The Riverhouse

by G. Norman Lippert

  “What do you mean? A little late for what?”

  “For anything. I mean, it’s got to be…” Shane trailed off, looking out the window again. He’d been about to say it’s got to be seven P.M., but that couldn’t be right. It was far too light outside for that. If it was seven, it’d be mostly dark outside, wouldn’t it? Instead, the sun shone brightly, sparkling on the wet grass of the side yard.

  On the phone, Morrie went on. “I know, it’s Sunday, but I’m a control freak, all right? An extra day is an extra day, and my Photoshop guy doesn’t have your sparkling penchant for deadlines. Sooner I get that canvas to him, the better. But if it’s no good for you, don’t sweat it. We’ll work something out for Monday.”

  “No,” Shane said distractedly, carrying the phone into the kitchen, peering through the window over the sink. The sun was bright over the trees on the other side of the river. Could he have actually slept through the entire night on the couch in the sunroom? He’d never done such a thing before. It was extremely disquieting. “No, that’s fine. Send your guy on over. If I’m not in, I’ll leave the painting in the front room and a key under the mat.”

  “Great,” Morrie agreed. “His name’s Derek. Tall kid with glasses and a tat on his neck. Looks like a damn skinhead, but don’t let him fool you. He’s a decent kid. Two or three this afternoon, all right?”

  “Sounds fine,” Shane replied, still staring out the kitchen window. Suddenly, he blinked and glanced aside. “Wait. What about Christiana?”

  “What about her?”

  “Er, I was just thinking, she’s the one you sent last time. Sorry, I’m probably being nosy. Just curious.”

  “Well, she is a lot easier on the eyes than Derek, I’ll give you that, but it’s Sunday. I wouldn’t call her even if I thought I’d get hold of her. She’s been M.I.A. for a few days.”

  “What?” Shane said, feeling suddenly very cold. “What do you mean? Is she on vacation or something?”

  “Nah. She just hasn’t shown up at the office. Not since Thursday. Not answering her cell either. She left me a message saying she might have to take some time off, but I figured she meant to arrange something, not just up and vanish on me.”

  Shane clutched the phone tightly and struggled to keep his voice even. “That seems pretty strange, don’t you think?”

  “Nah, she’s done it before. She has a pretty loose schedule here, works whenever she wants to squeeze it in, unless I need something special. She’s never been gone this long before, but she’ll turn up, acting like nothing’s happened, like everything’s perfectly normal. That’s just how she is. Besides, I’m sure I’d have heard about it if she was found dead in a ditch somewhere.”

  Shane couldn’t say anything. His lips felt sewn shut. Completely unbidden, snippets of last night’s dream sprang up in his mind: Boundary lands; Marlena’s searing black eyes, the dead clang of her voice, saying if you eat too much, uh-oh, you’ll awake with a tummy ache.

  “You cool, Shane?” Morrie said, his voice sounding tiny and unimportant in the telephone earpiece. “You sound like you’re fading out on me there.”

  “I’m here,” Shane said, amazed at how normal his voice sounded. “I’m cool.”

  “Great. Nice work on the Florida series. Let me know when you get the last pieces done and maybe I’ll come collect them myself and we’ll hoist a few, all right? See you, Shane.”

  “Yeah,” Shane said, and then dropped the phone on the floor as he reached to turn it off. He heard it clunk onto the kitchen tile and looked down at it dazedly. The dial tone buzzed up at him from the floor; Greenfeld had hung up, thankfully.

  Feeling strangely numb, Shane squatted to retrieve the phone. His fingers were shaking as he reached for his wallet and opened it. Christiana’s card, the one she had given him at the art show, was tucked into a pocket in the back. He pulled it out and stared at it. Two numbers were printed underneath her name, one marked “office” and the other marked “cell”. Knowing it was no use, Shane dialed the second set of numbers.

  He lifted the phone to his ear and listened. The electronic burr of the rings began. He counted them. After nine rings, the phone still hadn’t clicked over to her answering service. Shane lowered the phone, not even bothering to hang it up. Dangling at his side, the earpiece continued to burr incessantly. Shane listened, feeling weak and utterly hopeless.

