Desperate Remedies

DESPERATE REMEDIES



         The clock-radio came to life, blaring the 6am news, but Lillian was already awake. Hating being jolted from sleep, she had trained herself to always wake three minutes before her alarm went off. She lay in the semi-darkness and listened to the usual local politics and foreign wars. It was the same every day. Staring at the thick brown curtains that allowed no light to penetrate her room, she thought about the day ahead.



         She would get up, shower, and dress in one of her conservative, just-below-the-knee length skirts- it was Tuesday, so the blue one. Her dark hair tied in a knot at the nape of her neck. She would slip on her low-heeled brown shoes before going down the hall to wake her fifteen-year-old son, Jamie. In the kitchen she would put on coffee before going back upstairs to prod Jamie again. Once certain he was in fact awake and ready to move, she would head downstairs and make breakfast. Toast with Marmalade and coffee for her; eggs, scrambled for Jamie, orange juice and hot chocolate.



         Then the bus stop two blocks away. The long, crowded commute into the city with the other drones. When she finally reached the department store where she worked Lillian would just have time to hang her coat in the staff room before hurrying out onto the floor of the lingerie department. She sighed as she pictured herself at work, squeezing the uptown matrons into bras they swore were the same size they had always worn. It sickened her to see these wealthy dowagers made caterpillar-like by the too-tight elastic pressing their fleshy bodies into grotesque rolls. Always she would suggest a bigger size might be more comfortable, and always she was silenced by a look that would freeze fire.



         Kids were no better. Barely blossoming teens brought in by their mothers, trying desperately to disappear between the racks of underthings as Lillian tried to find something that might appeal to them. Those girls didn’t want to be there. Didn’t want to be growing up like this. And they hated Lillian for forcing them to acknowledge that they were no longer Daddy’s little girls.



         Lunch was always at the deli across the street. Tuna on rye, the bread just stale enough to start curling up on itself, the mayo watery and tasteless. Back at work five minutes before she was due on the floor, she would take the time to re-apply her pale pink lipstick and comb her hair, refastening the knot at her neck as she hurried down the hall to her station. And the long afternoon of serving and hanging and folding would begin.



         She would get home just after six unless the traffic was particularly bad. Jamie sprawled on the couch watching TV or playing one of the endless video games he had an insatiable appetite for. Lillian would barely be in the door and out of her coat before Jamie asked her what was for dinner. So it was straight into the kitchen again where she would find the remains and residue of the snacks Jamie had made himself piled on the bench by the sink.



         No, thought Lillian before she even started picturing the lonely evening she would spend after dinner. It’s not going to be like that anymore. I’ve had enough. She glanced over at the clock and was shocked to discover it was almost seven. Just about to launch herself from the bed, she stopped herself.

“No,” she said aloud, “I’m not doing it. I’m not getting up today.”



         There was a light tap at the door and Jamie stuck his head in.

“Mum?” he peered into the dimly lit room. “Hey, Mum! It’s late. Almost eight! You’re gonna be late.”

“I’m not going today,” Lillian did not even turn over to look at her son.

“Are you sick?”

“Not really. Just sick of this.”

Jamie took a step into the room. “What?”

“I’ve had enough, Jamie. Now go, before you’re late.”

“But what about my breakfast?”

“Make it yourself!” Lillian’s voice was so sharp that Jamie was startled and took a step back into the doorway. He was about to speak, thought better of it, and turned to stomp back up the hall to his room, not slamming the door exactly, but closing it hard behind him.



         Lillian watched him go. What happened to her baby boy? This creature was not someone she understood. Jamie barely said a word to her these days. He seemed to regard her with distain as much as anything else, as a servant or skivvy. And he was growing to be so like his father. She remembered Gordy the summer they met. He had been seventeen then, tall and slender with that coffee coloured skin and strikingly green eyes, dark hair just a little too long and flopping fetchingly over his forehead. Oh, she had loved him. That he had even noticed her, skinny, pale little Lillian Eames, was a miracle.



