“What were you doing out there? You know you’re not supposed to go near the woods.”
“I was walking Carnegie,” I said. “She got loose. I tried to chase her, but she was too fast for me.”
“She’s still out there?” Peter asked.
“She must be. I saw her go into the trees. That’s the last thing I remember.”
“I better go look for that dog,” Peter griped. “Mrs. Branch will be mad.”
I cleaved to Greta. I closed my eyes and absorbed her warmth as she held me against her.
*
The sun had been extinguished in the bleak horizon, a damp chill had seeped through the seams of the windows into the house, and I was in my bed under piles of covers watching the small fire flickering and wondering what it would feel like to touch the flames. Carnegie never reappeared. Mother was still not home, and I wanted to stay awake to see what would happen when she found out about my mishap.
I crawled out of bed, kneeled on the Persian carpet, and passed my hand over the fire. I became more and more brave, putting my wrist directly in the yellow flames, holding it there until I smelled my burnt hair. Revolting. I wondered what fire was made of and why it gave off such destructive heat and how it would feel to be burned alive. Even for me, the thought was unbearable, and throughout my life, the only types of injuries that turned me off were burns. I know it may be hard to believe, but the smell is just too disgusting.
The next morning when I awoke, I looked out the window. The sun was obliterated by white skies, the clouds overcast and opaque, making a blinding backdrop for the yard. I watched Pete lumber over the hills, cupping his hand and calling the dog’s name. I almost felt sorry for the small animal knowing she had spent the night outside in the cold. Then I saw a flash of white streak from the woods. Pete ran toward her. First he tried crouching and speaking softly. She would approach slowly, but just when he reached for her collar, she darted away. Then he stood firmly and commanded calmly and evenly, “Carnegie, come here right now.” The dog stared at him with her disdainful jaw as if saying I don’t have to listen to you, lowly fool. I giggled as I watched this dance go on between Pete and the dog for nearly a half an hour. “Get your fluffy butt over here right now!” Pete yelled. The dog stared at him defiantly, but she would not budge. He strode toward her, and she pranced off just out of his range. Her fluffy tail bounced as if waving him off, dismissing him in her snobbish way.
Pete gave up. He grumbled off, and I could see his clenched fist and hunched shoulders. His temper was boiling. I watched Carnegie lay in the grass with her head poised aristocratically, daring Pete to speak to her like that again. I thought Peter had given up, but he returned. Again he crouched, making a creepy, cooing voice. He held out his hand. Something was in it. A piece of bacon, perhaps.
Once Carnegie got a whiff, her inherent instincts took over, and she ran toward Pete without a thought of what he was trying to do. As she opened her crooked mouth to snatch the treat, Pete’s mammoth hand clamped around her neck. Carnegie yipped and turned to nip at him. I saw his eyes bulge with angry confusion. He felt betrayed, and he stood up slowly with the dog clenched in his grip. Carnegie wriggled frantically as Pete glared at her, squeezing her tiny neck. He shook her violently, and she yipped again in high-pitched desperation. I thought he might kill her. I prayed for it.
I heard muffled voices outside my door. I left the window to listen.
“Unconscious? Really?” my mother said.
“Yes, Mrs. Branch. He was completely knocked out. I had to dump cold water on him to wake him up.”
“What on earth had he gotten into?”
“He was trying to catch Carnegie, ma’am.”
“Foolish child. He shouldn’t have been outside.”
“I think all he wants is to be a normal boy.”
My mother scoffed. “Where’s the dog?”
“We don’t know, ma’am.”
I smiled at the thought of Carnegie squirming in Pete’s grip, but the door opened, and I dared not draw attention to what was going on outside.
My mother stared down on me with her frown and cocked eyebrow. “John, what happened yesterday?”
“Where were you, Mother?”
“I was at an important dinner for the club. It ran late.” I noticed her eyes flick to the side as she said this. She was lying. Then her hard stare settled back on me. “What happened to Carnegie?”
