He walked back in the house at eleven in the morning, grateful that it was a weekday and the boys were in school, and he could feel the road in his bones and a crushing desire for his own pillow. He walked into the house and called out to Dolores as he poured himself a double scotch and she came in from the backyard and said, “There wasn’t enough.”
He turned with his drink in hand and said, “What’s that, hon?” and noticed that she was wet, as if she’d just stepped from the shower, except she wore an old dark dress with a faded floral print. She was barefoot and the water dripped off her hair and dripped off her dress.
“Baby,” he said, “why you all wet?”
She said, “There wasn’t enough,” and placed a bottle down on the counter. “I’m still awake.”
And she walked back outside.
Teddy saw her walk toward the gazebo, taking long, meandering steps, swaying. And he put his drink down on the counter and picked up the bottle and saw that it was the laudanum the doctor had prescribed after her hospital stay. If Teddy had to go on a trip, he portioned out the number of teaspoonfuls he figured she’d need while he was gone, and added them to a small bottle in her medicine cabinet. Then he took this bottle and locked it up in the cellar.
There were six months of doses in this bottle and she’d drunk it dry.
He saw her stumble up the gazebo stairs, fall to her knees, and get back up again.
How had she managed to get to the bottle? That wasn’t any ordinary lock on the cellar cabinet. A strong man with bolt cutters couldn’t get that lock off. She couldn’t have picked it, and Teddy had the only key.
He watched her sit in the porch swing in the center of the gazebo and he looked at the bottle. He remembered standing right here the night he left, adding the teaspoons to the medicine cabinet bottle, having a belt or two of rye for himself, looking out at the lake, putting the smaller bottle in the medicine cabinet, going upstairs to say good-bye to the kids, coming back down as the phone rang, and he’d taken the call from the field office, grabbed his coat and his overnight bag and kissed Dolores at the door and headed to his car…
…and left the bigger bottle behind on the kitchen counter.
He went out through the screen door and crossed the lawn to the gazebo and walked up the steps and she watched him come, soaking wet, one leg dangling as she pushed the swing back and forth in a lazy tilt.
He said, “Honey, when did you drink all this?”
“This morning.” She stuck her tongue out at him and then gave him a dreamy smile and looked up at the curved ceiling. “Not enough, though. Can’t sleep. Just want to sleep. Too tired.”
He saw the logs floating in the lake behind her and he knew they weren’t logs, but he looked away, looked back at his wife.
“Why are you tired?”
She shrugged, flopping her hands out by her side. “Tired of all this. So tired. Just want to go home.”
“You are home.”
She pointed at the ceiling. “Home-home,” she said.
Teddy looked out at those logs again, turning gently in the water.
“Where’s Rachel?”
“School.”
“She’s too young for school, honey.”
“Not my school,” his wife said and showed him her teeth.
And Teddy screamed. He screamed so loudly that Dolores fell out of the swing and he jumped over her and jumped over the railing at the back of the gazebo and ran screaming, screaming no, screaming God, screaming please, screaming not my babies, screaming Jesus, screaming oh oh oh.
And he plunged into the water. He stumbled and fell forward on his face and went under and the water covered him like oil and he swam forward and forward and came up in the center of them. The three logs. His babies.
Edward and Daniel were facedown, but Rachel was on her back, her eyes open and looking up at the sky, her mother’s desolation imprinted in her pupils, her gaze searching the clouds.
He carried them out one by one and lay them on the shore. He was careful with them. He held them firmly but gently. He could feel their bones. He caressed their cheeks. He caressed their shoulders and their rib cages and their legs and their feet. He kissed them many times.
He dropped to his knees and vomited until his chest burned and his stomach was stripped.
He went back and crossed their arms over their chests, and he noticed that Daniel and Rachel had rope burns on their wrists, and he knew that Edward had been the first to die. The other two had waited, hearing it, knowing she’d be coming back for them.
He kissed each of his children again on both cheeks and their foreheads and he closed Rachel’s eyes.
Had they kicked in her arms as she carried them to the water? Had they screamed? Or had they gone soft and moaning, resigned to it?
He saw his wife in her violet dress the night he’d met her and saw the look in her face that first moment of seeing her, that look he’d fallen in love with. He’d thought it had just been the dress, her insecurity about wearing such a fine dress in a fine club. But that wasn’t it. It was terror, barely suppressed, and it was always there. It was terror of the outside—of trains, of bombs, of rattling streetcars and jackhammers and dark avenues and Russians and submarines and taverns filled with angry men, oceans filled with sharks, Asians carrying red books in one hand and rifles in the other.
She was afraid of all that and so much more, but what terrified her most was inside of her, an insect of unnatural intelligence who’d been living in her brain her entire life, playing with it, clicking across it, wrenching loose its cables on a whim.
Teddy left his children and sat on the gazebo floor for a long time, watching her sway, and the worst of it all was how much he loved her. If he could sacrifice his own mind to restore hers, he would. Sell his limbs? Fine. She had been all the love he’d ever known for so long. She had been what carried him through the war, through this awful world. He loved her more than his life, more than his soul.
