Alex

by Adam J Nicolai

  No answer. He stalked out of the room and slammed the door behind him.

  67

  He got to the junior high before Alina, for once. He waited in the parking lot, staring at the front doors through a haze of exhaustion, wishing the ibuprofen he'd taken would do something for his headache, or his sprained elbow, or his dead son.

  At ten to eight he went inside and took his seat. He was the first one there, except for Shauna, of course.

  "Hi Ian," she said brightly.

  He nodded, wished he had brought a book.

  "You're here early tonight!"

  "Yeah," he said.

  "Find a new route?"

  He blinked. "What?"

  "Did you find a faster route here?"

  "I - no. No, I just left the house early."

  "Oh, okay." She smiled.

  He spread his hands, annoyed. "Is that okay? Should I leave?" What the fuck do you want from me?

  "Oh, no, no, of course not. The Nguyens usually get here a bit early too, they should be coming in any minute." She continued smiling at him, and he bristled. Finally, she said, "Well, I'd better finish setting up."

  The others filtered in in pairs. He and Alina were the only ones that ever arrived separately.

  "Sorry," Alina called as she came in to the gym. She was the last one there.

  "No, no," Shauna answered. "It's all right, you're right on time."

  His wife bustled to her seat; as she took her coat off, she gave him a little smile. On some level, he understood how important that was. But it was buried beneath so many suffocating layers of fatigue and despair that he couldn't grasp it. Her brief display of affection played out like a movie scene behind a thick wall of plastic wrap.

  He was still trying to figure out what it meant when Shauna said, "Tonight I'd like to talk about guilt."

  Ian peered at her.

  "All of us feel it sometimes, and especially in these kinds of circumstances, when we've lost a dear child, it's easy to feel responsible. We wonder if there was something else we could have done, something we could have said. Harvey, you're nodding. Is there something you'd like to share?"

  Harvey shrugged, but started talking. "Lana. She was working late as a waitress. I didn't like how late she was working, you know? A couple times I even thought..." He looked at his wife. "I even thought, 'I don't want her out driving at that time of night.' But I didn't say anything. I should've. But I didn't."

  "Do you think it would have made a difference if you had?" Shauna asked.

  "I don't know. Maybe? If she listened to me, and changed her hours, maybe she wouldn't have been at that red light at two in the morning. And that asshole..." In the silence, Ian's eyes slipped effortlessly closed. When Harvey spoke again, they flicked back open. "That asshole could've crashed into a fucking tree."

  Shauna worked him over, trying to get him to talk about how much or how little that regret ate at him. When she was done, she turned her attention to the Bensons, but Alina said, "We know something about that, too."

  Shauna nodded, and Alina went on.

  "It was Alex's first day walking home alone. Neither one of us was there with him. We'd shown him the way before, walked it together as a family before, but it was his first time - you know, walking it by himself. It was really hard for us."

  "She means it was really hard for me," Ian said. He was hardly aware he had spoken.

  "Ian?" Shauna said. "What do you mean by that?"

  Alina was looking at him, but he didn't look back. "I mean that we're really just here for me. I'm the one that can't just put this behind me and move on with my life like I'm supposed to. I'm the one that's always wondering how far he was from the house when he got grabbed, or why we had to make him walk it that day, that fucking day of all days, when that crazy... fucker was driving around. I'm the one. We're here for me."

  That buried part of him was surprised at what he'd said; was sending up alarms. He ignored it and jerked his thumb toward Alina. "She was good to go the day after we heard he was dead."

  The Bensons recoiled from his words; the Nguyens' faces remained carefully neutral.

  Alina whispered something, but Shauna spoke over her. "I doubt that, Ian. I think it would be best if we each speak only for ourselves."

  He nodded - Fine, sure, yeah - and lifted his hands in surrender, but then he said, "Okay, speaking for myself, I wouldn't have let him walk home alone yet. I didn't think he was ready. I was scared shitless."

