I didn’t want to take crap that made me feel bad. Erin and Alec wouldn’t take pills that made them feel sick. I needed rest, not meds. They all got mad at me when they found out I hadn’t been taking what I was supposed to. It was my secret, for me to know and for them to find out.
Chapter 37
‘Arrogance is tough to stomach, and a douchebag is annoying. Put them together, and you’ve got big trouble because an arrogant douchebag is fucking dangerous,’ said Mike on the way home from their fifth and final visit to Avon. The weekend had been a disaster, and Erin and Mike both acknowledged that they were dealing with something really bad.
The minute they had arrived in Avon, they noticed a marked change in Quinn, for the worse. The last time Erin had laid eyes on her sister had been that past Christmas in New Jersey, close to seven months before. Since then, all communication between them had been on the phone.
Physically, Quinn had gotten extremely thin. The hollows of her cheeks were sunken. Her hair was stringy and uncombed, and her clothes looked dirty like she had picked them up off the floor. Erin detected dried food crusted on the front of her sister’s sweater. Quinn had always been meticulous about how she looked. Now, her sister was tentative, nervous, and at times, confused. Her voice was flat, almost robotic. Her sister was fading away before Erin’s eyes.
Conversely, from the moment Mike and Erin arrived, Alec was at high velocity. He knew everything. His opinions were right and theirs, if they differed, were wrong. When he spoke to Quinn, he was dismissive and condescending with a look on his face that screamed, ‘I’m superior to you in every way’.
Between Alec’s constant lectures and Quinn’s withdrawn behavior, the weekend felt like a month to the two visitors from New Jersey. Mike endured Alec’s opinions on politics, religion, guns and people at the university he thought were jerks. Erin and Quinn spent most of their time in the kitchen cooking while Erin gently coaxed Quinn into telling her what was going on.
‘Something’s wrong,’ said Erin. ‘You’re distracted, you’re not acting like you. I’m worried, Quinnie. You’ve lost too much weight. Maybe you should be seeing someone.’
‘I’ve got a lot going on,’ said Quinn. ‘If I can get more rest, I’ll be okay. You don’t always have to play big sister, you know.’
‘That’s my job,’ replied Erin, more concerned than ever.
With the girls sequestered in the kitchen, Mike was left to fend for himself with ‘the doctor’. He had long ago developed his survival strategy for Alec; agree with anything he said, no matter how ridiculous.
On the Sunday afternoon of that weekend, Quinn went upstairs to take a short nap, giving Erin a window to talk to her brother-in-law. She quietly asked Alec what he was doing concerning her sister’s treatment. Alec looked at Erin with a smirk on his face.
‘What am I doing?’ he replied. ‘You don’t get it. I’ve been carrying your sister for years. I’ve done everything. You know how hard it’s been for me? It’s about time Quinn helped herself for a change. I can’t fucking breathe for her.’
‘She’s got an illness,’ Erin said, her voice rising. ‘I live six hours away, or I’d take care of her myself. She needs a better therapist, not that crappy clinic you send her to so you can save money. Her medication has to be monitored and you have to make sure she takes it. You need to look after her. Alec, you need to take this seriously.’
‘Take it seriously?’ said Alec. ‘Screw you, Erin. You come up here, all high and mighty, like a Monday morning quarterback and tell me I’m not doing the right thing. Screw you.’
It took every part of Erin’s being to keep from lunging across the room at her brother-in-law’s throat. He was destroying her sister through neglect and he knew it, and didn’t care.
When Alec verbally attacked Erin, Mike stood up, ready to pummel his brother-in-law. For a second, Erin thought they were going to go at it. Trying to bring the temperature in the room down, she pleaded with Mike to sit down and turned her attention back to Alec.
‘I’m sorry I got so upset,’ she said calmly. ‘We all want the same thing, for Quinn to get better. We need to get her into better treatment and then make sure she follows exactly what the doctor prescribes. She cannot be left to her own devices.’
