Chinese Handcuffs

by Chris Crutcher

  When her body finally slackened, he said, “What happened?”

  “My mother,” she choked out.

  “What?”

  “She came home today, just before I was ready to leave for the game. All smiles and giggly, like a little kid with ‘great news’ for us.” Jen started to cry again. “She’s pregnant. That bitch is pregnant. She’d just come back from an ultrasound. My goddamn mother is pregnant. And it’s a girl.”

  The implications bloomed full in Dillon’s mind.

  “I had convinced Dawn to leave with me,” Jen said. “I finally figured out I have to leave Mom there. If she wants out, she’ll have to do it herself. But now she’s pregnant. And it’s a girl. She waited for the ultrasound to tell us, wanted to be sure the baby was okay. It’s a girl. It’s okay. It’s okay until the minute it gets here. Then it gets my life. I can’t do it, Dillon. I can get Dawn out, but now there’s a baby. A baby girl. I can’t beat him, Dillon. He’ll kill it. He’ll kill its heart, just like he did mine.”

  “We’ll do something,” Dillon said. “I promise we’ll do something. It’ll work. I talked to a guy. There are some things we can do. Really there are. If not, we’ll just steal her. We’ll steal her and go. I promise, Jen. We will. We’ll do something.”

  Jen looked up at him, and for the first time she gave herself over. “Will you? Will you help me? Someone’s got to, Dillon. I can’t go on like this.”

  “I’ll help,” he said. “Now let’s get out of here.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Dear Preston,

  So much for the Ironman for a while. Three Forks, Washington’s favorite renegade triathlete is out of commission. Got me an ankle like a medium-size mushmelon and some serious dental considerations. The ankle is worse. Doc says I’d have been better off to have broken it. Instead, I tore all the ligaments and rendered it as useless as an appendix or tonsils. It’s going to be a good six months before I can do any serious running, though I’ll be able to get into the water before that, and I should be able to do some stationary biking with my other leg if I use a stirrup. Maybe this is a little bit of what you felt like. No. That’s like saying I did Black Like Me by wearing black shoe polish under my arms. Anyway, I should be able to hit a couple of late-summer or early-fall triathlons, though I certainly won’t be at my best. But for now, I’m keeping my ankle above heart level and an ice bag on my lip—over the hole where my left front tooth used to be. Jen kicked that sucker clean out, trying to kill her goddamn self. She been talking to you? She tried to jump off the old water tower down in the regional park, the one you and I used to try to figure out how to get on top of. Ran right out in the middle of a basketball game out at the community college, with me on her tail, only she didn’t know it. This was not what the professionals call an adolescent vie for attention. This was serious shit. She beat me half to death, trying to get to do it. I’m glad she didn’t have your Luger.

  I found out some things about myself that night, Pres: I got a good look at my physical limits. When the stakes are high enough, I can take a lot. And I learned something about stakes. If I’d lost her, if I couldn’t have pulled her back, then I really think I’d have gone with her. I can’t have another suicide. Not on my watch. It’s just too ugly, leaves me with way too much that can’t be fixed and too much hate for myself—too much wondering what I could have done, what I should have seen coming. If life is important, then god damn it, it’s important, and people have to do everything they can to keep it going when they get the chance. Their own or anyone else’s. And it must be important or everyone wouldn’t be making such a big deal about it. I guess it doesn’t do a whole lot of good telling you that.

  Telling a big enough lie to cover the events of that night hasn’t been all that easy, and it’s way too much to hope anybody believes it. I mean, Jennifer Lawless ran out in the middle of a basketball game, and it wasn’t just a basketball game, it was a tournament game, and it wasn’t just a tournament game, it was a tournament game she was winning almost single-handedly. I want to tell you before she split, she was kicking butt.

