Precious and Fragile Things

She shook her head, not quite able to voice the lie. She was suddenly terrified. In her hands the plastic crinkled and shifted, and she clutched the bags in front of her like a shield.

  “Shit,” Todd said. “This is all a bunch of shit.”

  Then he stormed to the front door and out, slamming it behind him. A few minutes later she heard the truck’s engine roar into life. Gilly dropped the bags and ran to the window, but he’d already pulled away.

  5

  Gilly had always prided herself on keeping cool in an emergency, but now she flew to the door, flung it open, ran out onto the freezing front porch. The truck had disappeared. She ran after it anyway.

  She couldn’t even hear it by the time she crossed the snowy yard and reached the gravel that began the rutted road. Rocks dug into her sock-clad feet and she hopped, slapping at her arms to warm herself in her long-sleeved but thin shirt. She ventured a few steps down the road, which grew immediately shadowed by the trees.

  A layer of snow, perhaps two inches deep, interspersed with rocks and ice, blanketed the ground. It hadn’t been a good winter for snow. Bitter-cold temperatures had abounded since late October, and one large storm had closed schools across the state, but that was all. None of it had melted, and piles of it were still all over the place, but no more had fallen. Gilly looked at the moody gray sky, clouds obscuring the sun. This spot was up high. Close to the sky. The wind pushed at the trees and lifted the tips of her hair. Was she going to run?

  She looked again down empty road and knew she wasn’t. Not like this, anyway. Not unprepared. Sparkly tights would not protect her feet. He hadn’t bothered to tie her up when he left, but he hadn’t needed to.

  “Moss,” she muttered aloud, turning back toward the cabin. “Something about moss.”

  Growing on a side of a tree. Something about finding and following a stream. She knew snippets of information about how to find her way out of the woods, but nothing useful.

  The smartest thing to do would be to steal the truck and drive away, something she’d have to do when he got back. With that in mind, Gilly headed back into the cabin. She closed the door behind her and looked down at her muddy socks. She stripped them off and dug around in the plastic bags until she found another pair. They had kittens on them. Sparkly, glittery kittens.

  Socks in hand, Gilly sank onto the floor and cradled her face in her hands. She didn’t cry. Her feet and hands were cold, and she shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself. The floor was filthy, but she couldn’t seem to care. How had she ended up here, in this place?

  Quiet. Everything was quiet around her. Her knees ached, her thighs cramped, and a chill stole over her in the overheated room. Still, Gilly didn’t move. She had nowhere to be, nothing to do, nobody tugging on her for attention. She was still. She was silent.

  She sat that way for a long time.

  Without a watch or a clock, Gilly had no way of knowing how long Todd had been gone. At last she could no longer stand even the luxury of idleness. She had to do something.

  With nothing to keep them occupied, her hands opened and shut like hysterical puppets. Gilly paced the room, step by step, measuring her prison with her footsteps. There had to be a way, some way to take advantage of his absence. In the end, she could think of nothing, could make no decision.

  She understood without hesitation she was breaking down, that she’d broken down the moment at the gas station when she’d stayed in the truck instead of escaping. Her split from reality was shameful but not surprising; that she’d wondered for years if she would one day step off the deep end did not, now, make her feel better about having taken the dive.

  She was too strong for this, damn it. Had always forced herself to be too strong. No fashionable Zoloft or Prozac for her, no trips to the therapist to work out her “issues,” nothing but sheer determination had kept her functioning. And yet now…now all she could think about was her mother.

  Gilly had grown accustomed to hearing her mother’s voice. Dispensing advice. Scolding. She knew it was really her own inner voice. She hadn’t realized until a day ago that she’d used it out loud, too.

  She thought of her mom now, not hearing her voice but remembering it, instead.

  “We’re normal,” her mother says. “You think we’re not, but we are. Other families are just like this, Gillian. Whether you believe it or not.”

