Jade couldn’t believe how badly everything had spiraled out of control. How had an innocent, stupid affair taken such a wicked twist?
Easy, she knew. Because this had never been about anything as simple as an affair.
It had been about revenge.
Ronnie, her son, sought revenge for being abandoned as a baby, and tricking his biological mother into sleeping with him, consequently driving an unforgiveable wedge between her and her husband, his father, was his sick form of wild justice.
It took Jade about two minutes after Mick stalked out of the house to finish the bottle of wine she’d opened. Now she snatched another from the wine rack and brought it into the kitchen. She rifled through the drawers for the corkscrew, forgetting in which one it was located, not thinking clearly.
She found it in the third drawer down amidst the cheese grater, whisk, spatula, pizza-cutter, and other miscellaneous cooking utensils. She opened the Merlot—pop!—filled a new glass to the brim. But she didn’t drink it. She felt dirty. Filthy. She needed a shower. She needed a cigarette. No—a cigarette, a shower, then oblivion. That’s what she needed, in that order.
Where were her damn cigarettes?
Where were her damn cigarettes?
She dug through her purse, which was on the table.
Her pack of cigarettes was empty.
Coughing up an exasperated sob, the strength seeming to seep from her body, she sank to the floor. Curling into a tight ball, weeping silently, she closed her eyes and jumped the queue straight to oblivion.
♀
Jade didn’t know how long she remained on the floor, but at some point Mick was kneeling next to her, patting her shoulder, telling her she should go upstairs to bed.
She had been sleeping, she realized. She opened her eyes. Rain still drummed against the windowpanes, more insistent than before. She was cold, shivering.
“Take my hand,” Mick told her. “I’ll help you up.”
She didn’t move.
“You can’t stay there,” he told her, his voice flat, indifferent—but at least no longer permeated with anger.
The lights went out.
“Shit,” he grumbled, getting to his feet.
“Mick,” she said softly, sitting up.
He looked down at her. She wanted to tell him she was sorry, she would do whatever she could to make things right, but for whatever reason she couldn’t bring herself to utter anything more than his name.
Flashlight in hand, he opened the back door, letting in a gust of wet, shrieking wind, and disappeared into the night.
Chapter 18
Mick tugged open the garage’s narrow entry door and stepped into the dark, cavernous space. The fuse box was located on the wall to his left. As he turned toward it, the beam of the flashlight illuminated a man standing directly before him, no more than four feet away.
Mick cried out in fright, stumbling backward into some buckets and other junk on the ground.
His first instinct was to demand the stranger identify himself, but this would be redundant.
He knew who it must be.
Regaining his composure, Mick studied his son. He was no longer a boy. He was a man, tall and athletic-looking, the popular quarterback jock on the college football team.
Mick felt a burst of pride.
My son, goddammit, this is my son.
And he’d turned out all right.
Really, Mikey? Did he really turn out all right? Because why was he standing in the dark in your garage? Why’d he flip off the main breaker? To lure you here, that’s why. And why do you suppose he did that, Mikey? To have a long-overdue father and son chat?
Mick worked some saliva into his mouth. “Leslie…”
“That’s not my name anymore, Dad. It’s Ronnie.” Although his wet hair was plastered to his skull from the rain, and his clothing was soaked through, he was smiling.
But it wasn’t a friendly smile. Not even close.
It was a shit-eating grimace.
“Ronnie, right,” Mick said, wondering how quickly he could open the garage door again and get the hell out of there. Probably not quickly enough. “What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?” Ronnie snorted. “Right. I guess that’s the kind of welcome I should have expected from a father who never wanted me.”
“Ronnie, that’s not true. Your mother and I, it was a very difficult time for us. We were very young.” Mick saw the baseball bat Ronnie held casually at his side for the first time.
His heart beat harder and faster. Going to have to make a run for it after all.
