CHAPTER 11 STRANGERS COME TO CALL
STRANGERS COME TO CALL
“Double-check the locks,” my mom says when we get home.
“Mom, that man is locked up for the night, maybe longer,” I say. “He is not coming here to get us.”
Mom isn’t convinced. “Lock everything up anyway. If it isn’t good ol’ Mr. Lions, it might be whoever was stealing supplies out of the shed or whoever it was that was following you from the falls.”
When I tally up the people who may or may not be out to get us, I’m surprised that the number is so high. I do what she says, checking the locks on the doors before settling down in the living room with our pizza and a plan to watch some old movie Mom picked out for us.
“Are we gonna tell Dad about what happened at Kate’s?” I ask.
Mom hesitates for a moment. “Yes, but not till he gets home. I don’t want to worry him while he’s working. We’re okay, we’re safe. I’ll fill him in when he gets back.”
I stake out a spot in the corner of the couch while my mom goes to change.
“Mom,” I call up to her from the living room. “What’s the dude from the movie’s name? I want to look him up.”
I hear her groan. “Meka, baby, you know who Bruce Willis is. Come on now. You’re making me feel old.”
I know exactly who Bruce Willis is, but I can’t resist giving her a hard time about it. I find the movie just as she returns to the living room in a black sweatsuit and fuzzy black slippers. Her hair is in a bun on top of her head and her face is covered in a thick, white face cream.
“Trying something new?” I ask.
My mom’s skin care routine is too complicated for me to follow. It’s got at least ten steps and she never puts it off. No matter how tired she is or how late she stays up, she tells me the key to her perfect complexion is never skipping a single day or a single step.
Mom gently touches the side of her face and some of the cream comes off on her fingertips. She rubs it into the back of her hand. “It’s supposed to keep the skin hydrated so it’s nice and plump.”
“What’s it called?” I ask. “Maybe I can try some.”
She smiles. “You don’t need it, baby. You’re perfect.”
“My blackheads say different,” I sigh. “What’s this movie about?”
“Bruce Willis plays an undertaker,” she says. “It’s right up our alley. You want popcorn?”
“No, I’m good, but Mom?”
She starts the movie and the opening credits begin to roll.
“Yes, baby?” she says without turning to look at me.
“When I was in the fitting room with you, I saw, well, I don’t wanna make you uncomfortable but—”
“The scars,” she says.
I try to replay the entirety of my life’s memories back in that moment.
I don’t remember ever seeing the scars on my mom’s back and chest. We’d been to the beach a few times but only because I had begged and begged for us to go.
She was firmly against it but finally agreed after my dad assured her it would be fun.
I’m pretty sure she had been wearing a suit but what I remember was the mint green kaftan she’d worn and how she’d painted her nails to match it.
I don’t remember seeing the scars then. She never wears anything low cut enough for me to see clear down to her sternum or the full length of her back so I try to think if I would have noticed at all.
“I got them a long time ago,” she says softly. “I’m very self-conscious about them.”
I suddenly feel like bringing it up is overstepping. “We don’t have to talk about it,” I say, gently touching her hand. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No, it’s fine.” She smiles and squeezes my hand.
“I try really hard to keep myself up. I try to keep myself together. The scars aren’t ugly.
It’s not about that. They’re a part of me, but they are a reminder that I don’t have control over every single aspect of my life—my appearance—and I don’t like that. ”
I thread her words through the needle of knowing exactly what kind of person she is.
It might sound vain to somebody who doesn’t know her but I know her—and this isn’t about vanity.
She says things like “keep myself up” and “keep myself together.” It’s about control and I have to believe it has everything to do with being around death every day of her life.
“You said they’re a part of you,” I say, trying to think of something to tell her that really matters. “So that means they’re beautiful.”
She blinks twice in quick succession, then grabs my hand and holds it tight.
“What did I do to deserve you, huh?”
“Must have been something really good because I’m, like, the perfect daughter.”
“Can I tell you something?” she asks.
I look into her face. I can’t tell if this is going to be something serious or not.
“Sure,” I say.
She pulls the collar of her sweatshirt up under her chin, being careful not to let her face cream touch the black fabric. “Sometimes, I have your father use some of our—supplies—to cover the scars.”
I laugh, but then I stop. She’s not joking. She’s not laughing. She is waiting.
