by Ray Garton
“We’re not going to sue anyone, Richard. Can’t you see that we’re trapped in this. Because we’re guilty. We’re dirty. Filthy.” Tears rippled calmly and quietly down her face. She went to the dresser and leaned on it, staring down at the music box, afraid to touch it.
“Christ, Danielle, you talk about us like we’re pornographers, or something! This… this is just insane! You’re insane if you think we deserve to be—”
“You know it as well as I do, Richard. You most of all.”
He clutched her shoulder and spun her around, spitting, “And what the fuck does that mean?”
“I let it go on. I watched. I said nothing, did nothing. Because I was afraid of what you would do to me. After you beat me that first time—”
His face twisted. “You lying bitch, I’ve never laid a hand on you and you know it, I’ve never so much as—”
“Stop!” she cried. “Please stop, Richard, it’s making me sick, physically ill, this… this selective memory we’ve developed.”
“I may have a temper, but—”
“No, Richard. You have more than a temper. I let it go on because I was afraid of you, so that makes me dirty, too. But you did it. You were the one who always did it, kicking him, hitting him, throwing him—” She stopped for an instant as a sob hit her in the midsection, “—throwing him around like a beanbag doll. The way you always—”
He was on her in an instant, fingers digging hard into her shoulders as he shook her back and forth, his face darkening with blood, eyes pushing from their sockets like a toad’s, his mouth spraying her face with spittle as he roared, “That’s bullshit, that is such bullshit, goddamn you, I was not always the one, was I, Dani, was I?” He slammed her back against the dresser, then quickly moved away from her, pacing. “Was I?”
She knew the answer, but she could not say the word…
22.
“How old are you now, Jason?”
“Seven.”
“And where are you?”
“My… room.”
“Where are your parents?”
“Dad’s in… his room… dressing, I think. Mom’s in the… hall bathroom. They’re… going out, I guess.”
“Who will stay with you?”
“Probably Tracy. From down the street. Or Mrs. Royer.”
Jason was silent a while, lying on the sofa, eyes half open, but not seeing the living room ceiling, not really. He was, in his eyes, leaving his bedroom and going down the hall to the bathroom, where his mother was curling her hair. He stood in the doorway and watched her, unnoticed.
The phone rang and Jason heard his dad answer in the bedroom. Moments later, the curses began.
“Goddammit. Son of a bitch!”
Jason turned to hurry back to his room, but it was too late; his dad was coming down the hall, shirtless, a blue and red tie held in his fist.
“Forget it,” he said angrily. “Just forget it. She can’t come. Tracy can’t come. Dammit.” He pushed Jason aside and stepped into the bathroom. “She just called. No sitter. I’ll call and cancel the reservations.”
Jason ached when he saw the shattered disappointment on his mom’s face.
“Can’t we get someone else?” she asked hopefully.
“This late? Who, for Christ’s sake?”
“But… but I’ve been looking forward to… you promised we’d—”
“Well, what the hell am i supposed to do? We’re sure not gonna take him with us!” He spun and returned to the bedroom.
Jason stepped toward the doorway again but collided with his mom, who shoved him into the doorjamb and snapped, “Dammit, Jason, get-out-of-the-way!” Hurrying down the hall, she called, “April’s gone tonight, but maybe Ken would watch him for us.”
“Christ, Dani, he’s not gonna want to—”
“Well, just let me call and ask.”
Jason regained his balance, went into the bathroom, and stared at himself in the mirror as his parents shouted at one another.
“No,” his mom said, “we never go out, we haven’t been out in over a year, and now that we’ve actually made plans—”
“Well don’t bitch at me about it, you’re the one who wanted to have kids so bad, what the hell’d you think, they come equipped with babysitters?”
“Just let me call and ask Ken—”
“You’re not calling to ask him anything.”
