by Serra, D. A.
“Yes, sir, but there are charges today that are out of the ordinary and so for your protection -”
“What is it? What charge?”
“A charge to Merriweather Guns and Military Surplus on Bloom Street.”
Hank slams down the receiver. “That’s it!” Hank grabs his keys. “Scottie!”
“Yes!” Scott looks in, “What?”
“Pick up Jimmy for me now at school so I can get home first.”
“You got it.”
And Hank is gone.
He breaks every speed limit driving home. I can’t believe she did this. His mind reels. This is a complete break of our trust. This is truly crazy, scary paranoid. How could she do this? How could she! Damn it! He screeches into the driveway. He throws open the front door to his home and yells, “Alison!” She is catapulted by the sound of his angry voice. She rushes in from the living room where she was trying to read. By the time she gets into the foyer, Hank is already wrenching open every drawer. Then, he moves into the living room where he begins a serious search under the sofa cushions.
“Hank?”
“Where!”
“Hank?”
“Where is it, Alison?”
“What? Where’s what?”
“Where’s the gun!” Surprised, she doesn’t answer. He throws the books off the bookcase. “Tell me now. Where’s the gun?”
“Are you following me?”
“No. Although I guess I should. The credit card company called. They thought it was kind of odd your expensive purchase at Merriweather’s Military Surplus.” He moves toward the stairs. She follows him. “Where is the gun, Alison?”
“In a safe place.”
“Give it to me right now.”
They stand face-to-face in conflict. She answers with her eyes firm but her voice shaking, “No.”
“Alison,” he turns on her with force, “Give it to me or I’ll tear this house apart.” She has never seen this kind of fury from him. It is so out of character and she is unnerved and frantic.
“I need it, Hank. I have to have it.”
He takes the stairs three at a time and blasts into their bedroom. She follows and stops at the doorway. He starts in the far corner of the room, opens her little desk and empties the contents on the rug. He moves to the next drawer and then the next, throwing everything onto the floor.
“Okay,” she says. “Stop.”
He slows and turns to her. “Where?”
“Under my side of the bed.”
Hank walks over, bends down and pulls out the rifle. “Oh my god, it’s huge.”
“There was a waiting period for a smaller one.”
He turns away disgusted, “Is it loaded?”
“Of course it’s loaded. Not much use if it’s not loaded.”
The door slams downstairs.
“Mom? Dad?”
Alison answers with a forced calm, “Upstairs, honey.”
Hank shoves the gun in the hidden area behind the opened door to the bedroom as Jimmy appears in the doorway. He looks at them. Clearly, something is up.
“Um…hi?” Jimmy says leery.
“Hi, how was school?” Alison asks. Her voice sounds high-pitched and strained.
“Kinda normal. Why did Scottie pick me up?”
Hank turns away from Alison and speaks to his son with a bare-knuckle calm because now he is finally absolutely certain of what he must do. “Jimmy, please go into your room and pack a suitcase.”
“What?” Alison whips her head to him.
“Why?” Jimmy asks worried.
“Hank, we need to talk.”
Ignoring her, Hank continues speaking directly to Jimmy, “Make sure you have clothes for school, a toothbrush, and all your books.”
“But, Dad, I don’t want to go anywhere.”
“Hank!” Alison tries not to further upset Jimmy but it is no use. Her son’s brow is furrowed and his eyes alarmed.
Hank says, “Bring a couple of video games, too. Now go.”
Troubled, Jimmy backs out of the volatile room. “But where are we going?”
“We’re driving to Grandma’s”
Jimmy asks tenuously, “All of us?”
Hanks replies, “Just you and me. Your mom has some things she needs to do.”
Jimmy stands for a moment. He looks at his mom. She holds her words but the quivering of her face is undeniable. His dad nods his head at him and Jimmy crosses the little hallway and enters his bedroom. Alison turns urgently to Hank and speaks in a nearly hysterical whisper.
“You can’t do this.”
“I can.”
“No.”
“I have to.” Hank walks to the closest and takes out a suitcase. He packs aggressively throwing clothing into the suitcase while Alison pleads.
“Hank, please, don’t do this.”
“You need help, Alison.”
“I need a bazooka.”
“Your judgment has gone to shit.”
“I have good judgment.” She feels panic rising - alarm soaks her.
“You’re seeing things, you’re hearing things, and you refuse to help yourself.”
“I am helping myself. I’m helping us all.”
“You won’t take your medication.”
“It makes me feel sick and groggy!”
“You refuse to go to therapy.”
“I don’t need to talk about it. I need to be prepared.”
“You’re going to shoot me or Jimmy on our way to the bathroom some night.”
“No! I won’t. I wouldn’t make that mistake. Never!”
“You pulled a knife on Polly.”
“She was sneaking up from the basement!”
“Sneaking?”
“Okay, maybe not sneaking. But I didn’t imagine it. I really heard something. She was in the basement!”
“Doing our laundry.”
“So maybe I overreacted.”
“Maybe? Maybe you overreacted by pulling a knife on our sixty-year-old housekeeper?”
“Please stop packing.”
“It’s no wonder they are laying you off work.”
