42. Nicola
Nicola
I need to get out. I need to get back to Emmy. The darkness has me in its grasp, cold fingers wrapping around my arms and legs, holding me down, keeping me trapped in the endless night. I long to escape, to hold my daughter, to feel her heartbeat and know she’s okay.
Instead, I feel nothing except the occasional impulse that I know is Martha’s. Her wild thoughts intrude, interrupting the stream of memories that appear as if to torture me—daggers stabbing, stabbing from the past.
Pack the bags.
Buy a fresh bottle.
Make sure there are none left in the house.
Make sure there are none. None what, Martha? But she won’t say. Something is happening. I can feel just enough to know she’s arriving at her purpose. I feel the change in her, swift and palpable like a change in the weather.
Clouds are brewing in the sky, and a dark haze forms overhead. Daylight turns to dusk. The gray early evening takes on a heaviness I remember but have tried to forget. The heaviness of that day.
In the black beyond, I inch toward the doorway of the memory, light from my father’s basement cutting into the dark with a single sharp beam.
Through to the light and down the basement stairs, creaking, creaking.
I pause at every step, my body trembling, my child-sized fingers holding the rail.
The entire room thuds, as though my heartbeat is outside my body.
A few steps more, and my father’s frame comes into view, sitting slumped in a chair, his head tilted to one side.
I stop, the sound of something drip drip dripping catches me off guard.
There’s a sulfur smell in the air.
A few more steps, and I reach the landing, something black and hand-sized at my feet. My father’s pistol. Peering closer, I go to touch it, then yank back my hand. Blood is splattered everywhere. Tiny fragments of flesh cover the floor. A great pool of dark blood is growing beside him.
My ears prick as the house creaks overhead, as though everything is shifting, groaning from the release of him.
I can’t resist moving toward him and getting close. What’s left of his face is turned away from me.
“He’s gone,” I whisper. “He’s really gone.”
The voice appears inside me. Her voice, so confident. So assured.
Yes, Nicola. Your father is with us now. Just like you asked. You don’t have to be afraid anymore.
A light flashes, and the memory dissipates, fog drifting away from the shore.
Now, the lilies on my father’s casket are gaping mouths upturned to the sky. My mother jerks my arm trying to keep me from staring, but I can’t help it. I keep imagining what his face must look like inside. Would he still be recognizable? There was so much blood.
My mother leads Janice and me toward the casket.
Our little reflections are curved and distorted in its shiny brown lid.
Janice leaps forward and flings herself into the hard shell of the casket like it’s my father’s chest. “Goodbye, Daddy,” she says.
My mother clutches my hand and snivels. The faint smell of mildew from the carpet mixes with the pungent scent of my mother’s perfume, and my stomach rolls.
I wrench from my mother’s grasp, eager to remove the feeling of her hand upon mine. “How long do we have to stay?”
My mother’s eyes are dead. “Until it’s time to leave.” She looks me over, a flicker of bitterness. “Tuck in your shirt. You look like a ragamuffin.”
I catch the corner of Janice’s face, smirking.
My mother places her hand on the casket and starts to cry heavy, strange sobs that almost sound like laughter.
Someone hands her a handkerchief with little yellow tulips embroidered on the bottom.
She blots her makeup and dabs at her eyes.
Janice hugs her waist and buries her face in her stomach.
“It’s okay, Mommy,” she says. “You still have me.”
Later, the guests have left, and the house is full of containers of food that make me sick to look at. I have long since retreated to my bedroom. My mother comes in and sits at the edge of my bed, careful not to get too close to me. A hand on my back, firm, unfeeling. “You didn’t cry.”
I sit up, aware that she expects me to answer. “I don’t feel sad.”
My mother is quiet. She turns away, shakes her head. “You’re in shock. That’s all. I’ll make an appointment with the psychiatrist. I think it would be good for you to talk to somebody.”
“I don’t,” I tell her. “I feel fine.”
“You are not fine, Nicola.”