When Jason heard his mom begin to cry, he decided to go back to his room and read a book, stay out of the way, but as he turned around, his arm caught on something—a cord—and when he pulled his arm back, his mom’s curling iron slid away from the sink and fell to the floor.
Jason stared at it.
He knew he should pick it up, but Mom had always told him never ever to touch her curling iron and he was scared he’d make her angry.
So he stared, thinking about it, trying to decide what to do—
—as smoke began to curl upward from the blackening carpet.
The smell was awful and, terrified, certain of the punishment that would come, Jason bent down and picked up the curling iron, but—
—the smoke alarm in the hall began to scream and the noise so startled him that he dropped it again.
He was trembling now, quaking uncontrollably with fear, but he tried to pick it up again before too much damage was done and, as he bent down, he felt the presence of someone behind him as the smoke alarm wailed on.
When fists began to fall on his neck and back, Jason knew that it was his dad, knew that his mother would be standing in the hall, watching, her eyes dead, until she could take it no longer.
But he was wrong.
“Goddamn you! Goddamn you!” his mom screamed again and again, her fists pounding in turn with each syllable. “How many times? How many times have I told you not to touch it? How many times? Don’t you know it’s hot? It’s hot!” She slammed him against the sink, clutched his wrist and pressed something into his hand, screaming, “Here! Here! Feel this? Feel it? Didn’t I say it was hot?”
When Jason felt his skin melting, he began to scream, “No, Mommy, no, don’t, noooo—”
“Why don’t you do what you’re told? All you do is make trouble! Trouble! All the screaming and crying—”
“—doooon’t Mommyyy—”
“—because of you! Now we can’t even go out! Because of you! Everything’s turned to shit—’’
“-noooo!”
“—because of you!”
The alarm stopped.
His mom fell away from him, staring with disbelief at the now messy curling iron held in her fist, her knuckles as white as her face.
Jason could not get enough breath to cry out loud; he simply shook with muffled sobs as his mom began touching him, caressing his face as she cried, “What have I done? What have I done?”
And from the hall, there came a groaning, long and deep and tremulous.
“Oh, dear Jesus, what have I done? What have I done?” his mom sobbed as his dad stood moving oddly in the hall, blurred by Jason’s tears.
Groaning… groaning…
Jason clutched the sofa cushions beneath him, grinding his teeth.
“Relax, Jason,” Dr. Krusadian whispered as the thing that now hunkered beside him shifted its gelatinous bulk. “Just relax. Take deep breaths.”
Jason did, took them in deep and let them out slowly, gradually relaxing, feeling his body sink into the cushions.
Dr. Krusadian stood and gathered the tarpaulin together. As he began to drag it, full and heavy and shifting, from the room, Jason spoke.
“What’s that?”
Dr. Krusadian stopped, smiled, and replied, “Something for your parents.”
23.
As Jason lay on the sofa reliving the relentless punishments of his seventh and eighth years, working his way to the previous night’s fall down the stairs, the shouting upstairs continued without pause. They had been shouting in long uninterrupted circles and by the time Jason had forgotten all about his
mom’s curling iron and was into the next torment, they had come around to the beginning again.
“It only happened once,” Dani gasped, “and I hated myself for it, I still hate myself. I’ve never done it again and you know it, but I’ve let you do it and that’s just as bad. You do it constantly. Every day, sometimes. You don’t have a temper, Richard.” She spat the word “temper” through a burst of bitter, hateful laughter. “You have a prob-lem, Richard.”
Veins stood out on Richard’s neck and his hands opened and closed over the pockets of his tan chinos; his lips tore back over his teeth, then bunched into a rectum-like hole through which he puffed bursts of air as he slowly advanced toward her a step at a time.
“You’re sick, Richard,” Dani went on, not caring that his anger was stretched over his face like thin transparent plastic, transparent but disfiguring and suffocating. “You’re sick and you know it, and that just makes you worse, doesn’t it? Knowing that you’re so sick, that you’re such a monster.”