“They’re laying me off?” Alison feels like she’s been physically struck.
“Yes, what did you think? You think you can run around fleeing from ghosts and acting crazy and no one will care that you’re around their children?” He slams shut the suitcase. “I can’t trust you.”
She begins to cry protesting, “You can.”
“You’re buying weapons behind my back. You’ve turned away from everyone in your life who has tried to help you. But this is where I draw the line. Jimmy comes first. I know that now. I need to protect my son.”
“Our son. And how can you protect him when you won’t even face that there’s a threat?”
“Oh,” he levels his eyes at her deadly serious, “I know there’s a threat.”
“It’s not me, Hank.”
“We will be at my mother’s. We’ll come back after you return the gun, when you have gone back to therapy, when you are on the medications that have been prescribed, and when it is safe to bring Jimmy back into his home.” Hank spins around with his small suitcase and meets Jimmy in the hallway.
“Let’s go, son,” he says.
“What about Mom?”
“Mom has some stuff she needs to do first.”
Alison cannot tolerate the worry on her little boy’s face. It pains her to see the distraught look in his eyes. This reaches right through the wall of her fears and into the very heart of who she is as a mother. She knows at this moment that she cannot stop Hank. She has to help Jimmy. She must do what she can to lessen this blow, to make it okay for him. She clears her face, manages a half-grin, bends down and hugs him tightly.
“Hey, my little man, it’s okay. Just temporary. It’s better if you go on with your dad. I actually do have a few things to take care of and then I’ll come over. Don’t let Dad drive Grandma nuts with his music all the time, okay?”
�
��Okay.” Jimmy looks down at his shoes trying to mentally organize his feelings.
And even through the betrayal and all the fury, Hank loves her for this. He knows how this must feel to her. Somewhere inside, beyond all the paranoia at the core of her, she is still the selfless caring woman he fell in love with. Hank and Jimmy load into the car in the driveway. Jimmy looks back at his mother standing in the doorway. His anxiety reaches her and feeling it, she quickly smiles to reassure him. She watches them back out. She has no idea how to stop them, whether to stop them. She has doubts. Of course, she has doubts. Standing in the front doorway, she attempts to bring some semblance of order to her deteriorating world. What is best? She does not know. She waves weakly to Jimmy who sits next to his dad in the front seat. Jimmy places his opened hand on the window as they drive away. He cranes his neck and watches until he can no longer see his mom. He feels somehow that he is letting her down.
She says quietly, “Love you.”
And they are gone around the corner. Gone. She has killed to save her family and now they’ve left her because she’s a killer, because she thinks like a killer, and acts like a killer, and because she buys weapons like a killer. She did pull a knife on Polly. I did that, she thinks. I did do that, but, no, no buts…I did that. What if I am confused? What if the fear I’m feeling isn’t about the return of Ben Burne at all, maybe it’s transference, and what I’m afraid of is who I’ve become. Maybe I’m running from myself, running from looking at what this all says about me. Am I keeping the fear of a dead man alive so I don’t have to confront the truth? What if the trouble is that it is too hard to accept that the line between me and a mass murderer is so thin that it can be crossed in one night? If what you’ve done in life is the true gauge of who you are as a person, what does that make me? I guess as long as I’m still running, still fighting, I don’t have time to examine my own behavior, or to face the blood on my hands. I don’t need to think about what happened, because for me it is still happening, and so there is no time to think. Perhaps the ghost I’m running from is the apparition of me: of the me that died that night, the me who was kind and incapable of harm. So, then, am I running from the old me or the new me?
Once Jimmy can’t see his mom any longer, he starts to fidget in his seat. He tries to keep his mouth shut because he can see the conflict and pain on his father’s face. But he can’t keep his mouth shut. It’s his mom.
“Dad, we can’t leave mom alone.”
“Right now we have to. It may be the only way we can shock her into helping herself.”
“We have to go back, Dad.”
“Jimmy, you need to trust me here.”
“But we’re letting her down.”
“It’s only for tonight. I’m going to bring the doctor over tomorrow and we will get her the help she needs no matter what it takes.”
Jimmy is straining, working hard to hold his emotions in like a man. Hank can see this. It only adds more emotion, which he is already barely controlling.
“I don’t want to leave her, Dad.”
“Me either, buddy, me either.”
Jimmy slumps down in his seat. Hank looks over sadly. They have tried so hard to keep Jimmy on the outside of what’s happening to his mother, but of course, he sees it all. He knows this is a big step. Hank runs a series of well-known platitudes through his brain searching for something to say that will ease Jimmy’s mind. Nothing. There doesn’t seem to be anything that can make this easier. He rests his hand for a moment on Jimmy’s hand lying on the seat next to him. He squeezes. Jimmy squeezes back. Exactly the way Alison would and Hank aches for her.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Six
Grandma Carolyn was surprised to see her son and grandson pull into her driveway. Usually they call first. The fake grin on her son’s face told her that things were very far from okay and that the horror of the unimaginable events of these last many weeks was continuing to tear up the family.
“What a super surprise!” Carolyn kisses them both. “If I’d known you were coming I would have made Jimmy’s favorite chicken pasta.”
