The East End

by Jason Allen

  No answer, of course. And to think she’d actually thought she loved this maniac for a while there. He was sick on so many levels, but then again, she needed help as much as he did. Choosing to be with him in the first place proved that.

  The right-hand number on her dashboard clock changed. She was already late. Glacially slow, another full minute passed with neither of them speaking, his eyes like bloodshot marbles glaring less than a foot from her face.

  She finally broke the silence by shouting, “Fine, I’m dialing the police!”

  As if he’d just awoken from a spell, he unfurled his grip from the top of the door, then repeated, “You don’t leave me,” sounding deadly serious, and gently pressed it closed.

  She turned her head and fumbled with the gearshift, her eyes watering. She didn’t want him to see how badly he’d scared her, or to know that his words had just now dropped inside her stomach like stones. She had to get away. With him eyeing her through the driver’s-side window, she reversed, feeling as though she’d been punched.

  She didn’t want to drive off until she saw him leaving, though, not with Dylan inside, so she shifted into Park just after reaching the street, her car idling perpendicular to the driveway while she watched him walk toward the shed and then prop his extension ladder on his shoulder. Looking through her passenger-side window, she hated him more by the second for making her late for work, though much more for scaring her, for acting like a bully in her own home, where she’d made the mortgage payments all by herself every month they’d been together, where her son now lay in his bed.

  From the opposite end of the driveway, Ray saw her staring and flashed that damned smirk of his, raising his hand as if to say I’ll see you later.

  Gina shifted into Drive but kept her foot on the brake, staring, as Ray took the key to her house from his pocket and pointed it like a gun to his temple, then jerked his head to the side, pretending to blow his brains out. “Get it?” he yelled, with his hands cupped around his mouth. “You’ve got the key to my heart, baby! And like the reverend said, till death do us fucking part! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

  Nearly choking on her tongue, she floored it down the block. Just before the Stop sign she slammed on the brake, skidding before parking at an odd angle by the curb. I need to change the locks again, she thought. And no backup keys anywhere he can find them. As soon as she could see straight she flipped open her phone, thinking she’d call the police, but then for some reason she pulled up her new sponsor’s number instead.

  On the second ring Maryanne answered, “Hey, hon. How are ya?”

  Gina had been holding back tears purely out of pride, hating Ray for having power over her enough to affect her so viscerally, but now Maryanne’s innocuous question hit her like a fist in her chest. She stuttered out the basic summary of the past half hour. “My son didn’t come home last night, and my husband, who’s about to be my ex-husband, I think he just threatened to kill me if I leave him—or maybe that he’d kill himself? I’m not—”

  “Whoa, stop. He threatened to kill you?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, and kept speaking through hyphenated breaths. “Maybe. I’m not sure if he has a gun. Never thought about it till now. But he scared me.”

  “Has he ever hit you?”

  “I don’t want to get into any of that right now.” The memory of Ray punching her in the stomach during their last drunken blowout a couple months back suddenly registered as if it were happening right then, the physical pain returning in a wave. She couldn’t get any air.

  “If he did threaten you, you really should report him, dear,” Maryanne said, sounding extra motherly. “Maybe get a restraining order.”

  “I don’t know, maybe. I probably should. But right now I’m late for work, and today is my first day sober in I don’t even know how long, so I pretty much feel like a chicken running around with its head chopped off. I slept maybe an hour last night, and even though I quit smoking when the boys were little, I want a cigarette like you wouldn’t believe.” Sucking in a deeper breath, she unclenched her hand from the steering wheel. “Sorry. How are you?”

  “Can’t complain. We should get back to what you said about your ex-husband, though. I have some experience with this and want to help.”

  Gina wrestled a stick of gum from its wrapper, stuck it in her mouth and chewed quickly until she’d slathered the surface of her tongue with mint. “So, any advice on staying sober?”

  “First of all, take another deep breath. I’m serious. I want to hear it. Breathe in, breathe out. Go ahead.”

