The light flashed under the door. He couldn’t have heard it, he couldn’t – but I froze, not daring to breathe, swallow, think – just a spider at the skirting. I heard him move again, take another step, but which way? Toward the stairs or back towards the bedroom? A spider at the skirting, taking a step over a knot in a green carpet, testing its path, looking for traps. A green carpet, under a bed.
I blinked.
He moved.
The light did not flash again. He turned away from the stairs, and I heard the door of the neighbouring room creak, a sound I’d have missed if I’d been deep in the emails, if I hadn’t been taut as a wire. I don’t know if I heard the bed frame in his room thrum as he lay down, or if I just imagined that it did, but I let go of the breath I’d been holding with a gasp, and pressed my forehead to the floor. I lay still, then I smiled. He hadn’t heard me, and the illusion of my sleeping form on the couch below had reassured him. I still had time.
I reached for the papers, turned up the light, and continued reading, not quite ready to leave the shelter of the bed just yet.
Chapter 12
PAPA LEVINE IS ANGRY. He went banging around the place, shouting about how the government asks men to die for them, and yet sticks knives in their back. I went in and asked him what was wrong, but he shut up like a clam and just said that Red is coming home and the army has turned its back on him.
He said, ‘You just make sure as you’re ready to welcome him, because he ain’t gonna get no hero’s parade ‘cept from us, and that boy deserves one from the president himself.’ He had loads of things coming up, events and so forth, and I heard him cancel them all.
What if he knows what I’ve done?
I knew what Red was doing. He was in dark, dry places, fishing in the air. There was a storm coming, and Papa Levine thundered, and Lisa put her hands over her ears and counted.
Red’s back and he’s very quiet. He’s sleeping in one of the other rooms, like before we were married. He won’t say why. I asked him what had happened, why he came back alone without his platoon. He wouldn’t say at first.
He had to get drunk before he could tell her, and even then, he hardly told her anything. An incoherent tumble of stories, of names she forgot and relationships she couldn’t follow. In their room late at night, the rest of the world asleep outside the window, he tried to make her understand while still keeping his secrets. He cried, and she didn’t know what to make of his tears, other than to feel guilty because he didn’t know how she’d betrayed him. She felt sick at herself, for being the thing she’d always been told she was, the thing she’d tried to run away from. When he got angry and marched around the room, shaking his fist at god, she was frightened, because she knew he should be angry at her, that it was her who deserved his fury. He told her how he was being made a scapegoat, that they’d saved him just because of who he was, and how the men beneath him, those who’d gone down with him, now thought he’d betrayed them. The word betrayal rattled about in her mind even as she held him, even as he slept.
In the house in the swamp, my hands trembled. The sheets of paper were eroding, so few of them left. I curled onto my side, clinging to them. The storm was breaking, and I could feel the rain.
‘Ya know what it mean, when the rain fall but the sun still shine?’
I don’t know what’s happened, not really. Red either hardly says a word to me, or asks me if I love him over and over. He says he needs me, but he’s still sleeping in the other room. He keeps saying how his men all hate him, and that he was only doing his job. I asked him what had happened, came right out and asked him, but he went cold and didn’t speak to me for a whole day. Do you think he knows?
I try and go out, but sometimes my car keys are gone, and sometimes the gates won’t open. I’m trying to be strong for him; I’m trying to be a good wife. I miss you so much.
Everything watched her: the eyes of the house, the eyes of the staff and his eyes, cold and hurtful. She went to go for a drive, but the keys for her car were gone. The garden was quiet, the gate was locked and the storm was locked in there with her.
Red didn’t sleep in their bed any more, but came in at night when she was asleep. He was nice and polite in the morning, but in the night, the wolf was in his eyes. She wanted him, because if they were to make love, or have sex, or fuck, it would mean he still wanted her, or that he really didn’t know about Paris. She didn’t think he knew, but she feared it, and the longer it went on, the drought between them, the more she was sure he did know. It was worse when he came at night, because then she thought he did still want her and believed she was good and clean and nice, but then he wouldn’t touch her and would leave without a word. Then she was sure he knew what she was, that he’d found out somehow.
