Authors: Julie Frayn
Mazie nodded. “I guess so. It’s
been so long since I’ve heard you sing.”
“Yeah, well, that life is over.”
His phone chimed and a red light
flashed. He picked it up, grinned at the screen and ran his thumbs across it.
Seconds later the phone chimed again. He let out a small laugh and responded.
Mazie sipped her water, hacked off a
bit of cake and stabbed it with the fork then handed the fork to Ariel. “Yummy
cake, eh?”
Ariel nodded with her mouth full.
Cullen texted back and forth with
someone who did a better job of making him happy than Mazie was doing. After
the fifth chime, she sighed.
He glanced up at her. “What’s your
problem?”
She looked at the table. “Nothing.”
She took a breath. “Just that, whoever it is, maybe the texts could wait until
after dinner?” She lifted her eyes to his.
His one eyebrow shot up and he
squinted. Mazie looked away.
“Daddy, can we get ice cream on the
way home?” Ariel to the rescue.
He smiled at her. “Sure we can.
It’s my birthday, after all.”
Ariel slid the side door of the van
closed, chocolate ice cream stained her upper lip and dripped from a waffle
cone.
Mazie clicked the passenger door
shut and waited for Cullen to pass in front of her before falling into line
behind and heading for the front door.
“Evening, Reynolds clan.” Rachel’s
husband, George, stood on his front lawn in checkered shorts and a ratty old
T-shirt. He held the garden hose and sprayed a fine mist over Rachel’s beloved
rose bushes.
Cullen ignored him.
“Hi, George.” Mazie waved.
Rachel jumped out through the front
door. She was like a damn jack-in-the-box and Mazie’s presence was the hand crank.
The second she was in range, surprise! Rachel popped up.
“Beautiful evening!” she yelled.
“Ariel, want to come play with Polly?”
Cullen spun around. “No, she
doesn’t. It’s my birthday and she’s spending it with me.”
Rachel cocked her head. “Well, sooorry,
birthday boy. I didn’t know this was the day the world was graced with your
presence.” She jerked her chin at Ariel. “Maybe another day that isn’t so
special, ‘kay sweetie?”
“Okay, Mrs. Simpson. Thanks.”
Ariel took her ice cream into the
living room and turned on the television.
Mazie clicked the front door shut.
“Don’t drip on the carpet, bug.”
Cullen went straight to the
cupboard over the fridge and pulled out the bourbon. He sloshed a few ounces
into a tumbler and turned to her. “I swear, one day I’m gonna kill that bitch.”
He kept his voice low.
Mazie placed her purse on the
kitchen table. “She’s snoopy, but harmless.”
“And for future reference, who
texts me and when I choose to reply are none of your damn business.”
She looked at her feet. “Sorry. We
don’t get many nights out. Just thought it would be nice to focus on that.”
“I don’t care what you thought.” He
snatched her purse and rummaged inside. “Let’s see who you’ve been texting,
huh?” He pulled her phone out and slid his grease-stained fingers all over the
screen. The same thing he did at least once a week. He pressed his lips
together and threw her a withering look. “Good. Just me.” He tossed the phone
on the table, took his drink, and joined Ariel in front of the television.
At ten, he sent Ariel to bed. At ten-thirty,
he took Mazie by the arm. She followed him up the stairs, her wrist aching in
his grip.
In the bedroom, he stripped and
tossed his clothes on the floor.
Mazie got undressed, hung her pants
in the closet and put her shirt and underwear in the clothes hamper with the other
dirty laundry. She picked up his clothes from the carpet, along with his filthy
work shirt and jeans that lay where he’d dropped them after work — shag the
colour of applesauce had seemed the right choice thirteen years ago — and tossed
them into the laundry basket she kept in the room for his things. Kept them
away from her clothes so his filth didn’t infect her.
He stood by the head of the bed,
hard and anxious. “Hurry up already.”
She approached from the other side
and lay on her back.
