by Lisa Unger
From my vantage point on the floor, I saw the other exit from the attic. There was an identical hatch with an attached ladder that opened down the hallway from Luke’s room across from Rachel’s. I moved over toward it slowly, my mind ticking through options.
I’d have to wait. If I heard someone come up from Luke’s access, I’d exit quickly and run. If I got caught, I had the Mace in my pocket. But then there was only a silence that stretched on so long I began to convince myself that I was alone after all. I thought of my medication in my bag, how I hadn’t been good about taking it at precisely the same time every day. How I’d already passed the time for my dose this morning. My mind played tricks on me when I went off my medication, something I hadn’t been foolish enough to do in years. Maybe that was what was happening now, a crack in my chemical armor, demons leaking from my subconscious to my conscious mind. Funny how, in certain circumstances, the worst-case scenario becomes the best.
Oh, how the seconds snake and crawl when you’re afraid. But how attuned are your senses, how your blood pumps to fuel your muscles for flight, how your focus tightens. The brain releases its flood of chemicals to increase your chances of survival. There’s a certain power in the prey response, a rush that nothing but fear will deliver. Then there was a soft sound that lifted up through the open hatch to Luke’s room.
I realized in that moment that Luke could get out of his room anytime he wanted, even when Rachel locked him in. I knew from snooping around that she took pills at night; so her sleep must be sound and impenetrable. All the banging he did, all the pounding at those cheap locks, pulling them out of their mounts. It was just theater; how it must drive Rachel crazy. Not that it was the best choice to lock your kid in his room. Maybe she deserved the anger he felt toward her. But what did I know?
My parents, so distressed by my behavior, sent me to board part-time at a school for troubled children. The school was forward thinking for its time, blending education with talk and medical therapy. It was a safe place, and I got well there.
I don’t have any horror stories of abuse to recount—but the staff locked us in our rooms at night. We each had our own space to sleep in, and it was actually a relief to know that no one else could get in. It was a school for crazy kids, after all. I had been staying there four nights a week, spending weekends at home. At first I was distraught, nearly doubled over with despair at missing my mother. I know that, but there’s no real visceral memory of pain. It’s honestly kind of a blur. There was class, then therapy—group and individual. There was the new cocktail of medications I took, and what they gave me to sleep at night. Initially I was overwhelmed and foggy. But eventually, it all normalized and it became my life. There was a certain measure of relief in being away from my parents. It was quiet—no more fighting.
The kids there were all handpicked because Dr. Chang believed that we would benefit from his program. We were all gifted. His critics accused him of “creaming,” skimming the least disturbed kids, the most intelligent, those who were most likely to respond to medication and therapy, in order to obtain the best results for his program.
Whatever. It worked. The raging creature that lived inside me quieted. The voices, the nightmares, the sick daydreams and bizarre ideas, ceased. Or at least they were buried, deep, deep below soft fuzzy layers of consciousness, a hard pea beneath a stack of mattresses.
On the weekends, I was so happy to see my parents, my mom especially, that I worked hard not to stress her out. And she did the same for me. We would go for walks and talk. She would read to me as she had always done, lie on the floor of my room while I fell asleep. The things that used to frighten us both were gone, and we got to know each other for maybe the first time.
At the school I’d even made some friends. Sure, they were crazy, drugged-up friends. But they were friends nonetheless. Dr. Chang had a staff of young doctors working with him, most of whom rotated out each semester. But they were all bright, and had the energy of camp counselors. I remember a lanky young man in his twenties, and a girl with red hair who smiled a lot. But there were so many of them over the years and they stayed for such a short time, I can’t recall many faces or names. I think you try to forget a place like that.
I lost touch with all my nutty friends, too. No one wants to remember crazy school. Once you’re out, you don’t admit you were ever there, and you think about it as little as possible. But for some reason, as I was crouching there at the attic access, it was coming back.
It was something about Luke’s hideaway, his bags of candy and weirdly inappropriate reading material. Something Rachel had said about how he manipulated the other kids with candy. Something buried deep inside me was crawling its way back up through those layers.
