by Rick Hautala
Over and over, until Elizabeth thought he wouldn’t be able to stop, Doug thrashed in agony on the ground, kicking clots of snow into the air. Seared flesh hung in raw strips from the left side of his face. The eyelid from his left eye was gone, and he looked at her with a horrifying, bulging-eyed stare, all the while shrieking, “I could have saved her! ... You killed her! ... You killed her!”
4.
“Could I have killed her?” Elizabeth asked her mother.
Looking over at the clock on the wall, she saw that it was already past three in the morning. Feeling completely drained, both emotionally and physically, she wished she had a bit of Aunt Junia’s brandy on hand to help brace herself.
Rebecca’s eyes glistened with tears after listening to her daughter’s story. In the silence following Elizabeth’s question”
“Could I have killed her?”
— Rebecca got up from her chair and went over to her daughter. Kneeling beside her, she hugged her tightly and willed with all of her strength that her daughter could find some relief, some small respite from her guilt and grief.
“I — I never realized ... what happened,” she said, licking her lips for moisture. “I ... “
“So does that mean I did kill Caroline?” Elizabeth asked in a tortured wail. “That I wanted her to die, so I stopped Doug from saving her?”
Stunned into silence, Rebecca simply shook her head as she held Elizabeth close, feeling the sobs that racked her body.
“No, of course it doesn’t, honey.” she murmured. “But I’ll tell you one thing — if that’s how Doug felt, then I can’t say I’m very surprised that you left him.” She choked up as she gently raked her fingers through Elizabeth’s hair.
Elizabeth opened her mouth to say more, but nothing came out.
“I mean,” Rebecca went on, “how — how could he? How could Doug make you live with such guilt?” She shook her head in total confusion. “A man who says he loves you and who then can ... can —”
“I did stop him from going down there,” Elizabeth said, her voice no more than a squeak. “He was trying to save her, and I stopped him.”
“But doesn’t he realize he would have died if you hadn’t?” Rebecca asked. She sat back on her heels and clenched her fists in frustration. Hot tears were coursing down her own as well as her daughter’s face. “Even from where he was, the heat destroyed the side of his face. All those months of painful plastic surgery he had to have! And even after all of that, he still thinks he could have gotten Caroline out in time?”
Elizabeth snorted and ran the back of her hand under her nose. “He told me — told me afterward that he would just as soon have died with her that night,” she said. Her voice hitched painfully, but she forced herself to go on. “He says Caroline was — was his only reason for living, and that without her ... “ Her gaze clouded as it drifted past her mother and out the kitchen window at the dusky night sky.
“And what — ?” Rebecca snarled. “Does he think you never felt any pain, and grief? Does he think he was the only one who loved Caroline? That he was the only one who truly suffered when she died? Christ! When I think that I was ever nice to that man! That I talked to him just last night and tried to reassure him!” She pounded her legs with her fists.
“Why? What did you say to him?” Elizabeth asked.
Rebecca stood up slowly and went back to her chair. Shoulders slouched, she hung her head dejectedly.
“He never called the house,” Rebecca said sullenly. “I called him, both the night you came home,” she said, “and again last night. I just wanted to ... to tell him how I thought you needed help, that he should call you or come here and try to patch things up between the two of you.” She sighed heavily, like a wheezing bellows. “Goddamn him to Hell!”
“He has his own pain to deal with,” Elizabeth said mildly. “And maybe — you know, the scars on his face and all are still a pretty vivid reminder of what he suffered that night.”
Elizabeth knew she shouldn’t be defending Doug. Over the past year and a half, she had lost or let slip away whatever love she had once felt for him; but she also didn’t want to listen to her mother curse out the man she had once loved, the man who had been the father of her daughter. “He’s had a pretty rough time of it, too, in the hospital after the accident and all.”
Rebecca nodded in agreement, but she didn’t unclench her fists, which were turning white at the knuckles.