He crawled on top of her, ran his
sweaty, stinking, sticky skin all over her. She closed her eyes and turned her
head. He wouldn’t care. He never kissed her on the mouth anymore.
He pushed her legs apart with his
knees and forced himself inside. The weight of him knocked the breath from her.
She clamped her lips closed, shut
her eyes, and imagined an idling river, a quiet meadow at the base of the
mountains, the scent of daisies and pine needles. Ariel played in the distance.
Molly, their golden retriever, frolicked in the grass. The dog she’d always
wanted. A dog they’d never owned. Ariel tossed a stick to Molly and the dog
fetched and returned flawlessly.
Cullen’s breathing became laboured.
He shifted his body until he loomed over her and encircled her throat with one
hand.
As the air left her, she opened her
eyes to glare at the monster he had become.
He grunted and groaned and thrust
into her harder and harder, his grip on her neck tightening with each creak of
the bed, each thud of her head against the headboard, the headboard against the
wall.
Creak, thud, gasp, thud, creak.
Sparks of light exploded in her
periphery. She clawed at his arm.
“No! I’m not done fucking you yet.”
Mazie gasped for air, prayed for
his grip to falter, to allow just one small slip of oxygen through. Her vision
blurred and she closed her eyes. He was going to do it this time. She was going
to die. Tears dripped onto the pillow.
His body went rigid and his grip
relaxed. He toppled onto her and breathed garlic and liquor onto her cheek. “Oh
yeah.” He rolled off. “That’s what I needed.” He swatted her thigh with the
back of his hand. “Go shower. You’re disgusting.” He turned off the bedside
lamp and stuffed his pillow under his head.
Mazie slid from the bed, her
movements robotic and stiff. She clicked the bathroom door shut and opened the
one drawer that was hers and hers alone. He would never peer where tampons and
pads and hair removal products lived, nauseated as he was by the whole ‘woman
thing.’
She pushed the contents aside and
tugged the false back away. The Polaroid camera lay at the ready.
She ran the shower, inched the door
open a sliver and peeked out. He was unconscious. Bourbon-fuelled snores
grunted from his nostrils.
She snapped two photos of the fresh
hand print on her neck, the cumulative damage redder and brighter than before,
the contrast against her ashen face a stark reminder of why her drawer was full
of scarves. When the pictures popped out, she wrote the date on the white
border of each and returned everything to the drawer, replaced the false back
and slid the drawer shut.
She stepped under the near-scalding
shower. The loofah found every inch of her skin. She ran the bar of herbal soap
over her body again and again, lathered her fingers and slid them inside
herself, stroking and rubbing to purify where he’d stained her. Masturbating in
the shower used to be a relaxing, exciting, release. But this wasn’t
masturbation. It was cleansing. She felt no pleasure. Only relief to know that
as much of him as possible was out of her body.
When she was as clean as mere soap
and water could get her, she sat in the tub and wept. No matter how hot the
water, no matter how long she scrubbed, no matter how many bars of soap she
went through, she could never wash him off.
She climbed into bed and turned her
back to him, the slice of mattress between them a glacial chasm. She fell into
a fitful sleep, her body on the brink and her arm hanging, fingertips pressed
into the carpet. They were all that kept her from going over the edge.
Like any normal day.
~~~~~~~~
Mazie perched on the edge of her
chair and sipped her sweet tea. The dinner dishes were washed and dried and put
in their place where they belonged. The lingering comfort of roast pork pulled
at her senses, quickly losing the aroma argument to the yeast of too many
lagers poured down Cullen’s throat.
Ariel sat on the carpet, her face
too close to the television, its glow illuminating her black tresses with
strands of neon blue. Mazie reached out with her foot and gave Ariel a gentle
poke in the butt. “Time to get ready for bed.”
“Not yet!” Ariel swiped at Mazie’s
foot with one hand. “My show’s not over.”
