The East End

by Jason Allen

  “So how about I tell him a million?”

  She’d said it without really thinking, more as a joke than anything. But then she watched Corey consider the amount, the sunrise colors like bonfire flames overlaid upon his pupils. He sat up straight. His jaw relaxed. He grinned, and then she did as well. No need for another word now that he’d begun easing his face over, each of their grins much wider just before he kissed her.

  She kept her eyes open at first, watching the bottom edge of the sun break free from the horizon. Then she closed them, and kissed him back.

  FIFTEEN

  After leaving Henry hidden in the woods and trudging a slow zigzag back to the house, Leo labored from step to step upstairs, the pain in his head unbearable by the time he walked the second-floor hall and reached Tiffany’s bedroom doorway. He peered in, his eyes immediately watering over at the sight of her sleeping face. Born six weeks premature, so impossibly tiny during those early hours in the pediatric unit, Tiffany had grown to have the strongest personality, or at least the most brutally honest one, of anyone in the family. Though for reasons beyond his comprehension, while she was so quick to criticize her mother and brothers for their decadence and self-centeredness and their opulently wealthy circles of friends, she still allowed Leo an undeserved pass; even at this contentious age, he remained on a pedestal in her mind, the same one where she’d placed him as a child. She’d slept through it all tonight, he thought. Thank God she hadn’t seen.

  Back in the master bedroom, while gathering his clothes from the bedspread and floor, he found his cell phone and discovered a missed call from Sheila that had come right around when he and Henry had arrived at the estate. Her voice-mail message awaited him. No way in hell did he have the capacity to listen to it now. She would be here soon enough, too soon. Too many people would be here, and far too soon.

  Feeling as though he’d gained a thousand pounds overnight, Leo walked slowly back downstairs and into the kitchen, where he flung open the freezer door, dropped handfuls of ice into a large plastic bag and wrapped it in a dish towel. On his way out of the house, he pressed the cold compress to his head while scrolling through his texts with Gina from last summer. The final one had been his apology for not speaking up when Sheila tore into Gina for breaking the crystal chalice. The rest of the text thread from earlier in the summer consisted mainly of his panicky requests for her to cover for him with Sheila in a variety of ways, and her responding with comforting assurances, more than once stating: I’ll take care of it. She’d been the one to buy his wife an appropriately glittery necklace with his platinum card after he’d forgotten their anniversary, the one who so often had appeased her on his behalf, and yet Sheila consistently treated her like shit. This poor woman—with a white-trash husband and two teenaged boys to raise on her own—she’d been the one Leo had trusted over the years to bail him out or to keep his secrets or to hold her tongue when he spun some fiction in regard to his whereabouts, when the truth had been that he’d come out to the estate midweek to escape Sheila. For years now, Gina had been the only person he could rely on to lie for him. If ever he needed her help, he needed it now.

  As he made his way over to the pool, though he had no clear idea what he even could say to her, he called her. By the third or fourth ring he realized that she wasn’t going to answer. Her voice-mail greeting played. Leo cleared his throat and muttered something about needing help, his words hanging in the air while he squinted at the screen and fumbled with the phone to end the call. Gina would be here to start her workday within the hour, but she couldn’t help. No one could. No help was on the way. He would receive no quarter, no shelter from this unthinkable, nightmarish storm. No time now even to sleep. He had to think. If only his head would stop throbbing, maybe he could make it through the day and somehow move Henry off the property during the night.

  The blood. He still needed to check the border of the pool for blood. Kneeling, he inspected the stairs and handrail, and then from there hobbled along on all fours like a wounded bear, his eyes focused on the charcoal-gray stone coping, section by section, until he’d journeyed the entire perimeter and, surprisingly, found nothing.

  Staggering to his feet sapped the last wisp of his energy. The stabbing pain in his skull nearly blinded him. He reached back to touch the wound, his pulse suddenly racing as he flashed to the moment he’d awoken on the lawn and squinted at his own blood on his hand.

