She was a wreck, and so was I.
“If I had listened to you and stuck through the last week, I would have been right at the front desk. I would have been the one to let him in. I would have seen Bill shot again and again. What if I had tried to stop it? I mean, I don’t know what I would have done.”
It was close. Too close.
“Anytime you want to quit a job, you do it. Don’t listen to me,” I told her, frantic to push the images from my head. We hadn’t heard who had done it yet, or why. I had a terrible thought that it could be Adam. He was crazy enough that he could do something exactly like this.
We hadn’t heard from Adam in quite a while, and Matt was largely out of our lives while he got his life together. Yet here was another insane man reaching into our lives and taking something away. Just when we thought the waters were safe, we were reminded that life is never so neat and simple.
Within hours the gunman was run down and shot by the police. No motive was ever discovered. He had written profanities on the wall at a Target where he worked and walked out of the job earlier that day. They had found a Post-it note at his home with Bill Gwatney’s name and a phone number but no other connection. It wasn’t Adam.
Friday night I went with her to a vigil on the steps of the courthouse where Bill had been a state senator for ten years. The atmosphere at the courthouse was nerve-racking. Everyone was afraid, wondering if someone would shoot into the crowd. Wondering what terrible thing would happen next. Hope’s friends who had been in the building or in the same room with Bill needed to talk. They needed to share the horrible details. No matter how badly I wanted to plug her ears and run away, I stood with Hope and we listened.
She was too numb to cry on the way home. “I’m going to cancel my trip to Denver. He was supposed to be part of our group. He was a superdelegate. It will just be so depressing to do that now. We were supposed to leave in a couple days.”
I didn’t argue with her. I was afraid to offer any advice. “Go with your gut,” I said, confident that her gut was luckier than my own.
On Monday we drove to the funeral. It was a huge affair, with the Clintons, General Wesley Clark, Governor Beebe, and dozens of local politicians from both parties attending. Two blocks from the church, people lined the sidewalk holding signs. It wasn’t until we stopped at a traffic light that I realized exactly what we had run into: the Westboro Baptist Church demonstrators. The signs had photos of Bill with flames around his head that read “Burn in Hell Gwatney,” and dozens of other hate-filled messages, and scriptures suggesting that God killed Bill as a punishment for our country tolerating homosexuality. Hope started yelling and unbuckled her seat belt. She had every intention of going after them. She hadn’t slept more than a few hours in the past week and had no filters or patience left for cruelty.
I locked her door and put my arm across her, trying to hold her in the car. I looked ahead, willing the light to change so we could get away from the hateful chants, and then I saw something unexpected on the opposite side of the street. It was a long line of Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Long-haired, bearded bikers in leathers were also holding signs—peace signs. “Look across the street!” I yelled. “Just focus on the bikers. Look at their signs!”
Hope relaxed, the light turned green, and I rolled down my window so that we could both wave at the Patriot Guard motorcycle group who frequently counter the Westboro demonstrators. “This isn’t what I expect you to do every time you see a group of guys on Harleys,” I said.
By the next day, everything had changed again. “I’m going to Denver,” Hope told me, chin up and tears dry. “I just heard that Rebecca, Bill’s wife, is going along with the Clintons. If she can go then I can do it, too.”
So I piled her in a van with a group of law students, all quite a bit older than her, and they headed off to Denver. It was exactly the healing trip she needed.
She called me from Denver while I was on my hands and knees in her closet, gluing and pounding narrow strips of hardwood in place at eleven P.M., still fighting to make our deadline. She had just heard Hillary Clinton’s speech and she was bawling while she quoted her. “‘My mother was born before women could vote. My daughter got to vote for her mother for president. This is the story of America, of women and men who defy the odds and never give up.’”
I was crying, too. This was our story. Women like Caroline. Women like us.