“She got away from me. I tried to chase her, but I don’t know ... everything went black. Then next thing I know, I woke up in the kitchen.”
She folded her arms over her chest. She was wearing one of her heavy suits—thick, woolen armor that kept her from making contact with my body. I always thought she could be a beautiful woman in a simple way, if only she wasn’t so angry all the time. The bitterness made her ugly. If I could only make her smile, she would be beautiful again.
“You were very irresponsible, John. I don’t want you to take the dog out anymore. If you’re not strong enough to hold onto a Bichon, you have no business being outside.” She stressed the Frenchness of the word Bichon, which made me hate her for a second.
I looked at my feet, my white toes sticking out from my flannel pajamas. The cuffs of my pant legs dragged on the floor. I had lost so much weight my pants were falling down. Just love me. Just love me, I thought.
I unsteadily walked to her and wrapped my arms around her. She stiffened, and so I hugged her more tightly, desperately. I wanted to scream Love me, love me. But instead, I told her how frightened I was. “Mother, I’m sorry I lost Carnegie. I can’t remember what happened. I was so scared.”
I just wanted one word of comfort. One caress. Something had to break the ice that encased this mother of mine. I felt tears of emotion welling up; not contrived tears, but real despair overtook me. I just wanted to move her.
But after a few sobs, she couldn’t tolerate my embrace any longer. “Stop it, John. You’re fine,” she said evenly. Then she flinched, as if to tell me to let go, but I held on, still sobbing. “John, you’re behaving like a baby. You’re too grown up to be crying like this.” She mechanically disconnected my arms from her and held me by the shoulders at arm’s length. “Now just stop it.”
I sniffled and rubbed my nose on my sleeve. I recovered from my weeping and looked into her eyes for any trace of sympathy. There was nothing.
“If Carnegie is lost, you will be punished,” she said. “She is the last of the line from the Bichons my family has bred for over a century.”
“She is a horrible dog!” I snapped, wiping the tears from my eyes. “An ugly little bitch!”
My mother’s quick hand made contact with my wet cheek. The sting shocked me, but I had moved her all right. I rubbed away the burn and glared up at her with a spiteful sneer.
“Wipe that look off your face. Don’t ever speak to me like that again. How dare you? I will not tolerate this behavior. I’ll send you off to boarding school.”
Her cruelty was steady. I did not feel one ounce of compassion from her, but the thought of being sent away made me slump over and break into boyish tears again. This time I put more heart into it.
“Don’t send me away. Mother, don’t send me away! I promise I’ll be good. I promise I’ll do whatever you say.”
“Promises don’t mean anything. Not from you Branches.” She snorted. “Show me. Show me you can behave properly. Stop acting like a spoiled little weakling” She walked away and left me whimpering bitterly in the center of my room. The only thing left was the dark, empty space where she had been standing.
I ran to the window. Pete and Carnegie were long gone. What had he done with her? I imagined him taking the limp, fluffy body to the woods and burying her. Well, the dog was sorry now. And I would make my mother sorry too.
*
After I composed myself, I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and dressed quickly. I looked into the grand expanse of the dining room. All the china and cutlery gleamed in the silence that w
as only punctuated by the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall. No breakfast. My mother had escaped already; I never knew if my father was absent as usual. He might have been in his study, or just as likely in Europe for all I knew.
Even the kitchen was empty. A basket of croissants and crocks of butter and jam were left on the breakfast bar. I was ravenous and light-headed, but I wasn’t going to eat. I was on a hunger strike.
Was I so loathsome? I knew Mother cared, she had to, and if I became sick enough, if I was dying, it would awaken her motherly instincts. All mothers cared for the wellbeing of their children. Nature commanded it.
My mouth drooled from hunger and violence. I left the kitchen and walked out the side door and around the back of the house to Pete’s garage. I heard the lawnmower and smelled the freshly cut wet grass. There was no little white dog in sight. Could Pete really have finished her off? I glanced around the corner and saw him pushing the machine only three rows into the expansive lawn. I had time.
