by Neal, Toby
I’d always been a shadow—Constance’s shadow. Richard’s shadow. I toed out of my shoes and set my purse and phone on the side table.
Hector greeted me loudly.
“Hey, buddy.” I fed him before I strode to the wet bar—I still have some self-control. But after the second shot of Patrón gave me my sea legs back, and the third and fourth made me start to feel clear again, I decided I’d do a little bonfire.
Richard had already cleaned his shit out of the closets, but he’d left a lot of knickknacks behind, the kinds of things that would have reminded the Acrobat that he had another life before her—things like family photos, golf trophies, cuff links, and a gold watch I’d given him for our anniversary.
I took a big shopping bag out of the kitchen and began scooping his stuff into it: the aforementioned gifts, his family’s ancestral Bible (maybe God would strike me with a lightning bolt), photographs framed in silver of us as a family. I filled the shopping bag with anything of his I could find and a lot of mine too—those stupid stiletto heels he’d wanted me to wear when we had “kinky” sex; the golf shirts and glove I’d worn to please him on the course, golf being a game I found boring and pointless; scarves and purses that he’d alternated giving me on birthday and Christmas the last ten years.
There were twenty of those. I’d never used them, and he hadn’t noticed.
I thought I’d been happily married—but come to think of it, had I been? I didn’t remember being really happy since those early years, both of us building careers, sharing a passion for Chris and our identity as a family. The smart, accomplished, and good-looking Wilson family.
Coming home from work in the evenings, we’d sit on the deck of our little starter home in Hilo to compare stories. Richard had always said the law was full of psychopaths, and I’d agreed. Come to think of it, things hadn’t really started their slow drift until Richard became obsessed with work and building Hidden Palms. We’d had a few good years here in the beginning, I thought, dumping a rack of his less-favored ties into the shopping bag—but I didn’t think I’d paused long enough to really wonder until it was too late and he was pole dancing with the Acrobat.
The jewelry he’d given me and the anniversary watch I’d take to the pawnshop. I hadn’t totally lost my marbles.
I carried the bottle of Patrón, the lighter fluid, and the barbeque lighter outside and set them on the steps in the darkening evening. A light wind tossed my hair as I hauled my loot out into the turnaround in front. The fronds of the palm trees clattered like applause. Hector followed me and sat on the top step watching, his tail twitching back and forth, as I made a big pile at the base of the flagpole.
I stopped periodically to slug Patrón. It went down smooth and kept me fueled.
“It’s therapeutically important to make a ceremony of endings and beginnings, Hector,” I said, lowering the American flag, draping it over the pile of items. “I’m going to make a ceremony here. This is the ending of my marriage and of putting up with anything I don’t like in my home and my life. This is the beginning of the new, liberated me.”
I realized I was wearing one of those polo shirts, a lot like a golf shirt, and it didn’t feel right anymore. I tore off the shirt, unzipped my sensible twill skirt. “I don’t think this is really my style. I don’t know what my style is, but this is not it.” I tucked the clothes under the flag. I was warm from the booze and enthusiasm and didn’t even feel the cool night air pucker up my nipples.
“Hector, you’re the witness to my declaration of independence!” I squirted lighter fluid over the pile and held the barbeque lighter out to touch it.
The flames burst up in a fireball, scorching my hand, and I realized I was burning both the American flag and a Bible. My heart pounded with terror, and I shut my eyes and waited for the lightning bolt.
None came.
I was standing close enough to the fire that it warmed me in my underwear, and I sat down on the grass and finished the bottle while watching the flames. But even drinking couldn’t stifle my sense of loss this time.
My identical twin, Constance. The one that sparkled bright, the one with the flair. She was gone, and I was the pitiful broken-down divorcée that was left. It just wasn’t right, or fair. It felt like a crippling weight—I was living for both of us, and what a failure at that I’d become.