“Ariel!” Cullen pushed his
newspaper down, crumpling its pages. “Do as your mother says and get your ass
upstairs.”
“Daddy, please? It’s almost finished.”
Mazie winced at the whine in her
daughter’s voice. “It’s okay. She can finish watching.”
“It is not okay.” He slammed his
beer bottle on the table and tossed the paper aside. He stood, grabbed Ariel’s
arm and yanked her to her feet.
Mazie’s legs went cold.
“Ow, Daddy that hurts!” Ariel gazed
up at her father. Fear and defiance glinted briefly in her eyes before the
tears came.
“Then do as you’re told.” He threw
his hands open. Ariel stumbled backward.
Mazie stood. “Cullen, leave her be.
She’s just a child.”
He turned to her, eyes squinted,
upper lip trembling.
Ariel rubbed her hand over the
giant red fingerprints on her arm.
“She’s not a child, damn it. Look
at her! She’s got tits for Christ’s sake. About damn time she grew up.”
Mazie took a step back and guided
her daughter away. “I just don’t want you to hurt her. It’s not her fault.”
“It’s not her fault.” His face
twisted and his voice raised an octave. “It’s not her fault, it’s not her
fault.” He put his hands on his hips and laughed once on a heavy exhale.
“You’re right.”
Mazie hesitated and looked back at
Ariel.
She was right?
Ariel gaped at her father and inched
toward the stairs.
“Yup. You are so right.” One side
of his upper lip lifted in a sneer. He took two steps and poked her collar bone
with one finger. “It’s your fucking fault.” He raised his right hand across his
chest.
She closed her eyes.
The back of his hand slammed into
the side of her face.
“Daddy, no!”
He swung around and stepped toward
Ariel. She screamed and ran up the stairs.
He turned back to Mazie and punched
her in the stomach.
The wind left her and she doubled
over onto the floor. She gasped for air and willed her dinner to stay put.
“Get that little bitch in bed now,
before I give her a real lesson in behaving.”
Mazie crawled to the staircase and
looked up to the landing. Ariel stared at her mother, her eyes red with tears and
double their normal size.
Mazie grasped the railing and
forced herself to stand. She smiled at Ariel. “It’s all right, honey. Mommy’s
all right. Come on, I’ll read you a story.”
She looked back at Cullen. He was
hidden behind the newspaper, his beer near-empty. She climbed the stairs,
gripped the railing for balance.
That wasn’t normal. He’d never hit her
in front of another living soul. Had never really harmed Ariel. Not with his
hands.
At the top of the stairs, she touched
a finger to her cheek and winced. Her eye had already swollen, her fingers
stained with blood.
What lie could she come up with this
time?
Mazie took her daughter’s clammy hand
and led her to the bathroom. Her fingers trembled in Mazie’s grip.
She squeezed toothpaste onto Ariel’s
toothbrush and handed it to her, gave her a weak smile and brushed strands of
shiny long hair away from her emerald eyes.
Ariel’s hand trembled. Half the
toothpaste slid off the brush and landed on the counter.
“It’s okay, bug. You brush. I’ll
clean that up.”
Ariel nodded and stuck the brush in
her mouth, making feeble attempts to clean her teeth. She spat into the sink
and rinsed her brush, then wrapped her arms around Mazie and hugged her hard.
A pang shot through her bruised
belly. She kissed the side of Ariel’s head. “Come on, let’s get you into bed.”
When Ariel had changed into pyjamas,
Mazie fluffed her pillow and pulled back the covers. Ariel climbed in, not the
usual run and jump and bounce. Just dragging feet and quashed spirit. It was all
so damn familiar, like looking through a window into her past, witnessing those
first signs of giving in. Giving up. Acknowledging that this was what her life
was going to be. And that she had no power to fix it.
Mazie pulled the covers up to her
daughter’s chest and chose a book from the shelf. “Clementine?”
Ariel allowed a shy grin to cross
her face but quickly wiped it away.