Cul-de-sac

by Joy Fielding

  “Goddamn, son of a bitch,” Nick mutters, marching from the room.

  Her hands shaking, Dani fills a glass bowl with warm water and Tyler gingerly drops the fish inside.

  “Is he gonna be all right?” Tyler asks. “Is he bleeding?”

  “He’s not bleedin’. He’ll be fine. See? He’s swimmin’ around, all happy.” Dani looks toward her younger son, seemingly frozen to the spot. “Oh, honey-pie. Are you okay?” She kneels down and takes him in her arms.

  “Your face is bleeding.”

  “It’s nothin’. Just a little scratch.”

  “What did you do to make Daddy so mad?” Ben asks.

  Dani collapses on the floor. “Oh God,” she says, the force of her son’s words stronger than any blow to the head. “I didn’t do nothin’, darlin’. Your daddy was just a little upset….”

  “Trying to turn my sons against me now, are you?” Nick says, reentering the room.

  Dani gasps when she sees the .22 in his right hand. “Nick…”

  “It wasn’t enough you poisoned the neighbors against me. Now you’re trying to do the same thing with our boys.”

  Dani scrambles to her feet. “Please put the gun away, Nick. You’re scarin’ them.”

  Nick’s gaze vacillates between Ben and Tyler. “I’m not scaring them. Well, maybe Goldilocks here a little bit. But not Ben. You’re not scared, are you, Benny-boy?”

  Ben shakes his head, although his eyes remain frozen wide with terror.

  “You go back upstairs now,” Nick tells his sons. “Mommy and I have some unfinished business to take care of.”

  “I’m not leaving Mommy,” Tyler says.

  “You will, if you know what’s good for you.”

  “Mom?” Tyler cries, his eyes darting between his mother and the gun in his father’s hand.

  “What are you asking her for?” Nick demands. “I just told you to do something. Now do it.”

  “Go on, possum. Take Neptune with you. I’ll be up soon.”

  “You heard your mother. Now, unless you want me to flush that goddamn fish down the toilet, I suggest you get your ass out of here.”

  “Go on, boys,” Dani urges.

  “And don’t worry about your mom,” Nick says. “I’m not going to shoot her.” He laughs. “Gun’s not even loaded.”

  The boys take a final look at their mother, then leave the room, Ben running, Tyler more slowly, carefully cradling the bowl with Neptune against his chest.

  “Well, what do you know?” Nick says, examining the gun in his hand. “I lied. It is loaded.”

  “Oh God. Nick, please…”

  “Oh, don’t go getting your panties all in a knot. I meant what I said. I’m not going to shoot you. Not till I figure out a way to dispose of your body without getting caught, that is.” He laughs. “I’m joking,” he says, although his eyes say otherwise. “Besides, right now, I’m kind of turned on. It seems I’ve got all this excess energy you’re going to help me take care of. Aren’t you, darlin’?”

  “Sure, Nick. Whatever you want.”

  “That’s my girl.” He walks toward the den, the gun dangling carelessly from his fingers. “I’ll just put this baby away and be right with you. Now get upstairs and make yourself pretty for your husband.”

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Aiden sits in front of the TV in his living room, watching his mother sleep on the couch beside him. The television is on, tuned to some awful British series about the lives of a bunch of boring people speaking in posh accents he can’t understand, talking about things he couldn’t care less about.

  And neither, it would appear, can his mother, since she fell asleep half an hour ago.

  Still, he can’t risk waking her up by trying to change the channel. If she wakes up, she’ll want to talk, and he doesn’t want to talk. Not to her. Not anymore. God knows they’ve talked enough. He doesn’t want to hear any more of her negative thoughts about Heidi.

  So instead, he watches his mother sleep and wishes she were dead.

  That would solve all his problems. His money worries would be over. He would no longer care about disappointing her. He wouldn’t give a good goddamn whether she was happy or not.

  Heidi would come home.

  He leans forward, checking on the gentle rise and fall of his mother’s breathing. Her head is back, her mouth is open, a strange whirring sound, like a tiny motor, emanates from somewhere deep in her throat. For a second, he wonders if she’s his mother at all, if it’s possible she’s been replaced by some sort of unfeeling alien being, like what happened in that old black-and-white movie he and Heidi watched on TV a few months back.

  Or maybe she’s a robot, he thinks, and laughs softly. Maybe she was never human at all.

  That certainly wouldn’t surprise Heidi, Aiden thinks, extricating his phone from his pocket and clicking onto his wife’s Instagram, flipping from image to image: Heidi inhaling a colorful bouquet of spring flowers, Heidi walking along the beach, she and Aiden wrapped in each other’s arms in front of a spectacular sunset, Heidi proudly displaying the chicken dinner she’d prepared for his mother.

  God, he misses her!

  He wonders what she’s doing, if she’s happily ensconced in front of Shawna’s TV, enjoying her Real Housewives. Or maybe she and Shawna are out at a bar or a club; maybe she’s letting some guy buy her a drink or lead her onto the dance floor; maybe she’s relishing her life without him.

  Without Lisa.

  Maybe she doesn’t miss him at all.