  Who the hell hit me? Aside from Tiffany and her friend, who else would have been here late at night? He looked toward the spot on the lakeside lawn where the memory ended, wiping sweat from his face with the back of his hand, now even more confused. And how were they right behind me, right there to knock me out a second after Angelique and I fell to the ground?

  He gripped the handrail like a crutch. He needed to rest, needed to think.

  Whoever it was, they must have seen me with Henry... Oh my God... Someone knows...

  * * *

  Time passed as Leo sat cockeyed on one of the lounge chairs beside the pool with an elbow on one knee and the bag of ice pressed to the back of his head, staring at the water, his vision like that of an old television set with poor reception, blurring between two channels. Closing one eye, for a moment he saw only an empty pool, its soft surface sheened by morning light swirling away from the return jets. In the next moment, day abruptly returned to night and Henry floated there a few yards away, once again under a veil of moonlight, once again with arms outstretched; though now, instead of panic, Leo felt what he could only guess might be the palm of a benevolent hand on his shoulder, leading him to the warm water with the silver tray in hand, toward a living, breathing image of Henry.

  Straining to block the morning birdsongs from his mind, Leo closed both eyes and let the ice pack fall from his wound, now hunched in a position similar to that of Rodin’s The Thinker, spellbound by the vivid, cinematic delusion playing behind his eyelids. He breathed in the slow-motion scene, recalling it all now in detail—the feel of the grass beneath his feet as he approached the water, the soft serenade of crickets as he set down the bottle and tray and stepped into the water with a film of steam whirling at his calves. Henry floating a few yards away, swiveling from his back and fanning his arms, gently kicking, his eyes beaming as he swam closer to the stairs, smiling while he kept his head low in the shallow end and coyly asked if Leo cared to join him. And the night had gone on from there without a false note, hour after hour had been a perfectly orchestrated water dance, until—

  Voices of men speaking Spanish sounded in the distance, and a moment after, motors of landscaping machines ripped to life. Leo’s elbow slipped from his knee and he tumbled from the chair. Lying on the grass, he stared at the vacant pool, the light of the fully risen sun now reflecting the nearby oak branches in the faintly swirling current. He pushed himself up and leaned against the chair, looking in the direction of the woods, where his epic trek with Henry had ended just before dawn. No help was on the way. Henry was out there, wrapped in a blanket. Dead.

  SIXTEEN

  Gina had planned on a tiny catnap between the meeting and her drive to work, but after sleeping so little the night before, the nap consisted of a few odd minutes of tortured dreams and three smacks of the snooze button. She dragged herself out of bed and stood before the full-length mirror hanging from her closet door. Her hair was matted on one side and frizzed out with static on the other. She looked like an aging groupie in her old Pink Floyd T-shirt and her favorite pair of blue-and-white-polka-dot pajama pants. Her reflection stared back with red puffy eyes. She’d been rubbing them throughout the night and during the past half hour while praying for sleep that hadn’t come. An hour or so ago, in the meeting, she couldn’t recall anyone mentioning insomnia or how this insidious side effect not only thwarted any attempts at rest in early sobriety, but also emboldened her inner critic, who’d picked her apart while she tossed and turned and sweated against the sheets.

&
nbsp; She left the mirror and peered out the window at the driveway, relieved not to see Ray’s truck. A second after, her stomach sank when she registered the absence of Corey’s pickup as well.

  No big secret that he went out drinking with his friends, but as far as she knew he’d never stayed out all night without at least sending a text. She checked her cell phone. No messages. Anger welled up as she imagined him showing up late to work at the Sheffields’, or hungover, or both. Then she pictured him unconscious in an overturned truck with blood on his face, and rushed into the hall and swung open her sons’ bedroom door.

  “Dylan, wake up.”

  His head turned on the pillow and he groaned, “What time is it?”

  “It’s early, and I have to leave soon. Where’s Corey?”

  “I don’t know. I texted him that we were at the hospital but didn’t see him last night.”