  Time seemed to have overlapped on him, taken him right back to that day at The Spring Garden, the day he learned that he’d never hear from Steph again because she was dead, struck down by a red truck with GMC printed on its huge chrome grill, just like in the drawing sprawled across his cellar floor. He’d thought he could change it, alter it with a few bits of leftover chalk, but of course that had been silly. You couldn’t change destiny. He felt vaguely sick.

  Uh oh, a voice in his head chided gaily, you’ll awake with a tummy ache…

  Shane lifted the phone to push the “end” button, and then stopped. There was something odd about the sound of the incessant ringing in the earpiece. It almost seemed to be echoing.

  Shane stood very still and listened. The phone in his hands burred, and almost immediately afterwards, very faintly, came a sort of electronic chime. Shane frowned, straining to hear. The noise seemed to be coming from outside, near the front of the cottage.

  Still carrying the phone, listening to the burr of the ring in the earpiece and the subsequent distant chime, Shane walked through the library. Sure enough, the chiming sound grew slightly louder. It was coming from outside. Shane began to walk faster, approaching the door. He pulled it open more forcefully than he’d intended to, clambering out onto the little porch that overlooked the driveway, his eyes widening and his heart suddenly pounding.

  There was a car parked on the woods side of his pickup, a bottle-green Saturn. Shane had seen it before, but only once. Its rear windows were open slightly, and out of them came the persistent chime of a ringing cell phone.

  Shane hunkered down to peer into the side window, cupping his hands to his face to cut the glare of the morning sun. There didn’t seem to be anyone inside. And then behind him, shocking him so much that his knees nearly unhinged, a voice spoke.

  “Peeing outside is a lot easier for boys than girls,” the voice said, sounding bleary and vaguely annoyed. “I’m too tired to explain much more than that right now.”

  Shane turned around, a grin of helpless, monumental relief spreading across his face. Christiana was approaching from the direction of the woods, her dark hair mussed and her blouse untucked, flapping over a pair of jeans. She’d obviously slept in her car, right here in his driveway. Shane couldn’t begin to guess why, but for the moment, he didn’t care.

  Christiana stopped ten feet away and squinted at him. “What are you smiling about, anyway? Aren’t you wondering why in the hell I’m here?”

  Shane shook his head wonderingly. “Just my lucky day, I guess.” He drew a deep, shaky breath and nodded toward the cottage, still smiling. “What do you say? You want some coffee this time?”

  “I’d like to say that I didn’t know what Randy was like. It feels so stupid. To have known, almost from the very beginning, probably from the first time we ever went out, and to still stay with him.

  “I wish I could say he kept up a really good image for a long time, until after we’d been together long enough to make me care about him. Long enough to make it hard to walk away. But that’s not true. My parents didn’t raise any idiots. I knew he was trouble, right from the very beginning. I didn’t know how much. There’s that, at least. But that’s no excuse.

  “I kept telling myself he’d never turn it on me. Later, I told myself it’d never be more than words. He’d never actually raise a hand to me. He wouldn’t stoop that low. Then, after he did, I told myself the same thing that all women in abusive relationships eventually tell themselves: I told myself it was my fault; that I’d asked for it. When I heard myself say that, that’s what finally woke me up. I looked in the mirro
r, at the bruises on my upper arms where his fingers had dug in, where he’d held me and shook me, and I realized I’d begun to believe it—that I deserved it, that it was my fault for making him so angry.

  “And I stopped and just stared at myself, my mouth dropped open. It would have been funny, at another place and time, that look of comic surprise. And I thought, ‘When did I become that girl? The weak one? The one who makes excuses for the abuse she takes?’”

  Christiana stopped and pressed her lips together. She sat on the patio next to Shane, cupping a large red mug of coffee between both of her hands, staring out at the current below the bluff. She was sitting in the chair that Brian had occupied during his and his grandfather’s visit. Shane sat in the other chair, watching Christiana as she watched the river. She was wearing a long-sleeved button-down blouse, tangerine colored, still un-tucked. The sleeves were unbuttoned and rolled up, but not enough to show her upper arms.

