Where the Broken Lie (5 page)

Late in that night, I have the choking dream again. Except it’s different this time. This time, there’s an actual nightmare and I remember it. It’s one of those mind-working-overtime dreams where separate realities fuse together. Where the sleeping intellect tries to make sense where sense has not been found.

Tammy is crying in agony. Her cries are coming from a room at the end of a darkened corridor. I’m in a hospital, and our child is in danger. I sprint down the hallway, but the floor is icy slick, and I can’t keep my balance. I slip and slide, tumble and fall, rise and run again. Except now the corridor rotates slowly like I’m inside a cement mixer. Tammy’s cries continue to pour out from that distant room as I inch forward. I realize then that her guttural wails are coming from the room at the end of the corridor and darkness shines from that room. Like the light at the end of the tunnel, except the exact opposite.

Tammy’s voice grows louder, shrill screams piercing. “Stay away from him! Keep your hands off my son!”

I turn the corner of the room, and the first thing I see is myself sitting in a rocking chair in the corner. Like some child’s toy left in a disturbingly awkward pose. A mannequin with a face of exaggerated features carved on petrified wood. Bright red cheeks, bulging eyes with long lashes and thick frowning brows. Mouth and lips carved into a frozen wicked sneer. Suddenly, mannequin-me jerks his head toward real-me and locks his eyes on mine. I find contempt in his eyes.

I turn and see Tammy on a gurney; a man in doctor’s scrubs stands on the other side of the cart, bent over her torso. At first, it looks as though the man has no arms, but then I realize both of his arms are wriggling deep inside of Tammy’s stomach, as though trying to reverse the sleeves of an inside-out sweater. His arms fish through the insides of her abdomen and she writhes in spasms, but there’s no blood. Then, with a violent jerk, he pulls both hands out. Tammy deflates before my eyes, and the man stands bolt upright. Arms extended, he holds a silent child out in front of him.

For the first time, the man looks at me, and I recognize him but cannot make out the face. I know him; I don’t know him. Both hands are around Ethan’s neck and the man turns him so that I might see Ethan’s face. Except that it’s not Ethan’s face, but rather it was the face of Katie Cooper. And then the man with the face I do and do not know smiles a razor blade smile and winks.

My background mind has been quietly obsessing on something that the rest of me can’t put my finger on. I try to walk it out of me and find my feet leading me to the playground. Swinging Girl is not here today. I take my place on the bench and behold the world of Willow Grove. There was a time when I thought this place was the world.

“Hey.”

Somehow Swinging Girl has managed to sneak onto her swing without me noticing. She blows a big pink bubble that nearly conceals her entire face.

“Hello,” I say. “You sure must like swinging.”

“Yep. Don’t you?”

I think about the porch swing at Grandma’s. “Yes. I do like swinging.”

The chains on her swing clang in a rhythm that gives tempo to our conversation.

“Then swing.” She nods to one of the empty swings.

“Maybe next time.”

“You’re just going to sit there again, aren’t you?”

“I’ve got more thinking to do.”

“Have you figured out what you’re even thinking about yet?”

She swings a little faster and the tempo between us picks up.

“Well, sort of. I mean, I know what I’m thinking about,” I lie. “It’s just … it’s complicated.”

“UGH!” she says, as though she has just stepped out of a Peanuts comic strip. “I hate how grown-ups are always talking about how complicated everything is.”

I have no defense for that. She swings higher, faster, harder, and my heart goes with her.

“You know what’s not complicated?” she asks.

“Swinging?”

She smiles and extends her legs, the tempo slowed, and for the first time, I take a real good look at her. She can’t more than eleven or twelve years old—maybe younger. Freckles around her nose dot her light complexion and long lashes frame green eyes that are so light they almost look yellow. When she blinks, it conjures an image of blooming daisies in my mind.

“Didn’t your parents ever tell you not to talk to strangers? There are dangerous people in the world.”

