Heart and Home (6 page)

“What the hell?”

“Dad? What is it?” I waited,
but he didn’t answer, nor did he seem to move. “Dad?”

He still hadn’t answered by
the time I pulled open the door and stepped out into the hallway. Dull and
yellowed light leaked into the hallway from the sewing room and staggered
through his thick shadow.

“Daddy?”

I was almost behind him
before he turned quickly and said, “Don’t take another step.”

“What happened?”

“Damned if I know,” he shook
his head. “The mirror on the back of that vanity… Looks like it just
shattered.” I tried to peer in over his shoulder, shards of light catching in
the broken glass strewn all over the last quilt she’d been working on. “Go on
back to your bath before you cut your feet all up. I’ll take care of the mess.”

“How did it fall?”

“I don’t know, Janice,”
there was tension in his voice. “Don’t worry about it now, just finish up your
bath and let me clean up.”

I stood in the hallway for a
moment and watched him try to make sense out of it. I realized he wasn’t going
to budge while I stood there, so I slipped back into the bathroom and closed
the door. I sat down on the edge of the tub, still wrapped in my bathrobe, and
listened to him mutter under his breath as he tiptoed through the broken glass.
From time to time pieces of it crunched under his shoes.

The entire incident brought
the stress back and I lowered my forehead into my hand to massage the tension
away. After a few moments I realized nothing was powerful enough to take the
edge off of that day. I’d be better off just going to bed and hoping for a
better start on tomorrow, so I reached back to let the water out of the tub and
filled my lungs with the fragrant steam one last time.

I released the breath as I
turned to stand up, but a startled scream caught in my throat as soon as I saw
it. Drawn into the steam on the bathroom mirror were the letters YATS.

I clamped my hand over my
mouth and nearly gagged on my own strangled cry. It hadn’t been there before. I
would have noticed it while poking around with my face, but then the mirror
hadn’t steamed over fully until I’d opened up the door into the hallway.
Perhaps the air temperature difference caused the mirror to really steam over,
and that was why I hadn’t seen it, but who would write on the bathroom mirror?

Ignoring my upbringing and
the thousands of times my father told me not to clear off the mirror with my
bare hands, I reached out and smudged my palm across the letters. My skin
squeaked against the glass until the mirror was clear and I could only see my
face. Wide-eyed and frantic, I shook my head at myself and then bent down to
retrieve my clothing from the floor.

Dad was just coming out of
the sewing room when I opened up the bathroom door to step out into the
hallway.

“Stay outta there tonight,”
he said. “It’s a real mess.”

“Okay,” I swallowed and was
grateful that he couldn’t hear the thump of my heart. “Did you figure out what
happened?”

“No, but I’ll take care of
it tomorrow. I’m just not in the mood to mess with it now.”

“I can clean it up. I don’t
mind.”

“Nonsense,” he flapped his
hand at me. “Don’t worry about it.”

It wasn’t really him I was
worried about, I realized. It was me. My day had just gone from really
depressing to downright insane. After the shattered vanity mirror, I couldn’t
tell him about the writing in the steam. He’d have me committed before morning.
On the inside, however, I was dying to figure it all out.

He headed toward the steps.
“I’ll probably turn in soon, so if you need anything, you’ll have to fetch it
yourself.”

“I know my way around this
house probably better than you do,” I laughed.

“Good,” he nodded. “Then if
I need anything, I’ll know exactly who to turn to.”

“Goodnight, Dad.”

“Night.”

He disappeared down the
stairs and I stood there in the hallway for a few moments trying to pull myself
together.
 

Chapter Six

Steam billowed into the air and began to fill the room. It
soaked the fabric of my nightgown so it felt heavy on my frame and clung to me
as I walked. I turned away from the bathtub and leaned my body across the sink
to watch the mirror cloud over. Behind the silver coat of moisture, my blurred
reflection followed the contour of my every movement. I paused, but the murky
image in the mirror still moved. I jerked backward with a startled cry, as one
by one the letters YATS formed in the steam. In the brief clarity of the letter
A, a familiar eye peered out at me like sunlit honey.

When I sat up against the
stifling darkness with a gasp, I wasn’t sure where I was. Gripped in a haze of
confusion, I scanned my streetlamp lit surroundings until the furniture began
to take familiar shape. The dream clung like loose fabric to the edges of my
staggering consciousness, my quickened heart rate the only real evidence that
I’d been having a nightmare. I raked my hands through my hair with a strangled
sigh, and untucked myself from the blankets just as a rumble of thunder sounded
somewhere in the distance.

Even as a kid I had not
liked getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. Then it was
fear of the bogeyman that made me reluctant, but as I grew older plain
old-fashioned laziness became my excuse. With the strands of nightmare still
clinging like old cobwebs to my mind, it was a combination of both fear and
laziness that made me dread leaving my bedroom.