  She’d been virtually silent since Shane had invited her in. She’d merely perched on the edge of the kitchen counter and hugged herself, warming by the stove as Shane made the coffee. He’d been content with the silence, not knowing what her story was, but knowing that when it came, it probably wasn’t going to be very nice. Shane had known a few women who’d been in abusive relationships. He knew enough about the dynamics of such relationships to know that you could never guess what kind of woman might be involved in one. In Christiana’s case, he was surprised, but not quite shocked.

  She drew a long, deep breath and went on.

  “I’ve been with Randy since my second year at Wash U. We met in copyright law. I was interested in that class because I was interested in art, and copyright is an important issue with the arts, especially in the digital age. He was smart and funny. Decent-enough looking, even if he did dress a little like a grown-up version of Alex P. Keaton. You remember him? Michael J. Fox in that show, ‘Family Ties’? Huh. Hardly anybody remembers that reference anymore.

  “Randy carried a briefcase. I mean, lots of guys carry briefcases in law school, but with Randy… it was kind of the whole package. He wore sweater vests and wingtip shoes and slacks with creases right down the leg, razor sharp, like his butler had ironed them fresh that morning. But I knew he lived alone, in an apartment off-campus, a little basement flat with nothing but a bedroom, a bathroom, and a cook-top. I knew that because he’d dated one of the other girls in class, a friend of mine named Angel. They’d gone out once or twice and she’d gotten bored with him. She said he was nice enough, but too intense. Too serious.

  “He packed his own lunches and carried them in his briefcase. If it had been two or three years earlier, I’d have thought he was a hopeless geek, but I was in college then, and prided myself on my open-mindedness, my fairness. I could tell that he was interested in me. Randy was quiet, but he wasn’t timid. He had this insufferable, stupid confidence that drove me a little crazy. He seemed to believe that I’d go out with him, no matter what. It was like he knew that, anywhere else, he’d never have a chance with a girl like me, but there, in law school, in copyright law, he was in his element. There, he was the smart one with the bright future. There, he was the big fish in the little pond. Naturally, the girl fishy in that little pond would recognize how great he was.

  “And the stupid thing is, he was right. That’s exactly how it happened. Back home, I’d never have dated a guy like him. Not just because he was skinny and arrogant and dressed like Alex P. Keaton, but because some part of me knew he was trouble, right from the beginning. Probably, that was even part of what drew me to him.

  “And don’t tell me that it was a stupid thing to do. I already know that. I knew it then, even. All girls do. I went along with him because he was trouble, because I was already feeling some resentment at my parents for pushing me into their world, and I wanted to revolt. I wasn’t ready to quit school yet, like I did a little while later, but I was ready to rebel against my parents, at least in some small, secret way. I knew my parents would never approve of Randy. My father would have smelled him from across a crowded room. My parents would have hated him. That was enough reason for me to be with him, in spite of everything. Take that, Mom and Dad.

  “Of course, they never even knew about Randy. Not until after I left school completely and moved out of the place they’d rented for me. By then, they had bigger fish to fry. The more they tried to push me back into their mold, the more I ran back to him. I hate to admit that, but what’s the point in hiding it now? For awhile, I even had the gall to blame it all on my parents. I told myself that if they hadn’t pushed me so hard, I wouldn’t have had to run so far away from them. I wouldn’t have had to cling to Randy like I did. But that’s all a lie. It’s the opposite of the lie I told myself about deserving Randy’s abuse. I blamed my parents for my decisions, and blamed myself for Randy’s. For a while, it was a vicious cycle.

  “I became exactly the sort of woman I’ve always hated. That’s how it always is, isn’t it? It’s like the homophobic guy who’s really just responding to his own gay tendencies. We all hate the thing we most fear becoming. I’d always hated the weak women who stayed with the men who hurt them. I scorned them, and had no patience for them. I even considered getting into domestic law, just so I could sit across the table from those women, the ones who defend the men who beat them, who make excuses for them and protect them, even after those men have nearly killed them. It wasn’t that I wanted to help those women, necessarily. I just wanted to lean across the table and grab them by the collar and shake them, and say ‘Why? What in the hell is wrong with you? Why do you protect the one who hates you? Women like you are the reason men like them always get away with it! Women like you are the reason rapists go unpunished! You are as much to blame as they are! What is WRONG with you?’”