My brilliant plan: as soon as I saw the figure come up, I would go down. I would race down the stairs, grab my bag, and flee out the back door into the woods. That was one advantage to being small. I was fast as lightning when I wanted to be. I was going to go straight to Dr. Cooper. I needed to talk to her. I was going to tell her everything. I was going to ask for her help. I could tell Jones Cooper everything I’d figured out; he’d get the police to go into the woods. Maybe they’d find Beck. But the minutes ticked by, and no one came. I waited, and waited, then finally I decided to go for it.
I pushed the hatch down hard and the ladder crashed to the landing with a bang. And I scrambled down quickly. I landed lightly on the floor and ran. I was already downstairs by the time I heard the reaction, a crash, a sudden storm of footfalls.
I ducked to grab my bag as I passed the kitchen counter in one lithe maneuver, but on an upturned corner of the area rug, I lost my footing. I fell, sprawled, spilling the contents of my bag. The footfalls were on the stairs now as I gathered up my things—a notebook, my cell phone … leave the pens. Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go. As I hit the back door, I realized it was locked. The dead bolt, the one I had locked myself. I needed the key.
I fished in my pocket, panic rising up my throat, adrenaline making me clumsy, butterfingers. Fumbling with the lock. Then I was bursting out into the cold, racing for the woods. I dared to look behind, where a dark form lurked in the doorway.
I froze at the edge of the woods, staring. For a moment, just a moment, I thought I was looking at my father.
26
Dear Diary,
I’m here again. Even though I promised myself that I wouldn’t visit with you anymore. But I honestly don’t have anywhere else to turn. I can’t stand to burden my mother. I know she worries about me so much already. And my sister? Well, the ugly truth is that she’s just so goddamn perfect, I can’t handle the idea of losing face in front of her again.
I mean, I look at her, and envy just curdles all the love I have for her inside. She seems to grow ever dewier and more youthful, even as the years drain me of whatever beauty I once possessed. Her marriage is strong and healthy. Sure, she and her husband argue all the time, she insists. He’s a slob, thinks she’s a micromanager of everything in the house. He’s too lenient with the girls, says she’s too strict. She doesn’t like to cook; he feels they eat out too much. Really, I think, that’s what you argue about? I would love to argue about things like that, normal, meaningless things that only prove your foundation is rock solid.
Meanwhile, she’s a natural mother, never seeming beleaguered or overwhelmed by it all. Even when the girls were small, there was none of that wild-haired, stained shirt, exasperated impatience that seems to characterize motherhood for so many. She was the one milling baby food and breast-feeding for years. She was carrying her girls around in slings, quitting her job, making gingerbread cookies. (Sure, they tasted like shit. She really was a terrible cook—her one personal flaw. But still, she baked.) She was the kind of woman who said she was grateful for her life and her children and her husband. And she meant it. And she had really great taste. I mean she always looked amazing and her house could have been in a magazine. Seriously.
How could I tell her that I thou
ght my husband wanted to kill me? That he was perhaps plotting to kill me? I could imagine the look on her face. Open at first. Then wondering if perhaps I’d lost my mind. Then, stern. She’d have an action plan, and would hover until it was implemented. She’d save my life probably, and still get home in time to order Thai takeout. And all the while she and I would both be aware of her vast superiority, how well she ran her life. How she had recovered after “what Daddy did” and how I never really did. How I floundered after that and never quite found my footing, not really. And she’d have to take a certain kind of pleasure in it. Because for a time it seemed like things would be quite the opposite. While she grieved and was nearly crushed beneath the weight of our shame and tragedy, I ran wild. She disappeared into school and books, spent years in therapy. I lived it up, skating through school, enjoying my role as the pretty one, the popular one, the one that boys liked.
And my husband was rich and handsome. While hers—well, everyone agreed that John was a good guy, stable and reliable, everything her own father wasn’t. But he was a bit of a geek, wasn’t he? A computer nerd. He wasn’t dark and mysterious, not one to whisk her off to Paris. And her ring was lovely, but well within his means. No one really got that he was a fucking genius and that he’d invent some piece of hardware that would revolutionize computers. No one expected him to get crazy rich. I didn’t anyway.
