IAN, AGE ELEVEN
Ian might have eaten cereal for dinner, but he hadn’t spent the entire night alone. His mom returned around two in the morning. He knew the time because he’d been lying awake, ever watchful of the numbers on his digital clock until he heard the crunch of gravel. Headlights brightened his room as the station wagon came to a stop in front of the detached garage. The engine cut and his room returned to black. Keys rattled and the front door opened. A few seconds later the bottom step on the stairs creaked and that was it. He heard nothing further. Ian loosened his grip on the sheets he’d been clutching. Lungs filled to the max expelled.
Sarah had come home, not Jackie.
His mom was considerate. She took off her shoes and walked quietly through the house while others slept. Jackie couldn’t care less. She’d bang doors and slam cabinets. Clomp like a horse up the stairs while singing John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Jack & Diane” at the top of her lungs. She sang horribly. A screechy chicken.
Ian curled onto his side, facing the wall. Clothing rustled just outside his room. Skin tightened across his back. He could feel his mom watching him, checking to make sure he was there. Jackie would have kept walking, past his door and straight to his parents’ room. She’d flop on the bed, facedown in a starfish position, an arm and a leg dangling over the edge. She wouldn’t dare let his dad share the bed if he happened to be home. Ian’s dad slept on the beat-up leather couch in his office when Jackie was around.
Ian feigned sleep. While relieved his mom had come home, he was still shaken. Jackie had wanted his dad’s gun. Ian had called his dad as soon as Jackie bailed. His dad ordered him to leave the house. But what if his mom returned and didn’t find him there? Ian didn’t want to worry her, so he stayed. His dad would be angry and Ian expected he’d be grounded this weekend. He’d called Marshall earlier and canceled their movie plans. He’d catch Jurassic Park next week.
Ian heard his mom leave. His body grew heavy and he started to drift. He was exhausted. He had spent most of the day and a better part of the night cleaning the mess Jackie had made. Sarah would be sad if she saw the state of her room and Ian didn’t want her to feel that way. She’d spend the rest of the day in bed. She’d miss her embroidery deadlines and lose clients. If she lost business, his dad would have to take on more assignments. He’d be away more often than he was already, and Ian was tired of doing everything alone. He was always alone.
“Ian,” his mom called from her room late the next morning. “Would you come help me?”
Ian tossed aside his dad’s Popular Photography magazine and stared at the ceiling above his bed. His heart raced like a jackrabbit in his chest. Yesterday had been rough.
“Ian, come here. I need help.”
He swallowed the lump in his throat and swung his legs over the side. Pushing off the bed, he walked slowly down the hallway.
“Ian,” his mom said with more impatience.
He stopped in the doorway and gripped the jamb. His parents’ room smelled like a department store. Jackie had shattered a perfume bottle and soaked the braided area rug during her rabid search for the car keys and cash yesterday. He had picked up the glass but couldn’t get out the smell.
His mom sat at the vanity table, her back to him and dress partially zipped. She capped a pen and folded a slip of paper, which she put in the vanity’s top middle drawer.
“What do you want?” Ian asked in a reluctant tone.
She looked over her shoulder and smiled a little. “There you are. My hair is stuck.” She gestured at the back zipper.
Ian came into the room and stood behind his mom. Cosmetics, makeup brushes, and hairpins cluttered the tabletop. Another mess Jackie had left. He’d forgotten to straighten it up, he’d been so tired.
His mom draped her long sandy-brown hair over a shoulder and pointed at the snarl clutched in the zipper. “Can you free my hair?”
He glanced at his mom in the mirror and did his best to differentiate her features from Jackie’s. Sarah smiled more. Jackie scowled. His gaze met his mom’s. Her mouth curved into a crescent moon. She whispered a thank-you. He nodded and started working the tangled hair from the zipper’s teeth.
“Your fingers are cold,” she said with a low laugh and shivered.
“Sorry.” He frowned. The zipper wouldn’t budge so he broke the strands, one by one, trying not to let it bother him. He liked his mother’s hair, a lighter shade of his. She brushed it every night before bed until it shone. Jackie liked to tease the hair, as she once explained to him when he found the nerve to ask. It gave it lift. Volume. Ian recalled the word Jackie had used. Jackie hated Sarah’s hair. She called it limp and boring. Poor-girl hair.
