Kathryn removed everything of hers from the master bedroom — her clothes, her perfumes, her shoes and handbags, all the clutter of little objects — lipsticks and mascara wands, her camelhair brush, her collection of crystal dragons on the bureau. She emptied the drawers of her lingerie, packed all and sundry into suitcases, and lugged them into the guest bedroom, now her bedroom. She had much to do still in the master bedroom where the baby slept on the king-size bed. Later she would take the time and put all her things away, but right now the baby’s room must be seen to.
On the walls of the master bedroom, she finished painting the bunnies and ducks — floppy-eared, dewy-eyed bunnies in cream and brown, lemon yellow ducks with orange as orange can be bills and big webbed feet. She worked quickly, and as she painted, she cried, not loudly or profusely, but gently and quietly. Her tears gathered and fell, gathered and fell, and all the time, she smiled. She stepped back from her work, sweat trickling down her neck, and for a precious minute stood staring into space, oblivious to the bunnies and ducks, deftly twirling the paintbrush from fingertip to fingertip.
Of course, bunnies and ducks were not quite her world. She preferred moon-touched fairies frolicking amid ivy, devil-eyed elves, and all sorts of dragons — water-dragons, sun-dragons, star-dragons, dragons crowned and clawed, with melodious voices and avaricious habits, like the wonderful dragon-prince in her last successful children’s fantasy, published seven years ago. That one had been chosen by the Los Angeles Times as one of the top ten books in children’s fantasy. That was the year she’d married Paul.
On the bed, the baby stirred and Kathryn sent a startled glance over her shoulder, but the baby remained asleep, softly snoring. He lay on his back, hairy chest rising and falling, big feet splayed outward.
Today was the start of Kathryn’s new life.
* * * * *
"Scratch, Kathryn." Paul sat down on the arm of the wing chair, presenting his back to Kathryn. Kathryn pulled her gaze away from the children's book spread open in her lap. One of her own. She smoothed her hand over the beautiful illustration of the fairy queen — ivory, emerald, and violet. So pretty. So perfectly drawn.
"Scratch, Kathryn." Paul wriggled his shoulders. "Come on. While the commercial’s on."
He was watching a crime drama, his favorite kind of television. The irritated whine in his voice set her nerves on edge. She reached up, placed her fingertips against his shirt and began scratching at random. He wriggled his shoulders again.
"Not there. Down lower."
Kathryn moved her hand further down his back. Scratched.
"It's better if you go under the shirt. Over a little more."
Kathryn shut her eyes briefly. She tugged his shirt free of the waistband of his pants and worked her hand beneath the fabric, pushing her nails firmly against his skin, scratching rhythmically.
"Ahh," said Paul. "There’s the spot."
Her fingertips moved over a smattering of raised freckles. Repulsed, she imagined the dead skin cells of his back peeling up under her nails, tiny, invisible scales catching on the curved edges, flakes of desiccated flesh. One time, she'd accidentally abraded the top off a pimple on his back. Nauseated, Kathryn pulled her hand from under Paul's shirt. She got up, letting her book fall to the carpet.
In the bathroom, she fiercely twisted the hot water tap open, drenched her hands and scrubbed up to her wrists with a lathering of cherry almond soap. He could never let her sit in peace. He always needed something. She couldn’t think, couldn’t concentrate on starting over. She’d never get her career going again, with him bothering her all the time. When she’d married him, she hadn’t thought he would be such a problem. If her mother had left her alone, she wouldn’t have married him.
"You’re withering on the vine, Kathy." She heard her mother’s voice, stubbornly declaring Kathryn’s failure to get a husband. The way her mother said her name, the first syllable popping in phlegm, made something snap in Kathryn. "You’re going to be old and lonely, Kathy. No husband, no children. Just those books."
Her mother’s voice would turn contemptuous, piercing Kathryn clear and keen as an ice needle, edged with pity. Hatred stabbed deep in Kathryn’s heart. Her mother was in a home now, didn’t know she had a daughter anymore. Kathryn never visited.
On the way back to the living room, Kathryn paused at the door to her studio. She touched the knob, tapped her finger against it, and opened the door, staring through the dark inside. A draft touched her, musty with the scent of dust, paper, ink, and paint. She made out the square bulk of her worktable, the tilted easel next to it. She hadn't set foot in this room in a long time. In her soul urges eddied, tendrils unfurled. She longed to feel the satiny wood of color pencils, the delicate tissue of transfer paper, to breathe the mingled scents of ink and paint while fairies flitted at the edge of her vision.
"Kathryn! Bring me a beer, will you?"
Paul’s voice swooped upon her, a crow beating at her, as the wicked crow in "The Gilded Wing" had beat at the princess. Kathryn shut the door sharply. He was like a child. Always calling her. Never a moment to herself. Never a moment to think. Except for the hollow hours after midnight and before dawn.
"I’m going to bed," she told him, delivering the beer.
"Save me a pillow," he replied, snapping open the beer, not taking his gaze off the television.
Kathryn laid awake, recalling the days when she’d lived in castles of her own making. Her thoughts herded through her mind like the groups of tiny, unearthly animals that used to fill her sketchbook. From beyond the window, straying streetlight crept through the blinds, rendering the curtains a fall of shadows, reshaping the corner armchair and its footstool into a cloaked throne, casting a spectral translucence over the bureau mirror. It melded into a silver-dark pool and Kathryn floated serenely on its waters.
