A Keeper's Truth (4 page)

Karen
pries the tray from my fists and sets it on a ledge then turns to cup my cheeks
in her hands, forcing me to look at her. “Tess, you’re scaring me.”

“They were
there,” I say, my voice a whisper. “I swear.”

Karen
moves to inspect my face. “Who was there, honey? Customers?” She looks around.
“There’s a lady with a baby, an older couple eating bagels, some business men
huddled for a meeting. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I squeeze
my eyes, holding them tight. My fingernails gouge my ribcage, now throbbing
from a lack of oxygen. This can’t be real. He wasn’t real. I must be seeing
things.

I peer
past Karen as the men in suits rise to leave. The guy with dark skin and the
slightest hint of a tattoo showing around his collar looks in my direction
before walking out the door. It’s him. I think. It looks like him. Sort of. He
doesn’t seem to notice me.

“He’s
normal, and his eyes aren’t blue. And where’s the girl, the one in his arms?”

“Whose
eyes, Chickpea? What the hell are you talking about?”

I move to
stand by the door, watching them walk down the street through the glass, four
men in business suits, not a woman around.

“Where is
she?”

Holy shit,
I’m having a serious mental breakdown. This is it, the moment I’ve dreaded my
entire life, the moment I become my mother. Meyer’s death pushed me over the
edge. I need help. I need a doctor. I shake my hands out, panicking. Abby. Who
will take care of Abby?

I search
for Karen and spot her talking to someone behind the counter. She turns and
walks toward me, a foam cup in each hand. “Here,” she says, handing me a cup.
“It’s a double shot latte. Kill the caffeine ban.”

I take the
cup. “Air, I need air.” I open the door and step outside.

Karen
follows, sliding in beside me. “Did you see someone who reminded you of,” she
leans close, “Meyer?”

I focus on
a piece of broken sidewalk, keeping the amount of air I intake equal to the
amount I exhale, allowing no room for stale air to linger in my lungs. I need
to think rationally. What did I really see? Nothing, it had to be nothing. I’ve
never even met Sonia, so why would I think the woman was her? She wasn’t real.
He wasn’t real. It was a daydream, a vivid daydream.

Karen
guides me to a bench. “Talk to me,” she says. “Did someone look like Meyer,
sweetheart?”

What do I
say? Should I tell her the truth? Like that would go over well. And Karen can’t
keep a secret. Grams will freak if she hears I’m hallucinating.

“Yeah,
Karen, he looked just like Meyer.”

“I didn’t
notice anyone who reminded me of Meyer.” Karen speaks softly, every word
pronounced as if consoling a child. “There is a phenomenon where someone
recognizes a facial pattern or something like that, and I suppose
hallucinations and flashbacks are a normal part of the grieving process, a
stage.”

That’s it.
A stage, a sleep deprived daydream and nothing more. I’ve been under a lot of
stress and my body is reacting, like when I lost all that hair.

“You
should speak with someone, you know. A doctor or grief counselor. Frank could
recommend a good therapist, someone to help you through the rough spots.”

“I’m fine.
I’ll be fine.” I have to be. There is no way I’m telling a doctor this shit.
He’ll say I’m nuts and take Abby from me. It’s the very reason my mother, with
all her faults, didn’t seek the help she needed. Death was a lesser fate.

Karen
grins. “Maybe a shrink will tell you to get laid.”

A chuckle
escapes me. I take it Grams never mentioned BOB. I fiddle with my wedding ring.
I’ve lost weight, and it slides on and off with ease. Physically anyway.

Maybe
Karen is right. Maybe I’ve been cooped up too long. Maybe I need time outside
my head, a little adult interaction. Maybe I should go to that Halloween party.

How bad
could it be?

Some
scientists believe Earth’s first civilization, the
Lemurians
,
were the Adam and Eve of mankind. Little is known about
Lemurian
culture, most tangled in ancient myth predating the written word. This theory,
even when substantiated, is not popular. In fact, it borders on forbidden.

