The Woman Inside

by E. G. Scott

  The whole time I was watching Sasha, I had no idea someone was doing the same to me.

  After

  When I enter the Lotus Pedal studio, one of the girls at the check-in desk hands me a votive candle with Sasha’s name and bike number, 5, written on it in metallic Sharpie. She’s wearing a shirt that I see on the wall with a “$47” sign next to it. The words “Missing You” are emblazoned on the front in silver script, and “Like Crazy” with the number 5 is on the back. Familiar women are milling around buying shirts and cradling votives, with somber but suppressed looks of excitement on their faces.

  A remix of Everything but the Girl’s “Missing” blares from the speakers as I work my way through a throng of frozen foreheads and strappy sports bras, swimming against the tide in the direction of the locker room as it empties out. Every color of hair is pulled into ponytails and buns—the few men included. I mutter to a straggler that I’ve got to pee as I head down the stairs to the lockers and bathrooms. I slide into the now empty hallway and do my best with the chintzy combination locks. I can only do one or two; otherwise, I’ll look suspicious on the cameras. It takes mere minutes and I’ve got what I came for.

  I’m the last one in except for the instructor, who is waiting to make her entrance. The studio is nearly full, with every bike occupied except for the bikes to the left and the right of mine. Sasha’s bike is expectedly vacant. Someone has placed a lit votive on the seat, the small flame alive from the blast of AC above.

  Madeline, Sasha’s favorite teacher, sashays in, all hair and six-pack abs, and hops up to the stage, arms above her head, goading us to hoot and holler. The song ends, and a club version of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” blasts. People cheer.

  Madeline lowers the lights, and the votives dot the floor of the studio all around us, like the night sky below. Sheila’s empty bike is a surprise. I know she won’t appear, but someone new had been riding on number seven since she stopped coming, and I’m surprised no one has claimed the prime spot.

  I clip in. The absence of riders to my left and right leaves me feeling exposed. I sense eyes on me. The women behind me lean into each other on their bikes.

  “Which is the missing one again?” a woman in a bike-riding Buddha tank top asks her friend. I don’t tell them that technically, both women are missing. But only one seems to have left a hole.

  “I think the skinny blond one with the Madonna arms.” The cycling Buddha girl nods. As if her friend hasn’t described nearly every woman in the front row, with the exception of me.

  The music changes, signifying the start of class, and Madeline climbs atop the bike facing us and closes her eyes while the first few strains of Beck’s “Missing” come on. She frowns at Sheila’s empty bike and invites the woman behind it to move up front, anointing her. Her friend lets out a string of “Woo-hoos!” She clips in, tears in her eyes, and smiles hugely.

  “All right, you beautiful soldiers of love and truth. Breathe. I want you to lead with your left foot and run this one with your eyes closed and your hearts open. Turn that resistance up high, because life ain’t easy and change only happens if you ride through the hard parts as hard as you fucking can to get to the other side.

  “Tonight we ride for one of our fellow warriors of light and beauty. She is missing in the great unknown and we need to call her back to the pack.” I fight the urge to roll my eyes.

  She turns the volume all the way up and the entire class falls into time together on a one-two beat, sixty pairs of eyes closed, heads swaying to the music, including Madeline’s. I keep my eyes open and watch myself in the mirror. My face is without expression and my eyes look dead.

  I should be feeling something about Sasha’s disappearance. And I do, but not the right things. I’m glad she’s gone. I’m glad Sheila’s gone too. I realize I’m a little stoned from the Ativan I’ve stolen from locker number twelve when my legs slow down. Reflexively, I put my hand on the pocket of my Lycra hoodie and feel comforted by the weight of the Percocet bottle I lifted from locker eight.

  How much can I really trust what Paul’s told the police about his interactions with Sasha recently? Just about as much as I can trust anything he has said to me in the past. The repeated realization that I should have known better triggers a new level of outrage. My legs speed up again, propelled by the anger and the bass.

