The Lovely Shadow

CHAPTER 1

Some days from my life stand out more clearly than others in my memory—I think it is likely that way for most people—however one day from my past stands out with particular clarity. June 12th, 1990—I remember that day quite clearly. I remember it because it was a day of revelation for me, and the day my life started over.

It was two days after my seventh birthday and I was digging through my older brother, Joe’s, left behind possessions looking for a treasure. I had expected that treasure to come in the form of a comic book—of which my brother had been an avid collector. The treasure I found, however, came in the form of Kim Basinger.

It was a tattered copy of the February, 1983 issue of Playboy magazine. Kim Basinger graced its cover like some kind of benevolent angel or perhaps, a goddess, promising that all the needs of the heart could and would be met by her without any necessary actions or reciprocations on my part.

It was only a head shot, without any giant breasts thrust forward in a grotesque display of sexually predative desire. No long, unclothed legs opened slightly to reveal the faintest hint of that mystery of mysteries at the pelvis of Woman that has so entranced men through the ages that they would commit acts of murder, slander, war, debauchery, deceit, and countless other horrors just so they can lay a finger on the fallacy that they have somehow become the sole master of this mystery, (this will never be however, for this mystery belongs to Woman alone).

No, it was only a picture of her head. She was lying on her side on some kind of grey box and staring intently at me. At me!

There was no lusty gleam in her eyes, nor were her lips pouty and swollen, alluring and glistening with feminine sweetness. There was none of that. She simply lay there staring at me. And at the same time she was laying there, she did not simply lay there, she existed there!

She existed there encompassing my entire world with her long blond curls hanging down out of the camera’s reach—seemingly to infinity—and staring at me through the tattered cover page with blue-grey eyes that swallowed me whole and pulled me into her very soul.

I held the magazine with both hands at about the level of my belly button and stared down at it. I felt weird but didn’t have the faintest understanding of the feelings that were broiling inside my chest and stomach. My chest felt constricted while my belly twittered as though there were millions of tiny bubbles dashing around inside it at blinding speeds and crashing into one another which caused them to suddenly pop.

I only stared at that magazine cover for a few seconds, but it felt like hours, lost as I was in its dizzying allure. I was so intent on it that I never heard my mother creeping up behind me, I never saw her already wrinkled face contort and shrink into even more wrinkles as she peered over my shoulder and saw what I was staring at.

I never saw her eyes shrink to the narrow slits that I had often seen, and often felt must have been impossible to see through, nor did I see her lips pucker into a tight mass of flesh that gave the impression of a person being forced to kiss an electric eel.

I didn’t see any of that happening, nor did I see her arm swinging back.

I didn’t need to see her transformation taking place; I’d seen it many times before. I didn’t even know she was there until her open palm connected with my right ear at a speed of roughly one million miles per hour.

A huge noise and blinding flash of pain shot through my right ear and my head swung so hard to the left that I nearly hit my left ear on my left shoulder as I began falling towards the floor.

My first thought was that my head had exploded and I could not understand how the seemingly loving and beautiful angel I’d been staring at could be so cruel as to blow up my head in such a painful manner, but before I hit the floor I began to grasp the situation a bit better.

My mother’s shrill shrieking was piercing through my left ear as I fell, (my right ear was only hearing a high pitched whine and a dull thudding sound as my heart beat). That was the only clue I really needed to unravel the mystery of my exploding head.

My mother’s shriek was horrible; a single note that didn’t fluctuate at all until her lungs ran out of air. It was a note that I was certain could have easily shattered crystal if there had been any around, which there wasn’t. As I fell I was thankful for that, somehow knowing that my face would have been cut to ribbons if there had been.

Shortly after imagining the crystal, another thought struck me—if our house had been built on top of an Indian burial ground like the one in the Poltergeist movie, my mother’s shrieking would likely wake those long dead Natives and then I’d have much more to worry about than plain old crystal fragments flying through the air.

I saw the floor racing up to meet me in seeming slow motion, I saw the Playboy tumbling away from me, its pages fluttering open as it flew. I saw a naked woman flutter by on the pages of that magazine and I was shocked! I had no idea that women could be so beautiful; I also had no idea that there were naked women in that magazine.

I hit the floor on my stomach and quickly rolled over onto my side with a cry of pain and shock finally fleeing from my lips. My mother was still screaming as I rolled onto my side, and as I looked up at her I was frightened.