  He tried speaking to her at work, going around to Lola’s Lingerie yesterday morning, but Shawna informed him that Heidi would be in the storeroom all week doing inventory and was unavailable. When he’d gone around again after he finished work, he was told she’d already left, even though she was staying with Shawna and Shawna was still there. “It’s probably better if you don’t keep coming by,” she’d advised him. “Give Heidi some space. She needs time to think.”

  Except, how much space? How much time?

  What exactly is she thinking about?

  People don’t separate to get back together, his therapist told him this afternoon. They separate to get divorced.

  Is that what Heidi is thinking about? Asking for a divorce?

  There were always three people in your marriage, the therapist had elaborated. And that was one person more than Heidi had signed up for.

  Clearly, Dr. Patchett said, the time had come for Aiden to make a choice: his mother or his wife?

  Except it wasn’t quite as easy as the good doctor made it sound.

  His mother had made it clear that if he got back together with Heidi, she’d be forced to take drastic measures, if only to save him from himself. She would cut him off financially. She’d write him out of her will. She’d put the house up for sale and stop the monthly payments on his car. She’d even stop funding his weekly visits to the therapist.

  “Do you really think that girl is going to stick around once she finds out you’re broke?” his mother had asked. “Trust me, darling. She’ll be gone in two seconds flat. And don’t come crying to me then, because it’ll be too late. You’ll be on your own.”

  Aiden understands that his mother isn’t bluffing. Indeed, the more he thinks about it, the more certain he is that she means every word she says. And he realizes that the best solution for all concerned would be for his mother to die.

  Although his mother might disagree.

  He laughs and jumps to his feet, as if trying to distance himself from such thoughts. Lisa stirs, her mouth opening and closing, like a fish. But her eyes remain shut and the strange little whirring sound from deep in her throat soon resumes. Aiden goes upstairs to his room and sits on the edge of his unmade bed, staring at his phone and willing Heidi to call.

  Miraculously, she does. Aiden answers imm
ediately. “Heidi?”

  “Hi,” she says.

  “I’m so glad you called. I think about you every minute of every day—”

  “Can you talk?” she interrupts.

  He knows what she’s really asking is whether his mother is within earshot. “Yes.”

  “Let me guess. Lisa fell asleep in front of the TV.”

  “Out like a light.”

  “And you’re…?”

  “In the bedroom.”

  “How are you?” she asks.

  “Miserable.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Come home,” he says.

  “I want to.”

  “Then, come.”

  “I can’t. Not while she’s there.”

  “I know.”

  “So, what do we do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do.”

  He smiles. “That’s what Maggie said.”

  “What do you say?”

  Aiden rubs the space between his eyes. “That my mother isn’t the problem,” he acknowledges. “I am.”

  “What do you want, Aiden?”

  “I want you.”

  “It’s not just me anymore,” Heidi reminds him.

  “I want you and the baby.”

  “Our baby.”

  “Our baby,” he repeats. “That’s what I want. That’s all I want.”

  “That’s all I want,” Heidi echoes.

  There is a moment of silence. “You have to understand that she’ll take back everything—the house, the car…”

  “Let her. I don’t care. We’ll figure it out.”

  Another silence, this one longer than the first. Aiden pictures himself sneaking along the dusty, bombed-out streets of Kabul, no clear idea where he’s going or what he’s supposed to do. He jumps to his feet, sweeps the image aside with a wave of his hand.

  He’s not in Kabul anymore.

  And he knows exactly where he has to go.

  What he has to do.

  “I love you,” he tells Heidi.

  “I love you, too.”

  Yet another silence, this one longer than the first two combined. Aiden fights to keep his resolve strong.

  “I’ll call you later,” he tells her.

  “I’ll be here.”

  The line disconnects. Aiden sits on the side of his bed, staring at the phone in his hands, his breath stabbing at his chest like a knife. Does he have the courage to do what needs to be done?

  Another unbidden image floats across his mind’s eye: his father on the day that he left. Aiden watches him come into his room and close the door, his head down, his broad shoulders hunched forward in defeat. Lisa is screaming obscenities from the hall. He’s there to break the news he’s leaving. “I’m so sorry, Aiden,” he says, his voice as clear now as it was then. “Please understand. I’ve tried everything.”

  “Can’t you try harder?” the child Aiden pleads.

  “Sorry, buddy. I got no ‘try’ left,” his father says. “It’ll be better this way. You’ll see. For everybody.”

  “Please don’t go.”

  “Hey. It’s not like we won’t see each other anymore. I’m still your father. I’ll see you every week.”

  “Can I come with you?”

  “I wish you could. But we both know that your mother would never allow that. You’re the one thing in her life that makes her happy. And you want your mother to be happy, don’t you, Aiden?”

  You want your mother to be happy.

  Aiden closes his eyes and the image disappears. His father responded to his recent overture on Facebook, although Aiden has yet to reply.

  Why not? What is he so afraid of?

  “It would be too upsetting for my mother,” he remembers telling his therapist.

  “And not upsetting your mother is more important to you than seeing your father?”

  Than being a father?

  “What are you doing, sitting there?” Lisa asks from the doorway.

  Aiden jumps at the sound of her voice.