  My anger is so big now I feel like I can’t contain it. I shut my eyes tight and try to will the memories away, but they persist. So many images flood in, I pedal faster and harder to escape them but fail. The velocity pushes me headfirst into that night twenty-nine years ago.

  I am pushing the closet door open after the yelling stopped and the sound of thunder gave way to silence. I’m standing over my mother’s lifeless body and trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. The song changes and so do the images. A fractured image and the sound of my father calling to me and reaching out for help. A stream of blood running down the side of his face from the corner of his mouth. His strangled voice saying my name. Like always, I try to shut the memory down before I make that short walk to his outstretched hand. I try to make myself run away every time. The image changes from my parents’ bedroom to ours. She is sitting on the chair watching us and waiting. My heart is beating so hard that I think I might be in cardiac arrest. I slow the bike and shakily unclip before I dismount, knocking over several candles on my way. I feel all of them watching me, their judgmental eyes following me as I bolt. The Percocet is in my mouth before the door shuts behind me.

  I can’t get her face out of my mind in the dark. I need to run from her.

  Before

  She came in the middle of the night. When I opened my eyes, she was watching us.

  She was sitting in the nest chair under the window, slowly petting Duff. Her eyes wild and her body calm. She was unmoving, aside from the wave of motion running from her shoulder through her fingers. Duff was content, tongue hanging out. Evidently, they were old friends.

  Part of me knew exactly who she was and why she’d come. And then I recognized her. Bike number seven. She was in our house, sitting in our room. I didn’t understand why, but I knew enough to be afraid.

  As my eyes adjusted to the half-light, Paul snored softly next to me, unmoved. He was deeply unconscious. My heart banged the walls of my chest so hard I hoped it might wake him. She hadn’t said a word, but it was very clear to me from the look on her face that she intended to hurt us. The gun in her lap confirmed as much.

  I moved my leg under the blankets across our enormous bed to try to nudge him awake, but the distance between us was too far. Even if I had been able to reach him, he’d taken a sleeping pill. I’d been keeping him up with my restlessness.

  She remained completely still, aside from her petting hand. She looked completely at home in the plush chair, one leg pulled under her, as if she’d sat in it before. She’d lit a candle and the reflection of the flame danced across her face, giving the room the effect of a séance. As my eyes adjusted, her face became more visible. I’d never really looked at her that much in class, even though her reflection had been next to mine so many times.

  She had a pretty mouth and eyes like saucers, even when narrowed. She was thin and polished like a shiny new toy. Her hair was impeccably blown out and I could make out a dark lipstick color that I recognized as one I regularly wore. She wore a sleeveless dress that seemed more costume than outfit. This was a special occasion.

  She spoke softly and slowly. “Do. Not. Wake. Him.”

  I hadn’t yet figured out who she’d come to shoot. I just nodded.

  “He can’t have everything.”

  I nodded again, put one hand out and the other on the bed to sit up. She didn’t protest.

  “I had so much. So much. And now I have nothing. I’ve lost everything. First, my husband. Then my home and friends. Then Paul. And now Molly is gone.”

  She starte
d to sob quietly. I couldn’t even imagine who Molly was. The woman’s instability was beyond anger; every tremble of her body indicated something deeply unhinged. A storm of frenzy.

  “I’m done. I can’t do this any longer. I can’t keep feeling this way.”

  I’d hoped the raised volume and emotion in her voice would snap Paul out of sleep, but I also wanted to keep her calm as she agitatedly moved her free hand to the gun’s grip.

  “Your husband told me that he was going to end me.”

  I’d let my organic facial reaction speak for me. My shock seemed to empower her.

  “He doesn’t get to use me and just throw me away. He doesn’t get to pretend that I never existed and threaten me when I remind him. He doesn’t get to have everything and get away with it.”

  I was hit with a burst of angry heat from the inside out. I felt like murdering Paul too. For cheating, for lying, for cheating and lying with someone so clearly unstable. For putting me in danger.

