Interlude Three

INTERLUDE THREE

Open the highest wing, bring it upwards and press the sides of the paper inwards at the same time. Flatten it down, and again, crease well.

Emily pulled the needle through her husband’s skin and yanked the thread. The jack-o-lantern wound pinched inwards, sealed. Jordan flinched, his teeth gritted together. He was on his side, splayed across the couch, which Emily had covered with the plastic tarp they’d used to paint Lucette’s bedroom. Blood pooled in its crinkles. Debris from her makeshift triage surrounded them, all those matted cotton buds, tweezers, gauze, saline solution.

An empty bottle of whiskey. They had been saving it for a special occasion.

Lucette was locked in her room with enough crayons and toys to keep her occupied. She was happy in there, and wouldn’t be able to hear her father’s groans over the television in the living room. Midday cartoons blared violence as cats mangled dogs with hammers. Only these animated beings didn’t bleed. Just stars and birds flying about their heads.

Now that the bite had been tended to as best Emily could without taking Jordan to the hospital, they sat on the couch, held each other tight, and sobbed. Their misery was pure and undiluted and shameless. Her hands gripped his arms. Jordan gripped her back. They were pieces of the same shattered Humpty Dumpty, and sadly, as was the case in Lucette’s picture books, not even the King’s horses and men would be able to put them back together again.

“Don’t let me go,” Jordan said. His breath was sour. It smelled of dirt.

“I won’t, darlin’. I promise.” She rocked him.

“I’m so fucking scared.”

“Me too.” Emily kissed his forehead. He was hot to the touch.

Emily pulled the needle through Natalia, her daughter’s doll, and yanked the thread. The black button eye drew back into place. “There you go,” Emily said, handing the toy over. It was seven-thirty in the evening, Jordan was already passed out in their bedroom, and it was time for Lucette to turn in. The little girl took the doll in her arms and held it to her chest.

“Sweetheart,” Emily began, steeling herself. “I need to talk to you. A big girl talk, okay?”

“Okay, Mom. I’m a big girl.”

“You sure are. And I’m so proud of you, too. You know that, right?”

“Yep! Just like I’m proud of Natalia,” Lucette said. “She keeps me safe at night.”

“Does she? She’s a good dolly.” Emily ruffled the old toy’s plaits. “But let’s be serious now.”

“We’re listening, aren’t we?” Lucette gestured to the dusty old toy, squeezed its neck, and made it nod. Emily half smiled.

“That’s good, sweetheart.”

Her last word fissured in two, shattering the dignity Emily had been fighting to maintain. She fumbled through the pockets of her jeans for a tissue. There were none left. Emily let the briny tears free-flow, a greasy layer on her skin.

She studied her daughter in the star shaped illumination of the slowly turning night-light. The blue glow crept across Lucette’s face, followed by shadow, though Lucette’s eyes shimmered throughout, like the evening sky reflected in the bottom of twin wells.

And every bit as deep.

“Don’t be sad, Mom,” she whispered. Her chubby fingers reached across the duvet to curl about Emily’s wrist. “There, there. There, there.”

Lucette propped herself up on one elbow and offered the toy to her mother. “I’ll share with you. It’s good to share, isn’t it? Maybe Natalia can keep us all safe.”

With a finger, Emily traced the stitching she’d threaded. The black button eyes, unlike those belonging to her daughter, held no vivacity. They were stoic, like those of the bone eater that had dug under their fence and attacked her husband.

The stars continued to fall around them.

“Lucette. Your father and I always taught you that it was bad to lie.”

“Ah-huh. It’s naughty. And naughty girls don’t get presents from Santa. He’s always watching.”

Emily, chewing on her lower lip, couldn’t help guffawing at the depths she, as an adult, had gone to swindle her child into virtue. It went beyond hypocrisy. Fat Saint Nick with his bag of bribes was yet another deception that kept the New Developed World spinning on its axis. Such trickeries, they all thought, kept the infection away. In the slums. Where it belonged.

Sweetheart, we’re in here. The monsters are out there.

It won’t happen to us.

“Natalia can’t keep us safe.” Emily’s voice was stern, maybe too stern, but it had to be. It was time to be what her own mother always said: harsh, but fair. “If we want to be safe we have to look after one another. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

The three-year-old nodded. Those wet eyes of hers continued to glimmer, but now it seemed that something was shifting within them, right there at the bottom of the wells. A serpentine creature, ugly and adult.

This was its birth.

Emily took another breath before continuing. “There’s no such thing as Santa. He’s made up. I’m so sorry, sweetheart. But sometimes it’s okay to lie. Sometimes it’s the only way we get by. And I need you to listen to me now. You need to understand that this is the most important talk we’ll ever have.”

“Okay, Mommy.”

“Lucette, your Daddy and I need you to lie.”

Emily pulled the needle through the tarpaulin and yanked the thread, sealing the makeshift body bag that held the bone eater’s remains. The stars above were not those from Lucette’s night-light, these were real constellations. Emily wanted to assimilate herself amongst those distant balls of gas, burning for generations on end, shedding little in the way of light, and unsympathetic to the wishes cast upon them.

How sweet it would be right now to feel nothing.

This didn’t happen, though. There was no clemency. She was, and always would be, anchored to this delusional planet. To this hurt.

Somebody up there, please help us.

We’re dying down here. Can’t you see that?

Our land is honeycombed with tombs, and it’ll crumble under our feet one day. Soon.

I’ll build a bridge from me to you out of corpses. Just promise me you’ll be there when I arrive. You need to pinkie-swear I won’t be alone.

The sky held no answers.

So Emily shoved the bulging bag into the pit she’d dug in the backyard instead. It thumped against the soil, exhaustion threatening to drag her in with it. Emily pushed through. With her sweaty clothes sticking to her flesh like a second skin, with the mosquitos swarming about her face, she heaved dirt. Over and over again.

There was no breeze. No moon.

She was done.

Emily showered inside while bulb-happy moths beat themselves to a powdery death against the bathroom window. Emily toweled off, wrapped herself in the dressing gown she’d left by the clothes basket that morning and walked to her bedroom door.

Stopped.

Emily could hear Jordan’s breathing. She began to shake; terrified of the darkness that would come when she switched off the hallway sconces, and the darkness waiting inside her room. Emily stepped away from the door, and in doing so, learned to hate herself.

She tiptoed into the study. Flipped the lock. Folded in on herself. The floor was cool against her cheek. Kevin’s birthday card and present were still on the desk.

The lies she’d rooted in her daughter’s head echoed through her ears.

If anyone asks, your Daddy has gone away for work. He’ll be gone a while. Don’t tell anyone anything. This will be our secret. Just you, me, and Natalia. And you’re not going to be going to daycare for a while because you’re ‘sick’. That’s what we’ll say.

Everything’s going to be okay.