She lowers her head. The face cream covers every inch of her face, even her upper eyelids, but a thin strip of skin is visible just under her lower lid. With her makeup removed, the skin is dull, almost ashen.
“You mean the mortuary supplies?” I ask
She watches me intently. When I look down, she pats my knee.
“Sorry,” she says. “I know it’s a little weird.”
“It’s okay,” I say. Is it? I don’t know.
“I can make the injuries—the scars—on my chest almost disappear completely,” she says. “Your dad isn’t as good at doing the makeup as I am.” She laughs a little. “The mortuary makeup lasts a long time and then I don’t have to think about them as much.”
“It works just as good on your skin?” I ask.
She nods. “My skin is always a little . . . ?dry. So it works fine.”
“That makes sense, I guess,” I say. “If you need help or something—”
“No,” she says quickly, patting my knee again. “No, baby. Your dad and I can handle it. I just wanted to tell you because, well, I don’t know. I just thought you should know.”
I grab her hand and squeeze it. “Get under a blanket with me,” I say. “Your hands are freezing.”
She pulls a big fluffy blanket off the back of the couch and we snuggle under it and watch our movie.
I hope I’ll dream of the knife-wielding man.
I hope the terror I felt would be enough to carve out a new space in my head, but the incident isn’t enough to keep the song, the car, my mother’s broken body out of my mind.
It does change the details in the dream.
When Noah died, the table had come into view and the strange book; now there is more.
There is a window, rain outside it, the rhythmic pattering of the droplets, but buried with that is something else .
. . ?words. Not a song. Not a conversation, just words.
I grasp at them when I wake up, trying to remember what they were, but it’s pointless.
My dad returns from his trip three days later and is so horrified when my mom tells him what happened at Kate’s that he just sits on the couch with his head in hands for a solid ten minutes.
“You should have called me,” he says. “I would have come home right away.”
“We’re fine,” my mom assures him. “Really. And it turns out the knife wasn’t even real. It was plastic.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” he asks with a ring of genuine sincerity.
“Yes?” I offer. “I mean, maybe. I don’t know.”
“Mr. Lions needs more help than what he’s getting,” Mom says.
“Of course that’s what you’re worried about,” Dad says. “And you’re a saint for it but my god, Kassie, you could have been—” He stops short.
Mom turns her face away from him and stares out the living room window.
“You could have been hurt,” my dad continues.
“Or killed,” I chime in. I’d meant to say it in my head but it just kind of slips out.
Dad’s face goes ashen.
“He was talking about the end times and saying somebody was gonna cut him into pieces,” I say quickly, trying to put the conversation back on track.
My dad lifts his head and swallows. “What?”
I nod. “Even after he got dropped he was mumbling about ‘little tiny pieces.’ ”
My dad looks like he’s about to say something but changes his mind. He stands and puts his arms around me. “I’m just glad you’re both okay.”
I hug him back. “We’re good, Dad. And I wasn’t going to let anything happen to Mom either. Believe me.”
My dad straightens up and gently grasps my shoulder. “Love you.”
“Love you too,” I say.
The look in his eyes wrecks me. He’s cloaked in sadness again but it’s more than that, it’s despair. I recognize it because it rides shotgun with a lot of people who’ve come through the house grieving their loved ones.
My dad breaks from me and heads toward the stairs. “Kassie, I need to speak with you alone when you’ve got a minute.” He treks upstairs and my mom sighs.
“We should have told him earlier,” I say.
Mom shakes her head. “No. It would have stressed him out too much. Don’t worry. I’ll go talk to him.”
She disappears up the stairs and I cut on the TV. A few minutes later I hear a sound I’ve rarely heard in my entire life—my parents arguing.
I mute the TV. Their muffled voices filter down through the floor. I can’t hear exactly what they’re saying but they’re going back and forth, my dad’s voice low and almost frantic, my mom’s tone higher, more measured.
I consider unmuting the TV and ignoring them but there’s a pit in my stomach, a feeling in my gut that makes me get up and slip into the back staircase.
I make my way up, avoiding the boards that creak.
At the top, I peer down the hall and catch a glimpse of my mom pacing inside her room as my dad sits on the edge of their bed.
I duck back, concealing myself on the landing, peeking out just enough to see them both.
“They went back on their word,” my dad says.
“You don’t know that for sure,” Mom says. “Let’s not jump to any conclusions.”