“I know it’s hard to see it that way,” Elizabeth said, “but I think what he’s blaming me for isn’t just what happened to” — her voice almost broke, but she forged ahead —”to Caroline. I think he blames me for what happened to him, too. I don’t think you realize how horrible it was, you know? There were bums over fifty percent of his face.”
“I realize that!” Rebecca said. “In case you don’t remember, your father and I came out to visit him nearly every day he was in the hospital. But doesn’t he realize that if it hadn’t been for you, he’d have died that night, too?”
“I’m sure he does,” Elizabeth said, as she rubbed her eyes and shook her head. “I’m sure he does.”
“But it doesn’t stop him from blaming you for everything, does it?”
Elizabeth merely continued shaking her head.
Rebecca leaned back and took a deep, noisy breath. Running her hands through her hair, she let the breath out in a long, shuddering sigh.
“It’s really late,” she said. “You should be off to bed. You should get a few more hours of sleep anyway. You want to be fresh for your new job tomorrow. “
“Oh, God — that’s right,” Elizabeth said with a start. “I have to be at Hardy’s by seven-thirty.”
“Your father’ll be getting up in another hour, anyway,” Rebecca said, glancing at the clock. “I might just as well stay up. I can take a nap later in the day.”
Elizabeth stood up, but before she left the kitchen, she went over to her mother and gave her a long, tight hug. Tears were streaming down her face, and she could tell by the shaking of her mother’s shoulders that she was crying, too. Somehow, distantly and dimly, that made her feel better … not much better, but better. At least for now, all she could do was be grateful that her mother had been there for her and try like hell not to think how badly she had let down Caroline!
“G’night, Mom,” she said, kissing her lightly on the cheek. “And thanks ... a lot.”
“You know what I think the real miracle is in all of this,” Rebecca said, smiling kindly as she held Elizabeth at arm’s length and looked intently into her eyes. “I think it’s simply amazing how well you’ve held yourself together through all of this. I know ... I know it must have been absolutely horrible for you, but you’ve hung in there. You’ve been strong. I think you’re a miracle.”
A deep stirring of guilt twisted in Elizabeth’s gut as she turned to leave the kitchen. As she mounted the stairs to her bedroom, all she could think was, Maybe ... hopefully you’ll never have to learn the truth about the rest of it!
5.
After an early-morning shower, which helped some but, she feared, not enough, Elizabeth left for her first day at Hardy’s. Surprisingly, she was only five minutes late, and, as much as she wasn’t looking forward to a day of selling monkey wrenches and screwdrivers, she found that Jake Hardy wasted no time making her feel welcome and comfortable at the register.
Once she got into the swing of the work, things weren’t half as bad as she had thought they might be. She had always found Jake Hardy to be a cheerful man, and he had her laughing out loud much of the time as he explained the basic operations of the cash register. Between the few sales they had that morning, he kept up a goodhumored, rambling discussion of things that had gone on in town over the past few years.
In the many quieter moments, when Jake left her alone at the register, she couldn’t stop wondering how it could have been a dream when she woke up to find herself sitting on the bedroom floor with the Ouija board in her lap. She tried, inst
ead, to focus on the more positive aspects, like the closeness and honesty she had felt between her and her mother.
By one o’clock, when Frank Sheldon, one of the high school kids who worked afternoons, came in, Elizabeth thought the job at Hardy’s would prove to be well above the “tolerable” level. Then Prank Melrose dropped by during her lunch break and cast a cloud over the rest of her day.
Elizabeth’s mother had packed her a lunch, and she was sitting in the back room, surrounded by cases of hardware and plumbing supplies, when she heard a light knock on the door. Before she could turn to tell the person to come in, Prank Melrose poked his head around the comer of the open door.
“Hi,” he said, smiling widely. “Just thought I’d stop by and see how it’s going.”
Caught with a mouthful of tuna-fish sandwich, Elizabeth could do nothing more than nod and hurriedly swallow. She took a sip of milk when the food caught in her throat, making her cough, then swiped at her mouth with her napkin.