“It’s okay, Grandma, I’m not hungry,” he says deflated. Carolyn and Hank exchange a quick message with a glance.
“So, we’ll eat later.” She sees the suitcases and asks leerily, “Are you staying?”
“Just for a little,” Hank says.
Forlorn, Jimmy pushes past them, “I’m gonna watch TV.”
“Okay, son, go ahead.”
Jimmy heads off to the TV room. They watch him. From behind, it is evident that the spark has gone from this child. He shuffles off, scuffing his heels, with his chin dropped down and his hands shoved completely into his pockets. Hank follows his mother into the kitchen where she closes the door.
Carolyn is a formidable woman, worldly, and matronly in her bulky flowered caftan. She seems out of place in her own kitchen, which has been decorated with a surfeit of delicate items: porcelain teacups, champagne flutes, little picture frames, all of which only serve to make her loom larger in comparison. But she loves all of these sweet things. She turns to her son with trepidation.
“What’s going on?” she asks.
“Mom, we just need to give Alison a little space.”
“Space? A little space? What is this, high school? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s between us.”
“It isn’t between you. Please don’t make the mistake of thinking it is between you. It’s between you and Alison and Jimmy and you’d better not think it’s between you two alone.”
“I know.”
“There’s nothing you two could do that won’t affect that little boy.”
“Mom, I know.”
“So, what are you doing in my kitchen holding a suitcase, Henry?”
Hank plops down in the kitchen stool and rests his elbows on the Formica countertop. How much can he really tell his mother? He must be cautious. He must not say anything that could turn his mother against Alison. He can forgive Alison anything, but can his mother forgive Alison for putting her grandson at risk? No. She will protect her grandson with ferocity. He must choose his words with care. He must say enough for support, but not enough to damage Alison in his mother’s eyes. Jeopardizing their relationship is a risk he cannot take. He is having a tough enough time trying to hold his little family together. They are strung too tight to add any other stresses to the cord that binds them. Besides, he couldn’t stand it if his mother thought badly about Alison even for one second.
“Mom, look, I know you don’t understand what’s been going on. But Alison is my wife and I can’t tell you some things. It would probably be best if you just let it be.”
“Let it be?”
“If you can’t do that, then Jimmy and I can go to a hotel…”
“Now, stop that. You can stay here as long as you like. You know that.”
“Then, no questions.”
“For a time.”
“For a time,” he agrees.
“And you understand that boy is distraught.”
“Oh, I understand, believe me. I’m thinking of only him. You have to trust that.” He looks into the face of his mother and wishes he could explain everything to her. He would love to sit down and tell her about the hallucinations, the paranoia, the craziness, and the weapons. If he does, his mom will throw her arms around him and he will enjoy the solace of a connection that he craves right now. He genuinely needs someone to say they understand, to confirm he’s done the right thing. But he can’t. He knows he cannot. This is a burden he must carry in silence, or risk being the source of more destruction. He must protect Alison and so he cannot tell his mother any of it.
Carolyn asks, “Then just tell me - is she all right?”
“If she were all right I wouldn’t be here.”
Carolyn nods. She walks over to the sink, turns on the faucet, reaches for her little copper teakettle and fills it. She puts the kettle on the stove. These rote gestures give her a
moment to consider. This is not an easy position he has put her in. She is frantic inside to hear what’s going on. She turns the gas on under the kettle as she reviews what she should say. Her son loves his family. He is asking her to trust him, to trust his judgment. She turns back to face him.
“Then, I’ll get dinner going.”
“Thanks.”
* * *
Several hours later, Alison sits with her forehead planted on the kitchen table. An untouched cup of chamomile tea beside her went cold hours ago. She lifts her head three inches from the table and then just lets it flop back down with a thud. She can’t do this any longer. She knows Hank as well as she knows herself. The only reason Hank would have left her side is if she really were crazy. I have to face it. I’ve cracked. I mean, maybe, maybe I’ve cracked. I see things. I hear things. Oh god, how do I end this when it all feels real? Is this what all crazy people say? My husband has left me. My husband who I know loves me has left. What does that tell me? She picks her forehead up again and lets it drop into her hands. I have no one. No one understands. Everyone around here has already decided about me. I have no one. She picks up her phone and dials 411.
The operator asks, “City and State, please?”
In Hobbs’ cabin, Curtis reaches for the ringing phone. “Sport Fishing.”
“You really did get a regular landline up there.” She tries to make her voice sound normal.
“Alison?”
“Not indoor plumbing too I hope.”
“And ruin the ambiance? No way. Evidently, you city folk like a good crap in the woods. How’s civilization?”
Her voice cracks, “A lot harder than I remember.”
“True that. Reality sucks. People are animals.”
“Yes. That’s been a hard lesson.”
“But useful.”
“Maybe. Maybe we’re better off not knowing that. Maybe we’re better off living in a dream world.”
“We’re surely better off that way,” he says almost wistfully, “but once you wake up…well, you’re up, ya know?”
“Yes.” She sighs.
“Why don’t you come for a visit? Be my guest.”
“Not a chance.”
“This time you could really go fishing.”
“I hyperventilate when I see fish sticks.”
