Next To You (25 page)

***

The dog barked intermittently from his bedroom prison. Alex held a folded square of gauze to his throbbing nose as he wandered down the hallway to the living room, inspecting the new furniture and pictures of her parents. Annoyed there wasn’t a single photo of Drew anywhere, he rifled through the few pieces of mail Caroline had left sitting on a side table—bills, domestic abuse flyers, junk mail. He flipped through her nearly empty address book, and rifled through her collection of DVDs.

Caroline and her goddamn movies
.

Her phone rang. She’d left it beside her purse on the striped couch. Gauze pinching his nose, Alex answered the call, lifting the device to his ear. ‘Hello?’

‘Pardon me. I must have misdialed,’ a man said politely before hanging up.

That polite voice was one he’d heard before, whispering beside his ear. Alex knew the phone would ring again in a moment or two.
So, she’s giving it to that genetic fluke
. The phone let out an electronic jangle. ‘Hello?’ Alex said in a sleepy voice.

‘I’m sorry. I’m not sure I have the right number. May I speak with Caroline Jones, please?’

‘You’ve got the right number.’ Alex said quietly. ‘She’s sleeping right now.’

‘May I ask with whom I’m speaking?’

‘This is Alex.’

‘Alex. I see.’

‘Who is this?’

‘I think you know who it is.’

‘Could it be the circus attraction,
Mr. Casper
?’ Alex sniffed. ‘Well, sorry
Mister
Casper, we’re still in bed and she’s still asleep.’ He ended the call. His smug smile made him wince.

Grinning and wincing, he walked back to the bathroom. He was examining his nose in the mirror when Caroline returned with the peroxide. ‘It stopped bleeding,’ he said.

‘You still need to see a doctor, maybe get a tetanus shot,’ she said.

Although it had stopped bleeding profusely, blood still oozed from the tip of Alex’s nose. The dog’s bite hadn’t punctured the nostrils, but the skin below the bridge of his nose and the rounded tip had been lacerated. He leaned over the sink again. She poured a slow trickle of peroxide over the wound. Alex sucked air between his teeth as liquid and flesh bubbled. He fought the urge to screw up his face because it would crinkle up his smarting nose. Instead, he straightened stiffly, turned in a half circle, reached for Caroline’s wrist, and squeezed.

When he looked up, she’d backed into the basin, making the face he wished he could. The pit of his stomach twirled in on itself. She set the peroxide on the edge of the sink and the monstrous things he’d spent time contemplating seemed hallucinatory, feverishly unreal and so very distant, though it had only been five days since he’d stood outside the diner and deliberated murder. He ached and that ache astounded him. He needed her and that hadn’t changed. That wasn’t ever going to change.

‘Alex you’re hurting me.’ Caroline tugged against his hold.

‘I’m sorry for that.’

‘I bet you are.’

His hand slid from her wrist to separate her fingers between his, and he looked into those funny grayish-green, blue-flecked eyes of hers. ‘I am. More than you know. More than I can say.’ For a moment it was as if nothing had ever changed between them. He saw that flicker through her eyes as well, and he leaned towards her, the sink behind her, with a familiar heat traveling up his neck, his bloodied face descending closer to hers.

‘Alex, don’t.’

His lips touched hers.

She jerked back, shoving him away. ‘I said
don’t
!’

‘Caroline … I didn’t mean …’

‘Sure you didn’t.’

‘Honestly I—’

‘Go.’

‘Look, I’ve been insanely angry for so long and I’m trying to do the right thing here.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘that wasn’t the right thing.’

‘Please. I want to explain. It’s still there. You know it is. You feel it too.’

‘No. I don’t.’ She pushed her hair behind her ears. ‘You can’t make
this
go away by trying to sleep with me. Things don’t work that way. Regardless of what you still think, sex is not a band aid for anguish.’

‘That’s not what I was trying to do.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘You’re sleeping with your next-door neighbor. Doesn’t that make
you
feel better?’

‘I’m not sleeping with anyone. And why should it make a difference to you if I was? What business is it of yours?’

