Porch Light

The porch light clicks on as Callie sets her foot on the bottom step. She freezes. On either side of the screen door is a hanging basket, thick with petunias, the colour hard to discern in the glare of the security light. Liam whimpers in her aching arms. The taxi driver couldn’t, wouldn’t take them beyond the driveway gate. She left the car in the little town five miles away, at the end of a cul-de-sac, in case there’s a tracker in it, which is ludicrous for a nine-year-old Honda Civic, but she doesn’t put anything past Dale. She dropped her phone in a southbound trash can and took the next turnoff north. If Dale tracks it he will assume she has gone to her friend Sophie’s. Sophie is fictional and can fend for herself.

The porch is deep, a pair of Adirondack chairs sit to her left, a little table between them holds a terracotta planter with more petunias. If her mother were here she would say, ‘Someone sure likes petunias.’ Her mother’s favourite flower had been a tulip, the basic single kind, the kind that children draw one-dimensionally with fat crayons. Sourcing tulips for an October funeral had been a challenge.

To the right of the door are two pairs of boots, a medium brown pair and a large black pair, sitting neatly on a rubber mat. There is an unfamiliar scent in the air. Cows maybe, or horses, she’s not sure which. ‘Smell that fresh country air!’ her mother used to say, on summer drives with the windows down to visit Great Aunt Martha in the ‘boonies’. Great Aunt Martha lived near a dairy farm. This smell is not so pungent, so maybe it’s horses.

It must be late. It is midsummer and the night is black as pitch, the sky out here huge and crazy with stars. She has driven for hours that may be days, and time has lost its markers. Liam fusses again, and this, and her aching arms drive her forward. She presses the doorbell, which makes an old-fashioned ding-dong sound. She pivots to look around, paranoid. No, cautious. Dale will not take kindly to her flight. There are two vehicles parked in the gravel drive, one is a hatchback newer and cleaner than hers. And a truck, a proper farm truck with huge deep tread tires and a mud-spattered chassis.

She senses a movement above her and looks up, her heart a fist punching in her chest. A tingle of hope moves through her. She pushes the doorbell again. Ding-dong. A light goes on in the hallway behind the door. She takes a step back. Please god, please god, please. The inner wooden door opens. A woman, the right age, peers through the screen door. She blinks against the glare of the security light.

The woman takes them in, a few heartbeats pass, then she speaks, ‘What on earth?’ The screen door opens and the woman stands in the doorway in her bare feet, one arm crossed over a soft cardigan worn loose and long over a crisp cotton nightgown. She gestures them into the house. ‘Here, you poor things, come in. Have you broken down? Are you lost?’ Callie carries Liam into the house. It is warmer than outside, and the smells are different. Lemon and wood and laundry. The woman is still drawing them into the house and closing the two doors when Callie sees a man standing at the bottom of the stairs. He is tall and still as a deer, his face in shadow.

The woman sees him and admonishes, ‘George, put the kettle on.’ He doesn’t move. ‘George!’ The woman tuts and shakes her head, giving up on him. ‘You’ll have some tea won’t you honey, maybe a cookie for the little one? He looks old enough to have a cookie.’ She smiles at Liam. Callie is exhausted and hungry and desperate to pee. She lowers her heavy backpack to the floor but keeps Liam on her hip. Suddenly the woman stops and turns and speaking slowly says, ‘You – speak - English?’

Without warning Callie bursts into tears, almost wetting herself in the process. She can see that the woman has asked the question out of kindness and not cruelty. It is the woman’s soft eyes and the warm fingers on her elbow guiding her further into the house that have placed the lump in her throat and the tears in her eyes. She is so tired. It is her amber skin, brown eyes and dark hair that begged the question. Both her parents are - were - mixed race. Liam’s skin tone is lighter than hers, but his eyes are brown, not blue like his daddy’s. The woman looks stunned by this outburst, and the man has disappeared. Callie sees a light go on down the hallway and moments later a tap is running.

She says, ‘Can I please use your bathroom?’

The woman jolts like she has just woken up and her cheeks turn pink. ‘Of course honey, just up there.’ She points to a doorway at the top the stairs. Then she turns and moves towards them, as if to take Liam into her own arms, ‘Let me take him off your…’

Callie cries, ‘No!’ And the woman steps back as if she has been slapped.

As she climbs the stairs Callie turns her head a little and whispers, ‘Sorry, thank you, sorry.’ There are photos at eye height all the way up the stairs. Family groups, retro wedding portraits, a boy and a dog, a group of men in desert camo sitting on a tank.