But he’d failed her. Failed his children. Failed the lives they’d all built together because he’d refused to see Dolores, really see her, see that her insanity was not her fault, not something she could control, not some proof of moral weakness or lack of fortitude.
He’d refused to see it because if she actually were his true love, his immortal other self, then what did that say about his brain, his sanity, his moral weakness?
And so, he’d hidden from it, hidden from her. He’d left her alone, his one love, and let her mind consume itself.
He watched her sway. Oh, Christ, how he loved her.
Loved her (and it shamed him deeply), more than his sons.
But more than Rachel?
Maybe not. Maybe not.
He saw Rachel in her mother’s arms as her mother carried her to the water. Saw his daughter’s eyes go wide as she descended into the lake.
He looked at his wife, still seeing his daughter, and thought: You cruel, cruel, insane bitch.
Teddy sat on the floor of the gazebo and wept. He wasn’t sure for how long. He wept and he saw Dolores on the stoop as he brought her flowers and Dolores looking back over her shoulder at him on their honeymoon and Dolores in her violet dress and pregnant with Edward and removing one of her eyelashes from his cheek as she pulled away from his kiss and curled in his arms as she gave his hand a peck and laughing and smiling her Sunday-morning smiles and staring at him as the rest of her face broke around those big eyes and she looked so scared and so alone, always, always, some part of her, so alone…
He stood and his knees shook.
He took a seat beside his wife and she said, “You’re my good man.”
“No,” he said. “I’m not.”
“You are.” She took his hand. “You love me. I know that. I know you’re not perfect.”
What had they thought—Daniel and Rachel—when they woke to their mother tying rope around their wrists? As they looked into her eyes?
“Oh, Christ.”
“I do. But
you’re mine. And you try.”
“Oh, baby,” he said, “please don’t say any more.”
And Edward. Edward would have run. She would have had to chase him through the house.
She was bright now, happy. She said, “Let’s put them in the kitchen.”
“What?”
She climbed atop him, straddled him, and hugged him to her damp body. “Let’s sit them at the table, Andrew.” She kissed his eyelids.
He held her to him, crushing her body against his, and he wept into her shoulder.
She said, “They’ll be our living dolls. We’ll dry them off.”
“What?” His voice muffled in his shoulder.
“We’ll change their clothes.” She whispered it in his ear.
He couldn’t see her in a box, a white rubber box with a small viewing window in the door.
“We’ll let them sleep in our bed tonight.”
“Please stop talking.”
“Just the one night.”
“Please.”
“And then tomorrow we can take them on a picnic.”
“If you ever loved me…” Teddy could see them lying on the shore.
“I always loved you, baby.”
“If you ever loved me, please stop talking,” Teddy said.
He wanted to go to his children, to bring them alive, to take them away from here, away from her.
Dolores placed her hand on his gun.
He clamped his hand over hers.
“I need you to love me,” she said. “I need you to free me.”
She pulled at his gun, but he removed her hand. He looked in her eyes. They were so bright they hurt. They were not the eyes of a human. A dog maybe. A wolf, possibly.
After the war, after Dachau, he’d swore he would never kill again unless he had no choice. Unless the other man’s gun was already pointed at him. Only then.
He couldn’t take one more death. He couldn’t.
She tugged at his gun, her eyes growing even brighter, and he removed her hand again.
He looked out at the shore and saw them neatly lined up, shoulder to shoulder.
He pulled his gun free of its holster. He showed it to her.
She bit her lip, weeping, and nodded. She looked up at the roof of the gazebo. She said, “We’ll pretend they’re with us. We’ll give them baths, Andrew.”
And he placed the gun to her belly and his hand trembled and his lips trembled and he said, “I love you, Dolores.”
And even then, with his gun to her body, he was sure he couldn’t do it.
She looked down as if surprised that she was still there, that he was still below her. “I love you, too. I love you so much. I love you like—”
And he pulled the trigger. The sound of it came out of her eyes and air popped from her mouth, and she placed her hand over the hole and looked at him, her other hand gripping his hair.
And as it spilled out of her, he pulled her to him and she went soft against his body and he held her and held her and wept his terrible love into her faded dress.
HE SAT UP in the dark and smelled the cigarette smoke before he saw the coal and the coal flared as Sheehan took a drag on the cigarette and watched him.
He sat on the bed and wept. He couldn’t stop weeping. He said her name. He said:
“Rachel, Rachel, Rachel.”
And he saw her eyes watching the clouds and her hair floating out around her.
When the convulsions stopped, when the tears dried, Sheehan said, “Rachel who?”
“Rachel Laeddis,” he said.
“And you are?”
“Andrew,” he said. “My name is Andrew Laeddis.”
Sheehan turned on a small light and revealed Cawley and a guard on the other side of the bars. The guard had his back to them, but Cawley stared in, his hands on the bars.
“Why are you here?”
He took the handkerchief Sheehan offered and wiped his face.
“Why are you here?” Cawley repeated.
“Because I murdered my wife.”
“And why did you do that?”