  She stopped talking and began tapping her foot rapidly. Duff matched her beat with his tail. Paul didn’t stir. She was a ticking bomb in our bedroom that he’d activated, and he was unconscious.

  I finally spoke, carefully. “I understand. He hurt me too. Let’s do it together.”

  My voice was surprisingly calm considering my levels of fear and rage. I’d improvised with every inch of my life.

  I didn’t have to see her expression in the full light of day to know she was confounded by this response. I knew I didn’t have much time or a real chance of her handing the gun over to me, but I was at a major disadvantage in the weapons department and I needed to think, not panic.

  And then I remembered what I’d put under the bed when Paul had gone away on a trip some months before. I reached into the space between the headboard and the mattress and behind Paul’s and my pillows.

  The sound was louder than I remembered from childhood. The explosion of pain in my shoulder hit me moments before the hammer in my hand made contact with her skull.

  * * *

  THE PRESSURE OF PAUL’S hand on the T-shirt wrapped around my shoulder registered before the sound of his voice. He was repeating my name with a tight grip on my shoulder, losing against the blooming bloodstain on his shirt. The pain was threatening to bring me to my knees, but I fought to stay upright.

  She was crumpled facedown on the floor to the right of the chair. Next to her was the gun that looked suspiciously like Paul’s. I couldn’t stop staring at the blood splatter on the span of the floor between her and me. It was hard to tell whose blood it was, there was so much.

  Duff was sniffing her hair and intermittently barking and yelping. The hammer I’d hidden in arm’s reach for protection in case of an intruder when Paul was away was on the floor between us. Paul guided me to sit in the chair where she’d been only minutes or hours before. My grasp on time was shaky, at best. “You lost a lot of blood. You are in shock. Hold this tightly.” He pushed my hand in place of his and I winced at the momentary release of pressure and the excruciating return of it. I nodded calmly but internally was violently cycling through shock and the smoldering fury at my husband.

  “Wait here.” He disappeared into the darkness of our bathroom, and the sound of him rooting around beneath the sink did little to distract me from the tangle of her hair splayed on the floor. I remember thinking she had pretty hair, and I’d never really noticed it, since I’d only seen her with it pulled up in a tight bun in class.

  He quickly returned and carefully removed the blood-soaked shirt, replacing it with a large swath of gauze. The searing pain of the hydrogen peroxide in and around the wound brought on a nasty kick of nausea. Paul expertly cleaned the area, and once the blood had stopped enough for him to examine it, he nodded, relieved.

  “It’s not too bad. The bullet just grazed you. Just a flesh wound.”

  He placed a clean cotton rectangle over the point of impact and wrapped the gauze bandaging securely. The pain had moved from unbearable to excruciating.

  “It’s my bad shoulder.”

  “You should probably take a painkiller.” I could see the reluctance in his face when he said it. I’d managed to taper my use down substantially since he’d gone back to work, and I hesitated. But I wanted one more than anything.

  When I went to retrieve the hydrocodone in the medicine cabinet, I heard him repeat “Sheila” a few times, each time louder than the one before, as if lack of volume were the reason she wasn’t moving. His voice saying her name made me shudder. I unscrewed the bottle and fished out two fat pills and swallowed them dry.

  I returned, bottle in hand, and stood close to him. It wasn’t either of our first times seeing a dead body, but he was acting like it was his.

  After a moment of suspended animation, he knelt next to her, brushing her hair away from her shoulder. The gesture of sweet intimacy and my husband’s hands on another woman caused a deep heart pang until he placed his fingers on her neck clinically and seriously, void of any tenderness. He pressed and waited, stone-faced. He moved his hand away and her hair cascaded down. He stood, pale and shaken.

  “She’s dead.”

  fourteen

  PAUL

  After

  WHAT DID SHE do? What did we do?! Fuck! Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck!