By the end of the summer they were inseparable. By the end of high school they were married, baby on the way.



         Lillian was not alone in thinking her husband handsome. Everywhere they went women caught Gordy’s eye, even when Lillian was with him, arm in arm as they strolled down the street. And Gordy just couldn’t resist a blonde. Jamie was four when his father left. He had tried for a while to maintain a relationship with his son - Lillian couldn’t fault him there. But after a few months the weeks between visits grew longer and longer until, when he did appear on the doorstep, Jamie was shy and unwilling to go with him for ice-cream or to the park or wherever he proposed they go. By the time Jamie was ten, contact with his Dad was a cheque at Christmas and on his birthday, and maybe a phone call if he was lucky.



         Lillian heard the front door slam and was shaken out of her reverie. Jamie’s gone to school. I’m alone now. She wondered vaguely what she should do. It was such a luxury to have taken the day off. Even when she’d had that terrible flu last winter she had dragged herself into work each day. I think I’ll just stay in bed, Lillian decided. There was a book on the nightstand, the bookmark dusty where it poked above the three or four read pages it marked. Maybe read a little, Maybe just sleep. Lillian stretched and lay back on the pillows, smiling contentedly to herself.

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         When Jamie came home and found the kitchen exactly as he left it, he was surprised. His cereal bowl was still on the bench by the sink, the milk now dried to a souring crust in the bottom. The open box of cornflakes was on the kitchen table. For a moment Jamie stood inside the doorway and surveyed these things. Then he went through to the living room and threw his backpack and jacket in the general direction of the couch. Pulling his boots off as he went, he climbed the stairs and made his way to his mother’s room.

“Mum?” Jamie didn’t knock this time, just walked in. His mother was still in bed, a book open across her chest that she wasn’t reading.

“Go away, Jamie” Lillian said gently. “I need to be alone right now.”

“But…”

“But nothing, Jamie!” Lillian snapped. “I need some time to myself for once. Please try to respect that.”

“What about dinner?”

“There’s plenty of food in the kitchen. I went grocery shopping yesterday. Make yourself something.”

“What?”

“Whatever you like,” Lillian heard herself saying the words but could barely believe they were hers. She had always been so careful about what she fed her kids. Lovingly made home-cooked meals, the most nutritious of snacks. Hell, she even did her own baking rather than have them subjected to the additives and chemicals in store-bought cakes and cookies.

“Anything?” Jamie asked suspiciously. He was all too aware of his mother’s hang-ups about food. He’d been almost eight before he had McDonalds for the first time.

“Whatever,” Lillian turned away from him, dismissing him. While he was at school she had raided the kitchen herself, stockpiling non-perishable items and piling them in her wardrobe. It was like a survival kit for some natural disaster - an earthquake maybe. Only she had running water in the ensuite so hadn’t had to lug bottles of that up the stairs. Once she heard Jamie run down the stairs, she got up and turned the lock on her bedroom door.



         Back in the kitchen Jamie looked bewilderedly around, poking through cupboards and drawers curiously. This had always been his mother’s domain. He had never, even as a small boy, been invited to help bake cookies or ice a cake. And he had certainly never been asked to make a meal on his own before. The very idea of it was daunting. Jamie picked up different pots and pans, spatulas, spoons, beaters and whisks and looked at them without comprehension. He had no clue what most of them would be used for. His own experience in feeding himself was limited to pouring milk on a bowl of cereal or opening a box of crackers.

“Well, I can do that,” he said aloud, searching the pantry for the rice crackers he so liked and his mother kept the house well stocked with. “And I’m sure it isn’t too hard to cook soup.” Jamie pulled down a can of chicken noodle and read the label carefully. Hunting through the drawers once more, Jamie came across an implement that looked as though it might open a can and attacked the metal cylinder.



Crackers and peanut butter actually made a fine dinner.