From the expression on Alec’s face, she could tell her words were falling on deaf ears. It was obvious he no longer cared what happened to Quinn. That was when she understood everything. He only cared about her sister when she was beautiful, perfect, sexy Quinn. Unhinged and confused Quinn was of no interest to him. It didn’t matter that she was the mother of his children and they had been together for twenty-three years. For better or for worse was not a vow he had any intention of keeping.
Part III
OUR BREAK-UP
Chapter 38
It started out as a regular Saturday morning. Erin had just finished her first cup of tea and was reading a movie review online. The phone rang, it was Quinn.
‘Hey, Quinnie,’ Erin chirped into the phone. ‘What’s cooking up there in the boonies?’
‘Nothing,’ Quinn said quietly. ‘Just hadn’t talked to you in a few days.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Erin asked, suspiciously noting her sister’s flat voice.
‘Nothing.’
‘Quinn?’
‘Well…’ she began slowly, pausing slightly between every other word, ‘I called to tell you that my husband of over nineteen years, Alec, has decided he doesn’t want to be married to me anymore. He’s determined he doesn’t love me and thinks it’s best that we get a divorce.’
‘Divorce?’ Erin shouted into the phone.
‘He said he’s not happy being married to me and has decided I should move out,’ she continued, matter-of-factly.
‘Are you sure he meant it?’ Erin said. ‘Maybe he was just upset about something.’
‘Apparently,’ said Quinn calmly, ‘he’s in love with one of his students from the university. He said that I’m fat, old and stupid and he’s wasted enough of his life on me.’
‘That bastard, like he’s some kind of prize?’ Erin shouted even louder, causing Mike to come racing into the room. Quinn began to cry and free associate with a string of questions and statements interspersed with sobs.
‘I don’t understand. What did I do wrong? I love him, Erin, I love him. I can’t live without him,’ she sobbed. ‘I don’t know what to do. Where am I going to go? I don’t want to be alone. Why doesn’t he love me anymore? I did everything I was supposed to do. What about my kids?’
As far as Erin was concerned, no one hurt her little sister, ever. Quinn’s pain was palpable, and Erin’s instinct was to protect her and make the pain go away. She wished she could reach through the phone and put her arms around her and tell her everything would be alright. Quinn cried and cried until she was too tired to weep anymore.
‘He was never good enough for you,’ Erin said quietly.
‘You didn’t like Alec?’ said Quinn in disbelief.
‘Not really.’
‘But you were always so nice and friendly to him, always joking and laughing.’
‘Because he was your husband,’ Erin said. ‘I made the best of it. We all did.’
‘No one liked him? Oh my God,’ said Quinn. ‘Why?’
‘When we were young he was okay but as he got older, he became more of an arrogant jerk,’ Erin replied. ‘He had all those whacky political ideas and the emotional mentality of someone with an arsenal of assault weapons in his basement.’
‘How did you know? He does have assault rifles in our basement,’ Quinn said, surprised that her sister guessed.
‘Figures. Now I hate him even more.’
‘What about Mike?’
‘Mike can’t stand him,’ Erin said. ‘After our last visit to Avon, Mike was done.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Quinn asked.
‘Because you seemed happy-ish. I thought he would take care of you. But he never did. Now, the gloves are off.�
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‘But I still love him,’ Quinn wailed again. ‘I don’t want to be by myself.’
For over two hours Quinn went from tears to anger and back to tears. Her sister tried to comfort her by pointing out Alec’s shortcomings. Now that she didn’t have to hold her tongue, Erin let it rip and prayed they didn’t reconcile down the road. If that happened, she would be persona non grata after all the smack talk she did about Alec that day.
Erin reminded her sister of an incident at their parents’ house a few Christmases before. Alec, Quinn and Erin were in their parents’ TV room. Quinn’s kids were around fourteen and fifteen and were playing some kind of shooting and killing type of video game. Erin’s kids were watching a movie in another room. Quinn’s son, Jack, and a friend were blowing up and killing fictional people in their game.
