Part 2

Lily's Ghost
by Cheryl Drake Harris

(Page 2 of 3)

I do as a good mother should do, but I do it with trepidation. I try to channel the fear underground. But it inevitably oozes back up, seeping into the breach between muscle and skin, invading, finally, my whole body, narrowing my throat, leaving my tongue lying like a stone on the floor of my mouth. I had Jaime at thirty-five because I wanted to change the defining experience of my life: I wanted blood to signify life, not death. Becoming a mother has given me untold joy, but it has not stopped the flashes of memory: the Marine who talked about the blue summer mornings of his native West Virginia and then quietly died. I'd laid my hand on his chest; it was smooth and hairless. I tried to convince myself I was wrong, that he was still alive, so I listened for a heartbeat, and when I could find none, I said, Fuck You, God. Fuck You.

By the time I hear Ben's car, I have been tempered by the light. I no longer feel like a wood louse whose log has been rolled over.

"It tastes great the second day," Ben says, "doesn't it, Jaime?"

Jaime nods enthusiastically.

I don't bother to tell Ben it's the third day after. His dish is laden with leftovers: turkey, gravy, creamed onions, squash, mashed potatoes, and green beans.

Jaime scoops out a quivering slab of cranberry jelly from the small cut-glass bowl and slides it onto his plate next to the pieces of turkey breast Ben has carved for him. He begins to build then, carefully pressing a spoonful of buttered potato into a small mound, and when it is shaped to his satisfaction, he pushes a bit of turkey into it with his thumb. I sip my wine and watch him. With intense deliberation and remarkable dexterity, he crowns it all perfectly with a slippery crescent of cranberry.

"Quite a feat, there, Jaim'," I say.

He smiles at me before spooning the exotically layered mound into his mouth. With cheeks slightly bulging, he chews with particular rumination, like his father. Not something he does, usually.

"You need to build your next culinary creation just a bit smaller," I say. And before I can get up from the table for more milk to facilitate his feasting, Jaime gags as if he's choking.

Ben stands and ineffectually pats him on the back.

Jaime's cheeks are now full to bursting, and his eyes are watering, but his color's fine.

With deliberate calm, and in order not to panic him, I say, "Just spit it out, sweetie."

He obeys me, bending over his plate. A masticated mess of food mixed with saliva splatters onto the chipped stoneware. I get up and kneel next to him. He begins to cry. I dab his tears with a napkin and wipe his nose.

Ben ruffles his hair.

"It's okay," I say, encircling his small shoulders with my arm. "You put too much food in your mouth, that's all."

He nods, still crying, more out of embarrassment now than fear. To make him understand the gravity of the situation, I say, "But you could have really choked, and I was ready to squeeze it right out of you, like squeezing toothpaste out of a tube."

He looks at me gravely. I hug him. "Like this," I say, "only a bit more energetically."

Through brimming tears he smiles at me. "I made it too big, Mum."

I dab his eyes again. "If it's not raining, maybe we can take a walk after we do the dishes. How 'bout you stick your nose out the door and check the weather?"

He nods, sniffs, and wipes his eyes with the backs of his hands, then slides out of his chair and, with a new sense of purpose, heads for the kitchen door. After he has opened it and carefully closed it behind him, Ben says, "You didn't need to get quite so graphic, did you? It sounded a little scary to me, '. . . like squeezing toothpaste from a tube'?"

"Choking is more than a little scary."

Ben shrugs and begins to clear the table, leaving Jaime's plate for last.

I feel like asking him if he really wants to know what happens when someone chokes, but I resist the urge. Decide not to tell him about the particularly speedy trach I'd had to do on a grunt as he lay on the floor of a chopper with a dead buddy wrapped in his poncho beside him for company.

Jesus, Lily, I tell myself, just leave it alone. Just damn well leave it alone.

Jaime comes in. He closes the door behind him. Emulating his father once more, he loosely splays his fingers out low on his hips. "It's raining, Mum," he says, "but not too much."

"Maybe not a good idea, then, a walk tonight," I say. "Maybe your dad'll give you a bath. And then I'll read you a story. How about that?"

Copyright © 2006 by Cheryl Drake Harris.

About the Author

Cheryl Drake Harris is a former nurse and teacher who lives with her husband in Maine, where she is at work on her second novel, about a contemporary writer reasearching the life of Elizabeth Siddal, the wife of poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, which Dell will publish in 2007.