Sweet Adaline

Chapter four

That amber night undulated behind me, devoid of sound. I couldn't feel anything but the heat of my own body and the sensation of body hair on end. The box of light over the front door, amber as the night behind and above and closing in around me, beckoned me. I was the concrete man staring through a pane of glass, frosted beveled edges. It had never been there before, that I could recall. I wasn't even sure what house it was, or who I was, standing on that stoop. I was not myself.
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 that mom and I stayed for a week when we ran away from Terry who was drunk like every other night. Was she was drunk, or was that me? How old was I?
I was in the front hall. Still no sound, save the echoes of my footsteps off every glossy grey 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, huh Kayla? 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 and 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 at the same time I couldn't. The lawn was dark and dry. Flickers of lightning sprayed out like cracks in a windshield, across the night. No rumbles, just the silence.
The volume was high now of the showers outside; SShhhhh. It was cold and I was feeling it come down on me, and yet I was still inside against the glass of the sliding door, catching little glimpses of the toys we left outside. The yard was wet from the rain that was pouring down furiously. The Sing & Play that never seemed to sing when we shook it. 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 was dancing 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. I could only hear the rain pouring over me. The sound from it slowly rose to a single high-pitched ceaseless 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 that danced by the tree. 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. I was restricted by something. And I tried to scream, call out to her, but no noise would summon. 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.
***
Startled, I sat up atop my unmade bed, heart beating so intensely that I couldn't catch my breath. The taste of blood was in my mouth. God dammit! Not Again.
I looked around the empty room. It was familiar. Not at first but then I noticed my guitar that sat against the wall. I had myself covered by the comforter, still bent and crisp from being pulled from the package.
My t-shirt clung to the sweat of my chest. The rain outside was coming down furious, as it had been off and on all night. Again, lightning lit up the whole night sky, and the room, and the crack of thunder shook the window and stunned me.
My face and neck seAngieed with panic's adrenaline. I threw off the blanket, lit the place up, and went to the car to bring in the boxes.
It was looking grim outside, but not like I'd seen it today.
Gently, I placed them on the floor against the wall. "Why?" I asked myself as I stared at them. I sat on the floor.
With a key, I punctured the tape and dragged it across the top and opened the flaps. It was all there. I didn't smile. I didn't feel...anything. It was not an old friend. Not a sight that conjured warm nostalgia.
It was a box of dust. Memories of a time that I'd departed from. A time that I regret... everything. They were the types of tarnished reminiscences that sleep well until stirred. Why I opened the box, I still do not know.
I read the scattered pages, and those that remained in the spiral notebook that I wrote most of the recipes I'd deemed perfect or had found through trial and error. There were recipes for Vodka, many for Whisky's and Rum. Some were for foreign spirits that we'd never bothered to try. Most we never bothered with. Just a lot of chewed up intentions and dusty fruitless schemes. Hours that culminated to nothing but disdain.
And now, all said and done. She took everything with her when she left, just as she had said she might. I never believed it was as deeply seeded as it was. I thought the sadness was a mere cry for attention. She could demand so much from me at times. I felt so dry then, too dry to save her from another drought. If she did not know I loved her, I would tell myself, what more could I do? I could only tell her in the ways I knew. But it was her heart that would need to feel it, and I had no control over the barriers that denied it.
I didn't read them, but peaked in to take inventory. Not to feel the roughness of its tarnished lid, or feel the weight of the pressure cooker that distilled so many liquors on the tiny two-burner mini stove of our first apartment. It was heavy as my heart, weighted by the history it wore, stagnant now in its dusty cardboard tomb.
An 18 quart pressure cooker, a thermometer and coil of copper tubing filled the box. It was still rank with malted grain and alcohol.
Before I closed the lid, I spied a paper riddled with scribbles and corrections: A recipe for whisky, the one I was sure about. Sure for months that it could be just what would make me. It was perfect as could be made with my amateur tools. My curiosity took hold of better judgment, and charged my arm impulsively and snatched it up.
I folded the flaps into each other and carelessly heaved the box into the closet. The recipe, however, was folded in halves and set aside. The still was slid beneath the kitchen sink.