‘Do you think it’s healthy for kids to play such violent games?’ Erin asked Quinn and Alec. ‘I don’t let my kids play that stuff.’
Alec looked over at his sister-in-law, and she saw arrogance creep across his face. She knew he was about to enlighten her on something.
‘When boys play video games it prepares them to defend our country, so they’re ready if they are ever called to serve,’ Alec said confidently. ‘Video games hone weaponry skills and make them better and stronger soldiers.’
Erin started to laugh, thinking it was one of Alec’s pranks. Even that deadpan look on his face was undoubtedly part of the joke, she thought.
‘What’s so funny?’ Alec said. ‘I’m not kidding.’
‘Come on, Alec,’ Erin said as she looked over at Quinn for support. ‘Quinnie, he’s joking, right?’
Quinn looked at Alec and then back at her sister.
‘We both feel that video games develop young men’s shooting skills and ultimately make them better soldiers,’ Quinn had said, looking at her husband for approval.
‘Do you remember that conversation, Quinn?’ Erin said into the phone.
‘I don’t know what I was thinking,’ said Quinn laughing a little. ‘He had me so confused. He’d get so angry whenever I didn’t agree with him, so I always did.’
‘What do you mean he would get so angry?’ Erin asked, antenna going up.
‘He pushed me around and screamed at me all the time but mainly when nobody was around.’
‘Did he hit you?’
‘Not a lot.’
‘What’s not a lot?’
‘He mainly shoved me against the walls and screamed in my face but sometimes he’d push me down onto the floor and pull my hair or twist my arms. One night, he locked me out of the house. Another time he locked me in the hall closet.’
Erin couldn’t stop her once the floodgates opened, and Quinn’s dirty little secrets came pouring out. That morning, Erin learned the truth about her brother-in-law and was thankful there were hundreds of miles between them, because she surely would have killed him, or at the very least, put him in a wheelchair.
Alec was dumping her little sister for one of his students. She hated her brother-in-law more than ever but at the same time, was relieved Quinn would finally be free.
Chapter 39
Joan Hemmerly didn’t feel like going all the way over to show the apartment if the woman on the phone was looking for a palace. It was just a plain vanilla box, but some prospective renters had such unrealistic expectations.
‘It’s nothing fancy,’ she warned Quinn Roberts. ‘Just your basic one-bedroom apartment but it has lots of closets, and the neighborhood is safe and sound.’
Quinn assured her that the location sounded ideal and the landlady agreed to meet her there later that day to show her around.
When Joan Hemmerly first laid eyes on Quinn, she thought the woman looked half-starved. Within the first few minutes, Quinn told the older woman that she was getting divorced and needed to find a new place to live, to start over.
‘There’s no shame in divorce,’ the landlady said. ‘Heck, I got divorced, too, before I married my second husband. Most of the people I like are divorced. No sense in staying with someone if you don’t get along. Especially, if they’re ornery like my ex. He was a bad one. Nasty and mean, especially after he had eight or nine beers.’
The two women talked a little more about the difficulties of marriage while they walked up the uneven wooden stairs to the apartment on the second floor. The landlady said the minimum rental was six months and she needed a two-month deposit up front.
The two women entered a spacious foyer, big enough to double as a dining room. The empty apartment had been freshly painted white. The kitchen was to the left and the living room to the right. On the far side of the living room was a hallway with two doors, one to the bathroom and the other to the bedroom. Quinn walked around the living room and then over to the windows and looked out.
‘You get a nice view from here,’ the landlady said, trying to sell the younger woman on taking the place. She’d already decided Quinn would make a great tenant. From the landlady’s perspective, Quinn Roberts was mature and appeared to be quiet and clean, not like those two young hooligans she had in there before. Those two were a pain in the ass, she thought. They were always breaking things, making noise, and bothering all the other neighbors. At one point, her other tenants threatened to move out if she didn’t get rid of those young guys. When their lease was up, she didn’t renew. Quinn Roberts, on the other hand, wouldn’t scare a mouse or make any trouble. She’d be a model tenant.