It’s as if he finds me disgusting, as if he’s thinking about everything I said. I can see it in him, in his eyes; he thinks I’m dirty, used up, broken.
They fought. She made it happen, she wanted it to happen, because the sky was heavy with rain and the heat built up and up, until the weight of it was unbearable. She picked and nagged and worked at him, until he snapped at her, teeth bared, and she flew at him, screaming and crying, claws out.
Hooker’s claws.
She flew at him, and he caught her, held her, then let her go. And she ran. She ran through the house with all its fucking rooms, all the closed doors and the stairs that never seemed to go anywhere. She ran until she found a room with a closet, and shut herself inside, and waited for him to find her, hoping he wouldn’t, desperate he wouldn’t.
I’m so big I can’t hide anywhere any more. Please, I’m so scared, please help me! If only I could talk to Paris again, one last time. There might be a chance next week.
Then there was a break, a gap in the words. The dates were weeks apart and I felt the echo of my panic as I checked them – three weeks at least. Under the bed, in the room in the swamp, I tensed; I drew my knees up to my chest, hiding because she couldn’t hide, not in the end.
There’d been no word from her, and I’d gone to the cafe every day and paid my dollar and gone online, but there’d been nothing. I built imagined horrors for her, reading the words she’d sent me over and over, all of it coming back to me in the swamp at the turn of the page. There was even a blank page in the papers, a memento of that dreadful, echoing silence. In my cold city, I’d started running, running to the cafe at first, and then just running, and then buying training shoes so I could keep on running. It had started then, in the pause between her words. Running, when I’d heard that I’d flunked my first year exams, when I had to tell Mom and Dad, and not caring at all, if only I could have heard from her. I rang the number she’d made me promise not to ring, but it was never answered. I even ran past the neighbour’s place, though the dog had died years back. I wished it had been there, so I could prove I was brave. Barking dog, pearl buttons, an old lace table cloth.
I haven’t been able to get out for days.
Days! It had been weeks, surely?
Red is watching me all the time but he won’t come near me. I don’t know what to do. I’m going to try and buy air tickets. I told him I needed cash the other day for a dress, but he just said to tell them who I was and he’d pay them later.
Her credit cards were gone, and she sat in the blue room and looked at the jewellery he’d bought her. She felt the weight of her wedding band in her hand and saw how the diamond caught the light. All of that, all of those things piled up around her and none of it any defence against him, against what she felt, and me, running, running to the coffee shop because I couldn’t run after her, I couldn’t save her again, just like when we were kids.
She found her car keys. She took the key that opened the gate at the end of the drive. She didn’t have her jewellery but she thought she’d try, just see? Maybe she’d have come back, maybe she was just seeing how far she could get; a kite tugging at its string?
Had she told me this? I looked at the paper in my hands. The words were n
ot there, but I could see them, feel them. I could see her.
‘Tell me who ya love, an’ I’ll tell ya who ya are.’
He caught her – he must have, I was sure he had. He caught her in the garage and demanded to know where she was going, what she was doing. She tried to get into the car, but he caught the door and pulled it open. He was someone else, the strength in him something living and hungry, something she’d only toyed with before. You thought he was going to pull you out, hit you, but instead he ripped the keys from the ignition and slammed the door shut. Then he locked it, clicking the key twice so the mechanism thudded into place.
I imagined how she beat against the glass, white hands flat against the glass, and how he just stood there, watching her. Then in my mind she saw movement, a flash from behind him in the well of sunlight, and his father was there too. Cut out against the sunlight of the garden, the old man watched her for a moment, watched his son watching her trapped in the big, white car. Then he turned his back and walked away.
He’s always there, Red’s father, watching me and watching me with him, both of them all the time. He never says anything to me. There’s so much silence, I can’t hear myself think.