Physical injury was the only way. I had been putting it off, but I wouldn’t any longer. I needed visible proof of my sickness. I ran my fingers over all the heavy, cold, grimy tools hanging on pegboards along the walls. One tool stood out to me. A small hammer with a gleaming ball end. I grabbed the smooth handle and lifted it off the pegs. The steel end was heavier than it appeared. I let my wrist rotate side to side, enjoying the weight of it, watching the light slide side to side on the head, imagining the damage it could do. It was time to experiment.
I sat on the gritty floor behind the Lincoln and rolled up my pant leg. There was my white calf glowing in the gloominess of the garage. My shinbone was prominent, a clean canvas ready to be marred. Leukemia needed bruising. It was the only way to make them believe.
I raised the hammer and brought it down a few times just to tap the skin. Practice swings. I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss. Then I took a deep breath, bit my lip, and swung at my leg. But a curious thing happened: by the time I reached my leg, I could feel myself resisting the swing. I wasn’t even sure I hit myself hard enough to leave a bruise. I tried it again and again, looking, not looking, biting an old rag, growling, but at my age, I wasn’t self-possessed enough to let go of the natural instinct to protect my body. Some part of me would not allow me to hurt myself. I was afraid of the pain. There was no denying it. I was so frustrated and disappointed, I cried a bit. I didn’t have any better ideas. All my hopes rested on this plan.
I was so upset that I didn’t think anything of the lawnmower going silent. For a moment all I heard were the birds chirping, the locusts buzzing, and my own pitiful shuddering. I jumped when I heard the machine rattling up the driveway and Pete’s boots scraping against the concrete. I put my head to the ground and saw his feet approaching me from underneath the car. There was nowhere to go. I only had time to roll down my pants and wipe away my tears before he stumbled in and found me sitting on the ground in front of the bumper with the hammer in my hand.
“Jesus, you startled me. What are you doing here?”
“Just playing,” I said.
“Those aren’t toys,” he said pointing to the hammer, “and you’re too old to play.” He bent down to take it from me. “Let go,” he said.
I locked my grip around the handle. He tugged the hammer again, yanking me back and forth. “I’m not kidding, Johnny. Let it go.”
“I saw what you did.” I said.
“Saw what?” he asked.
“I’m going to tell Mother.” I said.
“I don’t have time for your tricks. Let go of the hammer.”
“Where’s the dog?”
He released his hand. Suddenly the weight of the hammer was all mine and it dropped to the floor with a clank.
“You strangled Carnegie,” I said.
“I most certainly did not.”
“You choked and shook her.”
“I didn’t hurt her,” he said.
“Where is she, then?”
“Don’t know,” he said.
“Where did you hide the body?”
“I didn’t hide it.”
“Ah-ha, so there is a body.”
“I didn’t hurt her,” he whined.
“I’m going to find her. I’m going to find Carnegie and dig her up to show Mother.”
“Shut up,” he said. “Now you just shut up about that.”
“She’s in the woods, isn’t she?”
He wrung his giant palms together. “I was trying to make her understand,” he said. “She ran away and wouldn’t come back. It was for her own good. Stupid dog. I was trying to make her understand that she better never do that again. Then she just stopped moving.”
“You choked her to death, you fool.”
He wiped his brow and stared at me with puzzled eyes. He was at a loss of what to do. “I didn’t mean to. Honest to God. I lost my temper is all. No, I didn’t mean it. Sometimes I don’t know how strong I am.”
“Oh, but you were angry,” I said. “I saw you. It wasn’t an accident. You wanted to kill her. You’re a bad man, and I will tell Mother and Father if you don’t do as I say.”
“I told you now, I don’t wanna play these games with you, Johnny.”
“I will tell them you’re a murderer. That they should send you away.”
Pete looked frantic. I knew he had nothing but this job, and his simple mind couldn’t comprehend an existence outside the estate. His brows contracted, creating a deep, black crevice between them. “You wouldn’t do that.”