  She felt the urge to snap at Maryanne, but realized how irrational that would be, also how crazy she must have sounded. “Okay,” she said, “here goes.” Her lungs filled slowly, loudly enough for Maryanne to hear, and then the same on the out breath. “How was that?”

  “Excellent. Now how do you feel?”

  She watched a sparrow leap from a branch and join three others on the telephone wire across the street, the sky cloudless and bright blue behind them.

  “Honestly, I don’t know. I feel numb, or in shock more than anything. This morning is off to a rough start.”

  “You need to get to work, huh?”

  “I should be driving now if I’m going to get there a little after when I’m supposed to get there. So, yeah. Speeding might need to happen.”

  “Well, don’t get a ticket. That’s all you need now.”

  “Are you laughing?”

  “It’s not at you, dear. I just know exactly how you’re feeling.”

  “This is strange for me. Here I am rambling all this crap to you over the phone at eight in the morning and I hardly know you.”

  “It takes a little getting used to, trusting someone. I get that. But all that matters now is that you take one thing at a time and do what you need to do, which is to get to work, don’t drink while you’re there, and either call me or get to a meeting right after. Long as you don’t drink today, you’ll be all right, I promise. I’ll be at work myself, but call me anytime if you feel overwhelmed, and if you can’t call, then say the Serenity Prayer to yourself. You’ll be amazed how pausing to say that short prayer can take a lot of the power out of whatever stress you have going on, and it helps to remind you what you can or can’t do about the situation. Take the day in bite-size pieces. Half an hour at a time. Fifteen minutes. Get through the morning, make it to lunch, then the afternoon. You get what I’m saying. Later today we can talk more about you filing a restraining order, but for now just know that you’re not alone. Okay, hon?”

  Gina wiped her eyes. “Okay, thanks.”

  “Good. Now put both hands on the wheel, focus on the road and get your sober ass to work.”

  She hung up and did as she was told, placed both hands on the steering wheel and pulled away from the curb, but a few feet along she stopped once more when her phone rang. Hoping to hear from Corey, she looked at the screen.

  A call from Leo Sheffield? I can’t answer now, she thought. Whatever mess you need me to clean up for you, Leo, it can wait till I get there.

  A moment after the ringing ceased she dialed Corey’s cell number, but the call went straight to his voice mail. Gina’s mouth hung open. She couldn’t think of a thing to say. Instead, she set down her phone and gripped the wheel until her knuckles turned white, chewing her gum. She’d be angry if he came to work late, livid if he missed the day. How could she blame him, though? She’d been so far from perfect, especially these past few months. She’d let her boys down. How could she expect them to be there for her? She needed to start driving, but redialed her son’s number first, and this time left a message: “Core, it’s Mom. I hope you’re okay. Anyway, I’ll see you at the Sheffields’. I love you.”

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, after nibbling her nails for most of the drive, she turned off Gin Lane at the stone lions, passed through the Sheffiel
ds’ gates and drove down the driveway to the wide parking lot next to the kitchen. The landscaping crew had finished their work and now bustled around the lot loading their mowers and weed-whackers onto the trailers with wood-slatted sides, none of them paying her any mind as she shuffled past with her phone to her ear, listening to Leo Sheffield’s voice mail: “Gina,” he said, sounding as though his throat had been scraped raw. “I need your help.” The pause that followed went on so long she thought he’d forgotten to hang up, then he added, “You’re the only one I could call,” and a second later the message ended.

  She replayed it, even more confused as to what the hell he was calling about the second time around, overwhelmed by everything when she entered the kitchen and found her coworkers. Her face stretched into the falsest of smiles and she greeted them both even before the screen door slapped closed. “Sorry I’m a few minutes late. Any updates?”

  Josie, her second in command of the house, shrugged but continued polishing silverware, while the chef, Michael, looked on with a grin while hunched over a cutting board.