  We didn’t go back to the gym. Both of us were freezing, and I could barely walk, and I couldn’t think of a good enough explanation so Jen could just walk back in out of the cold and take up in the fourth quarter where she’d left off in the first. Besides, even if I had been Papa Hemingway and able to concoct such a story, Jen wasn’t interested. So we went to our place—Dad was out of town for the weekend at Uncle Brad’s in Seattle—and made some hot chocolate and called Coach’s answering machine and left a message for her to call when she got back. Then I gave Jen some gym shorts and a tank top and got a dry swimsuit for myself, and we hopped into the bathtub, which Dad has turned into one of those two-seat Jacuzzis, and we cranked up the heat while I iced my ankle out over the edge, and somehow we got our body temperatures back above the hypothermia level.

  So I said, “How come you tried to kill yourself and I’m the one that’s almost dead?”

  Jen didn’t answer. You suicidal types don’t have all that great a sense of humor, you know that? I remembered back on the water tower Jen had told me what set all this off was she found out her mother was pregnant and it was a girl. They tested, I guess because she’s old, and they wanted to make sure the baby’s okay. Jen is sure that this new kid’ll have the same kind of life she has if she’s going to be raised by T.B. I told her back there that we’d do something. In fact, I said if we had to, we’d steal the baby when it’s born.

  I put my arms around Jen and pulled her back against me, and she didn’t resist. “I wasn’t just hollering to keep you from jumping back there,” I said. “We’ll do something. This has all gone way too far.” I went on to tell her some of my conversation with Dr. Newcomb, the psych guy I told you about in the last letter, and she at least listened this time, didn’t stand on her idea that nothing would work. Maybe she was just too tired.

  “Tell me what you want to do when Coach calls,” I said.

  She said, “I want to pretend we’re not here.”

  “We can’t do that. Not to Coach. She’s got to be worried sick.”

  “I know,” Jen said. “But that’s what I want to do. Tell her I’m okay and I’ll talk to her tomorrow. Before the game.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t tell the team what’s going on, and if anyone finds out what really happened, I’ll end up in the psych wing at Sacred Heart.”

  I know it sounds selfish to think about my own position in all this, what with Jen a heartbeat away from joining you in Teenager Heaven and a district basketball championship hanging in the balance and that asshole T.B. on the loose in the world, but I’m in a tough spot. This is suicide we’re dealing with, and I’m in no way competent to deal with that. I proved that conclusively once before, don’t you think? I fix injuries and fine-tune bodies, not psyches. But the pros have had a go at this one, and all they do is mess it up. I lay awake all that night thinking. Part of me knew this is way too big for me to handle alone, but another part knew I could push Jen right over the edge by telling the wrong people. Everything I do has to be protected, and the people who could help me the most were the people who could mess it up the worst—Coach and Dad. But the alternative, like I said, was to try to handle it myself, and like I said, I’m a body man.

  I realized something else. I know the distance I’m willing to stick my neck out has vastly increased because when I was on top of that water tower and I really thought I might be going over if I couldn’t get her to help me pull her back, my commitment to stop all this expanded exponentially. Crazy as it sounded, I didn’t rule out killing him. And I wouldn’t do it like the kids who’ve tried so far—doing the deed, then throwing themselves on the mercy of society and the courts. No way, Red Ryder. If I did it, no one would know. When I thought of it up there on the tower, no one in the world except Jen even knew I have a reason to hate him. The few times I’ve even spoken with him have been civil as the day is long. I didn’t l
ike thinking about that too much, though, unless I couldn’t find any other way, ’cause I gotta tell you, bro, when I thought about it, I liked it too much.

  I think the thing that finally got to Jen up on the tank the other night was when I yelled at her that if we had to, we’d steal her mother’s baby and run away. That’s still a possibility. I don’t want to, though; I hate the idea of starting my Life After High School as a felon with a family. I mean, think of it. There I’d be, going on nineteen, with a baby and a girl friend who can’t even be my girl friend, and not clue number one about how to raise a kid. I’ve read enough—and the shrink out at the college was real clear about this, too—to know that people who have been sexually abused all their lives don’t make for the best parents, or partners, right out of the chute, and my guess is Jen has a lot of work to do before she can have a regular life.

