The Riverhouse

by G. Norman Lippert

  Thinking that, Shane climbed the stairs to the studio. He took the Florida title painting off the big easel and placed a fresh canvas there, setting it on its side, in “landscape” position. He pulled his stool up to it and sat down, resting his chin on his right hand. For several minutes, he simply stared into the white. Like all artists, blank space tended to both calm and mesmerize him. His mind wandered.

  Shane had had only one good friend back in New York City, a writer named Desmond. Desmond wrote crime mysteries under a female pseudonym, and while he didn’t earn a terribly fine living at it, he was prolific enough to have been able to quit his advertising job of ten years and write full time. He and Shane had only ever talked about the craft of writing once or twice, but on one of those occasions, Shane had asked Desmond what it took to make a really awful villain. Was the worst bad guy a rapist? A murderer? A pedophile?

  Desmond had shaken his head wisely and peered crookedly at Shane, as if the answer to that question was a sort of trade secret, like the answer to how a magician saws a girl in half. Shane hadn’t thought his friend was going to reply at all. When he did, his response had both surprised and dismayed Shane.

  Now, staring at the bottomless white of the canvas before him, Shane thought again about Desmond’s answer to the question of what made the worst villain. For the first time, he thought maybe he understood.

  Randy had given Christiana a pet rabbit. Christiana had told Shane this with a wry laugh, as if it was the sort of gesture that was typical of Randy—close but way off, as Shane’s dad used to say. She’d wanted a cat, but Randy apparently hated cats. He was allergic to them, or so he had said. He’d bought the fat brown rabbit as an apology gift, after a particularly vicious argument, the one during which he had gripped her arms hard enough to embed deep bruises in the flesh of her biceps, shaken her violently enough to give her a splitting headache that lasted until the next night.

  Randy was apparently an expert at that sort of violence—the kind that didn’t leave marks in obvious places. He was almost a connoisseur of careful abuse. There were never any black eyes or bloody lips, but there were plenty of headaches and hidden bruises, plenty of sore ribs and dry heaves in the bathroom afterward, listening to him stalk the floor just outside, breathing curses and threats, telling her how it was all her fault, fretting about how she’d asked for it, demanding to know why she made him do such things.

  Randy was wont to return the next day with dramatic ovations of affection and apology, offering Christiana gifts, flowers, often even heartfelt tears of sorrow.

  Over and over, Christiana had wanted to end things with him, but had never found a way to do it. When he beat her, she was too scared of him to proclaim her intentions to leave him. When he apologized, he was too sincere and pathetic.

  I’ll do it sometime when things are normal between us, she’d told herself. When he won’t hurt me, and when I won’t crush him. When we can be like normal people, talking, being rational. I’ll do it then. Then I’ll be free.

  The problem was, things were never normal between them. They were constantly swinging wildly between the polarities of his violent rage and his pathetic, wretched remorse. Further, Christiana had come to fear Randy, even in his ‘I’ve been a bad boy’ mode. This was because some part of her knew that his remorse, dramatic and sincere as it seemed, was just a ruse. It was simply the price he had to pay for the privilege of hurting her whenever he wanted to.

  For most men, apology meant giving away a part of themselves; it meant breaking off a part of the ego and presenting it as a gift. For most men, apologizing cost them something, and that was what made it meaningful. For Randy, however, apologies didn’t seem to cost anything. That was why it was so easy for him, so natural and indulgent. He didn’t really ever think he’d done anything wrong. Putting on the ‘I’ve been a bad boy’ façade was merely a dull obligation, like leaving money on the hooker’s dresser.

  Christiana was terrified of knowing this, of knowing that Randy’s apologies were meaningless. Because if that was true, then the only real emotion Randy ever felt was the rage, and it was probably always there, hidden just under the surface, under the misty eyes and the oh-so-sincere smile of regret. The rage didn’t need to stew to a boil before it flashed out at her. It was always there, simmering, ready at any moment. This was never more apparent than the day of her birthday, less than a week earlier.