  Gilly doesn’t believe it. By now she’s spent too much time at Danica’s house. She understands that most other people’s mothers don’t spend days without showering or brushing their teeth, without getting out of their nightgowns. Most mothers are able to get up off the floors of their bedrooms. They don’t cry softly, moaning, over and over and over again while rocking. Most people’s mothers wear bracelets on their wrists, not scars.

  A cliché has prompted her mother to say it. Spilled milk, a puddle of it on the table and the floor. Gilly knocked it over with her elbow and would’ve cleaned it up before her mom even noticed, but it’s one of the days Marlena has made it out of the dim sanctuary of her bedroom. She weeps over the spill, gnashing her teeth and pulling at her hair as she gets on hands and knees to mop up the spill with the hem of her skirt.

  “This is normal, Gillian,” her mother mutters over and over. “You think this isn’t, you think we aren’t. But we are!”

  Gilly had stood watching as blank faced as she felt now.

  This is different. You’re not her. This isn’t like that.

  But it was worse, wasn’t it? What Gilly had allowed to happen, no, what she’d chosen to do was worse than anything her mother had ever done. Because Gilly couldn’t blame any of this on being crazy. She’d worked too hard against insanity.

  A plastic bag tangled in her ankles as she paced, and Gilly paused to kick it away. She looked at all the things he’d bought her and kicked those, too. Scattering the brightly colored turtlenecks made her feel better for a moment, gave her some power.

  She gathered up the clothes and stuffed them back in the bags. Gilly looped the handles over her arms and took all the stuff upstairs. She was moving on autopilot, but having something to do made her feel calmer. Allowed her to think.

  She pulled open the top drawer on the dresser and prepared to put away the clothes. Inside she found a sheaf of photographs, some in frames but most loose. She picked up the top one.

  A dark-haired boy stared out at her. He stood beside a tall, bearded man wearing a blaze-orange vest and holding a gun. The boy was not smiling. Gilly traced the line of his face with one finger. It was Todd.

  He was in other photos, too, in some as young as perhaps eight and others as old as sixteen. It was the younger faces that grabbed her attention. Something about him as a boy seemed so familiar to her, but she couldn’t quite figure out why.

  Gilly put the pictures away and used the other drawers to store the things Todd had bought for her. In the chest at the foot of the bed she found sheets, blankets, pillowcases. These were cleaner than those on the bed and fragrant with the biting scent of cedar. She stripped the bed and made it up again. Smoothing the sheets and plumping the pillows gave her hands something to do while her mind worked, but when the task was over her mind was as blank as it had been before.

  In the kitchen, she opened cupboards and saw the supplies he’d bought in the hours she’d been asleep. Beneath the sink she found bottles and cartons of soap, sponges, bleach. They weren’t new, but they’d work. She rolled up her sleeves and bent to the task.

  The day passed that way, and Gilly lost herself in the work. At home, Gilly was lucky if she got to fold a basket of laundry before being pulled away to take care of some other chore. Floors went unmopped for weeks, toilets went unscrubbed, furniture went undusted. Gilly hated never finishing anything. She’d learned to live with it, but she hated it. She felt she could never sit, never rest, never take some time for herself. Not until she was done, and she was never done. Later in her life, with spotless floors and unrumpled bedspreads, she might look back to this time with
wistful nostalgia. But she doubted it. She hated never finishing anything.

  Most of her girlfriends complained about it incessantly, but Gilly liked cleaning. Not just the end results, but the effort. Making order out of chaos. For her, it was much the same feeling she’d heard long-distance runners or other athletes describe. When she was cleaning, really working hard, Gilly could put herself into “the zone.”

  Everything else faded away, leaving behind only the scent of bleach and lemon cleanser, the ache of muscles worked hard and a blank, serene mind. It wasn’t a state she often reached. Always, there were too many distractions, too many interruptions. Too many demands on her time.

  Now, today, the dirty cabin and time reeled out in front of her without an end to either of them. By concentrating on one small part at a time, the task didn’t seem so daunting. Todd had cleaned the fridge before loading it with groceries, but the rest of the kitchen was a disaster. Gilly started with the counters, then the cupboard fronts, the stove. She cleaned the scarred table of as much grime as she could. She discovered the pantry, as fully stocked as the fridge and cupboards, and through it the door to the backyard. She scrubbed the floor on hands and knees and dumped buckets of black water off the back porch, forming a dirty puddle that quickly froze.