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Alina's face flicker between something like a smirk and a grimace. "He would've been going to Kindergarten in September, Ian," she hissed. "He had to learn how to walk home by himself, we talked about that, we both decided -"

  "I would've picked him up every day at school for the rest of my life if it would've kept him safe," Ian snarled. "Every. Fucking. Day."

  "All right," Shauna said. "Let's all just take a quick break."

  "And you think I wouldn't?" Alina lashed back. "You think I... what, that I planned this? You think I wanted this to happen?"

  "You knew I wasn't comfortable with it!" Ian snapped. A long, tearing pain started behind his left eye and wormed slowly toward the nape of his neck. His eyelid spasmed uncontrollably. "You did it anyway! You didn't care what I -"

  "If you thought it was so goddamned important -"

  "- thought, because you knew better, you always -"

  "- why the hell didn't you just take matters into your own hands -"

  "Ian, Alina, please -"

  "- know better than me, how the fuck can I know anything, I didn't even have a dad -"

  "- and save him, since you knew what would happen!"

  "- so why fucking listen to Ian? Why fucking listen to anything I say? Just a dumb piece of shit -"

  "Please, both of you, this isn't helping!"

  Alina leapt to her feet, her face burning. Her coat slid to the floor and he suddenly realized why she had been sitting with it on her lap at these meetings. She was trying to hide her stomach.

  Oh god. His mouth slapped shut. His eyes searched her livid face like he could find the words there and take them back.

  Her mouth worked in silence; her whole body seemed to quiver with wounded rage. But finally she snatched up her purse and her coat and stalked out, in silence.

  "Alina!" He bounded out of his chair, caught up to her in the hallway and grabbed her arm. "I'm sorry, I'm not -"

  "Get off me!" she screamed. He stumbled backward, and she banged through the door and into the night.

  68

  He called her four times in the car on the way home. Each time, when the voicemail picked up, he disconnected and tried again.

  At the house he stalked from the living room into the dining room and back again, a tiger pacing its cage. God, why couldn't he shut up? She didn't deserve anything he'd said to her. Why couldn't he just shut up?

  He tried again to call her. This time, he left a message.

  "Alina, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean anything I said. I know I really screwed up. I just... I'm... I haven't slept well in days, I can't sleep, and I just wasn't thinking. I wasn't thinking at all. Please call me. Please. I love you."

  He hit END. Her face, at the session, haunted him. She looked like he had stabbed her in the stomach.

  At the start of the night, she had smiled at him.

  "God!" he screamed. "God damn it, god fucking damn it!" His voice broke, still raw from his tantrum earlier in the day, and he sat down hard on the couch, staring at the floor.

  She couldn't be pregnant. It was nearly impossible, unless she'd been with someone else. He couldn't imagine she would do that. She'd handled Alex's death better than he had, but surely not enough to have an affair? If she were with someone else, why would she still bother with the sessions, or their occasional calls?

  With Alex, she had started showing late in the third month. Three months ago they weren't even in the same house anymore. She had moved out, gone to live with her fathe
r -

  Right after their last night together. It had been good, their first sex in months, but it hadn't been enough. A couple weeks later the same old shit had started up, and she'd gone.

  One night? There was no way. They had tried for months to get Alex. And she was on birth control, too - unless she had stopped that after Alex went missing.

  His stomach flipped at the thought of a second child. It flipped back at the thought of Alina having the baby without him.

  You're ahead of yourself. You don't even know she's pregnant. And it doesn't matter. You have to fix this. You have to figure out how to calm down -

  He clenched his fist against the couch. How could he calm down, how could he move on, with Alex screaming every night?

  He had to tell her. That was all. Tell her what was going on, that he was hallucinating, that he was going to get help. She might understand. They had been married for ten years, and they had been good years. They had. She might forgive him, might wait for him, if she knew -

  The home phone rang.

  He grabbed at his cell out of habit, and the home phone trilled again. He scrambled to his feet and into the kitchen, caught it on its third ring.

  "Hello?"

  The line was quiet.

  "Alina?"

  Her voice was a like a pane of cracked glass. "I'm done, Ian."

