Housebroken

by The Behrg

  Maybe they weren’t that similar.

  Adam led the way through the foyer and up the stairs to the theater room. By the time Jenna’s eyes popped open, they were both immersed in their game.

  7

  “I interrupting?”

  The cop did not sound happy, a short, pudgy Asian with a clean-shaven face that made him look much younger than he probably was. He had a dark, fat mole where his left nostril met his cheek that looked like an obscene and bloody pimple. His suit was pressed, badge shined, hair trimmed so short it wasn’t possible to have it out of place.

  “Sorry, officer,” Joje said. “Been a long day. Our dog just died.”

  “Eat your homework too?” He ignored Joje’s laugh, eyes training on Blake. “You been drinking?”

  “I don’t drink, sir,” Joje said.

  “Not you.”

  Blake opened his mouth, a plea for help preparing to leap from his tongue. The words collided head-on in a pileup that went on for unspoken paragraphs.

  “You look a little banged up. Something I need to know about?”

  A lot he needed to know about. Joje’s finger circling around the send button on the phone had a way of rejuvenating Blake’s vocal chords. “Uh, no, sir. Just an accident.”

  “Uh-huh. Where you headed?”

  “Home,” Joje said. Blake couldn’t stop the shiver that raced through his body. Joje may not have noticed, but the police officer certainly did.

  “Where’s home?”

  “Couple miles up ahead. What’s the address, Bwakey?”

  “Sixteen Vanilla Banks,” Blake said.

  “Have it for the weekend?”

  “Seven days,” Blake replied. He looked up. “I mean, we bought it. We’ve only been there, well, about seven days.”

  “So the Welchsetzer home sold.” The officer’s lips curled up on the left side of his face, making the mole widen as his nostrils flared.

  “Moving trucks should have given it away,” Joje said.

  It had to Joje, apparently, though Blake was having a hard time believing their encounter was nothing more than chance. Someone must have sent them. And if they were sent, it meant they were after something, something more than Blake’s money.

  The officer stuck his hand through the window, and Joje took it.

  “Officer Randall,” he said, reaching across Joje and offering his hand to Blake. “Welcome to the neighborhood. Me and Deputy McClellan run tight end D on the PCH. Anyone not local, we make sure they’re running from point A to point B. No pit stops in between. I’m sure you’ve heard, crime rate in Malibu is the lowest in all of LA County.” He paused as if in a high school play, waiting for the line the other actor was struggling to remember.

  Blake nodded after a moment. “Thank you.”

  “Hey, it’s what we do. I don’t want you to think the locals get a free pass or anything, but,” he shrugged, “we look the other way, you know, when we need to. Malibu is sort of a throwback to the Old West. A town where . . . money still talks.” He laughed, then looked out over the car toward the ocean. “We make it a point to know the residents on a personal basis. We’d love to come by. You married? Family?”

  “Yes,” Blake said, almost too eagerly. Joje’s face was crinkled as if he were squinting, though the sun was overhead.

  “I don’t want to invite ourselves . . . ,” Randall said, implying quite the opposite.

  “Now’s a bad time,” Blake said. “We might be going to the hospital, right George?”

  “Someone sick?” Randall asked.

  “My wife,” Blake said.

  “You don’t want to go to the hospital, trust me—you’re new here, there’s a lot to learn. Here, the hospital comes to you. I mean, you’re living in Mount Olympus. Even the cops are like your own personal escorts.” The left side of his mouth curled up again in that half-spawned smile. “Here,” Randall pulled out a business card and jotted a number down on the back, handing it to Joje. “Dr. Cheverou. From Russia or something. Makes house calls. I hear he’s phenomenal. And discreet.”

  “Thank you,” Joje said.

  “My number’s on the front. Give me a buzz once you’re settled. McClellan and I can swing in one evening at shift’s end. For drinks or something.” He glanced between the two of them one final time. “You sure everything’s all right?”

  Joje conceded to Blake, it was the moment to either fold or go all in. Joje’s finger continued its swirling pattern on the phone’s keypad in his lap. How long would it take Drew to respond to that text? Minutes? Seconds?