So—really. How could I call her up and say, Sis, I’m in trouble? Again. I couldn’t; that’s how. I won’t. From all outside appearances, things have normalized. Our son is doing well in school, has some friends. If he’s a bit bookish, a bit girlish—well, he goes to an artsy, progressive private school that is well supervised, so there is no playground torturing. And the kids seem to accept him. So that’s a big deal and I’m happy for him.
My husband has finished his novel and he’s found an agent. It’s gone out to publishers, and it looks like he might actually sell it. So the surface picture of us looks fine to my family, and I’d like to keep it that way. And to think I was actually feeling pretty good about things.
And then I realized that my husband was having an affair. It was not a fling or a one-night stand, but a relationship that had spanned the better part of the last five years. He tried to call it off when we moved to Florida. When I told him I needed him and we thought we were in love again. But it started up again soon after. I wonder: Did we not make it because he loved someone else? Or did he go back to her because we couldn’t make our marriage work?
His flaming, torrid e-mail correspondence (of which he has studiously saved every single miserable missive) with her is pathetic and full of all the old clichés. You deserve so much better than this. But I can’t leave them. My son can’t handle it. Or: Just be patient, my love. We’ll find a way to be together. Or: A love like ours that has survived so much, will survive. We’ll have our day. I know: Barf. It doesn’t bode well for his novel.
The worst part is that there’s a child, a boy. My husband steals visits for birthdays, sends gifts charged on a card he doesn’t think I know about. He sends money. The child is small, just five now, I think. I feel bad for that kid. I really do.
I can’t really fault my husband, though. Our love is dead and buried. We are together only for the sake of our boy, and we did agree to live separate lives. And I think I wouldn’t mind the affair so much except that recently the tenor of the correspondence has changed.
I know he’s been to see a lawyer. He is careless with his computer, doesn’t realize that I know his password. He wanted to know how much I would get in a divorce. Here’s the worst-case scenario: half of everything (including his family money and inheritance because we were too in love to get a prenup—ha ha), child support (for our special-needs boy), and alimony until I married again (which, trust me, I never will). Marriage sucks, by the way, diary. It’s like a mirage in a desert. Tired, travel-worn, and dying of thirst, we all stagger toward it looking for water and shelter. But when the shimmering image fades, we find only what we brought with us. Which in my and my husband’s case was simply selfishness and vanity.
Suddenly their e-mails are short and cryptic. He’s been away every third weekend, meeting with his agent, he claims, visiting with publishers. But I know they’re together. She sends pictures. And there he is, holding hands with his other son in Central Park, pushing him on the swings. He looks happy, free from the grim frown he always wears at home. I hate him for it. The last time we fought, he called me a succubus. All you do, both of you, is drain and drain and drain. You give nothing.
I wonder if that’s true. Maybe it is. I haven’t been the wife I wanted to be. Motherhood has dominated me for the last sixteen years. But it’s too late to look back in regret. At least that’s what my therapist says. There is only moving forward.
I’m weak. I’d let the whole thing slide. But the violence has escalated. And I can feel his frustration mounting. We have constructed a trap for ourselves. Yesterday, I stumbled upon (while I was snooping in his office, which I clearly do a lot of ) a term life-insurance policy that he has taken out on me. I know, another cliché. But there you have it; I’ve built a life out of them, as most of us do.
When I think of uprooting our son, ending my marriage, and opening whatever Pandora’s box of neurosis and breakdowns such acts would inspire, I can’t. I just can’t. I have no real proof that he’s actually planning to kill me. He hasn’t threatened me. It’s possible that I’m being paranoid.
If I’m right, I wonder how he’d do it. Would he hire someone to break in? Would he find an evidence-free way to poison me? The stairs would be a good plan—most accidents happen in the home. There might be an investigation. He’d be expecting that, I’m sure. He’s a man who knows how things work; he’s canny and wise. He’d have a plan, a good one. He is charming and semi-well-known, a B-list celebrity journalist—or he was once upon a time. He’d walk away from my demise richer than ever and free to be with his new family. And what would happen to our son? How would he fit into my husband’s new life?
