A Blue So Dark (17 page)

Families who have been through a psychotic episode warn that no amount of preparation can protect you from the shock, panic, and full body sickening dread you feel when your loved one enters this stage of schizophrenia.

oddamn you, fanny, I think as I smash the cigarette lighter into the dash. Why the hell are you acting like you actually care? It was too much, remember? I tear a cigarette out of the pack, shocked that only two more are left.

Too much, too much-the words bounce around inside my head as I suck at my cigarette-I'm like a vampire with the thing, devouring every last drop of blood from my latest victim. Yeah, too much, you said, so you ran to your precious Ace. You made your choice-why shove your face back in my business now?

I slam the car into park and stomp inside, anger rolling off me like steam from the nearby city power plant.

But when I open the front door, everything changes. No more Janny, no more anger, no more smell of cigarette smoke rolling out of my pink schoolgirl sweater. No more Groce, no more Fritz. It's like I've entered another dimension, you know? A dimension that smells of fear and sweat, and it's too hot and too cold and too quiet, and the instant I step into the front hall, the overwhelming silence gives way.

My ears throb against a horrendous squeal that sounds just like a note struck high on the neck of an electric guitar, then sent out of tune with the whammy bar. The note whines, it wails, and I'm thinking of Mom's record player. My first thought is that it's some guitar solo that's attacking my ears. Music that'll have Mrs. Pilkington on our front porch, threatening us yet again with the cops.

But just as I'm about to make a run for Mom's bedroom, to snap that turntable off, the squeal acts like the sound version of a kaleidoscope, because it shifts, it changes color. And I know this isn't music. It's the smoke alarm.

Black curls-like hair caught on a breeze-waft down the front hall and up my nose, crawl inside my head. As the smoke slides down my throat, I cough against it, fighting to breathe. Had I really been sucking this crap into my lungs on purpose just a minute ago? Did I really think it made me feel better?

My whole body feels wobbly. Electricity is chewing on my arms. Something's burning. Something's on fire.

My breath is ragged and it scrubs against my lungs like sandpaper as I rush down the hall. What the hell is going on here? Is the whole house on fire?

"Mom!" I scream, not sure which direction to turn. From the center of the living room, I can see through the doorway to the kitchen, where the chairs are turned over on their sides. A few of the mermaids lie scattered across the table, and the fishing lines they'd once dangled from hang from the ceiling, broken. One mermaid lies on the floor, her tiny arm reaching out across the linoleum as though asking to be saved.

The scene makes me so queasy, it's like I'm not even in control of my body anymore. It's like I've just come home to find my family slaughtered, and the gruesome sight has sent me into shock.

"Aura!" Mom calls, running into the living room. But she doesn't stop when she gets to my side. Instead, she tackles me, pushing me straight into the kitchen, where she forces me down to the cold floor. My sweaty palm adheres to the linoleum.

"Look," she says, making a motion with her head toward the remaining mermaids that still dangle from the popcorn ceiling. "Look at them, up there, smug. Look what they're doing. Trying to drown me, Aura. See them, how they're swimming, mean, on the surface of the water? How they're making a wall, see? And they won't let me through? Red Rover, Red Rover, like a game, Aura. Send Gracie right over. And every time I try to break their chain, they laugh. Like they think it's some funny game, playground, laugh ing, and here I am and I'll die and you will, too, now that you're here we'll die this way, see?"

"What's burning, Mom?" I ask, struggling to get away from her. But her hand is like the old vice Dad left behind in the garage, on his workbench. "What's on fire?"

"They're killing us, Aura, killing us," Mom says. "We've got to kill them back first." Her eyes are as wild as a rabid dog's. But the thing is, you're not supposed to run from a dog. That just makes them think you're scared, right? That they've got you cornered? So I reach up to pet her hair. Nice doggy...

"You're right, Mom," I say. My body could be what's making the smoke alarm go off, the way it burns. But I can't let her see how terrified I am. "Show me where you're killing them."

"Shh," she scolds me, putting a finger to her lip, like she's afraid they'll overhear. "The tilty floor didn't work. I fixed it, but nothing changed. So I covered it up, and that made them mad. They chased me," she whispers, "into the bathroom."

The ear-shredding screech of the smoke alarm gets louder as I make my way through the living room, toward the hallway that leads to all the bedrooms. That wail is the same pitch and decibel as the fear that courses through my veins, and I can't take it. I just can't-so I jump, swing my hand over my head. I miss, so I try again, this time striking it dead center, where the 9-volt lies. The alarm lets out a weird, lower-pitched yelp, like I've actually hurt it. I hit it a couple more times until it finally breaks.

The plastic shell on the alarm shatters, like a whiskey bottle. A bottle that I could have emptied, taken care of. You moron. You had a choice. You had a chance, you could have said something, told anyone. You're worthless. You let this happen to her. She's been in here suffering, and you did nothing.

