The Gift

Chapter 4
Lucas

Chapter Description: The picture with all the mud.

You know what’s weird about this?

Everything. Everything is weird.

I step out of the tub and I almost fall straight back in before I find my balance on the wet, soapy tiles.

“Lily! Lily, come back!”

I hear my sister thump down the stairs. “Gotta count,” she calls back, in a sing-song voice that is both childish and spooky at the same time. “Gotta count a hun-ded!”

Why? What for? She’s making up rules as she goes along, she’s doing what she’s always done. Bossing me around, taking charge and making me feel lost.

Where is she going? What does she want? My head is cluttered with thoughts and feelings of the last few minutes. Before, we looked at photos in the kitchen. Later, we were cuddling in our fuzzy pajamas. And just now, squirming together in the bathtub.

But I was beginning to think more clearly. Left to my own space, I remembered my physics, I could even explain it to Lily.

And then it got weird again.

No pacifier this time, no dressing up. It got weird anyway. I think of Lily standing by the tub, sucking on her fingers, babbling to me about scavenger hunts.

Ever since she came back with the toy duck.

The duckie is floating on the bath water. I pick it up gingerly, as if it might be radioactive. And then I think of my dad. They put radiation inside of him, to fight his cancer. Now we’re trying to do our best to give him a perfect gift for his birthday. So that he knows we love him. So that he knows that we haven’t written him off.

I squeeze the duck absent-mindedly and there’s something so reassuring about that. I smile, thinking of my sister holding the toy on top of her head.

To make the picture. So, Daddy can take the picture…

I sigh as my thoughts begin to soften and simplify. Maybe I can try to put the duckie on my head? Maybe I can be as silly and sweet as Lily.

“Hun-ded! Hunnnn-ded!”

I frown. Lily’s voice, coming from downstairs. She’s calling out, but from further away. She’s being so silly; she’s forgotten her own plan.

I drop the duckie.

I look down at myself. Covered in bubbles, dripping water. I grab a towel, rub at my skin. The sensation helps clarify my thinking.

There’s something wrong with my sister.

“Sca-gee hun!”

I can hear her giggling, running around.

Because she’s a toddler, in her head. First the dressing up in the pajamas, the sucking on the Binky, and then bath-time with the duckie. She keeps falling under some kind of spell.

And what about me? Am I any better?

I was the one who messed my diaper. I look back with red-faced shame at the mess I made. The dirty diaper is rolled up by the toilet. I look down at my legs, craning to see if I’m clean, and I’m relieved to see that I am. No hint of the smears on my legs and rear. I’m just pink from the bath, steam rising from my skin.

More giggling from downstairs. And then a crash. Was that the living room? The kitchen?

“Lily!” I shout. “Stop! Wait for me!” I understand that my sister is an over-sized toddler, causing havoc. I consider the physics, her cause and effect. She’s going to create damage; she could easily get hurt.

I run from the bathroom into the hallway, glad to be on the carpet, and I stop by my old room, eager to put on at least a pair of pants.

Another crash downstairs helps me realize that I don’t have time for clothes.

“Uh-oh,” I hear Lily say. “Oop-sie day-zee.”

“Hang on!” I call. “I’m coming!”

I race downstairs and I enter the living room just as I hear the kitchen door open. “Don’t go outside,” I shout. I beg.

“Hidey seek!” Lily replies, adding a fit of giggles. And in this moment, I’ve never missed my phone so much. Because this is a job for the real grown-ups. This one is for Mom and Dad.

The living room is a mess of cushions pulled off the couch, as if Lily got half-way through building a pillow fort before she got distracted by something else. And then I get it; she’s searching, she’s scavenging. But that game has transformed into hide and go seek – because Lily is in charge, she has always been in charge, she’s had the corner office of every game we’ve ever played. Even Dad let her decide on the rules.

Only now, it’s different.

The rules used to be about making order for Lily, about coloring between the lines.

Nothing about this looks orderly.

The living room is in chaos. Because in Lily’s head, she’s two years old again. Because Lily is a mess. She’s going to slip; she’s going to fall down the steps and she’s going to break a leg.

“Lily!”

I don’t want to run outside without clothes on, but I barely give it a thought. I feel the tingle from before, and now I can be a superhero, saving the damsel in distress. Saving Lily from whatever madness has taken hold.

I run into the kitchen, I see Lily’s wet footprints, I see the open door. I walk onto the deck, closing the door behind me and I look out into the yard.

The rain is falling just as hard as it did a few minutes ago. The lawn is a mud pit. In the center, stands Lily, with her arms around an object that takes me back to early childhood.

She sees me, shouts. I see her, naked, hair plastered to her head. She sounds triumphant.

I have no idea what she’s saying.

“Come back,” I call. “It’s too wet. You’re getting all muddy.” I stretch out my hands as if I could just pick her out from the grass. “Please come back, Lily.”

She laughs, shakes her head, her hair flapping back and forth, covering her face. She shouts again, and this time I can decipher her words.

“Found it!”

She has won a game of her own devising, a game in her muddled mind.

What has she found?

Not her phone. I doubt she even remembers she owns one. No, she has found a striped beachball, a replica of the toy we used to play with right here in the backyard.

The most innocent of times. The silliest of times.

I take a step onto the wooden stairs, and I feel the rain on my skin. Cool and refreshing. Cleansing.

I look towards the privacy fence, and I know that it’s never been so valuable. A six-foot chance that no one has seen Lily out here without her clothes on. No yet. The weather helps. But if she keeps shouting, someone will look out their window.

I have to get my sister inside. And to do that, I will have to indulge her. I will have to outsmart her inner toddler.

How difficult could that possibly be?

I walk down the steps and stand on the bottom stair. I wave at Lily through the rain. There are just a few feet between us.