“Good ... good,” she said as soon as the coughing stopped.
“Great, “ Frank said. “I was just on my way to work.” He eased the door open a bit more and tentatively entered the back room. “Mind if I come in?”
With so little sleep the night before and the memory of the messages from the Ouija board still working her nerves, Frank’s appearance made her feel suddenly very vulnerable and insecure. Elizabeth’s first reaction was to say, Yes I do mind! Yet she surprised herself by nodding and saying, “Sure — have a seat. I don’t think Jake will mind.”
Frank smiled as he pulled over a folding chair and sat down. There was a long stretch of silence between them as they looked at each other, both of them wondering where to start. Elizabeth thought she might start by thanking him for telling her about the job opening, but she remained silent after deciding she didn’t want him thinking she owed him anything.
“I gotta tell you,” Frank said at last, “I never thought I’d see the day when you’d be working in a place like this.” He snickered and shook his head. “You always had such big plans.”
He was embarrassed by his lame attempt to begin a conversation. The truth was, he had stopped by the store because he had to see Elizabeth again. Since talking with her at her aunts’ house yesterday and finding out that she was planning on divorcing her husband, he had begun-as foolish as he knew it was-to think they might possibly pick up their romance where they had left off almost twenty years ago.
Elizabeth knew Frank well enough to see through his rather obvious attempt. No matter what she thought might happen between them later, once she was settled, she didn’t want to say or do anything now to encourage him. Besides, the things that had split them apart were also still too clear in her mind.
“I guess a lot of things happen that we don’t expect,” Elizabeth said for want of a better response, then adding, “I mean, I was fairly certain that, once I was off to college, I’d get a phone call or a letter saying you’d been killed in Vietnam.”
Frank scowled slightly. “But you didn’t.” He looked at her, trying hard to gauge her reaction, but all he could see was her blank, steady stare as she took another mouthful of sandwich. He leaned his elbow on the work table beside him and idly fingered through the box of loose bolts and nuts.
“You know,” he said, once the silence began to get uncomfortable, “when I saw you yesterday, I couldn’t help but start thinking about — you know, some of the things we used to do. Do you remember the time we double-dated with Skip Munroe and Gail Fisher, and drove out to Bristol Pond. What was it, sometime in early spring? March or April?”
Elizabeth chuckled in spite of herself. “I sure do,” she said. “And the damned fools went skinny dipping! God, the ice was barely off the pond!”
“I thought we were going to lose Skip there for a while, too,” Frank said. “Remember how he kept complaining how cold his dick was? That he was afraid it was going to drop off?”
Chuckling, Elizabeth shook her head with feigned embarrassment and said, “And his suggestion to Gail how she could help him get it warm again?”
“ ‘For future generations,’ he kept saying,” Frank added with deep laughter.
Before long, both of them were laughing out of control. “But you know,” he sputtered, still laughing even though his face had gone hard, “it’s too bad we can’t stay like that all the time. I mean, happy-go-lucky. like we were back in high school.”
Elizabeth suddenly stiffened as dark thoughts clouded her mind. Her voice was low with a tone of deep sadness when she said, “Well, life has a way of throwing curve balls at us, that’s for sure. It’s probably the people who try to stay the way they were who get hurt the most. “
Frank saw the sorrow in her eyes; it was the same pain he had seen flitting in her glance yesterday out at her aunts’ house. A sudden coldness tightened in his chest.
“And I think we only tend to remember the good times,” Elizabeth went on, sounding almost wistful.” ... At least if we’re lucky.”
“It’s tough sometimes, I know,” Frank said, “when you start thinking about what could have happened.”
Unable to stop herself, Elizabeth asked him directly, “Like how things would have been if I hadn’t been so damned pig-headed about not wanting you to join the army?”
