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A high school student finds a grimoire that shows how to make magical disguises. |
Previously: "The Mother of My Enemy Is Me"  You shut off the bathroom light and walk back out into the living room. Your body prickles hard all over as you look around the house with new eyes, from inside a new skin: the skin and eyes of Sarah Johansson. Almost (almost!) involuntarily, one hand goes to a breast, to squeeze and settle it, and the other goes up to pat and shake loose the ringlets of hair tumbling around your ears. Okay, I'm Caleb's mom, you think to your self. What do I do? What was she doing before I—? Oh yeah. Watching television. But then she turned it off and was going to get that paperback romance she bought at the used-book store. Your eye goes over to the little bookshelf next to the TV, and you walk over to squat at it. One shelf is jammed thick with ratty and tattered paperbacks with titles like Seven Midnight Kisses, Melting the Ice Princess, and Two Wrongs with Mr. Right. The one you're looking for is One More Time (Okay, Two More Times), which Sarah's friend Emma from work recommended to her. You pull it out, study the cover illustration of a young woman in a clingy dress sagging in the arms of a beefy hockey player, and riffle the pages with your thumb. Are you really going to have to read this and pretend to like it? Well, okay then. Maybe you can make it work. You tuck it under your armpit and go into the kitchen for a beer. (Sarah drinks one Coors Light a day, always in the evenings right after work.) So fortified, you settle on the sofa with the book. But you can't concentrate on it, and your mind will flit from one acquired memory to the next, each one stimulating the next as you ponder your plans against Caleb. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ "Lemme have a bite of that, honey," you tell Renny after he's lit and taken a deep drag off his cigarette. You're behind the Seven-Eleven, leaning against the wall, putting off the moment that you have to go off your ten-minute break. He hands the cigarette over. "I didn't know you smoked." "Used to, don't anymore, except when I'm stressed." You take a drag, and force yourself to relax as the smoke fills your lungs. You sag more deeply against the wall, turn your face up, and exhale. "What's got you stressed?" You give him a sidelong glance. Renny is at least six-foot three, lean as a rail, with dark, thick hair brushed straight back. He wears a mustache and a goatee, and he can't be more than twenty-three. "What are you doing with your life, hon?" He stretches a little. "Waitin' for a break." "Think you're gonna find a break around here?" He shrugs. "I got little side businesses." You know he does. One of these days Devin, the district manager, is going to find out what kind of side businesses his store manager has going, and then Renny's going to have to find some other place to conduct his little side business from. "One of these days, hon," you tell him as you hand the cigarette back to him, "you're gonna look back and realize all them breaks you were waiting for were taking the interstate while you were hanging out here." He gets a pinched look and is about to reply, when he catches sight of something behind you. You turn, to find your son coming around the corner. You almost panic, before you realize that you're not holding that cigarette anymore. "What are you doing here?" you ask Caleb. "Dropping the car off for you." His eyes dart. "Yeah, Will's gonna give me a ride out to, uh, the library." "Oh. Well, you didn't have to do that, but thanks," you add, cutting him off before he is forced to tell an actual lie. "I'll see you when you get home. Or in the morning," you can't help adding. He blanches a little, then hops around the corner. Renny snorts. "I never went to the library when I was in school." "I didn't either," you confess, and put your hand out for the cigarette. "Lemme have another. At least 'going to the library' hasn't hurt his grades, so far." "Is that what you're stressed about?" Renny asks. "He getting bad grades?" "No, he's getting good grades. Without really trying, so far as I can tell." Renny snorts again, and mutters, "I wish I could'a got good grades without trying." "Well, that's how come I worry, 'cos his daddy was the same way." ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ "Why her?" you scream at Daniel as he carries the cardboard box out his car. "Why her?! Why not us?" Tears explode out your eyes. He rolls his eyes as he puts the box in the trunk. "Because I told you, I'm married to her." "You're married to me! Me! And we've got—!" You throw out your arm, pointing a jagged finger toward Mrs. Lawson's house, half a block down, where the four-year-old son you had by this bastard is being looked after as your (and his) life dissolves like toilet paper in the rain. "I married her first." Your voice cracks. "Did you give her a kid?" Daniel's expression is a frozen mask as opens the driver-side door. "Yes," he says. The world reels, and you have to clutch one of the patio supports. "That's—!" you scream as he gets in the car. "You liar! You fucking liar! That's not—!" Then something in your head seems to break and collapse. "You know what?" you scream. "Just get the fuck out of here!" He's already started the engine. "Get the fuck out of here, you cocksucker! I wouldn't keep you around now if—! I could have you arrested, you fucking bigamist! You fucking—!" You stumble down the walk after him as the car pulls into the street. But you don't even make it to the front sidewalk before collapsing into a huddle, sobbing and shuddering all over. When you get back to the house, you call Mrs. Lawson ask her to let Caleb spend the night, and he spends most of the next morning with her, too. When you do go over to pick him up, you have a long talk with Mrs. Lawton while he's playing in the back yard, in the sand box that her high-school boy long ago outgrew. You are raw and hollow when you finally take him home, and when he asks, in all innocence later that afternoon where "Daddy" is, you have to turn your back when you tell him that he left to go visiting his own daddy and mother. Six months later, you have to tell him that Daddy's parents are sick, and that he has to stay with them. You never do actually tell him that his father is never coming back. You keep putting it off, dreading having to explain it to him. And then one day you realize that he has to have figured it out on his own. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ "Well," the caller says, her voice fracturing with uncertainty. "I thought you might like to know." "Yes, thank you very much," you reply. And without waiting or giving another word, you close the connection and lay the phone flat on the dining table. You could really go for a cigarette, but it's your day off. Besides, Caleb is home, in his bedroom. You thought you were over him. You were certain you were over him. You told yourself that the vise that would grip your heart when you thought of him was only anger and hatred, for what else could it be? He deserted you and your son, returning to his first wife—to his other wife—so what other emotions could you have? You are jerked out of an intense reverie as Caleb materializes in the corner of your eye, coming out of the hallway to turn into the kitchen. He pauses when he sees your face. "Is something wrong?" he asks. You twitch as you lunge for an excuse. "I just heard they're changing my hours at work." "To what?" He looks slightly alarmed. "Don't worry about it, I'm going in to argue." You quickly change the subject. "Are you working on your homework?" "Done with it," he says as he goes to the refrigerator. "How are your math grades?" He raises his head to give you a look over the refrigerator door. You smile back crookedly. Caleb has always been a math wiz, just like his father. Who, you have just learned, has been involuntarily committed to someplace called the Meadowlark Clinic. The caller—Daniel's other wife's sister—didn't give details, but she more or less admitted that he would likely never be released. "If you're gonna start needing the car," Caleb says from the kitchen, "I can be the one who starts taking the bus. To school, to wherever." "There's no way in hell I'm taking those new hours," you retort. "Don't worry about it," you insist when he protests. "Someone just had a wild idea, that's all." He looks dubious, and the glance he gives you is skeptical as he takes a sandwich back to his bedroom. So, that was awkward, but it cleared up one thing. You actually are done with Daniel. Let him rot in the looney bin. You won't even go online, to find out what he did that got him put away. (After introducing herself, your caller delicately asked if you'd seen anything online about "Daniel" recently, so it must have been newsworthy.) He left you with a son, and that's the only way he's relevant to you. But that's enough. Because the older Caleb gets, the more he looks like his father. And the longer he is in school, the more you see the resemblance there, too. Daniel was a math lecturer at Kesyerling when you met him and married him, and he returned to a college-teaching job when he left. That pain you feel: it's the dread that the resemblance of son to father will only grow more pronounced as time passes. Next: "A Little Light Torture to Start With" |
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