Monday
She was sitting on the bench in the park across the street when he came out to trim his hedges. Even after twenty years, and a complete change in style, he recognized her at once.
Her hair was now its natural light brunette, and she wore it in a conservative mid-length cut favored by soccer moms everywhere. She had gained a few pounds, but not excessively. Just enough to emphasize this was now a woman comfortably into her forties who no longer pushed herself at a gym. In her dove gray skirt and jacket, she could have been a secretary or office manager in any number of businesses.
He paused for a brief second at the sight of her, then turned his back and went to work.
The woman closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath.
She stood, smoothed her skirts, and adjusted the black shoulder bag she carried. Her first step was hesitant, but the next was firm and set a determined course across the street…the click of her heels loud on the asphalt in the misty morning quiet. The gray clad woman reached the little chain link fence, paused, and considered the gate. She reached for the latch, then reconsidered and rested her hands on the top of the fence instead.
He ignored her, holding up the clippers in his hand and examining their edges with critical attention.
“Don’t I even merit a ‘hello?’”
“Hello, Laura.”
He sighted down the top of the bushes running down his sidewalk and started snipping off the stray twigs that threatened to soften the razor sharp line of his hedge. The well-manicured lawn around him bore witness to an ethic that one gets out of the world what one is willing to invest in it.
“Well hello, Alan. How have you been doing?”
“Good.”
“You look like it. You must still work out.”
“Thanks.”
He snipped another few twigs then moved on to the next bush.
The lines at the edges of her mouth deepened as she frowned at his back. Resettling the purse strap on her shoulder, she marched along the fence line to put herself in his view.
“So this is the way it’s going to be? Even after all this time?”
“Why are you here, Laura?”
“You’re not going to make this easy at all, are you. Can’t you just let it go?”
He sighted down the top of the next bush in the hedge and started snipping.
“Why are you here, Laura?”
She glared at the repeated question, then set her jaw and put both hands firmly on the fence.
“I have to talk to you.”
“I’ve already figured that out. Why are you here?”
“It’s about Adrian.”
“Now why doesn’t that surprise me?” Alan stood and rested the clippers on his shoulder. “When has it ever been about anything else? Oh, that’s right…twenty one years ago.” His face closed, he turned toward the house. “Good bye, Laura. Have a nice life.”
“Alan,” she snapped at his back, “he’s dying.”
He stopped for a second. His head bowed down and his fist clenched at his side. He stood still for about five seconds, then resumed his march toward the front door.
“He’s dying, Alan. His kidneys have failed and the dialysis isn’t doing it anymore. He doesn’t have a lot of time left.”
“Then you should be with him, where you belong.”
“Oh, that’s nice. You could help him!”
“Good bye, Laura.” He opened the door to his house. “Have a good life.”
“He’s your brother!”
“I don’t have a brother. Goodbye.”
The door slammed.
Tuesday
Alan stepped out on the porch, rake in hand, and saw her sitting on the same bench across the street.
“Crap,” he muttered and stalked over to the corner of the yard furthest from the fence and started raking. The whisk of the tines through grass provided a rhythmic counterpoint to the sound of her heels approaching on the asphalt.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this.”
“Raking my yard?” He didn’t look up from his work.
“You know what I mean.”
Working carefully, he systematically cleared leaves from the corner of the yard then started working his way down the side fence. Each stroke of the rake was measured, carefully overlapping the spot of the previous stroke by half the width of the rake. He only paused in his work to pull off leaves that had gotten impaled on the tines.
“Alan, you’re being a jackass.”
“You’re probably right,” he sighed as he tugged at a stubborn leaf. “Just go home, Laura. The answer is ‘No.’”
“He’s dying, Alan!”
“Then you should be with him, not hanging around here bothering me.”
“I didn’t come here to bother you.”
“No.” He leaned on the rake. “You came here because you wanted something. I told you the answer was ‘No.’ Now, go home.”
“How can you do this? He’s your brother!”
“Don’t say that again,” his calm features were in stark contrast to the white knuckles caused by his grip on the rake. “I don’t have a brother.”
“You do have a brother,” she shot back. “And he’s dying up in Dallas Memorial Hospital as we speak. You can stop that from happening.”
“My brother died twenty years ago.” He threw the rake to the ground and stalked back in the direction of his house. “Whoever is in that hospital is your family…not mine.”
“Alan!”
“Go home, Laura.”
He gained the porch and reached for the door.
“Goddammit, Alan! How can you hate him for this long?! It’s time to forgive!”
He stopped and took an angry step back toward her.
“Forgive? What the hell do you know of forgiveness?” he spat. “You think it’s just something you should have on demand? ‘Oh, I feel bad about what we did. Please forgive me!’ or nowadays, ‘Oh, he’s dying! I need you to forgive us now. Hey, by the way, can you throw in a kidney?’ Forgiveness is just another currency to you, Laura. Go home.”
“It’s not like that!”
“Go home, Laura.”