  "Alina, I'm so sorry. Please, listen -"

  "No. I'm done listening. I'm done trying to fix you. You have to fix yourself."

  "I know. I know, you're right -"

  "No, Ian. Are you listening to me at all? I'm done."

  The room tilted. He stumbled to the closest chair and sat.

  "I wish..." She paused, pulling together the shards of her broken voice. "God. I wish you were still strong. You used to be so strong, the whole time we were together. And this is hard, I know it is, but life moves on, Ian. My life moves on, and you... you won't move. You won't come along. You... you're making me go alone."

  "No," he whimpered.

  Her voice writhed, high-pitched, nearly breaking. "I don't want to be alone."

  "I don't want you to -"

  "But you do! You do. Or you would come with."

  "Alina..."

  "Do you have any idea... how embarrassed I was tonight." It wasn't a question.

  "Yes. I'm sorry."

  "I felt... like an idiot." She spat the word like a curse.

  His tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth and stayed there.

  "You say... you miss me. And you say... you love me. But you think I killed our son."

  "No...!"

  "And there's nothing I can do to change that, and I can't live with that. I can't live with a person who would believe that of me."

  "Okay. Okay." The room was swimming. His head throbbed. "Okay."

  "Goodbye, Ian," she said, but before the words were done he blurted:

  "How long have you been pregnant?"

  He waited for her to scoff, to hang up on him, to deny it. Then she said, "Three months."

  He had expected this answer, but it still made the floor tremble beneath his chair.

  "Is it mine?"

  An exasperated, disbelieving sigh. "Yes, Ian. It's yours." Then a muttered, "Jesus."

  "You should have told me." It wasn't the right thing to say, not with things as precarious as they were, but -

  "And what would you have done, Ian?" she said, acidly. "God. You probably would've thought I did it to you on purpose, just to force you to deal with it."

  "It changes everything, Alina."

  "No, it doesn't. Don't you get that? That's exactly the problem, it doesn't. That's why I didn't tell you. You are not the man I married, Ian. You're not the guy I wanted to have children with anymore. I miss that man, I miss him really bad." Her voice cracked. "God, I dream about him, I miss him so bad. But he's gone and he's not coming back."

  "How can you say it doesn't change anything? A second child? That..."

  "Every day, you would look at this kid and think, 'They wouldn't be here if Alex still was.' Tell me you wouldn't."

  His heart labored in his chest, but he couldn't answer her.

  "You know," she said, "when I first found out, I thought, 'This will be good. This'll give us something to grab hold of, something to look forward to. He'll be...'" The words whined upwards in pitch, tumbled off a cliff. She finished hoarsely: "'He'll be so happy.'"

  The room spun slowly around him as he listened.

  "I took the test at work. I was actually in a good mood all day. Terrified, but happy. I couldn't wait to tell you. And the second I walked in the door, you started in on me about the dishes, or some shit, and I realized..."

  He remembered it. He had delivered another stupid round of accusations at her, and she had fallen silent for the night.

  The next day, she'd left.

  "You're grieving, Ian, and you're doing it by hurting everyone around -" Her voice choked off.

  "I'm sorry," he said into the silence. "I'm really hurting, Alina."

  "Well, so am I!" she snapped. "So am I! You're not the only one who loved him, Ian! You're not the only one who feels guilty! But I thought this was something we could get through together, and you... you won't even hold me at night anymore!"

  "I will, if you give me another chance, I will -"

  "Oh, fuck that," she spat. "That's all I've done, is give you chance after chance. I can't keep getting hurt by you, Ian. Don't you get that? I am already hurting enough."

  "Okay. Okay. You're right. I know I've been an absolute bastard."

  Silence.

  "Look, I was wrong tonight, everything I said was wrong. If I had been more awake, I wouldn't have said any of it, but I haven't slept at all this week, I keep having these nightmares -"

  "You wouldn't have said it?" she seethed. "You would've just sat there pretending everything was okay, the whole time thinking, 'What a shitty mother'?"

  "No! Let me finish!"