Caught by surprise, Frank was momentarily flustered, but then he slowly nodded and said, “Yeah — I think about that sometimes. “
Hating herself for it, Elizabeth replied, “So do I ... sometimes.”
Frank shifted in his chair and made a move to come over her. He was filled with a desire, almost a need, to hold her, hug her, kiss her, tell her that even after all these years he still loved her ... but he just couldn’t do it. Too much had happened between then and now, and no matter what he felt, he couldn’t expect her to still feel anything for him. It wouldn’t be fair ... to either of them.
“So does that mean you’ve forgiven me?” Frank said. “For joining the army and going to ‘Nam?”
Elizabeth slouched back in her chair and closed her eyes for a moment. “You don’t need my forgiveness,” she said softly. “I mean-yeah, sure I was probably pretty irrational about it at the time, but I thought if you really loved me — I mean really loved me — you would have respected my feelings about how wrong the war was and not volunteered!”
Frank clapped his hands together. “And I felt just the same that you should have respected my feelings — and I felt that I had an obligation to my country.”
“Even after it was so clear that the war was wrong?” Elizabeth said, feeling the twenty-year-old anger swell up inside her.
Frank nodded and said, “Yeah — even then, if you really loved me.”
Elizabeth burst out with a laugh and said, “And what did either of us know, about love or life or anything back then?” Frank didn’t answer her, so she continued. “I mean, both of us, and all the kids we used to hang around with-who the hell did we think we were, acting like the world was our oyster?”
“It was, at the time,” Frank replied. “And to tell you the truth, when I saw you yesterday, I didn’t like what I saw —”
“And just what the hell is that supposed to mean?” Elizabeth snapped.
Frank held up his hands as though defending himself. “I remember you as a happy-go-lucky girl with a pretty good head on her shoulders and, as far as I could see, one hell of a future.”
“And now ... ?”
Frank shifted uneasily in his seat, almost regretting that he had stopped by the store; but he knew he couldn’t back off now.
“I see someone who has been cheated — by life, by the world, circumstances, or whatever else you want to blame. I see someone I used to love, someone I still care about, getting the shit end of the stick and, worse than that, I see that person letting it happen!”
“Oh, is that so?” Elizabeth snapped. Putting her sandwich down, she glared at Frank. “And just who the hell are you to sit in judgment of me? What gives you the ri
ght —” She lowered her voice to an intense growl. “What gives you the right to say what I should or shouldn’t do? Is that why you arranged with Jake for me to get this job? So I can start rebuilding my life the way you think it should be?”
“I never ‘arranged’ for you to get this job,” Frank said. “And I just thought that —”
“You just thought that maybe if you got me a job I might feel — what — obliged to you? Is that what you were thinking?” Flushing with anger, Elizabeth had to restrain’ herself from slapping him across the face.
“You don’t know shit!” she said, her voice crackling with pain and rage as tears sprang from her eyes. “And you don’t have any Goddamned right to sit here telling me how I should be living my life.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” Frank said, forcing calmness into his voice. “Look, I just stopped by for a friendly visit, okay? I didn’t mean for us to get all worked up.” He kicked back on his chair and stood up, preparing to leave, but he didn’t really want to until Elizabeth had calmed down enough to see that he truly had meant no harm.
“Oh, yeah — yeah, sure!” Elizabeth said. Her voice was trembling, and her face had gone pale. “That’s all I seem to hear from everyone — from Doug, from my parents, from you, and no doubt I’ll be hearing it from Roland Graydon and everyone else I meet here in town. I’ve got to get back to being the lighthearted, lovable girl I used to be! Maybe I should grow pigtails again, and tell everyone to start calling me Betsy!” She snorted and stared at Frank, her eyes glistening with tears. “But that just isn’t the way it’s going to be! I’ve seen too much of what life can do to bring you down, to trample anything good right into the mud!”
“Elizabeth,” Frank said, feeling helpless and fighting the impulse to embrace her. “Please ... understand, I just want to be —”