Constance. What a misnomer for that gossamer spirit, that whirligig of impulsivity. She’d been a natural performer, and even though we looked the same with our slim build, blue eyes, and blond hair, it was always Constance friends called for, Constance who sang in the talent show, Constance who won awards for everything from art projects to dance numbers.
I’d never resented it. Her successes lit me, standing in her shadow, and that was more than enough. I enjoyed that she did everything well—somehow that meant I didn’t have to, that I already knew I could.
That was only one of the mysteries of being a twin.
Chris had asked for a brother or sister many times over the years. Richard wouldn’t have been opposed, but I was adamant. “No, Chris, you’re better off as an only child,” I’d said.
“Why, Mom?”
I’d never been able to explain that the pain of the loss of a sibling was so much worse than never having had one at all.
I must have passed out, because rain was falling on me. Big, fat, cold raindrops. Hilo rain is powerful when it gets going. Rain was hitting me in the eyes, collecting in all my nooks and exposed crannies.
I sat up, smelling something horrible—something like melted plastic. I hit my head, opened my eyes. The timer lights had turned off, but the dim solar ones around the walkway were on, glowing like green mushrooms, and I saw that what I’d hit my head on was the flagpole. It had fallen over me where I lay on my back on the ground, and somehow it had missed pulverizing me.
I remembered the flagpole was made of resinous plastic. Perhaps making a bonfire at the base hadn’t been the best idea.
I got up, or rather rolled over onto my hands and knees. I felt sick, and I had the whirlies. I dry heaved but there was nothing there. The beginning of the mother of all hangovers was gathering behind my eyes.
I couldn’t even think about it now. I crawled up the steps and tried to open the door.
It was locked. Which was part of the new upgrade—if I didn’t lock the house, it locked automatically at ten p.m. And it armed itself. We’d changed the code today.
Where was my phone, with the text with the new code on it?
Of course. Inside the locked house, in my purse, with my keys.
But no matter. I’d probably tripped the alarm when I moved into the sensor’s range, and help would be on the way in the form of local PD, whom Bruce had put on alert about my residence. I’d be there to greet them. In my underwear, in the rain, in front of a burned-down flagpole.
I stood up very carefully. There had to be something I could do. I teetered back down the steps and around the side of the house to the gardening shed. The rain seemed to ping off me like evil BB pellets, cold and painful. Mercifully, the shed wasn’t locked, and I stepped inside, into its warmish, dry, total darkness.
I spread my hands and stumbled forward, feeling the air in swooping motions, trying to remember with my battered brain where things were.
I connected with something tall, fabric-covered, that gave under my hand. I recoiled. Immediately my mind supplied the ex’s corpse, strangled and stuffed in my gardening shed as a “present” to me from my stalker.
I made myself reach my hand out, feel the object again, patting it.
Ah. Not the ex’s corpse, but a burlap bag of mulch. That was wishful thinking. I kept feeling forward. I knew what I was looking for—a blue plastic tarp I used to pile weeds on when I got the urge to tidy something. The gardening shed had been the yard guy’s terrain for a while now; no telling where it was.
I barked my toe on something metal—further investigation told me it was the mower, which I knew was parked at the b
ack of the shed. So that meant on my left was the table where we stored various implements. Maybe the tarp was there, folded up.
The rain drummed relentlessly on the steel roof, an overwhelming timpani of sound. Musty smells of mulch and manure formed a substance in my nostrils and throat, activating my gag reflex again.
Suicide flickered across my brain, a viable solution, as my hand fell on the sickle. I could cut my wrists the right way—straight up to my elbows from my wrists—lie down in here, and it would probably be over by the time the cops found me. It almost seemed like a better idea than being caught in here in my underwear, still drunk, with the remains of my angry divorcée bonfire on my front steps.
My left hand curled around the sickle, lifting it, and just then my right hand touched the square plastic softness that had to be the tarp.
I took my hand off the sickle, shook out the tarp, hoping there were no centipedes, roaches, or cane spiders in its folds, and wrapped it around myself.
Somehow, dimly even through the rain and the cushioning darkness of the shed, I could hear the wail of sirens.
