Swerve

by Vicki Pettersson

  As the pounding of feet hitting the marble staircase reaches me, I imagine Imogene’s raw croak again. Com—ing.

  I know . . . and I’ve just climbed into place when the door to the billiards room swings wide.

  What is left to do?

  I know the exact moment Daniel crosses the threshold. The air in the room depresses like a syringe, the weight of his presence squeezing out the oxygen and filling it with something noxious instead. His breath is ragged from running and, I imagine, from the damage I inflicted when I bit down on his nose in the guesthouse.

  I grit my teeth together as he says, “Hello, Mother. Don’t get up.”

  I am stemming like a rock climber beneath the pool table, spread-eagle and tense, completely motionless just thirty-six inches above the Persian rug. My limbs are tucked into heavy, squat ledges beneath the giant table, which form pockets to hide me, though the position forces me to stare directly down if I’m to keep my back pressed against the table’s underside. It was the only place I could think to hide where he might not look, and one I think doubly safe, as his attention will likely be focused on what’s atop the pool table, not under it.

  “You can’t see it from where you are, but the sun has already set.” His voice floats over like a memory, and I know he’s looking out the window facing the lake. He can’t view the guesthouse from there, this room faces the east lake and the hotel, yet dusk has arrived and if there’s light . . .

  I shift my eyes enough to make out Daniel’s shadow sliding across the floor like a specter. Even his silhouette looks capable of murder.

  “The police vessels are already positioned in the center of the lake, and it looks like the fire marshal is double-checking the fireworks on the floating dock. We wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt, you know.” The chuckle in his voice tells me that despite Imogene’s death—or maybe even because of it—all is still well in Crazyland. Daniel does not yet know of things that burn. “Some of our neighbors have already started gathering in the middle of the lake. Do you remember when we used to do that? Every Fourth of July, pile on the blankets? Pack a basket into the Paceship, motor onto the lake with cheese and bread and wine. A day of celebration. Of independence.”

  Chills ratchet my spine as his voice shifts in the room. He’s looking over his shoulder, speaking directly to his dead mother. I push the back of my head against the heavy mahogany at my back and reinforce the pressure on my palms and flats of my feet. The burns at my wrists throb and flare, but I don’t cry out as I use leverage to keep my legs from buckling. The pressure builds in my head, and I pray my ear is no longer dripping blood.

  “The hotel is at full capacity, of course, and the DJ is on the lawn, spinning pop music for the kids. I know, you’d prefer a full string orchestra, but all those little redundancies seem to be enjoying themselves. They’ve set up a buffet line for the cookout too.” He pauses. “I know. So gauche.”

  His footsteps shush-shush over the carpet, and I try to look up, but that causes my right arm and leg to shake and I quickly still and close my eyes. Daniel hacked off my long hair in order to both frame and terrorize me, but now I’m thankful. Were it still long, even plaited, it would be hanging down like a curtain, calling attention to my presence. Instead, wisps of the shorn bob float around my head and cause a different worry by tickling my nose.

  But by then Daniel is too close to see beneath the pool table. He is looming over Imogene’s body, likely studying her with that clinical gaze, the wheezing of his breath rattling with all those things that are broken inside of him. I am molten.

  “You’ve done a hell of a job on your dental work, Mother.”

  His fingertips trail the table railing, scratching as if he’s grown claws. I catch him pausing at the short end and imagine him fondling her cold, chapped toes, scratching at those too. He moves along my right side and abruptly stops.

  “But what’s this?” And he is bending, reaching for the rope that’d bound Imogene’s right wrist, the one I carelessly let drop to the Oriental rug. I force my breath to stop in my chest, but I’m certain he can still hear the pounding of my heart. If I were still bleeding from the ear, I bet he could scent it.

  Daniel picks up the rope, fondling it with his talented, deadly fingers, and then straightens, knees popping. “Two weeks without moving an inch, and now all of a sudden you break free?”

