by David Beers
Scott sat watching for a few more seconds.
He wasn’t going to call John. He already did that and his son didn’t answer.
Alicia was worried and Scott was too, now. John wouldn’t miss Lori’s anniversary, not ever. His son might be an alcoholic, might be a hard driven executive, might be a lot of damn things … but more than anything, he was in love with his mother. Scott always tried not to think about the things Lori said at the end, indeed, actively pushed them from his mind and went on with his life. He didn’t want to hear them or even think any of it was true.
Those things didn’t matter, though—not when it came to the bond Alicia spoke about.
He and Lori used to argue about it.
“She can tell,” Scott had said once. “Alicia can tell that you love John more.”
He still remembered the hurt that shone in Lori’s eyes. “I don’t love either of my kids more than the other.”
“You can lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to me about it, and you can’t lie to Alicia either. Look, I’m not saying you have to stop loving him—you can’t help that. But you do have to stop showing it so obviously.”
Lori tried. She really did, and in the end, it worked. Alicia appeared to understand their bond but not resent it.
So for John not to show …
And what does that mean, old man? Your son is what your crazy wife said he was at the end of her life? Not a word of rationality came from her mouth in that hospital room, and because John missed a few phone calls and one date, you’re going to believe her?
And she had been crazy at the end. Scott couldn’t deny it.
Scott always hated the hospital room. He hated how clean it looked. He hated the way his wife was confined to that huge bed, the one that moved up and down with the press of a button. He hated the tubes hooked to her and the sounds the machines around her made.
Yet that hospital room had become his home as much as Lori’s. Their kids came and went, staying a long time but unable to sit there like he did. Nor would he want them to. The goddamn room was boring and, more and more, Lori’s lucidity faded when she was actually awake.
“Why?” he had asked the doctor.
“She’s dying.”
“I know that. What I mean is, what inside her is causing her to act like this?”
The doctor looked over to her bed, where she lay asleep. “We don’t know one hundred percent. Lack of oxygen to her brain. Her body putting resources elsewhere other than her consciousness, trying to stay alive. The body will do a lot to keep going.”
Scott had nodded and remained quiet, both of them looking at her.
“Anything else I can do?” the doctor said.
“No. Thank you.”
Cancer took out everyone eventually, that was the way Scott saw it. Unfortunately for Lori, it came early.
She would wake up, her eyes ablaze with some fury that Scott couldn’t understand.
“Where is he?” she said.
“Where is who, honey?”
“John?”
“He’s at home with Diane and the kids.” Scott stood from his chair and walked over to the bed, placing his hand on her thin and pale arm.
“You gotta get him away from the kids, Scott. He can’t be around those kids.”
Scott’s eyes narrowed and his thumb quit rubbing across her skin. “Why would I do that?”
“He’ll hurt them. He’ll hurt them all, eventually.” She breathed heavily, her chest heaving up and down, adrenaline pumping through her dying veins.
“He wouldn’t hurt them, honey. Just close your eyes and get some sleep.”
She rolled her head to look at him, then, eyes still on fire though the rest of her body could barely move. “You don’t know. You’ve never known. I never told you because I couldn’t. I kept it all inside because I love him, but I won’t be here anymore to make sure he stays in line.”
“Shhh,” Scott said. “I’ll make sure they’re all safe, baby.”
She shook her head but he saw the fire dying in her eyes, the energy running through her finally draining. They both kept looking at each other, her looking like she wanted to say something more, but she didn’t. Eventually her eyes closed and Scott stood there alone in the room, staring at his dying wife.
Scott parked his car in his own driveway and slowly got out, his knees aching as he did.
She said other things at other times, though that was the first. And that’s what he was listening to, the words of a woman barely alive.
Why? he asked as he walked up the driveway. How is this different than any of the other times that John went off the reservation? And why do you suddenly think what she said is true?
Maybe I don’t, he responded. But maybe I want to know what’s in that notebook. Maybe she wanted me to read it for a reason.
He put his key in the lock, turned it, and opened the door.
Whatever you find in that notebook isn’t going to make you feel better. At best, you’ll feel more depressed about today, and at worst, you’re going to read the writings of a mad woman, and it might influence how you feel about your son in some way.
I don’t care.
And he didn’t. John didn’t show up to his mother’s grave today and Scott was going to open that journal and see what his wife had to say on the subject.
He shut his mind up, dropped his keys on the end-table, and picked up the journal from the coffee table in front of his couch. Scott sat down and looked at the lovely handwriting, though he didn’t feel the same love that he had when he picked it up from the attic days ago.
He felt chilled all the way to his core, as if his heart no longer pumped warm blood through his body. He felt like he was about to do something that he couldn’t come back from, no matter how hard he tried. Few things in life were forever, but this one might be.
Maybe there’s nothing in there, he thought. It could all have been a hallucination and what you’re going to read are the thoughts of a housewife. Laundry. Cooking. Anger at you because you never helped clean the house.
Scott rubbed the cover with his finger, scared to open it.