Her mouth had left its puckered state and had opened to its widest possible limit; her lips had peeled back like old paint on a weathered barn—curling into a vicious snarl that showed her crooked and yellowed teeth which were glistening with a shine that was most certainly not feminine or alluring.

Two strands of spittle, just slightly off to either side of the center of her mouth connected her top teeth to her bottom teeth like pillars in a roman temple. Her tongue, the tip of which seemed to be pushing violently against the back side of her bottom teeth, was white instead of pink. And her eyes were wide saucers, showing too much white and bulging slightly from their sunken, purplish-black ringed sockets.

For every ounce of love, acceptance, and desire I’d just seen in Kim Basinger's eyes, my mother’s eyes showed pounds of fury, malice, and hate. Her dark hair was hanging limply around her face in long, greasy, and matted tendrils. And to top it off, she was wearing her damned wedding dress again.

I had barely hit the floor and gotten a glimpse my mother’s bestial face before she was leaping over me (still shrieking that horrible note) with the unnatural grace of an Olympic hurdler and scooping the Playboy off the floor. As she was straightening up with it in her hands she finally seemed to run out of air and stopped screeching. I rolled around to look at her with tears streaming down my face. My right ear could not hear properly, and I was quite certain that the blood I felt leaking out of it was actually my brains somehow turned to jelly by the force of her blow. The pain was excruciating. I began to wail loudly, I don’t know if it was more from the pain or more from the fear, but either way, I couldn’t stop it.

She stood there with her back to me for as many as thirty seconds with her shoulders hunched and heaving up and down, as though the exertion of the screaming and jumping had winded her terribly. She stared at the playboy she was holding in her hands, impervious to my sobbing and pleading.

When she turned around and stared at me, her face had returned to its normal pissed off pucker, and though her eyes were the narrow slits that I was certain could not be seen out of I could still feel the hate and malice shooting out of them like laser beams.

I pushed myself up off the floor until I was sitting on my butt with my left leg out straight and my right leg bent under the left and stared up at her, still sobbing and pleading, with both of my arms reaching out to her. I was hoping for forgiveness; hoping to be scooped up off the floor, held in a tight hug, and forgiven for whatever mortal sin I must have committed.

Please, Momma I cried. I’m sorry! I’m sorry!

I didn’t know what I was apologizing for, but I sure as Hell knew I needed to apologize! I was nearly screaming now, the fingers on both hands making clawing ‘gimme’ gestures toward her at the ends of my outstretched arms.

Please, Mama, I pleaded again.

My mother didn’t move. If she was anything, she was stoic. My wailing sobs slowly reduced themselves to whimpers as I began to plead for forgiveness more and more quietly.

I watched my mother carefully roll the magazine up into a tight tube while she continued to glare at me. I dropped my arms and tried to rub my ear, but the pain of touching it made me gasp and jerk my hand away as though I’d touched an electric fence. I looked at my finger tips and saw blood on them and was somewhat relieved to find that it was only blood I’d felt trickling out of my ear and not jellied brains as I’d originally suspected.

I had one bright shining moment of hope then. As I recoiled from touching my ear I saw my mother’s face soften just the tiniest bit. Tears were still streaming down my face, but I was no longer wailing. My mother cocked her head slightly to one side and a faint smile played at the corners of her mouth. She stepped toward me with the rolled up magazine held at shoulder height.

Johnny, she said quietly as she came near. She bent toward me, her eyes suddenly looking sad and her eyebrows arching in apparent concern. Do you know what this is, Johnny?

She wiggled the magazine around a bit and I looked at it, suddenly frightened of it as if it were a venomous snake. N...n...no, Muh…mah...ma...ma, I sputtered in a sob choked voice, shaking my head vehemently hoping to show her how innocent I was in this unfortunate incident.

This, Johnny, she said compassionately while giving the magazine another little wiggle and standing up to her full height before me, is POISON!

At this last word, all the softness in her voice and face fled like deer from a rampaging forest fire and was replaced with her former puckered malice. As she screamed the word, poison, she brought the rolled up Playboy swinging down in a lightning fast arc and smashed it directly into my already throbbing ear.

My eyes rolled up like some crazy slot machine as fresh pain burst through my head, and I was convinced for the second time in a matter of minutes that my head had just exploded.

I screamed so loud that it felt like I’d just regurgitated some of those imagined crystal fragments into my throat. My arms came up instinctively to protect my head from further explosions. I fell to the floor for the second time, curled myself into a fetal position, and kept my arms around my head as blow after blow landed upon me.

My mother was screaming at me at the top of her lungs as she pummeled me with the Playboy, but I was only able to catch bits and pieces of what she was saying through my own screams and the continuing whacks.