“Are you dangerous?”

“No, I’m not dangerous. But nobody is going to tell you they’re dangerous.”

“Well, duh.”

“I’m just saying, I could be dangerous. You don’t know.”

“I know you’re not dangerous.”

“How can you tell?”

“I just can. You’re too sad to be dangerous.”

“Listen … just humor me, ok. Tell me you don’t make a habit of this.”

“I don’t. In fact, you are the only stranger I have ever even seen on this playground. So consider yourself humored.”

I settle into the swing on the opposite end from hers. I walk it backwards, then lift my legs and glide forward. I pump until my legs stretch nearly as high as hers did, and we swing together like that, side-by-side. Not talking, not thinking, just swinging and occasionally dragging my feet to remind myself of dirt and rock and things that can be touched. After some minutes, we stop. Here we sit, twisting in our swings. The only sounds in the entire world come from the chains clanging above our heads and the gravel crunching beneath our feet. I feel her turn my way. She looks up at me with those daisies and stares hard, flower eyes dancing across my face left to right to left again, as if literally reading my face.

“Now, see, isn’t that better than just sitting there?”

“Yes. It really is.”

“Thought so. It’s always better to do something.”

Grandpa and Grandma are napping, though Grandpa may have been aided in the effort by a liquid sedative. I sit by myself, reading the Daily Chronicle. When I open the obituaries, which I have recently taken an interest in, my eyes are drawn to the obituary of a little girl who has recently passed.

Beatrice Hart had been a classmate of mine through all my school years in Willow Grove, and she’d had a crush on me through most of them. Probably because I was a little less cruel to her than most kids. Because of this, Beatrice was always giving me things—bubble gum, candy bars, even money sometimes.

As most of us grew older, Beatrice seemed to regress and withdraw. She kept to herself so much that it felt as if it literally pained her to be seen or spoken to. She looked like someone who wanted to not be noticed. When she stood, she cowered. When she spoke, her voice was muffled and the words came out garbled, as though they didn’t come from her at all but rather from some smaller someone deep inside of her that strained to push the words through the barely parted lips. When she moved, it was with small steps, head tilted down so that the long, scraggly, gray-brown hair curtained her face. Nobody ever saw the eyes of Beatrice Hart.

One time in P.E., Beatrice and I had been assigned to be square-dancing partners. Her hands were clammy and as we began to dance, she was clearly nervous. After awhile, though, she did loosen up and almost seemed to be enjoying herself. I was swinging my partner round and round when my partner smiled and laughed a little bit. Then she lifted her eyes cautiously, slipping a toe into waters that were always cold for her. I yanked my hands out of hers, wiped them on my pants vigorously, and for the rest of the class we danced without touching. Without smiling. Beatrice Hart gave me a smile and I responded with a cruelty that chased it away. It should have changed me, that smile.

I wish I hadn’t been so cruel. Life, I guessed, was cruel enough for Beatrice Hart.

I put down the newspaper, grab a pen and notebook, and go to the kitchen table where I write Beatrice Hart Benton a letter of apology for every cruel thing that had ever happened to her. I apologize for how unkind life had been to her and promise her my prayers. I tell her how beautiful her daughter’s obituary was and how much it has moved me. How it has changed me.

I don’t sign the letter and I don’t mail it. Instead, I put it in an envelope and carry it to the cemetery. The Willow Grove cemetery is small and it only takes a couple minutes to locate the small patch of dirt that Laura Jane is buried beneath. I leave the letter under the angel figurine that stands where Laura Jane’s headstone will soon be.

Some days later, I am back at the cemetery and see a different envelope sticking out from under the angel figurine, and I know it’s meant for me.

That hole inside me begins to fill, and it occurs to me that perhaps the baby girl in my dream wasn’t Katie Cooper, but rather Laura Jane. Now that I know the meaning of my dream, hopefully it will go away.

It does not. My dreams choke me awake again that very night.