The Rhythmic Tapping of My Heel

Even without a breath of fresh air, I preferred my room to outside. My mother would laugh when she saw me. My face inches away from the screen, eyes glued to whatever lights decided to glow. I was a deer fixed to these flashing boxes, these tubes of colour streaming from one side to the other. Stuck in my own world, I felt that life was malleable. Everything out of my interests were but meaningless background noise.

I could hear a faint scuttling downstairs. My mother was waking from her midday nap. It was like her ritual, her way of finding regularity. That was also something she pushed onto me, and not once did I push back. Well, maybe once in the beginning, but I was only young, it’s what we did. Our cabin was a twenty-minute drive from the main road, and a ten-minute drive from the next house. What else was I going to do? Some would find the remoteness unnerving, but I found it freeing. 

“Eveline, darling? Have you left yet?”

“No, mum.” That day, I had planned to meet with some friends, first at the diner then the arcade, but an extra episode of Smallville was too tempting. I was in love with Tom Welling. He was and forever will be my true Superman. My friends could eat without me, I thought. They wouldn’t mind.

“Eveline, darling? Have you had a bite to eat yet?”

“Can you put the sandwiches in the toaster please? They’re sitting on the bench.”

“Can’t you come and do it yourself? Or is Tom on the screen?” I could hear her laughing after she said it. Her snide wit was something that irritated me, but I must admit, it’s also stuck with me to this day. I think it might have even rubbed off on me. I certainly hope so.

“But mum, I can’t right now. I’m busy.” Busy? Really? That’s what I came up with? It was an actor in a tv show. Hardly a reason for being busy. Nevertheless, I could hear the sizzle of the toaster as she slipped the cheese-filled sandwiches into their slots. There was little space for the food to move. The metal walls on either side were like handcuffs. Mum was a proud woman, and she especially prided herself in being the best toasted sandwich maker in the state. Even dad—when he was around, obviously—said that her cheesies were the best he’d ever eaten, even better than the ones at the diner, and the diner had won awards for them. Cheesies. It’s been a long while since I last thought of the word.

Several minutes had gone by and I could smell the crisp cheese which had oozed from gaps in the bread onto the simmering plate. Without hesitation I rushed down the stairwell, nearly tripping over both the broken stairs. There were two of them, and neither had seen attention for several years. A wooden floorboard was sticking up on the first. The greatest trip hazard in the house. Mum had almost sprained her ankle trying to hike up it too quickly. The other had the runner peeling off like an old band-aid covering a half-healed wound.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the bear has awoken from its hibernation.”

I looked at my mother, trying to seem annoyed, but the cheesies were too good to even fake any anger. Eventually I shut my eyes and enjoyed the sandwich. I could feel the oil from the cheese dripping down the side of my face. It ran down my chin like a teardrop and fell onto the table like a teardrop. A teardrop of oil. A weird thought.

“What time were you leaving again?”

“In about fifteen…”

“Can’t you come for a walk beforehand? It won’t take more than fifteen.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Why not? Let’s go for a walk. Tell me why you don’t want to once we’re already walking.”

I gave her a look that said ‘really?’ She was full of herself then, always joking about, making fun of me. I know I shouldn’t say it because it might sound terrible, but it was true. Like one endless supply of jokes and jabs. I think she felt she could accommodate my lack of a dad through unending unwarranted dad jokes. It became her thing. 

“Eveline, I really want you to come with me. Would you do that, please?”

At that moment I had opened my eyes and looked up at her. I could hear the pain in her voice, and now I saw it on her face. Something was wrong, but I was too stuck in my own selfish, ungrateful little world to notice. I shrugged it off like every teenager would’ve done, every teenager who didn’t have a heart. I should’ve said something. I should’ve gone on that damn walk.

“I think I’ll leave a little earlier.”

“You do that, darling. I’ll just be here.”

An uncomfortable silence filled the room. I could hear a quiet tapping in the inside of my ear. It began to annoy me. I looked around and saw my mother sitting on the couch, her head in her hands, and her leg bouncing up and down with her sole still fixed to the floor. Her heel was making the rhythmic tapping. In that moment, she was alone. I think she thought I wouldn’t notice, but I did, and I still did nothing.

Picking up my bag, I headed for the car. I looked her way as I walked out the door. She smiled back at me, her face breaking. I left like an obnoxious teenager, the soles of my shoes squeaking as they slid across the rubber welcome mat. I regret how this was the first time I had been outside that entire day, and it was already the afternoon. The worst part was that it wasn’t the first time either. I had grown accustomed to laziness like a sloth in its tree, worrying only about the state of the branch I clung to.

I could see my car in the driveway, a layer of dust settling around it. There were animal tracks by the front. Some deer had pranced through, unfazed by the metal monster they had passed. Even now I can picture that car, sitting untouched in the bleak, unsettling driveway, its wheels speckled with rust, punctured and deflated as if a bear had chosen it as its next meal. Its body was something saddening. There was no paint left on the roof, no paint on the bonnet, and nothing on either side-view mirrors. Looking back, that car was a scrap heap. But I still drove it with pride, a pride I inherited from my mother. And it could only have been my mother. My father was too much of a coward. Then again, maybe the laziness was his. But his cowardice was the worst. He didn’t have the courage to admit his faults. How could he have left us for some bright-eyed college graduate? Her only worldly experiences were from inside malls she shopped at. I couldn’t understand it. Not that I wished to. The last thing I wanted was to give my father any honour of being called rational. He was too far from it to even contemplate the idea.

“Darling, don’t forget your wallet.”

I looked at her like a child caught with their hand stuck in a jar of sweets and a mouthful of marshmallows.

