Sweet Adaline

Chapter One

I trudged hard, deeper into anonymity, pushing on until the sun fell when I could hear her voice again. Heavy in the night, an old familiar ring echoed through the woods outside my pod-like tent. It was a call I never missed. It grew unearthly beckoning me.
For several days I hiked into the canyons and along the creek, dipping back into town for water and whatever, always coming back to the indigo expanse. I was usually bone dry. I ambled through every stony vortex and grassy vale, half empty daypack hanging from my wiry slumped shoulders, I reflected on our missed steps prior to the day. How long ago? A month maybe. So many arguments. Maybe it was more than a month.
Delirium...dehydration... distanced me from myself. Decaying self. I started to feel softness. The rays of sunlight through Juniper canopies. Quail cawing and that high and steady chirping of the robins perched, inconspicuous. The waking solidarity of my soothing earth mother, that quickly grew all around me. My nights became more natural in progression. I drifted into sleep. I wanted it all to sleep. Penny. Kayla. Whatever I'd become. All of it.
Then came the night. I slipped into it.
Orange clouds moved like rust stained water across a concrete sky of grey. No way of telling if it was night or day. No sound. Nothing was around me, but something kept on moving when I turned away. I turned to walk, and I was walking to the door of our home. Penny wasn't home. It had been awhile since she was there. I wondered where she could have gone, so long ago. Or maybe it was me. There was no knob on the door. White Sears siding and a ratty old flaking door. The outside entry was closing down around me. Thick reverberations from my heartbeat pulsed and overpowered my senses; Shortness of breath. In that instant, I was inside, the walnut door open behind me. The air was still. This house was strikingly familiar but in such an indescribable way. And in the same way, it was foreign. Maybe someplace I noticed one day. Did I know a friend that lived here? It felt like that place on Wilshire where mom and I stayed for a week when we ran away from Terry. Fuckin drunk. Was I drunk, or was that me? How old was I?
I was in the front hall. Still no sound, but the echoes of my footsteps off of every glossy wall. My feet struck the cold linoleum like gavels with each step in my leather soled black dress shoes. I felt the concrete beneath like iron and ice. Pop tap. Heal toe. Pop tap. The hall grew and grew. Pop tap. I was wearing the suit.
What were those whispers? Was that a lullaby? Mama and her lullabies? Such a silly mama. Be good and go to sleep. Sleep for mama. She needs it.
A grey couch with a black stain sat against the wall by a ragged rocking chair. I remember the feel of the air in there. It was brisk and I shivered as I passed the couch, compelled to stare as much as to look away. I looked forward.
It was raining everywhere but on the lawn outside. I could hear the patter of it against the evaporative cooler for a moment, but then gone. The lawn was dark and dry. Dark green. Green as hell. Flickers of lightning sprayed out like cracks in a windshield, across the night. No rumbles, just the silence and the light.
The volume was high now, of the showers outside; Shhh. It was cold and I was outside by the tree, feeling it come down on me; I was still, hollow inside, behind the glass sliding door, catching little glimpses of the toys we left outside. That Sing & Play never seemed to sing or play. But in the night, the little plastic sheep lit up in the shower, and sang Little Bo Peep. The lights sprang colorful.
I was staring at it, and the sheep danced gleefully, and it turned its plastic head to look at me where I now stood outside by the tree. It's tiny plastic mouth open. It was saying something incoherent. My stomach sank and it's empty plastic eyes bore into me, and it's mouth cried out. It was desperate. It was plastic though, behind an opaque plastic shell. Little Bo Peep lost her sheep too.
I could only hear the rain pouring over me. The sound from it rose to a single high-pitched unwavering cry like a terrible siren. I clutched my ears but it only grew louder.
I looked up at the figure in the house, still standing at the door inside, staring back at me.
At the window inside, I stared at the woman in the grass. Only then, I realized it was Penny standing out there, staring into the plastic eyes of the gleeful toy. I pounded my hands against the glass but couldn't build the momentum enough to make a noise. The glass was smooth stone. I was weak and the air was thick. And while I tried to scream and call out to her, nothing. Then lightning coursed the sky and tore away a piece of the darkness. One white blinding bolt cut the night in half and struck the dancing toy explosively. The woman by the toy, my Penny, was gone. Immediately after, like a shotgun, came the crack of thunder.