  Route 25 was still pretty clear of traffic that morning, a fact I was very thankful for, under the circumstances. But the dawn light was peeking over the horizon, taunting me. Putting me on the clock. As I squinted hard in an attempt to focus, the image of Sheila’s frozen gaze looking up at me—desperately, bewilderedly—from my bedroom floor flashed violently behind my lids.

  She did what she had to. We were justified. I could still go to the police and explain all of this.

  The sudden friction and whirring of the wheel on the rumble strip yanked my attention back to the road. I took a deep breath and exhaled. I wiped my palms one at a time on my jeans and realigned them on the wheel. I was aware for the first time of how cold and numb they were, but I needed to keep the windows open for the fresh air. I eased on the brakes to get myself back under the limit.

  Should I just go to the police? It’s not too late. Fuck. Of course it is. How are you going to explain moving the body?

  “Open your eyes, shit-for-brains!” The exclamation from the irate driver of the Mazda in the lane to my right was underscored by a long lean on her horn. I watched as she recovered from her swerve and flicked a cigarette butt out the window in my direction.

  I’ve got to do this. Everything looks so bad. Rebecca was right. There’s no way they’d believe how it went down. Not now. Would they? Rebecca was right, wasn’t she? Of course she was. She pled. She never pleads. Of course she was right. Of course she was. It was my gun. Sheila was holding it, but it was my gun.

  The next thing I knew, lights were flashing in my rearview mirror. I experienced that terrible sense of doom in the hiccup between the lights and the sound of the siren. That moment when your stomach drops and the suspicion that you’re fucked is utterly confirmed. I pulled over to the shoulder of the road. The police cruiser pulled in behind me.

  As I came to a stop, I heard the thud of the rolled-up tarp hitting the toolbox behind my seat. The sound prompted an awful, hollow feeling inside my gut, and I tasted bile creeping up my throat.

  “License and registration, please.” He looked me up and down like he wasn’t sure what to make of me.

  “Morning, Officer.” I produced both and handed them to him. My hands were curled as if still holding on to the wheel. I had to will them into relaxation.

  “Mr. Campbell. Up and at ’em early today. You didn’t slip a little something extra into your coffee this morning, did you?”

  “No, sir. I apologize for the erratic driving.”

  “Everything okay with you, Mr. Campbell?” He gave the back of the Cherokee a visual once-over.
<
br />   “Well, my wife’s at home, not feeling all that hot. I’m working on a contracting job, and I’m trying to get these tools over to the site and get back to the missus.” I nodded in the direction of the back seat.

  “Wife’s under the weather, eh?”

  “Afraid so, yeah. She was up all night, tossing and turning.”

  “A real killer.” He nodded to commiserate.

  “I’m sorry?” I coughed.

  “This flu. It’s making the rounds at my house as well.” He handed back the license and registration and patted me on the shoulder. “Good luck, my friend. And please slow down.”

  * * *

  I FIRST INVESTIGATED this plot of land near Smithtown Bay a few years back when we were looking at the possibility of parceling it into smaller lots and putting up condos. We got a team together to come out and test the soil, only to learn that the land was just a little too close to the water table to get zoning approval. The extra cash burning a hole in my pocket wasn’t enough to persuade the surveyor to fudge some measurements, and so the land just sat here, undeveloped. In the blur of this morning, it was the first clear thing that came into my head.

  I pulled the Jeep up, parked, and stepped out onto some very solid-feeling land. Shit. I opened the back door, hauled out a shovel, and gave the soil a tap. No give. I got a little height on the next go, and as I brought down the blade of the shovel with more force, it ricocheted off the frozen earth, driving the handle painfully into my numb palm. Fuck.

  I sat back in the Cherokee, rubbing my hands together and blowing on them. I looked at the digital readout on the dashboard. The sun was starting to cast long shafts of light across the frozen ground, causing the tiny ice crystals to sparkle like gemstones. This has to work. This’ll work. It’s practically swamp out here. Give it a few minutes. Just give it a few; it’ll give. I looked at the dashboard clock again, then shifted into reverse and backed up a car length.