Forgotten
History Magazine
: Archeological Finds Baffle Scientists

A
bby is so
full of pulsating energy she has difficulty sitting through dinner, and her
eyes dart to the clock every few minutes, which is funny since she can’t tell
time. Peas lie scattered across the kitchen table, shot in all directions by
anxious little hands having trouble holding a fork. The juice has been tipped
over twice. I can’t bear another minute, so I excuse her from the table,
smiling as she makes a beeline for Gramps,
Keds
in
full throttle.

Grams and
Gramps wouldn’t miss tonight for the world. Since Abby was a baby they’ve
planned their annual Florida migration around Halloween. They usually spend
winters there,
to warm old bones
, Grams says, but I suspect this year’s
escape has more to do with Meyer’s death than their eighty-year-old bones.
Gramps has always been a proud man, a quiet man. So much so, I used to think he
didn’t like me. But he had a hand in making Meyer the good man he was, having
raised him when his parents died, and no man wishes to outlive two generations
of sons. He’s barely uttered a word since Meyer’s funeral, and Grams is
worried.

I stab
peas, three and four at a time, popping them into my mouth. I’ve given up
trying to collect them with the cloth as they keep rolling to the floor. I
should get a dog, a self-propelled food vacuum. I track Grams, currently the
big bad wolf, chasing Abby around the living room.

“
Ahhhh
,” Abby screams, launching herself into the couch.

“I think
I’ll eat an angel for dinner tonight,” Grams growls, hands over her head in a
menacing pose. The threatening look is thrown off by laugh lines and tight
silver curls. She looms for dramatic impact then drops her hands to Abby’s
belly, spurring massive strings of uncontrolled giggles. Arms and legs flail
about haphazardly.

“All
right, you two, that’s enough.” I playfully swat Abby in the rump. “Get ready
to head out, baby. It’s candy time!”

As much as
Abby loves to be tickled, she loves trick-or-treating more, so she swiftly
slides off the couch and runs upstairs for her wings.

Grams
collapses, taking Abby’s previous spot on the couch. “Her costume is adorable,”
she says. “Perfect choice.”

“Abby
picked it out. You should’ve seen how excited she was when we found it.” I
can’t bear to repeat what she’d said at the time,
Now I’m an angel, Mama, I
can visit Daddy.
It took everything in me to keep from bawling in the
middle of Walmart.

Abby
bounds into the room. “I’m ready!”

I look and
my heart stops. She’s slipped Meyer’s hockey jersey over her costume.

“Abby,
baby, what are you wearing?” I’m having trouble breathing.

“Daddy’s
pajamas.”

Meyer was
a die-hard Maple Leafs fan. Game days were pajama days. Always.

I fall to
one knee beside Abby and pull her into my arms. I kiss her face. Grams has both
hands over her mouth.

Abby
weasels out of my grip and stands back, tapping her wings on the floor. “So
Daddy can find me,” she says. “He likes candy.”

“He . . .
does,” I whisper, gently working out the creases in the jersey with trembling
hands.

Grams
rises from the couch and heads for the door. A bowl of candy waits beside the
pumpkin we carved before dinner, and Grams picks it up, visibly relieved to
find Gramps hasn’t made it to the door yet. Her eyes are red.

I take
Abby by the hand and open the door. “Let’s go get some junk.”

The moon
casts
an eerie glow onto the street sparsely dotted with
kids fluttering about in their costumes. Most of the families out this early
have young children in tow, making their way from house to house. I park Abby’s
wagon so no one trips over it, waiting at the end of a long driveway while she
runs to the door. She skips, humming some muddled tune that sounds dubiously
related to the theme song for The Addams Family. I find this amusing. Abby’s
never heard of The Addams Family and I’ve never watched it, not even as a kid.
The show scared the bejesus out of me. And goodness knows my imagination didn’t
need any assistance on the horror front.