My oldest daughter had seen a lot of life’s bad things, but she had seen good things, too. She returned stronger and braver, more determined to make changes in the world. She brought us each one of the small flags they waved as Obama spoke, and she brought a special gift for Roman. It was a twelve-inch plush doll of Obama. She had taken Roman with her to hold signs and hand out stickers near polling offices, so the names of politics were familiar to him, but his love for his doll surprised us all.
“It’s Obama!” he squealed, hugging his doll close. “I have Obama!”
The doll became his security toy, and for months when he woke in the middle of the night, instead of hearing a cry for water or a blankie over the monitor, I heard him whimper, “Obama! Where’s Obama? I want Obama!”
Life is stranger than we could possibly predict. And while we all leapt back in to work twenty-hour days to finish Inkwell Manor, we found new strengths, new weaknesses, and thousands more reasons to call ourselves fortunate.
–22–
Fall
Aiming True
Adam’s red Honda was no more than half a car length behind me, matching my speed. If I had seen him seconds earlier, I could have kept going, driven to town like we had last time, bought some time while I called the police. But I had missed all the warning signs, because I was preoccupied with being happy, with moving on, and finally dating this guy named Matt who made me feel safe and felt like he might be a true forever-after.
Drew saw him, too, and I wondered what made him look over his shoulder. Hope spotted him only a second or two after us.
“Is he wearing…” Hope tried to turn all the way around in the passenger seat and I pushed her back down. “Horns. He’s wearing red horns,” she said, settling back in her seat and not wanting to see more.
“Hell.”
“You’re not supposed to say that. It’s a bad word,” Jada said. “Hell.”
I sped up, turning sharply at the top of the driveway to angle across the front lawn instead of into the garage. He followed, and I pushed the garage-door button. I had to choose between getting into the house or running, and just then the house seemed like the better bet. He followed me, but the turn caught him off guard and I had the advantage. I whipped around in a circle, slipped neatly between the post for the basketball goal and the lawn-mower shed, and stopped in the garage with my finger mashing the door button and the nose of the car denting the shelf unit against the far wall. The door moved down, slow and careful. It was only halfway down when his car stopped in front of it.
“In the house!” I yelled at the kids. “Get upstairs now!” I should have followed them, locked us all tight in a room with the door barricaded. It wouldn’t be the first time we hid from him like that. But Adam had jumped out of his car and I caught a flash of his legs—red tights, or leggings. Red like a demon.
The door sealed down tight before he got to it. I knew perfectly well it wasn’t enough to keep us safe, but it was another minute bought and paid for. I ran inside and passed the bottom of the stairs just as the kids reached the top.
“Jada, did you say you saw a demon outside this morning? A devil? What were you playing?”
Jada chewed her lip. “I thought I had imagined it. There was just a peek. I didn’t think it could be real.” She had been little the last time she’d seen Adam. She wouldn’t even recognize him if he were in everyday clothes let alone a costume from hell.
“Go in Hope’s room,” I said, running to my closet. “Push the dresser in front of the door and don’t come out.”
Drew hesitated, took two step
s back down the stairs.
“Get your knife, Drew. Go in that room and keep them safe. I’m getting my gun.”
He didn’t seem surprised that I had one. I wished he had.
I loaded Karma and filled my pockets with shells. This time there was no doubt in my mind that I could shoot him. If he came in the house, I could shoot him to keep my kids safe. Not only shoot him, I knew, but kill him if I had to. It surprised me. When I bought the gun I had imagined scaring him with it. But I hadn’t been imagining him in a devil costume that day.
I walked slowly out of my room and across the den, watching out the windows for the demon. In the dining room, I grabbed my phone and Hope’s from the table. On hers I called 911 and dialed Ivana on mine immediately after.
“My ex-husband is outside trying to get in my house,” I told the dispatcher. “I have a restraining order, and he’s told me he’s going to kill me.”
“Is anyone else in the house?” she asked, sounding bored.
There was no way to explain his insanity to her without sounding insane myself. “My three kids are here. He has schizophrenia.” It was the first time I had said that to anyone but my mom. It sounded scarier out loud.
