I.
Almost everyone over the age of fourteen hated to go into the land of fun rides and coin operated games known as Pixie Forest.
Thirty year-old Miranda Swigg could see why. Every afternoon its winding entrance lane of fake plastic trees was choked with screaming children. Bags of cotton candy dangled over untied shoelaces. Sticky smiles blew pink bubbles. Balloons bobbed. Tokens jingled. All of this even before you got inside the gate to the heavy stuff.
Miranda could see why…she just couldn’t agree with it.
How could anyone set eyes on these myriad faces, round and bright and innocently thrilled, and not feel happy, too? Was a man’s childhood really so easy to forget? Did a woman truly wish to begrudge these little ones their own?
Terrible as it seemed, perhaps the answers were yes, for many of the adults looked exasperated. The antithesis to the spirit of their offspring could not have been more precise.
In fact the only two adults who looked happy to be here were Miranda and her husband. She thought that fitting enough. After all, happy was exactly what they were.
“Mommy!” one of their two girls—the five year-old—shouted. “Ferris-wheel!”
Miranda followed her pointed finger into the throng and pretended to be confused.
“Where, Crindy?” she said. “All I see are people standing in line!”
“There!” Crindy said with a little jump.
“Where?”
Now the girl looked at her father.
“Daddy carry!”
Her hands were outstretched. Jeremy Swigg, high school sweetheart of the best cheerleader on the old varsity squad, had no choice but to scoop her up to a better vantage point. She was often a fearless child, and the fact that the wheel towered over its good-time counterparts (lights flashing, seats swaying) fazed her not in the least. Where she had obtained this bravado seldom went questioned.
“See Mommy?” she said, pointing again.
“There it is, all right,” Miranda told her. “And you know what? I want to ride it, too!”
“Yay!”
“And what about you, Jess?” Jeremy asked. “You’re two years older than your sister. Are you going to let her show you up?”
Miranda looked at the tall, bespectacled girl standing close by. She didn’t seem to care one way or another about being shown up. Her attention was on the games.
“There’s your answer,” Miranda told her husband, who laughed and pushed the turnstile, Crindy still smiling on his arm.
***
Ninety minutes later they arrived home. Miranda went straight to the bedroom to change into a tank top and jogging shorts. It was getting late, but there was still plenty of time for a woman who cared about staying fit to have a run through the park.
“Order a pizza?” she said to Jeremy at the front door, going on tip-toe to give him a kiss.
His brow furled in that James Dean way he knew she liked.
“Would you like that affrettando, appassionato, or andante?”
“Whichever goes down the smoothest, baby.”
He laughed. “Oh Christ.”
“You can’t get a double entendre past me.”
With that, she kissed him again and left.
Twilight had just settled on West Main Street, carrying a flower-scented breeze through the foliage of a blossoming spring. Miranda began her run with a deep breath. Summer—the best season of the year—would be here before long, but it wasn’t thoughts of warm days and long evenings that had her spirits so high tonight. It was simply good to be alive in this place, at this moment, under this sky.
Thank you, she thought out to God as she turned down Pleasant Street towards the park. Thank you for everything.
II.
“Everything?” the butcher asked with a smile.
His large, hairy hand had just placed a bag of sole on the countertop scale. A row of green numbers now glowed what it weighed.
“Yes, please,” the woman opposite said.
The butcher pressed a button on the scale and waited. Nothing happened. He pressed it again. Still nothing. The smile on his meaty face fell off, giving his customer a glimpse (or so she imagined) of the true man underneath. It was not pleasant, that truth. It looked angry and impatient. Stripped down like the sole of an old shoe. A lit fuse burnt to the exploding point.
She only had a second to see all of this. Then the smile was back, and the butcher explained that the scale printer’s ribbon needed to be changed.
“It only takes a couple of minutes,” he went on to promise.
“All right,” the woman said. “That’s fine.”
The butcher began to busy himself with the machine as three other customers fell in line.
“Ya doin’ anything for Labor Day?” he asked, after an irritated glance at the newcomers. “Me? I’m just gonna stay home and mow the lawn. What the hell? It’s not like I can ask my wife to do that. Mow the lawn, I mean.”
“I’m not doing anything,” the woman said.
The butcher looked at her. “Why not?”
“I like to be alone.”
“Really? Well I have to say that’s a strange thing to hear from a woman.” He closed the lid on the scale and nodded as a fresh row of green numbers came alight. “Okay, ma’am, we’re good to go. Let’s get you a price sticker.”
“Thank you.”