How long did they leave you there, alone, in the dark? Did you cry, were you scared, trapped in the bell jar of the jeep, hands like wings beating against the glass?
We fight all the time, and I can see Red’s holding himself back and that it’s a struggle. He wants to hurt me. He’s going to hurt me.
Or was that at night, in the blue room as they called it? Was it there that Papa Levine saw her locked in and walked away, the click of the key loud as a gunshot? A thousand miles, a thousand years away, I wanted to scream at him for his cowardice. Or it was me who turned away, me who didn’t – couldn’t – stop him?
Please can you tell Mom and Dad where I am, I don’t care any more, please?
Did I? I thought desperately, trying to force the memory back – did I tell them? I could have killed Red then and there for what he did to her, dug out that jewellery roll and killed him for all the things I thought he’d done.
Please can you tell Mom and Dad where I am?
Had I told them? How could I tell them this, when I hadn’t told them about everything else? Had I thought that she was making it up, telling stories like she had before, getting me into trouble, Little Red Riding Hood crying wolf? That was what Dad said: just Lisa and her stories, Lisa making a fuss, buzz, buzz, buzz, with a bee in her bonnet.
The click of a key in a lock, loud as gunshot.
I’d hated it when they’d said that, hated them laughing at her when I knew she was right, knew she hadn’t made any of it up. Why hadn’t I told them?
He’s always watching me. He’s always on edge, checking the windows whenever he comes into a room, not letting me open one no matter how hot it is. He’s making sure I can’t get out, I know he is.
I never told them, because of college. I never told them, because of Dad, because of the smell of him, of decay and sickly sweet morphine, and the shuffle of his feet against the floor as he tried to get up. I never told them, because I left home instead.
He’s outside now, in the car, watching through the window. He’s watching me as if he knows what I’m writing. He’s got a gun, I’ve seen it. He’s waiting for proof, I know he is, he’s waiting to catch me out and if he does—
I saw them as if it was the first time, our family. Not their faces, but their worries and words and voices and the slowly increasing distance between us, which I’d never, ever been able to bridge. Lisa had made me hers and then she was gone and I was as far away from them as she was. I knew she did it to try and protect me; and she had, she’d made me safe at her expense. I knew they were never going to come and save her, they’d already let her go. A deal had been made without me. Without knowing why, I’d just kept on running.
I saw us then, saw the view from under our bed in the beautiful big room we shared. She was a shadow against the light and we were hiding. But we were not playing a game. A savannah of green carpet, a barking dog coming up the stairs to find us – no, not the dog.
‘I didn’t mean to do it. I’m scared, Lisa. Will he find me, will he?’ I was crying. I couldn’t remember what I’d done, only that it was something unforgivable.
‘Shh.’ She put her finger to her lips, her little angel face cold with a fear she didn’t want to show me. ‘Remember the rhyme?’ she asked and I nodded, too frightened to speak.
The click of a key in the lock, loud as gunshot.
‘Close your eyes,’ she commanded and I did, though I heard the footfall on the stairs. ‘Say it.’ She gripped my hand in hers, and I remembered her fingers, hot and hard and clammy all at once. ‘Say it!’ she hissed again as the door of the room creaked open. ‘I’ll say I did it, just close your eyes and say our song.’
‘Count to ten, count to ten, then he’ll go away again. If you get to twenty-one, then you’ll live to see the sun.’
It is true, all of it. Please, you have to believe me. You do believe me don’t you? Please say you believe me!
The pages were nearly gone, just two more sheets thin and insubstantial. If I did not read, then maybe she’d be okay? No. If I put the pages back and closed the door and locked it again, if I went back down and lay on the couch, if I even went into the other room and woke Red and let him fuck me or kill me or killed him – none of it would change what was printed on the last two pieces of paper.
