Michael R Collings (25 page)

A hand touched his shoulder. It was Linda.

“How is she?” Linda did not try to keep the fear from her voice.

“All right, I think,” he answered. He held a clean hand cloth to the cut and pressed. Elizabeth winced but didn’t say anything. Her eyes were still clouded with tears, but she was no longer screaming.

“More frightened than anything.”

“Let me see,” Linda said. Jay gently released the pressure on the cut. He pulled the cloth away. The wound was now a thin red line, oozing lightly but no longer flowing.

“Where are the band-aids?” Linda asked.

“Up there,” Jay said, motioning with his head toward the medicine cabinet. Linda opened the mirrored door and rummaged for a few seconds in the depths. She took out a box of band-aids and small pair of scissors. With the deftness honed by years of motherhood and family crises she snipped at the band-aid until it was butterfly shaped.

“Move a minute.”

Jay shifted away from Elizabeth. Linda carefully positioned the butterfly band-aid on the cut, then lifted Elizabeth and sat down on the toilet seat, her daughter securely on her lap.

“It’s all right, honey,” Linda murmured. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”

Jay reached out and touched his daughter’s forehead. As he moved, he noticed that Abe was standing in the hallway, watching the proceedings intently.

“She’s fine, Dad,” Jay said in an attempt to reassure the old man. “Just an accident.”

“Huh-uh,” Elizabeth said. “Josh hit me.”

“What!” Jay swung his attention back to the small, pale face pressed against his wife’s shoulder.

“Josh hit me.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to play. With the video game. He didn’t want me to, and he grabbed that glass thing and hit me.”

Jay surged to his feet. Linda grabbed his arm and held him tightly.

“Jay, please, try to stay calm and find out what happened.”

“Calm! Stay calm! That little bastard nearly kills your daughter and you tell me to stay calm.”

Linda blanched at the anger in his voice, then her face flushed red and hot.

Jay was out the door in an instant. He shouldered past his father, not noticing the distanced, glazed expression in the old man’s eyes, not noticing that as he passed his father Jay almost knocked him off balance. The old man slumped against the wall. Already Jay was in the family room yelling. But Mitch was there also, running interference, hunched aggressively between his son and Jay.

Jay accused. Mitch defended. Josh burst into tears and threw the glass ashtray. It spun in the bright winter light, catching sunlight and refracting it in rainbow spirals as it shattered the family room window and disappeared into the dead yard.

The crash of glass startled both Mitch and Jay, enough at any rate for the nearly crazed fathers to catch their breaths. They stared at each other, realizing with a unanimity that was itself breathtaking how close they had come to blows. Mitch’s fists were clenched at his sides. Jay’s breath was ragged and shallow, and his voice shook as he spoke.

“Anna, come here.” She came. Without a word, she slipped across the room and stood behind her father. Jay took her by the hand and led her down the hall. As he passed the bathroom, he looked in at Linda and Elizabeth.

“We’re leaving. Now,” he announced. “Anna, pack your things and Elizabeth’s.”

“Yes, Daddy.” She disappeared into the bedroom the girls had shared.

“You stay here with Elizabeth,” Jay said to his stunned wife. He rushed down the hallway and threw his and Linda’s things into their still-open suitcases, hammered the Samsonites shut, and yanked them up. Without speaking to anyone, he stalked through the hall and out the front door. He thrust the unoffending cases into the trunk of the car, slamming the lid hard enough to jostle his key ring loose. The keys dropped to the pavement with a harsh, raucous clatter. Blood throbbed in his temples as he leaned over to retrieve them.

He re-entered the house, carefully avoiding any words with Ellen, who now fluttered protectively around her boys. Thad was in the family room as well, Jay noted, his long frame slouched in Mattie’s favorite chair, his feet hooked over the arm. The boy’s shoes were filthy.

He helped Anna close her bag and Elizabeth’s, then took them outside as well and, moving like an automaton in spite of his mounting fury, went inside for a final time. By then Linda and Elizabeth were on their feet, standing together in the bathroom doorway.

“Jay,” Linda began. “Don’t you think....”

“Think, nothing. I’m leaving. Now.”