He was closer, actually tearing his pockets from his pants now with fingers hooked into claws.
“Know that you enjoy beating up on children and women. That you actually get off on—”
He struck. His arm whipped through the air and his palm connected with her face with the sound of cracking ice.
“That’s bullshit!” he hissed, cheeks quivering as they deepened in color. He repeated “bullshit” again and again, striking her each time, driving her backward until she fell against the dresser. The back of her head cracked the mirror and shards of reflective glass rained over her, dancing together musically like blood-speckled wind chimes. He dragged her away from the dresser by her hair and threw her to the floor, then swept his arm through the perfume bottles and powder puffs and lipsticks and jewelry, sending it all to the floor with her in a clatter of plastic and glass. A dozen different perfumes mingled and rose in an eye-watering cloud, filling the room with flowers and spices and sexual promise. Richard stood over her and dropped to his knees, straddling her chest. He began to beat her shoulders and face and head, spitting “Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! Nothing’s wrong! There’s nothing wrong, goddammit, nothing’s wrong!”
Dani tried to scream for help, certain that Dr. Krusadian, however sinister he might be, would not allow this to go on while he was in the house, but the fists were coming too fast and hitting too hard and she was afraid she would lose consciousness soon and—
—then she felt it. Against her. Pressing between her breasts.
Through the thunder in her skull, Dani heard the music box begin to play. It had fallen from the dresser to the floor with all the other things and lay beside her head, so close that she could hear its insides moving again, coming to life, turning slowly with soft clicks and whispers and—
—Richard struck her cheek and her head snapped to one side and her eyes, swelling and blurred, locked onto the box and held and she saw it, Dani saw—
—that horrible thing.
She’d seen it so many times before and each time she dragged it from the center of her attention like some bloated incriminating corpse and she’d buried it, hidden it away in one of the many secret compartments of her memory, compartments she kept locked and covered so no one—including Dani herself—would notice them.
She’d seen it and ignored it.
That horrible thing.
And she saw it for the first time once again. And the second and the third, countless times, on and on through the nine years they’d had Jason. She saw it pressing and throbbing against the wall of its small prison, trying to expose its one glistening eye so it could watch, first hand, the pain and violence that inflamed and excited it so. The images rushed through her mind with painful dizzying velocity, sickening her, inflating her with such hatred for herself that she felt she would burst and then—
—they were gone.
And she was left with only one.
Richard had stopped shouting, had even stopped beating her, but he was still on her.
Groaning.
Moving against her.
Pressing his sickness between her breasts.
He pulled one bloodied hand away from her face and placed it over the bulge between his legs, smearing his crotch with her blood and squeezing his erection, letting his head flop back, mouth gaping to make way for the dreadful groan that slithered up from deep in his chest and rose to become a trembling cry as his hips began to convulse on her and a dark wet spot appeared over the bulge and spread slowly like a soggy cancer as his back stiffened and he gulped air and sputtered, “Nuh-nothing’s wruh-wrong! Nuh-nuh-nothing’s wrong!”
Richard’s body quaked for several seconds, then calmed to a brief shiver, and finally became still as he stared forever at the ceiling without even taking a breath. Then he lowered his head and blinked his wide confused eyes, looking at Dani, then his hands, then his soiled pants. His hands trembled as he dragged himself off Dani and crawled on all fours over broken glass to the bed against which he leaned as he sat and stared at his hands. They were imbedded now with tiny shards and slivers, but he didn’t seem to notice; he dropped them in his lap, gasping suddenly for breath as he whispered, “There’s… nothing wrong… is there? Is there? Please. There’s nothing… wrong… “
“Yes, there is,” she said, spitting blood. “And I’m going to fix it.”
A clatter at the door signaled Dr. Krusadian’s entrance.
He stepped into the bedroom and, silently and without expression, surveyed the mess. He went to Dani’s side, bent down and retrieved the music box, then studied the two of them closely before saying, “My work with Jason is finished. It is your turn now. Please clean yourselves up and come downstairs.”