They were here.
I lifted the tarp over my head, tightened it around me like a crinkly plastic burka, and walked back into the rain to face the cops.
Chapter 5
Bruce handed me a cup of coffee. His warm chocolate-brown eyes were crinkled with worry even though he smiled. “Quite the drama, Caprice. Didn’t know you had it in you.”
“I’m full of surprises.” I took the cup. He’d made it black, the way I liked. I closed my eyes as I sipped. Closing them was an exquisite relief since they throbbed like hot marbles.
“I can see that. So much for the security upgrade. You’re going to laugh about this someday.”
“I hope so. It’s hard to imagine that. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.” I kept my eyes closed to avoid looking at him, but I could feel the heat of tears welling, bursting out from under my swollen lids. I was in my voluminous terry-cloth robe after a hot shower. The alarm company had given the responding officers the code, and they’d deactivated my new alarm while grilling me over my semi-nakedness and the fire reeking in my turnaround. It was hard for them to believe I’d done it all myself, and I’d had to call Bruce to get them to leave—but now he wouldn’t leave either.
“Doesn’t your wife wonder where you are?” I asked.
“Divorced,” he said. I opened my eyes. Things were a little blurry without my glasses, but I could see the compassion in them, the kindness. He’d always been a good friend, and I’d never felt any hint of anything toward him but collegial friendship. I’d assumed he was happily married—there were pictures around his office of his grandkids in soccer outfits.
“I didn’t know that. Well, then, maybe you know a little bit of what I’m going through—a rough patch. Entirely normal for me to be a little distraught.” I looked around. “I need some Advil. Like really a lot of Advil.”
“I think you’re drinking too much.”
I felt defensiveness rise up. “You’re in my home in the middle of the night. Yes, I got blasted and burned my ex’s shit and got locked out of my house. It’s embarrassing. But it’s never impacted my work, and I’ll get through this.”
“I think you need some help to get through this.” He reached over and took the mug out of my hand, set it on the table. His big brown hands chafed my small cold ones a long minute. “Do you have anyone you can call? I don’t want you alone out here.”
“I don’t want to be alone out here. And no, if I did, I would have called them.” I felt the tears return. Weak, self-pitying tears. “I thought about dying tonight. It scared me.”
“I’m not surprised you had those thoughts.” His mellow, calming bass voice worked its charm, and I felt like telling him everything, all of it. He didn’t get to be chief without some interviewing skills. “It’s okay. It’s a hard thing you’re going through.”
“It’s not okay for someone in my position to be in this state. I think I need to take some time off.” The words popped out of my mouth, and I immediately wanted to take them back. What would I do without my work? I’d have nothing to do all day but drink and burn stuff and cry. Suicidal thoughts circled like black crows.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea without you going somewhere. Perhaps a spa, or a rehab place? You need some TLC.” His hands were still massaging mine.
I felt something happening, a dim tingle of something warm, as if those hands were rubbing two sticks together to light a fire. I suddenly knew that this man, my colleague for the last seven years, someone I’d never been attracted to before, could make me feel very good indeed.
I yanked my hands away. “Rehab. Geez.”
“I’m just saying you need support. You shouldn’t be alone in this big house.”
“I agree with you there.” I stood up, and it was a mistake. I felt my knees buckling, and I sat back down on the couch. “Could I get that Advil now?”
He stood up. I looked up at him from the new vantage point of two divorced people, alone and lonely in a big house at night. He was tall, with the solid burly bulk of a Hawaiian man in the middle of his life, his buzz-cut black hair threaded with gray. Probably prediabetic, needed to lose some weight—and yet all I could think about was how warm that bulk would make me feel.
My mind provided a contrasting picture of the ex, with his careful workouts and Pilates and golf. Every inch of his body was cared for and tweezed. He took his own blood pressure and weighed his food. His icy blue eyes and ash-blond hair matched mine. We were like Aryan bookends, and I’d never questioned that our fit was perfect.
