The Beloved

by Gonzalez, J. F.

  Laura paused and the only sound in the kitchen was the coffee brewing. Elizabeth gathered the spoons and a bowl of sugar and set them out on the table as her mother continued. “There was something different in Mary’s voice this time when she called and begged to come over. She actually sounded frantic, like she was scared to death of staying over there. She sounded like....well, she had that tone of voice you only hear when women scream in horror movies. There was this underlying tone of genuine terror in her voice. That’s the only way I can describe it. I’ve never heard a child sound like that before, and when I heard it in Mary’s voice it scared me to death. I actually started thinking that maybe Cindy was right in what she was saying.”

  Elizabeth immediately thought of Cindy’s accusations against her brother’s new girlfriend. Laura had related last week that on a supervised visit with Mary, Cindy had told her (while Mary had been playing with Eric in the daylight basement out of earshot) about the harassing phone calls and the threats Diana made against Mary. Laura hadn’t believed her and told Cindy she found it hard to accept such a story. Cindy had been insistent though, and Laura had even talked to Ronnie about it, warning him that Cindy might try to use the story as ammunition in a custody battle. Elizabeth didn’t know what to make of the story either way; she didn’t like Diana, and her respect for Cindy had been on a steady decline since her former sister-in-law left her brother and began sliding into her present drug and alcohol state. Cindy’s behavior of late, as indicated by a DUI she had acquired over the summer, her constant changing of addresses and boyfriends, living with drug dealers, and the numerous fights she’d gotten into at area bars clearly indicated she was unstable, and Elizabeth wouldn’t put it past her to resort to lies and false accusations against her brother in a custody battle. Mary was at the right age to be easily manipulated, and an allegation of abuse was just the sort of leverage Cindy would need to throw a wrench into Ronnie’s case, even if she couldn’t prove it.

  “So Jerry went to the house,” Laura continued, looking out the sliding glass doors to the backyard. “And Mary must have been at the window waiting because when he pulled up she ran outside and opened the driver’s side door, crying that she wanted to go. Jerry tried to calm her down, and by then Diana had come out. She was apparently shocked Mary had run out of the house like that, and Jerry said later she looked surprised he was there, as if Mary had placed the call to us secretly.”

  Elizabeth nodded. Her niece probably had made an effort to catch Diana off guard.

  “Jerry told Diana that we were going to have Mary over for the evening,” Laura continued. “He made up a story, said I had arranged this with Mary a few days before. By then Lily was standing at the door looking outside, and Diana told Jerry she was going to go inside real quick and get Lily and Mary’s things. Jerry stopped her and said, ‘that won’t be necessary. Mary has plenty of clothes at the house.’ Diana said something about going inside to pack a bag for Lily and Jerry said, ‘Lily isn’t coming over. She’s staying with you.’ He said Diana got this look on her face, as if she were about to say, well, Lily is coming over whether you like it or not, and Jerry held his ground. Diana tried to pull her sweetie-pie thing on him. You know, ‘Oh come on, Jerry. I could really use the night off. Ronnie and I will be more than happy to come over and mow the lawn or run errands for you sometime or some other bullshit, and Jerry told her no, we weren’t keeping Lily tonight and if she didn’t like it that was just too bad. While all this was going on, Mary was in the car crying. Jerry got mad and I’m afraid he told Diana off and she stomped back in the house and said ‘Fine! We’ll see how your son likes it,’ and she pushed Lily into the house in front of her and slammed the door. Mary was crying hysterically and as much as Jerry wanted to calm her down before he started driving, he felt this urge to pull out of the driveway and head home, so he did.

  “Mary cried all the way home. Jerry asked her if Diana had hit her or hurt her in anyway and she just shook her head, not speaking, just crying. When they got to the house she had calmed down a bit, and when she came inside she came to me and started crying again. I held her and let her cry and Jerry caught my gaze and he looked troubled. We both sat down with Mary in the living room and tried to calm her down. By then I was all up in arms with worry that Diana had done something to Mary, that she’d beat her or done something worse, but the more we asked if Diana had hurt her, the more she shook her head. Finally when she had calmed down, she said she never wanted to go back to that house and then she started crying again, asking if she could live with us instead of with her father and Diana and her kids.

  “Jerry was pacing the kitchen and the living room and I could tell he was both angry and scared, and you know how he gets when he gets angry and scared. He becomes agitated. I had to calm him down before I could get any useful information out of Mary, so I got his pills and a glass of water and made him take some. Then I made some hot chocolate for Mary, and Jerry actually went downstairs to the bar and brought up a bottle of 151 and made us some Rum and Cokes. Of course he put more rum than coke in it, but it did the trick with him. It calmed him right down.”

  Elizabeth was about to ask the inevitable question about mixing alcohol with her father’s prescription nerve medication, then decided against it. Her father rarely drank, but he had an unusually high tolerance for alcohol.