He swept Elizabeth into his arms and carried her outside. Anna followed, her eyes dark with unwept tears. Jay sat Elizabeth on the back seat, then held the door open for Anna and waited until both girls were securely seatbelted in. He looked up. Linda was on the door-step. He could see Abe’s silver hair glistening in the darkness behind his wife.

For a moment, Jay faltered. This is absurd, he heard himself argue. You haven’t even talked to the boy; you don’t know what really happened. Elizabeth is fine; she probably won’t even have a scar in a couple of weeks—shallow cuts like that bleed like hell but don’t really do much damage. Why are you acting like this, like Attila the Hun with raging hemorrhoids, setting out to rape and ravage and slaughter.

For a moment, he almost turned back to the girls and unbuckled their seatbelts and helped them from the car. Part of him wanted to. But that part was weaker than the part that repeated incessantly
Get out get out get out
. Even that part knew that Elizabeth’s injury had little to do with the need to be away—away from obsessive Ellen and her obnoxious brood, away from Mitch’s unfeeling superciliousness, away from....

Away from this house!

Admit it, Jay old boy, that’s the real thing. Away from this house. He swallowed convulsively and gestured for Linda to get into the car. As she passed him, she reached out for his arm again, as if she were his mother trying to help him realize for himself the enormity of his mistake before things went too far.

He shook his head. “I know what I’m doing, hon.” He waited until she was in the car, then he returned alone to the front door.

Ellen and Mitch were still in the family room. They were not speaking; they were watching him with an intensity that unnerved him. The boys were gone—whether out back or into the bedroom Ellen and Mitch were using, Jay didn’t know. He didn’t care, either. After the way Thad had acted the first day, after Josh injuring Elizabeth today, he didn’t give a damn if he never spoke to his sister again. He focused his attention on his father.

Abraham Morris looked old and frail in the filtered light. His skin hung loosely from his face, his lips trembled even though he was not speaking, and his eyes darted back and forth, as if he were trying to discover who this stranger was standing in front of him.

“Dad,” Jay said as gently as he could. “Dad, Linda and I have to leave. You understand?”

Abe nodded.

Jay wasn’t sure that the movement meant; there was something about it that suggested his father did
not
understand anything that had happened in the past few minutes.

“Look,” Jay continued, “I’ll call you as soon as we get home. We’ll have you out to our place soon. Maybe later this week. You can come out and stay until New Years if you want. Longer. We’ve got the room. And I don’t like the idea of you staying here in this house...alone.”

Abe’s eyes cleared. His lips stopped their nervous tremors, and when he spoke, Jay heard his father’s voice the way he remembered it from years before.

“I’m fine, Jay. I’ll be fine. You just take care of Lizzy-Bizzy and Anna-banana and Linda, and let me worry about me.”

Jay swallowed. He hadn’t heard his father use those pet names for years.

“Okay, Dad.” He paused, unsure what to say next. “Look, tell Ellen that...tell her I’m...I’m sorry and I’ll call her later, too. When I’ve had a chance to cool down.”

Abe nodded. “That would be wise. I’ll talk to her.”

Jay looked at his father and—on an impulse he would never quite understand but for which he was grateful for the rest of his life—reached out abruptly and threw his arms around his father. He felt the angularity of bone beneath the bulk of Abe’s clothing, and realized anew that his father was old and frail and thin. He hugged Abe with all the strength he could muster, and when the two men finally broke their embrace, both had tears in their eyes.

“Okay, Dad. And...thanks.”

“You drive careful, now. You hear?”

“Sure, Dad.” Jay left. Abe followed a few steps out onto the porch and waved at his daughter-in-law and granddaughters in the car. Then he turned and went inside and shut the door.

“Jay?” Linda’s voice was calm but subdued.

“I’m okay.”

“Should we...?”

“I told him we’d call. We’d have him out soon. For a long visit.” He cranked at the engine, relived that it turned over right away. “For a real long visit.”

Ellen’s family spent that night at her father’s house. Not a word was spoken abut Jay or Elizabeth or Anna. Neither Thad nor Josh was punished in any way, but all three boys were unusually quiet for the rest of the day.

