Jack & Jill (5 page)

"He said you had finally become a woman, and he was excited to show you how much he really loved you. How much he was going to protect you from all the bad things in the world. But he was the bad thing, wasn't he?"

"Yes."

"Was I?"

I frown at that, try to discern his expression, but the light above renders his face little more than a white mask with dark holes for eyes. "Of course not," I tell him. I am sick, and suddenly desperate to wake, desperate to be gone from here, for though I have no sense of danger here, it feels as though something is coming.

"Were you?" John asks.

"No."

"Then why did you hurt me?"

"I didn't hurt you, John."

"Jack."

"Okay,
Jack
, I didn't hurt you. I loved you."

A faint gurgling sound that might have been my brother chuckling through a mouthful of blood. "Daddy said that too."

There is a sudden slam at the door behind me and even in the dream I am startled by the ferocity of the sound. The echo seems to linger in the air for far too long, until it is reinforced by another blow against the wood.

"Oops," John says. "Reality comes a-callin'."

"What do I do?"

"
Sis, I have no answers for you that you don't already know, no conclusions you haven't already drawn. This is all your make-believe Hell, after all, and I'm just a figment of it. All I can say is what you want me to say, so here goes: If we were the nursery rhyme, if we were really Jack and Jill, how would it all end? I'd fall down, and break my crown..."

The light illuminating him
extinguishes and now the dark is twice as dense as before. I am blind but for the afterimage of my brother and alone with the sound of the church door behind me being pummeled by the fists—or hooks—of a giant.

Wood splinters. Cracks.

My heart starts to pound.

Feeble gray light creeps through the gaps in the door. The hinges rattle.

"Hide," my mother whispers from the cross high on the wall.

But it is too late for that, and
John's words are still ringing in my head with a fervor that mimics my father's assault on the door. A panel of wood separates with the sound of a gunshot and clatters to the floor. Now I can see the edge of my father's shoulder, a piece of the plastic wrapped around his head made foggy by his acrid breath.

I answer my brother’s question.
"...I'd come tumbling after."

The door explodes inwards.

NINE

"
The hell do
you
want?" the old man asked, and shut the door before I had time to formulate an answer. I stood on the stoop, chilled by more than the breeze, and stared at the chipped white paint on the front door. As I ran my finger over the tarnished brass number 9, I saw through the smoked glass panel that my father was still standing on the other side, back hunched slightly, head tilted as if listening. Slamming the door in my face had been a statement, a demonstration of his loathing. That he was lingering there meant curiosity had gotten the better of him. And who could blame him? It had been almost twenty years since we'd last seen each other. He had to be wondering what had brought me to his doorstep now.

"
Open the door," I told him, struggling to keep the tremor from my voice, "Unless you want me to announce to the neighbors my reasons for coming here."

He did not hesitate long. We both kne
w the trouble neighbors could cause.

The man who yanked the door open had
managed to age three decades in two and I guessed he'd probably grown even older still in the sixty seconds or so since he'd seen me on his stoop. His cheeks were sunken, the bones straining against the skin, pulling it taut. His face was angular, vulpine, the eyes bloodshot and all but lost in the folds of dark, wrinkled sockets. Broken capillaries formed a road map of regret across his nose. He had made an attempt to temper the mass of his silver hair with pomade, but something—failing vision or poor lighting, perhaps—had caused him to miss frizzy clumps over his ears and the top of his skull. He wore battered work boots and a pair of denim dungarees over a red and white checkered shirt. From the opening, a tangle of wiry gray chest hair wound its chaotic way up to his wattled throat.

The odor he exuded
was a noxious combination of sweat and alcohol.

He wa
s exactly as I'd imagined he would be, as he should have been, though it was hard for me to reconcile the monstrous image I had carried with me since childhood with the wretched thing that stood before me now.

"
The hell do you want coming around here?" he asked, warily.

"
Can I come in?"

"
For what? What do you want?" He did not move from the doorway.

"
To talk."

"
We have nothing to talk about."

"
I think we do."

He shrugged
. "I don't really care what you think or don't think. You've already caused me enough pain, so why don't you go back to whatever rock you crawled out from under and let me be." He started to close the door and I flattened a palm against it, stopping him.

"
I'm not here to cause you trouble," I told him, unsure if that was the whole truth, and more than a little disgusted at the audacity of him playing the victim. "I just want...I need to talk to you."

He
threw a cautious glance over my shoulder. The neighborhood was quiet, the street deserted.

The
rain, which had been a mere drizzle to that point, quickly strengthened until it was hissing against the pavement.

"
As soon as the rain goes away, you do too," he said gruffly, and turned away, leaving the open door as my invitation inside.

TEN

Entering the gloomy hallway was like stepping back inside the womb. Here was where everything began, and ended. Though the carpet in the hall had been changed in the intervening years, wasn't it here I knelt weeping, feeling the wooden floorboards pressing against my knees? To my right, the stairs, where I sat in the dark listening to my parents arguing about what to do with me, as if I was ever the problem?

