Under David's Blanket

You were staring at me with those eyes again. It was the look you got when you were working out a puzzle, searching for the piece that would fit, finding it, turning it, flipping it, and when it wasn’t fitting in, that wave of confusion that drifted across your face like a vapour. You looked at me that way through my whole life. All I wanted you to do was to look at me like you looked at David. 

I didn’t know I was missing something before David existed. It was good then. You cooked me breakfasts and read me books like Milly Molly Mandy and the Boxcar Children. I wondered what it would be like to live alone, away from you, away from Daddy, in a box on my own in the woods with no people, just a creek, and a bush to collect berries from. It was the book I would ask you to read, again, and again. It was my favorite because it gave me hope that one day I wouldn’t have to live with you. 

You didn’t know I would catch you staring at me. I would look up from the TV set, my eyes shifting from that purple dinosaur, Barney, to you in the corner, with a teacup of Earl Grey growing cold beside you to catch you staring at me, staring through me. Your eyes were dark and vacant like your soul had escaped. The curtains were closed, and it seemed you were too tired to close the lids of your eyes, maybe you didn’t have the energy, you often said, 'I'm tired’. I supposed this is what tired looked like. 

You bathed me that night and I didn’t like it so I lifted my chin and bit you hard on your forearm. Your eyes flashed. I liked what I saw. There was life in them then, the dead centers came alive as your hand came down. You were going to slap me. I could feel the energy of it vibrating the air, but you stopped before your flesh met my flesh. You got up from your knees, I could see your pink track pants soaked through, you pulled a towel from the bar to dry yourself and flung the door open and left me there, alone in the bubbles, a blue rubber ducky blinking at me from under the suds, foam letters that spelled my name floating away from it. T. A. R. A. The R was under the tap. I watched drips of water drop onto the yellow foam. I could taste your blood on my teeth. It was salty. Daddy found me, with nothing but my nose poking out of the bubbles. The water was cold by then. I could hear you crying from your bedroom. Daddy pulled me from the water and wrapped me in a little mermaid towel and carried me to my room. I can still smell him, Old Spice and sweat. A day's growth of beard rubbed against my cheek as he leaned in to kiss me before he pulled my purple duvet over my warming body. He waited until he thought I was asleep before he went to you in the bedroom you shared next to mine. The room with the bright windows looking over the park where you took me on days when you wanted to drink your tea someplace other than home. I loved to sit by the middle window. The one above the seat that lifted. I found treasures in there, sometimes I hide treasures in there. The windows were never bright after David. Heavy curtains were drawn across and you would tell me to come away from there when I would lift the edge. The window was nailed shut now. It was too bad; I use to love the way it would swing open. I loved sitting in front of it feeling the wind push my hair from my face. 

I could hear the tone of Daddy's voice rising, the pitch crawling higher, and your sobs coming softer. I heard the words then. I didn’t know what they meant, but I knew you meant them about me because you used the word ‘She.’ I was never Tara to you, I was ‘She’. ‘She is evil.’ You said. 

I knew what you said about me was bad because Daddy started screaming louder. ‘She is just a child, Liona!" I fell asleep to the sound of your sobs. 

In the morning you toasted me a crumpet and drizzled warm honey on it and watched me as I dipped my fingers into each hole and then lick the honey from my fingertips. One of your eyes twitched. You looked away and quickly went back to the stove. I watched you pick up the left-over oatmeal and go to the corner where David’s highchair used to sit, the garbage can is there now. The highchair is in the basement. Sometimes, I go down there when you are laying on the sofa, when the TV is tuned to All My Children and your eyes are closed. I take my Violet doll, and we go down, and I dress her in David’s clothes. The blue romper I watched you button over his belly, your nose tickling his belly button till he giggled, then you would giggle and do it again, and again, until you were laughing so hard I could see wet tears come loose. I would dress Violet in the blue romper, and I tried to rub her belly with my nose, to hear her laugh the way David did, the way you did. She stayed plastic and her legs would never bend right to get her to sit up in the highchair, so I stopped trying. When I came back, you were standing at the top of the stairs, staring at me from a dark place. I don’t think you even blinked. 

Even now, you still don't blink. I smiled at the thought as I reached for the light switch to illuminate the same stairs you stared from twenty years ago. My hand seemed to guide my feet, sliding down the handrail Daddy installed just after you lost your balance, the day you fell. The day your head hit the cement floor. I picked up my marbles before you woke up and put them in my pocket. The black one was always my favorite one, I didn't want to lose it. Now, only the amount of dust had changed. I could see what I had disturbed rising to the light like an eclipse of moths, and David’s highchair, it was in the back corner now, covered in a sleeping bag and a box that with ‘Tara’ written in bold letters in black Sharpie ink. The last remnants from my room, you must have packed them after I left for university. I pulled the giant suitcase from the corner, the one where you kept all of David’s things. I knew you put them there a long time ago, because I snuck down there one day and watched you move Buggsy the elephant, his blanket and that blue romper from the cardboard box it was in on the day you found mice poop next to the furnace. I watched you put your nose into the romper. I watched you cry, and I wondered why you had loved him more than me. 

