by David Boyle
“It’s good you remember that, Pop.”
“Your mom and I used to love the way you came down the stairs with your hair all out of order, sticking up in every direction. You’d sit at the table and eat every strip of bacon yet rarely touch the rest of your food.”
“Good times, huh, Dad?”
“You bet, Lex,” he said, pouring milk in his coffee.
“I have something to tell you as well, Dad. But you go first. What did you want to say?”
“Well, I wanted to come clean with you about some-thing, something that’s been bothering me.”
“What is it?” she asked, chewing a bacon strip.
“I went to your job the other day and interfered with your life and—”
“Hold on a second. Slow down. That doesn’t sound good, Dad,” she said in a raspy voice, her bloodshot eyes widening.
“Let me finish, Alexia.”
Alexia, becoming irritated, cleared her throat. “Go ahead. I can’t wait to hear this.”
“Lex, I’m sorry. But I asked the owner to get rid of you.”
“You, what?” she said, raking her hand through her long frosted hair.
“Yeah, I know, I infringed on your personal life and that was wrong. But what you do leaves me hollow, like I’ve been a bad father, a man who can’t do better for his own daughter. You’re a lady now and I have to accept it. It’s just hard to watch you leave the house and then come home knowing how you earn a living.”
“Dad, I—”
“Please let me get this out, Lex—please!”
Alexia held her tongue.
“I just wanted to apologize for my actions. From now on you’re your own woman and I respect that. I just want us to be closer. Your mother walked out on us and took most of what I had, but she didn’t take you. Whatever you choose to do, no matter what it is, I will always support you. I promise.”
Alexia smiled, sipped her juice. “Thank you. That makes me happy. That wasn’t so bad after all, Dad.”
“No, it wasn’t. Thanks for hearing me out.”
He grabbed the pot and refilled his coffee. “So... what did you want to tell me, Lex?”
“Dad, something unexpected has happened.”
“Yeah? Good or bad?”
“It’s depends on how you look at it. Follow me,” Alexia said. She got up from the table and walked out of the kitchen, her dad following her to her bedroom. Alexia opened her purse, pulled out an envelope, and handed it to him. Peering inside at the contents, he gave her a perplexed look. “My God,” he said.
Alexia smiled, wiped a tear from her eye. “Trish gave that to me after work last night. We spent all night talking about things.” Alexia took a deep breath. “Phil and Trish are moving to Vegas, Dad. I guess they’ve had a thing going on for quite some time now. I didn’t even know about it. Trish kept it quiet. She told me that Phil thought a lot of me and knew what I really wanted in life. She obviously told him about my plans to go to school. What you’re holding in your hand is a generous jumpstart. Trish also mentioned that Phil has been offered a very lucrative deal to sell Under Lights. He couldn’t refuse it.”
Her father was speechless. He was now fanning out the thousand-dollar bills in his hand.
“Trish said something about him being ashamed of his broken relationship with his son. The whole situation is a lost cause. It really bothers him, I guess. He considers that envelope to be his way of redeeming himself, of doing the right thing by me, by us.”
Leonard stared at Alexia, his eyes moist with tears. Alexia hugged her father. “I can afford an education and there’ll be plenty left over for us to get back on our feet—for the short term. And, well...I’ve given this a lot of thought: I think I’m going to head across town to Spinners, that gentlemen’s club on Block Lane. See if I can dance a couple of days a week and keep socking the money away.”
Silence. Leonard cleared his throat, then pulled away from their loving embrace, scowling. “What? What?”
UNDESERVING
An intimidating knock on the door jarred Lucy Burroughs from her slumber on the couch. Slowly adapting to the darkness, she reached under the nearby lampshade and yanked the cord, spreading fingers of light on her pallid face. Squinting and rubbing her eyes, she asked who was there. A response came in indistinguishably garbled speech, like that of a malicious crank caller attempting to scare her. The grumbling became louder. Her vision less hazy now, Lucy glanced at the clock on the wall. 3:30 a.m.