  “Just, the dog dying has really shaken us up,” Blake said.

  “Oh, shit—I thought that was a joke! Oh, man, I’m sorry. Happens a lot you know, after a move. Dog tries to get back to where home was, not realizing where home is. They have sort of a sixth sense thing about that. You, uh, get him cleaned up off the road or need me to get animal services?”

  “No, we’re good,” Blake said.

  Randall tapped the top of the car. “We’ll be seeing you then.” He winked before leaving. Apparently, that was acceptable in the throwback town of Malibu.

  8

  Jenna sat on the couch, staring at the legs that had to be someone else’s appendages. The sight made her stomach churn. Blotched patterns, misshapen bubbles, and deformations had replaced her normally sleek and tanned calves. Her feet were even worse, like they were simply rotting away. If they healed—a big if—she’d have nothing more than nubs at the end of her legs. Stumps, like a tree that had outgrown its usefulness.

  I’ll never be able to run again.

  The thought was paralyzing, and for a moment, Jenna couldn’t breathe. She wasn’t sure she wanted to. That this was the first moment she had been left alone since Joje and Drew’s arrival, she knew she had to use it for what it was. An opportunity. One that might be her last.

  She forced herself to regulate her breathing as she did before any race, deep, even breaths in with a slow exhalation. The same pattern she had used in childbirth.

  Her breathing stopped. Jenna thought her heart might have also. Bricks crumbled from the wall she had constructed, toppling down in an avalanche of memories.

  These memories were more painful than the screaming of her legs or the thought of never being able to run again.

  These memories were death. These memories, suicide.

  Her feet, bare, stepped onto the dried weeds and craggily grass of the path that wasn’t a path, just a slightly trampled trail leading through the trees to the spot where kids went to smoke cigarettes or pronounce their love by branding a tree with a blade. Discarded condoms hanging from bushes proved there were other ways love had been pronounced. With each step, she felt a poking or prodding, something sharp trying to break beneath her skin—a rock, a twig, a jagged piece of aluminum from a pellet-riddled Coke can.

  Poisonous clouds dropped so low they grazed the tops of the trees. They seemed to move from the sky into her head where they were waiting to burst. Wind shook the dead leaves from skeletal trees whose limbs were turned down like claws reaching for her. Dead leaves, dying trees, dark clouds. A day with a complete absence of color.

  Her legs carried her forward as if she were on a moving platform, an escalator that never ascended but pushed her toward what she didn’t want to see. What she could not believe. The permanently dried pond, two boulders stacked on top of each other where countless teenagers had sat. Her feet gave way to her knees and later to her whole body lying prostrate against the carpet of prickly leaves and grass.

  A child’s body lay at the bottom of the rocks, long, strangled hair swept over the face turned at an angle that could only be achieved on a doll.

  That’s what she was: a doll. Cold. Lifeless.

  Unmoving.

  Adam screaming. “Maaaaaaaaum! Maaaaaaaauuum!” Shadows leapt around her, birds flitting from tree to tree, cawing their mourner’s cry.

  Her little girl.

  Her baby.

  She gasped, ai
r returning as she wept, unearthed grief so new and fresh it felt like it had just happened yesterday. She wept for a life that had ceased to exist that day. Their daughter’s, yes, but also her own. Nothing had ever been the same.

  She could hear Evaline, her soft honeyed voice, her words an unsung song. “Lub you. Lub you, Momma.”

  “Maaaaaaaaum!”

  Jenna closed her eyes, reveling in the pain that was her escape. It was why she ran, why she worked herself past the point of exhaustion. It may have even been the reason she stayed with Blake. Pain—blinding, intoxicating, consuming, addictive pain—it made her forget.

  Luckily, pain was in ample supply.

  She brought her arms to her left leg, one under the knee, the other slid beneath her calf. Grimacing, she lifted the leg and set it over the couch, ignoring the tears leaking from her eyes and her shortened breaths. Her right leg followed. She spun her torso with its movement, now facing forward toward the TV.

