Simulacrum

A lovely blue cape nestles between two splits, both cold and grey as steel. White picket envelops the house. The mailbox looks like an alligator, mouth open ready to snap, or accept periodicals. A tire swing dangles from the strong arm of an ancient oak that remembers when this slice of New Hampshire heaven was once a great forest. Now its old friends comprise the studs and sills and rafters of the neighborhood, mocked and imprisoned by the corpses of its compatriots. It stands tall as ever, indentured into a plaything for the enemy.

From the curb, one is forgiven for falling in love with this picture of domestic utopia, upon closer inspection, however, the cracks begin to form. White trim chips and cracks, rust creeps up the black wrought iron railings, the ropes of the tire swing fray enough to worry a hovering mother.

Every week two local men who smell of cigarettes and dress in neon ride industrial sized lawnmowers to cut the neighbor’s grass until it is perfectly manicured. Sandwiched between pristine lawns, the grass before the lovely blue cape grows unkempt and uncared for, invaded by weeds.

There is a doll on top of the bookshelf in the basement.

A car pulls into the driveway, a Ford with rusted brakes and pollen streaks. The woman driving puts her car in park and turns to smile at her daughter. Two different hairstyles adorn the woman’s head, the left an elegant bob with bangs to match, the right a rebellious shave. Her eyes share in the duality. No one alive knows if her eyes, right green and left purple, are natural or if she uses contacts, only the woman herself.

“Ready, Sweet Pea?” the woman asks her daughter.

Sweet Pea nods and smiles. She is always nodding and smiling. Her pigtails, pink backpack, and matching jacket could be taken out of a department store magazine, were in fact taken out of a department store magazine. “What did I ever do to deserve you, little lady?”

Sweet Pea immediately thinks of the tall ceilings and baroque wooden detailing of the city courtroom where Mommy told the judges and lawyers and Joe especially that she and only she deserved her.

Mommy lifts her daughter from the car seat and kisses her cheek before carrying her into the house. She deposits Sweet Pea on a tall chair at the kitchen island, searches through the fridge, and gives her daughter a drinkable yogurt and a string cheese. The phone in the woman’s pocket buzzes. She sees the name on the screen, and her face changes from rainbows to thunderclouds in an instant. Sweet Pea freezes with a string of cheese halfway to her mouth. Mommy marches to her bedroom and closes the door. Sweet Pea finds herself alone in the kitchen.

The doll on top of the bookshelf is made of rough burlap. It wears a tiny suit sewn together from scraps of real suit. Its feet are covered in black sprayable rubber, painted glossy to look like men’s dress shoes. A plastic suitcase is glued to one hand, a cell phone in the other. The eyes of the doll are black buttons, sewn with garish green thread. Staples comprise the mouth. There is no nose to speak of. The hair on top of its head appears to be human.

Sweet Pea finishes her drinkable yogurt and string cheese and throws her trash in the garbage. She tears paper towels from the roll and wipes up her yogurt drips and cheese crumbs. She takes off her shoes and puts them together on the mat by the door. She hangs her jacket on the hook beside.

Downstairs in the playroom Sweet Pea gets out the oversized Legos and begins building a tower. She sits in her little red chair and arranges her foundation on top of the little red table. The foundation is wide and strong, a lesson learned after countless wobbly towers crashed to the blue-gray carpet below, undone by weak bases. The second level is all arches and hidden doorways. Sweet Pea likes to build secrets into her tower, places she can store things, the note from a boy at school, a particularly interesting leaf blown over her feet by the wind, one of the locks of hair Mommy keeps in the armoire of her bedroom.

The doll looks over the edge of the bookshelf. Below, Sweet Pea constructs in silence.

Sweet Pea feels something in her stomach, then panic, as her underwear dampens just slightly. She drops the blocks in her hand and rushes to the bathroom. Mommy gets so mad at her when she wets her pants. Sweet Pea just got so engrossed in her building she didn’t listen when her tummy said time to go. It’s just a little bit. If Sweet Pea is really good and keeps her listening ears on the rest of the day Mommy can still be happy with her.

A loud crashing of oversized Legos interrupts Sweet Pea’s wiping.

A fancy suited burlap doll with black button eyes sewn with green thread lays in the middle of her ruined tower, blocks strewn about the surface of the little red table. Sweet Pea has never seen this doll before. She picks it up and wipes dust off its jacket. She looks to the top of the bookshelf, the only place it could have fallen from, and wonders. She runs her hand over its hair, which doesn’t feel like any of her other dolls. Maybe this is a gift from Mommy, hidden until the right moment, fallen by accident?