  But I’ll steal that baby before I’ll let Jen die. I will, Pres.

  What a lot of people don’t know—or don’t remember—is that I have an ace in the hole. Well, maybe not an ace, but at least a pretty good face card. Okay, maybe it’s an eight. Anyway, I’m going to have a choice of citizenships pretty soon. Remember, I was born in Vancouver, B.C., when Mom and Dad were up there for a vacation, so I’m going to have the opportunity to be a Canadian citizen if I want to. If I have to run, that’s where I’ll go because if I do get caught, they’ll have a tougher time getting me back and I can work there if I’m a citizen.

  So I’ve been thinking about all this. I know when things start to move, they’ll move fast. I don’t want to get caught like I did the other night. If I’d been a second slow in a couple of key spots, I’d be looking through my closet deciding what to wear to Jen’s funeral.

  But first things first, and now I’m caught in the middle of a lie. I did what I promised I wouldn’t: I told. I had to do something, if for no other reason than as I lay there, Jen asleep in my arms, I knew I couldn’t keep the responsibility to myself. I decided to tell only one person—either Coach or Dad, but not both. What finally tipped the scales was I figured Coach has probably put up with more bullshit in her life about “inappropriate” sex if she’s ruled out marriage, so she’d be the one best able to see that going to the so-called authorities isn’t always the smart thing to do. The other thing that helped me make up my mind was that she trapped me. That Coach, she’s as smart as ever.

  The story we ended up telling her over the phone about Jen’s early departure from the game and my looking like I’d been run over by a truck was that Jen had had some kind of chemical imbalance and got so disoriented she just stumbled out into the night. A passing car picked her up and rushed her to the hospital. I got hurt chasing her: slipped on the ice, sprained my ankle, and smashed into a tree, tooth first. Lame. I’ll bet you’re thinking a guy as smart as I think I am could come up with a better story than that overdosed on Valium.

  Coach accepted it over the phone—way too easily, if I’d thought about it; the story had more holes than an octopus’s bowling ball—and asked me to come in the next morning and help her with the uniforms, that she’d get the physical therapist from the college to look at my ankle and give me a second opinion.

  When I got there, there were no uniforms and no physical therapist. Surprise.

  I said, “Aren’t teachers supposed to be truthful and honest, especially when dealing with the fragile psyches of adolescents?” hoping to get in one little bit of humor before it all hit the fan.

  “Adolescence has nothing to do with it,” Coach said. “I’m honest with people who are honest with me. I wasn’t honest with you because I wanted to get you here. I’m about to be honest with you, though, because you’re about to be honest with me. What the hell is going on?”

  “You’re not going to swallow the chemical imbalance theory?”

  Coach stared.

  “I made it up in virtual isolation,” I said. “It sounded good, but I couldn’t test it.”

  Coach stared.

  “Jen tried to kill herself.”

  Coach’s expression didn’t change. “Tell it all.”

  So I did. I started with her real dad and then T.B. and told everything I knew: about Jen’s fear to leave and her horror at staying; about her fear that her sister is next; and finally about her goddamn pregnant mother. I made sure that at least every fifteen seconds I mentioned the fact that even though people who were supposed to be able to help knew, they didn’t help.

  Coach let me spill my guts, didn’t interrupt or ask questions until I was finished.

  Then she said, “We have to be very careful what we do next, Dillon. What happens next has to work. You’re right. Jen doesn’t have many chances left.”

  God, Pres, it felt like someone lifted a Buick off my shoulders to have Coach with me. I swear this woman is like Allstate. I just burst into tears. I sat there in that chair and cried like a baby. There aren’t many people in the world with big enough arms to hold me. I’ve seen too much and gotten too tough, but Coach moved over to my chair and laid my head against her chest and put her arms around my shoulders—she even shielded my fat lip—and just held me and let me cry, and I thought it would never stop. I had no idea that was all in me. Part of it was you.