But he did.
Dear Scott,
I saved the first few pages of this notebook, leaving it in case I had to create some introduction to this little journal. Then, when I found out I was sick, I decided to fill them up.
First, if you’re reading this, I imagine that I’m dead. It’s weird to write that, writing to the future. I want to say that I love you and that marrying you was the greatest decision of my life. I won’t dwell on it, because much of what’s in this notebook will say it again and again, if in different words.
The next thing I want to talk about is John. Much of this notebook will be filled with my thoughts on him, our son. I won’t go ahead and put it all out on these few introductory pages, because, I want you to go through the process as I did, and then see if you think the same things I did in the end. To put it all out here on one page wouldn’t be fair to you, John, or me.
I do want you to read this. Every word. Because much of what’s in this journal can be forgotten, but not the pieces about John. Those parts, you’re going to have to deal with. I never had the strength to do it; maybe I love him too much. I know that you love him too, but I hope that you’ll do what I couldn’t.
Go ahead and get started, because the sooner you finish, the better off everyone will be.
Yours always,
Lori
12
A Portrait of a Young Man
Years Earlier
“They could never prove she did it,” Lori said. “I’m fairly certain no one even looked. She was at work the whole day; they had her timecard stamps. She always left before he got home, too.”
“But you think she killed him?” Dr. Vondi said.
Yeah, she did. Lori thought Clara killed her father and would have killed Lori too if given the chance.
“There’s no doubt in my mind she did it.”
“But there wasn’t e
ver an investigation?”
“Not of her,” Lori said, “and I certainly wasn’t going to say anything. I was already terrified.”
“What makes you think she did it? I know she was cruel to your father and the relationship was very abusive, but … that’s a stretch to murder, isn’t it?”
Lori knew once she started down this path that she would have to finish. The problem was, she had too many stories. She had too many examples of the evil that was Clara. Evil incarnate, as if the Devil himself donated his seed.
Too many stories, but she came here for her children, not herself. She came here because she was scared that some part of Clara might have transferred to her kids, and now she saw if her dead mother lived in anyone, it was John.
“I had this cat,” Lori said. “I named it Whiskers. I loved that cat, maybe more than any animal I’ve ever had. After my dad died, I … I didn’t have much. I found the cat maybe six months after. I was in therapy—a lot of therapy—and the cat helped. Whiskers.” She smiled as she remembered him. An ugly thing, but always willing to be petted. Lori had loved the way it always rubbed against her leg, purring. Her smile died as she continued speaking, though. “My mother saw that I loved the cat. No way she couldn’t.
“I came home from school again. Seems like every bad thing I talk about in here starts with me coming home from school. I should have just stayed there, huh?” She smiled though with no humor. “Whiskers was in a cage. A small metal one. We had a fireplace next to the TV; I remember it being hot outside that day, because I remember thinking why in the hell would she have the fire on with the heat so bad outside? She stood next to the cage and I knew she was about to do something awful. I knew it immediately.
“She asked me if I liked the cat, but I didn’t answer. I was too scared. She waited a second and then I saw the poker. She had the metal end stuck in the fire. She pulled it out and stuck it between the cage’s bars. That cat screamed in a way that I never thought possible. To this day, I’ve never heard pain expressed so horribly. Clara did it over and over again. I don’t know how many times, but eventually, the cat stopped screaming. Clara dropped the poker and walked off. I remember, I went to the cat but I couldn’t touch it, because steam still rose off its body.”
Lori stopped talking and turned her face back to Dr. Vondi. That’s how she knew Clara did it. That and more stories like it.
“Another true story,” she said.
Dr. Vondi nodded, crossing one of his legs over the other. “I have to ask, Lori, how you made it out as well adjusted as you appear to be? Normally people with those type of experiences, they have deep, deep problems. Things that can’t be fixed a lot of the time.”
“I decided she wasn’t going to win. That she wrecked everything, and would wreck me if I let her. It helped some that I knew she killed my dad.”
13
Present Day
Scott closed the notebook.
He put it on the table in front him, truly not wanting it near him any more.
She wrote that when she was lucid, he thought. She wrote it when she first found out about the cancer. Not at the end, not when you saw her delusional and screaming in the hospital room. She wrote that before the chemo, before she was vomiting blood.
Scott felt his chest moving up and down in huge breaths—not quite hyperventilating, but close to it. He wiped his hands on his pants’ legs, trying to rid himself of the sticky sweat popping on his palms.
He wouldn’t read any more of it, not another fucking word. He didn’t know what she meant with those words, but she hadn’t told him while living for a reason. Because she wasn’t going to lose her son, and whatever she thought, she believed it would destroy John.
So she left it up to him?
Goddamn her.
He sat like that for a few minutes, letting his heart slow and breathing still. He needed to get his body under control unless he wanted to have a heart attack. Wouldn’t that be something, to be found on his couch with his dead wife’s journal in front of him, ready to give up her paranoid thoughts to the entire world when in life, she told no one. Not until the very end.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
You’re fine. You’re not going to die. The old ticker can take more than what you just gave it. Has to be able to, or your body really ain’t worth much.