The doll is odd looking, but charming, in a battle-scarred prince sort of way. It smells familiar somehow, like an old friend after time apart. He sits in the chair beside Sweet Pea to oversee the construction of her new tower, bigger and better than ever. Someone in a suit should make sure things go according to plan. Joe wears suits and is always telling people what to do, especially Mommy. That’s the way the world works, Mommy is always saying things like that. Showing men like the burlap one in the suit her middle finger, telling them to eff off or eff themselves.

The tower finished, Sweet Pea looks over to her new friend and gasps. In his place is now a great ape! The ape climbs up the tower and, upon reaching the top, pounds its powerful chest in triumph and roars. A plane made of Sweet Pea fingers swoops low and buzzes the ape. It swings and snarls. The plane wobbles, barely able to dart away. Guns fire and the ape roars in anger and fear. It leaps off the tower and catches the plane, one gnarly knuckled fist gripping the thumb wing. The plane tailspins. The ape roars. Together they careen into the tower, and it comes crashing down around them.

Panting, the ape pushes himself to standing. He looks around at the broken tower and ruined finger plane and he roars one last time in hard-won victory.

Sweet Pea sits back down in her chair with a huff. Then she smiles at her new friend.

“That was fun,” she says. “Hungry?”

Sweet Pea takes the stairs two at a time. Until she reaches the top. There is a man in the kitchen. Sweet Pets gets cold all over and can’t move. Scruff makes his face petty and mean. The dark circles and red lines in his eyes do not help. He smells like the bar smells across town, like things unwashed and uncared for.

“Don’t you worry, Sweet Pea, this here is Mark,” Mommy says, clicking down the hallway in high heels and jangling with many bracelets. “He just came for a little reading. Didn’t you, Mark?”

Mark shoots a glance at Mommy and puts something into his pocket. Then he nods.

“Don’t be putting that away now. We’ll get to it,” Mommy says. Marks lips press together in relief.

Mommy stands on her toes to grab the box she keeps above the refrigerator. Silver swirls on a background of purple and black cover the surface of the box. A small chrome padlock dangles from the clasp in front. Mommy blows dust off its cover, takes Mark by the hand, and marches them both past Sweet Pea.

“Now, don’t go knocking on the door disturbing us. I need complete quiet to do a reading, you know that. You just go downstairs and play with your toys, and I’ll call you up when we’re done.” Mommy bends down and plants a kiss on her daughter’s forehead. Her bedroom door closes with finality. Sweet Pea hears the lock grind closed.

Sweet Pea knows they will be in Mommy’s bedroom a while. She creeps to the refrigerator and pulls the freezer tray open as slowly as she can. Inside, in an inviting white plastic wrapper, wait her favorite thing in the world- drumsticks. Sweet Pea grabs one for herself and one for her new friend, closes the freezer door, and dashes downstairs.

“Told you they were scrumptious,” Sweet Pea tells her new friend. Though his face is stained brown from the chocolate, he didn’t like his treat much. Sweet Pea had to finish most of it for him.

“What should we do now?” Sweet Pea asks her friend, lying on her stomach, hands supporting her chin so she can look him in his black and green sewn eyes. “No, we can’t go outside without Mommy. We’ll get in trouble.”

But would they? Sweet Pea knows from experience Mommy’s bedroom time with the men that come over can take forever. Sweet Pea often finds herself eating table scraps or falling asleep without dinner before Mommy and the men come out, glistening and stinking and looking at the floor instead of one another. This time, Mommy and Mark haven’t been in there long. Sweet Pea and her new friend, she thinks, have plenty of time to play.

Together they sneak into the smallish backyard and wait in the graveyard of a deceased garden until they are sure no one is coming out to investigate the scrape of the closing slider door. Satisfied, the pair make for a green plastic turtle-shaped sandbox. Sweet Pea kicks out the turds from a local cat and, because her new friend barely touched his ice cream, sets about making mud pies with water scooped from a puddle of day-old rainwater.

After Sweet Pea burps her burlap buddy so he won’t get sick on the swings. She lifts him into the baby swing, the one that looks like a big blue diaper, and pushes him. “Isn’t this fun,” she says in her best Mommy impression. “How high can you go?” Higher and harder she pushes her new friend. His fine hair waves back and forth. At the zenith of every swing, for just a moment, gravity loses its hold on the doll, and Sweet Pea marvels at the way he hangs in the air above his seat, a tiny burlap astronaut, just for her.

The phone rings inside the house.

Sweat Pea leans into the next push, shoving with all her might. The doll flies backward and tumbles from his seat, bouncing against the fence and falling into the too tall weeds at its foot.

“Sweet Pea, what the hell are you doing outside by yourself?” Mommy yells from the porch. One hand squeezes her hip, the other the filter of a long cigarette. “Get in the house right now, Ms.”

“Busted,” Sweet Pea whispers to her new friend. She picks him up from the grass and brushes him off. A gasp escapes her lips as one button eye falls back to the earth. She picks it up, then walks back toward the porch and her mother, studying her feet.