  “He didn’t say where he was going? Sit up for a minute, open your eyes.”

  “Jeez, Ma.” He pushed the tangled strands of hair from his face and shoved the blanket from his shoulders. “I have no idea where he is. I haven’t seen him for, like, a week. Can I go back to sleep, please?”

  She stomped out without closing the door, returned to her bedroom and pulled open the dresser drawers, piecing together the clothes for her twelve-hour workday. She should’ve gotten out of bed when her alarm first went off or not even bothered to lie down at all. Twenty minutes or so before she had to be in the car, so no time for a real breakfast. She’d call Corey while she drove.

  First things she saw in the shower were Ray’s disposable razor and dandruff shampoo sitting on the edge of the tub in the corner. Goddamn him, she thought, how could he leave me like that on the bed for Dylan to find me? She threw Ray’s things into the bathroom trash can before stepping under the showerhead. All that remained now were those goddamned boxes by the back door, his jackets in the closet and one dresser drawer still stuffed with clothes. If he didn’t get it all by the end of the weekend—and this was a promise to herself—she’d toss everything into the woods down the road. Or better yet, into the fucking ocean.

  The shower curtain whipped closed and she positioned herself beneath the hot water. Her neck hurt. Her stomach grumbled. She needed coffee as much as a person had ever needed it. Twelve hours of work ahead of her. Twelve hours of smiling through frantic arranging and cleaning and pandering to the woman of the house, and that twelfth hour could stretch to a thirteenth, maybe more depending on Sheila’s mood. Gina had signed on to slave away summer after summer, but always with a bottle of wine as the reward after these marathon days, sometimes also with a secret drink or two during work. How she’d managed to not take a drink during the past hour this morning, after thinking about it so intensely in the church parking lot, she had no idea. The water temperature from the shower steadily decreased, as it always did after a couple minutes, so she turned the Cold off and tried to appreciate the last minute of diminishing warmth.

  As soon as she stepped out of the tub she heard someone knocking loudly on the front door. A moment later she froze in place when she heard Ray calling from the doorway, “Coming in,” followed by his heavy footsteps in the living room. Swallowing hard, she stared at the puddle forming around her feet. He must have broken in, she thought, since she’d already changed the locks. Exhausted even by the thought of dealing with him, she quickly wrapped a towel around her body and cracked the bathroom door.

  Ray’s boots came stomping into the hall as Dylan’s voice carried from his room. “Why won’t anyone let me sleep!”

  Ray answered with all the charm of a drill sergeant, “Rough fuckin’ life you got here, bed-wetter.” A second later he stopped abruptly when Gina stepped into the hall as she imagined her new sponsor would, like a mama bear about to maul someone who’d come too close to her cub.

  “Hey,” he said, sounding surprised to see her.

  “What did you just say to Dylan?”

  “Oh, that? That was nothing. Playing with him is all.” He turned his head and called out, “We’re good, right, Dyl?”

  Dylan muttered from his bedroom, “You are such a dick,” and before Ray could react, Gina shoved a finger against his chest.

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “He’s tired, so I’ll forget he said that,” Ray said, folding his arms. “Needed a ladder for the job site, and since you keep hounding me I thought I’d grab some clothes while I was here.”

  Gina felt nauseous, thinking back to how weak she’d been the last time he knocked on the door, kissing him, almost sleeping with him. “Don’t ever talk to my son like that again,” she said, pushing past him and entering the bedroom they’d shared for nearly three years. He followed while she spoke. “I’ve been asking you to get your stuff all week, and you show up unannounced right before my first day of hell weekend? And you insult Dylan, in my fucking house!”

  “Jesus, G. Calm the fuck down.”

  “You left me for dead yesterday, do you realize that?”

  “Drunk and dead are two very different things, honey pie.”

  “What are you even doing here? You don’t live here anymore! You know what, I don’t have time for this. Just get the hell out. I’m too tired to look at your face, let alone to deal with your bullshit.”

