Nocturnal (11 page)

“I hope you got a few good shots in,” she says with a sly smile. 

“Sort of.” Not really.

“Good, because if he ever touches you again, he's going to have me to contend with.” She points her trowel like it's a sword. I wouldn't mess with her.

“It's not going to happen.” I toss another weed away with more force than I mean to.

“I know, that's why I gave you the pepperspray.” She smiles as I put my scarf back on. She arches her back. “I think I need some lemonade. Would you like anything?”

“No, thanks.” She brushes my shoulder as she gets up, using me as a support. I watch her walk away, thinking about how many days I have left with her. 

It's just the two of us tonight, with Dad out at some dinner with the stockholders of the bank that he's required to go to. It sounded horribly dull. 

“Ava?” She calls from her room after dinner. She'd been in there for a while, and I hadn't wanted to disturb her. She seemed distracted. I'm busy in the kitchen, baking some banana bread. It's from a box, but still. She loves the smell of it baking, and doesn't have enough energy to do it herself. 

“Yeah?”

“Can you come her for a moment?”

She's lying on her bed, surrounded by torn sheets of paper. It looks like a notebook exploded. I step on a few crumpled pieces near the door.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, nothing.” She turns the paper she's holding over so I can't see what she's writing. “Sit down.” She pats the bed and I clear some of the paper away, trying to read the curly script, but I can't.

“I've been thinking about some things I want to talk to you about.” I hate the way her voice sounds. I'm not going to like this conversation, I know it.

“There are some things I want you to know before...” She's accepted it, but doesn't say it out loud. Not yet. Not until it's closer. She shakes her head, as if to rid her mind of the words.

“So. I made a list.” Of course she made a list. 

“What's on it?” I say. She grabs a piece of paper from her nightstand and hands it to me. The writing isn't as nice as the other pieces around me.

The list is relatively short.

“Make real banana bread,” I read. That one makes me smile. She's underlined the word real. Okay, I get it.

“I feel it's only fair to teach you. My grandmother taught me, and yours isn't around to teach you.” My mother's mother had died when I was seven. I had only blurry memories of her, and they all took place in a nursing home. One of the only things I can remember is the smell of that place. That was what death smelled like. Rot and bodies and stale bananas. The cemetery smelled like grass and fresh air. Ironic.

“Hem pants.” It's something she's always done for me. Being 5'1 is rough when most pants are made for someone who's 5'7. They leave a lot of leg that drags on the ground and trips me up. She'd whisk them away, get on her Singer sewing machine, also from my grandmother, and fix them for me. They'd appear in my drawer completely done, as if fairies had done them in the night.

The rest of the list seems simple. Tend the garden. Change oil in car. 

“Fold a fitted sheet?”

“It's a pain in the ass of you don't know how to do it,” she says, chewing on the end of her pen. She's still writing something else, but holds it so I can't see.

They're mostly domestic tasks, but there are some others in there. Like telling me more of my grandmother's stories. Setting a table for a fancy dinner. Read her favorite poems. Go through my baby clothes. Drive to see the house she'd grown up in. The second half of the list doesn't feel like it's for me.  I look at the first item and then at her. We both smile.

“How are we doing on bananas and flour?”

“I think we're out of both.” Dad and I don't have her magical skill of knowing exactly what we need for groceries and when we needed to restock. I wish she'd passed that on to me. But I still have time.

“Then we must go shopping,” she says, hopping out of bed as if it's the beginning of the day, instead of the late evening. She takes my arm and drags me out to the car. “Here,” she says, tossing me the keys. 

I've never been allowed to drive her car before. It's nothing spectacular, a black Jetta with a sunroof, but still. It's much snazzier than the Civic. It's also quieter.

“Thanks.” I don't really know what else to say.

“It's about time you started driving it. You can have it. If you want.” Comments like that make me swallow hard and make my stomach clench. I bite back the bile that threatens to come out on the leather seats as I pull out of the driveway. She turns on the radio, probably sensing my feelings.

An hour and a half later, we're both covered in flour and have banana is everywhere. I pull a slimy bit from my shirt and fling it into the trash. 