So what would he do? His wife wanted him to read her innermost thoughts and make some pretty serious decisions about their son, and he was here considering it because his son didn’t show up to a gravesite.
Get ahold of yourself. You’re sounding like Lori used to, worrying about everything.
He looked at the journal, lying alone, her letters staring back at him—practically accusing him of dereliction of duty.
“No,” he said. “I’m not reading anymore.”
If Lori had thought something was wrong with John, then Lori should have brought it up while alive, that or done something about it herself. Over a decade had passed since she died, and despite a few incidents with John, nothing serious occurred. And even those weren’t hospitalization worthy. Or jail worthy. Or whatever the hell Lori was trying to say in that opening page.
Scott picked up the notebook and walked it over to the trashcan. He dropped it in, allowing the cover to swing back in place, hiding him from the accusatory glance of Lori’s dead scrawl.
“We’re going to be careful.”
“Of course we are,” Harry said. “Why do you think I’ve put so much thought into this? I don’t want to get caught, John.”
“I just want to remind you, if things start looking bad, we’re aborting the whole thing.”
“Yes. Yes. Yes.”
John didn’t look over to Harry but he didn’t need to—he heard the exasperation in his old friend’s voice. The two of them sat in John’s car outside of Starbucks. The Starbucks. They weren’t directly in front of it like they had been a few days ago; they parked deeper in the lot, needing to hide themselves as long as possible. To sit in the car looking inside created a chance for people to remember them. Or remember John, but that was the same as remembering Harry.
“Are you ready?” Harry said.
He was ramping up, losing his calm. John had been the one deep inside his emotions this whole time, with Harry remaining cool, but as they moved closer … Harry couldn’t keep up outside appearances. Because he wanted this more than anything else in the world.
“Don’t get in there and start making me do something crazy, Harry. You’ll get in there and fuck it up. If I even think you’re going to fuck it up, I’m gone. You got that?”
“YES!” Harry shouted.
“Good. Don’t start talking either. Just let me deal with everything. Your part here is done, okay?”
“This isn’t my first time, John.”
“Maybe not, but you’re acting like it is.”
John looked to the passenger seat. Harry stared forward, focused only on the man they could both see sitting inside. He had a newspaper laid out in front of him and a small coffee to his right. John had the scene etched into his mind, as he would every single moment of this encounter. He didn’t know if Harry remembered everything as intricately as he did, but from the looks of it, Harry was doing his damnedest.
“Let’s go,” John said, taking the keys out of the ignition.
He opened the car door and stepped out, not looking at Harry or really even thinking about him. His mind transferred to the task at hand, zeroing in on something he had been exceedingly good at since he was a young child. The man in the coffee shop. John didn’t know him, not well, not outside the fact that they both struggled with some pretty large inner demons. It didn’t matter what this man wanted or wished for, though. He walked into something that he would never find a way out of. He walked into John Hilt’s world, one that John barely controlled. He more or less just lived there.
Which was fine, too. Right now. Because the only thing that mattered was what came next.
John entered the
coffee shop, immediately slowing and looking away from Paul. John became just another customer, someone here for a latte and perhaps a conversation. He looked up at the menu behind the counter and put his hands in his pocket.
“He’s to the left,” Harry said from behind John.
“No fucking kidding. I told you to stay quiet.”
Harry didn’t respond and John kept looking forward. The line moved slowly, feeling similar to a theme park line in the middle of the summer … practically not moving, yet at the end the rider knows joy waits for him. John didn’t fidget or show any annoyance. To him, the line was to be expected, something that everyone who came to Starbucks knew would happen … he was no different, because as far as anyone else in here needed to know, he came for coffee.
“Americano, black,” he said when he got to the register, pulling cash from his front right pocket. He wouldn’t pull his wallet out because he didn’t want a chance of someone seeing his ID. He handed over the few dollars cash, told the cashier his name, and kept moving through the line until he finally had the drink in hand.
“Thank God, he’s still here,” Harry said.
John ignored him, remaining focused on the goal. He glanced to Paul, noting the exact place he sat—far against the wall, four tables down. John walked, counting the tables until he was two feet away from the man he came here to see.
“Paul?” he said.
The man turned around and looked up, obviously curious as to who was calling his name.
And then, as he recognized John, he smiled.
The conversation went on for a solid hour.
John could practically feel Harry’s agitation. Harry, the calm one who always scouted everything out and knew where every possible landmine might lay, could barely contain himself. He stood next to the table, looking down at the two of them like an angry god, disturbed that his subjects weren’t honoring his wishes. John didn’t really give a damn. This wasn’t going to be a wam-bam-thank-you-ma’am type deal. John needed to take his time and ensure that everything was kosher before he moved to the next base. You didn’t hit a homerun in this situation. You stole bases. Quietly, so quietly that hopefully no one noticed until you crossed home plate.