Town Limits

Liam doesn’t follow me out and I’m grateful for it because I don’t know where I’m going, but wherever it is I don’t want him to see me there. I don’t want anyone to see me.

I head west, treading along the boardwalk which would be empty if not for an elderly couple tucked in together beneath a black umbrella. Stores with leis and surfboards tucked into their display cases clash with the deep grey clouds layer on top of each other in the sky. Tilting my head up, I allow droplets of rain to peck my face and run off onto the tips of my hair until my thin jacket suctions to the skin of my arms and I’m chilled to the bone.

It doesn’t take long to get to the house from the boardwalk. Seven minutes. Two songs if you’re listening to an iPod. But though I know I when I’ll arrive there, I still find the blue door and beige siding startling. For what could be seconds or days I stand atop the concrete steps, my lip pressed between my teeth, hand hovering centimetres above the doorknob.

I need to go inside and change my clothing and unfreeze my veins and fight off the memories that are imprinted on the walls but I can’t make myself do it this way. So I jog around the side of the house and push through the worn wooden gate that leads to the yard, hoping that if I walk through a different door I’ll end up in a different place.

Alas.

My parents are everywhere in this house.

Mom’s fingerprints lay the baking sheets that rest inside the oven I refuse to open. A droplet of Dad’s spilled coffee stains the newspaper dated from over three months ago that sits at his place on the table. The dually favoured lavender scent is growing increasingly subtle from the old air freshener placed next to the phone.

I wonder what the last thing is my mother saw. Did she stand in the foyer before heading to the car, staring down proudly at the shiny floors? Or did she sigh when she realized she wouldn’t have time to organize the shoe rack before work? Was she running through her mental checklist, making sure the coffee maker had been flicked off and the backdoor was locked? Or maybe she left the backdoor open, wanting to give me a way to get inside in case, out of a lapse of sanity, I’d decided to return.

Up until that day, Dad had been so good at covering his tracks. Always hitting where the bruises wouldn’t be seen. He’d done more than just physically abuse my mother and I’d hated them both for it. Him because he was a monster and her because she refused to leave. So, on March seventeenth I took matters into my own hands, shoved a backpack full of necessities, and bought the cheapest bus ticket that would take me the furthest.

He’d murdered her on May twentieth. Hid in the trunk of her SUV until she’d made it onto the highway. Probably threatened to kill her with a baseball bat unless she pulled down a country road. When she did it, he killed her anyway.

I hate both them and now I hate myself too. Because maybe if I had stayed, finished school, I’d have been able to stop it from happening. Maybe my presence would have been enough.

Hesitantly, I step further into the house. My boots squeak against the grey linoleum and the drone of Linda Swan carries into the hallways from the living room. The old clock lays dead on the floor in the hallway. I’d removed it from its perch days ago, then taken a hammer to it to stop its incessant ticking.

I drag my finger along the edge of the heavy, tigerwood table, leaving a trail in the dust. There’s five vases aligned perfectly down the centre of the tabletop, increasing in size and changing in colour as they grow closer to one edge. Mom loved them. Family heirlooms she’d remind me. Dad liked them too. I know that because out of all the useless objects he could have, he never threw those at either of us.

Without thinking the action through, I pick up the blue one and launch it against the wall. Its shattering releases a pressure in my chest. Then I do the same to the green one and the red one and the yellow one, until the floor is laden with delicate pieces of glass and I’m on my knees squeezing the sharp edge of one against the palm of my hand and thinking guilty, guilty, guilty.