That made me sad on some profound level.
Bruce returned with the bottle of Advil. I poured four into my palm, threw them back with a coffee chaser. I’d finally remembered what had gotten me so upset in the first place.
“I’m still worried about the stalker thing. Something new happened.” I told him about Alison and the dog collar and Mrs. Kunia’s mug. “So I don’t know. Mrs. Kunia hasn’t called—I just checked my phone. And Alison’s not credible. I mean, I love her, but she’s got compulsions, and she could have had a slip right in front of me.”
He just sat down across from me in the good leather armchair the ex used to watch TV in and gazed at me.
“I’ll sleep out here on the couch,” he said. “And I want you to go on leave as of tomorrow and go somewhere safe and get help. If you don’t do it yourself, I’ll document this and get you fired.”
I recoiled as if slapped. “You would never know about this if you weren’t my friend. I can’t believe you’d kick me when I’m down.”
“I’d know about this. I had to send two officers out to your house to respond to an alarm for a colleague I care about who may have a threatening client. I get out here to find you could have burned down your house or been crushed by a falling flagpole—in your underwear, suicidal and drunk. This is not a rough patch. This is an intervention.”
His raised voice brought the hairs up on my arms, and his brown eyes were hard as pebbles in an icy stream. This was the police chief I knew and respected, whom I’d watched deal with every kind of disorderly behavior from officers and perpetrators alike. He was no pushover.
“Okay. Damn.” My mind was too fuzzy to decide what to do, but I could see the necessity of getting away for a few days. “I’ll go somewhere, take some days off. Now can I go to bed?”
“You need help, a program or something. At least a spa.” He flipped his hand. “One of those celebrity beauty things or something. You could have massages every day and a personal chef.”
My mind was too spongy to respond with anything coherent. “Okay.”
I’d figure a way out of this tomorrow.
“Can I get it in writing?”
I looked up, and that crinkle of humor was back in his eyes. “Ha-ha. I’ll show you where the sheets and blankets are.”
I wasn’t even embarrassed when he had to help me back to bed.
I’d just been through an intervention, and there was nothing to hide anymore. Apparently things were bad, and I really did need help. There was a measure of relief in admitting it.
Morning wasn’t kind and neither was Hector, disliking being shut up with me. His yowling at the door got me up and staggering across the overlarge room to open it and let him out into the house, where he could exit via his kitty door. Down the hall, I glimpsed the upright shape of Bruce sitting on the couch. He turned and grinned at the sight of me.
“Morning, sunshine.”
I bit back a curse word and shut the door.
So it all had been real. There was no God. If there was, this would have all just been a bad dream. I’d burned the ex’s family Bible and the American flag, been rained on and almost clobbered by a flagpole, and worst of all, I’d agreed to go to rehab.
In the shower again, hoping that would make some sort of difference to the worst hangover I remembered in years, I thought strategy. My strategy was . . . well, I couldn’t think of one, but I had to do something to get out of town and dodge a possible stalker—and live down the gossip at the station from my divorcée bonfire—and maybe even admit I had a drinking problem.
I seemed to remember doing that last night. I must have been really drunk.
I got out and made the mistake of glimpsing myself in the mirror. I hurried past that and into the bedroom, stopped in front of the closet.
I wanted to dress in my style. Only I didn’t know what that was. I knew only that the row of polo shirts and chinos of various types just wasn’t it anymore. That look was left over from my life with the ex.
I pulled on pair of yoga pants and a long shimmery, silky blue tee. I felt comfortable and easy in it, not like I’d just come off the country club golf course—something I’d never do again if I could help it.
I brushed my wet hair as I headed down the hall. “Got coffee?” I asked Bruce. He held up his mug in reply. “Good.”
I went into the kitchen, struck by how big and excessive every single copper-bottomed pan I never used was. This Architectural Digest kitchen wasn’t me, either. I got out my favorite mug, a delicately hand-thrown pottery one with a raku glaze Chris had made in a ceramics class and given me for Christmas.
