THE MISTAKE
by Cynthia Pryor
It was a mistake to come home. Sodder Marris knew it the minute she saw Donny Barr sitting on the cement block steps leading from his junk-infested porch to his grassless yard. He stared at her in the dirty pink light of the sun going down and smiled one of those smiles that sent shivers rippling down her spine.
In an instant, Gunner, his war-beaten pit bull, was at the chain-link fence growling and curling his lips as if he could chomp through metal, sink his teeth into Sodder’s trembling flesh and draw crimson. She clutched her college books tighter and escaped down Star Street in a half walk, half run, Donny’s laughter trailing.
If seeing Donny Barr was bad, seeing her mother wasn’t going to make it much better.
The house loomed ahead, like a lopsided cake. The two-story frame, now weathered to a velvet brown, looked like it might house a ghost, instead of a woman in her late forties. Dandelions spotted the yard, dabs of cheer. The whole neighborhood trapped in a horseshoe of dark wooded hills.
It had been a year since Sodder had been home. She climbed the porch steps to the green front door. Gunner still howled his regrets. She’d heard stories about people mauled to death by pit bulls. Donny ought to be more careful, she thought, but when was that ever going to happen? He was, as far as she was concerned, an egotistical man who strutted upon the earth like a bandy rooster barely recognizing anyone else’s right to exist.
Her mother was curled up under a depressing tan and white afghan.
“Home at last,” she said, smiling weakly at Sodder and coughing into a wad of blue Kleenex.
Sodder shut the door on a brisk autumn breeze. The room was a mess. Newspapers and books were scattered about. The furniture looked even older, dustier, than Sodder remembered, stuffing coming out here and there -- exposing yellow cotton. A single lamp was on to light her mother’s dungeon.
“So, what’s going on?” Sodder asked. She put her books down on the thickly varnished coffee table, a remnant of better days with brighter suns and dreams not yet worn off.
“The doctor doesn’t know, yet,” she said. Her hair was a ball of loose black yarn. She smelled of vinegar and raw potatoes.
“Can I get you anything?” Sodder stood back, let the shock of her mother’s bedraggled appearance seep in.
“Water would be nice,” her mother said and coughed again into her Kleenex. “I was too cold to get up and get it myself. I waited for you. I hope you don’t mind.”
Sodder went to the kitchen. The oven door was standing open. Dishes were piled up. A pan of used kitty litter still remained in the corner, the cat gone now for more than a year, run over or maybe killed by Gunner, or maybe even Donny. She closed the oven door and opened the refrigerator. She thanked God the shelves were bare. She wasn’t sure she was up to cleaning shrouds of soft blue mold. She sighed. The icemaker had apparently stopped working. She found a clean glass and went to the sink, looked out the back window. God, she didn’t want to be here.
“You didn’t tell me Donny Barr was back?” Sodder said, returning to the living room and sinking onto the too soft sofa of her childhood.
Her mother took the glass and sipped sparingly. “His father died a month ago. Left him the place.”
“Has he been to see you?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“You are your father,” her mother said. “Jumping to conclusions. Always blaming me.”
“Let’s not talk about it,” Sodder said. The memory still stung. She’d come home early from school one day to find her mother in bed with Donny Barr. Her father had apparently discovered them, too. Within hours, he moved out and Donny moved in. She hadn’t seen her father since, didn’t know where he lived, except that he was still somewhere in Ohio.
Her mother nodded at the clock. It was nearing eight. “I’m the last patient of the day.”
“We’re off then,” Sodder said.
“I didn’t want you to come home. I know you hate it here. Maybe even hate me. But I feel pretty bad right now. Unless I get back on my feet, I’m good for nothing. I may as well curl up and die.”
“Jesus, Mother,” Sodder said. Her jaw stiffened. Her mother’s dark pronouncements always filled her with anger, regret and guilt. The guilt always surprised her. It should have belonged entirely to her mother. After all, her mother had foisted her parental duties off on relatives and neighbors, spent her nights at the Orange and Black when she should have been at home knitting or watching TV or just being there like all of her friend’s mothers.
“Go warm the car,” her mother said. “I’ll get my coat.”
Sodder was relieved when the eleven-year-old Dodge sprung to life on the first turn of the key in the ignition. She backed the car out of the leaning one-car, detached garage onto the gravel drive. Her mother was standing on the porch above her. She had on an ancient brown coat, making her look fat and ugly and even more unkempt. Sodder was amazed at how much her mother had deteriorated in the year since she’d been gone. She’d turned from a shoulders-back beauty into a stooped old woman, and her bright indigo eyes were a dreary, misty gray.
The news at the doctor’s office was not good. Sodder bowed her head as the doctor called her aside and told her out of earshot of her mother that he suspected cancer.
“I want to be sure before I talk to her,” he said. “I plan to run a series of tests first thing in the morning. I want her in the hospital right away. She’s weak and dehydrated. I’ve sent for an ambulance. She needs her rest. You might as well go on home. There’s nothing more you can do.”
When Sodder went to say good night, she found her mother perched at the edge of the examining table, her legs swinging back and forth, fidgeting like a child at an event going on too long.
“Well?” her mother said.
“The doctor wants to do some tests.”
“Cancer, right?”
“He sent for an ambulance to take you to the hospital from here.”
“Are you coming?” Her mother’s chin quivered.