  Early-falling dark and the grumbling of her stomach forced her to stop. Gilly surveyed her efforts. The kitchen would never be fresh and new, but it was now, at least, clean. Her back ached and her fingers cramped, stiff and blistered from the scrub brush, but satisfaction filled her. She’d accomplished something, even if it was irrelevant and useless to her situation.

  She went to the windows. Snowflakes flirted through the sky, promising a storm. As she watched, the soft white flakes grew thicker. Maybe they weren’t just flirting after all.

  She thought of Arwen and Gandy. Who was with them? Did they miss her? And Seth, dear, sweet Seth who couldn’t find his own pair of socks…what must he be going through?

  She thought of the stack of bills waiting to be paid and the poor dog missing his vet appointment. Laundry, baskets of it overflowing, and dishes piled in the sink. The house would be falling apart without her.

  When Gilly was pregnant with Arwen, her grandmother had given Gilly a sampler. Embroidered in threads of red and gold, it read simply: “There is a special place in Heaven for mothers.” Gilly had thought she understood the sentiment, but it wasn’t until after Arwen’s birth, as her daughter grew from baby to child and Gandy came along, that Gilly really did understand. She’d embraced motherhood with everything inside her, determined to be the kind of mother she’d always wanted but hadn’t had.

  Good mothers cooked and cleaned and read stories to their children before bed. They sang songs. They played the Itsy Bitsy Spider until their fingers fell off, if that was the game that made their babies giggle. They changed diapers, filled sippy cups, sewed the frayed and torn edges of favorite blankies to keep them together just another few months. They gave up everything of themselves to give everything to their children.

  Good mothers did not run away.

  Gilly pressed her fingertips to the cold glass. She’d wanted to run away. How often had she thought about simply packing a bag, or better yet, nothing at all? Just leaving the house with nothing but herself.

  Gilly understood having children meant sacrifice. It was the only thing about motherhood she’d been certain of before actually becoming a mother. Impromptu dinners out, going to the movies, privacy in the bathroom, had all become luxuries she didn’t mind foregoing, most of the time. She didn’t even mind the grubby clothes, which were far more comfortable than the pinching high heels and gut-busting panty hose she’d worn when she worked. Gilly cherished her children. Lord knew, they drove her to the edge of madness, but wasn’t that what children did? Staying home to raise them had become the most challenging and rewarding task she’d ever undertaken. She’d conceived her children in love and borne them in blood, and her life without them wouldn’t be worth living. It was just the constant never-endingness of it that some days made her want to scream until her throat burst.

  She loved Seth, the solid man she’d married more than ten years before. Seth did his share, when he was home, of bathing and diapering and taking out the garbage. Yes, he needed reminding for even the simplest tasks and no, he never quite managed to complete any of them without asking her how to do it, but he tried.

  She had a good life. Her children were healthy and bright, her husband attentive and generous. They lived in a lovely house, drove nice cars, went on vacation every year. She had as many blessings as a woman could want. If there were still days Gilly thought she might simply be unable to drag herself out of bed, it wasn’t their fault.

  They were her life. They consumed every part of her. She was a mother and a wife before she was a woman. Feminism might frown on it, and Gilly might strain against the shackles of responsibility, but when it came right down to it, she’d lost sight of how else to be.

  The hours of cleaning had cleared her mind. Everyone would believe a knife to her head had made her toss her children out the car window, and nobody would question that fear for her life had kept her moving. Only Gilly would ever know the real and secret truth. She’d wanted to escape, but not from Todd. From her precious and fragile life. From what she’d made.

  Gilly opened the pantry door and surveyed what she found. She ran her hands along the rows of canned spaghetti, the jars of peanut butter and jelly, the bags and cartons of cookies and snacks. He’d bought flour, sugar, coffee, pasta, rice. Cartons of cigarettes, which she moved away from the food in distaste. He’d stocked the cabin with enough food for an army…or for a siege.