The house wa
s smaller than I remembered it, the rooms narrower, as if my absence had created a vacuum that pulled the walls in closer. The air smelled stale and dusty, rank with memory.

I follow
ed my father into the living room. The light in here was dull, or perhaps the room had only possessed color in the old days, like a reversal of the photographic process. Boots scuffing against the carpet, the old man clicked the switch on a small shaded lamp. The yellow glow did little to add cheer, but illuminated enough to show just what had, and had not, changed.

"
Sit down," he said, halfheartedly indicating a leather armchair that hadn't been there in my day.

The television was new. The sideboard was
old and lined with pictures, some black and white (my father's parents, my parents' wedding), most faded color.

I notice
d that there were no pictures of me or John in that gallery.

"
Well?" my father said, brusquely. "Are you going to sit or what?"

Although loath to obey any command from him,
I did, and took a moment to steady my nerves, to bolster the facade of false composure I'd had to maintain since leaving the car. I'd sat out there for an hour, watching the house, the breath sucked from my lungs at the sight of the place, struggling to summon the courage to come to the door, to do anything but turn tail and run, to take Chris's advice and just go see the damn shrink. Anything had to be better than this. After all, what was I doing but voluntarily going back into the lair of the monster, a monster I had for years feared I'd never escape?

But the d
reams wouldn't stop, and my life was beginning to erode. I had to come here, to see if it might make a difference before everything was lost.

Still standing, he asked,
"You want a drink or something?"

"
I don't drink. Thank you."

"Surprising."

"Why is that surprising?"

"You
come from a long line of drinkers."

And pedophiles?
I almost asked, but figured if I wanted any kind of closure—assuming such a thing was even possible—it would be better to avoid antagonizing him, at least so soon.

"
So...how long has it been? Fifteen years?" he asked.

"Something like that, yes."

"I suppose you're married now?"

"Yes."

"Kids?"

"Two."

He smiled bitterly. "Two grandkids and I didn't even know."

"You didn't know because they're nothing to you, and you're nothing to them. It didn't bother you to not know they existed, so let's keep it that way."

"Fair enough. Bit late to make any kind of a connection with them now anyway I suppose, assuming you'd even allow it."

"I w
ouldn't."

He smiled humorlessly.
"Husband. Kids. Are you happy?"

"Do you care?"

He shrugged in response.

"Then let's cut the chit-chat."

"Fine." He cleared his throat. Since I'd arrived, the living room had become a source of renewed fascination for the old man. Anything to avoid making eye contact. "I assumed we were done with each other. Why the surprise visit?"

"
I'm having trouble sleeping."

His bushy eyebrows rose
. "And? Who doesn't? Why would that bring you here?"

"
I'm having trouble sleeping," I explained, "because of nightmares. Memories of things that happened to me when I was a child."

Now he did meet my eye, and his stare radiated coldness
. "And what do you think I can do about it?"

"
You can answer a question for me. That's what you can do."

"
About what?"

"
You know what."

"
I don't have any answers for you, missy. None that you'd care to hear anyway. I tried to talk to you when it mattered, when all the misery could have been avoided, back when we were buddies, you and me. Remember?"

My recollection of this
was vague at best. What I could recall was my father with tears streaming down his face, eyes bulging with fear and anger and pain as he alternated between slapping and screaming at me:
Why? Why did you do this? I'm your father for fuck's sake! Do you
want
them to take me away?
And my mother, sitting in the kitchen, weeping silently, her flour-covered hands in her hair, fingers like glimpses of bare skull between the dark strands.

"
Try again."

He sat down in
a well-worn chair opposite me and sighed, rubbed a hand over his face. "Why are you really here?"

I close
d my eyes for a moment and saw the faces of my family, the unit that had carried me this far through the battlefield of my own psyche. I saw Jenny, weeping; Sam, scared half to death; and Chris, with hurt and hate in his eyes as he loaded up the car. I imagined what it would feel like if their absence wasn't so temporary, if that departure had been the final one.

Then sweeter memories flash
ed behind my eyes.

I remember
ed making up excuses on my lunch break to visit the bank where Chris was a teller long before we knew each other. He'd worked just down the street from the library where I'd been employed since college.

I remember
ed the day he'd asked me out, our first date, the first kiss, the first time we'd made clumsy but sincere love in his apartment. The day he'd proposed.

I remember
ed all of this, and was reminded just how very much things had changed. It was not too late for me to save my relationship with my children, but what about Chris? Had he already decided we were through? And if so, how badly did I want to fight to change his mind?

Perhaps I was wrong about how good
a liar I was, and all along I'd been lying to myself.

I raise
d my head and looked at the old man sitting across from me. I hardly recognized him now, but I saw the awareness in his own eyes, the denial of guilt, the need to be a victim for fear of having to face again the darkness he'd allowed to consume him once upon a time. The darkness that consumed his children. The very same darkness that had touched me in my dreams all these years later and would consume my family if I let it.