         After his meagre meal, Jamie did his homework in front of the television, music videos playing at a volume he knew would ordinarily send his mother screaming into the room. He sprawled across the couch, enjoying an evening without that shrill voice constantly correcting, nagging and prodding.

“You stay up there as long as you need to, Mum,” Jamie murmured, eyes directed at the ceiling. “I’m getting along just fine. Bet you didn’t think I could!”



An odd defiance boiled up inside Jamie’s chest. He was going to prove he could make it on his own, regardless of whether he really could. The telephone rang, but Jamie ignored it. If his mother had decided to opt out of everything, well, he could break some rules too.

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         Five days later the neighbours started to notice something strange going on at Lillian Eames’ house. Her front yard had always been beautifully kept, lawns neatly trimmed, flowerbeds clear of weeds, the path always swept clean of fallen leaves. But what was this going up in the yard? What was that son of hers doing? The neighbours gathered across the street and watched as Jamie dragged furniture, artwork, toys, appliances and various other pieces of household detritus out the door and built them into artful towers, joined in places by ropes or chains. The entire yard, leading right up to the house became a sculpture of sorts, some bizarre outsider art. And once he reached the front of the house, Jamie kept constructing, the sculpture rising up and up, spreading around the house and disappearing into the backyard.



         The neighbours muttered to one another. They had tried telephoning Lillian but for several days the telephone had rung and rung, unanswered even when they could see Jamie was home. And then the line started beeping a busy signal, as if the telephone had been disconnected or someone inside had left the receiver off the hook. Her mobile was the same story, and e-mails went unanswered. No one had seen Lillian; knocking on the door elicited no response.

“Something strange going on there,” Mr. Delano muttered, shaking his head at Mrs. Guest from next door. “I don’t like it, but it’s none of my business.”



         Inside the house the sculpture continued. For three days Jamie had not slept, bathed or eaten anything but the odd handful of crackers and cereal. He was obsessed with his work, with this re-arranging of household objects into something different and aesthetically pleasing. It had started simply enough: a pile of soiled dishes in the sink had toppled, falling into a fan-shape on the bench. Jamie had stared at this for more than fifteen minutes, realising he liked it. Liked the shape and the texture of it. From there he had added other dishes, pulling things from the cupboards and drawers at random and adding them to his growing design.

“I’m an artist,” he said in wonder. “Why didn’t I know that? Why hasn’t anyone noticed before?” He kept adding things until the sculpture meandered out of the kitchen and through the dining area. Chairs, books, the fishbowl on the desk, the telephone, the television, all became a part of this mad creation.



         Once he had finished in the first floor of the house, he went down to the cellar and dragged up more and more to add to his domestic installation. The bigger the sculpture grew, the happier he got, the more confidence he gained in his previously unrecognised artistic ability.

“I’ll be famous!” he muttered to himself as he tore strips of wallpaper from the dining room wall, leaving them curling and waving in the breeze from the window opposite, open just a crack. “I’m like that guy who wraps plastic around things. Or the guy who crapped in a box and called it art. I’m a…. A… A Dadaist!” He clapped his hands, congratulating himself on remembering something from the compulsory art appreciation unit he’d snoozed through the year before.



         And then it was upstairs. He unearthed his father’s old toolkit in the cellar and that had come in handy. He had a saw to cut things that didn’t quite fit where he needed them. Nails to join things, and screws to hang things off. A drill and drill-bits, a plane, paint and paintbrushes! The sculpture grew and grew, twisting through doorways and snaking across the floor.

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         Lillian heard banging, crashes and thumps and knew she should be concerned with what her son might be doing. But somehow she could not bring herself to move from the warm cocoon she had made for herself in her room. It had been several days, she knew; how many she was unsure. And she knew she would have to get up soon, face the world once more, face Jamie and the resentment she knew she would see in him. The room was dim with the curtains drawn and Lillian kept the lamp on all the time. Day and night were indistinguishable from each other, the room sour with her own unwashed smell. The book slid from her lap and hit the floor with a loud splat that startled her into jumping.