  A furnace’s flame scaled her legs, so intense it felt almost mind-numbingly cold. Still, the memories were there, Evaline’s face, her laugh, her crystal-blue eyes.

  She put the slightest amount of weight onto her feet resting against the hardwood floor, an incendiary pulse racing through her entire body. Droplets of sweat slid from her forehead down her temples. Her fists were clenched, stomach muscles tightened.

  Breathe.

  She would use the pain to forget; use this chance to live. The den might as well have been across the Sahara, but the kitchen, well, it was the impossibility that had always brought her to the starting line. They had taken the knives, but she could find something—a screwdriver, can opener, it didn’t matter. Something for when their guards were down, and right now, in her condition, the amount of resistance they’d expect was virtually nonexistent.

  Jenna scooted herself toward the edge of the couch, picking up her legs to inch them forward. She could do this.

  Fists against the cushion, she pushed off, raising herself up. Her left leg screamed at her but eventually slid back the two inches she’d need to steady herself. She hovered, her arms bearing most of her weight, still resting on the cushions. She started rocking forward, letting the momentum build.

  She could do this. She could do this. She could do this!

  She launched herself upward, pushing off with her arms. Both knees buckled like links in a chain, her weight throwing her right knee sideways while she toppled. The resulting pop burst through her ears, rattling through her head. She collapsed, her arms shielding her head from the floor but not from lying across her right knee, twisted at an awful angle. Her breath came in short, jagged bursts, barely muffling the agonizing screech dying to leap out.

  She forced herself into a push-up position with her arms, twisting her body around so that her back was to the floor. Her legs jolted with the turn, moving of their own accord like the lifeless limbs of a rag doll.

  And just like that, the memory was back.

  Evaline.

  Her doll.

  This time, she was unable to silence her screaming.

  9

  Blake pulled into the driveway, putting the BMW in park. He wasn’t ready to go inside, not without getting what he had really gone out for.

  “What will it take to get help for my wife?” he asked.

  “We just did get help,” Joje said, shaking the pharmacy bag of boxes and pills.

  “Real help. You heard the pharmacist, she’s—those aren’t minor burns.”

  “I said no, Bwake. I meant it. No hospitals.”

  “The card, the doctor the cop referred. He said he’s discreet.”

  “No,” Joje said.

  “You’re the one who wanted to observe what I do—if my wife was seriously injured? Nothing would stop me from getting her the help she needs. Nothing.”

  Joje cleared his throat, the tic disappearing from his face. “All right, Bwake. If she’s not doing better tomorrow, maybe we call the good doctor.”

  “Maybe?” Blake asked.

  Joje smiled. “You are such a good mentor.”

  The garage door climbed upward at the press of a button. The door leading into the house opened. Adam’s face was more grim than his usual teenager self.

  “Mom needs help!”

  Blake was inside the house, following his son into the family room before Joje had exited the car. He realized too late how easily he could have locked the garage door, keeping Joje out. If he only had to deal with one of them, he was confident he could win. Or at least have a fighting chance. He had to be more aware of the opportunities parading as normal occurrences if he was going to save his family. Escape wouldn’t necessarily require a big event.

  Jenna was on the floor, her body flailing in spasms—legs flittering, head shaking, one open eye rolled far above her eyelid.

  He was going to lose her.

  “Joje, the pills!” Blake ran to his wife’s side, kneeling and cradling her head in his lap. “How long ago did it start?”

  “We heard a scream. She was like this when we came down,” Adam said.

  Joje entered from the hall. “What do you mean when you came down?”

  Adam looked at Drew, then dropped his gaze.

  “Pills!” Blake screamed. Joje threw him the bag. “Adam, get me water—now!”

  Adam went to the kitchen, looking relieved to slink from Joje’s attention.

  “You left her alone?” Joje asked.

  Blake was too concerned with his wife to give more than a passing thought to the argument beginning to build. He had the first of the small medicine jars unscrewed, pills spilling onto the ground around him as he jerked a few into his palm.