SMUT BOOK… WHORES AND PROSTITUTES… DEVILS OWN PLAYGROUND… SEX FIEND LIKE YOUR FATHER… BURNING IN ETERNAL HELL... YOU SON OF A BITCH! YOU GOD DAMNED… OF A BITCH…JUST LIKE YOUR FATHER… DON’T DESERVE JOHN’S NAME… YOU BE LIKE JOE? JOE WOULD NEVER…SOMETHING SO EVIL!

I have no idea how long she went on screaming and flogging. But when she started screaming that Joe would never, I had just enough time to think, ‘The Hell he wouldn’t! It’s his goddamn magazine you’re smacking me with’ before I blacked out. Judging from the pain I had all around my body when I woke up, my mother’s rampage must have lasted for quite some time.

I was only seven years old then and I suppose the few things I came to understand that day were probably a bit beyond my years. One; I am very fond of pretty women. Two; I would probably be terrified of Playboy magazines for the rest of my life. Three; though the pen is supposedly mightier than the sword, I can tell you from experience that when that mighty pen is set to a sheaf of papers, and that sheaf of papers is rolled into a tight tube and used to bludgeon you, then the paper is suddenly mightier than the pen. And four; (and probably most important) my mother was utterly insane.

CHAPTER 2

My mother hadn’t always been insane. The Sickness that had only rarely showed itself before didn’t come on her in full until December 23rd, 1989. That was when my older brother, Joe had been killed in a car accident on an icy road.

He was 16, exactly one week shy of ten years older than me, and he had a different Father. His father was my namesake, John, and my mother’s only true love. They had met when my mother was only sixteen. He was three years older than her, already graduated from high school and working in a local factory. To her that made him seem like a full-fledged man of the world who would be able to take her under his wing, show her the world, protect her from all harm, and provide for her fully.

From the stories my mother told us, John had performed his duties admirably. My mother graduated two years after they’d started dating. He took her to dinner at the local Denny’s to celebrate her graduation and at some point during dinner, when my mother got up to pee, John surreptitiously dropped a ring into her coffee. After returning from her trip to the restroom, they chatted while she finished her coffee.

When there was only a gulp left in the cup she tried to chug it and nearly choked on the ring. In a fit of coughing she spit the ring across the table and it landed right in front of John who deftly plucked it up, slid out of his booth and dropped to one knee in front of my still sputtering mother. He proposed, she accepted, and bam! Life was suddenly perfect.

Two years into nuptial bliss my mother got pregnant with Joe. John had insisted that they name the child after his grandfather, Joseph, but my mother wanted to name the child after her father, Martin. In the end they had compromised, and on June 17th, 1973, a wrinkled screaming baby boy named Joseph Martin Krimshaw came bursting into the world.

Life was good. Even the death of my mother’s parents in a tragic house fire later that same year could not detract from the sublime perfection of her happy world.

Sadly, the good times wouldn’t last forever. In January of 1975 John was at work in the factory. He should have been home with his wife and son, but money was tight and there was some overtime available on the night shift so he took it. There was an explosion. The details have always been sketchy, but the story that has been pieced together by various accounts runs something like this:

John had been running a welder in the back part of the factory, building a frame for a new piece of equipment when his friend Charlie Patten came by on a forklift to deliver some metal beams to him. They most likely chatted for a bit while they worked together unloading the heavy beams and leaning them against the wall.

They were likely still chatting as Charlie started to drive away which is why a distracted Charlie backed his forklift into the beams, knocking them over and damaging the wall they were leaning against about eight feet up. John and Charlie probably started standing all the beams back up before anyone could see their faux pos, not knowing that inside that damaged wall there ran a propane line right alongside electrical wiring, both of which had been damaged when the beams fell.

The inside of the wall was filling with propane; the loose broken wiring was being jostled with the vibration the men were causing when they bumped the heavy beams against the wall. Eventually two loose ends of wire managed to swing just close enough together to cause an arc between them. If the resultant fireball hadn’t killed them almost instantly, the heavy metal beams flying at them certainly would have.

There was an investigation which proved that the building was not up to code and the accident was a direct result of this derelict construction. From this came a nice hefty settlement for my mother, as well as a nice chunk of money from John’s life insurance policy and monthly Social Security checks for both her and Joe. My mother, if she was frugal, was financially set for life.