“Oh, yeah,” Ronnie said, raising the bat and tapping the barrel in the palm of his free hand. It was an absurd action, an almost comically clichéd impression of a bully salivating to dole out a punishment. But right then in the dark garage Mick couldn’t remember the last time he had been so frightened, so in fear of his safety.
Ronnie said, “I thought maybe we could play some baseball. That’s what fathers and sons do, isn’t it?”
Mick held up his hands. “Let’s talk, Ronnie. Let’s just have a talk, okay?”
Ronnie repositioned both hands on the handle of the bat. He cocked his elbows and stepped forward.
“Ronnie,” Mick said, stumbling backward, his back striking the door. “Ronnie—”
His blindly probing hand found the door handle behind him. He twisted it, throwing his shoulder into the door, pushing it open, just as the bat cracked against the back of his skull.
Chapter 19
Jade was on her feet, trying to pull herself together, when the back door opened—only it wasn’t Mick who appeared; it was Ronnie, dripping wet, a maniacal look in his eyes, a bloodied baseball bat in his hand.
“Here’s Ronnie!” he said.
She screamed.
♂
Jade snapped open her eyes. Something had been chasing her in her dream, and a vague yet urgent fear had followed her into the waking world, causing to her jerk upright. She grimaced as a fireball exploded inside her skull. Very slowly, she touched a bump on the left side of her head. This triggered the most intense, needling pain she had ever experienced. With a gasp that was more a hiss, she remained perfectly still.
Shadows draped the room. The only light came from six candles, each casting a soft yellow glow in the darkness. Downstairs music played on the record player—The Doors, she thought. The machine gun patter of rain beat against the roof and the windows.
The storm. The power going out. Mick returning to the kitchen—
No, not Mick. That wasn’t who returned.
Ronnie.
He’d chased her through the kitchen into the living room and—
She didn’t remember. She must have fallen and struck her head, or Ronnie had hit her with—
That baseball bat.
That bloody baseball bat.
“Mick?” she said, her voice weak and raspy.
She was about to stand when she noticed for the first time she was wearing a wedding dress. It was hers. She’d originally worn it twenty years ago for her wedding ceremony in a little Methodist church in the Bronx. She’d kept it all this time, in a plastic dry-cleaning bag, in the back of her closet, first in New York, then here in LA.
“Mick?” she repeated, more firmly than before.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Ronnie appeared in the doorway, wearing a too-small black suit, an ivory dress shirt with French cuffs, and a red silk tie—all of which she believed belonged to her husband.
“Hey, Mom,” he said. “Dad’s not around right now, I’m afraid.”
“Where is he?” she demanded, dreading the answer.
“Get up. Everything’s ready.”
“What are you doing, Ronnie? Please—”
He yanked her to her feet by the hair. The resulting fireball in her head dwarfed any that had preceded it, causing her to nearly black out. Then she was stumbling after Ronnie, bent at the waist, pulled by her hair, simply trying to s
tay on her feet.
He shoved her into the unfurnished room she’d always hoped might one day serve as a nursery—only now it was filled with red candles. There must have been two dozen, some in proper holders, others buttressed in glasses or mugs. They formed two parallel lines extending from the margins of the doorway to a large circle in the middle of the room littered with rose petals.
Ronnie said, “Wait here,” and released her hair. He walked to the center of the circle.
Jade gripped the doorjamb so she didn’t fall over. She contemplated making a break for it, fleeing down the stairs, outside into the rain, yelling her head off. But she knew she wouldn’t make it to the ground floor in the hip-hugging wedding dress before getting caught.
“Don’t try it, Mom,” Ronnie said, as if reading her thoughts. “Come down the aisle now. Slowly. You’ve done it before. You know how to do it.”
The aisle. Jade felt sick to her stomach.
“Why are you—?”
“Come down the fucking aisle!”
She walked toward him, one hesitant step after the next, making a mockery of a bride, of the wedding ritual, until she stood before him.
