I rotate the toothpick inside my mouth, staring at the jar holding a dried gold poppy wrapped around the Chuckwalla lizard skull I found for my wife. She told my daughter it was her favorite one. My daughter hasn’t spoken to me in three days.
#
“Daddy, look!” my daughter urges, pointing at the smiley face she has created from a pile of salt she poured out on the table.
“That’s nice, sweetie, but you need to wipe that up before our waitress comes back,” I say. She leans her head back and puffs out her cheeks to blow the salt at me.
I raise a brow and take the toothpick out of my mouth. She giggles, cups her hands around the pile, and transfers it onto my coffee saucer in small bundles.
“Daddy, did mommy ever go to bed last night?” she asks. She pulls the saucer in front of her.
“What do you mean?”
“I heard you asking mommy why she was having trouble sleeping last night.”
“Oh, uh…“ I pause, uncertain of how to explain this, “mommy isn’t always tired when she tries to go to bed.”
“Oh. So, did you sing her a lullaby?” She licks the salt off of her thumb.
I meet her big brown eyes after a few silent seconds and hang my bottom lip open in an attempt to form a response.
“No, she …needed some quiet time to relax.”
“But you stayed with her, right?”
I take a sip of my coffee and shake my head.
“No, she asked to be alone for a bit.”
“Why would she want to be alone?” she asks, confused. I purse my lips, realizing I don’t quite understand, myself.
“I’m not sure, Allison. Mommy has been confusing daddy lately, and I told her that.”
“Oh.” She begins twisting the button on her yellow dress and looks down as I take another sip of my coffee. I smile weakly.
I pull the saucer back over toward me and blow the salt onto her. She shrieks with delight and tries to kick me under the table, but her legs are too short.
“Sir, please don’t do that,” the waitress says flatly, carrying two plates in one hand and a coffee pitcher in the other.
“Sorry about that,” I try catching her with my contrite eyes. “Just trying to make my daughter laugh.”
She glances at Allison, who is stifling a snicker. I lay the toothpick on the edge of my new breakfast plate and unwrap my silverware.
“Setting a good example?” the waitress mocks, refilling my cup.
“Always,” I retort, chomping on a piece of toast.
#
I pick my tooth with a rattlesnake bone I found on my wife’s studio floor. She had plans to put the rattlesnake skull inside one of her jars, but it shattered at the touch of her delicate fingers. She had carried it in a velour pouch all the way back from the campgrounds, but it didn’t survive two minutes in her own arms. Her eyes grew wet when I entered the space to see the new creation. She never cleaned up the bones. She said she felt like a terrible person for destroying something so beautiful. I told her she was beautiful while I cradled her head close to my chest.
My daughter hasn’t spoken to me in four days. She’s carrying a Polaroid of her mother around in her pocket that she won’t show me.
#
“We should do something nice for mommy since she didn’t come with us,” my daughter suggests.
“Like what, sweetie?”
I watch Allison’s reflection in the rearview mirror and read into her ideas as they come.
“Chocolates?” she says, licking a line of dried maple syrup along her wrist. She looks out the window for a minute and turns back to me. “Flowers?”
“That’s a good idea. Mommy could put them in her studio space and let them inspire her,” I say, “but what inspires mommy the most?”
“Skulls!” my daughter shrieks.
“Where can we go to try to find her a nice skull?”
“She can have mine!” she offers.
I laugh. “But your head will turn to jelly if we take out your skull. It’ll look like this.” I lift my head to the mirror and rapidly shake my cheeks with my tongue hanging out.
She giggles and kicks the back of my seat.
“Eww, no!”
“Well, since you don’t want to look like that, where can we go to find a non-human skull?” I ask.
Face still contorted by her hands, she turns to the window and presses her face against it. She draws a cockeyed heart into the condensation from her warm breath.
“I don’t know,” she mumbles into the glass. She blows over the imperfect heart to draw a new one.
“Well, how about the trail?” I sense that she is tired of my guessing games.
“The one where I lost my sandal?”
“Yeah, where the gold poppies grow.”
“Sure, let’s go there. I’m not wearing sandals today,” she informs me, pointing her slip-ons at my face.
#
The light pouring into her studio this morning is too bright. Her underused Polaroid camera is casting a glare on the rows of jars resting on the heavy shelf. There are twenty-three jars.
I pick up the jar containing a Mourning Dove skull and red rocks from the trail. This one never seemed complete to me. When I asked her why she didn’t include flowers, she said she didn’t want it to be too beautiful. There was nothing about the dove’s skull to suggest abnormal beauty to me. In fact, I wouldn’t be able to tell it from the other doves’ skulls if she had not labeled it. Now, I understand even less. There’s nothing beautiful about Mourning.
My daughter hasn’t spoken to me in five days. She thinks I killed her mother.
#
“Why does mommy like skulls, daddy?” my daughter asks. It’s a fair question.