But money can’t buy happiness so they say, and they are right. My mother always said a little piece of her soul was lost that day and she was convinced that she would never smile again. But she still had Joe, and Joe was a little piece of John. And eventually, she did begin to smile again knowing that John’s spirit was alive and well in Joe.

I think in some ways my mother believed that Joe had become an incarnation of the man she loved. I think she truly believed that somehow when John died, he’d managed to push Joe’s soul aside and insert his own soul into tiny Joe’s infant body. I think that’s when my mother’s Sickness really began.

My mother raised Joe as best she could and would often call him Johnny-Joe as a nickname. This nickname was, I believe, a manifestation of the Sickness that had only just begun to sink its yellowed and scaly talons into my mother’s brain, but things were okay for them for several years. It was just the two of them and they didn’t need anyone else. Unfortunately for my mother sometime in September of 1982 she stepped out.

CHAPTER 3

My mother hadn’t had much social life since John died because she had committed herself fully to raising Joe the John Child. However she did have one close friend, Katelyn Patten, the former wife of Charlie Patten who’d been blown to bits with John. My mother and Katelyn had met at the hospital the night of the explosion and in their intermingled grief they found some semblance of solace between them. In fact, I believe it was Katelyn who saved my mother from stepping fully into madness back then.

Over the course of a couple years, Katelyn had managed to pull her life back together and had even begun dating again. She tried often to get my mother to join her at the local tavern for a beer or the theater for a movie, but my mother resisted for several years. Katelyn, however, was persistent and eventually my mother agreed to go to a movie with her. They saw E.T. the Extra Terrestrial.

My mother wept through a great portion of the movie, somehow empathizing with that little alien fellow in the film; with his aching loneliness and desire to return home. She saw her own home as being in the arms of John and understood that she could not return there. That film, aside from breaking my mother’s heart, woke up in my mother a new feeling…hope.

Why, if a little heartsick spud like E.T. can have a happy ending in his life, she’d said to Katelyn, then I suppose I can too. And that was the start of my mother’s new social life.

Throughout that summer she and Katelyn went to several movies and often went dancing at the local tavern. Katelyn’s fourteen year old daughter, Bess would come over and babysit Joe while the two ladies went out.

My mother began to disassociate Joe from John and saw him again as a separate entity. She had, in essence, started to heal. Then came a night in September of 1982 when my mother had a bit too much to drink and began an instant spiral back into her Sickness.

As I was growing up my mother was always telling Joe and I stories about John, and what a wonderful husband and father he had been. After one such story, when I was around five years old, it dawned on me that I didn’t ever come into these stories and John was not my father. So I asked my mother to tell us about my Father.

Her reaction was instantaneous and frightening. It was the first time I can ever remember seeing her face pucker into that mask of anger and hate that became so prevalent on her only a couple years later. That horrible face only lasted for a second before she was able to swallow it back down and resume most of her normal composure.

When she spoke her voice was a bit strained and her eyes shone with anger and she said, Johnny, I’m only going to tell you this story one time, and only because as a bastard child, you deserve to know. Do you understand? I, of course had no idea what a bastard child was, but did want to know about my daddy so I nodded my head up and down and stared at her with wide eyes.

Okay then, she said, speaking softly in a very controlled tone. Your daddy was a dirty sex fiend who fed me magic juice one night that made me fall asleep. When I was asleep he planted you inside me and he stole a piece of me that should have only been John’s, and then he ran away. I never saw him again.

I was mesmerized by her story and not quite bright enough yet to see the danger in her eyes so I asked, What was his name, Mama?

Her eyes narrowed to slits and her mouth puckered and she spat her words at me like a cobra spitting its blinding venom.

He didn’t deserve a name! she screamed. He was a filthy sex fiend who only wanted one thing! He was poison! He was trash! He stole what was John’s and he ran away! And it was all because of that bitch, Katelyn! She let it happen!

As my mother started yelling, I recoiled in fear. Joe, who was standing behind me, caught me and wrapped his arms around me in a bear hug from behind and shouted over my head, Mama! Stop it! You’re scaring him, and it isn’t his fault! His words seemed to hit my mother like a fastball to the forehead and her countenance went blank for a second, then it softened and looked very much the way a concerned mother’s face should look.

She stumbled forward and reached for me, crying.

Oh Johnny, she said, grabbing me in her arms as Joe released me from his. Johnny, I’m so sorry.

She pulled me in close and nearly suffocated me between her breasts as she gripped the back of my head and buried her face into my hair. When she released me a few moments later, I was fairly certain that I had snot in my hair.

