Thinking about his daughter brought a frown to his face. He hated being apart from her so much, but he didn’t know what else to do. He loved Diana and he wanted her in his life. If he could only convince her to do something like get a job, maybe he could scale back on his own hours and spend some more time with Mary. Actually, he could spend more time with Diana and her kids as well. They could be a real family, do things together. He could take them on trips; they could do normal family things together. He could be happy.
He made a right down Elm and yawned. As much as he loved Diana, he hated arguing with her about this. He’d tried bringing it up to her, tried to convince her he just couldn’t take working like this anymore, but she wouldn’t hear it. She told him if he really loved her he would just shut up and go to work like a real man and provide for his family. She had uprooted her life in Ohio to be with him; she’d made plenty of sacrifices already, especially with her children. Couldn’t he sacrifice a few extra hours for them? When she put it to him that way it made sense, and Ronnie would back down. But lately he’d been mulling it over and the more he thought about it, the more fucked up it was sounding. It wasn’t until he was bitching about Diana at work while on the assembly line when his co-worker Mark Shank overheard him and said, “Well, shit man, maybe she’s just stringing ya along. You know, digging for gold and all that.”
Ronnie’s first impulse had been to punch Mark but he’d resisted. In a way, what Mark said made sense.
He was thinking about this now as he turned down his street and pulled up in the driveway and killed the engine. Diana’s car was safely inside the closed garage and as Ronnie got out of the car feeling tired and achy, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye.
He almost jumped back but relaxed when the form solidified into a recognizable face. It was Cindy, his ex-wife.
And just as quickly as he recognized her, so did his anger rise. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked, making no effort to lower his voice.
Cindy stepped forward. She looked like shit. Her hair was a stringy mess and it looked like it hadn’t been combed or washed in days. She had gotten super skinny. Her tattered jeans barely clung to her bony hips, and she was wearing a long-sleeved black T-shirt with some kind of white tribal design that snaked up the arms. Her eyes were large, the pupils wide, and Ronnie could see that her face had broken out with some bad acne. Evidence that she was on something. “I had to see you,” Cindy said, rushing up to him, clutching his arm. Ronnie pulled away from her and she clutched at him again. “Please Ronnie, you’ve got to listen to me!”
“Do you know what time it is? It’s three in the fucking morning!”
“I know what time it is but you’ve got to listen to me,” Cindy said, lowering her voice a little. “This was the only way I could think of getting in touch with you. I’m sorry if—”
“Go home, Cindy.” Ronnie felt wide-awake now. Confrontations with Cindy always did that to him, and he brushed past her and started walking toward his front door.
“Ronnie!” Cindy ran after him and grabbed his arm, pulling him back. “Listen to me!”
Ronnie yanked his arm out of her grasp and now his anger flared. He resisted the urge to yell at her, especially this late at night, and it was a good thing he was now more awake to keep his anger in check. If he’d still been dead tired he would have yelled at her. “Get the fuck off my property!”
“Diana is harassing me and she’s threatening our daughter,” Cindy said. “I’m scared for Mary and—”
“You’re fucking crazy!”
“Listen to me!” Cindy pleaded, and for a moment there was something in her voice that got to him, something that got through the hard exterior of his stubbornness and suggested there was a hint of truth in what Cindy was trying to tell him. But then it was quickly gone as he took in her physical appearance. “I know it was stupid of me to call her back and fight back with her, but I’ve been trying to stay away from her and she keeps calling me and saying the most awful things about me and Mary and—”
Ronnie snapped. He leaned forward, jabbing his index finger at Cindy. “You think I’m going to believe the ravings of a lunatic like you? You’re a drunk, drug-addict psycho bitch, Cindy! You make shit up all the time, you always fuck things up, and you go looking for trouble. I know you, okay? I know from experience so please spare me your bullshit, okay?”
“Please, just listen to me for once in your life!” Cindy was actually crying. He could see the tears streaming down her face. “I know I’ve fucked things up between us and there’s no chance for us getting back together, but this isn’t about that. This is about Mary and—”
“You still think we can get back together? You’re out of your fucking mind.”