24.
Jason sat up slowly on the sofa, feeling as if he’d taken a long nap filled with muddled dreams. He looked around the darkened living room and recognized Dr. Krusadian’s bags beside the recliner. But there should be something else… the music box and tarpaulin; they were gone. He was alone and the only sound was the rain falling outside. When he tried to stand, Jason felt very dizzy and wondered why; he’d been doing nothing more than lying on the sofa talking with Dr. Krusadian and listeiJing to the music box.
Hadn’t he?
Jason tried to think back over the past few hours but could come up with nothing clear or solid. Just music. Beautiful, restful music. He couldn’t even remember where his parents had gone.
There were voices upstairs, so he wasn’t alone in the house, but that didn’t quell the fear growing inside him, brought on by his confusion and disorientation.
“Mom?” he called, quietly the first time, then again, louder and with urgency.
“What, sweety?” she cried, her footsteps thumping down the hall. “What’s wrong, honey? I’m coming! It’s all right!” She hobbled down the stairs, clinging to the banister with both hands, and knelt before him.
In the shadows, she was an obscene clown; one blackened eye was swollen into a ghastly lingering wink and blood smeared her pale face like dark red greasepaint.
“What is it, honey?” she whispered, clutching his small knees.
He was inclined, at first, to ask about her face, but didn’t because he knew she would lie and he already knew the truth, anyway.
“I was… scared, is all.”
“There’s nothing to be scared of, baby. Not now. Not anymore. I promise.” She leaned forward and embraced him, pressing her bloody face to his chest and crying softly. “Your mom’s not gonna let anything happen to you anymore.”
Voices shouted upstairs; Jason recognized Dr. Krusadian’s rising like flames to the very top of the house. He sounded much the way Jason had always imagined God to sound.
“Is Dr. Krusadian angry?” Jason whispered. “Did… did I do something wrong?”
“No, honey, nobody’s angry at you. You haven’t done a thing.”
The shouting stopped. Dr. Krusadian came down the stairs, turned on the lights and put something in his black
bag.
Jason watched his dad descend to the living room one heavy step at a time, shoulders wilted, head sagging forward. He was wearing different pants.
Jason squinted at the sudden light and rubbed his eyes.
Dr. Krusadian said, “Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, if you would come with me to the kitchen, please.”
Jason opened his eyes when his mom pulled away from him and said, “I’d like to talk to you, Dr. Krusadian.”
“We will talk.”
“Alone,” she whispered, glancing at her husband. “Please.”
“In the kitchen, Mrs. Campbell.” He took a step backward and gestured with his arm. “After you.”
Jason watched his parents go, his dad first, his mom following reluctantly. She stopped in front of the doctor and whispered, “Look, whatever you’ve done—”
“The kitchen, Mrs. Campbell.”
“—I’ve decided this has got to stop and I’m going to take Jason out of here. Tonight. Now. He… my husband… is sick. I can’t let it go on anymore. I’m getting out.”
“That’s very noble of you, but out of the question for two reasons. It won’t solve the problem, first of all. And secondly—” He grinned. “—I’m not through with you yet. Now, Mrs. Campbell. After you.”
Dr. Krusadian turned to Jason, gave him a wink, and followed them into the kitchen.
When they were out of sight, Jason stood, crept to the kitchen entrance, leaned his back against the wall, and listened.
25.
“Please sit down,” Dr. Krusadian said, seating himself at the table.
Reluctantly, Dani pulled up a chair but she did not want to sit down; she wanted to take the doctor aside and explain that she had finally, after so many years, come to her senses and wanted to take Jason away from the house immediately. She had no idea where she would go or how she would support herself and her son, but she’d decided upstairs, only a few minutes before, that poverty—even homelessness—would be preferable to living on in the nightmare her family had become.