Quinn walked through the entire apartment and opened every closet and cabinet several times.
‘Plenty of closet space, too,’ Mrs. Hemmerly said, giving her the hard sell. ‘And there’s a little market in walking distance, so you don’t always have to get in your car. Kenny’s Kwik-Mart is just a few blocks over.’
‘That’s nice,’ Quinn said. ‘I like to walk.’ She circled the apartment one last time and said she’d take it. She wrote the landlady a check for the first month’s rent along with the deposit. Joan Hemmerly pulled out her lease, and they cut a deal right then and there.
‘Well,’ the landlady said, handing her the keys, ‘I hope you make a great start here in your new life. I have a good feeling about you. I’m a southern girl, and in the south, we listen to our gut. My friends say I have a sixth sense about people and I have a good feeling about you. You’re going to be just fine, honey.’
Quinn looked up at the landlady and flashed a big smile. Look how pretty she is when she smiles, thought the landlady. Her husband must be a real asshole. Most of them are.
Chapter 40
Alec had chaired the History Department twice, and after twenty years of teaching at UR, he was considered by his peers to be an expert on twentieth-century European history. His dissertation was called ‘The Rise of the Third Reich in a Complacent Europe’.
He’d never come out and say it, but weirdly, Alec admired what the Nazis had accomplished in only a few short years. That was a side to World War II that he wanted his students to understand.
‘Germany had been ravaged and decimated after a massive defeat in World War I. An entire generation of German men had been killed leaving only old men and young boys,’ Alec said to his freshman class. ‘The Treaty of Versailles created economic sanctions and conditions that tied Germany’s hands from moving forward economically. There was no money, work or food and the people were desperate until an Austrian artist told them there was a way out, and there was hope.
‘In less than a decade, Hitler built momentum and Germany was on course to take over the entire continent,’ Alec continued. ‘If the United States hadn’t finally gotten involved, and they might not have if Roosevelt, who was by nature an American isolationist, had gotten his way, Hitler would have been successful.’
‘Why didn’t Roosevelt want to get involved?’ a student asked.
‘Roosevelt wanted no part of it; as far as he was concerned it was a European war, and he had no plans to intervene,’ Alec explained. ‘If the Japanese, who were aligned with Germa
ny, hadn’t bombed Pearl Harbor, America probably would never have sent troops to Europe. You could say that it was the Japanese who caused the Third Reich to fall. When the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, America had to get in. At that point, Hitler was only weeks away from taking over Europe.’
Alec wanted his students to understand and appreciate the good as well as the bad.
‘Good guys are not a hundred percent good, and bad guys aren’t all bad,’ he’d say every semester. ‘To prevent the rise of another Hitler, we have to acknowledge the qualities and strengths that had enabled him to do what he did and amass so much power. The Germans didn’t start out following a monster.’
The students loved debating this concept, and his classes got into some pretty wild discussions. Most of the kids liked his classes, and they filled up fast. His students told him he made them think about things from a different perspective.
‘I guarantee you,’ said Alec to one of his colleagues, ‘none of these kids ever looked at the positive side of Adolf Hitler before. I can see it on their faces as their little minds grapple with that concept.’
That was one of two reasons Alec Roberts loved to teach. He enjoyed watching the light bulbs go on inside the students’ heads and found it a real rush to mold a young person’s mind.
The other reason was that he got to spend his days standing in front of a room filled with girls who were eternally twenty-years-old. No matter how old he got, the girls were always young, dewy, curious, thin and supple.
One or two female students per semester started the dance, resulting in at least one student ‘relationship’ each term. There were always plenty of willing volunteers and, it was common knowledge that spending a little extracurricular time with Dr. Roberts dramatically improved a girl’s GPA. He didn’t know it, but he was the easiest A on campus.
I Am Quinn Page 12