“You want it to be a little lumpy. It bakes up better that way.” I stop stirring and she holds the pan for me to pour the batter in. We've been working from my grandmother's recipe, which is written in fading purple ink on a recipe card that's so stained you can barely read parts of it. Thankfully, she's got it memorized. Someday I will, too. I hate to think of that someday.

I haven't baked with her since I was little and begged her to let me lick the beaters from the big stand mixer. Before she'd been diagnosed, I'd come home and see her baking for her class, and I'd think about asking to lick the beaters again, but then Tex would call and ask me to go out, or I'd have ballet or homework. Now these moments are numbered. Like grains of sand, they ran through my fingers. I had to do what I could to capture them. I run upstairs to grab the camera she'd gotten me for my fifteenth birthday.

“Smile,” I say, surprising her. She poses while she wipes her finger around the inside of the bowl and licks it with relish. Then she throws some flour at my face and that's the end of the picture taking for a little while. It's time for epic flour fight.

Dad comes home to find us both panting on the floor, backs against the cabinets, flour still floating in the air like smoke. We both cough.

“It looks like a flour bomb exploded in here.” He's got Chinese take-out and tired expression on his face. 

“It pretty much did.” We both look like ghosts or clowns or something. She bumps me with her shoulder and we giggle helplessly. There's something satisfying about making a huge mess without worrying about cleaning it up.

I choke on a flour cloud. It just makes me laugh harder.

Knowing

The bread comes out great, even though we make enough to feed a small country. 

“You have to make it until you can do it without the recipe,” she says. So we do, sending Dad out on another banana run. He's taking the next couple of days off to prepare for the camping trip, and she wants to visit the Sussex Elementary school where she worked. That disposes of much of the bread. I bring some to school and get a kick out of Tex and Jamie's faces as they bite into a slice.

“This is heaven. Are you sure you didn't put crack in here?” She doesn't even bother to swallow before she talks. Attractive.

“Only the best Colombian. How did you know?” She rolls her eyes at me and takes another bite. Jamie is kinda quiet, but he is eating it, so I know it isn't the bread. I'd tried calling him last night, but he never picked up and I didn't know what to say on the message so I gave up.

“How are you James?” He shrugs. Uh oh. Bad sign. Tex is too busy mowing down on the bread to notice the look I give him. He shakes his head. Hasn't told Tex. I give him another look. He shrugs again. I kick his foot under the lunch table.

He just glares at me. Fantastic.

I don't get a chance to talk to him until just after school when I snag him on the way to track practice. He tries to get away, but I hold on tight. He's not enough of an ass to drag me, thankfully.

“You didn't tell Tex about Cassie? What is wrong with you?” He tries to pull away, but I'm not letting go. I do stumble a bit, but I'm like a pit bull. Not letting go.

“I don't know. I just... I didn't want to tell anyone.” Ear tug with sigh included. I let go.

“You told me. I'm someone,” I point out.

“You're different.” He won't look at me.

“Why?”

“Because you know,” he says, like it's obvious. Not to me.

“Know what?”

“What it's like to have a parent that...” He shifts his bag to the other shoulder, glancing at the gym. A parent that what? Isn't going to be around? His dad's and alcoholic. My mother is a cancer patient. Those are two different things.

“I'm not getting it.” I wave my hands for him to elaborate. He just keeps looking at the gym, as if it's the last lifeboat and he's standing on the Titanic.

“I can't talk to you now, but we can talk later. I have to go.” I try once more to get him to turn around, but I see his face. He can't do this right now. I do know what that's like.

“Okay, fine.” I let go of his arm and watch him jog so he isn't late. It's almost a relief to think about something else. Other than how my mother is going to slip through my fingers and there's nothing I can do to hold onto her. And how I still want to see this guy I meet in a cemetery who threatens to kill me, and almost did. Thinking about anything else is a relief.

***

There are piles of bags on the kitchen counter when I get home. Work was harder than usual, with Tex pestering me about Jamie and Toby shushing us every five seconds and giving us useless chores like dusting the shelves or alphabetizing the frequent-buyer membership cards. I'd barely made it out of there without having a major blow-up. 