  Christiana had named the pet rabbit Percy, even though it was a female. Percy lived most of her days in a hutch on the back porch of the apartment, but Christiana took her out for a while most evenings. She’d hold Percy on her lap and stroke her deliciously soft fur.

  The rabbit was typically timid. It didn’t arch its back when Christiana pet it, like a cat would. Instead, it sat perfectly still, as if it were catatonic, merely twitching its nose and breathing in quick, panting puffs. Still, there was something pleasant about holding the small animal, about stroking Percy’s luxurious brown coat. Christiana had been holding Percy on her lap, sitting on a lawn chair on the back porch, when Randy had gotten home that evening. He’d announced his intention to take Christiana out for her birthday, acting magnanimous, throwing his arms wide and grinning.

  Christiana had been less enthusiastic than him. She’d told him she was tired, and that she’d already started some dinner thawing in the sink.

  Randy’s grin had vanished. He’d nodded, curtly, and announced that he’d already made reservations, so whatever was thawing in the sink would just have to wait for another night. She could wear her new black dress, he’d suggested, the one with the spaghetti straps. He liked that one. He’d bought it for her. He’d even gone to the trouble of laying it out on the bed, along with the shoes he liked for her to wear whenever she dressed up. He’d already done all the work for her, so there was no reason for her to complain.

  Christiana had known she was treading on thin ice, but she really had been tired. She’d been looking very forward to a quiet evening at home. She’d tried to soothe Randy with her voice, telling him how nice it’d be to just stay in for the night, to snuggle on the couch and watch something she’d recorded on the DVR.

  “Besides,” she’d said, smiling up at him and cocking her head. “Percy is so content right here on my lap. I’d hate to stick her back in her hutch. She’s been in there all day. Maybe she can cuddle with us on the couch. I bet that would make her happy.” She looked back down at the rabbit and stroked her fur. “What do you think, Percy? Would you like that?”

  Randy seemed to relax a little. He sighed and smiled thoughtfully, hunkering down on one knee in front of Christiana. He was still wearing his sweater vest and tie, although he’d left his briefcase on the kitchen table, like he usually did when he got home from class. He’d reached forward to pet Percy, scratching her between her big, floppy ears. Then, before Christiana had realized what he was doing, he’d wrapped his hand around the rabbit’s neck. He reached forward with his other hand, gripped the rabbit’s head, completely engulfing it in his fist, and twisted. Percy’s neck snapped audibly.

  The rabbit lurched once, violently, and then went still on Christiana’s lap. It felt no different than it had a moment before, except that its quick, metronome-like breathing had stopped.

  “There,” Randy said, neither grinning nor frowning. “Now Percy doesn’t care what the fuck we do tonight. Go put on your dress. Our reservation’s at seven.”

  Three minutes later, Christiana had been in her bedroom, standing in front of the cheval mirror, half-dressed and shuddering violently. From the hall, Randy’s voice came. “Maybe we can make Percy into a really little bitty fur stole for you to wear with that dress. Would you like that? Will that help you to remember to listen?” And he’d laughed, delighted with his wit.

  Shane stared at the white of the canvas, stewing, thinking of Randy and Percy. Thinking of his friend Desmond, the writer.

  “If you really want to make the reader hate someone,” Desmond had said, leaning forward and sm
iling thinly, “Make him kill an animal. Something cute. A kitten. You have your villain do that—easily and with no remorse—and they will despise him. They’ll want his head on a pike. No death will be too gruesome for that guy.”

  Back then, Shane had thought that that was some pretty screwed up logic. Why would people feel a greater sense of vengeance for a man who killed an animal than somebody who murdered his fellow human beings? Now, however, it made an eerie kind of sense.

  Murder is heinous, Shane thought, but it is rarely, except in the most deranged cases, committed lightly. If someone can kill an animal, though, without the slightest compunction, something inside them is truly dead. Whatever invisible thread exists that connects people to the brotherhood of humanity, it does not embrace the person who destroys life lightly. For that individual, the only difference between murdering an animal and murdering another human being is one of personal consequences, not morality. One can get away with killing a rabbit. It is much harder to get away with the casual murder of one’s fellow man. This is the only real barrier preventing such a person from becoming a serial killer, and it isn’t much. Shane had read enough to know that.