  She snorted. He could see her shaking her head.

  "Look, I..." He was losing her. He had fucked this up so badly there was no way to save it. "I was really trying, I was. I sent you that text this weekend because it was true. I still love you, I swear to god, and I want to be the person you need. I want to be strong. I'm just not perfect. I'm trying, but I'm not perfect. But I think I'm getting better. I just haven't been able to sleep and it's... it's turning me into a lunatic. I'm going to get help. But... I was really looking forward to tonight. I was really hoping we were gonna get through this."

  A long pause.

  "Goodbye, Ian," she whispered, and hung up.

  69

  He sat with the phone pressed to his ear, staring at the wall as it clicked and fell silent, trying to understand what had happened. Sick disbelief, heavy as an oil spill, floated on the surface of his empty thoughts. Eventually the phone began blaring a warning - BLAT BLAT BLAT BLAT BLAT - and he still stared. But the noise aggravated the pain in his head, already searing. To make it stop, he let the phone slip out of his hands and clatter to the floor.

  70

  The cold table pressed against his face as he woke. Jagged pains crackled in his neck and back; his elbow groaned as he straightened his arm.

  The phone had stopped its noise. The clock on the microwave read 1 AM.

  He stumbled to his feet, lurched toward his bedroom like the walking dead. Alina's face hovered in the darkness, hurt, incriminating. It made him feel like vomiting.

  After he collapsed in the bed, the thick soup of his thoughts swirled.

  He and Alina had fallen in love over the phone. They'd talked every night in college. Since the first night he called her, they had talked every night until the day she left. They'd fallen in love over the phone, and she had left him over the phone.

  She was right - he didn't hold her anymore. He used to, especially when she had nightmares. He would pull her close, caress her face, whisper lovingly in her ear until she calmed. He had that power over her, but he stopped usin
g it after Alex died. When she woke him with her night terrors now, he just stared at the ceiling.

  He was going to be late for work tomorrow. He hadn't even set his alarm. There was no point in it now. Who was he trying to support?

  There was a gun in the closet - a .22. He'd bought it after Alex had gone missing. He'd never told Alina. She would've flipped. It was stupid, anyway. There was no one to shoot.

  Talking to Alina on the phone. Her voice so inviting, so feminine, so smart. Her laugh. God, he loved that laugh. She thought he was funny. He could make her laugh. He could bring her to orgasm. It was hard to say which was better. They were both divine, both heaven in his ears.

  Alex wasn't screaming tonight. Why wasn't he screaming? Had he come back to break them up? Was that Ian's punishment for losing his son, and now the haunting was done?

  He'd be fired tomorrow when he came in late. Did that matter? He could just stay home. Take the .22 and blow his brains out. He would never hear Alex screaming again, then.

  His bed swallowed him and he drifted away.

  Two hours later, Alex screamed.

  Ian sat up, sucked in a giant breath like he was drowning. Blind panic, madness, gibbered at the edges of his consciousness.

  "Noooooooo!" the boy shrieked. "Nooooooo!" He sounded crazed, feral, but Ian could match him, Ian was mad with exhaustion, and white rage boiled out of his stomach, seized his throat, made him shriek back, "Alex! Shut the fuck up! Shut up! Shut UP!"

  "Nooooooo! Help!"

  Ian flailed against his blankets, kicked them away, hissing, spitting. "Shut up!" He tripped as he jumped from the bed, smacked his face against the carpet, burst back to his feet on a geyser of fury that rocketed him across the hallway and into Alex's door like a cannon.

  "GOD DAMMIT!" he roared, hurling it open, "YOU FUCKING - !"

  Leroy Eston crouched in the empty space above the carpet, eyes casting about like a lion on the hunt, his nose twitching, a light dusting of snow on his jean jacket.

  Seven feet away Alex was hiding behind a tree, deathly quiet, mouth open, breath pluming.

  "Alex!" Eston called. "Come on out, now! We'll bring you home!"

  Ian's scream died on his tongue. He froze in the doorway, empty and cold.