  Gilly took a box of spaghetti and a jar of sauce from the shelf and closed the pantry door behind her. He’d already told her he didn’t plan to let her go and warned her of the risks of trying to leave on her own. Two choices, two paths, and she couldn’t fully envision either of them. Yesterday she’d been ready to toss her kids out a window to get away from them, and Todd had appeared. Now she felt tossed like dandelion fluff on the wind.

  Gilly slapped the box of pasta on the counter. She found a large pot and filled it with water, then a smaller one. She lit the burners on the stove with an ancient box of matches from the drawer and set the water boiling and the pasta sauce simmering. She stood over them both, not caring about the old adage about watched pots. The heat from the stove warmed her hands as she stared without really seeing.

  There was a third choice, one she’d already imagined even though now her mind shuddered away from the thought. If she could not manage to convince Todd to voluntarily let her go, and if she couldn’t somehow be smart and strong enough to escape him, there was one other option. And, of the three choices, it was the one Gilly was sure would work.

  Some pasta sauce had splashed on the back of her hand, rich and red. She licked it, tasting garlic. The water in the pot bubbled, and she opened the box of spaghetti, judged a handful, then tossed in the whole box. Dinner would be ready in a few minutes, and Todd was likely to return soon.

  If she couldn’t change his mind or break for an escape, Gilly thought she might just have to kill him.

  6

  Todd walked in the door just as Gilly finished setting the table with a red-and-white-checkered cloth and a set of lovely, Depression-era dishes and silverware she’d found in the drawer. Though the silver was tarnished and several of the plates cracked or chipped, she could only imagine what pieces like this would sell for in an antiques shop. Hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars. He paused in the doorway to sniff the air. Again, he reminded her of a hungry, loveless dog hanging around the kitchen door.

  “Smells good.” He jingled the pocket of his sweatshirt, then took out her keys. He tossed them on the counter.

  Gilly purposefully kept her eyes from them. “I hope you’re hungry,” she said flatly. “I made a lot.”

  Todd pulled out his chair with a scrape that sent chills up her spine, like fingern
ails on a chalkboard. “Fucking starving.”

  Gilly poured the spaghetti into the strainer she’d put in the sink. Clouds of steam billowed into her face and she closed her eyes against it. She scooped some onto a plate and went to the table, taking the seat across from him.

  Todd didn’t serve himself, just stared at her expectantly. With a silent sigh she got up from her seat and took his plate to the sink, plopped a serving of spaghetti on top and splashed it with the sauce. She tossed a piece of garlic bread beside the spaghetti and handed it to him.

  “Thanks.” At least he did have some manners.

  They ate in silence interrupted only by the sounds of chewing and slurping. Surreptitiously Gilly watched the movement of his mouth as he gobbled pasta. A few days’ worth of beard stubbled his tawny cheeks, the dark hairs glinting reddish in the light from above.

  “This is good.” He wiped his mouth with the napkin she’d folded next to his plate. “Really good.”

  “Thank you.” Cleaning had made her hungry. She’d polished off a large plateful herself and now sat back, her stomach almost too full.

  Todd burped loud and long, the kind of noise that at home would have earned a laugh followed by a reprimand. Gilly did neither. She sipped some water, watching him.

  “Where did you go?”

  “Out.”

  She hadn’t really expected him to tell her. She sipped more water and wiped her mouth. Todd eyed her, his mouth full. He chewed and swallowed.

  “Why’d you do this?” Todd twirled another forkful of spaghetti but didn’t eat it.

  “To be nice,” Gilly said. There was more to it than that.

  Todd’s eyes narrowed. He knew that. “Why?”

  Only honesty would suffice. Gilly took a deep breath. “Because I’m hoping that if I’m nice to you, you’ll let me go home.”

  Todd sat back in his chair, tipping it. “I can’t. You know my name. You know where we are. You’d tell someone. They’d come.”