  Lisa laughs. “Somebody was very deep in thought.”

  “You have to leave,” he says, his words sliding out between barely parted lips, his voice so soft he’s not even sure he spoke the words out loud.

  “What did you say?”

  Aiden straightens his shoulders, stares directly into his mother’s eyes. “I said you have to leave.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Lisa tells him. “I’m not going anywhere but to bed.”

  “I choose Heidi,” he says as his mother swivels toward the hall.

  She stops, turns back. “Then you know the consequences.”

  Chapter Fifty-three

  It’s almost three o’clock in the morning and Dani is still awake. She props herself up on one elbow to stare at her sleeping husband through eyes swollen almost shut from the steady flow of her tears.

  She’s been crying for hours. Sometimes it feels as if she’s been crying all her life.

  “What are you crying about now?” Nick had demanded earlier, climbing off her back and wiping himself off with a tissue. “You want the boys to hear you? Is that what you’re trying to do?”

  “No, Nick.”

  “Good. Then get cleaned up and come back to bed. Tomorrow’s a busy day. First thing in the morning, you’re going to go next door and tell your new best friend that if she so much as breathes a word of her unfounded accusations to anyone, we will sue her ass from here to eternity. You understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “I have half a mind to just go over there right now and shoot the bitch.”

  Dani had said nothing, overwhelmed by a combination of relief and guilt. Relief because, for once, Nick’s anger was directed at someone else, guilt for the relief.

  Now she peers through the darkness to study her husband’s face in repose. He looks so peaceful. So calm. There’s no tension in his jaw, no snarl in his lips, no trace of fury in the set of his shoulders. Maybe the latest cycle is complete and the worst is over. Maybe once they find a new house, a new environment…

  “You’re fooling yourself if you think anything’s going to change,” she hears Maggie say.

  She’s right, Dani acknowledges, slipping out of bed and tiptoeing down the hall. She checks on the boys, first Ben, then Tyler. Both are asleep, Tyler curled into a fetal position, Ben on his back, his arms shooting out from his torso like limbs from a tree.

  What would happen if she were to rouse them, tell them they were leaving, warn them not to make a sound? Would they ask questions? Would they protest? How far would they get before Nick got wind of what they were doing and came after them?

  “Nick’s never gonna let me leave,” she’d told Maggie. “He’ll kill me for sure.”

  “He’ll kill you anyway.”

  Not if I kill him first, she thinks.

  The first time Dani remembers consciously considering killing her husband was at the shooting range. She’d thought of it again after the first time he sodomized her, and every time he’d struck her after that. Still, it was one thing to fantasize about something, another thing entirely to make that fantasy a reality.

  Could she do it? Could she kill another human being, especially someone she once loved, the father of her children, for God’s sake, even in self-defense?

  Does she really have a choice?

  Dani hurries down the stairs, through the kitchen, and into the den. She can’t afford the luxury of thought. If she thinks about it, she’ll lose her nerve. Just do it, she thinks, recalling Nike’s famous motto and stifling a laugh. Not exactly what the company had in mind. She walks directly to the cabinet filled with her husband’s impressive collection of weapons.

  It’s locked.

 
She pulls on its glass door, but it doesn’t budge. “Damn it,” she whispers, crossing quickly to the desk, her shaking hands locating the key in the top drawer, then promptly dropping it, watching helplessly as it bounces along the carpet and disappears under the leather couch. “Damn it,” she says again, louder this time, as she falls to her knees and stretches out prone on the floor, her right arm reaching out in front of her, the palm of that hand searching blindly for the key beneath the sofa.

  It feels like forever until she finds it, although it is likely that only a few seconds have elapsed. Her fingers wrap around the jagged piece of metal as she pushes herself back to her feet. In the next instant, she is fitting the key into the lock and opening the cabinet. Seconds later, she is holding the .22 her husband was brandishing earlier.

  “I lied,” she hears him say. “It is loaded.”

  She checks to make sure the bullets are still in place. Can she do it? she wonders again. Can she really march back up the stairs, put the gun to her husband’s head, and end this misery once and for all?

  “Oh God,” she moans, as she approaches the bottom of the stairs. She stops, her tears resuming their seemingly endless flow. She might be fooling herself if she thinks Nick is ever going to change, but she’s fooling herself even more if she thinks she’s capable of killing him.

  Dani stands at the bottom of the stairs for several long seconds before lowering the gun to her side and walking back to the den, returning the gun to the cabinet and locking the cabinet door. She’s returning the key to the top drawer of the desk when she hears footsteps behind her.

  “Oh God,” she mutters, closing her eyes and bracing her body for the blow she knows will follow.

  “Mom?”

  Dani spins around. “Oh my God. Tyler! What are you doin’ up?”

  “I had a bad dream. I went into your room, but you weren’t there. I was afraid Daddy hurt you again.”

  “No, sweet pea. I just couldn’t sleep, so I came downstairs,” she improvises. How much has he seen? “How long have you been standin’ there?”

  “Just a couple seconds.”

  Dani walks to her son’s side and takes his hand. “Well, what do you say we go back upstairs and get back into bed, try to get some sleep?”