Iris

If you woke up one morning to find the world turned upside down and that instead of walking, you had to spin on your head as fast as you could to get places, you could hardly feel more disoriented than Iris did upon waking up on December the second. Dimly remembered words from a fast fading dream rode the last diminishing notes of a carousel as it faded inside her head. They were angry words, she decided, slipping off the bed, shivering a little as bare feet met cold linoleum. Iris frowned, small wrinkles marring the broad white expanse of her forehead. Surely she was still dreaming? Her bedroom had carpet. Lush, thick, orange carpet that your feet would sink in up to your ankle. Iris remembered lying on the floor, her face pressed against it her vision obscured with garish orange spikes, wondering if this was the last view dying animals had as the lay supine in the grass, waiting for the final breath to steal from their bodies. She remembered taking comfort from the softness of the carpet she lay upon as unimaginable pain wracked… her thoughts abruptly shut off. The wrinkles on her forehead cleared. She was still dreaming. Her mind was hazy, as it is in dreams. A barely formulated sense of self gave her comfort in the strange surroundings. She was Iris. That was enough. Walking to the window, Iris gazed at the frosty scene below. Now she must be dreaming, for Iris knew it was Autumn, not winter. She remembered standing outside, underneath the Oak Tree in the backyard, laughing as the brightly coloured leaves drifted silkily past her and a gentle breeze stirred the tyre swing into lazy circles. Remembered how the leaves varied in colour from sickly yellow to violent orange to a flaming red, as red as the blood on her hands as she raised them, laughing, to catch a falling leaf. Blood? Another puzzled frown, but just as quickly, her mind cleared again and a gentle serenity settled across her features. How silly, to question the thoughts and memories you have when you are dreaming. For you know you must be dreaming your thoughts too. Layers upon layers of dreams and thoughts, whizzing together like cake ingredients when the bowl goes under the MixMaster until you can’t recognise a single ingredient, just the smooth cake mixture a combination of all. Standing near the frosty panes of the window made Iris shiver but she stayed, gazing down at the dreamscape below. The ground was covered in thin looking, dirty snow. Several trees stood solitary vigils, bare, stunted branches seeming to grasp at the sky in tormented attitudes of obeisance. She noted the lack of a tyre swing and understood that this was not home. But where was home? The ivory forehead crinkled again and she struggled to negotiate the hazy mists of grasping fog that obscured her memory. Home was orange carpet in the bedroom, oak tree in the backyard and blue vase in the kitchen. She could not associate a house with that picture, merely those fragmented shards of recollection. And Matthew, of course. Home was Matthew. But who was Matthew?

Tanya rose and dressed in the still gray light before dawn. She didn’t look out the window, she knew too well the bleak picture that waited there. Could sense the oppressive grey sky that melded into wet, grey snow on the ground with apparent seamlessness. Knew that stepping outside was to step into a void, to feel lost and alone in a grey world. She refused to conform to the greyness. She chose blue jeans, a purple sweater and her big red coat. That red coat was her defence against the numbing conformity of the world. A coat that stood up and shouted “Here I am! I am a person worth notice! I know who I am an am not afraid to show you!” The coat took over the job of shouting when Tanya herself could not. Iris had given her that coat. And what had Tanya given Iris in return? She mused upon this with bitterness. One simple sentence had changed the course of both their lives with all the subtlety of a shove off the sidewalk into the path of a speeding car.
“Iris, this is my brother Ben.”
Tanya walked quietly down the stairs, shivering a little as her body heat slowly permeated the layers of her clothing. Matthew was sitting at the dining table in perfect silence, his head bowed over his folded hands. Such perfect stillness was unnatural in a 13 year old boy. It was the stillness of marble, the waxy stillness of death, the stillness of a child who still fears what may happen if he draws too much attention to himself. She paused in the doorway and he spoke without shifting his position, his voice seeming to emanate from the walls rather than the mouth of that silent, unmoving figure.
“We’re going to see her today aren’t we.” It was not a question. Tanya didn’t try to lighten his mood, she had learned months ago that it didn’t work. When Matthew smiled it was a sudden Chinook in the middle of winter, a moment when the season’s icy grip slips the tiniest fraction and an unguarded moment of warmth sneaks through. Usually, Matthew clutched his gravity to his chest like a drowning man to a buoy, you dare not waste time smiling when you can feel the sucking darkness tugging at your feet. Tanya sighed a little and moved to the kettle, a flip of her hand setting it to bubbling.
“Yeah Matt, I thought we’d go see her today.”
