Something is missing

A Short Story by Rosemary

July 2020

The young man was twenty-eight years old. He was nothing special, just your normal, average, everyday, young man. He worked at an ordinary job, stocking shelves, selling things, and occasionally running the till. It wasn't a huge box store, but a small, Mom and Pop hardware store, in the middle of a small town right out of Leave It To Beaver. The only thing missing on the streets was Jerry Mathers.

He only lived a couple of blocks from work, and each day, he would wake to his alarm clock and get up. Stretch, rub his eyes, and look around the room for something that was missing. Not seeing it, he would, without fail, enter his ensuite, take care of the essentials, then shower. All the while, he knew that something was missing. He would then head to the kitchen, pour himself a cup of coffee and grab an apple, toss the apple about a foot into the air as he went out the door, and head to work.

It never failed. Even as he was the young man who never missed a day of work, cared for his house and garden on his weekend, attended church on Sundays, he always knew that something was missing.

So it was when he got up on a particular Thursday morning, he stretched and thought missing. Still the same thing. He went through his usual routine and went out the door toward Pete's Hardware. He waved at Mr. Melton, who was already up and pulling the dead flowers off of his roses.

Mr. Melton always was tending his roses, and the young man always wondered how many dead blooms could a person remove a summer. Oh well, Mr. Melton had roses that surrounded his house and made it hard to even see the color of the house. They were absolutely gorgeous.

He walked in the back door of the hardware store, clocked in and went to work ten minutes early, as usual.

“Morning, Lyle,” his boss said to him.

“Morning, Pete. How’re things today?”

“Same ole, same ole,” his old boss, Pete, said. “You know how it is.”

“Yes, Sir, I do.”

The day was pretty usual, and Lyle worked to Pete's expectations, just like he usually did. An old man with a grizzled beard and smelling of sweat and hard work came in wanting some ten-penny nails, and he was happy to help. A woman came in and wanted to look at a new bathroom faucet, and he talked her out of the cheap ten dollar model into one more expensive but longer-lasting.

Later in the day, two kids came in, wanting a foot cutoff of PVC pipe, two caps, and some cement. Lyle smiled and asked them why they wanted it. When they came up with differing answers, he told them he refused to sell them the equipment needed to make a pipe bomb. Naturally, the kids denied that it was their intention, but he didn’t believe them.

Once they left, the old man from earlier came in, this time wanting some grade two bolts, nuts, lock washers, and flat washers. “Whatcha doing with them?” Lyle asked as he was counting out the specified number and putting them in bags with the prices marked down.

“I’m fixing our porch swing. Layla was saying… Hey, son. Are you alright?”

Lyle had dropped the bag. Fortunately, it didn’t spill, but something the man said jarred loose a memory. Something foggy that he could barely remember. He bent down to pick up the bag, and it took a couple of tries to pick it up. He noticed as he continued writing prices on the bag that he was shaky. He could barely write legibly enough to read. He set the bag down on a ledge above the bins and tried again. Better.

Old Pete gave him a couple of strange looks later in the day, and finally came up to him, asking, “Are you okay, Lyle?”

The young man raised his shoulders in a shrug. “I don’t know, Pete. You ever have something bother you, but you don’t know what it is?”

The old man laughed. “That all ‘t is?” He pulled a pipe out of his overalls’ pocket and started tamping tobacco in it. “Every’n has that ‘appen, evry once ‘n awhile. Pay’t n’ mind, son.” He gave Lyle a friendly pat on the back, and went back into his office, shut the door, and lit his pipe. He always left the window open in his office, but he could never keep the pipe lit anyway. The smell in the office smelled more of Borkum Riff Cherry ™ tobacco than smoke.

Lyle made it through the rest of the day without any incidents and finally headed home. Usually, he would stop at the fuel stop next door and get a Coke, but it was still bothering him.

He got home and realized he hadn't seen Mrs. White walking her dog, a fun-loving boxer, on the way home, but he was home ten minutes earlier than usual. He shook his head. Things were very strange this day.

He went into the kitchen and made himself a small salad, then sat down on his couch and started sifting through his mail. Nothing unusual there, but that wasn't really a surprise. He tried to figure out what the old man had said that bothered him.

As he sat brooding, the inevitable happened, and perhaps it was a good thing. He started to drift off, and the conversation began to flow through his subconscious mind.

Suddenly, he stood up! He had it! Unfortunately, his mail and bowl that his salad remains were in went flying. While he was cleaning up the broken dish, he thought about what he had learned.

Nothing! It was gone again! What’s going on? he wondered. This was getting very strange. He tried to think about it for the rest of the evening, but he got nowhere. Usually, he would watch TV for the evening. He never watched games or anything. He secretly favored movies generally thought of as chick flicks, and since he lived alone, he was free to watch as many as he wanted. However, this evening he was troubled, and the TV remained off. He finally decided he wasn't going to get anywhere, so he got himself ready for bed and lay down.