“Let me go check your room.”

My mum ran up the stairs, miraculously dodging the broken runner on the sixth step, but stumbled when she got to the floorboard. I could hear a thud and an “I’m alright” as she got back up and made for my room. There she saw the horrid state it was in. A layer of loose papers and unclean clothes covering the floor, with a mountain of books in the back left corner like some landscape lookout over my rugged bedroom. I couldn’t tell you what it smelt like. A dead rat? A cheesie but with mouldy bread and cheese? These are all things my mother had said. That’s how bad it had gotten. My window was closed too. I could see it from the car.

I stood by the front door, hearing nothing but rustling from up the stairs. Every minute or so my mother would complain about the clutter. What could I tell her? I had more important things to worry about. Clearly, I hadn’t been dealt the tidiness gene. Downstairs, things were always straight and orderly. That’s just how she liked it. Her bedroom was downstairs too, which meant upstairs was my domain. However, I had to share it with an office she barely used. Thinking about it, she hadn’t been in that office for nearly a month, and it started to smell a bit like my own room, but it never got as bad. Don’t get me wrong, it was still as orderly as downstairs was, but such an order was seldom reordered. And that was the odd thing about her. She would reorder things like a maniac. Is that what mothers do? Maybe stay-at-home mothers, but surely not a single working mother. She had a job to attend to and yet spent her spare time alphabetically ordering the spice rack or color-coding the shoe shelf. I guess that’s just how she was. And guesswork is all I really have.

Finally, after too long of a search, she had found my wallet stashed behind some rolled up One Direction posters. Yes, I was one of those girls growing up. You can’t be one to judge. It was who we were.

“Now be safe on the road, alright?”

“I will. Stop worrying, mum.”

She was always worrying about me. Concerned to a fault. She used to tell me something her mother had told her when she was only young. ‘No matter where you are, or how dark things might get, your family will always be there, like your very own safety net.’ I think about that every day, how she never abandoned me like my selfish father had done. How she was the one who stood by me every morning at school and embraced me at the end of each day. No matter the worry, no matter the fear, she was always there holding me.

But what I had failed to see was how the saying was not only directed to me but also to herself. Her mother had told her that once, that her family would be there for her through everything, her true family. And as her true family, I had failed her. In the last breath of wind that she would feel, I abandoned her, like a herd leaves a dying calf to busy the wolves. I had made a liar of her mother, and I had made an idiot of myself. I jumped into the car filled with excitement without realising how lonely I had left her. I didn’t even bother with a moment’s thought about how she could be feeling, how much pain my actions could have caused. 

It was later in the afternoon when I got home. The house was silent. The front door was unlocked. No one was home. I stood on the front porch and called my mother’s name, but I could hear only insects buzzing and leaves blowing in the cold wind. It was so cold I grew chills down my arms. My chest became numb as my fear grew. Anxious sweat ran like rivers down my face. The sun hadn’t even started setting.

Terrible thoughts flooded into my mind like a dam crumbling under the weight of its water. I sat on the steps to the porch and cried. I cried tears of sorrow and tears of guilt. I had done this, I had made her abandon me, I thought. I knew I shouldn’t have left her. I saw the state she was in, and I still decided to leave. Alone, I was sat just like how she was, my head in my hands and my heel rhythmically tapping the ground.

I could barely contain myself. My mascara was ruined but I couldn’t care less. The person I loved the most was gone and I didn’t know where. But then I thought to myself, she couldn’t have gone far. I had the car. In that moment I felt she still loved me enough not to leave. That it wasn’t her choice not to come back. I ran into the house, grabbed the handheld spotlight sitting just inside the door and headed out, leaving everything unlocked.

The path we usually trekked began a football field away from the cabin. Light was fading as dusk approached. The spotlight pierced through the shadows of the rocky hills, scattering all the little creatures that were caught in its glare. My mother was the only one who knew the path better than me. She had grown up in these woods and had taught me about every plant and beast out there. My mother always told me never to leave the path. Out there things were too uncertain, she used to say. And I never dared defy her.

The sun had almost disappeared as I reached the stream. I remember playing in it as a small kid, splashing the fragile bank with enough water for it to crumble and float away. I’m pretty sure by the time I was six the mouth of the stream was twice as wide and it was entirely my fault.

I could hear the gentle spatter of the waters brushing against the rocks, flowing down the gulley. The stream seemed higher than I last remembered. At first I had doubts. I hadn’t walked the path for several months. Who knows what could have happened in that time? A mudslide or a fallen tree. A beaver dam or a dead animal. A dead animal!

I rushed off the path and leapt into the water, wading through the knee-high build-up. Each step brought me further into the woods than I had ever been. It could’ve been my water-soaked jeans weighing me down but I could feel my legs getting heavier the closer I got to the end of the rock face. My jacket that I had tied around my waist was now trailing behind me, sitting on the water surface like a leaf floating in a pond. I reached a tucked-away alcove and still the water level had not fallen. The blockage was further downstream. I ignored my aching body that screamed for a break. There was no a break I could justify, not a rest stop my conscience would allow. I moved around the rock to an opening in the trees. There stood a fawn drinking from the stream. It looked at me and I looked at it, both of us embracing the silence. Then far behind it I spotted someone lying across the bank, water built up behind them. I ran over, leaving the fawn to its unperturbed innocence. There was my mother, eyes shut, hand grasping her heart. I fell to the ground in pain, my tears falling like wilted petals on my poor mother’s body. Never again will I hear her wit nor feel her gentle smile as it rested upon my cheek. I had killed a life of love with my own selfishness.