“Yes, I would.”
“What did I ever do to you?” His big, sad eyes watered.
“I’m your boss,” I said. “You must do as I say. You hurt my mother’s dog. Now you have to pay for it.”
“You don’t even like that dog. No one likes it.”
“That doesn’t matter. It’s the principle.”
He squinted and glanced at the ceiling, as if he could find an answer there. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means that whether I hate the dog or not, it’s still very wrong for you to have killed her.”
He hung his head, defeated. His voice cracked as he said, “Well, then what do you want?”
I handed him the hammer. “I want you to help me.” I said.
*
Susan stopped me. “Wait. What did you mean you wanted him to help you?”
“I couldn’t do it by myself,” I said.
Her eyes stretched wide as she realized what I was saying. “You asked him to hit you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Many times.”
“Oh. Oh God. God! This is wrong on so many levels,” she said. “I mean, does he …” She pointed to my legs. “Does he help you even now?”
“No.” I laughed. “This was long ago when I was inexperienced.”
Her eyes narrowed as she stared at our grimy, avocado-green carpet. She was silent for many moments. “He kept your secret all these years?”
“For the most part, “ I said. “Until he started following you around and dropping hints.”
“He once said that you got hurt a lot. I thought he was implying I didn’t take good care of you, but he was trying to warn me, wasn’t he?”
“I overestimated his stupidity,” I said.
“But why wait till now? He could have tried to tell me years ago.”
“I don’t know. I think he just wanted to forget it ever happened, but maybe he knows he’ll be dead soon and doesn’t want to take it to his grave.”
She sat still and breathed slowly, her body slumped in physical exhaustion, her gaze blank with mental fatigue. I patted the bed.
“You’re tired. Sit down next to me.”
She glanced up at my pulpy face. A pained look of sympathy crossed her features, and then disappeared. “I still don’t know what to think of you,” she said warily.
“Let me just tell you the rest,” I said. “I promise, I’m not going to bite.” Now that she had found me out, I was in a fever for her to know all.
I didn’t realize I had been dying to tell someone for years. She was that someone. I had to get it all out, to purge.
She stood up slowly, shuffled around the bed, and gently lay by my side like she usually did when she read to me, only this time I was the one telling the story, and so I continued.
“That night, a rare night when Mother and I ate dinner together in the grand dining room, she noticed a bruise on my arm just below the edge of my sleeve,” I told Susan. “She pushed my sleeve back to discover more black and blues. I saw the alarm on her face, and it sent a thrill through me. She told me to go upstairs and wash up and to wait for her.
“My mother, the ice queen, actually tucked me into bed that night, and with Greta’s assistance, inspected the rest of my body, lightly touching the sore spots with her cold fingertips. My eyes didn’t leave her face. I studied her for the slightest emotion, and then I saw it. When she got to my shin, which was where Pete had taken over and swung the hammer with the most leverage, she saw the dark purple splotches, and she gasped. Maybe she was just shocked, but I took it as a sign that she cared for me and that things would be different from then on. The wounds reminded her that she loved me. I knew she always had, she was just too much of a worried adult to think about it.
“I’d finally succeeded. I almost couldn’t believe it. It was like a dream. Not only was I reveling in the attention, I noticed a strange euphoria from the pain of movement. I was stiff and sore all over, and the pain blotted out everything else.”
“You poor boy,” Susan said.
“Oh no, not at all. I was never happier in my short life.”
“But it’s abnormal. This was the birth of your mental illness.”
“What mental illness?” I scoffed. “I don’t believe in mental illness.”
“Of course you do,” Susan said. “I’m no expert, but you have something. Munchausen’s? Some sort of self-harm syndrome?”
“Oh, please don’t put a label on it. I’m not mentally ill. As you can see by my telling you this, I am perfectly aware of what I’m doing and why I do it.”
SICKER: Psychological Thriller Series Novella 2 Page 3