“What the hell am I doing?” she said out loud, looking around the bedroom. “I thought I was going to change! Lying here isn’t changing anything!”



         Lillian got out of bed slowly and stiffly, muscles learning to work together again after the long period of disuse, and went to her dressing table, turning on the lamp that hung over it. She peered at her reflection in the mirror, studying herself with an intensity she hadn’t known she possessed. Raking her fingers through her unwashed, dark hair she was shocked at how many strands of white there were.

“Easily fixed!” she sang out, getting up and going to the bathroom where several months ago she had stashed a little box of hair dye, too frightened to actually use it in case it made her look brassy. She took it out and carefully read the instructions.



         After washing the dye from her hair and scrubbing herself from head to foot in the shower, Lillian stood before the mirror wrapped in a towel. Her hair was now a glossy chestnut colour that made her blue eyes sparkle in her face as they never had before. Lillian threw off the towel and admired her body in the mirror: small firm breasts, a narrow waist and gently swelling hips.

“Not bad for an old lady,” Lillian whispered as she dug into her underwear drawer. There, at the back. She pulled out a skimpy bra and panties in black lace, tags still on them. Pulling them on she twirled before the mirror, admiring the way they sat snug against her body. In the wardrobe she pawed through the dowdy skirts and blouses until she found the sheer, silky green shirt she had bought the previous year in a sale. It was so pretty, but she had never dared wear it before, the neckline too scooped and the fabric too revealing. She put it on then stepped into a pair of tailored black pants that made her legs look like they went on and on. In a box at the back of the wardrobe was a pair of shoes she had coveted for months, finally purchasing though never wearing. She slipped her feet into them, admiring how they lengthened and narrowed the foot, the heel high enough to make her feel ten feet tall.

“Now, the face,” Lillian sat down before the mirror, combing back her damp hair with her fingers. In the top drawer was a vast array of make-up. Lillian had a friend in the make-up department at the store and Debbie was always passing on samples. She had rarely used them, the colours always too bright for her. But that was for Lillian. Lily needed bold colours.



         In the mirror a new woman stood, smiling happily with a mouth slicked in red lipstick, eyes glowing under a gossamer sheen of green eye-shadow.

“Way to go, Lily!” Lily said to her reflection before spinning on her high heel and heading to the door. She unlocked it and pulled on the handle. The door did not budge. She pulled harder, wondering if the jamb might have swollen in damp weather. Nothing. Becoming frightened, Lily tugged and tugged on the doorhandle, finally realising it was not going to budge. She knocked hard on the door.

“Jamie?” she called. “James! Are you out there? Jamie, I can’t get out!” There was no reply. Panicked now she flew to the window and tore back the curtains. Instead of the view over the backyard she expected, there was only blackness, the odd pattern of old couch fabric pressed against the glass. Trying desperately to push open the window, she pressed against the glass and the frame, but nothing moved. Her blouse came untucked from her pants, one shoe fell off and tumbled to the floor. She grabbed the towel she had dropped to the floor and wrapped her hand in it as she smashed the glass windowpane, pressing her hand against the hard object that was inexplicably there. It would not move, even when she threw her entire body weight at it. Her eye make-up smudged into circles below her eyes and her hair became tangled across her face as she threw herself again and again.

“Jamie!” she cried again, knowing by now that he was not going to come. She fell to the floor, eyes filling with tears as she realised that her transformation was too late. Lily was never going to see the world.



         Out on the portico roof Jamie was nailing faded blue carpet tiles to the shingle, making eccentric spiral patterns. As the air silenced after the pop of the nail gun, he cocked his head. Coming from the corner of what had once been the house, and was now a massive artwork, came a sound. Jamie leaned back on his heels and surveyed his creation, enjoying the new layer of texture the sound created. It was a wailing sound, a keening desperate wail like that of a trapped animal. The sound of a woman’s scream…



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