“What's this?” I motion to the bags.

“I got you new jeans and a bunch of fabric so you can learn how to sew. It's about time you learned.” I try to look excited. I should be happy that she's doing these things with me. But really, I'm just tired. One look at her eager face and I shove the tiredness aside.

“Awesome,” I say with a smile that takes a bit of effort.

She tries to teach me the rudiments of the finicky machine she'd inherited and painstakingly restored. “Nothing is better than an old Singer. Nothing,” she says. She makes the machine hum and purr like a contented tiger. Her straight lines are perfect. Every time I try to make a straight stitch, the machine makes a horrible grinding noise. 

“Whoa, stop, stop, stop.” She reaches in to adjust something, explaining what the issue was. I'm trying to commit it to memory, and thanking my stars that there is such a thing as Google. I yawn, but keep trying.

I nearly sew my fingers together three times, but I manage to sew two of the pieces of cloth together in a straight line, with no wrinkles. It's a miracle.

“Good job. See? It isn't as bad as you think it's going to be. I got you some patterns too.” Strewn across her bed are piles of fabric, all in colors in textures I love. It startles me that I would have chosen the exact same, if I'd gone with her. There are patterns for dresses, pants, jackets. They are thin as tissue paper, but extremely intimidating. There are words I don't understand about basting, and seam allowance. I'll have her explain them to me when my head doesn't hurt so much.

“I got out the manual so if you have an issue, it's there.” For after she's gone. “There's also the number of the guy in Lewiston who fixes them. He's really nice, don't be afraid to call him.” She's talking like she's going on a trip or something, just giving me care instructions for while she is gone. So calm. So rational. My strong mother. 

“I'll take good care of it,” I say, trying to stay as calm as she is. If she can do it, so can I.

My insomnia gets worse as the days go by and we tick off more items from the list. I take whatever chance I get to run into my room and write everything down I can remember. My body is beyond exhausted, but I can't sleep. Somehow I still manage to function, even though I spend most of each night staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling. I can't stop seeing Peter whenever I close my eyes. I also don't do anything to stop it. I've relived the moment when he turned on me. It doesn't seem so scary now. Further proof I'm coming unhinged from lack of sleep.

Four nights later, I have to get out. The walls keep closing in on me, the house sucking all the air out of my lungs. Even with the open window, it's too much. The snoring from below is what finally decides it for me. The bruises on my neck are gone. I stare out the window, into the woods just beyond the house. I long for the darkness and cool stones. The names and the whispers of the dead you can almost hear. I miss my sanctuary. It's time to poke the tiger.

My fingers dig into the windowsill and I turn away. I'm going. Even if it hurts me.

***

He's not there. Part of me breathes a sigh of relief, and part of me is disappointed. I wanted to show him. To make a stand that I'm not scared. No matter what he does. Instead I walk between the stones, saying hello. Making conversation with these people that I've never seen. Whispering their names and listening to the rustle of the leaves. 

Something flashes in the corner of my eye. I look, but there is nothing. Most likely it's a deer. In fact, your chances are better of being attacked by a deer than mugged in Maine. Maybe not my chances. I search the edge of the trees, looking for whatever it was. My feminine intuition sends up flares. Totally sexist, but true. Women have a sixth sense about things.

Hesitantly, I step closer to the woods that ring the cemetery. With my luck it's be a moose and it will charge me and I'll be eviscerated under its hooves. Did moose have hooves? Like horses? I shake my head. I'm losing. I peer closer, trying to make out anything in the darkness between the trees. They're old and thick here, like interlocked fingers, stretching to the sky.

“I'm not scared of you,” I call out. A rustle answers, but this time it comes from behind me. That damn mausoleum again. He must be here. “Peter?” I've never known him to make a lot of noise, but I really shouldn't make any assumptions about him. It hadn't ended well last time.

“Peter, are you here?” 

I squint down the stairs, remembering only now that I've left the flashlight in my car. But I did bring the pepperspray. I hoped it worked on animals as well as people. I hadn't bothered with the whistle. There was no one around to hear it. The mausoleum doors are still wide open. This is my chance to see what the inside looks like.