“Well, mommy really likes nature. And symmetry. I guess she thinks the symmetry of bones and skulls is really beautiful,” I say, recalling the first time we slept in the same bed. She told me my body was very symmetrical as she trailed her kisses from my forehead down to my midsection. That’s how I knew I wanted to see her again.
“Sim-uh-tree?”
“Yep. It’s when things are even on both sides. Look.” I divide my face into two parts with my hand. “See how on each side I have one eye, one cheek, one ear, one eyebrow, and half of a mouth and a nose? That’s symmetry.”
“Sim-uh-tree,” she says again, getting used to the new word. She picks up a stick taller than she is and snaps it in half with her foot.
“Here’s a walking stick, daddy.” She offers me the larger half.
“Thank you, sweetie,” I say. I bend my knee at a hard angle and position the stick to become my new leg.
“Alright, let’s go!” I exclaim, hobbling a few steps on the peg leg.
She shakes her head at my incompetence and puts her hands on her hips.
“You gotta use your arms.” Dramatically, she steps uphill with the help of the walking stick.
I smile. “Oh, I see.”
#
There’s a small ring of rust on the lid of the jar hosting the horned toad skull and gumweed. The toad’s jaw is separated. I never noticed that. My wife did a good job of concealing it.
Allison must’ve rushed to the balcony at the same time I did. The difference is that she approached it from the ground, and I went out onto the balcony to see her horrified face three stories below me. Allison lingered on the patio for a moment, glancing back and forth between her mother’s body on the cement and my own body towering above it. I watched her run to the farthest edge of our garden. The blood on her toes faded into the coarse red earth. She stopped only to retrieve a Polaroid that must’ve flown from my wife’s pocket when she fell.
My daughter hasn’t spoken to me in six days. How can I ever explain what she saw?
#
I smile and take the toothpick out of my mouth as I shift a jagged rock out of its crevice. Perfect.
“Sweetheart, will you do me a favor and pick some of the poppies for mommy?” I ask my daughter.
“But I thought we decided not to give her flowers?”
“I think they’d pair nicely with this skull I just found.” I hold the tiny reptilian skull out to her with cupped hands.
“Ooh what is it, daddy?”
“I honestly don’t know, sweetie,” I tell her, swaddling the skull in my sweaty bandana, “but mommy will.”
“Yay, my turn!” She pivots and takes off into the field of poppies.
Her lemon dress ruffles the heads of the flowers, and she further disturbs them with her tiny fingertips. She moves like she was born in this meadow. Were it not for the auburn hair she got from her mother, she would disappear completely into it.
She returns with an uneven bouquet and thrusts them into my face for inspection.
“Do you see any bugs, daddy?”
I pretend to inspect them very closely, pausing with wide eyes at the center bloom.
“Oh, yes I do,” I caution. I pull my sunglasses to the bridge of my nose and raise my eyebrows.
“Really? Where?” She lowers the bouquet back to her eye level and folds down the largest petal.
“Right…there!” My index finger finds her bellybutton. I scoop her up by the waist and swing her around until the squealing subsides.
#
I’ll never know why my wife fell. She’d worked on that balcony garden for years. And as I rotate the jar holding her tropical milkweed blooms and a kit fox skull, I understand even less.
The jar offers a hollow echo as I place it back on the shelf. Allison is watching me from outside, but she doesn’t think I can see her. She looks back and forth between the window and her Polaroid.
When the police reasoned through my wife’s fall, Allison wasn’t listening. She was rocking back and forth on the ground, refusing to make eye contact with any of the people on our property. Including me.
I feel like a stranger. I’ve forgotten how to be a father, but it’s only because I don’t know how to be a mother.
I roll a slim rattlesnake bone underneath my forefinger, wishing it was strong enough to slide between my teeth without breaking. A rogue tear lubricates the rotating bone.
My daughter hasn’t spoken to me in seven days.
#
“Daddy, why didn’t mommy come with us today?” Allison asks as she hugs the bouquet of poppies close to her chest.
“She wanted to work on her art, sweetie. She told us that before we left.”
“But she wasn’t working on her art. She was just crying.”
I frown, raising my head to the rearview mirror. “When was she crying?”
“Right before we left. I was walking in the garden, and I looked into the window and saw her crying.” Allison takes a flower from the bouquet and puts it behind her ear. Her eyes meet mine in the mirror.
“Why didn’t you tell me, sweetheart?”
“Because she noticed me and did this,” she puts a finger to her lips in a shushing motion.
I frown again, realizing that my wife must’ve still been upset by our discussion last night.
“Well, I’m glad you’re telling me now, sweetie. It’s always important for you to tell me things you notice about the people we love,” I tell her.
I start feeling guilty about not reconciling with my wife sooner. “Why don’t we skip the grocery store and get these flowers home to mommy before they wilt?”
She nods in agreement. I press a little harder on the gas pedal.
#
The gravel does little to hide my footsteps as I approach my daughter in the garden. She quickly slips the Polaroid back inside her pocket and turns her gaze to the ground.
One hand makes its way to my chest and the other drapes over her sunburned shoulder. She doesn’t move my arm. That’s a good sign.