“Between you running off and Joe calling out of nowhere spouting nonsense, I swear I’m going to an early grave.”

As Sweet Pea reaches the top step of the porch, two hands grip her arms hard enough to leave bruises. “Where did you get that?” Mommy says. Her eyes are wide and scary. Her lips shake and her cigarette burns at their feet.

“I found it. In the basement. It fell on my block tower,” says Sweet Pea, her own voice shaking. The only person to ever yell at her is Joe. Mommy never treats her like this, not even when she accidentally breaks something or walks in on her and the men and they yell to get out.

“Give him to me honey,” Mommy says, showing her quivering hand. “Oh my god, his eye!”

Sweet Pea relinquishes her new friend, feeling a growing sense of darkness and loss so deep within herself she thinks she might throw up.

Mommy looks around and then leans close and whispers. “Good girl. Now listen, this is very important, go get your suitcase and fill it with clothes. Just clothes now. Don’t let me open it up tomorrow and find candy and dollies. Okay? You and I are going on a trip.” Sweet Pea wants to ask where and why and how and about a million other questions. Mommy puts a finger to Sweet Pea’s lips and says, “I’ll tell you everything later, for now, let’s just get ready to go, okay?”

Sweet Pea nods and floats into her room, out of body, more confused at this moment than at any time previously in her young life. She gets her pink luggage from under the bed and puts in all her favorite outfits, some shoes, and probably more stuffed animals than Mommy would like but she doesn’t know where they are going or for how long. Sweet Pea decides she has to prepare for anything, and that means no unicorns left behind.

“It’s all going to be okay, Sweet Pea. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all,” Mommy says as she buckles Sweet Pea into the car seat. Sweet Pea can’t dislodge the feeling of coming dread stomach as she watches Mark drive away.

Another man stands behind Mommy. This one wears a black suit with a bright red tie. Sweet Pea recognizes him. It’s Joe. One of his eyes is completely white, sightless. Blood drips from the tear duct. The briefcase hanging by his hip has seen better days. His shiny black shoes are scuffed. In his other hand is a gun.

Sweet Pea feels the scream rip from her throat.

Mommy whips around and puts herself between the man and Sweet Pea. “Jesus, Joe. What the hell happened to you?” Mommy says. Her voice shakes like she knows exactly what happened to him. Her hand grips Sweet Pea’s knee so hard it hurts.

Joe barks a laugh, loud and mean. “What happened to me? Is that a joke?” He snarls and shows bloodied teeth. “Just give it to me?”

“Joe, calm down, please. Give you what?”

Joe spits blood onto the driveway and growls. “Don’t make me ask you again, Agnes.” He shows them the gun in one hand and an open palm in the other.

“Joe, please, I…”

“Do you think this is a fucking game!” Joe roars. Spit flies from his lips. He leans forward dangerously. “I know you, Agnes! I know how much you charge the men you bring over! I know what you do with their fluids in the basement! Look at me! I didn’t throw myself from my own balcony! I didn’t put out my own fucking eye! This is not the deal we had! You get the house and the kid, I get the money, and we never fuck with each other again! Did you forget? Now give me the fucking doll or I go back to court and Penelope is mine!”

Mommy’s face hardens. Her back stiffens, and her nose lifts in defiance. She takes the doll from Sweet Pea and shows it to Joe. Joe reaches for it. Mommy snatches it back and takes a knife from her pocket, pressing it against the throat of the doll. A teardrop of blood streaks down Joe’s neck. He puts his hands up and takes two big steps back.

“Okay, okay,” he said, his voice taking on a whining edge. “Jesus, okay, I’ll chill.”

“We are leaving, Joe. We’re going far away from here. You are never going to see Sweet Pea again. Do you understand?” Mommy says. Her voice is icy slashing blades making Sweet Pea cold all over.

Joe’s eyes hold fire and rage and violence.

Mommy presses the knife harder into the doll. “Do you understand?” She says, enunciating each word to the breaking point.

Joe nods and grunts in pain.

“Good,” Mommy says. “Get in your car, keep your hands on the wheel until we leave. If you can’t do that, or if I see you following behind us at any point, I rip the head off this fucking doll. Clear?”

Joe nods. He slams his car door shut and grips the wheel with white knuckles, twisting it like he imagines it to be Mommy’s neck.

“I need you to do something for me, baby,” Mommy says. She hands Sweet Pea the doll and the knife. “I need you to hold these. Don’t let them go for any reason. Okay?”

“I’m not allowed to play with knives,” Sweet Pea says.

Mommy smiles but it’s sad. “Just this once baby. Then you won’t have to do anything bad ever again. Okay?”

Sweet Pea nods through a haze of tears.