The door slammed shut so hard it shook the house.
Wednesday
“Aw, sweet Jesus!”
He put his face in his palm after stepping out on the front porch.
This time she simply stood at the fence, foregoing her previous waiting place on the park bench.
“Do you want me to beg?”
“I want you to leave me alone. You did a great job of it for twenty years. How about keeping up the good work?”
“Alan, please.”
“Go away.”
“I’ll beg if that’s what it takes. Hell, I’m begging now. But if you want me on my knees then just say so.”
“I want you to go away.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Sure you can. You just turn around and act like it’s twenty years ago. It’ll come natural to you.”
“That was low.”
“The truth hurts, huh.”
Her clenched fists at her side, she raised her face to the sky with her eyes shut.
“I’m sorry, Alan,” she gritted out. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll stand here and say it till my throat bleeds if you want.”
“Only because you want something. Otherwise, you just leave a note.”
“Okay, I deserved that. I was too ashamed to face you. How do you think I felt?”
“Oh well, that’s different… you felt bad, that changes everything,” he snarled. “Go home, Laura.”
“Christ, Alan! I didn’t know what to say! I wronged you. I wronged you in the worst way possible. And I knew what I was about to do was going to be a thousand times worse.”
“But you did it, anyway.”
“I loved him. I still love him. I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to hear me say that. I knew you would hate me for it back then. But I didn’t think
you would hate him for it. Not for this long.”
“Yeah, good ol’ Adrian. Nobody can hate him for long. He’s a lovable rascal who just forgets to play by the rules from time to time. Maybe of course, with our genetics he ought to have listened to that ‘take it easy on your kidneys’ rule and done a better job of staying off the cigarettes and hooch.” He glared at her in obvious disgust, then raised his fingers to make quotes in the air. “‘But hey, not to worry! Good ol’ dependable Alan will come through. I’m sure he’ll get over that little indiscretion with me running off with his fiancée and all that. He’s a sport. I’m sure he won’t mind paying the price of a major organ so I can have a good time.’ Right? You two must think I’m the stupidest man on this planet.”
“What do you want me to say, Alan?” For the first time since her return the tears started to fall.
“How about, ‘Goodbye?’ That works for me,” he spread his arms wide. “This time you don’t even have to feel guilty about it.”
“I can’t! He’ll die!”
“Happens to all of us. Hell of a thing, huh?”
“Oh my God…When did you turn into a monster?”
“When? I don’t know. Maybe it was when I came home from my last semester at Baylor, ready to get married and start a new life with my loving fiancée, only to discover a note with her engagement ring beside the bed. Or maybe it was the next day, the very last day I saw you, when I listened to my loyal and loving brother explain to me how things don’t always work out as planned, but somehow they always work out for the best. You just skulked behind him and didn’t even say a word. Or maybe it was later that evening when I realized you two had been using my bed and hadn’t even changed the goddamn sheets! What do you want? One particular instance in time? Well there were a lot of them! And they kept coming for quite a while.”
She didn’t reply, but just stood there gulping air with the tears falling freely.
“And in every particular instant,” he hissed, “another little bit of me died inside. I loved you. I believed in you. I thought you loved me. And him? I always knew he was a louse, but he was still my brother. I thought he had at least some lines he wouldn’t cross.”
“He didn’t mean to…”
“Oh hell, he never means to! Shit just happens to Adrian! And Adrian happens to other people. And when Adrian happens to other people you think it’s their job to just accept that’s the way he is and forgive him for it. Well it looks like this time shit happened to Adrian when he was counting on the wrong person to say, ‘Ah, what the hell…you ruined my life, but here, have a kidney.’”
She was openly sobbing now, and fought to regain composure.
“He wasn’t counting on you, Alan,” she finally choked out. “He said you would be like this. He told me not to bother. I just wouldn’t believe it.”
“You should listen to your husband,” he retorted. “Now, for the last time…Goodbye, Laura.”
He turned and stomped back into the house.
Thursday
He yanked the door open on the fifth long series of knocks.
“Dammit, Laura! Enough!” he shouted, then stopped and stared at the woman in shock.
She had changed.
The conservative, mid-length perm she had been wearing the past three days was gone, replaced by the radically shorter cut with the long bangs she wore twenty years earlier. Even the platinum blonde color was back. Her makeup now featured the heavy eye-liner and shiny lip gloss he thought made her look so sexy back in the early nineties. The ripped jeans and overlarge sweatshirt could have been the ones she wore the last time they ate out together.
“Well?” she held out her arms and did a pirouette. “What do you think? I can’t be 23 again, but this is the best I could do.”
“You’ve lost your mind.”
“No,” she pouted. “I’m giving you what you want. You want revenge? You want to hurt the person who destroyed your life? Well, here she is…or at least the closest approximation I can give you.”
“Get out of here. That’s grotesque.”
“After I went to the trouble to get all dressed up? Uh uh. I’m here to give you the one thing you really want, a shot at the girl who ruined everything. So go for it, take your best shot.”