  “Finally,” Laura said, her gray eyes reflecting fatigue, “when we all had our drinks and Mary had calmed down sufficiently, we sat down at the kitchen table and Mary just started talking. She started by talking about Diana and her kids, telling us that they don’t interact with each other, that they hardly talk to each other. At first I didn’t think much of it but Mary said, “Grandma, they never talk to each other. The only time they do is when you’re around, or when Daddy is around and sometimes when I’m around. But most of the time when it’s just us they don’t do anything! It’s like they don’t even know the other one is there!’

  “You know Jerry and I think Diana is a lazy bitch and that she doesn’t do anything—”

  “And that she doesn’t pay attention to her own kids, much less Mary,” Elizabeth said. The coffee had finished brewing and she brought down two big mugs and poured coffee. She returned to the table with the steaming mugs and the two women prepared their coffee silently.

  Laura stirred her coffee, now a rich golden color, and took a sip. “Thanks. I needed that.”

  Elizabeth nodded, sipping her coffee.

  Laura continued the narrative. “At first when Mary related that Diana and the kids don’t interact with each other I didn’t know how to react. I still believed Mary was throwing a tantrum and resented having to share her father with them and was using this as a way of venting the last few months of whatever pent up emotions she’d been holding in. I asked her if anything had happened that day that would lead her to call us in the state she did, and at first she wouldn’t answer. Then she started repeating what she’d said earlier, that Diana and her kids don’t talk to each other, then she started focusing more on Lily, saying that Lily was a monster and a freak, and again I chalked it up to feelings of alienation and her situation. Jerry tried to talk some sense into her and Mary shook her head and said quite calmly, ‘No Pop-Pop, I know what I saw and Lily isn’t what you think she is. They all aren’t what you think they are!’ She started to cry again, then took great effort in stemming the tears, then took a sip of hot chocolate and told us what had happened that afternoon.

  “Yesterday afternoon Mary went down the street to a friend’s house. I think this is Leslie Allman, who lives three doors down from where the Steele’s lived. Leslie is in Mary’s class. She told me that usually when she goes over she tells Diana, who makes Lily go with her, which Mary hates. This time though, she didn’t tell Diana where she was going. Rick never tells his mother where he goes, and Diana never seems to notice where Lily is or what she’s doing anyway, so she figured she wouldn’t care if she didn’t tell her she was going to Leslie’s. She sli
pped out of the house and ran down the street, and once at Leslie’s the girls played for awhile, then Leslie had to have dinner with her parents so Mary went home.

  “It must’ve been around six o’clock, maybe a little later,” Laura said. She sipped coffee as she related Mary’s narrative. “The first thing she noticed was that her father’s car was in the driveway. She was surprised he was home, and she thought maybe he had come home sick. It was starting to get dark, and she felt better that her dad was home because she knew otherwise she would have to find something to eat in the house since Diana rarely made the kids supper. She got to the house and let herself inside through the front door and at first she thought the house was empty. There was nobody in the living room or the kitchen and for a moment she stood there quietly, trying to listen to where everybody was. Her first thought was that Lily and Rick had gone somewhere and that Ronnie was in the bedroom with Diana. So she tiptoed to the master bedroom door and paused outside, listening.

  “It was right at that moment Mary said that she knew Diana and the kids weren’t in the house, but she sensed there was something wrong. She could tell her father was home, that he was in the bedroom, but she was afraid to go in there. She didn’t know exactly how to explain it to us, and it took Jerry and me a good thirty minutes of questioning to get it out of her, but what we both got out of it was this: her instinct told her Diana and the kids weren’t in the house, but theoretically she knew they should be in the house.

  “She wanted to see her father so badly she pushed the door open gently in case he was asleep. Keep in mind I still don’t know what to make of this next part of Mary’s story. Jerry and I were up most of the night talking about it and doing so worried Jerry more than ever. We’re both of a mind to have Mary looked at by a child psychologist.”

  Elizabeth felt her stomach turn into shaved ice as she clutched her coffee cup. “What happened?”

  Laura took a sip of coffee. She was looking down at the table as she spoke, as if she were still trying to make some kind of sense of what she had heard Mary tell her last night. “Mary said that the first thing she noticed was that somebody had lit all those scented candles Diana keeps in the bedroom. They were the only source of light. She took a step into the bedroom and saw something move on the bed. At first...when she got to this part I honestly thought she had been traumatized by the sight of her father and Diana having sexual intercourse. But...it wasn’t that at all.”

  Elizabeth listened with growing dread, her hands gripping the coffee cup.

  “She saw her father on the bed. He was lying on his back and he looked like he was asleep. She also saw what she first thought to be Diana lying next to him, but as she got closer to the bed she saw that it wasn’t Diana. It was...well, the best way I can describe it is that it was this...this large mass.”

  “Large mass?”

  “She said her first impression of what she saw was that there were several...people...crowding up against each other on the bed,” Laura said, speaking slowly and methodically. “She could make out a large shape mashed up against her father. She said there were also other shapes and they were moving, making a rustling sound. Mind you, I still thought Mary had walked in on her father and Diana having sex, especially when she mentioned the smell that came up, but...well, I still want to believe what she saw was probably a combination of her imagination or...” Laura shook her head, her features troubled. “I just don’t know.”