“Good, Jade,” he said. “Now I’m going to skip all the mumbo jumbo and get right to the important stuff.” He intoned the solemn, liturgical voice of a minister. “Do you, Ronnie Freeman, take your loving mother, Jade Freeman, to be your lawfully wedded wife?” He reverted to his normal voice, excited, lethal. “I sure do, Father.” Minister again. “Do you, Jade Freeman, take your loving son, Ronnie Freeman, to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
Jade was staring at Ronnie in horror. This was not mockery; it was madness, beyond all comprehension.
“Say it,” Ronnie urged.
“Stop this—”
He slapped her across her cheek. The sting was nothing compared to the trumpet of pain that blasted agony from ear to ear.
She started to fall over. Ronnie yanked her upright.
Holding her tightly, he said, “Do you take me to be your lawfully wedded husband, Mom? Say it!”
“I—I—do,” she said, the words feeling slow and fat given the left side of her face was numb. Blood from her nose trickled into her mouth, tasting slippery and sweet.
“Then I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”
Ronnie planted his lips on hers. His tongue thrust against her clenched teeth, pushing and probing, trying to find a way in. Groaning, she tried to shove him away, though she didn’t have the strength.
Finally he released her. She stumbled backward and fell on her tailbone. The impact with the floor set off the most ferocious fireball inside her head yet. Stars flashed before her eyes, followed by a canting, stygian darkness. Biting her lip against the pain, tears blurring her vision, she fought once more to remain conscious.
Ronnie sat down in front of her, crossing his legs and smiling.
“Now that the psychodrama is done with,” he said, “it’s time for the denouement.” He reached for a half-empty bottle of vodka that stood on the floor, next to a burning candle. He took a swig and ran the heel of his hand over his lips. “Did you ever get to those Greek playwrights I mentioned to you, Jade?”
“No…” she croaked.
“I didn’t think so. What do you know about Oedipus?”
Jade recognized the name from Sigmund Freud’s Oedipus complex, which, to the best of her knowledge, had something to do with a son lusting for his mother and detesting his father.
“There’s a story about him, a myth,” Ronnie said. “It’s old, real old. It goes back farther than Homer. Sophocles, who you were too fucking lazy to read up on, based one of his plays on this myth.”
“Where’s Mick?” she asked, which came out, Where’s Mig?
“So it goes something like this, the myth,” Ronnie continued, ignoring her. “Laius and Jocasta, the king and queen of Thebes, can’t seem to have a child, so Laius visits an oracle—that’s like a prophet or fortune-teller back then—who tells him if he ever bears a son, the son will murder him. When Laius and Jocasta finally have a baby—a son, you guessed it—they freak out and tell a servant to abandon the kid on a mountainside. A coldhearted thing to do—you would know this better than anyone, right, Mom?—but there was the prophecy and everything. What else were Laius and Jocasta to do? Now here’s the first twist. The servant doesn’t have it in him to kill the baby and instead gives it a herdsman who gives it to another herdsman who gives it to the king and queen of neighboring Corinth, who are also having a tough time having a child. You following me, Jade?”
She nodded, fighting the tears burning in her eyes.
“That’s good, because you seem a little fucking slow tonight, so I’m glad you’re following.” He swigged more vodka. “Now, in case you didn’t guess, the kid getting passed around like a football is Oedipus. When he gets older a drunk tells him he’s adopted. He confronts his parents, but they deny this, so he goes to see the friendly neighborhood oracle to figure shit out and—drumroll, please—he learns he’s destined to kill his father and marry his mother! To avoid this admittedly fucked-up fate, he decides not to go back home to Corinth but to Thebes, which is closer anyway. But on his way he gets into an argument with some pompous dickhead in a chariot who tries to run him over. So what does Oedipus do? He kills the dickhead. And who do you think the dickhead is, Jade? King Laius, his birth father! Still, Oedipus doesn’t know this, not yet, and he continues on his merry way to Thebes. The next person he encounters—or thing, I guess would be more appropriate—is the Sphinx, and she asks him her famous riddle: ‘What walks on four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three at night?’ What do you think, Jade?”