Alex didn’t believe her for a second. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I know I’m out of line here. I know I am. I know I have … for Christ’s sake, this has all been so confusing. Nothing ever seems to get sorted out because the pain overwhelms us and then we get pissed off. Acute stress disorder, postpartum depression, what a crock of shit I thought that was. You thought so too, but maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know. I can’t sleep. I have obsessive thoughts, some of them so incredibly sadistic I don’t know where they came from. I don’t seem to have any good feelings about anything anymore. I thought you … I thought your stretch at Linden Oaks would
cure
something for you, but you’re still so remote, so unreachable. I thought it would settle my mother, I thought it would satisfy me, and I’d be able to forget about Drew like you have.’

Her mouth sagged. ‘I haven’t forgotten about Drew,’ she said.

‘He was so young. So young. I’m an open lava pit and you’re as unaffected as that Australian woman who said her baby was snatched by a dingo. You’re still so blank.’ His shoulders rose and fell. ‘How do you do it? By God I swear I’m not trying to be vicious here, I am just so tired of living this way. Tell me what it is you’re doing because I’m all over the place, Caroline. I thought about hurting you. I thought about hurting you
a lot,
and I almost did. I came so close. I can’t live like this. I can’t be this way anymore. Can you help me? Can you help me get to where you are, to that numbed, frozen unfeeling part?’

‘Blank?’ Caroline looked at him, at the enduring squally agony evident behind his gray-blue eyes and knew he would always blame her. He had that entitlement. And yet … ‘Why is it that there’s this expectation, this idea that a person has to react, that they have to deal with grief is some particular way, that they have to carry it around with them at all times, forever and ever? My spending time in Great Oaks was a perfectly acceptable response to the tragedy in my life. Losing my mind was a satisfactory reaction for losing a child, but I am only allowed to recover as long as I still behave as if I am weighed down by inconsolable grief or guilt. Why? Why do you think that?’

‘Because you’re not the Caroline you were before.’

‘And I never will be again.’ She rubbed a hand across her forehead. ‘I’m not numbed or unfeeling. I feel five things all at the same time. There are times I can’t figure out which thing I feel is the most important, and it’s almost overwhelming, but I keep going on. I’m not wearing my guilt or my grief on my shoulders. You don’t have to like it, and I don’t have to behave in some way you, or your mother, or anyone else thinks I
should
. Keep your expectations of how I’m
supposed
to be. I am going on. I was ill. I was institutionalized. I live with what happened, with what I did, with where I was. Mental illness is stigmatized in society, but I’m not ashamed I got help. I needed help to grab life by the balls, and I don’t want to grab your balls, Alex. I want to grab my own balls. I want a normal, average life. You don’t know how much I want to be humdrum, ordinary, unremarkable, and just plain run of the mill like everyone else. I still need help, so I can’t help you.’

‘Yes, you can.’

‘No, I
can’t
. You need to talk to someone professional.’

‘I want to talk to you.’

‘But I don’t want to talk to you. See a doctor about your nose, and find a therapist, see a counselor, talk to a priest. Tell them what you told me. Maybe then we’ll be able to talk to each other.’

***

Caroline watched from the bay window. Alex got into his old Mustang and drove off south, toward home. She let the dog free and sat on the couch in the living room.

There was a basket filled with photo albums under the side table. A hazy spot of chocolate ice cream had dried on the table’s top. She rubbed the mark with a dampened finger, then pulled a thick blue leatherette album from the basket, opening it in her lap. She wasn’t quite sure why she she’d opened the book when looking at them last time had been an acid bath dissolving away flesh and bone.

Surprisingly, the wedding photos were easy, but the photos of Drew as an infant, the ones where his red hair stuck up in tufts, the shots of him on the beach with Alex, those images remained caustic—yet only enough to only sting.

She turned the pages, looking at Drew. He had been so young in the captured-in-time images, and so young when he’d died, and she waited to hear his cry, that thin horrible cry, but it never came, and she realized she was smiling. She was smiling because, instead of remembering the dismaying, soul-destroying pieces of her past life, she remembered having fun with the Jones boys, and she laughed.

Then she laughed harder because she couldn’t decide if she was happy-laughing over happy memories, or relieved-that-she-wasn’t-a-sniveling-mess laughing, or absurd-laughing because Alex had wanted her help. Maybe she was gurgling with laughter because—

The phone rang beside her with an electronic jangle and she jumped. Coughing, she stared at it on the sofa cushion. When the phone rang a third time, she picked it up. ‘Hello?’

‘Hi, Caroline.’