The bathroom is small and clean and the bathroom fixtures are light blue. There is a little vase of fresh marigolds on the windowsill. On a shelf under the sink is a neatly folded pile of yellow and white striped towels of varying sizes stacked in a pyramid shape. Liam cries when she puts him down on the floor. When she finishes she washes her hands and touches up the makeup around her eye, then she lays Liam back on the bathmat and removes his sodden diaper. He is red and sore and guilt surges through her like an electric charge. She uses the last of her baby wipes to clean him up, redresses him and hugs him to her, rocking him.

She goes back down the stairs where the woman is hovering. ‘Better?’ she says brightly, a careful smile on her face. Crow’s feet branch from beautiful eyes. Kind eyes.

‘Much better, thank you.’

They go into the kitchen. George asks, ‘Tea or coffee?’ He has his back to her, busy at the counter. His voice is low, gravelly. He wears navy and red checked pajama pants with a white t-shirt, grey bathrobe and slippers. His hair is short, fresh clipped on the nape and around the ears, a tide line of pale and tan.

‘Tea please.’

Callie and the woman start speaking simultaneously, then they both stop. Callie swallows. The woman resumes, ‘Here, sit down at the table. Can I get something for…?’

‘Liam.’

‘Can I get something for little Liam? A cookie, a banana, some milk maybe?’

‘All three if it’s ok, we haven’t eaten for quite a while.’

‘Oh my.’ The woman moves hurriedly to a fruit bowl and starts to peel a banana. ‘George, heat some milk for the baby.’ She puts the banana on a small plate and puts it on the table.

The plate has a little bird on it and Liam puts his finger on it. ‘Dah,’ he says. The woman claps her hands, delighted. ‘Oh, what a sweet little thing.’

Callie feeds him pieces of banana and he starts humming, something he always does when he’s eating, when he’s happy. The stone returns to her throat.

George puts a small tray down to one side of her, out of Liam’s reach. It holds a mug of tea, a jug of milk, a sugar bowl and a teaspoon. The jug and the sugar bowl are matching, white china decorated with tiny pink roses. Other than a restaurant, Callie has never had a man serve her anything before. She and her mother waited on her stepfather hand and foot, without question or thanks. And as for Dale, when he was in one of his moods he would sweep breadcrumbs from table to floor and sit and stare until she got down on her hands and knees. ‘Good little wifey,’ he would say. Except she wasn’t his wife, and he wasn’t Liam’s father. He wasn’t anything good to anybody decent.

Callie, heavy with Liam, her mother and her job both taken from her, had traded her dignity and her happiness for food and shelter. When the price went up to a black eye and a torn rotator cuff she kept up the payments. But the pliers held open ‘as a little joke’ around a sleeping baby’s thumb was an outlay too far. That was the night before she left. She looks down at Liam’s hands, plump and perfect, and feels a swell of hatred move through her, thick and choking.

These dark thoughts are interrupted by George clearing his throat.

‘Sorry, my manners, thank you George and thank you…?’

‘Helen. I’m Helen. And we know this is Liam, and what’s your name honey?’

‘I’m Callie. Calliope on my birth certificate, but most people call me Callie.’

Helen is about to speak again when George interrupts her, ‘Helen, the cookies.’ Helen slaps herself gently on the forehead and opens a cupboard.

Callie can feel George’s eyes on her and turns to thank him again. She is brought to complete stillness by his face. It’s the way his eyes curve down at the outer edges, and the shape of the space between his nose and upper lip. And the left eyebrow, lifted now in inquiry as she continues to stare. The microwave pings and he turns away to open it. Callie, her face hot, murmurs her thanks as Helen puts another plate with six large cookies on it in front of her. The cookies are oaty and asymmetrical, clearly homemade. She breaks off a piece for Liam. He hums louder, rocking back and forth, gesturing for more.

Helen sits down opposite them, grinning at Liam. ‘What an absolute sweetheart, isn’t he a little sweetheart George?’

George grunts and puts down a small mug of milk in front of Callie. ‘Best check it’s not too hot, been a long time since I heated milk for a baby.’

They are all silent for a while, apart from Liam who continues to hum as Callie alternates feeding him bits of banana and cookie. There are crumbs all over the green polka-dotted oilcloth and she tries to rake them into a pile with her free hand.

‘Don’t worry about that Callie.’ Helen’s voice is gentle, soothing. ‘Now, will you give me the baby for a minute so you can drink your tea and have something to eat? We can just sit here together; he won’t want you out of his sight I’m sure.’

Another knot in her throat. She hands him over, he fusses a little but Helen gives him another piece of cookie and he resumes his humming and rocking on her lap. Callie makes up her tea with milk and a teaspoon of sugar and eats one of the cookies. She is ravenous and the cookie is fresh and buttery and sweet and delicious. She takes a sip of tea and starts on a second cookie when Helen says conversationally, ‘So honey, what’s brought you to this neck of the woods?’

George adds, ‘At four in the morning.’ He is still standing, leaning against the counter, a mug in his large hands.