“—it’s about her welfare. You’re never home and I’m sure Diana paints a totally different picture of what happens during the day and she’d probably deny everything anyway and—”
“Goddamn right she would, because she doesn’t have the time to mess with you,” Ronnie said. He was quickly growing bored with this charade.
“Did you know Diana’s threatened our daughter? Do you know she’s called me and threatened to have Mary whipped to within an inch of her life and to sell a tape of her screaming to child molesters?”
“You’re sick!”
“She’s done more than that. Look at this.” Cindy pulled a photograph out of her pocket and held it up. Ronnie squinted at it. It was Cindy’s first grade school photo, and somebody, Cindy most likely, had taken a red pen and drawn a butcher knife across Mary’s throat, complete with blood spilling down her shirt. Ronnie drew in a breath of surprise. “Jesus, Cindy, what the hell is wrong with you?”
“Aren’t you listening? Diana sent this to me! It had a Reinholds postage stamp on it and—”
Ronnie grabbed for the photo but Cindy was too fast for him. She pulled back and they grappled for it. Ronnie’s right hand encircled Cindy’s wrist, squeezing. “Give me that picture you fucking bitch!”
“No!” Cindy struggled, her body thrumming with what felt like live wires. She doubled over, the hand gripping the photo drawn up against her chest. “Ronnie let me go!”
Ronnie reached down with his left hand to try to pry Cindy’s arm back. He was getting that picture. If he could get that picture, he was calling in sick tomorrow and going to the lawyer with it to try to convince him to end the supervised visitations. If Cindy was drawing pictures of knives stabbing his daughter he didn’t want her around Mary at all. “Give me that fucking picture, you bitch!”
The front door of the house opened but Ronnie didn’t notice. “Give me that fucking picture!”
Cindy lashed out a kick that connected with Ronnie’s left shin and he automatically loosened his grip on her wrist, enabling her to jerk away. She scampered back to the sidewalk. Ronnie was just about to chase after her when he noticed Diana standing in the doorway to the house. He hesitated, torn between wanting to chase after Cindy and going into the house. The brief hesitation was enough time for Cindy to run crying to her car, which was parked two houses down.
Ronnie stood on the driveway and watched while Cindy hobbled to her car. He could sense Diana behind him, standing in the doorway. They watched as Cindy got into her car and then drove jerkily down the street, turning down Fir drive and heading out of the development.
When Cindy was gone, Ronnie turned to Diana, who stood waiting for him in the doorway. He walked up the walkway to his front porch. Diana was watching the taillights of Cindy’s car recede in the distance. “What did she say to you?”
“The same crazy shit,” Ronnie said, dismissing Cindy with a wave of his hand. He motioned Diana inside the house, shut and locked the door behind him. “I don’t really give a shit about her. All I’m really interested in now is one thing.”
Diana turned to him and smiled. She was wearing a red satin bathrobe, and the front was loose enough to show the tops of her breasts. “And what’s that?”
�
�What do you think?” Ronnie said, taking Diana’s hand and leading her to the bedroom. He didn’t even bother to turn off the lights in the living room. Diana was ready for him; the bedspread was down, and the candles she had placed on saucers and candelabras around the room were already lit. Once in the bedroom he disrobed and joined Diana in bed and he fucked her twice and passed out three hours later, sleeping until one p.m. the following afternoon. He didn’t even think about Cindy or what she’d told him. He didn’t even ask about Mary. And when he woke up the next morning and got ready for work the only thing he could think of was that he couldn’t wait till his shift was over so he could get home and fuck Diana again.
EIGHT
IT WAS SATURDAY morning and it was already promising to be a beautiful fall day.
Elizabeth loved October. It was her favorite month. It reminded her of childhood, of running through fallen leaves, the crisp chill promising winter and Halloween. Most of her association with autumn was because of Halloween, which was her favorite time of year. The daytime temperatures had been in the low sixties during the week and the nights in the mid-forties. Occasionally thunderstorms rolled in, bringing rain and wind and thunder and lightning, but they were quickly gone within an hour. And sometimes at night when the wind kicked up and blew around the eaves, Elizabeth would snuggle in bed and think about her childhood, of reading the dark fantasy of Ray Bradbury (she still owned her tattered paperback copy of The October Country, which she’d discovered when she was ten), playing with her friends in the neighborhood, making Jack-O-Lanterns, creating elaborate Halloween costumes. And even when Halloween was over, its magic touch remained with her for the rest of autumn as it slowly gave way to winter.