“Because she murdered our children and she needed peace.”
“Are you a U.S. marshal?” Sheehan said.
“No. I was once. Not anymore.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Since May third, 1952.”
“Who was Rachel Laeddis?”
“My daughter. She was four.”
“Who is Rachel Solando?”
“She doesn’t exist. I made her up.”
“Why?” Cawley said.
Teddy shook his head.
“Why?” Cawley repeated.
“I don’t know, I don’t know…”
“Yes, you do, Andrew. Tell me why.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
Teddy grabbed his head and rocked in place. “Don’t make me say it. Please? Please, Doctor?”
Cawley gripped the bars. “I need to hear it, Andrew.”
He looked through the bars at him, and he wanted to lunge forward and bite his nose.
“Because,” he said and stopped. He cleared his throat, spit on the floor. “Because I can’t take knowing that I let my wife kill my babies. I ignored all the signs. I tried to wish it away. I killed them because I didn’t get her some help.”
“And?”
“And knowing that is too much. I can’t live with it.”
“But you have to. You realize that.”
He nodded. He pulled his knees to his chest.
Sheehan looked back over his shoulder at Cawley. Cawley stared in through the bars. He lit a cigarette. He watched Teddy steadily.
“Here’s my fear, Andrew. We’ve been here before. We had this exact same break nine months ago. And then you regressed. Rapidly.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I appreciate that,” Cawley said, “but I can’t use an apology right now. I need to know that you’ve accepted reality. None of us can afford another regression.”
Teddy looked at Cawley, this too-thin man with great pools of shadow under his eyes. This man who’d come to save him. This man who might be the only true friend he’d ever had.
He saw the sound of his gun in her eyes and he felt his sons’ wet wrists as he’d placed them on their chests and he saw his daughter’s hair as he stroked it off her face with his index finger.
“I won’t regress,” he said. “My name is Andrew Laeddis. I murdered my wife, Dolores, in the spring of ’fifty-two…”
25
THE SUN WAS in the room when he woke.
He sat up and looked toward the bars, but the bars weren’t there. Just a window, lower than it should have been until he realized he was up high, on the top bunk in the room he’d shared with Trey and Bibby.
It was empty. He hopped off the bunk and opened the closet and saw his clothes there, fresh from the laundry, and he put them on. He walked to the window and placed a foot up on the ledge to tie his shoe and looked out at the compound and saw patients and orderlies and guards in equal number, some milling in front of the hospital, others continuing the cleanup, some tending to what remained of the rosebushes along the foundation.
He considered his hands as he tied the second shoe. Rock steady. His vision was as clear as it had been when he was a child and his head as well.
He left the room and walked down the stairs and out into the compound and he passed Nurse Marino in the breezeway and she gave him a smile and said, “Morning.”
“Beautiful one,” he said.
“Gorgeous. I think that storm blew summer out for good.”
He leaned on the rail and looked at a sky the color of baby blue eyes and he could smell a freshness in the air that had been missing since June.
“Enjoy the day,” Nurse Marino said, and he watched her as she walked down the breezeway, felt it was maybe a sign of health that he enjoyed the sway of her hips.
He walked into the compound and passed some orderlies on their d
ay off tossing a ball back and forth and they waved and said, “Good morning,” and he waved and said “Good morning” back.
He heard the sound of the ferry horn as it neared the dock, and he saw Cawley and the warden talking in the center of the lawn in front of the hospital and they nodded in acknowledgment and he nodded back.
He sat down on the corner of the hospital steps and looked out at all of it and felt as good as he’d felt in a long time.
“Here.”
He took the cigarette and put it in his mouth, leaned in toward the flame and smelled that gasoline stench of the Zippo before it was snapped closed.
“How we doing this morning?”
“Good. You?” He sucked the smoke back into his lungs.
“Can’t complain.”
He noticed Cawley and the warden watching them.
“We ever figure out what that book of the warden’s is?”
“Nope. Might go to the grave without knowing.”
“That’s a helluva shame.”
“Maybe there are some things we were put on this earth not to know. Look at it that way.”
“Interesting perspective.”
“Well, I try.”
He took another pull on the cigarette, noticed how sweet the tobacco tasted. It was richer, and it clung to the back of his throat.
“So what’s our next move?” he said.
“You tell me, boss.”
He smiled at Chuck. The two of them sitting in the morning sunlight, taking their ease, acting as if all was just fine with the world.
“Gotta find a way off this rock,” Teddy said. “Get our asses home.”
Chuck nodded. “I figured you’d say something like that.”
“Any ideas?”
Chuck said, “Give me a minute.”
Teddy nodded and leaned back against the stairs. He had a minute. Maybe even a few minutes. He watched Chuck raise his hand and shake his head at the same time and he saw Cawley nod in acknowledgment and then Cawley said something to the warden and they crossed the lawn toward Teddy with four orderlies falling into step behind them, one of the orderlies holding a white bundle, some sort of fabric, Teddy thinking he might have spied some metal on it as the orderly unrolled it and it caught the sun.
Shutter Island Page 27