“Where’s Mick?” she asked.
Ronnie made an obnoxious buzzing noise. “Wrong! It’s man, Jade. As a baby, he crawls; as an adult, he walks upright; and in his old age, he walks with a stick. Oedipus, the smart duck, guesses correctly and defeats the Sphinx. The people of Thebes are ecstatic because the Sphinx had been eating everybody who got her damn riddle wrong. So in thanks, they appoint Oedipus the king of Thebes—in poor Laius’ place—and reward him with the dead king’s wife, Jocasta, his birth mother! Now it’s at this point where Sophocles’ play begins. To keep it short, Jocasta eventually learns that Oedipus is adopted, realizes what has happened, and kills herself. Oedipus comes to the same conclusion. He killed his father, and he married his own mother. In shame and loathing, he cuts his eyes out and leaves Thebes, wandering blindly around the countryside until his death.” More vodka. “Pretty sad, I admit, but that’s the reason it’s a tragedy.”
Jade had had enough. “Where’s Mick?” she wailed. “Where’s my husband? What did you do with him, you bastard!”
“Jesus Christ, Jade! Haven’t you been listening to me? I thought I’ve made it pretty damn clear. He’s dead! Mick’s dead! I fucking killed him.”
Jade dropped her throbbing head into her hands and sobbed.
“Now,” Ronnie added, “our version of Sophocles’ play is going to end a little differently. Dad’s still dead, of course. And you, my lovely mother and wife, are still going to kill yourself. But I’m not going to gouge out my eyes. Let’s be fucking reasonable here.”
Chapter 20
Ronnie stood, extending his hand for Jade to join him. She flinched away, spitting venom. He once again yanked her to her feet by her hair.
She wailed in pain and fury.
“I didn’t think you’d be in the best state of mind to organize your suicide, Mom,” he said, dragging her to the far side of the room. “So I’ve set up everything for you.” He stopped in front of the closet door, which was cracked open, her jump rope from the garage rigged into a hangman’s noose. “Okay, Jade. Hop up on those books and stick your head in the noose. I think it should hold your weight. If it doesn’t, we’ll just try again.”
“Ronnie,” she said breathlessly. “Please don’t do this.”
“Please?” he said.
&
nbsp; “Please, Ronnie. Don’t do this. Why are you doing this?”
“Why? Why?” His fragile, phony calm shattered, replaced by an apoplectic rage that twisted his face into something unrecognizable. “Let me tell you why, Jade. Because you stole from me. You stole something very important. My childhood.”
“Mick and I weren’t ready to have—”
“A lot of parents aren’t ready, Jade! Jesus fucking Christ! But they don’t give their kids away! They deal with it, they do their best—”
“It was a mistake,” she said. “I know that—”
“Good! Great! Glad for your fucking epiphany! But it doesn’t change a thing!”
“You had a good family. I checked up on you. I saw your parents, your house. It was better than anything we could—”
“The Bauer’s?” he said. “I don’t remember too much of those days, Jade. I was only with them until I was four. That’s when they gave me back to the system. See, the thing with being adopted is, you’re never really family. Not really. To foster parents, you’ll always be a kid that’s not really theirs, only sort of theirs, and they only keep you around because you’re cute and you make them feel like they’re doing something good, but because they’re not really your parents, when you stop being cute, or when they tire of you, they can still give you back with a clean conscience, good deed done, no harm done. They can wash their hands of the mess they made of your life and tell their friends, ‘Oh it didn’t work out, we tried, we did, but it just didn’t work out. He’ll be happier with another family.’ And if you’re wondering if I was adopted again, Jade, I sure was.”
Ronnie’s seething eyes seemed to look inward to a very dark place, while Jade’s mind reeled: His family gave him up? He was adopted a second time? She felt nauseous at his unfair treatment, and at her missed opportunity. I would have taken him back! I would have taken my baby back! If only I knew!
The Mailman Page 8