“One more thing honey. If you see Joe get out of his car. I need you to push that knife into the middle of the doll right here. Can you do that?”

“Will that hurt him?”

Mommy closes her eyes and nods. Tears fell onto Sweet Pea’s little pink jeans.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Mommy kisses Sweet Pea on the top of the head and pets her hair. “I know baby. You are so good. Never, ever change. I hope you won’t have to do it, but if he gets out of his car, I need you to. If not, he will hurt us, both of us. Do you understand?” Sweet Pea nods. “Good. My Sweetest Pea. Tomorrow we’re going to get us some ice cream. Maybe we’ll find a beach to eat it at. What do you say?”

“Mommy, it’s not summer yet,” Sweet Pea smiles.

“Screw it. We girls do what we want, right?”

“Right.”

Another kiss and Mommy buckles Sweet Pea tightly into the car seat. In her right hand, Sweet Pea holds the burlap doll and in the other the glinting, glaring knife. Mommy turns the key and starts the car.

“Phew,” Mommy said. “Alright. Let’s get this…”

The car door flies open, and Mommy is ripped out and thrown into the driveway. She strikes her head on the pavement and rolls into the grass. Sweet Pea watches the skin of Mommy’s shoulder scrape off as she bounces and slides. Joe stands over her with the gun, grunting and panting.

“Let me see your hands, Agnes!” Mommy puts her hands over her head and spreads her fingers. Her palms bleed from raw scrapes. “Where is the doll?”

“Glovebox,” Mommy gets out, her mouth full of grass and blood.

Joe inserts himself in the car and Sweet Pea thinks he smells a lot like the Mark man. She wonders if all bad men smell like this. Joe pulls everything out of the glovebox, tissues and tampons and the registration, and tosses it into the passenger side footwell. Then he touches the center of his chest and turns to Sweet Pea, who holds the knife against the burlap doll just like Mommy did.

“Give me the doll, Penelope. Please,” Joe says. Even young, Sweet Pea can see the roiling storms bubbling inside him, the self-loathing and rage and sheer danger of him.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Fine. It’s your name, but fine. Sweet Pea. Please, give me the doll. You don’t want to hurt me, do you?”

“You hurt Mommy.”

“No, we were just playing around,” Joe’s eyes grow wide. His hands rise and his voice rises higher. “Okay, okay, okay, I hurt Mommy. I’m sorry. But she was going to hurt me too. Just like you’re doing now. It is a really bad thing, Penelope, sorry, Sweet Pea, to hurt someone with a doll like you are doing now. You and Mommy could both get in a lot of serious trouble. But if you give me the doll, I can keep you safe.”

“I don’t believe you,” Sweet Pea says.

Joe closes his eyes. His lips tremble. But when he opens them again, he doesn’t look like himself anymore. He looks like a monster, the thing from Sweet Pea’s nightmares chasing her down dark, endless hallways. His eyes grow red and wet and scrunched until Sweet Pea can barely see them. Sweat drips from his forehead, scarlet now with a great vein pulsing through its center. He opens his mouth as if to shout and Sweet Pea sees fire and blood fly from between his monstrous pointed teeth and her left hand stabs down into her leg and they both scream, together.

Joe falls onto his back. He gasps and scratches at his chest until he shakes with his whole body and then gargles and then nothing. Sweet Pea screams at the knife pinning the burlap doll against her leg. Then Mommy is with her and telling her everything is going to be okay and Sweet Pea screams again as the knife rips from her leg. Mommy wraps Sweet Pea’s bleeding leg in her shirt and squeezes it tight, so tight, earning Sweet Pea another scream. Mommy cries and apologizes but Sweet Pea doesn’t catch much of it. Soon, everything is black.

After days and talking to men in suits and doctors with needles and sleeping in the hospital for a while, Mommy and Sweet Pea finally make it to the coast. They buy a shack at the edge of a swamp, overlooking the ocean. Mommy brings home books about how to survive and together they learn how to tie lines and hook worms and plant and forage, and they do just that. Soon, Mommy even gets a job. When she loses that job, Mommy brings home burlap and buttons and thread and a bottle of liquor from the store. Sweet Pea waits for her mother to fall asleep. She remembers how Joe became a monster, the two-inch scar on her leg, and throws it all into the fire.

The next day, Mommy sees charred burlap and an empty bottle and sits for a long while staring into the corpse of last night’s fire. After some time, Sweet Pea sits next to her and rests her head on her mother’s shoulder. Mommy wets the top of her head with tears and a kiss. Together they watch the sun rise over proud pines, and wonder, and hope.

*** 

Eric McLaughlin is a husband and father of two. When he isn't working construction, woodworking, or spending time with his family, he is writing. His work has appeared in Night Picnic Press, The Offing, and the Ripples in Space Podcast, among others.