Something Beautiful

Jillian said, “I remember wanting to run outside and grab you and hug and hug you.”

She found herself wishing that Allie would understand the underlying meaning. Her hands tightened around her daughter’s shoulders, holding her very close, the way she hadn’t done that sun-dappled afternoon. She touched Allie’s hair now, stroking that child-soft face.

She shook with the memory of how she’d longed to smell her daughter’s dewy skin, kiss those stained, sticky fingers, but hadn’t, because she didn’t want to interrupt that carefree dance, that innocent romp, that momentary return to normality.

If only she had.

Instead, Jillian had simply watched, a dazed smile on her own face, as her daughter—unbronzed by the summer sun, fair hair dark from too many days spent inside, knees unskinned from lack of romping outdoors, cheeks free of the normal freckles—had danced in the wilderness that their courtyard had become.

Jillian’s heart had wrenched then, and was still torn by the realization that the clear honey-brown eyes had, for a miraculous moment, been unconstrained by the clouded remnants of the explosion that had torn a hole in the very fabric of her childhood universe.

“I was happy that day,” Allie said. She seemed to be implying that she wasn’t happy any longer.

Jillian murmured an affirmative, but couldn’t hold back the frown that her daughter’s words engendered. She wanted to fall down upon her knees and beg for the universe to realign itself.

And, for some unknown reason, this thought reminded her of Steven, of the way he stood with his hands splayed, his face to the sun. And the way he’d locked gazes with her that afternoon. She shivered.

Allie said, “I was singing a song. Do you remember what I was singing?”

“No,” Jillian said honestly.

She hadn’t really heard it, and she’d been too busy reveling in the contrast between the dancing child and the little girl who at night issued long, keening wails, the heart-wrenching screams of an innocent who had witnessed too much, had smelled, felt and tasted the raw, undistilled evidence of her father’s last gasp of life, his body cradled in too-small, too-frail arms.

And on that day when Allie had discovered Lyle, Jillian had simply been entranced at the sight of her daughter’s dance, calendula stems trailing chlorophyll down soft, rounded arms, joyful that for a blessed moment Allie was simply a child again, forgetful of past or future, just eight years old on a sunny day, singing to flowers, skipping with butterflies and bees.

She hadn’t heard the song, but for a truly magical moment Jillian had felt as if she could possibly depress the door’s handle, slip down the steps into the brown, untended grass, and join her daughter in that strange and innocent herald to autumn. Her tears had dried, and her heart had pounded in sudden promise. She had felt her fingers tingle in anticipation as they encircled the brass lever.

“That’s when Lyle called to me,” Allie said. “That was the first time I heard him.”

Jillian stared at Steven’s miraculously different courtyard, locked in memory, locked in that day only a month old, a day when hope had blossomed and then abruptly altered.

She held her daughter against her now, warm, parental, but on that day, during that moment, her daughter had turned her head slightly, not toward Jillian, but to the overgrown lilac hedge to the left side of the courtyard, the dividing line between their inner courtyard and the other side yard, leading to the guesthouse, the only part of the enclosed patio not contained by the thick adobe walls.

“I remember,” Jillian said. “You turned to the lilac hedge, like someone had called to you.”

If only she’d called to Allie instead.

“He did,” Allie stated firmly. “Lyle called me. By my name. He already knew it, I guess. I couldn’t see him at first, but then I did.”

Jillian withheld a shudder.

“I wonder why Lyle says Steven is like him,” Allie said, her speech slow with puzzlement. “I saw Steven right away.”

Jillian didn’t answer. She couldn’t think of a thing to say to this. Gloria, the ubiquitous grief therapist, had suggested accepting Lyle as fact and avoiding pointing out his obvious unreality. She’d said that Allie needed this invisible friend because he represented something no one could take away from her. But now Allie seemed to be implying that Steven might be a figment of her imagination, as well.

“Well, that’s because Steven is a real live man,” Jillian said.

Was she saying this a little more strongly than might be necessary? As if to negate Allie’s earlier assertion that he wasn’t?

Allie shrugged a little, then continued with her story. “I looked and looked in the lilacs…then suddenly I saw him.” Her voice rose with satisfaction. “He’s so amazing, Mommy.”

Jillian realized Allie was describing Lyle, not Steven. According to Allie, Lyle was something so beautiful, so incredible, that he was hard to understand at first. She knew how Allie felt.

“Light stands out in spikes all around his body, like fur. Light fur. Rainbow fur,” she said, and she always giggled a little. “And his eyes are so green. His eyes are ’xactly like Steven’s…only bigger, you know?” She held up her fingers and made a two-handed circle. “This big.”

Jillian, unable to hold in the shiver this produced in her, as if she almost recognized Allie’s description, as if she had seen something like Lyle once upon a nightmare, wanted the conversation over. She was tired of hearing about Lyle and his seemingly unending virtues.

Jillian finished the description abruptly. “And when he moves, the rainbow light moves all around.”

She knew her voice sounded flat, even cold, and was sorry about deflating Allie’s enthusiastic memory of her first meeting with Lyle, but felt unable to continue the game tonight. It was all too similar to how she herself felt about Steven—all light that moved around. But she was an adult who knew that all things hold contrasts, opposites, and that nothing was ever always “good.”

“Remember, Mommy?”

Jillian nodded, having heard the tale before, having witnessed all of it but the “seeing” of Lyle. Allie’s beautiful creature still remained invisible to her adult eyes.

Maybe, as a favor to Allie, she’d try again to paint him from Allie’s instructions. But she somehow knew that her rendition wouldn’t capture him, that she would depict him too “silly.” In her rendition, Lyle would appear a toy. And he’s not, Mom. He’s something beautiful.

“He told me he really liked my dancing,” Allie said now, continuing with her account of the moment of discovery.

Jillian frowned as she remembered how Allie’s hands slowly had lowered to her sides. Then Allie had stood with one leg still slightly raised, as though ready to resume her skipping. But to Jillian she’d appeared a music-box ballerina, wound down and waiting for someone to turn the key. Or maybe she had been so poised because some part of her remained attuned to her mother’s warnings about strangers or, suddenly mindful of her own dark memories, had been prepared for flight from the sharp report of a gun, the shattering of glass, her daddy’s bleeding body pitching sideways onto hers, the car crashing into an adobe wall. Maybe all she’d appeared was ready to run, to race up the few steps and into her mother’s arms for what little safety Jillian could offer her.

And I didn’t move, Jillian thought, her frown deepening.

Now, as she had almost every day for the past month, she wondered what would have happened if she had gone ahead and stepped outside, as instinct had told her to do. Would Lyle have simply disappeared at that moment? Would he never have become that unseen presence in their home?

“Where’s Lyle now?” she asked. She didn’t want to know, not really. But she had to ask.

“Oh, he’s over by the table.”

The table behind them. Lyle was standing at a place that would account for that itchy, watched feeling prickling her shoulder blades.

“Does he sleep?” Jillian asked.

Allie cocked her head in that endearing considering pose she’d used since she was an infant. “I dunno. When I’m asleep, I can’t see what he’s doing.”

That was eminently logical, Jillian thought with a smile.

“Oh,” Allie said. “He says he watches you sleep sometimes.”

Jillian’s smiled faded abruptly. She felt the heart-stopping sensation that Allie was telling nothing but the absolute truth.

“Why would he do that?” Jillian asked. Her mouth was dry, and her lungs felt constricted.

“He likes looking at you.”

If Elise was here, she’d be giving Jillian one of those I-don’t-like-this looks.

Jillian heard a faint rustle behind them and swirled to see what caused it.