The fingers that destroyed the smoke alarm sting like they've been stuck with about a hundred carpet nails as I lunge into the bathroom. The bath mat is on fire-it's like some crazy burning bush there in the middle of the floor. Thank God for the tile, which must be made out of the same scorch-proof crap that Dad installed on the backsplash in the kitchen. But the flames are getting dangerously close to the shower curtain-an orange shoot looks like a tongue trying to lick an ice cream cone just out of reach.

I grab a towel off the rack-one of those fluffy, guestsonly items that was purchased once-upon-a-time, when there was still a dad and a hope that our house could be honest-to-God normal, with doilies on the arms of La-ZBoys and extra toothbrushes in the medicine cabinet and a different out-of-state relative on the doorstep each weekend.

I draw the thick towel behind my shoulder and throw it down, over and over, like I've actually got a baseball bat in my hands instead of a floppy piece of material. I attack the fire, beating it, like the flames are the only monster in the house. I beat it as though, once it's dead, this whole situation will be over, and I'll be able to collapse into a sigh of relief.

But once the mat is just a black, charred spot on the floor, my nose explodes with the firecracker-type stench of a match striking. I look behind me, and Mom's tossing a lit match into the sink where she's piled a few of the mermaids. She's got some newspapers twisted into wicks, too, like kindling in a fireplace. She just keeps lighting and tossing.

"I had them burning awhile, once," she tells me. "They tried to catch me, drag me under. I had them. But the burn is hard to keep, like secrets. Come on, Aura, help me! We've got to kill them before they drown us."

As she tosses another match into the sink, I catch my reflection in the mirror. The details are so sharp-so magnified. I can see every oil-oozing pore. Crooked black eyeliner. The top curve of a red, chapped lip. My faults pile one on top of each other.

Mom just keeps striking match after match, tossing them so wildly that only some wind up in the sink. Others drift scarily close to the washcloths stacked next to our old cracked ceramic toothbrush holder, or fall to the floor.

I'm dancing, even though my stomach is full of rotten pea soup. I'm hopping and jumping and trying to put out all of the matches that tumble, like orange rose petals, to the tile. But I've just stomped one when two more tumble. Four more fall when I get those extinguished. She's in a rhythm, striking them faster, faster. They're burning Mom's bare feet, they're catching the hem of her jeans on fire, and I'm stomping, I'm grabbing those washcloths and beating those flames on the edge of her jeans while the smoke pours from the sink, because the fire has caught on a piece of newspaper, and it's starting to singe one of the mermaids.

The smell of the smoke that trickles off the painted mermaid is acrid, chemical, sick.

"Come on," Mom grumbles as she lights and tosses. "Hurry-hurry!" she screams, like she's seeing the mermaids in the sink rise up, come after her.

The faucet, moron, I scold myself. I reach for the tap, turning the hot and cold on full-force. The running water blankets the flames that have only just started to grow. The orange danger disappears, but the smoke turns even blacker in the moment of extinction, the smell far more putrid. Like burning flesh. Like what's in that sink isn't wood, but honest-to-God mermaids. Real bodies.

"They'll kill us! Get away, get away!" Mom screams. And even though I know she's got the world muddled, that nothing she does should hurt me because she's not even in the same world I'm in anymore, I look at those mermaids piled in the sink-the ones she's tried to destroy-and I hear her words to the shopkeeper who carved them: We're just alike, me and Aura. Suddenly, my heart is in that sink, blackened into some unrecognizable, useless brick of ash.

"Stop," I tell her. "Just stop." I grab her the way Janny sometimes grabs Ethan, scooping him into her arms to keep him from crawling right off the edge of her front porch.

But Mom's still striking the damn matches. And I'm so angry at her-even as my heart is breaking, my anger gains speed. I'm in a car that left furious behind a hundred miles ago. I hit the box of matches, knocking them to the ground. They scatter like Mom's thoughts, rolling off in a hundred different directions. She falls to her knees, starts picking the sticks up off the tile, but I stop her. Wrap my arms around her, tightening my grip as she thrashes against me.

I want my arms to be as strong and overpowering as a straitjacket, but Mom breaks away from me, scampering across the linoleum and picking up a match. She tries to strike it, but the head splinters off. "Go," she says, grabbing another match. "A fire. Only way out." Just like she did back at the art museum. "Burn, burny burning," she shouts.

As our fingers tangle in our struggle, Mom starts crying, just like Ethan did that night in the grocery store. Hurt crying. Sick crying. And I know I have to be smart about this. I can't just rope her, this wild thing that'll buck me, knock me to the ground and trample me. I have to pretend; I have to play this game.

"Mom," I say. "Come on-you can't kill a mermaid with fire."

"You can too-"

"Think about it. They're wet, Mom. Right? You can't catch something on fire that spends its whole life in the ocean. They're soaked straight to the bone."

"What do I do?" she asks, her eyes as wide as wading pools.

"Suffocate them," I whisper. "Come on."

I motion for her to follow me into the hall. I pull a blanket from the linen closet, then tiptoe back through the living room, toward the kitchen, pretending I don't want the mermaids to hear me sneaking up on them.