  Ask any police profiler. Almost without exception, mass murderers begin with torturing and killing animals, usually while they're still children.

  The average person doesn’t need to be told that, however. People understand a lot of things instinctively, whether they know it or not. People understand that a man who can easily kill a rabbit can just as easily kill his girlfriend, if the mood strikes him and he thinks he can get away with it. That’s what Desmond, the crime fiction writer, had meant when he’d said that the best way to make readers hate a villain is to have him kill an animal.

  “But is that enough?” Shane had protested. “Doesn’t he have to follow it up with an actual murder of another person?”

  Desmond had shrugged, as if the answer didn’t really matter. “What are you more afraid of, Shane?” he said in reply. “The poisonous spider that’s already bitten you, or the one up in the corner of your bedroom, hanging over your bed, watching you, pondering, deciding whether or not it wants to strike?”

  Shane hated spiders. He’d shuddered at the mere thought. Desmond nodded wisely, not needing to elaborate.

  Christiana had told Shane the story of her previous few days, not because he’d asked, but because she seemed to need to. Keeping Randy’s violence a secret had apparently become a deeply rooted habit. Breaking that habit was an important, if symbolic, act. Shane was secretly gratified that Christiana had chosen to break her silence with him, instead of with Greenfeld or her parents, but he didn’t think too much of it.

  “After Randy killed Percy, he was in a sort of weird, giddy good mood for the whole rest of the night,” Christiana had told him, her voice strangely flat and expressionless. “It was like someone had given him a shot of B-12 or something. He joked with the waitress at the restaurant and ate like he hadn’t had a meal in weeks.

  “I wasn’t hungry in the least, but I made myself eat, because I knew he’d get angry again if I didn’t. When we got back to my apartment, I wanted to throw up. That would have been the worst of all. I sat as still as I could and just willed myself to keep it down. Percy was dead in her hutch out back—Randy had put her body there. He was whistling when we got back, and he just walked through the apartment and out the back door. He didn’t change his clothes or anything. He dug a little hole in the back yard and buried Percy back there. I almost expected him to call me out there, to try to have a little funeral, like I was a kid whose goldfish had died. He didn’t.

  “I went to my room and locked the door, glad to finally be out of his presence. I thought he’d try to come in when he was done. I just sat on my bed, staring. I was stunned. I didn’t know what I’d do when he came back. I just kept thinking about how it had felt, when he’d been petting Percy one moment, and then snapping her neck in the next, without even blinking. I kept thinking about how she’d died on my lap, as I was stroking her fur. I hadn’t been able to protect her.

  “And I thought who will protect me? Who will stop him from doing the same thing to me if he wants to? Would my neck sound the same as Percy’s? Would he bury me in the back yard?

  “He did come back, when he was done burying Percy. I heard him come in and close the back door. He wasn’t whistling anymore. After a minute, I heard him come down the hall toward my bedroom. The doorknob rattled, but just a little, like he was just resting his hand on it. He didn’t try to come in, and that was good. He wouldn’t have liked that I’d locked the door.

  “He just stood there for a minute, and then I heard him let out a big sigh. ‘Happy birthday, Chris,’ he said. ‘I’m willing to put all this ugliness behind us. I know you’re tired. Sleep tight. See you tomorrow.’ And then I heard him walk away. A minute later, his car started out front, and he was gone.

  “I went to work the next day. It was my half day. I had plans for that second half of the day. I was going to come home after lunch, and I was going to break things off with Randy.

  “He’d still be at class until four, so I’d have plenty of time to make arrangements. Some of his stuff was at my place, some clothes, a few books, that kind of thing. I was going to pack them up in a box and drop them off at his apartment, along with a note. I suppose that seems pretty weak, but there it is. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him in person. I could hardly bring myself to think about even being in his presence again. It was like…” She shook her head, then looked up at Shane, her coffee cup long forgotten on the stone wall of the patio.