Thad slept alone on the rollaway in the back bedroom. Twice Ellen made her sleepy way down the dark hall to check on noises that had awakened her, coming from that direction. The first time, just before she opened the door, she thought she heard Thad—who
never
talked in his sleep, who always slept like a corpse, barely even shifting his body during the night—cry out. She thought he was speaking, rather than just groaning from too many turkey left-overs at dinner time. But by the time she opened the door, he was silent and still.

The second time came much later, just before the first glimmerings of dawn. This time, for some reason, she woke a few seconds before the sounds filtered through her closed door.

She was up and heading toward Thad’s room before the muffled cries stopped, and this time she was able to step inside just as he fell silent.

“No, leave me alone,” the boy muttered, his new-found bass crackling unpleasantly into a childish treble. “I don’t want to. No!”

When her hand grazed his, he fell silent.

She spent the rest of the night perched on the edge of the rollaway, her hand stroking his long hair. He did not move under her touch.

He did not cry out again.

Later, at breakfast, she asked, “Did you sleep all right, Thad.”

“Yeah,” he answered, almost sullenly. That, at any rate was normal. Thad was a hard waker.

“No bad dreams or anything?”

He stared long enough at her to make her slightly uncomfortable. The rest of the table fell silent, as if waiting for his answer.

“No, nothing like that,” the boy finally said. “It was just…. It…. Sorry Gramps, but, Mom, those stuffed birds are
creepy
.”

Everyone, including Grandpa Abe, laughed at the intensity in Thad’s voice. After a tense moment, during which it seemed as if he might lose his temper—not an unusual occurrence for the teenager—even Thad joined in.

“I mean, every time I opened my eyes, there they were, hanging there, looking like they were about to pounce on me or something. Totally, totally
creepy
!”

The Camerons left before noon. Ellen promised to call her father later that week. They would talk things over, she promised. Maybe he could come down to San Diego for a long visit. A real long visit.

“We’ll see,” Abe said quietly. “We’ll see.”

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, 2005, started out unseasonably warm, but by early afternoon the ocean-driven clouds had invaded the valleys, bringing high winds and the threat of rain. The air was damp, charged with heaviness.

Abe noted the cloud cover as he closed the front door. A car had just pulled out of his driveway, but right at the moment, he couldn’t quite remember whose. It was important to remember; he new that much, but the names, the faces just wouldn’t come.

He leaned against the door. His face was flushed and hot. He shuffled into the kitchen and drew a cooling drink of water from the tap. He crossed to the cupboard and carefully took down a small revolving stand that supported ten or twelve amber plastic medicine bottles, all imprinted with his name. His hand hovered over several as he tried to concentrate.

This one, for sure. He knew that he had to take the little white one. His hand dropped to another bottle. The six-sided red ones? Were they once a day? Or twice? He couldn’t remember for certain, and even when he squinted at the tiny print on the label, he couldn’t be sure. He took one anyway. He took four others as well, washing them down with the cool water. He opened the refrigerator and took a thin slice of turkey from a plastic-wrap-covered tray.

Turkey. It tasted good.

And it reminded him...reminded him...reminded him.... Yes, he would have to get the turkey out of the freezer in the garage soon. Wouldn’t do to have the Thanksgiving turkey still cold and frozen and dead when the kids got there. Ellen should be pulling up any time now, and Jay, with their kids. I’m gonna cook them a dinner they won’t soon forget, Abe reminded himself.

Just to be on the safe side, he took a pad from the kitchen drawer and carefully wrote a note to himself: “Kids coming—Thanksgiving tomorrow.”

He slid the pad back into the drawer and closed it. He looked around. For a moment, he wasn’t sure where he was. He felt dizzy, and his breath was painful as he drew air into his lungs. His arm and shoulder ached. He would lie down.

He went down the hallway, but instead of turning into his bedroom, he continued on to the specimen room. The rollaway was open in the middle of the floor, sheets and covers rumpled at the foot. One pillow lay like something lost on the floor, mostly hidden by the metal framework of the bed. The rollaway. That surprised him. He didn’t remember putting it down, but then he didn’t remember many things nowadays. He sighed. He removed the sheets and pillows, folding them carefully and setting them momentarily on the top of the bookshelf near the door.

It was a chore for him to close the bed by himself, but he finally got the metal hasps on each side locked. After that, rolling the bed back into the closet was easy. He placed the sheets and pillows on top of the metal frame.