Callie stutters. ‘Oh, I’m, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise it was so late, it’s just, just that I was in a bit of trouble and—.’

‘What sort of trouble?’ George’s voice is sharp.

‘George!’ Helen admonishes. ‘Ignore him honey, just start from the beginning, we’ve got nowhere to be.’

‘Other than in our bed,’ George mutters.

Callie’s eyes blur with tears and she stares down at the table. She had this speech all thought out, like the time she stood in front of her Geography class in High School to talk for ten minutes about Costa Rican cloud forests. But like then the words have all scattered in her head and they start coming out in the wrong order, with the wrong emphasis.

‘I worked in a bar, in January, last year. In January last year I was working in a bar. As a waitress. And I—.’

George interrupts. ‘Where?’

‘Near the base.’ She sees Helen tense but she ploughs on. ‘I met a young man there.’ George curses under his breath and the wood floor creaks as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

Her throat closes and her words stop, and she feels tears running down each cheek, matching the silvery streaks on Helen’s face. Grief has joined them at the table, like an unwanted guest. Helen draws in a sobbing breath and suddenly Callie feels George’s large presence loom over her. Callie flinches and almost falls off her chair, and she is on the other side of the kitchen with her back to the wall before she can even force a breath. Her hands are cold and her heart kicks like a horse, right up into her neck.

Liam starts to cry and Helen’s voice is a whip. ‘George! So help me God.’

George gestures to the chair, for Callie to sit back down. He pushes the plate of cookies towards Liam and retreats to his place by the counter, and it is only then she realises that he was moving to comfort his wife, nothing more or less than that. His eyes glisten and blink. Liam stops crying and reaches for the cookies.

Callie edges back and re-takes her seat. She picks at a hangnail on her left thumb. Her voice hovers above a whisper. ‘He looked just like you George. James looked just like you.’

Helen nods and drops a soft kiss on the top of Liam’s head. Her smile trembles. ‘I knew. As soon as I saw you all at the door. I just knew.’

It is enough for Helen, but not for George.

George takes a deep inhalation, releases it. He says, ‘Why now? This very hour, this very day. Why now Calliope?’

She rolls her shoulders back, drops them down and sits straighter. It lifts her heart to hear him use the name only her mother ever did. As her gaze turns towards him again she sees, through the patio doors at the back of the kitchen, a change in the light. A barn is now clearly delineated, black lines in deep blue silhouette. Dawn is on its inevitable way. As night dissolves so do her inhibitions. These people are good, she can see it, she can feel it.

She repeats his question, ‘Why now?’ She looks from Helen to George and back again. ‘I didn’t know James for very long.’ She flushes and hurries on, ‘but we talked a lot. He asked about my family and I asked about his. I told him my dad was gone, my mom was real sick and my stepfather was--,’ she gives a dismissive flap of her hand. ‘And he said, “Well I guess I’m the lucky one because my parents, my mom and my dad, are good people. Real good people.” Helen’s face crumples and she stretches one sleeve of her cardigan, using it to wipe her eyes and wet cheeks. 

George clears his throat but doesn’t speak.

Callie says, ‘I’ve ended up in a bad place with a bad person.’ Her voice catches. ‘A person who hurts me, and now he--.’ She gestures toward Liam.

George takes a sip of his coffee, swallows, his Adam’s apple moving in his throat. He says, low and clear, ‘Well. You’re safe now, both of you are safe now.’

No one says anything for a time. Three pairs of eyes are on Liam, still humming and rocking. Callie can see his ears are turning pink, which means he’s getting tired. Minutes later he frowns and holds his arms out to her, a little whimper escaping his rosy lips. As Callie takes his warm body in her arms, Helen rouses herself, murmuring about bed linen and towels. As she leads Callie out of the kitchen Callie turns back to George, still not quite sure. Liam grizzles, his face finding the space between her neck and shoulder.

‘You were a soldier too George, once upon a time?’

His blue eyes, so like James’s, look into her brown ones. He nods and that familiar eyebrow lifts again. ‘Like I said Calliope, you’re both safe now.’

She follows Helen down the hallway to a bedroom behind the stairs, her mind dragging through one thought:  that hope had always been such an ugly thing in her life. She hears the kettle click on again, the scrape of a chair, the pull of curtain rings on a pole. She smells fabric softener on crisp sheets, and the sweet breath of a baby inches from sleep. In the bedroom, Helen has pulled out a drawer, lined it with a blanket and a sheet. Callie places Liam in the drawer, his limbs soft. She sits on the bed as Helen tucks a bath towel around him, murmurs, ‘Snug as a bug’. Callie reaches out a hand and touches the wall, leaning into it, pressing hard. It is cool and solid under her fingertips.

THE END