Elizabeth stood at the kitchen sink emptying the dishwasher. Eric was upstairs in his room playing with a game he had gotten for his last birthday and Gregg was in the basement working out. Elizabeth had spent most of the morning drinking coffee and watching the news, with occasional forays into reading the latest Stephen King novel. She and Gregg had made remarkable strides in their relationship since their blowup two weeks ago. Gregg had even started making inquiries at the Fulton Opera House for next year’s season. He’d been invited to send a resume, which he did a few days ago, and she was certain he would be called for an audition. Today they had talked about going into Lancaster and running around, visiting the mall, maybe taking in a movie and dinner. She had mentioned this to her mother earlier in the week and Mom had offered to take Eric for the evening to give her and Gregg the evening to themselves, and Elizabeth thought she was going to take her up on it. In fact, she was going to give Mom a call right now and
The phone rang and she closed the dishwasher and answered, thinking to herself, You beat me to it, as she saw her mother’s name and phone number flash across the LED readout of the Caller ID system. “Yello!”
“Hello Elizabeth,” Mom said. “How you doing?”
“I’m doing okay. What’s up?” Mom sounded tired, like she’d been up most of the evening.
“Okay, I guess. Didn’t get much sleep last night. Mary spent the night last night and is probably going to spend the weekend over here.”
“Oh?” Elizabeth frowned. Ever since Diana moved herself and her brood into Ronnie and Mary’s house (because it was her brother’s house after all; he paid the mortgage, and she was pretty certain his name was the only one on the deed), they seemed to think Mom and Dad ran a free babysitting service. Lily and Mary were dumped off at their home every other day. They were there every weekend it seemed as well. Elizabeth had objected to Ronnie taking advantage of their parents that way, but had remained silent. It was Mom’s issue, not hers, and Laura had simply smiled and accepted the kids readily, but lately Elizabeth could tell her mother was not happy at being taken advantage of. Diana would drop the kids off while Ronnie was at work, claiming she had to go grocery shopping or run errands, and she’d be gone for six hours or more at a time. They didn’t mind sitting for Mary, but Diana seemed to expect Mom and Dad to watch Lily all the time. Her father wasn’t happy with that, and had remarked to Elizabeth a few weeks ago he felt they were being forced to accept Lily as one of their grandkids. Dad was getting ready to burst at the seams but Mom was holding it in, trying to be diplomatic about it. Elizabeth knew her mother was trying to make the best of a bad situation, but in her opinion she was doing anything to be accommodating. Whenever Mary stayed over, Lily always wound up at the house, too. “So you had the kids last night then?”
“Just Mary,” Mom said.
“Oh, so Diana let you get away with just having Mary, huh? How hard was it to get her to keep her own kid at home for a change?”
“I’ll have to tell you all about it. Think we can come over for a little bit?”
There was something in the tone of Mom’s voice that told Elizabeth there was more to what happened last night than Mary simply spending the evening with her grandparents. Something had happened, and Mom didn’t want to talk about it over the phone. “Sure. Come on over.”
“Good, because I have quite a story for you. Think Gregg can take the kids somewhere for an hour or so while we talk?”
“Yeah, I think I can arrange that,” Elizabeth said, now brimming with curiosity. “Come on by.”
“Okay. I can be there in half an hour.”
When Elizabeth hung up the phone she replayed the conversation back to herself. No, she hadn’t been imagining things. Her mom really wanted to talk to her in private. Something serious must have happened last night. Maybe Diana and Ronnie were breaking up!
Brimming with anticipation at hearing her brother’s new romantic relationship was falling apart, she headed downstairs to talk to Gregg about the latest development in the day’s plans.
