A Keen Eye

A handy rule of thumb in Carrie’s house: don’t look too closely at anything. Housekeeping didn’t spark joy for her, so she almost aimed for the bare minimum. Inconveniently, a chronic condition afflicted her daughter, daily putting the two women at odds. Cecily had a keen eye.

Long into the morning this Cecily laid in her bed, turning occasionally as a heavy door on old hinges. In truth, she wasn’t more than ten or fifteen pounds above her preferred number on the scale, but her general lack of interest in breaking a sweat cultivated a penchant for stillness that weighed her down in ways she no longer noticed. The bed noticed, however, and so did her mother.

After a final creak across her hinges, Cecily’s nose caught an aroma which aroused conflicting feelings within her. “Pork flitch,” she rasped, stretching. Ever since she had discovered the word “flitch” in a thesaurus when searching for alternatives to “bacon” while writing a short story about two fat brothers on a farm, she never again deigned to use the commoner’s rendering, even in daily life. She adhered to this policy with a number of words. Regardless of what she called it, Cecily had always loved bacon, and her mother knew it. A sure way to get bacon for breakfast was to sleep too late than was good for her. Carrie used the smell of pork flitch much like one might use a rope to drag mule.  

Cecily remained in bed, stoking the embers of her disdain. Frying pork flitch meant spattered grease. Spattered grease meant nothing to her mother, who would probably have a kitchen covered in it if it weren’t for her daughter. In fact, if it weren’t for Cecily cleaning up after her mother every day of her life—Cecily seethed as she lay in bed—bacon grease would so accumulate that, aside from practically being a roach resort, Carrie’s kitchen would be a true hazard. The daughter closed her eyes as if spreading a red carpet for the possibly prophetic thought: her mother slipping and cracking her head on the tile. If she hit it just right, Cecily thought, she might even expire on that slick floor, blood mingled with grease soaking her hair and encircling her pate. All resulting from negligent housekeeping. After sufficiently puffing up her pride in literally keeping her mother alive by daily taking up her cross—as her mother would call any sacrifice—Cecily began to brainstorm possible headlines reporting the old woman’s death, the hilarity of which made her laugh aloud.     

She welcomed this levity, which helped her out of bed. Without humor and grace, Cecily knew she wouldn’t be able to face each new day of sacrifice and oppression. As she stepped toward her dresser, she consciously avoided looking at the wallpaper. She knew it would simply get her riled up again. On every wall, tiny pink roses stood at attention in columns, one by one. Each rose identical to her comrades above and below, every column separated by the same two thin, vertical lines. With the exception of the corner just above her bedroom door, these flowers had held their posts for decades, since her family moved into the house when she was six and her mother chose this wallpaper for her little girl’s room. That peeling corner, that small defiant act, disclosed a tenacity unexpected of such small, pale roses. They’d been secretly working on it for 30 years. The glue was so strong. Cecily admired their victory and stepped into the hall.

Carrie heard the bathroom door shut and smiled. Works every time, she thought. The smile then faded as she stacked the bacon onto paper towels and a familiar worry settled in. The picture of health—despite the frequent bacon—Carrie prided herself on her strength and agility for such an “old lady.” She certainly didn’t feel old, but sometimes when she let her mind slow down and contemplate her 77 years, she realized how close she was to the official American allotment of 81.65 years for her sex, which she discovered in a recent publication on global life expectancies. She expected to outlive that expectation without question, but she also had to be sensible. She had far fewer chapters left in her book than she had already lived. And what would happen to her Cecily then?

Her only daughter, her miracle child born late in life after nearly twenty years married and childless, was a disappointment. No matter how positive Carrie tried to remain, no matter how she focused on Cecily’s intellect, her talents, her creativity, her potential, this same fact remained: her beautiful Cecily Marie was 36, unmarried, and unemployed, and not even looking for a job or a husband! She spent her days holed up in her childhood room, supposedly writing. But Carrie had seen precious little of her writings, and the rest of the world—besides, she guessed, Cecily’s college professors—had seen none. None! Carrie had worked two jobs after her husband died to provide for her daughter and to make sure she went to a good, respectable university, from which Cecily had graduated summa cum laude. Her mother couldn’t have been more proud. Fourteen years ago. Since then, everything Cecily produced stayed locked in her laptop.

The disappointing daughter and her bedhead interrupted Carrie’s thoughts. She looked up and said, “Good morning, Sunshine!” with a little laugh. Noticing scrambled eggs drying on a wooden spoon laid directly on a counter, which itself was strewn with flour the biscuit dough had earlier disregarded, Cecily mustered a moderately courteous response, greatly restraining all that truly needed saying. She grabbed a plate from the cupboard, willing herself not to see spattered grease.

Refusing to use the crusted spoon, she took a clean fork and began loading eggs onto her dish, then a biscuit, then four entire strips of pork flitch. Being in such close proximity to the grease, and being that she so desperately desired to avoid seeing it just yet, her eyes happened upon a corner of the living room, just visible from her vantage point. Cecily actually had to close her eyes and count, breathing deeply, in order to push through this moment without exploding. How in the world her mother’s friends could even come into this house for quilting club was a mystery to her. But honestly, judging from the mess they thought nothing of leaving in someone else’s home, their houses might be even worse. Just as she was on the “ee” part of “three,” her mother broke in, “So what’s on the agenda for today?”