Another mysterious knock…then another—just as foreboding and similar in sound to a heavy suitcase being dragged down wooden steps. Her mind whirled with uncertainty and anxiety. She stared at the door, making sure the doorknob lock and deadbolt were secure. Extinguishing the lamp, she got up from the couch to get her fiancé, Tom. She wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t yet awakened; his sleep was always much deeper than hers.
Lucy tiptoed to the bedroom. She called out to Tom in whispers, careful not to draw the visitor’s attention to her presence. Although she was unnerved, she knew not to overreact. Over the years drunken teenagers had pulled pranks in the neighborhood, playing ring-and-run, soaping cars, vandalizing property. Lucy knew it could be the Gables’ obnoxious kid outside. Or maybe even the Jamesons’ delinquent teenage daughter, who had spent several years in a juvenile rehab for her wild behavior.
The eerie pounding on the door resumed. Lucy’s pulse quickened. “Damn it, Tom,” she said in a low voice tinged with frustration, “must you sleep through everything? Some-body’s whaling on our door. Tell him to go away.”
Tom remained unresponsive. What’s it going to take, she wondered, to rouse him to action? What’s he waiting for? He most certainly has heard the noise. But, then again, maybe he had experienced one of his ongoing late-night anxiety attacks and was sitting in the kitchen drinking shots, in the dark corner by the pantry, as he had done numerous times when the symptoms had been severe. Once stricken with an attack, Tom became emotionally inaccessible, virtually unaware of what was going on around him. What now?
With quivering fingers Lucy groped the bedroom wall in search of the light switch. Even though she was familiar with the layout of the room she had difficulty finding the switch-panel in the darkness. After about ten seconds of finger-spidering the wall, her thumb jabbed the switch.
The light revealed a jolting discovery: Tom was not there!
Stunned, puzzled, Lucy left the room, putting out the light as she moved past the switch. In the living-room she saw the wall-mounted phone, and for a brief moment she considered calling the police. But first she wanted to know who was outside; she wanted to have more to tell the cops than that some drunk or unruly neighbor, for the umpteenth time, was causing a disturbance. She crept up to the front door and pressed her eye against the peephole.
No one.
She flicked on the outside light, surveyed the area again, and was shocked to find Tom within range of the peep-hole—dirty, disheveled, trembling, crying.
Alarmed, Lucy opened the door and helped him to his feet and into the house. His eyes were glazed, his clothes sagging off his body, his hair drenched with sweat, his hands grimy, spasmodic—a condition she had never seen Tom in. Now, thrust into the pressure and confusion of the moment, Lucy attended to Tom and tried soothing him. He looked as if he might have been mugged and beaten. But when? Where? Questions bombarded her.
She helped him to the couch, the one she’d been sleeping on before the unexpected ripped her from pleasant dreams. He sat down and leaned his head back, his tears ceaseless, the tendons of his jaw line pronounced. In the past nothing had ever moved him to tears. Not movies, not music, not all the tender thoughts she had shared with him over the years. In fact, the last time Lucy saw him show strong emotion was when he had told her he loved her over six years ago, and even that could hardly be considered crying. That didn’t make Tom a lesser man, not in her mind; it just made his present behavior more mysterious, more baffling, more desperate.
Lu
cy got up, closed the door and secured the lock. Double checked. With a warm cloth she fetched from the bathroom she gently wiped away the grime and tear stains from his face. An afghan lay over the back of the couch.
She wrapped it around him. In the few minutes Tom had been inside, he hadn’t said a word, had not looked at her. He only mumbled incoherently and cried; his teeth were chattering so severely nothing was comprehensible. Lucy showed patience.
She got close to Tom and wrapped her arms around him, reassuring him that he was okay, in a safe place, in the comfort and privacy of his own home, out of harm’s way—whatever that meant to him in his current state of mind—and that he could take his time telling her what he had been through. Staring at the emptiness and terror in her husband’s eyes, Lucy wondered how he had found his way home, and, even more baffling, why he hadn’t come inside. She was certain he was on drugs or had been drugged. Although she had no memory of Tom ever taking drugs, his face and behavior suggested that he was under the influence of a dangerous substance.