A muffled
growl assaults me from the left and the cricket orchestra pauses in fear. I
hold my breath, suddenly tense, cursing the city for placing the streetlights
so far apart. Something snarls, and I search the trees where shadows come to
life, spinning gruesome scenarios through my mind. A figure jumps to my right,
roaring, and I tumble over the wagon.

“What the
hell?” I scream as the man steadies me.

“Gotcha,”
he says. His laugh is a garbled mess under the rubber zombie mask.

Backing
up, I twist the wagon between us. I can’t see his eyes, but his smile can’t
hide behind the gaping mouth hole.

“Thomas?”

He raises
gnarly rubber gloves. “How’d you know it was me?”

“You’ve
got teeth straight out of a dental advertisement. And the hoodie and shorts
kinda
blow the look.” Thomas removes the mask and runs a hand
through his hair, throwing reckless curls into absolute mayhem. I run the wagon
into his shins. “You scared the shit out of me!”

Thomas
grins, shrugs. “Mission accomplished.”

“You know
it’s October, right?” I point to the shorts then gather my sweater for warmth.

“Broken
thermostat.” He watches Sofia lock hands with Abby as they cut across the yard
to the next house.

I study
him, wondering, thanks to Karen, if he’s holding out for something other than
idle friendship.

“What’s
new with you?” he says.

Losing my
mind, seeing things. “Nothing much.”

Thomas
pushes the sleeves of his hoodie up, mindlessly fingering a nasty scar that
runs from elbow to thumb. I’ve seen the scar before but have never thought to
ask about it. We never talk about anything personal.

“What’s
that from?” I ask before thinking.

Thomas
tugs his sleeves down. “Boating accident.”

He’s
lying. I have this way of knowing the truth about someone, a sixth sense you
could say. He’s hiding something, but I’m not about to pry. I glance at him sideways,
curious. It’s the first time I’ve noticed the color of his eyes, a bluish gray
that matches the shade of his sweater.

We follow
the road, the wagon looking like a miniature toy behind Thomas’s towering
stature. I hide my hands in my pockets. I’ve been brooding over my ring lately.
Should I take it off? Are you no longer Mrs., no longer married, once you’re a
widow?

Till death
do you part.

“How long
did you wear your wedding ring after you and your wife . . .?” I
immediately regret asking. Other than assuming Sofia had a mother at some
point, I don’t know a thing about Thomas’s past. I think Karen once mentioned
he’s divorced, but I wasn’t really paying attention to the conversation.

Thomas
looks away, and for a moment I think he’s not going to answer me, but he
changes his mind. “I hadn’t even thought of it until I ran into a friend a few
months after . . . the divorce. He and his wife split the year
before and he donated his ring to charity. Mine went by burial at sea.”

“Boat or
toilet?”

Thomas
looks amused but doesn’t answer.

“What
happened to prompt a divorce?” The words are out before I think twice, and
Thomas just stares at me from several feet away. I haven’t known him long
enough to read his face, but I’m not blind. Several emotions flutter through
those glazed eyes.

“She left
me.”

I kick at
a weed growing out the side of a clump of gravel and dirt. Abby comes running,
almost tripping over the jersey, and shoves a handful of candy into the
pillowcase stashed in the wagon. I wipe the chocolate off her chin, and she and
Sofia head to the next house.

“I’ll give
you the pretty picture,” Thomas says when the kids are out of earshot. “My wife
wasn’t sure she wanted children. We had Sofia, and I was the happiest man
alive.” He beams, watching Sofia twist from side to side to keep a chubby
poodle from swiping the licorice hanging from her coat pocket. “We fought about
having another—and other things, of course. There are always other
things—I
wanted a son.”

A son. A
sibling for Abby. That’s what Meyer wanted. That’s what we both wanted.

Thomas
flinches as if slapped. “She got herself fixed.”