The next day, Monday morning, while Paul dressed for work, Kathryn riffled through a cardboard box. She’d got up while he was in the shower, the dregs of her dreams stuck and fluttering, and now she knelt in her nightgown by the bed, going through the box of old sketchbooks — years of pencil studies, ink sketches, color pencil visions, leaves, flowers and vines, castles, ogres, fairies, magic wands and orbs, cottages and forests. Some time ago, she didn’t remember when, she’d done a pen and ink sketch of a tree with scimitar-shaped leaves.
Paul rummaged in the closet, hangers scrapping, clothes slupping together. "Where's my shirt with the gray pinstripe?"
The faint whine in his tone rippled along Kathryn’s nerves. She dug deeper in the box, her fingers scrabbling against the cardboard, the scimitar tree growing larger in her mind.
"Kathryn!"
Kathryn sat back on her heels, plucked at the nightgown, feeling feverish and sweaty. Paul looked at her as if he expected her to produce the shirt out of thin air.
"You put it in the cleaners, Paul."
"That was a week ago. Didn't you pick up my clothes? I gave you the ticket." He turned back to the closet, fretfully pushed the hangers about. "I want to wear that shirt today."
Kathryn watched him yank another shirt off its hanger, look at it, toss it aside. "I want my gray pinstripe." He frowned at her. Through the dark tangles of her long bangs, he looked all scratched. His eyes made her think of peeled green grapes. "The least you could do is pick up the dry cleaning."
Kathryn rubbed her temple. A faint throbbing bloomed in her head. "I'll get the shirt today."
"You do that." He jerked another white shirt off its hanger and shrugged into it. "I don't know what you do all day."
Later, after Paul had gone, Kathryn sat at the kitchen table shredding her uneaten toast, tearing it into pieces and pieces. The crunch of the crusts in her fingers sounded a little bit like a neck bone breaking. After a while, she got up and washed her hands, scrubbing up to her wrists with dishwashing soap. Meticulously, she dried each finger, rubbing the dishcloth against her skin until it burned. Leaving the breakfast dishes undone, the saucer of torn toast, the scattering of crumbs all over the table, Kathryn exchanged her robe and gown for a pair of jeans and a blouse and went out to have her prescriptions for Nembutal and Xanax refilled.
Kathryn made sure she picked up the gray pinstripe and the rest of Paul’s dry cleaning. At home again, she cleaned the kitchen, vacuumed the living room, and tidied their bedroom. Then she set about preparing Paul’s favorite dinner — broiled pork chops with garlic potatoes and baby asparagus.
Paul got home later than usual. "I got a haircut," he explained.
"You got them all cut," replied Kathryn.
Paul laughed, a percussive bark. "Cute," he said.
They sat down to eat. Paul’s fork scrapped against his plate, emitting tiny shrieks. Kathryn’s sense of calm vaporized. She watched him sip his wine, swirl it around in his mouth, swallow. He held the fork with its tines pointing down, close to the plate. She waited, tense.
"How come you didn’t buy a merlot? Pinot noir’s too dry." He stabbed at an asparagus spear, the tines of his fork screeched against the ceramic.
Kathryn pasted on an apologetic smile, her nerves shivering. She couldn’t get a word out.
* * * * *
She'd worked all night painting the bunnies and the ducks. She'd done a damn good job too, especially since she hadn't held a sketch pencil or a paintbrush in many months. But that was going to change. In fact, it had changed already. A few more finishing touches and everything would be perfect. Her life would be her own again.
As demanding as a baby, a baby she’d never had, Paul had made sure she never had time for anything else, only him. Always yelling for her attention, always demanding. Accusing her of neglect with his round-eyed stare. He'd kept her from drawing, kept her from painting, kept her from writing. Often, her editor had called, cajoling, pleading, even threatening, but Kathryn had missed her deadline — for the third time. Her publisher had not offered her a new contract. Her last children's book project gathered dust in her studio. She laid the paintbrush on the rollaway cart, tapped the top back on the last can of cream-white paint. She gathered up the drop cloth, rolled it into a neat cylinder and wedged it between the other paint cans. She surveyed the room. Everything was as she wanted it.
On the bed, Paul slept, drugged, beneath a custard-yellow blanket patterned with A-B-C blocks. On the pillow next to his head lay a bright blue rattler and a pacifier. Kathryn pushed the rollaway out of the room into the hall. Going back into the bedroom, she picked up a hypodermic syringe and carefully filled it with a mixture of wine, she’d used merlot, and powdered Nembutal. She didn't want the baby to wake up right now. She'd given him the first shot yesterday to keep him from waking from the previous drugging. She'd given him another shot at about one this morning when he looked like he might be waking up. Better safe than sorry, she decided. She lifted the blanket and unpinned the diaper she’d made of a bath towel, held in place by fat, duck-headed safety pins. Deftly, she gave him the shot. Peace spread through her like cool air spreading through an empty room.
Kathryn sat at her worktable, lost in the forest with Princess Jonquil as she ran from the Fairy-Witch. From down the hall, she heard her name. The baby had awakened a while ago. His voice sounded a bit weak, a bit hoarse.
"Ka...th...rynnn... Ka...th...rynnn..."
She heard the chains rattling and clanging against the bedposts. She’d bought the strongest and heaviest the hardware store offered, and two solid steel padlocks. One for each wrist. Kathryn extended the claw on the water-dragon, giving it a particularly wicked curve.
In a little while, she would feed him. Maybe.
Debra says: Outside of being an avid vampirophile, a book lover, and having a deep fear of snakes, there isn't much to say about me. I live in Long Beach, California with my cat Levi, who thinks I'm a chew toy, and I'm always writing.
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