  “Christ sakes, first you tell me to leave when I don’t have anywhere to go, it takes me a little time to get situated these past months, and then out of the blue you’re all like, Get your shit out right away or I’m dumping it on the curb? Real nice. I’ve been sleeping on Jimmy’s goddamned pull-out couch for how many weeks? My back is killing me. On top of that—you know, technically, I haven’t said I’ll give you a divorce.”

  “Are you fucking high?”

  “Whether I am or not, I think we still have some talking to do, don’t you?”

  He grabbed her by the arm and she shoved him away.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “You weren’t saying that yesterday, honey.”

  “I’m saying it now. Do not—ever—touch me again. And don’t ever come in this house again, either, or I’m calling the cops.”

  Ray scratched the side of his head and stared, refolding his arms.

  She looked more closely at the redness in his eyes. “Jesus, you really are high, aren’t you?”

  “Who gives a shit if I am?”

  She muttered, “Dylan is right, you are such a dick,” while throwing clothes back into the drawer and slamming it shut, then faced him as she shouted, “And for your information, I don’t need you to give me a divorce! What’s wrong with you?”

  “You haven’t been a treat the whole time yourself, Gina.”

  “Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.”

  She continued dressing, sliding on shorts, a collared shirt, socks and her work sneakers, trying to ignore him while he lingered and stared, annoyed that now, of all times, he finally wanted to talk. With her bag over her shoulder and keys in hand, she stepped into Dylan’s room to tell him she was leaving and that she loved him.

  “Love you, too,” he mumbled from beneath the blanket.

  Then she hustled through the living room, calling back, “You’re trespassing, Ray! If I don’t see you leave before I pull out of the driveway, you can spend your morning talking to the cops. And take these boxes on your way out, or so help me God, I’m setting them on fire when I get back tonight!”

  Moving with hurried steps along the cracked cement walkway, fuming, she pulled out her phone, amazed at how crappy her first official day sober had started off. Worried about leaving Ray inside with Dylan, she dialed 911, but waited to press the send button. He wanted this. He enjoyed this, the drama, the arguments, and it damn sure hadn’t been a coincidence that he’d come by the morning of her first holiday weekend at the estate.

  She deleted the three digits from the ph
one screen, recalling what Maryanne had said just after the meeting—about how she could restart her day anytime she wanted. Probably easier said than done, but supposedly all she had to do was take a deep breath and allow herself a second to pause. She could choose to change her perspective. With that thought she breathed in and scanned her unkempt front yard.

  She noticed some of the crocuses already full-grown and ripe with color, and then plenty of other signs of springtime and the coming summer all around—squirrels scampering across the patchy lawn and along tree branches, blooms on the bushes, full green leaves on the oaks and sunlight filtering through. Even as her marriage and drinking had fizzled to an end, and Ray seemed more unhinged by the day, all this beauty surrounded her.

  But that flicker of serenity was snuffed out as Ray trailed her to her car. She felt him hovering like a storm cloud when she slid into the driver’s seat, the stench of weed and cigarette smoke creeping in. She gripped the side handle and pulled but he held her door open.

  “Let go,” she said.

  He looked on blankly.

  She pulled hard but the door didn’t budge. “Let go, Ray,” she said again with a long sigh. “I mean it.”

  He continued staring. She pulled even harder and he yanked it open wider.

  “Don’t you get it, G? I can leave if I want to, but you... You don’t get to leave me.” He angled his body between her and the door, leaned in and ran his finger along her cheek.

  “Don’t do that!” She leaned away, frightened by his confidence and this oblivious attempt at affection. Two months ago they’d parted as strangers. Yesterday had been a colossal mistake. He didn’t get to touch her anymore. Never again. He’d left her half-dead, for God’s sake. She looked out the windshield, hoping he’d realize the pointlessness of holding her hostage—and that’s exactly what this was, a hostage situation, and she hated him for it. “I was serious when I said I’d call the cops, Ray. You’re really going to push it that far?”