‘William?’

‘Yes.’

His voice sent a flutter of tiny wings up her spine. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Is it late or early?’

‘It’s both early and late for me. Did I wake you, were you napping?’

‘No, no.’ Caroline dabbed at her watering eyes and nose. Coughing again, sniffling, she wiped under her eyes. ‘I just came in with Batman. It’s chilly outside.’

‘You’re not crying?’

‘Okay, sort of,’ she said. ‘I was laughing so hard I cried a little.’ He was quiet. She thought they’d lost the connection. ‘William, are you still there?’

Will sighed. He imagined the sound traveled from India up to the satellite link and bounced from relay station to relay station, until it reached Caroline’s cell phone. ‘I’m still here,’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’

She sniffled again. ‘Alex was here. He was upset and I was upset, and then it was all so funny.’

Will sighed again, harshly. ‘He always upsets you,’ he said, and then his mouth got away from him. ‘Every time you see him he upsets you. Do you know he has no respect for you? Do you understand that?’

‘He’s angry and has a right to be.’

‘I think the man is volatile and you ca—’

‘I hurt him when Drew died, William. I took away something very precious to him and he has every right to be angry with me. It’s justified.’

‘His behavior toward you is justified? You can’t really believe that.’

‘Sometimes I don’t know what I believe, but I can only blame myself.’

‘Caroline, if … if …’
If only you would open your eyes a little wider
. This was going nowhere and Will could hear her sniffling, so he pressed his lips together.

‘If what?’

‘I don’t know. It must be late. I forgot what I was going to say.’

She sniffled. ‘Batman bit Alex, got him right on the nose.’

Will chuckled. ‘What a smart little dog.’ A second later he heard Batman’s
warf-warf
-
warfing
.

‘Sorry, William,’ she said. ‘Someone’s at the door. I think it’s Bonnie. Can you hang on a second or can I call you back?’

‘No, no. It’s okay. I called because I can’t sleep, and I thought I’d let you know
Gilligan’s Island
seems even funnier in Hindi. Blow your nose before you answer the door. I’ll see you in a couple of days. Okay?’

‘All right. Bye.’ Caroline ended the call and crossed to the entry. She made the dog sit before she opened the door to Dennis and Arch.

Both men wore concerned frowns.

Batman moved into the space between the two guys. He gave them both a good sniff, his hackles slightly on end. Once he decided they were no threat, he wandered back to the edge of the rug and kept an eye on things.

Dennis bit his bottom lip as he smiled. ‘Hi, Caroline. You doing all right?’

She nodded. ‘Yeah, I’m fine. Would you like to come in?’

‘Love to,’ Arch stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans, crossed the open threshold, sauntered into the living room and proceeded to look around. ‘Nice. This is such an improvement over Reginaldi’s Aqua-Velva fifties Rat Pack retro décor.’ Arch grimaced. ‘Aw, crap. I forgot he was your uncle. I’m sorry. Mouth, meet foot.’

‘He does that all the time, Caroline. It just pops right out, especially when he’s worried,’ Dennis walked into the living room and stopped beside the overstuffed armchair.

Arch plopped onto the couch. He picked up the photo album Caroline had left open on the cushions, paging through it.

‘Would you like some coffee?’ Caroline said.

‘No, thank you.’ Dennis gestured casually. ‘Bonnie sent us up here, you know. Will told everyone you had a stalker, some dude who can’t bear to let you go. He asked us to be on the look out for him. Bon said your dog bit him, and you brought him upstairs to clean him up. We saw him leave, but she wanted us to make sure you’re okay.
Are
you okay?’

‘Hey, Denny, these boys here have the same hair as you!’

Dennis turned to look at the photo Arch held up. ‘Is that your family, Caroline?’

Nodding, her mind stuck on
Will told everyone you had a stalker
, she remembered Alex saying:
You sicced your boyfriend on me
. Clearly, William thought very little of Alex, but telling people he was a stalker, even if he’d admitted to following her a few times, was irritating … sweetly gallant, and completely absurd.

‘Who’s this boy?’ Arch pointed to a photo with the title handwritten below.
The Big Boy on his Birthday 2001

Caroline glanced at the image Arch held up. ‘That’s Drew.’

‘And this handsome lad?’

‘That’s Alex. My stalker.’

Chapter 11