He’s so fragile, our boy. Even in his newfound happiness, what passes for us as wonderfully normal. He has friends, a group of funny, funky, artsy, alternative kids. I think he’s been smoking. He’s adopted a kind of Gothic androgynous look, with spiky, wild black hair. And I think I saw just the hint of black eyeliner under his eye the other night when I picked him up from the movies. Like he’d had it on and washed it off. He’s had both his ears pierced, which is apparently the style among a certain set. I didn’t say anything. I honestly don’t care. It’s only recently that I’ve seen him smile, and heard him really laugh. Whoever he has to be to make himself happy? It’s okay with me.
Am I making a mistake? Staying here in this dead and loveless marriage? Am I being paranoid, thinking my husband might kill me? Maybe I’m just creating drama, as he has so often accused me of doing. Should I ask him to leave, tell him that he can keep his money, that we’ll be fine? Maybe that’s all it would take.
Even so, I worry about my son all the time. The other night, when I picked him up from the movies and his friends were calling after him, waving, I think I heard one of them call him by a name that wasn’t his. I can’t be sure, and I certainly didn’t ask about it. But I have been turning it over in my mind. How the name sounded on the air, and how he smiled a little at the sound of it. Then, again, maybe I misheard. But I could have sworn that one of the girls (who I thought might be his little girlfriend) waved her arm wide and yelled, “Good night, Lana.”
PART TWO: lane
27
Why is God so unfair in His distribution of gifts? Why does He give so much beauty and love and wealth and ease to some? Why does He ask others of us to toil, to struggle, to grieve? This is something that has always bothered me. How could He create the monarch butterfly, and the pit viper? Why is the world so twisted, so dark and complicated, so impossible to understand? I was thinking all of this as I trekked, wretched and exhausted, through the woods. I expected helicopters
to come swooping in overhead. But, no, there was nothing.
They’ll think I killed her, my father said to me. I’ll go to prison. And you’ll go to a group home. You have to help me.
There was so much blood. When I had knelt down to her, I got it on my palm and I thought about preschool and how they used to brush our hands with finger paint and press our palms into paper, write our name and the year. Mom? Mom? What’s wrong? She was so still and white. Her head was misshapen, flattened on one side. Her arm was twisted so horribly, it looked as if it were rubber tubing. I stood staring, the world around me reeling, and me falling through space and time.
You have to help me, he said again. He stood in the kitchen weeping.
I ran, keening, up the stairs to my room. There had been so many day-mares, so many ugly visions and imaginings, surely this was just another of them. My mom, my mom, mom, mom. I dove under my bed and stayed there. I listened to all the strange noises downstairs, the afternoon light fading, the room growing dark.
Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineteneleventwelve.
Later, after her body was discovered, after he finally admitted to burying her, he said she fell from the landing, down to the marble floor below. She must have—or someone else pushed her. But not him.
He hid her body because he’d been having an affair, he said. She’d discovered it, and knew he wanted to leave her. He knew how it would look. He was a journalist, had reported the story a million times. It’s always the husband. He panicked, he claimed. He hid her body and made me help, but he didn’t kill her. Of course, no one believed him.
I helped him carry her body, wrapped in the Oriental carpet she had so loved, out to the car, heft it into the trunk. And we drove and drove, endless miles into endless night. Why? That’s what the police would want to know when I finally, with the help of my aunt and grandmother, screwed up the courage to tell the truth. I’ve done a lot of thinking about this. Why would I help the man I believed had killed my mother? And the truth is as simple as the fact that I loved my father, too. It was my mother who put the stars in the sky, but I loved him, too. Absent, short-tempered, sometimes distant—he was still my father. I couldn’t lose them both. I knew neither my aunt nor my grandmother would want me. I didn’t think they’d take me in after all the things I’d done. I didn’t want to go back to crazy school or a group home like the place where my mother worked. I would rather have slept in my own bed down the hall from my mother’s killer. But of course, I was in shock, too. And I wasn’t the most stable kid on the block to begin with.