BY ONE THIRTY P.M. the house was clean, and Gregg had taken Eric and Mary to Chuck E Cheese for an afternoon of pizza, soda, and video games. Mom had arrived with Mary thirty minutes after they’d gotten off the phone as she’d promised, and Elizabeth smiled at Mary as she came in the house. “Hey Mary, how’s it going?” Mary had smiled and gone over to hug her Aunt, but Elizabeth could tell something was different about the girl. Both Mary and Laura appeared tired, but it also looked as if a tremendous weight had been lifted from their shoulders. Laura’s hair was down and she wearing a grey sweater. Mary was dressed in blue jeans, a white blouse, and a blue jacket, clothes mom kept on hand at the house for her. Elizabeth had told Gregg something was going on with Mary and asked if he could take the kids somewhere for an hour or so while she talked to Mom and Gregg had readily agreed. Eric had come downstairs when Mom and Mary arrived, and fifteen minutes later he was out the door with his father and cousin, piling into the Explorer for an afternoon of games and pizza. Elizabeth had still been fiddling with house cleaning and her mother joined in, making idle chatter as they finished. When Elizabeth suggested brewing a pot of decaffeinated coffee, Mom sat down at the kitchen table and looked out the sliding glass doors that led out to the porch. “Coffee sounds fine, honey. I probably need it. Make it the real stuff, too. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“So what happened?” Elizabeth got the coffee out of the refrigerator and poured the fresh beans into the grinder.
“Well, Mary called last night around eight o’clock crying. She wanted Jerry to go out there and pick her up.”
Elizabeth nodded as she ground the beans, and then emptied the coffee into a fresh filter-lined percolator. She poured a full pot of water into the coffee maker, musing over this. Mom had related a week earlier that Mary had taken to calling her grandparents, often in tears, begging to come over and spend the night. Jerry would go over to Ronnie’s house to get her, and Diana would talk him into taking Lily with him, which only made Mary change her mind about wanting to come over, causing Diana to banish them to Jerry and Laura’s anyway. Elizabeth thought it was pathetic Diana was forcing her own child on her parents when their own granddaughter clearly wanted to spend time with her grandparents alone. Mom had told her
last Friday that Mary wasn’t happy whenever she came over with Lily. “Diana pushes Lily on us whenever Mary wants to come over and it almost feels like we have no choice but to take her. And I don’t want to take her every time. Every once in a while is okay, but not all the time. She isn’t our grandchild, but...”
I don’t want to offend anybody, Elizabeth had thought, finishing her mother’s sentence. That was the trouble with Mom. She didn’t like to rock the boat. She didn’t like to offend people. She’d let people walk all over her before she would lift a finger to stand up for herself, and she and dad were paying for it now. Elizabeth remained silent through Mom’s recitation of those events last week, and now as her mother sat in her kitchen waiting for the coffee to brew she suspected the subject of Lily always being pushed on them whenever Mary wanted to come visit her grandparents by herself had finally come to a head.
“Well, you know Jerry and I haven’t exactly liked the idea of Lily always coming over whenever Mary wanted to come spend time with us,” Laura said. She was sitting at the table gazing out at the backyard. “I could tell Mary didn’t like having her around because she became more clinging toward us. She actually started carrying her blanket around and sucking her thumb again last week.”
“Really?” Elizabeth frowned again. Mary had a security blanket from the time she was a year old until just last year, when she turned six. She had also sucked her thumb well into her sixth year.
“Yes,” Laura said. “So last night when Mary called I’d just about had it. I mean, I was really at the end of my rope. And I know it isn’t fair to be angry at Mary because it’s really Diana I should be angry at. She doesn’t show those kids any attention whatsoever, and she’s always dumping them on us whenever she damn well feels like it. Well, when Mary called last night she started crying right away and I cut right though and said, ‘Now Mary, stop it! You have to stop this crying right now and just calm down. You’re fine, I know you don’t like it over there but it’s just something you’re going to have to get used to’. And Mary wouldn’t stop crying. She insisted on coming over, practically begged to come over, and there was something in her voice that got to me, so I told her I’d have her grandfather go over and get her. And when I got off the phone with her, I told Jerry to bring Mary home and to not bring Lily over no matter how much she cries and begs to come over and no matter what Diana says. And Jerry’s just about had it with the situation too and he said, ‘Don’t worry about that. I really don’t give a good goddamn if I make Diana mad or not.’ And he went to pick Mary up.”
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