Sleep didn’t come easily, as his mind continued to race. What was happening?

Finally, he drifted off, and he dreamed of a little girl named Layla. He felt like he knew her, and everything he dreamed from her point of view. When he awoke the next morning, Lyle knew that he had discovered what was missing. It was so important that he figure this out, that he called Old Pete and asked for the day off. It was no problem, as he was such a competent employee, always on time, and knowledgable. Pete had seen the day before how Lyle was troubled, so figured “th’ youth shou’ have some time ‘ta get ‘s head ‘n stray."

From eight to a bit after nine, that morning, Lyle sat, wondering about Layla. He called his mom to find out if she or his dad knew if he remembered a real person. No luck.

He figured he'd look at it from a different point of view. He was dreaming of a little girl named Layla as if he was her.. Why? Her name was very similar to his. What did it mean? Wait a minute. There was another little girl there too. His cousin! Katie! He hadn't seen her in, how long? He couldn't remember. He didn't even have her number, although she lived in the next town. He looked on his phone. There it was! He had her number!

It rang for a bit, and he almost thought she wasn’t going to answer, but finally, she picked up. “Well, this is a surprise, Lyle.”

He got straight to the point. “Katie, I need to ask you about something.”

“I’m doing fine, how are you?”

He was chagrined, and they chatted for a moment, catching up.

Finally, she said, “You wanted to ask me something?”

He told her. When he finished, there was silence. Had she hung up? “Katie?”

It was weak. “I’m here, Lyle.”

“You know something.” It wasn’t a question, because the answer was quite plain.

“Yeah, I do. I didn’t think you remembered. I was waiting for you to bring it up.” She paused. “You weren’t at his funeral, so I wondered if you had finally, but you said nothing afterward, so I was confused.”

“Your father?”

“Please don’t call him that. I never thought of him that way after he did it.”

Lyle thought about his uncle. He couldn’t even remember his face. Very softly, he asked, “What happened?”

“You were staying with us while your parents were on a business trip. You don’t remember that?”

“I can’t even remember Un…. his face.”

"It was summertime, of '99. Your third day with us, we were playing with my dolls. We were only seven. You told me that you enjoyed it, and then you told me about Layla."

“I see.” But he didn’t. He was starting to have his suspicions, but…

“Can I come over there so we can talk,” he asked.

“Better, I come over there. Ron may not take kindly to this story.” Ron was her husband, and was at work, but would be coming home soon.

“Alright.”

It only took Katie ten minutes to get there. When she arrived, Lyle had put out some coffee, and they talked.

“He was a complete bastard, you know?” Again, Lyle didn’t, but there was a strange feeling that was developing in the pit of his stomach. “You told me you wanted to be Layla rather than Lyle. You had always wanted to be. We ran to my room, giggling, and I got you everything you needed to be Layla that day.”

"Every morning, when we went out to play, we went as Katie and Layla. Then, the bastard came home from work early one day. Caught us. He declared no daughter of his would gonna be guilty of turning a boy into a fairy, so he went and cut a section of garden hose and brought it back in. He started in on me, telling me I wasn't gonna turn a boy into a fairy." She got a Kleenex ™ and blew her nose, then continued. "You tried to tell him that you already were, and it was your fault, not mine. He screamed at you, 'Not when I'm through with you, you won't be!'."

"Mom was screaming at him to stop. It was just harmless fun, and he swung the hose at her, catching her across her chest. She fell down and just cowered while he went back to work on you." She grabbed another tissue. "I know several times, you rolled over, and he got you in front. Finally, he quit."

“Three weeks later, you went home. You still had some bruises, but the bastard told your folks you had crashed on your bike. Your dad looked at your bike, and I don’t think he believed it, but he didn’t say anything more.”

“How come I can’t remember it?” Lyle asked.

“I don’t know. PTSD?”

“But you do.”

“He was always hitting me. It wasn’t anything new, except the violence of it. He beat Mom all the time too. Until she hung herself. I think he knew what was coming. She had bruises all over her, so he shot himself, and I was left to call 911.”

It took quite a while before Layla made an emergence again. She was terrified when she did, although her mom and Katie helped. When she was introduced to her father, she was trembling, hoping that he didn't respond as his brother had. Thank God, it was completely different. Maybe it wouldn't have been, but after Katie had primed him with the story of what happened long ago, he was ready to love his daughter no matter what.

Three years later, Old Pete stood in is office watching Layla working in the store. Several people had laughed when they met her, but she just brushed it away, and frankly, if it was possible, Layla was better at her job than Lyle. She was at ease.

He had definitely found what was missing.