Yikes.
That’s as drastic as a concrete wall. And that final. I opt to change the
subject to something less bleak. That was his pretty picture.

“How’s
everything at the farm? Last time I saw you there was a situation with a foal.”

Thomas
houses some forty-odd horses and a couple of dozen goats. He’s also got a
donkey, a pig, and a flock of geese. Whenever I bring Abby by to play with
Sofia, I have to wander about the farm to find them. Sofia is usually playing,
Thomas close by working with the horses or tending to a repair. The guy wears
the outdoors like a layer of skin, camouflaged by his surroundings.

“Filly’s
got her land legs now. She can even outrun her brother.”

For the
first time I notice Thomas has a slight American accent.

“Have you
always worked with horses? Where did you live before moving to Carlisle?”

“Everywhere.
Nowhere important. Chicago.”

“The
city?” I can’t imagine Thomas living in a city.

“The one
and only. I didn’t work with horses then.” He starts to look uncomfortable
again. “I didn’t work with animals much at all.”

“So what
did you do in Chicago?”

“Well,” he
squeezes the bridge of his nose, “I was a teacher.”

Really.
Now that I hadn’t expected either.

“What did
you teach?”

I pretend
not to notice Thomas pulling himself together, picking at a hole in the seam of
his shorts. He seems more tortured by this line of questioning than he did when
talking about his wife. Maybe I should bite my tongue and avoid topics that
don’t revolve around the weather or our kids.

“I didn’t
mean to—”

“I’m a
dad. Without a mother, Sofia needed me. And I needed her to know she was the
most important thing in my life. I moved here, to Carlisle, to start fresh, to
leave all that behind. Is it so hard to imagine needing a new life?”

Is it hard
to imagine? Shit no. I’m the poster child. This spurs all kinds of questions,
questions about Thomas, but I lay them to rest. He’s his little girl’s hero. I
leave it at that.

The air
has
adopted a winter-like crispness, working its way
under my sweater, and Abby’s fervor has dwindled. Her pint-size feet take three
steps for every one of ours, and the
Keds
, meant to
give my angel a running start to fly, seem to drag behind. We plan one last stop
before calling it a night. We can’t miss Mrs. Maples on Halloween.

At the
very end of our street, huddled behind towering cedars and white pines, is an
ancient farmhouse. Although the house saw the raising of a half-dozen gangly
boys into strapping men, it now enjoys the quiet bliss of one, Mrs. Maples.
Mrs. Maples goes all out for Halloween. For weeks prior you can find her frail,
eighty-pound body dragging decorations from the barn. Cocky kids and curious
adults come from who-knows-where to brave the walk beneath ominous trees with
frightening ghouls to pocket one of Mrs. Maples’ renowned goodies. Even I’ll
endure this nightmare set-up for one of her candy apples.

We take
slow, arduous steps toward the farmhouse porch, turning every so often in
response to nail biting shrieks and piercing yellow eyes that assault us from
the dark foreboding trees that line Mrs. Maples’ driveway. Orange lights
flicker, illuminating ghosts hung from branches, goblins sneering from under
fake grass hills, and tombstones claiming the dead. Horrified screams and
animalistic howls seem to pour from the wood siding as we approach the house,
and less than two feet from the stairs, the girls stop cold. I stand on one
side of Abby and Sofia, Thomas on the other, both of us watching their faces.
Abby seems torn between ringing the bell and bolting as fast as her runners
will take her.

The front
door creaks open with an artificial screeching sound that must be from some
sort of battery-operated device because no door really sounds like that, and
there stands Mrs. Maples, all four and a half feet of the eighty-nine-year-old.
A black wig matted into a once-chic sixties hairdo hangs to her knees in
clumps. Ash colored net-like material clings to her body, chin to toes. A
bodice covered with glimmering sequins flattens her chest, wrapping around her
waist and over her legs, pooling into a black-feathered fish tail.