  Christiana stopped again. Her voice had risen, grown loud and shrill, splintering on the last few words. She was shaking a little, struggling to hold her coffee cup steady. She exhaled and shuddered and reached to set her cup on the stone wall next to her.

  “You don’t need to tell me all of this,” Shane said quietly. “He’s not here now. There’s no point in upsetting yourself.”

  She was shaking her head, making her hair flop limply around her face. “That’s not true. There’s every point in getting upset now. I’ve been numb for months, for over a year. I’ve been fooling myself. I was so adamant that I could never become one of those kind of women that I didn’t see it when it actually happened. I didn’t see it until I was standing there in the mirror, dabbing at the bruises on my arms, and telling myself it was my own fault for getting him so riled up.

  “Those were the words I thought, too. I actually said them in my head. ‘I shouldn’t have gotten him so riled up’. Like he was a dog I had teased, a dog that didn’t know its own strength, or how sharp its teeth were. I was amazed. I wanted to reach through the mirror and grab myself, like I’d always envisioned grabbing those pathetic, abused wives and girlfriends. I wanted to grab myself and demand those same answers.

  “And that’s when I realized the truth about it all. Nobody plans to get into an abusive relationship. Some of us just don’t plan not to. And once you start sliding down that slope, it’s all too easy to just put on blinders and hope it won’t be as bad as it could be. You start making excuses from the very beginning. And let me tell you, once you start making excuses…” —she laughed; a shrill, hopeless bark— “you just never stop. It’s like giving the guy Carte Blanche. Do whatever you want, sweetiecakes, because you’ll never have to pay for it. I’ll forgive you every time. I’ll cover for you. Just don’t take off my blinders. Keep telling me the lies about how you regret it, about how you’ll never do it again, and how it’s all because of how much you love me. As long as you keep telling me the lies… as long as you let me wear the blinders…”

  Her voice trailed away again. She reached to pick up her coffee cup, and then took a long, deliberate sip.

  “So,” Shane said, trying very ha
rd to keep his voice even, trying to simply give her room to say whatever needed to be said. “Why did you end up here last night?”

  Christiana looked at him full on, perhaps for the first time since beginning her tale. Her face was remarkably composed, her eyes steady, almost grave. “Because,” she answered, “He didn’t keep his end of the deal. The stupid bastard. He did the one thing he wasn’t supposed to do.”

  Shane asked, although he thought he already knew the answer. “What did he do?”

  Christiana drew a sigh and looked away again, out over the bluff. In a businesslike voice, she said, “He took off my blinders.”

  Shane called Greenfeld while Christiana lay down to sleep for a few hours, borrowing one of his tee shirts to use as a makeshift nightshirt. She hadn’t wanted to, but Shane had insisted. She obviously needed the sleep. By the looks of it, she hadn’t had a decent night’s rest in several days.

  He stood in the kitchen and looked toward his cracked bedroom door as the telephone line clicked through. After three rings, Greenfeld’s answering service droned to life. Shane waited for the beep, then told Greenfeld that if he got the message in time, he could tell his nephew to stay home and play a few more hours of World of Warcraft; he and Christiana would be coming downtown themselves later in the day, and they’d drop off the Florida title painting when they did.

  He hung up, feeling fairly confident that Greenfeld would get the message, despite his previous engagements—his “priors”, as he’d called them. Shane had considered offering some explanation for Christiana’s presence at his cottage, had even begun to concoct a rather elaborate lie about showing her some works-in-progress for a future gallery show, but had decided at the last minute not to say anything at all. It wasn’t Greenfeld’s concern why Christiana was there. She hadn’t asked Shane to keep her presence a secret. Besides, they were all adults. If Greenfeld was curious about it, he could ask.