“The doctor says you need rest.” Sodder brushed her hand across the top of her mother’s. It was cold and blue and trembling, and, for a fleeting instant, she wanted to warm it, hold it to her chest forever. But the doctor shooed her off.
“You can see her tomorrow,” he said.
Sodder drove the long way home, trying to absorb what the doctor had told her and what it might mean. She wondered if she would have to quit college and move back home. She disliked the idea. She noticed many of the downtown stores her mother used to take her shopping were empty. They matched the emptiness she felt being back. She wished she could keep on driving, forget her mother and the mess she’d made of their family, running her father off. She wished her mother had never met Donny Barr.
Back at the house, she washed the dishes, dusted the living room and cleaned her bedroom, trying to scour away the memory of Donny’s moving in. It wasn’t that he had ever touched her, but she could sense he wanted to. His eyes seemed to scan her every pore. Thank God she’d won a scholarship and was able to move away before anything happened. She pulled back the curtain to look at the stars. But saw Donny Barr hurrying her way on the road below, Gunner running out ahead of him like a wind-up toy.
She raced downstairs to lock the doors. Once they were secured, she rifled through the kitchen drawers searching for the bone-handled carving knife her mother used for special occasions. She found it in the last drawer, but not before a bead of blood sprouted at the tip of one of her thumbs. She wiped it off, snatched up the knife, scrambled into the living room and crouched behind her mother’s chair, waiting clutching the knife with aching fingers.
“Hey,” Donny yelled, rattled the doorknob and pushed hard against the door. “Sodder, open up.”
Sodder kept still. She’d never been alone with Donny even when he shared the house with her and her mother. Her mother had always been there. She wondered now if her mother had seen that sly look on Donny’s face and if her mother was protecting her from him or protecting herself from losing Donny.
A moment later, Donny stomped down the steps. It surprised Sodder that he wasn’t more persistent. She waited until her heart hit its normal pace then crept into the kitchen to put the knife away and get a glass of milk to soothe her nerves.
As she turned on the light, the back door opened. Donny stood there. “I used my key,” he said and waved it smugly in the air. “Your mother forgot to ask me to return it when she kicked me out. Thought your father was coming back. What a laugh.”
Out of nowhere, Gunner leaped at Sodder. She swung the knife around. The dog fell to the floor, red slashes ablaze on his chest.
“Christ Almighty,” Donny said. He grabbed a towel from the counter and pressed it to the dog’s wounds. “Are you crazy?”
Sodder slumped against the stove. Her eyes met Donny’s.
“Gunner can’t hurt you,” he said and glared at her.
She felt dizzy.
“Gunner doesn’t have any frigging teeth. Why do you think I laughed when you walked by and looked at him like you were about to be torn to shreds? I thought you knew.”
“Shit,” she said and dropped the knife.
“Lucky for you his wounds aren’t deep.” Donny lifted the towel and peered at the dog’s chest again. “Get me some newspapers and a cardboard box to put him in.” Donny knelt and whispered sweet nothings in the dog’s ear. “You’ll be fine, old boy,” he said.
The dog whimpered and flicked its tongue at Donny.
“I’m sorry,” Sodder said and pointed to a year’s worth of newspapers stacked in the corner. “You can use those. I’ll be right back.” She hurried to the basement to find a cardboard box. The only one she found was filled with her father’s tools. She dumped them out and rushed upstairs.
“Here,” she said and handed him the box.
Donny layered it with newspapers, placed Gunner on top and covered him with more dishtowels. “What the hell is wrong with you running around the house with a Goddamn knife? You trying to kill someone?”
“Why are you here?” Sodder held her breath, waiting for Donny to confess his intentions toward her. The whole house seemed to tremble.
She glanced at the knife. It was closer to Donny now.
“One of the ambulance drivers called. Said he’d driven your mom to the hospital. He knew we’d had a thing about a year ago. Said she was pretty sick. I went to the hospital to see her, but they wouldn’t let me in. Came here. Thought maybe you could tell me what’s going on.”
Sodder frowned, felt her guts shift. “Oh,” she said and let the idea Donny had not come to see her sink in, forget the knife.
“Is she going to be all right?”
“The doctor doesn’t know what’s wrong. Cancer maybe.”
Donny grimaced. “I hope not,” he said. “Your mother’s been through enough -- married to that son of bitch, if you don’t mind me saying, your father. Always cheating on her. She used to come to the Orange and Black to look for him. Cry on my shoulder.”
“Jesus,” Sodder said, a weariness enveloping her. “You’re in love with her.”
“I guess,” he said.
****
Sodder sat beside her mother, reading the newspaper, sunlight streaming in the hospital window. The doctor had been to talk to her. The surgery had been a success, and the cancer had not spread. Donny sat on the other side of her. Sodder scanned his face from time to time, searching for the want she’d hoped was there. But he seemed more like Gunner now – toothless in the world.
“You go on back to school,” her mother said.
“I’d rather stay.”
“I won’t hear it.”
“Someone needs to look after you.”
“Donny can do that,” her mother said, eyes flashing indigo blue. “It’s important you get an education. Not end up like me.”
“I don’t know if that would be so bad,” Sodder said and kissed her mother on the cheek. “You’re a great lady.”
A week after her mother had settled in at home, Sodder boarded the Greyhound bus back to school. She took a seat beside an older man who looked a lot like her father.
THE END
(Cynthia studied under Lea Schizas in a class at the Long Story Short School of Writing. This story was her final exam. We liked it so much, we asked if we could publish it.)