  When I was done, she moved around to my back and massaged my shoulders while she talked. “We’ll go with the chemical imbalance story,” she said. “I can fix it up so it sounds a little more likely. I’ve got to tell the paper something; they’ve been hounding me all morning. If you see Jen before I do, tell her things are business as usual, that I want to see her an hour before regular dress-down time tonight just to make sure I think she’s ready to play. You best spend the day getting that ankle taken care of and working on explaining your missing tooth. Looks nice, by the way, but you might want to see a dentist.”

  I said, “Thanks, Coach. . . .”

  She motioned me toward the door. “Get out of here. Stay with Jen. If anything goes wrong I’ll be here or at home. Call. If you have to, call 911.”

  I started to hobble out the door, and Coach offered me a set of crutches that were standing in the corner. “Dillon,” she said as I slid them under my arms, “we’re against the wall here. I’m breaking the law by not reporting this, and you’re taking on an enormous responsibility. There’s not a shrink in the world who wouldn’t have her hospitalized. We’re on instinct here. Don’t screw up, okay?”

  I said okay. It’s a strange thing to be trusted that much by an adult. I’m not sure I like it. If you fall with that responsibility, there’s no net.

  So things are pretty lively down here. You shouldn’t have left so early. We have a couple of plans, so this story could turn downright riveting. Stay tuned.

  Dillon

  CHAPTER 15

  T.B. Martin was a scanner. He could smell trouble at least two steps ahead of the nearest hound dog. That was why, he knew, he was such an effective lawyer: because of his uncanny anticipation of his foe’s next move and his uncanny knowledge of the location of his opponent’s jugular. If he’d been granted a choice to be any other animal on the planet, he’d have chosen the shark, at least from what he knew of sharks. Sharks never stopped, always on the watch, always looking out. It was that quality in sharks that struck fear in the hearts of humans, and it was that quality in sharks that T.B. respected so.

  And there was trouble now. He hadn’t been at the game the other night, the one in which his bitch stepdaughter had run out, but he talked briefly with her about it and with her mom, and he read the account in the newspaper. He knew damn well no chemical imbalance sent her out into the cold in the middle of an important basketball game. No, something was brewing, and it was about him. He hadn’t survived this long and come this far being slow. No way. Mrs. Martin raised no fools.

  Women were so stupid! It’s a wonder there were enough of them left alive to help propagate the race. You couldn’t get a decent response from any of them without the employment of terror, but once you did that, you had them. Look
at his wife. For years he had to beat her, had to get into a rage just to deal with her, to stop her infernal clinging and whining. But she was under tow now. Just knowing his rage kept her in line. And Jennifer. If it hadn’t been for that dog, he might have had more trouble with her, but once he’d crushed his stupid cute little skull into the pavement, well, that was that.

  He hadn’t spent his childhood locked in closets and tied to his bed doing nothing. He’d thought. In utter darkness he had figured out the world. Even his mother had been a stupid bitch, thinking she would “teach him a lesson once and for all” with her idiotic disciplinary tactics, when all she had really done was make him stronger. And those lightweights she brought home. Fools telling her they could help her get her kid under control. All they had done was prepare him well for life. He was grateful, really, though he’d never let any of them know that. And he didn’t have to tell his mom. Good old mom was long gone. Bad car accident. No brakes. How sad.

  But something was wrong now, something more immediate. He wasn’t too worried. Certainly he had fielded Jennifer’s lame attempts at exposing him before, but if she ran out of a basketball game, well, at least it needed to be looked at.

  Dillon hopped from his bedroom to the top of the stairs when he heard the back door open and close, and his father lay a sack of groceries on the kitchen counter.

  “Dad? That you?”

  “You know anyone else with a key?” his dad called back. “Of course it’s me. How ya doin’? Leg any better?”

  “A little,” Dillon said, helping himself down the stairs by the banister and hopping across the living room rug to the kitchen door.

  “Doc said you were supposed to use the crutches,” Caulder said. “Says you slip and bang that thing or step on it accidentally, and you’ll likely be crippled up for an extra three weeks.” He caught himself. “Hell,” he said. “It’s your foot.”