“Get out.”
“Right in the face, Alan. You know you want to.”
“Go away.”
“C’mon! I deserve it! I screwed your brother. I did it in your bed. I didn’t even change the goddamn sheets afterwards! C’mon, kick the shit out of me! I’m the one you want to punish. I’m the one you trusted, and I’m the one who turned to somebody else while you were gone.”
“And that’s who you belong with right now,” he deadpanned. “Go. Maybe your current getup will cheer him up.”
“I’m not going to just sit there and watch him die!”
“Why not? He’s dying over you. You could at least do that much for him.”
Silence fell like a hammer between them, that last sentence hanging in the air like gunshot.
She swallowed hard, staring at him with eyes widened in shock.
“Well, at least you came out and said it. I suppose that’s something.”
“Congratulations,” he spat. “You can truly boast that men have died for you. You are a goddess among women. Now, go away.”
“I don’t want anybody dying over me!”
“Oh well, life is full of disappointments.” He started to close the door.
“Goddammit, Alan!” She put her shoulder and leg into the door. “We’re out of time! The doctors say he’s close to being too weak to survive a surgery.”
“Does that mean I get my front yard back?” He turned and walked into the house, apparently choosing not to get in a physical struggle with her over the door.
She followed him into the house, scanning the room around her. This had once been his parent’s house, and had fallen to him when they had died of massive coronaries within two days of each other. Alan had lived here with them while he went to school, and she used to come here to be with him on the weekends when he came home. Back then he had stayed in a bedroom over the garage that could be accessed by an exterior stairway.
Nothing had changed. Nothing at all…except the picture over the fireplace.
It now featured a large blowup of a group photo that they had taken about four months before she had left him for Adrian. It featured Alan and her standing arm in arm, with his parents sitting in front of them, and Adrian standing on the other side of her. They all smiled brightly at the camera, imagining a whole different future than the one they got.
Otherwise the room was identical to the one she had last seen twenty years ago, right down to the same knick-knacks on the fireplace mantle.
“You’ve been looking at this for…” the words trailed off. “Oh my God.”
She reached up and touched her hair. It now matched the haircut in the photo from so long ago.
“Oh crap,” she breathed and started easing back towards the front door.
“Leaving so soon?”
With a startled squeak she whirled to see him leaning in the door that went into the kitchen. He glared at her over the can of soda he took a sip from.
“It’s okay. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”
“No,” she stopped. Her voice held the faintest of quavers but she faced him squarely. “No, I’m not going anywhere. I’m here to settle this.”
“It’s settled. Go away and leave me alone.”
“This is settled?” She gestured around the room. “No, this is wrong! This is all kinds of wrong! This is messed up!”
He straightened and walked into the room with her.
“I don’t need you,” he poked her in the chest with his finger, “to tell me what is messed up or not. I don’t need you to tell me a goddamn thing. And I sure as hell don’t need a whore like you to tell me what is right or wrong!”
“Whore?” she swallowed and glanced over at th
e picture on the fireplace. “I guess I should have known that was coming.”
“If the shoe fits…”
“Right,” she lifted her chin. “So ‘whore’ it is. Is that what it’s going to take? Is that what you want?”
“Oh for God’s sake!”
“Sure, why not? You’re absolutely right, I deserve it. How do you want it?”
“Shut up.”
“No really! How? You want it in the famous bed? You can wipe out what happened there twenty years ago. This time it’ll be the other way around, and you can mail him the goddamn sheets. That’ll show him. Or we can go to my house use our bed instead. You get your revenge on both of us.”
“I’m getting that now.”
“No, this is better. You want to hurt him; this is how you do it. You let him know I ‘whored’ for his kidney. He’ll never live it down,” for the second time in two days she started to cry. “He’ll probably never forgive me either. So you end up getting revenge on me two different ways. You get to ruin the same thing that was ruined of yours twenty years ago. What more could you want than that?”
He folded his arms, obviously unmoved.
“C’mon Alan! You want justice, right? You want to balance the sheets. Here is your chance.”
“You think you’re being noble, don’t you.”
“I mean it, Alan. You can have whatever you want.”
“Don’t you get it? You don’t have anything I want.”
“Bullshit,” she snarled and gestured at the photo and the room around her. “You want something, or you wouldn’t be doing this!”
“I told you,” he snapped. “I’ve already got everything I want. And I don’t have to lift a finger to get it.”
“Damn you!”
“You did that twenty years ago. Now it’s just coming full circle.”
“Knock it off, Alan! I’m tired of feeling guilty, and I’m tired of feeling sorry for you!”
“I doubt you ever felt much of either.”
“That’s not true! You have no idea what I felt!”
“People act on how they really feel, Laura. Everything else is mere words.”
“That’s not true, either.”
“Yes it is. You can say what you want, whatever makes you feel better, but it’s just noise. You are what you do.”
Ghosts, Monsters and Madmen Page 10