After another nod the butcher pressed ENTER on the scale. A white price sticker began to slither out the side like a snake.
And at that moment, very clearly, he said:
“Here it comes, baby.”
It earned him his first true reaction of the day from this particular customer. The woman jumped. Her eyes grew wide. A lock of dry hair fell across her brow.
The butcher noticed none of it. He gave Miranda the sole with his big, hairy hands and easy smile. Not bothering to thank him this time, she took it. Everything in the store seemed to have stopped. Miranda stared on. But the butcher was now looking at the next customer in line. Either he didn’t remember her from their previous meeting, or he was playing dumb. Whichever, their encounter for today had come to an end; Miranda had no choice but to leave.
Of course, she knew already that this was not a man who liked to give choices.
***
Less than an hour later she was back in her shabby apartment. The sun was on its way down, casting a feverish orange haze through the window, where it then seemed to infect every cracked wall and broken door handle it could find. Miranda put the groceries away over the radio and two glasses of brandy. A stain on the kitchen ceiling was getting bigger (it leaked). There was more mouse poop under the refrigerator. In the apartment next door an argument had broken out—swearing man, screaming woman.
Just another afternoon in the aftermath, Miranda thought, pouring another glass.
But was it?
She drained the glass and went back into the living room tipsy as Kathie Lee Gifford on a morning broadcast. Here two things, couch and television, invited her to lie down and stay awhile. To the couch she said yes, falling onto its lumpy cushions the way a drowning woman might fall onto the shore of a beach. And here she stayed, eyes fixed on the ceiling, until sleep engulfed her in its stealthy hands.
“How can you be sure it was him?” the policeman asked.
“I’d know that voice anywhere,” Miranda replied. “’Here it comes, baby’. He’s said that to me twice now. I—“
At that moment the phone on the policeman’s desk rang. He picked it up and started talking to someone. Much to Miranda’s confusion, the phone kept right on ringing. What the hell? she wondered. Her eye went to the policeman, who didn’t seem to notice anything unusual. His chair creaked as he leaned back and continued to chat with whoever had called…
And then she was awake, still on the couch, with her cell phone ringing nearby. The answer button was blurry, her hand shaky, but she managed to get the device to her ear without dropping it.
“Mommy?” a child’s voice asked.
“Crindy,” Miranda said, rubbing her eyes. “How are you, sweetheart? How’s Jessie?”
“Good. Daddy got us school clothes. When are you coming home?”
“Soon. Soon, honey.”
“You always say that.”
“I mean it, though,” Miranda told her, with as much sincerity as she could find.
“But when?”
“When I’m better.”
“Are you sick?”
“Just a little bit.”
The sun had set. Miranda reached to turn on the light but instead knocked her empty brandy glass to the floor. As it rolled towards the television, Crindy said something else.
“What was that, sweetheart? I’m sorry.”
“I said I can help you get better. Me and Jessie and Daddy.”
“How’s school so far? Do you like it?”
She didn’t mean for these questions to be anything more than a ruse to change the subject. But now that they were out something dreadful occurred to Miranda: She had missed Crindy’s first day of kindergarten. That was an event. A milestone for every child. Perhaps Jeremy had been there to hold Crindy’s hand. Or perhaps he had simply dropped her off at the door, forcing her to etch whatever mark she found appropriate for that moment in time alone.
“I guess,” Crindy said, sounding as if she too were mustering a little sincerity. Then: “Mommy, did you hear me that time?”
“I did.”
“Well?”
Miranda closed her eyes. A five year-old girl wasn’t going to let drop something she wanted really bad; and right now, she wanted an answer.
“I just need a little bit longer, Crindy? Okay? Is Daddy there now?”
Full out weeping came by way of response. A hot, sharp knife through the heart. Not knowing what else to do, Miranda begged her to stop. But Crindy wanted things back to how they were. Really bad.
“He’s at the office,” she said between sniffles. “Mrs. Carney’s here.”
“And Jessie?”
“At her friend’s house.”
“You tell her to call Mommy when she comes home, okay? And Crindy?”
“What?”
“I’ll be home soon. I promise.”
But then what were promises to a five year-old? Waiting on a holiday for specific presents the parents were sure to forget unless reminded over and over. Coming to wakefulness in the night after a bad dream that never needed reminding. Empty rooms behind pretty doors. Life lessons arriving early and often, the way ugly things always did.
“Okay,” Crindy said. “I have to go watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse now.”
“I love you, Crindy.”
“I love you too, Mommy.”
III.