  “She could’ve gotten away,” Joje continued.

  Drew took a step back. “It was only for a minute.”

  “What if she had gotten away!”

  “Look at her—she can’t even cross the room!” Drew said.

  Adam handed Blake a bottle of the flavored water, liquid sloshing over the lip and onto the floor. Please let this work. Doubt filled Blake’s mind—how was pain medication going to stop convulsions?—until he saw Jenna’s eye.

  She was alert, in control, as she always was. Blake looked at her thrashing body then back at her face. The hint of a smile crept onto her lips and a single tear snuck from the corner of her eye, gliding down her face.

  “You could have ruined everything!” Joje screamed.

  He came rushing at them. Blake hovered over Jenna to protect her, but Joje wasn’t coming for them. His fists swung furiously toward Drew—left, right, right, left, face, stomach, neck, face—until the colossal giant came crashing down into the eighty-inch flat screen. It broke his fall only slightly, forcing him to the floor with a shattering of glass.

  Joje brushed a fallen piece off his arm, standing over his “brother” like a victor in a ring. His foot came down on Drew’s bandaged hand. Drew screamed out in pain. “There are consequences for us too. Everyone plays by the rules.”

  He kicked Drew in the face with such force Drew’s entire body flipped over, tumbling another few rolls. An eye for an eye, “woo” for a “woo.” Drew lay there, unmoving—either unconscious or wishing that he were. Blake had to look away—as much hatred as he harnessed toward the large oaf, he couldn’t watch this outrageous display.

  But Joje wasn’t finished yet. He continued his attack. The sound of Drew’s beating was so similar to that of Jenna’s from the previous night. Blake held his wife, preparing to retaliate if the attacks turned in their direction.

  Finally, Joje stopped, his breathing slowing. “I’m sorry you had to see that. I really hate violence.” He paused. “The pills helped?”

  Blake looked down at Jenna, her body’s thralls silenced. Whether involuntary or forced, they seemed to have stopped with the shock of what they had just witnessed.

  “For now,” Blake said.

  “Good.”

  “Help me move her to the couch?” Blake asked.

  They lifted
her with care, Adam joining to help, and still a deafening yelp leapt from her tiny frame. Blake noticed how swollen her right knee was, the ball twisted sideways with her leg straight below it. Had Drew hurt her while they had been gone? Or had Blake landed on her wrong when they fell into the pool? He couldn’t remember but would have sworn that injury was new.

  He knelt beside her, the resolve to protect her and Adam stronger than it had ever been. He grasped her hands, pulling them together. What he felt made him swallow back the tears, his thoughts replaced with fear.

  Gripped in his wife’s fist was something foreign, something hard. Her fist relaxed in his grip and his fingers wrapped around hers, exploring the object beneath.

  A corkscrew, its wound, curved metal ending in a sharpened spike. The injury was new, and Jenna had done more than just fall from the couch.

  Though the waves outside crashing against the cliffs could barely be heard, Blake felt their sheer force hurtling through his mind. So many variables, so many risks. Had she hoped Drew or Joje would be the one to lean down and take hold of her? That metal coil waiting to pierce flesh?

  And what if she had tried and failed? What then.

  He pried the corkscrew from her fingers, her tensing grip proof she was more aware than she was letting on. But he couldn’t let her make a mistake. Not again.

  He shoved the corkscrew into his pocket, making sure Joje hadn’t seen the exchange. If there was a mistake to be made, this time he would be the one to make it.

  Chapter Five

  Day Four

  1

  They buried Conrad beneath the stone walk leading from the pool to the sand volleyball court, her remains placed in a small moving box. The recycling logo and “Handle with Care” imprinted on the side were hard to ignore, considering the circumstance.

  The gray waves of the ocean disappeared beneath the edge of their backyard. Despite being unable to see the impact, their soft roar was as guaranteed as the rise of tomorrow’s sun. They were about the only two things Blake could guarantee at the moment, the routineness of his life slipping away like the eroding cliff’s edge.