Hugging him, rubbing his back, Lucy said, “Can you tell me what happened? Take your time. You have all the time you need.”
Tom’s eyes met Lucy’s. His stare was empty, that of a dementia patient. As Lucy looked more closely at Tom’s wretched face she could see his bloodshot retinas, his eyes darting back and forth with paranoia, as if he were besieged by danger. She suddenly became aware of a stench whose origin she couldn’t place. Where could he have been? What had he come in contact with? Had he been in a musty basement? A contaminated room? Had he come in contact with toxic chemicals? As repulsive as the odor was she tried to ignore it and focus: Tom was becoming more alert.
Through his cracked, bloody lips, he mumbled “He did it…why?”
She placed her hand on his shoulder, pulled him closer, and with the other hand wiped a smudge of black dirt off his cheek using the sleeve of her nightgown. “Who did what, Tom? Please, what happened to you? It’s just us here. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Tom looked down at his grimy hand. The commitment ring Lucy had given him—an old ring her mother had passed down to her from her grandmother—was gone and a white circle of skin remained. A bead of sweat from his forehead fell into his dirty palm. “Ashamed. I’m… so…so… ashamed.” He said this word as if learning it for the first time.
“Of?”
“Of…”
“Of what, Tom? Come on. Don’t hold it in.”
“Of…”
“I’m not leaving this couch until you start talking. I don’t care how long it takes. How grueling it is.”
“You’re gonna be hurt. Real bad.”
Consternation registered on Lucy’s face. Her lips twitched, her eyes blinked, her jaw sagged—but even though torrents of emotion were rushing through her, she remained determined to help her husband open up to her. “I’ve felt pain before, Tom. I’d rather hear what you have to say than be kept in the dark.”
Tom sipped from the glass of water Lucy had gotten him earlier. He licked his lips. “I was closed in.”
“Where? Who locked you up? Why? When?”
“I think I’m gonna be sick.” Tom tried to get up but Lucy stopped him.
“No!” she said firmly, holding her weak fiancé down on the couch with her outstretched arm. “You’re going to tell me something first.” She snatched a nearby wastebasket and placed it on his lap. “You can be sick in here if you have to. I told you I’m not going anywhere until you tell me more.”
Tom held the wastebasket up to his face as if preparing to vomit. “I got scared. Last night,” he said, his voice echoing in the hollow pail. “I broke into a cold sweat. I freaked.”
Lucy noticed his shivering had intensified; she tightened the afghan around him. “Freaked? What made you freak?”
Tom shrank in his seat, pulling his knees up to his chest; his countenance took on a cowardly expression and he tried to conceal it by holding the waste can against his face.
“Are you gonna answer me, Tom? What made you freak?”
“You,” he answered in a barely audible voice.
Stunned, she swallowed. “What?”
Tom repeated his response. “Y…you.”
Lucy pulled the basket out of his hand and raised her voice. “Did you say… me?”
Tom bowed his head shamefully. With her hand, Lucy grabbed his chin and lifted his face. “Me?” she asked again, flabbergasted, not knowing what to feel or how to respond. She stared at her future husband as if she’d never seen him before; she assessed the mess he had made of himself. “I’m at fault for this?” she said, perplexed. “I don’t know what’s happened to you…but I’m to blame for finding you on our front stoop looking and acting like some battered waif, frightening me half to death?”
Tom shook his head, cleared his throat. “It’s complicated-ted.”
“I’m begging you,” Lucy said in a high, raspy voice, “to come clean. You’re scaring me. You’ve never acted this way.”
“A big wedding. A…A…A big house. Kids. You always wanted those…those things…r…right?”
Lucy sat still, vexed, frustrated she couldn’t make sense of Tom’s random, disjointed comments. Nor could she imagine what her desire for such ordinary things could have to do with the way he was behaving. She was going to get the truth out of him tonight, even if it meant calling for help. “Yes. So what? I’ve always wanted that kind of life. Where’re you going with this?”
Lucy’s concession apparently gave Tom the strength—the courage—to say more. “I got scared last night, Luc. I lost my mind. Thinking about the road ahead—how much it’s gonna cost to keep you happy. The endless hurdles. What happens if nothing works out right.”