  “Did you ever hear that if you try to poison someone by giving them arsenic, if you give them a little too much, the body will sense it and just throw it all up? A small amount, built up bit by bit over time, that’ll kill somebody, but if you give them just a tiny bit too much, the body’s alarms all go off. After that, you can bet your life that that person won’t ever trust you to get them a smoothie again. Right?

  “When I finally made my decision about Randy, that's what it was like. He had been spoon-feeding me abuse for almost two years, and I'd swallowed it all, even as he ramped it up, even as it got worse and worse. But when he killed Percy, that did the trick. It set off all my internal alarms. It took off my blinders. It’s stupid, really, that that’s what did it, but it did.

  “It was just like with the arsenic story. I wanted to vomit all of it out, every night I’d ever spent with him, every moment, every word and look and touch. Not just the bad stuff, either; everything. It was like taking a breath of fresh air for the first time in years.

  “I couldn’t bear to think of seeing him again. I thought I really would puke if I did, or I’d lash out at him, or worst of all, lose what resolve I’d mustered and never find it again.

  “My plan was just to pack up his stuff, write a short note telling him it was over and that I never wanted to see him again, plop it all on his doorstep, and then go away for a few days until it all blew over. My parents have a little vacation place up in the Ozarks. It isn’t much, just a little cabin with no heat or electricity, but it’s quiet and peaceful. I have a key, even though I haven’t been there for years. None of us have. I was going to pack up a few things and head there, spend a few days alone. I’d be there now, if things had gone a little differently.

  “When I got back to my apartment, I went straight to the living room and started pulling Randy’s books off the bookshelves. They were all legal stuff, textbooks and law books, things he’d left at my place over the last few years. Nothing good. Nothing readable. I started getting angry as I pulled them off the shelves, intending to stack them all in a box I’d found in the basement, but missing it mostly, just tossing them on the floor, not caring if they got damaged, hoping they would.

  “I got madder and madder, baring my teeth and throwing those stupid damn books over my shoulder, taking my anger out on them. The last one was big. It was some encyclopedia of legal precedents for the state of Missouri. I picked it
up with both hands and spun around, heaving it across the living room and letting out a little scream of rage.

  “Randy was standing there in the hallway, watching me. His face was blank, completely dead, like he’d been switched off. He just stared at me, his eyes on mine. I was panting and sweating and suddenly completely terrified.

  “I knew he had a key, but he’d never come in before without my knowing it. At least, that’s what I thought. Very slowly, he looked down at the books on the living room floor. I had time to notice that there was a big paintbrush in his right hand. The tip was black and wet. He looked back up at me, still real slow, and finally he opened his mouth.

  “‘Bad day at the office dear?’ he asked me, completely deadpan. I was shaking, partly from the rage, partly from the fear. I couldn’t bring myself to respond, not even to shake my head or nod.

  “The books all over the floor said everything. He just stared at me, and then, after almost a minute, he smiled. ‘I’m guessing you meant to put those in that box. A lot of guys would get mad about seeing their stuff thrown around, but lucky for you, I’m the understanding sort. I don’t care about any of those, anyway. That’s why I left them here. They’ve served their purpose. What do you say we box them up and stick them in storage? I’ll wait while you pack them up. Fair enough?’

  “He came into the living room then and stood there, right in front of the pile of books, and just smiled at me. The smile was the worst part. No matter what he said, he knew exactly what was going on. He knew why his books were all over the floor.

  “Suddenly, I was aware of how many heavy, blunt things there were in the living room: the lamp on the side table, a little bronze sculpture on top of the bookcase, a pair of pewter candlesticks, a lump of volcanic rock from Hawaii that I used as a bookend. I wasn’t thinking of these things because I was worried Randy might use them to hurt me—his abuse was usually very personal, using only his hands. I was thinking of them because of what I wanted to do to him with them.