The Drowning Child

64

Jimmy Lyle pulled up in his rental car and parked on Pleasant Lane. He couldn’t park in the driveway on Richmond Road, he couldn’t alert the neighbors that he was back. He couldn’t stand to hear the doorbell ring, to see the porch fill up with casseroles, to feel his ears fill up with condolences, his eyes flooded with pitying looks, or tears, his body squeezed by warm, fat ladies who left their scent behind on his neck, and their unreliable fucking memories caught in his throat.

He unlocked the gate, and started walking up the path through the back garden, his hands in his pockets, his head bowed. He stopped and looked up at the small bathroom window. He imagined being a boy, floating up to it, like the window scene in that old movie, Salem’s Lot: one boy on the inside, one on the outside. Inside Jimmy, Outside Jimmy. But in the movie, the horror, the ghastly boy, the smoke – everything was on the outside. Not in the Lyle house.

Jimmy remembered that bathroom blurred with steam, the bath, this time, one time only, filled with boiling water. It was night time. His father was drunk. He didn’t notice. He didn’t notice until he heard Jimmy’s piercing screams, saw his red, falling-away flesh. He didn’t know that Inside Jimmy wanted someone to know, but that when they arrived at the hospital, Outside Jimmy won. Daddy won.

Jimmy walked on. He was used to steeling himself when he knew he was about to face a reflective surface – this time, the windows at the back of the house, the glass kitchen door. He looked up when he got there and his reflection was clearer, starker than he expected. It took him a moment to realize why. The glass was black. Maybe the real estate agent had drawn the curtains. But he hadn’t heard from her all week. There had been no viewings. He walked closer. The curtains were moving. He walked closer again.

The curtains were flies. Lots and lots of flies.