He merely nodded.
“You want breakfast?”
He shook his head. Brown strands tangled in his eyelashes and he flipped them away with an impatient hand. Tanya realised with a start that she couldn’t remember the last time she took him for a haircut. She rested her head against the cold wood of the kitchen cupboard. Iris would have remembered. Iris was a mother. A single tear trickled down her left cheek and plopped on the countertop with defiant cheerfulness. Tanya wasn’t a mother. Tanya was a shattered, second best replacement. She sniffed away the threatening onslaught of tears and swiped her handbag off the counter.
“Me neither, we might as well get going then hey?”
She buttoned her red coat with the ceremony of a soldier strapping on his armour before marching off to war.

Another house, another grey awakening in the colourless pre-dawn. Mark walked into the kitchen with the restless attitude of a man who has conceded defeat in the battle against sleep. Tracey sat cradling a silver framed photo in her swollen, arthritic hands. One misshapen finger traced an unseen face in the photograph and steady trails of tears traversed the wrinkles of her careworn face to gather in social puddles on the table.
“One year.” She murmured, almost crooning the words in a grotesque lullaby. “One year since we buried my baby.”
Mark wouldn’t approach her to offer comfort, their opinions on this subject were too different. He recognised the implacable hardness in this decision but he was a hard man. He knew that. He knew he had passed that hardness onto his son, knew that if maybe he had been a little more compassionate and a little less exacting things may have turned out differently. He knew this, but he was also old enough to know that there was a choice in how to hit the balls life throws at you. He tried not to blame himself. Tracey chose denial. Mark didn’t need to see the photograph, he knew it by heart. Had spent many an hour sobbing onto its silver frame himself. The man pictured was handsome, had a strong, vital face that laughed from behind the glass with the carefree humour of one untroubled by conscience. It was a long time before Mark understood that it wasn’t the lack of blights upon his conscience so much as a lack of a conscience itself. Tracey lifted her head, the grey eyes he fell in love with over 50 years ago steadied on his face.
“Come with me?”
It broke his heart to say no but still Mark shook his head. Their marriage, a partnership spanning a half century had stood the tests of time and cruel fate, separation, miscarriage, adultery, you name it, Mark and Tracey had seen it through. But this barrier seemed overwhelming and Mark no longer had the strength to break it down. The clods of earth falling onto the lid of the coffin with the same finality as the judge banging his gavel after the Not Guilty verdict were the ceremonial drumbeats marking time as, brick by brick, a wall rose between them. Mark had made his choice as to which ceremony he attended that day and still held fast to the declaration implicit in that act. And the Good Lord knew Tracey would never forgive him.
“He was your son.” The words, uttered by the voice that had soothed his fears and aroused his passion for so long, dripped venom, marinated in the potent brew of spite and anger. Mark turned his back, his shoulders slumped in the universal attitude of a man who is broken.
I have no son. He wasn’t even sure if he had spoken the words aloud. He didn’t need to. The fell, as heavy as lead, into the vast crevasse of space between them, never making a sound for there was no end to the depth of the chasm in which they plummeted.

Iris sat in the recreation room with a look of gentle bewilderment that was repeated in different forms over several other faces there. It seemed an odd thing to be dressed, breakfasted, supervised by strangers then led to a room with several strange looking characters within and told with a false sense of cheer to occupy oneself. A nagging uneasiness was creeping into Iris’ countenance, that perhaps this wasn’t a dream. Perhaps something truly awful had happened and she simply couldn’t grasp with certainty any of the jumbled half-memories that repeatedly sparked in her brain. The smell of slightly burnt toast on her breakfast tray had fired a sudden panic, terrible things happened when toast burnt, she knew this but was eventually able to shake off the uneasiness with a healthy dose of reason. The insipid blue pattern of the linoleum in the hallway had sent memories spiralling through her mind of hospitals, many different hospitals but in all the overwhelming need to lie. That no one should know what happened. The gradual encroachment of uneasiness was taking solid form in her mind when a smiling lady in a nurse’s uniform called her name.
“Iris, you have a visitor honey, someone real special.”
Iris disliked the casual informality of this address. Iris hadn’t told the lady her name yet she bandied it around as though they were long acquaintances. And she truly loathed being called honey. Nevertheless, Iris rose and followed the stranger down another interminable hallway before she stopped before a doorway and intimated that Iris was to enter. A woman and a boy were inside, the nurse quietly closed the door behind Iris and she was left alone with more strangers. Only they weren’t strange. The woman seemed familiar as she struggled to keep hold of the smile that threatened to escape her face but Iris only had eyes for the boy. Such a beautiful boy. She fought with the urge to stroke his hair, brush it out of his eyes and tell him he needed it cut, how desperately she wanted to sweep him into her arms but the grief and aloofness she saw in his face held her back. She slowly lowered herself into a nearby chair.