By the end of November both girls had a list of the things they wanted from Santa Claus. Jessie’s was neat and numbered, with no mention anywhere of fat, jolly men in red suits. Reading it made Miranda feel a little sad for years gone by. Once, not so many Christmases ago, Jessie had dressed herself in red and white clothes and ran around the house giving presents (her old toys) to Mommy, Daddy, and baby Crindy.
“It’s you she takes after,” Miranda said.
A grunt came from the bed.
“You heard me.”
She turned to see Jeremy lying on the pillows, the book he’d been reading cast aside. His face made her think of the bedroom window—or more specifically, what lay beyond. Cold darkness, empty streets. Ice hanging in places too close to where dreams were made.
“Jeremy? Are you all right?”
The grunt became a shrug and a nod. Not good enough.
Miranda rose from her vanity desk—a clutter of cosmetic bric-a-brac—and sat on the edge of the bed. The bad weather in his eyes wasn’t meant for her, she knew. It came and went these days, a thing left over from a fallen city whose gates he’d failed to protect.
“Hey,” she said, placing a hand on his knee. “You know I’m getting better. And if I can do it, so can you.”
Jeremy’s eyes fluttered. He was feigning ignorance, pretending to be startled. It wouldn’t work.
“Wanna know the secret?” Miranda then asked.
And still he kept silent. Yet the fluttering had stopped. He was back in the room with her.
“Defiance,” she told him. “Jeremy, if you let the things that hurt you have their way, they’re going to keep right on hurting. Your mind, your heart. Even the people who love you.”
“But I can’t just pretend they’re not there, Miranda,” he said, at last relieving his peace.
And he had a point. Miranda knew that all the defiance in the world would never take away what had happened to her in the park last spring. She also knew that to dwell on the memory of it—to hang it on the wall like a clock and wait for its gears to wind down—would be the same as letting a criminal run loose in the streets.
No, you couldn’t pretend the memories weren’t there; but with enough defiance, you could lock them in a prison where they would never do harm again. The butcher who’d sold her the fish, now living in one of those prisons (in Mansfield, where they sometimes made movies about jailbirds), had learned that the hard way.
Jeremy’s case was far less severe. He just needed reasoning.
“How long will it take?” he wanted to know.
***
That night, before going to sleep, she went to check on the girls. Jessica was buried under the covers with her Teddy-bear. The hallway light shined delicately on her face, showing a girl peaceful and content with her dreams.
In the next room was another such girl. Ever the one for daring-do, Crindy lay spread-eagle on the bed, her nightgown wrinkled, her hair gone wild. Miranda carefully pulled a blanket over her waist, and was about to leave the room when she opened her eyes.
“Hi Mommy.”
“Hi, sweetheart. Did I wake you up?”
“No.”
“I’ll mail your Christmas list to Santa tomorrow.”
“Okay. Did you read it?”
“I sure did. You asked for some very neat things.”
Miranda sat next to her, much the way she had with Jeremy mere minutes ago.
“I especially liked what you put on the bottom,” she said. “Only you don’t need to ask Santa for that.”
Crindy frowned. “Yes I do. Or else it won’t happen.”
“It’s already happening, dear.”
Now the girl began to cry. Miranda hugged her. She said that she was sorry for making her do that. Then she promised again to mail the letter, with everything her little girl wanted left on the list.
Crindy’s tears stopped. “Even the last thing?” she asked.
“Even the last thing.”
“Will it be always and forever?”
“Look at me, Crindy.”
The girl loosened her embrace so their eyes could meet.
“Good,” Miranda said. “Now what do you see?”
Her question was pondered over for a few seconds. Then, when it seemed not to have a proper answer, Crindy let out a giggle.
“Mommy,” she said.
And that was the proper answer after all.
“That’s right,” Miranda told her. “Always and forever.”
***
Minutes later she lay down next to Jeremy. Crindy’s list was in her hand. The names of toys written in crooked, backward letters staggered down the page like rock climbers hanging on to a cliff face. But the last item had been put down more carefully, and was decorated with hearts and stars.
FOR MOMMY TO STAY HOME.
Miranda folded the paper, tucked it into a pink envelope, and put it under her pillow.
Almost everyone hated to go into the forest, and it was easy to see why. But once you found the way through you could never get lost again.
“A lifetime,” she said into the darkness. “That’s how long it takes.”
“How long what takes?” Jeremy’s sleepy voice asked.
“The defiance. And do you know what that makes us?”
“No. Tell me.”
“Survivors, Jeremy. It makes us survivors.”