  “Sheila called my cell about an hour ago,” Michael said, expertly slicing a yellow bell pepper at a wicked pace. “They’re going to be ten for dinner tonight, not eight.”

  Seated on the opposite side of the granite-topped center island, Josie set down the gleaming spoon she’d been working on and then forcefully rubbed a dab of silver polish up and down the tines of an antique salad fork. Her mouth pursed into her signature smirk, which Gina knew meant she had gossip to share.

  “Missus S also said that Mr. Sheffield came out last night,” she said, “but when he didn’t come downstairs early for his coffee like he usually would, I figured he was just sleeping in.” She looked toward the door to the hall and then leaned closer, speaking softer. “A few minutes ago I went outside and found him sitting in a chair by the pool—and holy cow did he look rough. Sit for a sec, G. Have a coffee before the fun begins.” Josie returned the final piece of silverware to the velvet-lined case, closed its hardwood top and fastened the brass clips. “Oh, and when Corey shows up, Missus S wants him to wipe down all the wicker chairs on the porch and run a mop over the boards. When’s he getting here?”

  “He should be here any minute.”

  Gina slid her phone into her pocket and turned her head to find Mr. Sheffield entering the kitchen from the hall, looking dead tired, his hand pressing something to the back of his head.

  “Good morning, sir,” Michael said, glancing up from the cutting board, and Josie and Gina both echoed the same greeting.

  Mr. Sheffield answered, “Good morning,” though his voice had a gravelly edge, just as it had in the voice-mail message, and his eyes seemed to be focused somewhere far off outside the kitchen windows. He released his hand from his head and Gina noticed what he’d been pressing there—a bloodstained dishcloth wrapped around a plastic bag with partially melted ice cubes sloshing inside.

  He began tilting to the right with his arm out, as if to catch hold of the door jamb, wavered for a moment and then took a half step toward her, but staggered sideways. Gina shouted as she lunged for him; then all at once they stumbled together through a blur of flailing arms, her coffee mug shattered and the ice pack and bloody cloth dropped to the floor.

  SEVENTEEN

  “I had a rather embarrassing accident,” Leo said, gazing down at the jagged pieces of the mug and the spilled coffee steaming on the floor, painfully self-conscious that Gina had just run to his aid and now strained under his weight to steady him.

  Her shoulder beneath his armpit kept him propped up long enough for the treble in his eardrums to dissipate and the vertigo to fade, though the nightmare that had plagued him all morning returned like water through a breaching dam, a torturous montage of images—Henry in the pool, his own desperate thrusts to resuscitate him, that haunting look of surprise before he’d closed his bulging eyes, then pulling him across the lawn, farther and farther from the house, deeper inside the darkness below the faraway pine boughs, and finally dropping his wrapped body in the woods, apologizing as he staggered around and blindly covered him with needles. Despite his drunkenness at the time, he remembered it all too vividly, the haunting series of hours that he knew no amount of drinking would ever allow him to forget.

  Gina picked up the bag of ice and bloody cloth from the floor, looked at him for a moment and then gently pulled his head forward.

  “My God,” she said, sounding horrified, “what happened?”

  “I decided to make the drive out late last night,” he said, easing away from her to lean against the door jamb. “It’s almost too stupid to say out loud. I decided to have a dip in the pool, and when I stepped out I slipped on the top step and hit my head hard enough that I bled a bit. Nothing to worry about, though.”

  “Why aren’t you at the hospital?”

  “I’ve been icing it for a while now and the swelling seems to be going down. I’ll be all right after getting some rest.”

  Gina eyed him the way his mother used to when he was a boy and he’d done something reckless or just plain dumb. That unblinking stare. The unspoken disappointment. He hadn’t showered yet, either, which only occurred to him when she brought the back of her hand to her nose. “Bend over again,” she said. “Let me get a better look at it.”