“Hello.”
The visitors took her cue and dragged chairs a little closer before seating themselves before her.
“Hello Iris, I’m Tanya and this is Matthew.”
Matthew. The name broke the floodgates of her mind and she was suddenly awash with knowledge, information swept like debris through her head, tangling with the strands of her sanity but only one fact grasped onto her consciousness. Matthew. Her eyes welled with tears and she stretched her arms towards him like a drowning woman to a life raft.
“Of course you are. My Matthew. My son.”
The distance in his eyes melted and Iris glimpsed the frightened child within who feared abandonment as he flung himself into her outstretched arms. They clung to each other as though they would never let go and Tanya could merely watch, yet more tears coursing down her cheeks that she could no more lift a hand to check than she could tear her eyes from the mother-son reunion in front of her. It was several minutes before Iris could speak. Matthew was cradled in her arms, they clutched each other with overwhelming affection that bordered on desperation. To let go was unthinkable. Iris eventually lifted her head to her sister in law and best friend.
“Tanya? Why is Matthew with you, what’s going on?” Even as she asked the question the answer hit Iris with the force of a sledgehammer, forcibly setting her back in her seat. Those half submerged memories resurfaced like sinister submarines and began firing off their missiles. Images slammed themselves with burning clarity into her mind’s eye and all Iris could do was clutch at her little boy to save her. Ben. Ben. She had married Ben, Tanya’s brother. She saw her wedding day, she was so damned innocent and he so worldly. She saw the honeymoon, the first time he hit her when she laughingly criticised his bathroom habits. Saw herself, beaten and bloody, driving herself to a hospital with a broken arm and three fractured ribs, telling the nurses she had been mugged. Saw herself pregnant, every chance of escape now halved by the growing life inside of her that she vowed to protect with every fibre of her being. The family gatherings, Tanya telling her she’d changed, had given up in the crusade of life, turning away from her with disappointment as Ben told his parents Iris had taken up horse riding to explain the bruise that blackened her cheek. Saw Matthew’s thirteenth birthday and the party she’d thrown him, expressly against Ben’s orders. Saw the dying animal view of the orange carpet as his boot slammed into her ribs again and again thinking that this time he would surely kill her. Saw him heading to Matthew’s room and with a last desperate heave reaching the gun in the nightstand and shooting him point blank in the back. Saw Matthew’s face as he ran to her and saw his father dead on the floor. Saw the complete lack of any emotion except relief and concern for her as he dragged her outside to wait for an ambulance away from the rapidly cooling body of the monster who had made both their lives hell. Saw his fear and confusion as Iris held her hands out to catch falling leaves and laughed with release before she dropped into unconsciousness. Saw the courtroom, the angry stares of Ben’s parents, Tanya’s trembling hand laid on her shoulder with support. Saw Mark’s sickening dawn of understanding of his son’s true nature and Tracy’s complete rejection of the truth. Heard the damning testimony of a psychiatrist chronicling her increasingly bizarre behaviour as an irreparable after effect of Ben’s last act on earth. Saw the irony even as she wept and raged against the inevitable deterioration of her mind and memory. Saw the gavel bang down on the ‘not guilty’ verdict and heard the howl of pain from Tracy as Tanya and Matthew hugged her and even Mark gave her a stiff nod of understanding. Saw herself, in this very room, signing over legal guardianship of her son to Tanya even as her tears mottled the pages she initialled. She raised her head again to face the pain in Tanya’s gaze and found herself shaking. A guttural moan escaped her throat as she realised Matthew had left her embrace, she began to rock back and forth, wrapping her arms around herself in a feeble attempt to exclude the sudden emptiness that invaded them. Nurses entered the room, one holding a syringe of what she knew was temporary oblivion and even as she succumbed to the cloudy embrace of unconsciousness she kept her eyes trained on the receding view of her son. His hand firmly clasped in Tanya’s but unable to tear his eyes from hers even as the sane understanding she craved sent her mind back to the mercy of the grasping claws of unreason. And though Iris could no longer see him, she knew that he had to be carried from the room, unwilling and unable to leave her, the staunch protector of his whole life who had ultimately sacrificed her sanity to save his body. In her heart Iris knew. And she would never regret.