Lacy Eye by Jessica Treadway

do.”
    “Worse than somebody else fooling you?” I leaned forward, impressed by her question. Though she was only six and had never seemed all that reflective, it sounded as if this was something she might have thought about before now.
    “Yes,” Joe said, “because somebody else fooling you isn’t necessarily in your control. But fooling yourself is.”
    She said okay and asked if she could go, and he said yes, but that she had to give him a kiss first. I heard a big smack, and then she ran from the room. I waited a few moments, then asked him from the door how everything had gone. “Fine,” he said, turning to some papers on his desk. “I think she got it.” I could tell he was pleased with himself.
    But the next morning, when I walked Dawn and Iris to the bus stop, Dawn ran ahead of us to tell Cecilia Baugh, “Guess what? I have a lacy eye! This one!” And she pointed.
    Iris looked up at me, exasperated. “What a moron,” she said, but I shushed her and said I’d better not hear her using that word again.
    Standing in her living room now, next to the picture of Rud Petty, I was grateful that Iris had never overheard her father accuse me of “lacy eye,” because she was angry enough that she probably would have thrown it in my face, along with accusing me of living in “fantasy land.”
    “That’s not what I’m doing, Iris,” I said quietly.
    “This picture is precisely why”—she gestured at it again—“you have to remember. Look at what we had, before she did what she did.” She pointed, and though I didn’t follow her finger, I knew she was referring to the way Joe supported the two of us on either side of him, her and me, his hand pressing separate messages into our chiffon-covered backs. In her maid-of-honor dress Dawn stood on the other side of Archie, so that no one from our immediate family was touching her. Was it possible that she’d felt rejected, somehow, within the family celebration? In the photograph she looked a little lost, or hurt, but I thought maybe I was just being too sensitive on her behalf. After all, on her other side—at the edge of the family—stood Rud Petty.
    And back then Dawn had made no secret about the fact that as long as she had him, she had everything she needed.
    I didn’t stay long, after we argued over the photograph. It seemed to me that Iris felt as relieved as I did when she and Josie walked me out to the driveway. Upset as I was about our quarrel, I didn’t notice that during the time I’d been in the house, the sky that had been so bright when I drove out had turned overcast, and the air was heavy with about-to-spill rain. I was just getting my keys out when a tremendous crack split the sky, and shutting my eyes tight, I pitched myself to the ground; later, Iris told me it looked as if I were trying to crawl under the car.
    “Mom, what are you doing?” She was scared, I could see that, at the same time trying not to show it because Josie was standing beside her.
    “What was that?” I asked, still keeping my eyes closed.
    “Just thunder.” She knelt beside me. “Open your eyes.”
    I got up shakily with my daughter’s help. “I thought…it sounded like—” I said, but I couldn’t finish.
    “Are you remembering something?” Despite my distress, I could see she was excited. “Did you just have a flashback?”
    I brushed off my hands and felt for the keys I’d dropped. “No,” I said, though I wasn’t sure of that at all. The sound had set off a memory of some kind, but it made me feel so sick that I didn’t want to pursue it.
    “Come back inside,” Iris urged, but I insisted I was fine. Reluctantly, she let me go.
    I’d only pretended not to be able to identify the sound that had sent me to the ground in terror. And it wasn’t thunder. It was the sound of a croquet mallet hitting something as hard as it could.

A Gesture of Modesty
    I drove straight home from Iris’s and gave Abby a walk. As much as I wanted to lie down