  Leo complied, glad he’d thought to explain away any blood beside the pool, but feeling less confident in his cover story with each passing second. All the goddamned cocaine still so present in his bloodstream kept his pulse pumping at an uncomfortable pace. The paranoia inescapable. His jaw clenched as she placed her fingers on his scalp and inspected the wound. The buzz from the booze had mostly worn off, enough for the hangover to take hold, anyway, which included a god-awful headache that he imagined would have been there head wound or not, something akin to diamond-tipped daggers slowly puncturing his brain through the temples.

  Gina let go and faced him. She placed a hand on his cheek and forced him to look at her, speaking as though she were in fact his mother and he an especially dimwitted child. “All right, so this is actually a very serious wound you have here,” she said. “And you’re absolutely going to need stitches, Mr. Sheffield. Come with me.” She took his arm and began leading him through the kitchen. “So we’re walking now, right? Don’t worry. I’ve got you. I see that look, and I know what you want to say but you can just skip it. You don’t have a choice in this. I’m taking you to the hospital, and I don’t want to hear a word about it.”

  “I feel like such a fool,” Leo said, feigning a smile for Michael and Josie as he walked beside Gina to the kitchen door. She led him by the arm onto the landing and down the three wooden stairs while commenting on his appearance, harping at him over the obvious point that he looked as though he hadn’t slept. Then she stopped walking and stared more intensely.

  “What was that message you left me this morning about?”

  He looked at her, though found it a challenge to focus. She’d worked for him all these years, trudging competently through what must have been interminable days when Sheila demanded every little thing be done the moment she mentioned it. Gina had never complained. She also knew so much about them, about him, and during all that time she’d kept his private life private, and even backed him up on his occasional lie. Despite her issues with drinking a bit too much on the property at the end of her shifts here and there, and her tragic decision to marry a deadbeat who apparently siphoned what little money she had—no wonder she always needed loans—he’d trusted her. But this secret he couldn’t trust her with. Not her. Not anyone.

  “Forget about it, it’s not important,” he said, hoping that some additional details might make the story more believable. “And you’re right, I was awake all night. Had to catch up on some work before the guests arrived today. And this here,” he said, pointing at the back of his head, “was a freak accident.” The lie barely left his mouth and had already
thrown him even further off his axis, probably because more truth had leaked out than he’d intended. His injury had been a result of an accident, though the result of Henry’s accident, not his. The wound, he realized now, was the scarlet letter he’d wear throughout the weekend, a visual reminder of his sin, the violent penalty for losing his mind and attacking his daughter’s oldest friend. Someone had hit him, and goddamn, they sure as hell had hit him hard. Not knowing who’d attacked him had been eating away at his sanity ever since he’d regained consciousness on the lawn, and now drained what little energy he’d had left, so he admitted that he needed to lean on Gina like a crutch for another moment.

  “It’s better that you stayed awake,” she said, straining under his weight. “If you have a concussion, and you most likely do by the looks of your head, I’ve heard you could die in your sleep. Not sure why, but that’s what I’ve heard.” Her voice drifted in his mind and settled like autumn leaves on a forest floor, her next words nothing more than a backdrop of low-tone static.

  Although he still felt light-headed and dizzy, he would have gladly paid a million dollars to skip the trip to the emergency room—more than a million to avoid the doctor’s questions about his coke-fueled heartbeat, the wound, the reek of whiskey and sweat seeping from his pores. If only he could skip everything. But no, he couldn’t. The day ahead rolled out before him like a scroll. After the hospital, all the impending greetings and conversations with the guests would be way too much to handle. He needed to shut himself away and hibernate through the hangover, and as soon as possible figure out a way to get Henry somewhere safer. He’d spend some time with the kids, sure, but the rest of them—the socialite neighbors, the yes-men and ass-kissers from the company, the dilettantes and country club rats—they could all go fuck themselves. He’d lost someone he cared about, horribly, suddenly. And Henry was still out there. A ticking bomb. How could he play host and sit through Sheila’s epic dinner parties, let alone keep his shit together?