  He doesn’t know it was me. It’s unbelievable, but then he hasn’t seen the guesthouse’s windows winking with flame, so why would he? He probably can’t even imagine a world in which things don’t evolve as he wishes. My gaze shifts right as he steps away. He is in front of the old French armoire, the one holding the television and the black-and-white image of my daughter.

  “Is this what gave you the will to fight?” His voice gleams. “A little girl? Another redundancy? Or do you simply want to make sure I don’t make a mess of your bathroom floor?”

  Imogene’s bathroom. Upstairs. South wing. A gilt-and-­marble bathroom with a fireplace and two chandeliers.

  I have to fight every instinct not to release my body weight and drop to the floor. I have been chased through the desert, thrown from a motorcycle, cut, and burned. Even healthy, I cannot outrun Daniel. But now I know where Abby is, and the lusty cries from the day she was born bloom raw in my mind.

  In front of the armoire, the rope falls to the floor.

  “I have to admit, I’m a little put out by all of this.” I imagine him waving his hand in the air, dismissing his mother’s corpse. “I mean, I had so much more to ask you. For so many years you simply refused to talk, and I tried to respect that, I did, but now that I’ve come for answers, you can’t. You can see why this might leave me a little . . . upset.”

  I don’t know what he does then. I can’t imagine what sort of act he’s performing above me, but all I know is that the ragged breathing suddenly quickens, and there’s a gurgling that pitches high, even as he finishes speaking. Upset. The clipped word bookends the other sound, a pained noise I don’t understand.

  Until I do.

  His mother is still alive. Somehow, she’s still alive.

  “So I guess I’m going to have to do all the talking.” His words hide my gasp, but accentuate her hiss, a sound that I’m somehow sure is supposed to be a wail. I squeeze my eyes shut. I can’t imagine what he’s doing. What is left to do?

  “See, I’ve always wondered what you were thinking that night, as we scrubbed this room clean.” He pauses, just a moment. “No, you made me wrap him in hay sacks.”

  Oh God. He’s talking to her.

  “No, no, that’s not the point. The point is you just watched me carry him away. I mean, thirty-two years of marriage, and then . . . what? After you told me to row to the center of the lake, then what?”

  He chuckles lightly at her unspoken reply, and I blink hard against it, a sound I used to love. “Sure, I’m happy to tell you what I thought. Once I’d rowed to the middle of the lake, I thought, the house looks so perfect from here. Just the way she likes it.”

  I kill everything to get her attention.

  “I sat out there for a good hour, but you were right. He never regained consciousness. It wasn’t until after I loaded him down with the salt bricks, in his underwear, in his shoes, that I ­realized . . . I felt alone. Probably the way you’ve been feeling, huh?”

  It was like hearing half of a phone conversation. Imogene might not be listening, but Daniel was determined to have his say.

  “It was just so dark out there. No other boats on the lake, no light. I couldn’t even watch him sink. But then, I looked up, and you were at the window. Remember?”

  A gurgle, but I don’t think Imogene was remembering.

  “Yes, you were. I saw the curtain move. You were silhouetted between damask. For a moment I even felt the light reach me. But then you disappeared and you took the light with you.”

 
She never looked at me again.

  Daniel pauses, and this time the silence takes me by surprise. I have become lost in his narrative despite myself. I haven’t forgotten the danger to me, though, and it reasserts itself as Daniel places his hands on his knees and leans forward. Those talented, killing hands . . . only inches from my face.

  “Not one word. Not to the police after they dragged the lake. Not at the funeral, where his old college buddies waxed on about accidental drownings. Not even to me, as if I didn’t know what I’d done. All through the service, the burial, the reception . . . never once did you look my way.”

