a Christmas wish list. He's giddy at the idea of waking up there; he wonders what they'll have under the tree, and how they'll spend the day.

I sit alone, smothering the bitterness roiling at the one disrupting our lives after years of indifference and absence, and instead focus on the happiness it will bring the one I love.

I sit alone, avoiding thoughts of the deafening silence I'll hear when I wake at a reasonable hour, instead of at the crack of dawn with warm little hands nudging me and a squeal of delight, "Santa came!"

I sit alone, refusing to listen to that slithering whisper in the back of my mind. What if he likes it better there?

I sit alone, wondering if he'll come home and ask, innocent and unaware of the rending of my heart, "Mom, can I go live with him?"

I sit alone, anticipating silence.

Thanksgiving: Generations

I scurry about the house, jittery, focusing on the preparations. It’s always like this. In the hours before everyone arrives, the idea of the family dinner intimidates me. I try to conjure ideas for witty conversation while spreading table cloths and pulling dishes from cabinets, but when the time comes, all wit escapes me.

Seasons mark the passage of time, like generations retiring to make room for the young. Some people like spring. The new growth and cool showers rejuvenate them. Others like summer, basking in the sun and outdoor fun. Then there are those who baffle me with their affinity for the snow and teeth-chattering short days of winter. My favorite is autumn. I love the warm colors falling like rain drops from the trees. I love the metallic tang in the air when I step outside. I love Thanksgiving, and a large family dinner. Everyone leaves their far-flung corners to gather for sustenance, physical and emotional.

I set out silverware and plates, arrange napkins, and devise a centerpiece. As I move about the long, make-shift arrangement of tables lined end-to-end, I envision everyone, already in their chairs, chattering and laughing as they wait for the feast. As I notice a similarity of traits in my clan, the image focuses on three figures.

My grandfather sits at the head of the table. His balding head gleams in the soft light, his large frame cocked to the left, with his elbows planted on the table. His huge hands, seamed with wrinkles and age spots that belie my childhood memories of a man in his prime, link loosely together just below his square chin. Thin lips press together in the slightest of smiles. It’s difficult to tell if his smile is the outward expression of a sense of superiority, which lies just below the surface, or simply mild amusement. There's something fantastic in his shoulders, in the way he holds them, as if an invisible mantle hangs upon them that bestows a greater…everything. He pulls his shoulders back and holds them straight, steadfast. They embody the pride he carries with him, like a coat of armor, inspiring admiration for the soldier of years past. His shoulders have carried large burdens, too heavy for many men. They embody strength and security. But armor can shield too well, preventing true closeness and intimacy. I'm certain I'll never peel that armor back quite far enough to see what hides underneath.

Then I picture my brother. He sits much looser, without the obvious rigid control of the man beside  him; he projects less visible tension. But as he shifts in his chair, I spot the signs of restlessness. He’s never still for long. His hands, so similar to his grandfather’s, are gentler in some indefinable way. They rest upon the table, then cradle the back of his head as he leans back with a sigh. The arms are thinner, more sinuous. But his shoulders mimic his ancestor's. Not quite as broad, but they have the same lines. I see the deeper differences, though. These shoulders speak of more pain endured and truly felt; absorbed rather than deflected. They do not offer the same inviting impression of security. More vulnerable, less guarded. But I know they shelter something within. The armor isn’t as thick, but it’s made from the same resilient material and formed from the same mold.

Last, I see my son in my vision. The thought brings a tightening in my chest; an unbearable ache, a need to hold him and keep him always within my reach. He squirms in his chair, that dazzling, mischievous smile lighting upon anyone who looks his way. Overwhelmed by the larger-than-normal crowd and all of the attention, his eyes flicker to me for reassurance.

He reminds me of the leaves swirling in a blustery autumn breeze, free and loose. Yet his excitement prompts a virtual vibration of his entire body, invisible energy on the verge of explosion. He sits straight, then leans to grab the cup belonging to the person next to him, then shifts to look at the people at the far end of the table who erupted in laughter, his green eyes opening wide in surprise. Between his bursts of movement, I catch a glimpse of his hands and his smile; the hands of a small child, the smile of a cherub. But when I look closer, I notice his hands are large for a boy his size, with long, slender fingers--exactly like his grandfather’s and uncle’s hands. He reaches to rub his ear, brushing away the bronze-red hair that tickled it. He has a slim neck, with the spot under his ear that I can’t help nuzzling whenever he allows me to restrain him for the briefest moment. He has the shoulders, too. They aren't as big or as broad, of course. On a child, they look as fragile as the whisper-thin bones of a hummingbird. But potential inhabits his shoulders. I try to imagine the man he will become, but it's too soon, and the picture eludes me. I pray he won't encounter too much pain, but I know he will bear his share. I hope when he meets challenges, he learns to absorb what makes him grow and learn, and manages to deflect what can damage his soul. His shoulders will carry burdens, and his hands will bear scars. Just like his grandfather and uncle.

I finish the settings, making small adjustments, fidgeting until it's just right. The aroma of rich food--turkey and stuffing and pumpkin pie--fills the air. I admonish my son to stop playing with the napkins I just folded and scoop him up as he giggles. I bury my face in that precious spot on his neck, inhale his little boy scent, and endure the painful swell of love he brings to my heart.

The others arrive, and I hug my grandfather and brother. As each embrace me, my cheek nestles against their shoulders. They comfort me and calm my nerves.

 

Image courtesy of Apolonia at FreeDigitalPhotos.net