“Stay on the line while I dispatch a car. Officers will be there as soon as they can.” She confirmed my name and his, then repeated my address twice.
“He’s at the dining-room window, looking in at me,” I whispered, walking sideways with my back tight to the wall until I could turn the corner to the den.
“Where are your children?” she asked.
“Hiding.” I took a deep breath. “I have a gun. Tell the officers I have a gun. It’s loaded.”
I heard her calling it in, sending help my way. She wasn’t bored anymore, and I could tell from how fast she was talking that she believed like I did that no one could get to me in time.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I looked around the doorway into the dining room. He was jabbing the tip of a foot-long, curved knife against the window. That knife could break the window with no real effort, but he wasn’t breaking anything, just tapping, just teasing, just wrapping his fingers around my throat and holding me under the water. Deep in the river. Anytime he wanted to, he could. He could kill me … but not only me.
He moved to the front door, tried the knob, and then moved on to the office window.
Tap. Tap-a-tap. Tap.
Around and around the house he went, tapping and teasing. I had seen the horns, curved beast horns that looked more demon than devil. They looked like real antler-type material, and I couldn’t imagine where he’d bought them. He was wearing a black shirt, a button-down that had once made him look suave instead of satanic, and red leggings that might have been Ivana’s.
I remembered I’d dialed her and lifted that phone to my ear. The 911 phone was on the sofa. “Ivana? Are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here. I wish you wouldn’t have called the police. I asked you not to. And good God, Cara. You have a gun? Do you really? I’m in Little Rock. I’m on my way, but I’m in Little Rock.” Her voice rose and cracked. She was crying.
“He’s tapping on my windows with a knife, Ivana. And he’s dressed like a demon, wearing tights and horns. If I have to shoot him, I will.”
She let out a little cry, like a puppy whimper. “Shoot him in the leg. Please, Cara. If you have to, just shoot him in the leg.”
I hung up the phone. Not because of what she said, but because of the images in my head. I knew beyond any doubt that I wouldn’t shoot him in the leg. I would shoot him over and over in every vital organ. I would put more bullets in the gun and shoot him again. I wouldn’t stop shooting him until someone made me.
Something bumped my elbow, made me jump, and I swung around to see Hope staring up at me. Her eyes were haunted and dark, stretched wide with shock. I had no idea how long she had been there, what she had heard. Maybe she had been there all along, ignoring my directive to hide with Drew and Jada.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “Please don’t shoot him.” Her words fell flat, deflated before I even tried to punch them down. “Just don’t,” she said. No passion, no power. She was empty of all those things, and I wondered if the overload of trauma and insanity would leave her cup forever perforated, leaking trust and security. Or if someday she would be able to hold good things again without the terror that everything could fall apart at any second, without wondering if Mommy would have to hold a man at gunpoint and weigh the consequences of not shooting.
The tapping moved to my bedroom window. I didn’t go in there to watch him through the glass. The shades were pulled. It was dark in there. If he made it into the house, I wanted to face him in the light. I stayed in the den, back against the side of the staircase, Hope at my elbow whispering things I didn’t have the ears to process.
“This has to end.” It barely sounded like my voice. It held less power than Hope’s.
The 911 phone was talking to me, so I picked it up and turned to the back door. He stood there watching us through the glass French doors. The knife tip was as red as his leggings. With almost no effort he could break that glass and step right through. I pointed the gun at him, made sure he saw it. He held up the knife. A challenge. A draw.
I didn’t move. It wasn’t like there was any place to hide. Not really. No place to go. “Are they here yet?” I asked the 911 dispatcher.
“Thought I’d lost you,” she said. “I have two cars on the way, but they were across town. It’s going to be a little while yet. Hold on. Stay calm.”
I closed my eyes, wanting to keep them that way for a long time. I didn’t want to see Adam, and I didn’t want to see what I might have to do.
