Writer Spotlight - Marlee Fancett

“Red Cedar Wood”

The feeling somewhat tickles. It comes back and forth, up and down, over and over again until it becomes numbing.

Ever so often, on warm days plagued by rolling clouds and shade, it feels nice. It’s a trickle of water after a drought. I have time to drink it in.

Most days though, the sun is high in the sky, bearing down on me until I feel withered; it’s suffocating. There’s this sweet moment, when the lacquer is first applied and my skin is cooled. But then the sun continues to scorch me and the glaze dries until it feels sticky and confining.

It’s hard to ventilate on those days. My systems feel clogged, lathered so thickly in the varnish that the shutters stick and a wrenching hand can only open the burning window after a prolonged struggle.

Today is one of those days. The sun soars and the lack of trees on this suburban street do nothing to shade me from its determination to sear those who dare to wander outside. I haven’t wandered, but this is one of the punishments I get anyways.

I feel the rumble of socked feet skid across the kitchen, a child bumping into a counter in his haste. His mother follows, bare feet a gentle padding against the wooden flooring of my kitchen.

On days like today, even the unpainted wood of the floor is sticky, like lacquer still drying. I suppose it’s just humidity. Or maybe I’m not the problem.

The mother opens the fridge, pulling out a carton of eggs and the child’s arms quiver as he pulls himself onto the kitchen counter he'd just bumped into.

“Mommy,” says the boy. “When are the painters getting here?”

His mother glances at where he’s sitting with a light scowl as her crooked fingers expertly turn the knob on the stove, igniting the small fire that flares into a ring, ready to suffocate me even more in the already smothering air.

Letting the fire alarm blare is a temptation I fight back. Instead, I focus on the trickle of water left from the night’s rain dripping down the gutter and onto the pavement below. It splashes lightly, hitting the puddle that’s already gathered from when thunder had raged and drowned me during the night.

But not the mother and child. I kept them safe while they slept, the child peacefully and the mother tossing and turning.

“There aren’t any painters coming today,” the mother says, cracking an egg over the open pan, greased with butter.

She used to use vegetable oil. She thought it was healthier. But since a memorable Sunday morning spent with his father, her son pouts and glares until she butters the pan.

“But that's how Daddy makes eggs,” he’d say.

“Well, Daddy's not here to make you any eggs, is he?” She seems like she wanted to say.

Now, the boy says, “But Mommy, the painters always come after it thunders.”

She purses her lips. He is right. But she already called her usual painters and they couldn’t squeeze her in at the last minute this time.

“Mommy’s going to paint the house today,” she tells her son.

The boy doesn't seem to mind. As long as he gets to play in the sand box that’s set up outside for him, he doesn't care.

…

After breakfast is finished, dishes and hands washed, and night clothes changed out of, the pair step into the yard. The boy stands in the grass, flexing his feet among the blades, laughing as they tickle between his toes.

The mother steps into the small shed his father had built, gathering her painting supplies.

She pries open the lid of the lacquer with a rusted flat-head screwdriver, muscles aching until the lid finally shoots off with a pop.

I see her come out of the shed, hair tied up, bucket of varnish swinging in a gloved hand, a brush clutched tightly in the other.

She stands in front of me, chest heaving as she lets the smell of the lacquer overwhelm her senses. It was the only smell strong enough to mask the stench of blood and rot.

Dipping the brush in, she breathes out once more before she begins painting, her strokes much more precise than those of the painters she hires.

When the painters come, she always directs them to the side of the house that faces the neighbor’s tall wooden fence. Below the fence, there’s a secluded strip of grass. Above the fence, there is nothing blocking the sun from shining down onto the shingles.

She makes up an excuse about how the cedar on this side of the house always seems to gray faster. “Must be the position of the sun,” she says with a laugh.

But really, she has tainted me. Under hundreds of layers of lacquer, under three layers of wood stain, there’s a stain on me that was too bright to be the natural red of the cedar wood shingle siding. Now, the stain would be too dark.

And really, who uses the splatter method when they stain the shingles on their house?

It was stiflingly humid the first night she painted over the stain. The night she painted over her husband.

And it’s humid now as the brush digs into me, scratching me until it aches, forcing me to keep her secret as she layers my mouth in so much glaze that I would choke on the goop if ever I could open my mouth and tell the world what she has done.

But she's far too careful for that to ever happen. She keeps her secret and I do too.