Dull orange light spilled
into the hallway from the nightlight that had been plugged in behind the
bathroom sink for as long as I could remember. I followed the familiar path and
avoided the mirror, no doubt a result of the dream I could now barely remember.
I convinced myself long before going to bed that whatever I’d seen in the
mirror was the product of some childish prank. My mother was socially active.
Maybe one of her friends’ children wrote on the mirror during a visit, and no
one ever cleaned it off. It didn’t matter that on top of being incredibly
active, my mother was also an astute housekeeper.

Anything was better than the
scenario that originally popped into my mind, but there was no doubt the
strange experience sparked my active imagination, leading me headlong into
nightmare.

On my way back to the
bedroom I paused to listen to my father’s snoring at the end of the hallway. As
annoying as it had been growing up down the hall from a master log-sawer, it
now provided a sense of comfort. He was all I had left, and it was up to me to
take care of him. If only I vested more interest in them to begin with I might
have been able to prevent my mother’s death somehow.

It sounded ridiculous, and I
knew it, but I wanted to believe that there was something I could have done to
stop it. Since there was no way to change what was done, I would do everything
in my power to hold onto my father. I wasn’t going to lose them both so easily.

I closed my bedroom door
behind me, and crawled back into the bed, drawing the quilt up just below my
chin. Rain splattered the windows, and the play of light on the ceiling moved
droplets like rolling shadows through the reflection of my curtains. Heavy
eyelids dropped over my vision, and I felt myself slowly drift away, until
something thudded loudly against the window. I shot upward as my eyes flew
opened. One thud turned into another, and then there were a few at once until a
steady downpour of hail battered at the roof and siding like determined soldiers,
the thunder their cannon fire.

Flopping over in the bed, I
faced the wall and listened to the thunder grow closer as the hail drummed an
almost angry beat upon the roof and windows. Sure, it stormed in Pittsburgh,
some real doozies, but I’d grown so accustomed to all the other sounds in my
apartment building the silence of the house made everything sound like it was
being broadcast through an amplifier.

Earlier in the week sleep
was an escape from my mother’s death, all the funeral preparations and the
visitors popping by with condolences and dishes of baked macaroni and cheese
had been exhausting. At the end of every night I’d practically fallen into a
coma, but all of that was over now and there was nothing left to hide from.

Eyes closed, the vision of
her grave site was incredibly clear. I could hear Pastor Crane’s sermon and
swimming dizziness twirled me in its arms. A nauseated numbness hummed in my
skull and I felt like I was fainting all over again, only this time when I fell
my body reacted with a waking spasm. The hail pounded on, or maybe that was my
heartbeat in my ears. Either way, I had a feeling it was going to be a long and
restless night.

By the time my body jerked
awake in mid-fall for the third time, I threw the blankets aside and reached
for the lamp on the bedside table. In the light the hail seemed less urgent,
but I knew that if I tried to sleep again that same scene would just play again
and again. I slipped into my bathrobe and tugged on a pair of socks. I crept
quietly down the stairs and turned on the kitchen light. After routing through
the refrigerator and arranging the week’s donated contents half a dozen ways, I
finally found the milk. I was glad to find that she still kept a can of cocoa
powder among the spices on the lazy Susan in the corner cabinet. I took down my
mother’s favorite mug and mixed the cocoa powder with sugar then set the milk
to simmer in a pan on the stove top.

While I waited for the milk
to warm, I turned around and pressed my lower back into the counter. The
kitchen still looked like it had the day I left, decorated in dark greens and
brilliant yellows to accommodate the sunflower theme. Sunflower dish towels and
pot holders matched the border that lined the wainscoting and there were almost
a dozen different sunflower magnets plastered across the refrigerator. She
always tried to bring as much of the outdoors as she could into the house,
especially flowers.

“This way I can have the
warmth of a good garden even in the dead of winter,” she explained when I stuck
my nose up at her sunflower obsessed plan.

Now I appreciated the
choice, especially while the hail and thunder battered at the window behind me.
The kitchen itself was bright and comforting, like a good garden. The liquid in
the pan softly sizzled, so I turned back to check on it, but instead my
attention was drawn to the window as a flash of lightning illuminated the
backyard. A series of chills rippled through me as I realized that it wasn’t
the lightning that caught my attention, so much as the figure that stood in the
middle of the yard, just about twenty feet from the house.

I swallowed and licked my
lower lip, not sure what I should do. If it was a burglar, and they saw me I
certainly didn’t want them to know I saw them too. Dad always kept a flashlight
in the last drawer on the left beside the refrigerator. I whipped open the
drawer and took out the flashlight, then managed to turn off the overhead
light. Total darkness made me feel blind at first, and then the orange and blue
flame flickering underneath the pan of milk came into being. I clicked the
flashlight on and moved to turn off the burner, being sure to keep the light
away from the window.