I reach for a magazine under my bed. This one has the latest celebrity boy crush on the cover—blond hair, sweet blue eyes, a jaunty expression like he’s just shown up at your birthday party to sing a song for you.
My bedding wafts faint odors of grease and dust into the air as I flip onto my stomach. “Cut me some slack, why don’t you?”
My mother’s eyes flare. “You watch the way you talk to me, young lady.”
I pull away from her as she reaches for my arm. Her nails dig into my flesh. I look at my arm, then up at her.
“You know, it wasn’t just you. I was afraid of him, too.”
I sit quietly, watching her recall her particular shades of pain. “I didn’t show it to you, but he used to hurt me as well.”
“Well, at least you were a grown-up when it happened.”
I watch her face stiffen, her eyes narrow.
“You could have done something. Daddy needed help.”
She stands up, and I realize she’s now wearing the same slippers and blue robe that belonged to my father. The smell of grease was him, not my bed. She pulls her robe around her, releasing another waft of him. I feel sick to my stomach. “What exactly could I have done?”
“I don’t know, get Daddy a doctor? Medication? Anything!”
“Your father didn’t want to get help. I could hardly force him, could I?”
I’m quiet, but my heart is lurching in my chest, banging forward on the walls of my sternum. “Well, maybe you should have.”
My mother leans toward me, her dark eyes cold, vacant. Her lips pull back, like an animal snarling, ready to bite. I brace myself for the sting of her words.
“You little ingrate,” she whispers. “One day, I hope you live this.” Her arms spread wide as her voice envelops me, a low and deadly frequency. “I hope you feel exactly what this is like.”
One day.
One day.
That day came and went.
Then Martha arrived.
Or was she always there?
My mother’s body stiffens unnaturally. A crack forms straight down her middle, the center dark and thick. Her mouth gapes open and hangs, blackness emanating.
The walls of my bedroom turn charcoal gray, cinders in a pit of fire.
A million cracks and crevices climb the walls, and ashes spill out as the room crumbles into dust around me.
The light dims and goes out, leaving nothing but the cold and bitter emptiness of the place I am in.
It extends forever and ever, this great void.
I reach into it, clutching at the vacancy, hoping that this is the final memory, and now that Daddy is gone, I’ll have a chance to escape, to return to Emmy and put Martha back where she belongs.
Back with the darkness.
Back with the memories.
Back with him.
Stop fighting, Nicola.
Lay down. Be quiet.
Rest. Be at peace.
Martha’s words echo in the black beyond.
It isn’t so bad here in the dark.
It’s the light that brings the real terror, remember?
“Shut up, Martha! Let me out! That’s enough now. You’ve had your time!”
My time? What a funny thing to say, Nicola. You know very well that I’ve had so little time of my own. Always playing you. Being you. Your life. Your problems. Your fears, hopes, and dreams. My time hasn’t even started yet. My time is just beginning.
Aware of my body, I begin to quiver and shake. Right now, she is the one in charge. I’m just a shadow, lurking here, a trace of myself. But I can stop all of this. I know I can. I just have to escape.
I just have to … escape.
Escape …
Moments ago, I could hear the sound of my own breath.
Now that, too, is becoming fainter. There is a vast sweep of empty quiet, as though a great pause has come over my inner world.
It is actually peaceful and serene when there are no memories.
Maybe this is what you liked so much about the darkness, huh, Daddy?
The way it wraps you in a blanket of emptiness, the hug of oblivion surrounding.
That’s right, Nicola. Just surrender. You don’t have to fight. You can rest now. Everything is fine, remember? You can trust me.
She is right, after all. Martha has control, and I’m lost in a sea of remembering. Daddy is dead.
Ben is dead.
But Emmy is alive.
Emmy.
My heart. My reason. My everything.
Her eyes appear to me, two little stars. I realize she is there, waiting. I feel her reaching for me, and I claw through the darkness, desperate to break through, desperate to find the light.