Chapter Two

 

Erin loved tents, and she loved hotel rooms. Nothing beat the freedom of carrying your own house on your back and living basic and free for a weekend, but hotels were the opposite and let her wallow in excess. There were three fluffy white towels after each shower. She could mess up the sheets as much as possible, have hot coffee in bed with no fear of spills, and always had new pillowcases to rest her head on every day. Erin didn’t mind when Lyric scattered her toys all over the stained carpet. Hotel living brought out the mass consumer hidden in her vegan, hemp-wearing self.

And now there was another guilty pleasure: the longest, hottest shower she’d ever endured with massive water pressure pounding down upon her body. Steam fogged the bathroom, making the air just as moist as the fire hose of water that beat down on her, and she moved back and forth, rocking herself gently to let it massage her skin until it was raw.

The bathroom door remained cracked so she could hear Lyric playing and talking back to the Dora show. “Backpack, backpack… the map… swiper no swiping…” The smug, cheery voice made her smile and know her little girl was safe and she could enjoy this moment longer.

Her ivory skin was turning red, her whole body becoming colored, and the contrast to the flower tattoo that wrapped from her side to just under her left breast faded. Her flesh had turned the same crimson red.

Outside, Macon was running but should be back soon. He will go too far, too fast. She knew that. But hopefully not too much. Every bit over a few slow miles is just energy from his legs taken from tomorrow.

He doesn’t listen, won’t listen. He has that sharp edge that cuts up any comment given to him and tells everyone to fuck right off. But it’s been rounding, and his new marathon training is giving him focus, drive. It is directing his energy and making him shine. She could see the Lyric in him.

Don’t be disappointed if he doesn’t finish tomorrow, she told herself, and don’t console him so much that he feels like a little boy. Don’t judge if he’s crawling and walking.

Macon’s training was intense, and he had run plenty of miles including a couple twenty-mile training runs. That was as much as she did during her first marathon five years ago. But he was made of different material than her, material with unknown elements. Of what, she wasn’t sure, but she had been waiting to find out because the time had come to either cut bait or hold him forever.

Marathons squeeze you and force out what’s inside. She knew this, and she was about to see his guts squished right out, cut out of him, and she would see what he was made of. He never let her do that. He was always holding something back; despite their cutting honesty, parts were always left hidden.

Where does he go sometimes? She had no clue.

She rotated in the shower after her back felt scorched and let it massage her stomach, then down to her thighs. Her muscles were loose, warm, fluid, and the pain and pleasure mixed until she could not tell which was which. She felt the phoenix on her back rising from the burn, and the mermaid swimming through the soothing, tropical water on her belly. She looked at her arms, where Macon had inked the phrase, Mother is the name for God on the lips and hearts of all children. It was written in italics, but the reddened flesh made the words seem to blink. The hot, streaming water made her ink come to life, vibrating with feeling, much like the day they were born. Her first tattoo was born on the day of her first child’s funeral. It wasn’t just a funeral—it was a funeral weekend, for three days to harrow hell.

How terrible—what torture, to live one second longer than her own baby, and her whole mission was to somehow bring that child back to life. A tattoo of the name Max was near her heart, just under her right breast, with birth and death dates. Macon had made flash art of a portrait of Max to tattoo onto her, just a sketch, but it would have been too much to have his face in the mirror everyday looking back at her. She already saw him in her mind’s eye when she closed her eyes at night; sometimes he was smiling at her, sometimes he was in a hospital NICU lying helpless with tubes sticking out of his body, and other times in her dreams he came to her. But she could never stay awake—never. It always jolted her, as if seeing his face felt the same as that last second of falling before you hit the pavement.

Her parents flew in for these three days and flew out before the airline could even find their lost luggage. She dropped them off at the airport and came home to her apartment, which smelled of four-day-old, stale air. With the feigning family closeness over, she returned to her home where the silence hurt to listen to. Her insides felt like the pit of a peach, hardened and shriveled. She wanted to curl up and perpetually hug her own soul, to take away the gnawing pain that ate away her insides. There had to be a way to stop it, to control it, to wash it away.

When she was fourteen, after her grandmother’s funeral, she had locked herself inside the bathroom, still in her black floral dress, and watched as the safety pin and then the razor cut into her skin. It was the best way to make her body feel; the blood was so rich and the rush that filled her so sweet. She swore she could hear a buzz in her ears. Thick, red blood made her nerves feel on fire. Different sharp objects would find their way back to her hands. It became a common scene, and by sixteen, she had a lot of scars.

She needed that feeling again after Max’s death. She was twenty-eight years old with an empty apartment, empty life, and empty insides. It was a Sunday evening with no life to it.

When she found the tattoo parlor open that night, she had no idea what she was going to have done. Make me bleed and feel alive, was all she could think. The man behind the counter seemed silently wise––a picture of still life, a constant, but his skin was aglow with a spectrum of colors up and down his arm. A sparkling piercing danced in his brow when he smiled.

“Give me one of those, just like you have,” and soon enough she felt her eyebrow get clamped and then the sweet sting through her that ended too quick. He explained self-care instructions as she thumbed the piercing. She wanted to push it in and out of her skin, to risk infection in hopes that it would go through her brow, down her spine, and impale the deep spots within her where the hurt lies.