“Go upstairs,” I said. But I never turned to see if Hope listened or stayed to be my whispering conscience. If I listened to her, we would both regret it one day. The next time he came looking for his lost mind in our house, we would regret keeping the bullets clean and whole.
He tapped the window again, and I realized it was Morse code, but I refused to translate the dots and dashes. I opened my eyes and put the phone down. I didn’t need the nervous lady anymore. She had done her best to help me and failed.
I took a long step toward the door and felt strength rising up through the heels of my feet, coursing through my veins with the power of every woman who had ever stood like I stood, with no one else to lean on, no one to help. I felt their power all the way to the top of my head and the tips of my fingers. Yes, even the finger that was curved around the chipped, black trigger of Karma.
For a second, or maybe longer, I thought about shooting him through the door. How much trouble would I get in, and could I get out of it? My kids would be safe. No matter what happened to me, they would be safe. Was it worth it? He was too heavy for me to drag inside without making that obvious, so that was out of the question.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap-a-tap. Tap.
I looked at the deadbolt—not to see if it was locked, I knew it was, but because I was thinking about unlocking it, letting him in so the story would be right for the police.
I wasn’t panicked; I was calm and rational. I was clearheaded enough to know that I didn’t want to do this again, not ever. There was only one way I could guarantee that, and that was if he was dead. I didn’t want to kill him, I just wanted it to end, and there was no other answer. Time moved immeasurably slowly. I imagined what it would look like if I shot him, first in the chest, three times, then in the head if I could manage it before he fell to the floor. I could see what that would look like on the tile, on the painted door.
Tap-a-tap. Tap-tap. Tap.
Then what? What if all the bullets I had in the gun and in my pockets didn’t kill him? How far could I go? I walked to the kitchen and got a butcher knife from the drawer, the one he had used to chop veggies chef-style when he’d gone through his cooking obsession. I laid it on the counter. Plan B.
I could still see him from the kitchen, lips moving and knife tapping messages to me, or to someone, ma
ybe to the house itself for all I knew. His left horn had fallen a couple of inches, making him look a little pitiful. I realized then that he was wearing lipstick. Bright red lipstick from Ivana’s collection. She wouldn’t be happy about that.
I wasn’t happy about it either. Most of all, I wasn’t happy with what he had made me face about myself. Ever since Hope was born, I could have guessed that I would kill for my kids if I had to, if I was backed into a corner. But I never imagined I would step over that line and want to kill, wish I could get away with it. Sure, I could tell myself it was still for a noble cause, not a cruel, cold-blooded desire without a grander purpose, but that didn’t make me feel all that much better.
The only thing that could was choosing not to do it.
The sun was setting behind him, a molten hell nowhere near as hot as the hell inside his own mind. I’m sorry, Cara, he had said about the schizophrenia. It wasn’t something he chose. And it was, without a doubt, the saddest thing I had watched in my life. A man stripped of logic and his family, left with only enough of his mind to know what he lost and that he still loved those missing things. Sad beyond words.
But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t still shoot him if he got through my door.
He moved around to the kitchen window where Hope had seen him so many nights since the divorce. I wondered if that was where Jada had seen him this morning. Minutes later, he appeared in the dining-room window, back to his starting point. Ring-around-the-rosy.
He was trying the front door, turning the knob and shouldering against it, when blue lights flashed up the driveway, moving slower than I thought they should. Four officers approached while his knife tapped a final, frantic message in code. Karma felt warm in my hand, pointed at the floor, but ready, just in case. You never know what might happen. Anything was possible in this crazy world. Anything.
Through the long leaded-glass windows in the front door, I didn’t see him resist or threaten, but he may have. Maybe I wanted him to so they could take care of the problem for me, but I didn’t think hard on that. It was going too far, stepping across a dangerous line in my mind that I’d already rejected. They pushed him to the ground, shouting and making a lot of noise I couldn’t interpret. I imagined my mom there with me, holding me together. Without her, all my pieces would have surely flown apart and left the house through the smudged windows.
Rise--How a House Built a Family Page 27