Carrie submitted this question with as much cheer, gentleness, and laissez-faire as she could scrounge, and she had dug right down to her toenails for it. She even smiled, as if making general conversation with an acquaintance. Cecily, however, recognized accusation immediately, her eyes springing open, and then quickly narrowing as they pinpointed the mother who’d—astonishingly—made them. “Same as yesterday, Mom,” she replied, returning the same false cheer her mother had offered. “Just cleaning up around the house”—at this, she noticeably paused to assess every detail of the messy kitchen and living room—“and then try to get published with whatever time remains. Same old, same old.”

Her mother nearly whispered her response, keeping a firm hold on her cheer: “Oh, and how’s that going?”

Cecily’s whole body reacted as though assailed by flaming arrows. In one motion, she dropped her plate onto the discarded flour and collapsed into a squat. She kept hold of the edge of the counter as though it were her sanity, and she pressed her head into the grain of the lower cabinet. The greasy, floured tile below her endured many mumbles and grumbles—and perhaps even a growl—amid low laments of enduring “incessant importunity” and being oppressed by “intellectual anemia.”

Carrie practically collared her daughter, pulling her to a standing position. “What is your problem? Are you insane?” she demanded.

“What is my problem? What is MY PROBLEM?! What is your problem? Can’t I just sit down and eat my damn eggs in peace, Mother? Or do I have to take my plate to my own damn room to find respite?” She glared at Carrie.

Carrie was in her daughter’s face now. “Cecily Marie,” she hissed, “you know better than to take that tone—or to use that language—in my house. This is MY house.”

“HA!” the daughter burst. “Your house. YOUR house?! Please, Caroline. If it weren’t for my charity work around here, you’d be absolutely drowning. Your own house would advance upon you and devour you. You could be on that show…” She stopped abruptly, turning away from her mother. Her breaths thinned as black, typeface words seemed to appear, letter by letter, before her eyes. The tired and discarded writing advice, “Write what you know,” echoed in her ears as the typed words filled an imaginary document before her. She even mumbled the words aloud as her mind caught up to the story arc: an insane and incompetent mother loses her daughter—who finds freedom after finally getting published—and then realizes her loss too late, as all the hoarded items in the house ally with the roaches and the rats and literally devour her.

“What are you—“

“Shut up!” Cecily screeched. “SHUT UP, CAROLINE! You’ll ruin it!” Cecily fairly pushed her mother out of the way in a desperate attempt to get the rush of beautiful, perfect words safely into her computer. The slightest sound, the smallest uttered word from an outsider could jostle this vision into oblivion, and she was not about to allow her mother that satisfaction.

In her hurry, she spontaneously decided to cut through the center of the living room instead of going around the furniture. Scurrying toward a clear opening just between her mother’s chair and the still-unfinished quilt, she kept her eyes focused down the hallway, on the second door, behind which her magnum opus would breathe its first sacred breaths. She dodged the extra chairs and TV trays zig-zagged around the quilt, which lounged across four huddled-together card tables. The old women had left their chairs and trays at varying distances from their work, taking refreshment as they tired of sewing. Cecily determined not to see the stale, unfinished snacks, half-empty Diet Coke cans, and crumpled, crumby napkins. That could be a scene, certainly, and she would need every disgusting detail, but there would be plenty of opportunities to observe such a scene again. She wouldn’t allow it to crowd out the beautiful book beginning before her eyes.

Though she remained focused on only two things—getting to her laptop and keeping the words present before her eyes until then—she did not miss the misplaced end table jutting into her path just before the hall. Upon it lay various implements: an overcrowded pin cushion, threads, rulers, scissors of various sizes, and countless other items Cecily could not have identified, had she cared. Her sharp eyes processed only the unseemly and unnecessarily cluttered mess upon a table in the wrong place. Really just a metaphor for the entire house—really, for my mother’s entire existence, she thought to herself as she neared the table, intending to hop around it.  That last thought, just one too many for her brain to hold on to simultaneously, might be what caused the highly uncharacteristic oversight.

Cecily deeply valued a clear, clean, and uncluttered floor. Truly, she valued these attributes in all areas of life and living, but floors and counters particularly mattered to her. No speck of dust or discarded item escaped her scrutiny, and she never failed to add a transgression to her mental list of grievances against her mother, for later reference. Until today. If she actually realized the sin, it never had time to make the list.

At the far end of the living room, just before the little, untidy table—which most assuredly made the list—a small amount of excess quilt flowed off of the card tables and pooled quietly on the floor. This gathered material so suddenly ensnared Cecily’s unsuspecting left foot that the rest of her completely lost all rational function or basic coordination. Panic overtook, with Cecily grasping for anything to break her fall. She naturally reached toward the table, but, unhelpfully, her hand could grasp only a pair of large tailor’s shears before her momentum pulled her down. Her hand, still trying to protect the author’s beautiful brain, made every effort to block it from hitting the floor. The outside of Cecily’s closed fist hit first, with her head following shortly after. Her head did not, indeed, hit the floor. The firmly gripped tailor’s shears, having thrust through Cecily’s right eye and fully into her cerebrum, perfectly pinned her head just above her fist, which quickly disappeared beneath a thick, sanguine flood.

Her mother, having heard a yelp as Cecily fell, shuffled into the room with little interest, until she spotted one of her daughter’s upturned feet. (The other, of course, being entangled and hidden from view.) Carrie then hastened forward, asking, “Cecily, what on ear…” The blood encircling the dead woman’s head, saturating her unbrushed hair, drowned the mother’s words.