She put her palms against my cheeks and turned my face up towards hers and said, Johnny, your daddy was bad, but Joe’s Daddy was good…so good, Johnny. That’s why I gave you his name, Johnny. So that the goodness of Joe’s daddy could fill you up and push out the poison that your daddy left in you. Do you understand?

I thought I sort of understood, was pretty certain that I somehow did not feel good about understanding, and was definitely certain that I was ready to be done with this conversation so I shook my head.

Good, my mother said. Now, it’s off to bed with you, Mister.

That night should have changed my perception of my mother, but being young and resilient, it didn’t. I didn’t notice the subtle changes taking place in my mother, but looking back now, I can see that Joe saw them. He saw them very clearly.

My mother became more withdrawn from me and clingier towards Joe. She had begun calling him Johnny-Joe again. Her sour lemon pucker face showed itself more frequently, and her outbursts became a regular occurrence. I think there may be truth to the old statement if you keep making that face, it’ll stick that way because my mother’s wrinkles seemed to increase daily. Even when she wasn’t puckered, her face remained deeply lined.

I seemed to be a jolly good catalyst for bringing forth her outbursts, since they were almost always directed towards me and generally had something to do with my good for nothing, sex-fiend, father. But after her outbursts she always found herself again and would come to me crying, hugging and apologizing, and always trying to explain that it was just the poison that my daddy left in me that got her so upset.

Joe protected me from my mother as best he could. Usually it was something as simple as a hand on my shoulder and nearly imperceptible head nod to stop me from saying something that would set my mother off. If subtlety didn’t work, his protection might include a hand over the mouth, and if I seemed to be really intent on pissing my mother off, Joe would sock me in the arm to completely distract me.

I loved Joe dearly. He was the perfect older brother. He shared his toys, he shared his wisdom, he shared his mother, and he shared his life with me. Most of what I know about my mother before the Sickness took her came from stories Joe told me. I idolized Joe and I lost more than a brother when he died on that December night. I lost my mentor, my protector, and my only friend…I suppose I also lost my mother.

CHAPTER 4

After Joe died, my mother’s Sickness decided it was time to quit poking its talons gently into her brain and just ram them in full force. After ripping through the grey matter, her Sickness withdrew its talons and desecrated the sanctity of her mind by spitting venom into the gashes that were left behind.

The Sickness grew rapidly and manifested itself in various ways. My mother became more withdrawn and for longer time periods. At first I didn’t mind the distance. My mother had always homeschooled Joe and me, and as she started to withdraw after Joe died she seemed forget about schooling me altogether. Then the distance that started out lasting only minutes at a time began to last for hours, then days, and finally for as long as a week and I grew lonely.

Another manifestation of the Sickness was that it seemed to take very little effort on my part (the act of breathing seemed to be more than adequate) to send my mother into one of her pucker-face screaming fits, and it wasn’t long after Joe’s death that the puckering and screaming met a new friend...hitting.

In the beginning my mother would show an almost instant remorse after striking me and would seem to return to her normal self. Then she’d begin a regimen of crying, hugging, apologizing, and explaining that my Daddy left poison in me. In time, though, my mother’s ritual of repentant remorse began to come later and later after the beatings, and finally there were no more apologies.

The worst part of my mother’s derailment from sanity came when she started wearing her wedding dress. She’d put on the dress and wander aimlessly through the house talking to the dead as though they were right beside her. She’d lost so much weight and taken so few trips into the sunshine that her pale and emaciated frame drifting through the house looked remarkably ghost-like itself.

Although her appearance was more than enough to scare the crap out of a six year old kid, it didn’t seem to be enough for her, so to add to the overall creep factor she’d carry on conversations with John and Joe, talking as though they were really there, pausing like she was listening to a reply from them and then answering in turn.

Sometimes she’d laugh like someone had just said something funny or she’d toss her hair and put on a coy expression like she was trying to be cute. Sometimes she’d even raise her voice and wave her arms around as if engaged in some vehement disagreement with the unseen dead.

I learned early on not to disturb my mother when she was wearing her dress. The first time I saw her in it I was completely unprepared.

It was nighttime and I’d awakened with a need to pee. My bedroom was at the end of the hallway and Joe’s room was directly across the hallway from mine. In the middle of the hallway was the bathroom and at the far end of the hall, nearest the living room, was my mother’s room. The hallway was lit by a small night light shaped like Snoopy sleeping on his doghouse. It was plugged into an outlet near the floor directly across the hallway from the bathroom door.

As I entered the hall from my dark room, the dim light in the hallway proved to