He made you smile; I didn’t make you smile, at least not very often. There was the one day before David was born, when he was still round in your belly, when I had put my ear on your skin and felt his foot on my cheek, it surprised us both, the kick from under your skin and at once we laughed out loud. Your hand pressed the back of my head, and I could feel your fingers run through my hair, feeling the strands as if you just discovered they were there. I looked up at your eyes then. They were not dark, they were dancing. They are not dancing anymore. 

I pulled the suitcase up the stairs and laid it on the floor, I pulled out the little things that belonged to David. If I closed my eyes and breathed deep, I could imagine the smell of his skin clinging to the fibers. Is this why you did it? Kept them for so long? So you could still smell him? The talc powder? The unused diaper, the faded ink of baby elephants on the sticky tabs? You would never smell him again. 

It was good after David was born, your eyes stopped hovering over me darkly and lit up under his toothless grin. You would kiss the drool on his chin as you washed crusted milk from the folds of skin. Daddy would smile at you and pet me on the head and before he would go to work, he would say his girls would take good care of his boy. You would smile up at him, as I inspected David. 

He had just taken his first step the day before he died. I remember how you and Daddy clapped for him, as he leaned from one foot to the other, forgetting to bend his knees if he knew to do that at all. He smiled, he drooled, and he clapped back. 

I was thinking of that when I packed the suitcase. The way he tipped heavily from one side of his body to the other without tipping over, the way you laughed, and clapped, and how Daddy did too. It was like he did something amazing, when it was just walking. I did that every day; your eyes didn’t dance for me that way. 

I wondered if it would have been different if David had never been born. If your eyes had just stayed dark on me and had never learned to light up. If he just never existed, then... 

You had just made your bed, dirty linens were picked up off the floor and I was watching you from the window seat, David was playing with a tube of mascara you had pulled from your bathroom shelf to give him something to drool on. You were both freshly showered. You both glowed, skin scrubbed clean, your hair still up in a towel, his damp curls drying in the air. He was in a diaper you were in your sweats, the pink ones. You left with the dirty linens and David crawled to me at the window seat, and I jumped down and lifted his rollie body up, together we would watch the bird with blue wings flutter leaves on the branch. He stood tall against the glass, and his hands banged it, and he laughed when his own sound startled the bird. I always loved it when that window swung open. You came through the bedroom door just David leaned against the glass. I watched you both. You had horror on your face. David was giggling, then I heard a sharp intake of breath as he felt the window leave his palms, as his body moved forward with nothing but air between him and the garden. You were close enough to hear the same thud I did when he hit the ground. 

Lights the color of red and white, flashed like Christmas. I stood beside you as your body sobbed over David’s. I reached out to touch you and you pushed me away. I wanted to be held in the same way you held him. I grabbed onto your leg. The medic pried my fingers off your pink sweats when he took you with him into the ambulance. I was left with Mrs. Jones. You were left to tend to your dead son. 

Your eyes never lit up again after that and you shivered if we were left in the same room alone together. You got skinny because you never ate, and whatever you ate you gagged on as it came back up. 

You moved out of the bedroom Daddy slept in and took your pillows and comforter to the sofa. It smelled like you when I would sit on it and watch Sesame Street. Scent of you coming from the comforter that was folded and placed on the side of the sofa, two pillows in blue floral pillowcases left on the top. 

You and Daddy didn’t talk much after that. He moved out before I went to university. He remarried. You never did. 

You called me last week and asked me to come to dinner. Some things you wanted to discuss. You were feeling bad that you hadn’t been a better mother. I think you had been drinking wine. It seemed to be the only time you would talk to me. 

I arrived in the afternoon. You greeted me at the back door. It was the door I was always most comfortable using. You had spent the morning making us a harvest salad, roasting yams and toasting pine nuts. I could see the square box grater laying sideways in the sink shreds of parmesan pearled on the sides. We ate mostly in silence. You asked me about school, I said it was fine. You asked me about my boyfriend, I said he was fine too. 

I watched your face turn purple before you knew you were having a problem. Your lips, the very edges of them pulling blue as they begged for the oxygen that was diminishing. I saw your hand as it dropped the fork and reach toward your throat as if you could somehow dig your fingernails in enough to let the air in. I picked up the glass of wine you had poured me and took a sip as I watched you gasp. I put another bite of my salad and chewed radicchio lettuce between my back molars as I watched your arms flail. I was savoring the flavor of the toasted pine nuts when I watched the final light leave your eyes leaving them dark forever. Your eye lids still too tired to close over them. They stared like they had stared at me my whole life. Vacant and dark. 

When I finished my lunch, I picked up my plate and wine glass, I picked up your wine glass too. I knew it was best to wash out any remnant of the Fox Glove I had laced your wine with. I left your plate where it was. I could have left you on the floor where you laid but I had thought of a better idea and that’s why I had been in the basement pulling up the suitcase. It was big enough for your body, you were always a tiny thing. 

I folded you in without problem. I was mid zip before I saw David's things still laying on the floor beside us. I always wished you had looked at me the way you looked at him. 

You never knew I learned about medicines that could inflict heart attacks the same way you never knew I knew how to unlatch your bedroom window. I was always good at puzzles. There were so many things you didn’t know about me. I turned you to your side and folded your legs up under you. You laid in that suitcase the way that David laid in your womb. I covered you with his blanket and tucked Buggsy in your arms. You looked like you were sleeping. I stood up and observed you. Your whole life lying there in that suitcase. 

I closed your eyes before I zipped it up, so I would never have to see you stare at me that way again.