Outside the open window, he heard his dad talking to Mr. Lansbury about his land lease and the season’s crop. Production was low and Mr. Lansbury needed an extra two weeks to make his payment. Ian’s dad wasn’t pleased.
Ian felt his mom watching him.
“Did I do that to you?” she whispered in a way that told him she already knew the answer.
Ian looked in the mirror. The shiner on his cheekbone from when Jackie knocked the camera from his grasp bloomed red, angrier than it had been yesterday.
“It wasn’t you,” Ian replied. His eyes dipped to the faint oval shadows on her wrist. He gently touched one.
She jerked her arm away. “They’ll fade,” she murmured, organizing her cosmetics. Nervous, busy work. She crumpled a piece of paper, dropping it into the waste can where it landed beside the pills her psychiatrist had prescribed. Ian reached for the small plastic container.
“Leave them,” his mother said. “They make my stomach upset.”
“But won’t they help?”
His mom shook her head.
Ian slowly straightened, wishing there was medication that would make Jackie go away, and went back to work on the zipper.
“What happened yesterday?” Sarah asked.
He knew his mother didn’t like hearing the answers, but she forced herself to ask the questions. And Ian would always tell her, no matter how uncomfortable the events had made him.
“Jackie knocked the camera from my hands.”
“Looks to me like I . . . she . . . missed.”
Ian popped up a shoulder. He struggled with the zipper.
“Ian,” his mom said after a moment, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not.” She shook her head, pulling against the imprisoned hair.
“Don’t move.” Ian finally freed the snarl and unjammed the zipper. He asked for the comb and as he worked out the tangle, his mom silently cried. Tears glistened on her cheek like snail trails on concrete. Seeing them made the back of Ian’s eyes burn. He kept his focus on his mom’s hair so he wouldn’t have to see her in the mirror. His hand followed the comb down the length of her back with each stroke until her hair glistened.
Ian returned the comb. “All done.”
She tugged free a tissue. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “Did you photograph Jackie?”
Ian rolled his lips inward and nodded.
“Ian,” she bemoaned, “that’s why she hurt you. I’ve told you, she’s dangerous. Why do you continue to put yourself in harm’s way?”
He picked up his mom’s blush compact. He opened and closed the case before returning it.
“Very well,” she said, resigned. She dropped a brow pencil into a glass jar of lip liners and mascara tubes. “Have you developed the photos yet?”
Ian nodded.
She swiveled in her chair and smoothed the skirt over her lap. “Show me.”
She wasn’t going to like them. She never liked them.
Ian retrieved from his room the photos he’d developed in his dad’s darkroom yesterday after Jackie left. He gave them to his mom.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then she dipped her chin and studied the top image, Jackie ransacking the master bedroom. Ian’s mom had learned to keep her ID, credit cards, and ATM cards hidden. Jackie had drained their bank account once before.
“She’s looking for cash again,” she surmised.
“Yes, and . . .” Ian gripped his shoulder and shifted feet.
She lifted her head. “And what?”
He tugged the hem of his shirt.
“She wanted . . . she wanted a gun.”
Her face paled. “Jesus.” The photos trembled in her hands. She flipped to the next picture, a close-up of Jackie’s face and her screeching at him, I’ll strangle you with the camera strap!
She flipped through the next two. Jackie getting into the car and then driving away.
“I wish I got more pictures.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.” She wiped her nose. “I would give anything to keep you safe from me,” she murmured.
“I am safe from you. It’s Jackie. She’s the mean one, not you, Mom.”
“I know, darling.” She cupped Ian’s cheek. “What did I do to deserve you? You’re too good for me.”
“I love you.” He tugged his shirt some more, stretching the fabric. “I wish Dad was home more often.” He always knew what to do when Jackie came out. What he didn’t know was how often Jackie made an appearance, and lately those appearances had become more frequent.
Ian once heard his dad suggest to his mom that they check her in to a hospital, should her transitions become more violent. But Ian didn’t want to lose her, and he believed his mom didn’t want to leave either because she didn’t like his dad’s idea about the hospital. Besides, Ian would be alone since Stu couldn’t stop working. So Ian took it upon himself to care for his mom. It wasn’t as though his dad was doing a great job at it, anyhow.
His mom returned the photos to him. “Put those with the others in your special place.” A place he’d sworn never to show her or Jackie. Because one day those pictures might come in handy.