“Allison, you haven’t spoken to me since she died,” I say bluntly. She offers no reaction.
“Allison, are you afraid of me?”
Silence.
“Allison, do you think I killed her?”
A short inhale.
“Allison, please, do you think I pushed her off that balcony?” I ask with a tightening grip on her shoulder. She continues looking straight at the ground, rapidly chewing on her chapped bottom lip.
“Allison!” I cry, crouching down to the ground and grasping her arms tighter than I should. “Allison, look at me!”
Her welling eyes meet mine. I hold my gaze for a full minute before she answers with an indisputable shake of her head. Gaging my reprieve, her eyes immediately give in to the downpour of fresh tears. Her dormant vocal chords sputter to life and purge seven days of repressed wailing. I wrap my arms around her small frame, bury my fingers inside her unkempt locks, and surrender.
#
“Mommy’s not crying anymore. She was just taking some pictures of herself,” my daughter tells me as I finish clearing all the trash out of the car, “and she said she’s surprised we’re home so early.”
“Well, that’s great. What did she think about our gifts to her?” I ask.
“She was so excited! She said the skull is her favorite ever!” She exclaims, tucking her hair behind her ear to show off the flower wilting over it.
“Hey, great. Now, it’s my turn to go see mommy, so just make sure you don’t go past the saguaro if you’re staying outside.”
“Okay, I won’t,” she promises. She skips through the garden to the saguaro and offers me a playful glance as she hops past it. I smile, and she hops back, crouching to investigate a bug resting in her shadow.
I slide through the front door.
“Honey?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Honey?”
Nothing.
I take the stairs to her studio on the second floor. She’s not there, but a candle still burns on the window sill. Lemon and basil notes permeate the space, cutting the familiar harshness of the freshly-boiled bones. She must’ve assembled the skull’s new home in under five minutes.
I blow out the candle and tenderly pick up the newest jar still resting on her workspace. In a moment of rushed assemblance, the poppy protruding from the left eye socket is sliding down the muslin-wrapped ethafoam throne under the skull. The unbuffered paper lining the bottom is wrinkled in the imagined corners of the spherical container. Everything about the display suggests imbalance. But the skull is perfect. Clean, discernible lines, straight rows of tiny reptilian teeth, not a crack in sight. Symmetry.
I lift the jar, squinting to read the new label tacked on the bottom.
“Sauromalus ater. Common Chuckwalla lizard.” Nothing too special. Why would this be her favorite?
“Honey?” I call louder this time.
Still no answer.
I hold the railing as I climb the stairs to the third floor, hoping to find that she was just having trouble hearing me from her balcony garden.
I have no trouble hearing her scream.
#
My daughter holds my hand as we gaze together at the exterior of our empty house. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to get her to speak to me.
“Accidents happen, sweetie,” I assure her. It’s the only place to start. It’s the only thought I have left. It’s the only thing that makes sense anymore.
She grips tighter to the Polaroid of her mother cushioned in the thick velour of her pocket.
Glancing up at the third-story balcony, she clicks her tongue impatiently and shakes her head. I turn my eyes to the ground.
I pick up a bone splinter beside the saguaro and pluck my teeth to mimic her tongue.
“I wouldn’t do that, daddy,” she says flatly, pushing all of her sticky fingers through her hair.
Shock sets in. Her voice sounds different. Aged, tired. But wonderfully familiar. I want to celebrate her return, but I fear she won’t say another word if I acknowledge it.
Gently, I lower myself to the ground, squatting to see her swollen eyes. I remove the bone splinter from my mouth and place it in the center of my palm. Then, I direct my hand beneath her chin and take a deep breath.
“Why not, sweetie?”
She produces the photograph from her pocket and runs a dirty finger over her mother’s blank expression. The over-handled portrait finds its way to my open hand, and her cracking lips find my open ears:
“I saw that break from mommy’s arm after she jumped.”
#
I run a cold finger over my wife’s lifeless expression. I place the Polaroid inside the velour-lined jar beside the bone splinter. And I read the hand-written note on the back once more.
I will not be destroying something beautiful. I am imbalanced. But please tell me if my skull is symmetrical.
A tag adheres itself nicely to the bottom, proudly displaying my response in smearing black ink.
It wasn’t.
I close the lid and place it beside the other glaring jars on the shelf.
I roll the toothpick under my front row of teeth with my tongue, staring at the dried brown poppy petals coating the bottom of the neighboring jar. The lizard’s skull has shifted on its muslin bedding and forfeited its symmetry. My wife told my daughter is was her favorite skull. I doubt that would be true anymore.
My daughter hasn’t spoken to me again in three days.
Jamie is an Ohio-Bred, Chicago based short fiction writer with a taste for the unsettling. Her work has appeared in the March 2018 issue of The Write Launch and the July 2018 Issue of Burnt Pine. She is currently working as a naturalist and plans to pursue a PhD in cultural anthropology. In her spare time, she enjoys a writing workshop, dance classes, and whispering sweet nothings to her potted plants.