She needed more, and moments later she was on her side, listening to the hum of the tattoo needle cutting into her. The sensation began as sharp and intense, but soon it became natural and invited, until finally she hated the moments in between the coloring and etching. She wanted the cutting feeling all over her. The hot scratch of the pin dragging across her flesh and the humming noise that hit some hidden brain frequency put her in a trance. She drifted into a sleep away from the world with vivid, electric dreams.

“Don’t need a picture here; just need to turn the insides out, is all. You’ve got some colorful insides,” the tattoo man told her.

Her whole body tingled, and her life, like her nerves, seemed on fire.

She sat in the front waiting room on a sunken leather couch, braless in her loose, white shirt. The bandage over her tattoo had quickly been taken off, and she spent moments starting at it, looking at the raised flesh, watching tiny traces of blood beading. The ongoing burn was still intoxicating, but her body craved more.

When he locked the front door, she watched his blue eyes, examined the shape of his shaved head, and traced the outline of his tattooed arms with her eyes. This was the more she wanted. She was vulnerable and see-through but still, it was she who used that man. She wouldn’t let him touch her—he couldn’t touch her, but he could be used, and after some words and a cup of coffee she was on top of him, ordering him not to touch her, and with each command he obeyed, she gained power and devoured him.

And this was her first encounter with Macon. She would never know if this was the date of Lyric’s conception or if it happened sometime within the next week, but burying Max was also the start of her life with Macon, and finally the birth of this beauty of a child. Spirit in, spirit out. She thought of it as The Big Bang because it created a whole new universe full of fitness and therapy, Pilate’s classes and yoga, marathon finishes and Paleo diets, and a surge of energy came upon her.

If she could make something as amazing as Lyric, maybe she wasn’t defective, maybe something glorious and angelic could come from her body instead of something flawed and defective that couldn’t last. Macon inked her body in the years to come and covered the scars from her life of cutting. She did her own part by sculpting her muscles and forming her body like clay.

We did it. We did it. We did it, yeah… the TV blared the words of Dora.

Lyric’s cartoon was ending, and Erin made one last rinse of her hair, realizing she had been in the shower much too long. There was a rustle at the door of the hotel room, like room service or the maid had arrived. She was sure she had locked the door, but hadn’t bothered with the Do Not Disturb sign. It was well before sunrise, so why should she?

“Lyric. Lyric,” she called out and turned off the shower.

No answer.

“Lyric!” she yelled again, louder.

Cooler air was sucked into the bathroom, and the foggy mist faded. Erin grabbed a towel and stepped onto the linoleum and yes, through the bathroom door she saw the outline of light spilling in from the hallway. Her heart raced, and she moved quickly out of the slippery bathroom to eye her child.

No sign of Lyric.

An open door.

She’s lying between the two beds—but a few quick steps showed nobody. With a towel wrapped loosely around her and shouts of Lyric with every few steps, she covered the room and even searched the small closet.

Where is my child? Who has my child?

She swung the door open, ready to run down the hallway. Goddammit! How did the door get open? With one glance to the right and another to the left, there, in front of the vending machine full of skittles, chips, and Hershey bars, stood Lyric. And right next to her stood a larger man, the hotel clerk, apparently helping her make a selection.

“Lyric, what are you doing? Come here… come here right now.”

Lyric didn’t move but just turned around, and Erin saw a dollar hanging out of her hand. The clerk got up from his kneeling position.

“Lyric, come on, get inside. What are you doing? You weren’t supposed to leave.”

Erin wrapped the towel more securely around her, but Lyric still didn’t budge, and Erin wanted to snatch her right up. She wanted this man gone.

“Go on,” said the man and put his hand on Lyric’s back to nudge her on her way. “You can come back later and have anything you want.”

Lyric turned sadly, her little hands still grasping the large dollar bill, and scooted to her mother.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Facinelli,” the clerk said.

Erin flashed him a half-smile. She wanted to know how Lyric got out, wanted to know what the hell he was doing with her. She also wanted Macon to return and all of them together.

“How did you get out, and why did you leave?” she fired at Lyric.

“It was my fault… I knocked on the door,” said the clerk, with bowed head.

Erin hadn’t heard any knock.

“Come on, we have to be ready for Daddy. He’s going to be here soon, and we need to be ready. You know what he’s like when he’s angry.”

Erin pressed the towel down secure, took a step inside her room, and wanted this clerk to know she was protected.

“Oh yes, the jogger,” the clerk said. “He will love the beach; maybe take a swim, see some fisherman. You go with him next time, and you’ll have hours of fun.”

Erin wondered if she was exposed and gave him a quick, friendly, get-the-hell-out-of-my-way smile, then shut the door behind her before making sure it was locked. The clicking sound of the door gave her relief.

“Lyric, you never do that. You never open the door. You never leave this room—you don’t do that!”

She was eye to eye with her daughter, face to face, pleading with anger and love and the strange mix she’d felt toward all her loved ones and things over the last six years. The fear she might lose them gave her words a quaking undertone.

Then she heard the wrapping of knuckles at the door and the sounds of keys from the hallway. The man was still there.