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I never found that shoe.
I was shoved inside the shed. I fell to my knees, but was careful to avoid the stained bucket in the corner, which would serve as my bathroom for the night.
Before locking me inside—this was always my punishment—Gerald kneeled down in front of me. His body was backlit from the porch light outside, his face hidden in shadows. The tip of his cigarette glowed in the darkness.
He was like a monster to me in that moment.
After blowing a stream of smoke in my face, he removed the cigarette from his lips and put it out in the center of my forehead.
He said, “now you have a scar to match the ugly pock marks on your cheeks.”
I still have that scar.
Anna used to run her little finger over it sometimes.
Now I’m thinking of Anna.
I never stop thinking of Anna.
8
Sylvia
Ican’t sleep.
I am tossing and turning in my bed, my vision plagued with flashbacks, my mind racing with memories. Not just the bad ones, but all kinds of memories. Weird, pointless memories, a nostalgia of what my life was with my mother, and what it was after her, and finally, the rollercoaster it has been the last handful of years.
I can smell her rosy perfume, the scent of the drugstore foundation she wore too thick, and a shade too dark. I’m not sure I ever saw her without makeup.
I was just nineteen when I moved to Vermont from Dallas, my hometown.
A year earlier, my mother received the deeds to my grandfather’s properties (after he had passed), and left Texas (and me), and moved to Vermont. Once there, she sold two of the properties, used that money to pay off her debt, and then moved into her childhood home, a large, red farmhouse in the middle of twenty-four wooded acres. One property remained, an old, two-story craftsman home, less than five minutes away. I asked if I could rent it from her, after realizing that living on my own wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be. She said yes. I packed up and moved the next day.
In its heyday, the home had been featured in a few regional architectural magazines. Now, however, the thing is practically falling apart. The foundation has cracked and settled, creating uneven flooring (you literally walk downhill to the master bedroom). There are cracks in the stone walls, and the roof leaks like crazy.
I spent my entire first week in Vermont on YouTube, learning how to fix a leaky faucet, a whistling furnace, how to remove popcorn ceiling, and the best way to exterminate an entire village of mice. When I became bored with home repairs, I got a job at the newspaper and my life as an active Thorncrest citizen officially began.
Honestly it really wasn’t that bad at first. Thorncrest is a tourist town, lots of good people-watching. And I enjoy the outdoors. I even went on a few dates with a few decent men in the first few years. There was Craig, the local insurance agent, who suffered from a serious case of Loud Cellphone Talking Syndrome. I was unsure if Craig was simply one of the unfortunates whose voices carried like the wind, or if his masculinity demanded such an obvious display of importance…. Come to think of it, there is no winner in that scenario, is there?
And then there was Kevin, a former Thorncrest High Mathlete turned traveling water filter salesman who conveniently misplaced his credit card(s) when it was time to pay for dinner. Neither relationship amounted to much, but I enjoyed the compliment of a date, nonetheless.
It was also nice to live without having to pay rent or mortgage, I’m not going to lie. I didn’t even have to cook. Marjorie and I had a standing Sunday dinner date and I left each visit with a box of leftovers that fed me for the entire week. Everything was just easy… too easy.
Then she died.
I went into a shell after. My life became an endless cycle of wake up, shower, go to work, go home, eat, drink, and pass out. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Just when I thought life couldn’t get any worse, COVID hit. A sneaky little (highly controversial) virus that completely flipped life as we knew it on its head. Chaos erupted, political battle lines were drawn, conspiracy theories ignited. Families were torn apart because of conflicting views, friendships destroyed, marriages broken. People lost their minds—not to mention the ones who lost their lives. I guess I should consider myself lucky, I only lost my job.
Lockdown was an absolute nightmare. This is when I started binge watching TV and drinking way too much. I found an escape by watching self-righteous train wrecks self-destruct on national television. And then when I got sick of the news, I turned to reality television. And just like that, I became addicted to watching other people live their lives.
This is also when Shirley entered my life, a stray Sphynx cat lost in the woods, likely abandoned after her owner passed away. When I first saw her hairless wrinkled body sniffing around my porch, I thought she was a demon, the devil’s spawn, risen from the depths of Hell, the final sign of the end of times.
Nope. Just a hairless cat with a bad eye.
The last few years, especially the six months since I lost my job, have left me in a rut, there is no question about it. Bored, numb, bleak. And now, it feels like I’ve been grabbed by my shoulders and yanked backward twenty years, awakening all those horrible feelings and emotions from the weeks surrounding my mother’s murder.
Seeing the crime scene photos was like walking into the kitchen all over again and discovering my mother’s body for the first time. Although two decades have passed since that fateful day, I remember it like it was yesterday.