As if she’d just heard a bold-faced lie, Lucy’s eyes rounded. “I don’t like what you’re suggesting. Are you going to blame me—all I’ve ever wanted—for…for your acting insanely?”
“No. I—”
“How convenient. I become the target of your—”
“Let me finish. There…there’s more.”
“I’m sure there is. I feel like I’m under attack.”
Tom lowered his knees and began rubbing his hands together nervously. “We had a conversation last week… about these things,” he said, his hands shaking. “The wedding. The kind of house you wanted. How many kids. Remember?”
Lucy nodded reluctantly. She had no idea what details he would divulge next. The palpable tension had risen. She had been comforting her husband, sympathetic in the face of his vulnerability, but now she felt herself on the defensive. Her mood began swaying in another direction. “Yes. I recall the talk we had. Where is this headed? Or do you even know?”
A tear slithered down Tom’s cheek. Lucy coughed reflexively. She averted her gaze and stared at the clock on the end table next to her; she couldn’t believe all this was happening in the wee hours of the morning. A full day’s work lay ahead of her. With his ripped, grungy sleeve, Tom swiped his face. “You said…then…that within one year you wanted to be in the perfect house… and have the perfect wedding…and start a family… and so on. You had a timetable.”
Lucy passed her tongue over her front teeth, then grabbed the corner of a throw-pillow and squeezed it in her palm, anything to subdue her mounting dismay.
“Well,” Tom continued, “we don’t have the money. We just don’t have it. Nowhere near it. I could never give those things to you, Luc. Not on what I make. Don’t you see that?” Tom looked around the room at their shabby furnishings, their hand-me-down carpet and appliances, their walls and floors in disrepair—proof that a better life was virtually impossible. “We’re scraping by as it is.”
Lucy glared at Tom. Her stomach roiled as heartache overtook her. “None of what you just said explains your actions. We’re both working. We’re both working toward the same goals. Goals we’ve agreed on as a couple. We’ve got to start somewhere.” A long sigh: “I still don’t get what happened. Or why you’re making a scene wh
ich you haven’t fully explained.”
“Look, Lucy, the story has a darker side to it. I mean, what I just told you is only what drove me out of the house in a panic, what started this nightmarish evening. This is all a result of something far worse. It will explain why I’m a wreck, why I’ve made a fool of myself.” Tom started blubbering again.
“Well?” Lucy’s patience gave way to her need for more information, less procrastination.
“I survived a fire,” Tom blurted. “When I should have died. Because I was stupid… and weak… and drowning in self-pity.”
Once again feeling sorry for Tom, Lucy embraced him. “Oh my God! Where was the fire? How did it happen?”
Tom pushed her away. Using a closed fist, he repeatedly struck his forehead in a sign of self-disgust. “I felt trapped last night. Terrified… that I was going to let you down. That you would one day think less of me…as a man…as a husband…as a provider.”
“Why didn’t you come to me if you had those feelings? Am I an ogre? Have I ever pushed you away? Questioned your manhood? For Christ’s sake, Tom! Don’t pin this all on—”
Tom interrupted her, his voice imbued with urgency. “So I took a long walk in the middle of the night. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.”
“And?”
“Ah, this is so messed up.”
“And?”
“And I walked for miles…to… to an old friend’s.”
“Whose?”
”John Hampton.”
“Hampton?” Lucy combed through her hair with her fingers. “The guy whose wife I can’t stand for reasons you already know? The alcoholic? He’s bad news, Tom.”
“Yeah, he’s had his problems. I guess I wasn’t thinking straight at the time. I wasn’t exactly clear in the head, you know?”
Lucy rolled her eyes, sighed, and glanced up at the ceiling in disbelief.
“Couldn’t stop myself, Luc. I was coming apart. I wanted to do something crazy, rebellious. I don’t know what got into me.”
“Apparently.”
“Well…I told him what was on my mind…” Tom seemed reluctant to continue. Lucy’s patience was thinning, but she knew he was about to reveal something—something even more unbearable perhaps.