I’m getting out. If I ask, you’ll do everything you can, won’t you? He’s going to kill me, I know he is, if I don’t get out. He hates me, or he thinks he loves me, but it’s really hate. I screamed at him to let me out, let me go and he went crazy – banging doors, punching the wall – saying over and over it wasn’t safe – but it’s him I’m in danger from. I tried to push past him, to run, but he grabbed for me and pulled me back. I tried to get away and hit out at him, and he hit me and I fell down. He tried to say he was sorry, but then his Papa came and I got away. He didn’t say anything, Papa Levine, not a damn thing! I should just go, but I can’t, I’ve nowhere to go.
Had she run? She should have, she should have just run away from him then. But she hadn’t. There was one more page.
I saw Paris the other day and he made me talk to him. I only had a moment. I told him what has happened. He saw the bruise under my glasses. Paris says he’s going to get me out somehow. Then I’m going to get you and we’ll be free for real.
The house shivered and waited. From under the bed, from a childhood far away, Lisa pressed her face to my ear and whispered.
‘Say our song and it will be okay. Say it for me, please!’
Very quickly – Red is away next weekend, and I’m going to get all the jewellery I can, and meet Paris where I first picked him up on the road. Paris said to bring other things, he knows what I need to get, stuff we can sell and then we can be together.
I’m going to get all the way back to you and then we can live together, all of us, and we’re all going to be happy I promise. Have faith in me. Please know that however hard it gets, however long it takes, I’ll come back to you, I promise. I can trust you, can’t I?
I closed my eyes under our childhood bed as Lisa had asked me to. I said our song, the one we’d made for when it happened.
‘Count to ten … count to ten …’
I felt her dragged away from me, I heard her scream and kick at him, and the slap as Daddy hit her. I pressed my hands over my ears and my face against the hard green carpet and tried not to hear the rest of it. I closed my eyes, I looked away: I pretended I did not see.
‘Count to ten, count to ten …’
‘Was it you, or her. Lisa, you or her?’ I heard Daddy hit her again. ‘It was you, wasn’t it, you filthy little beast!’
‘I’m sorry Daddy, I didn’t mean it.’
‘It’s always you, isn’t it?’
‘I’m sorry Daddy, please!’
‘Are you? ‘Cause your words ar
e saying sorry, but Daddy knows what a liar you are.’
‘I ain’t lying, I promise.’
‘You best come here and show your Daddy you’re sorry. You come here now, and show your Daddy you’re sorry.’
I was the one who’d listened, I was the one who’d kept her story safe, and now it had finished. The last page of the text slipped from my hand and landed with a sharp clip on the floor. I watched it fall.
She’d saved me, she’d taken it all on herself to save me.
I reached back into the void under the bed, right into the far corner. My hand closed about his body: firm, velvet, so familiar. The little pearl buttons on his jacket were cold, so too his black button eyes.
I drew myself out from under the bed, and I looked at him. I saw myself running upstairs with him, when Daddy had driven all the way to the depot, when Lisa forgot him on the school bus. Mr Pooter, her toy rabbit. Mr Pooter, left for me to find under the bed, in the locked room, in the swamp. The air became heavy with the scent of sandalwood and cinnamon, with the brush of silk on my skin and perfume on an old fur coat. As I read Lisa’s words, it wasn’t his face I saw any more, not Rooster, or Red, but Daddy, my Daddy, our Daddy. It was him.
I am a swimmer, I thought. I am a swimmer. I pressed Mr Pooter to my face and breathed him in. With his scent, the darkness of my memory shattered, and I knew who I was.
‘A key fit only the lock it were made for, Cherie.’
Chapter 13
I HAD THE KEYS IN MY POCKET. I opened the front gate and felt its squeak vibrate through the metal. I didn’t let it clang, but caught the lock and closed it softly. The maple in the front yard was in full leaf, dappling the sunlight and dancing with stars when I looked up, leaves like hands. I didn’t let myself stand under it and enjoy its scent like I wanted to, because I didn’t really want to. I only wanted to do it, so I didn’t have to go in yet.
Nemesister: The gripping women's psychological thriller from Sophie Jonas-Hill Page 10