  “Mom, what did she see?”

  Laura looked up at her, her eyes wide, scared, troubled. “She said it was like one big mass all bunched into different lumps. One of those lumps was attached to Ronnie.”

  “Attached?”

  Laura nodded. For the first time since she began spinning Mary’s narrative, she looked disturbed. “Mary said that was the only word she could think of to describe it. It was like this mass mended seamlessly with Ronnie and he was asleep and the rest of the...mass, or whatever you want to call it, was lying there like some gigantic tumor. It had skin, she said that much; it was like Ronnie’s skin had morphed with whatever this thing was and that...” Laura took a sip of coffee, seeming to struggle with what to say next. “...well, part of it, the part furthest away from Ronnie, was moving.”

  Elizabeth let that sink in, not knowing what to say. Laura continued and Elizabeth was momentarily grateful for this, as it kept the silence from becoming too great. “The part that was moving...she said it was like there were lots of other things underneath it moving around. That they would strain against the surface of the skin, like somebody being underneath a blanket...and that she could see shapes moving around in there.”

  “Shapes?” Elizabeth couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?” Laura took a hearty sip of coffee. “I don’t know how long Mary actually stood there watching it. She stood there frozen for a moment, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. And what she was seeing—what she insisted she saw—was this huge mass that became formless with lots of eyes and mouths and claws that rippled and disappeared, then reappeared over and over again. She said it shifted and changed and in some cases she saw faces erupt to the surface, faces that seemed to scream. And as the shapes began to coalesce into one huge mass, the faces became more distinct and she made out three different figures—Diana and her kids. That’s when she bolted from of the house.”

  They were silent for a moment and Elizabeth didn’t know what to say. How do you respond to a story like that? Especially from a seven-year-old? She sipped her coffee and looked at her mother, who met her gaze with that same worried expression.

  “Mary ran back to Leslie’s house,” Laura continued, hands still clutching her coffee cup. “She ran back and sat on the front porch for awhile, trying to convince herself what she saw was a nightmare. When she began to sense from the movements inside the house that supper was over at Leslie’s, she rang the doorbell and Leslie’s mother answered the door. Mary asked if Leslie could play, and Mary was allowed to go inside and play with Leslie for about an hour. She said she didn’t know what else to do; she didn’t really want to play with her friend, but she couldn’t go back to her own house. She asked Leslie if they could watch cartoons, so the girls went in the family room and watched TV for a while but Mary said she didn’t really watch the TV. She mostly thought about what she’d seen. And the more she thought, the more scared she became. When Leslie’s mother told Mary it was time for her to go home, Mary asked if she could use their phone to call her house real quick. She was allowed to use the phone in Leslie’s brother’s room and that’s when she called us.”

  “So she didn’t even go home?”

  “Oh, she went home,” Laura said. “After she called Jerry, she ran home and waited on the porch. The lights were on in the living room and she heard the TV. Ronnie’s truck was still in the driveway—Jerry confirmed the truck was there when we talked about it later. She was too afraid to go inside. She peeked in the window and saw Diana sitting in front of the computer and Rick sitting on the sofa watching TV. She couldn’t see Lily, and she didn’t want to go inside, so she huddled on the front porch. When Jerry pulled into the driveway she ran out to meet him. He didn’t even know she’d been waiting for him on the porch.”

  Laura sipped her coffee and sighed. “It’s when things like this happen I sometimes wished I still smoked. I could use a cigarette now.”

  “Sorry I never started,” Elizabeth said. Laura looked at her and the two women burst out laughing.

  “That’s basically it,” Laura said, wiping her hands on a napkin. “That’s what Mary told us happened, and she insists she won’t go back to that house. Jerry didn’t realize she’d been sitting on the porch waiting for him when he pulled up, and it was that little part that really got to him. I mean, the fact that the child was too afraid to go inside her own house and get out of the cold. It made him furious and it scared him. We were up all night talking about it.”

  “Did Mary get any sleep la
st night?” Elizabeth asked.

  “She finally got to bed a little after midnight,” Laura said. “I gave her something to help her sleep, and Jerry and I stayed up till two o’clock talking. Twice Jerry got up to call Diana to yell at her and both times I took the phone out of his hands. Then he ranted and raved about Ronnie all night, talking about how inconsiderate he was and how he was being stupid in letting this woman and her children move in with him, and how he was paying more attention to them than the welfare of his own child and it just went on and on. I didn’t want to defend Ronnie, but he is an adult now and we don’t want to make his decisions for him. You know what I mean?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “Yes, I know what you mean.” She sipped at her coffee.

  “Why does Ronnie pick the kind of women he picks?” Laura asked.

  Elizabeth glanced at her. “You think I know what turns him on?”

  Laura shrugged. “Well, look at his past history. All his girlfriends are dark-haired, skinny, and they all drink. They’re party girls. Look at Cindy. She was a wild one if I ever saw one. And what about the girl he was seeing for a while after Cindy left him? What was her name?”

  “Shannon.”