“Come inside, Lily! We can play inside!”

She shakes her head. “Nuh-uh!” she counters. She swings her hips, arms still wrapped around the ball. As if it is her hard-won treasure. She giggles. “Gotta catch me!” Goh-cadge-me!

I groan. I’ll have to go and get her. I might just have to pick her up and put her over my shoulder, carry her in. I’ll do whatever it takes, to bring her inside and hope I can bring her back to her senses.

God, when are our parents due back? Do I have half an hour to work with? Do I have five minutes? Again, I wish for a phone, I wish for a damn watch. But we have nothing out here. Nothing but our own bodies, scrambled minds, and of course a striped beach ball.

But I am big. I will be the hero.

Who knows? Maybe in a few minutes, safely dressed and dry and waiting for our parents, we can laugh about all of this.

I step onto the lawn.

Squelch.

I look down. There is mud oozing between my toes.

I bite my lip.

There’s something funny about mud. There’s something funny about making a big mess.

The mud between my toes feels nice. It feels like freedom. It feels as though I could just forget all my worries, I could just run and laugh and-

I shake my head. I look at my sister. She’s standing there, holding the beachball, waiting for me. Waiting for her brother.

She thinks she’s in charge. But she can’t be. She’s not competent. I must get her inside.

“Lily,” I say, feeling the rain on my skin, feeling the muddy ground beneath my feet. “We have to go inside.”

She shakes her head. “Nu-uh!” It’s the only argument she has, and apparently the only one she needs. So much for rhetoric; she’s reduced to the conversational gymnastics of a toddler.

I raise a finger and waggle it. “Daddy says you gotta come inside.” It is a lie, but I know while Lily may never do what I tell her, she wants to be a good girl for her father.

Sure enough, I see the change in her expression. “Dah-dee?” she says, so softly I almost miss it.

I nod theatrically. I point. “Daddy wants to give you cuddles. But he doesn’t want a muddy monster, he wants…” I search for the words. “He wants his pretty princess.” I wipe at my face, pushing rain and hair out of my eyes. “You gotta get in the tub, Lilly.” And then, inspired, I pull out the password, I say what Dad would say.

“Lilly, lolly, loo.”

My sister’s mouth drops open.

For a second, I know that I have her. I can see it in her mud-streaked face; she remembers the bath, the bubbles, the story makes sense.

“Lolly…” She echoes. “Loh…lee…loo…for dah-dee…”

I take two steps towards her, trying to keep my footing in the rainswept mess. Once I’ve got her hand, she’s coming inside. I’ll drag her if I must.

I’ve almost reached Lily when her expression changes from innocence to something more knowing, more calculating. She grins, raises the beachball above her head. “Daddy gone ‘way!” she declares. “Lilly bih giwl!”

“You’re all muddy,” I reply desperately. “We gotta get you in the bubble- “

“Yeet!” She shrieks. “Yeeeeet!” And with that cry, she throws the ball.

Reflexively, I hold out my hands to catch it.

I’m a football player. I’m on the team. I’m a great tight end – of course, I catch the beachball.

Lily cheers.

I feel a tingle of satisfaction. And then, like any good tight end catching a pass, I want to turn and run.

There’s no end zone. I run anyway because I have the ball. I run and my feet find traction in the grass for a few steps before I find more mud. I slide, falling backwards until I’m on the ground.

It wasn’t a fumble; my body is between the ball and the ground.

Yet, I do feel as though I’ve made a mistake. Something about the ball, gripped in my arms, that reminds me of before. It reminds me of sucking on Lily’s Binky, it reminds me of squeezing the rubber duckie. What I want to ask, as my mind starts to warm and bubble like the cherry-scented bath I enjoyed a few minutes before, is Where did you get this stuff, Lily? Where did you get these silly toys?

Because they are silly. Or rather, they are designed to make us silly. I get that, in the moment between lying on the ground, looking up at the rain-soaked sky, and Lily appearing above me, grinning like a beautiful idiot.

The question fades away, pushed out of my head by the bubbles.

Oof.

Lily falls on top of me, the ball in between us, and she rolls off, landing with a muddy splash beside me.

She giggles, she squeals with delight. Now, we’re both in the mud, now we’re both playing her game.

A game with a ball, the striped beachball now sitting between us. A game with mud, the kind that seems determined to get into every fold of our skin, every hank of hair. A game with rules that only the youngest child can understand. A game of energy, discovery, of messes.

As words leave my mind, as coherent thoughts dissolve into laughter, I understand that it’s okay. We don’t need to use words; we don’t need to know about consequences. Mommy and Daddy will clean us up, they will make us clean and warm again. Soon, we will be back in our diapers and our fuzzy jammies. We will have our milk and cuddles.

“Boh,” says Lily, patting the ball towards me. Our splayed legs create a playing field for our toy.

I bat the ball back with both hands. “Boh!”

We grin at each other. Like old times.

it’s not as if the rain can make us wetter, or the mud can make us dirtier. We’re already soaked, beyond filthy.

The game continues. Lily wins (she always does) by climbing on top of the ball, and when it slides out from under her, she climbs on top of me, and we squirm around each other, without a thought other than for love and laughter.

Lily lies on top of me and smiles, triumphant and affectionate. “Bruh,” she mumbles. She starts to suck on her muddy fingers, and she says more but there are no real words, she’s just making noises. I make silly noises back, we babble and giggle, and I watch drool run down her chin and mix with the water on her boobies.

I lie in the mud and smack the ground beside me, delighting in the sounds and sensations, and I don’t want this game to ever end. Because this is where we belong, Lily and me, playing our silly and messy game. Looking at her pretty, dirty face, blathering and gurgling at her, I know that we are together forever.