Burner off, I moved the pan
to the back of the stove and edged my way toward the window. I turned the
flashlight downward and hovered just at the corner, where I hoped I wouldn’t be
seen during the next flash of lightning. Part of me wanted to believe I was
just seeing things. Maybe Mom put a statue in the garden I hadn’t noticed. One
of the neighbors might have even chased their dog into the yard.

A scream caught in the back
of my throat when the next strobe of light brought on the reality of was
clearly a face right outside the window, almost as if whoever it was wanted to
let me know they’d caught me watching them.

My heart thudded as I
staggered backwards, and skittered like a crab across the floor. I barreled up
the staircase two steps at a time with the flashlight still in hand, and I
didn’t stop until I stood outside Dad’s bedroom door gasping to catch my
breath. I shined the light toward the empty stairway gulping air into my lungs.
As it started to slow, the rhythm of his snores rose up against the pound of my
heart, until finally his breathing was all I could hear.

That was when reason kicked
in.

What was I going to say to
him?

“Uh, hey, Dad, I saw the
boogey man in the backyard just now. Can you come down and have a look?”

He’d have me locked up for
sure. Flashes of lightning poked out from under his door and the door to my
mother’s sewing room. I was momentarily tempted to sneak into her sewing room
to see if I could catch another glimpse of whoever I’d seen from the kitchen,
but the greater part of me didn’t want to in the end and besides Dad hadn’t
finished cleaning up in there anyway.

The floorboards creaked
under my careful steps as I snuck back to my bedroom. I paused at the top of
the stairs, shining the flashlight down them again. There was nothing there, no
shadow lurking just around the corner, no movement to catch my eye. I slipped into
my room and closed the door. I locked it too, and then sat down on the edge of
the bed. I turned off the flashlight and laid it on my bedside table before I
crawled back into bed, and drew myself sitting into the corner. It was
ridiculous and I felt all of five years old, but I knew what I’d seen. While I
couldn’t make out any features in the face, I definitely saw someone right
there against the window.

I hugged my pillow tight and
rested my cheek against the wall while the hail continued to pound away at the
house.

*****

“Janice?” A tentative voice
followed a gentle rap. “Janice, it’s time to get up and get ready for church.”

Groggy and disoriented, my
head throbbed like the aftermath of a hangover. I wiped the drool from the
corner of my mouth and pushed off the wall I’d cuddled up to. My neck ached
from falling asleep sitting upright, and that ache throbbed through my head
awfully.

He knocked a little louder
then, and said, “Jannie, come on. Church starts in an hour.”

Church? My father had never
been an enthusiastic churchgoer, often worming his way out of attending on
Sunday mornings while my mother drug me off to Sunday School, and then made me
sit stiffly beside her while Pastor Crane preached the Sunday morning service.
As I’d mentioned to Pastor Crane, I really hadn’t set foot in a church since
I’d left Sonesville. My mother’s funeral service had been the first, and I had
no intention of making a Sunday morning habit of it just because I was back in
town.

“I don’t go to church
anymore, Dad.” I scooted down into the sheets and drew the blankets up under my
chin to warm away the morning’s chill.

“Well, everyone will be
expecting to see you there.” He added, “I’ll take you out for brunch after.”

Since when did he care about
keeping up appearances, especially when it came to church? Had my mom made him
go after I left, dressing him up each Sunday and dragging him along beside her?
I lifted a hand to my forehead and massaged the creases in my brow before
moving my fingers along the stiffness of my own neck.

“I want to get there before
all the good seats are taken,” he urged.

“Good seats?” I muttered.
“What have you done with my father?”

“Coffee’s on,” came his
reply.

“Oh, all right!” I supposed
there was only one way to find out what the aliens did with my father, and
after all, it was only one Sunday. Brunch would give me a chance to talk to Dad
about several things, like the bizarre person I’d seen in the back yard, and of
course my need to return to my job and the city. I hadn’t even mentioned that I
was planning to leave that afternoon, but I was sure he wouldn’t be surprised.
“I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

I felt even number as I
filed into church. Everyone had their eye on me, as though they were trying to
determine whether or not I would pass out like I did at the funeral. I managed
to smile at everyone I made eye contact with, but on the inside it felt like a
nightmare. Unfortunately there was no waking from it, especially every time we
were expected to rise with our hymnals to sing our praises unto the Lord. I
kept glancing sidelong at my father, waiting for tentacles to sprout from his
ears and prove that the man who forced me out of bed and drug me off to church
was indeed a clever body snatcher and not my father.

“. . . and while many of us
have felt the burden of sorrow in our hearts this last week at having lost one
of the most treasured members of our congregation, let us rejoice in the
knowledge that our lord and savior, Jesus Christ, passed on to us when he said,
‘I am the resurrection, and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were
dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall have
everlasting life.’ Let us pray.”

On instinct, I lowered my
head and closed my eyes as Pastor Crane’s voice reached out, “Dear Lord, we ask
that you join us here today and offer your comfort to the family and loved ones
of Chandra McCarty, who has passed now into your care ...”