  Imogene’s breath rattles, the sound moving like a choppy wave through her bony chest. I close my eyes and imagine him facing her, his broken nose tip-to-tip with her displaced one. He whispers, “I had intended to give you one last thing to watch tonight, Mother. I brought you the child just like I used to bring you the birds, the hares. I wondered, will she look this time? Will she see me now?”

  Air wheezes from Imogene without ever touching her lips. The sound is desolate, like the wind back on the flats of the high desert where Daniel crucified a man just because he could. Yet Daniel sucks in a deep breath at the same time, and I imagine the scent of tin-fresh blood and smoky gunpowder infiltrating his lungs. I can almost see his chest expanding, his eyes closing as he sucks in all the tension and toxins in the room, all the violence and pain of the world, into his sinew and muscle. I don’t hear him exhale, though. I know by now that Daniel releases nothing.

  Daniel sniffs and straightens. “Oh, shut up.”

  His shoes turn, and I arch my back slightly, turning my head to follow. I am taking little sips of air now, working hard not to hyperventilate, but I swear to God, if Daniel starts answering in his mother’s voice, I know I’m going to lose it. However, after another moment, he pivots and heads to the wet bar instead, where something clinks against wood. I can’t see, but . . . is this psycho actually fixing himself a drink? I try to track him without sight, but my ears are too full with Imogene’s wet breaths, with the tinny music coming through the television speakers, and with my own daughter’s intermittent mewls. Blood pools in my head from the downward slant, my pulse throbs at my temples, and all of my limbs are shaking now. They won’t hold out much longer.

  Where is he? I wonder, just as the butt of the pool stick thwacks against the rug to the right of my head. I gasp, Imogene gurgles above me, and I instinctively reinforce the pressure on my heels and hands.

  The first strike still shocks through me. My left hand dislodges and falls to the ground, and I actually cry out as I catch myself, something that would surely earn me a pool stick to my own temple if Daniel hadn’t grunted as well. A sick thud sounds above me, and my mouth falls open in a silent cry as I brace hard against the floor.

  Daniel is standing too close to see my arm, so I leave it where it is to steady me as another thwack sounds atop me, this one accompanied by a strangled yell. Daniel strikes Imogene a third time with such force it actually lifts him from his feet.

  “Look at me!” His yell veers into a full-on war cry. “Look at me now!”

  Blood spatters the rug in a bright crimson arc. Something that once belonged to Imogene, something vital and fleshy, drops inches away from my supporting hand, and I have to force back bile as I work to hold tight. I’m losing purchase with every strike, my other hand falling as my whole body shakes, and my feet slip closer together above me. I want to collapse to the floor, but I can’t let Daniel find me now. Not while raging.

  Suddenly, he’s finished.

  The silence is louder than the blows had been, and I freeze, palms on the ground, feet still splayed wide and high. I’m caught like an insect against flypaper. If Daniel backs up to admire his handiwork, he’ll see me.

  He shakes pulp off his shoes, blood flecking my wrists as he drops the pool stick to the floor. It rolls and comes to a stop against my pinky. The wood is splintered and warm and red.

  His jagged exhalation fills the room, and I time my movements to the shifting of his feet, yet every sound feels amplified as I climb back up into my precarious nest. My fingernails scrape against the unfinished wood, and as I press my back to the underside of the table, I try not to think of what lies on the other side.

  I am waiting with growing terror for Daniel’s bloody, grinning face to appear directly next to me, so it’s a full minute before I realize. I am completely alone.

  I brace and wait for the burn.

  All I have to do is follow the music.

  Yet it’s not solely the horns of the twenties jazz that draws me up the third-floor staircase in search of my daughter. Instead, I follow Daniel’s voice. He’s humming, feeling good, though he is not done yet. Not by a long shot.

  It’s why I carry the rope. It’s why, despite exhausting myself beneath that pool table, I do not stop. My head throbs where I’ve been hit, first at the rest stop by the swinging steel door, and later by the butt of Crystal’s gun. I am dehydrated in a way I never thought possible, and my wrists have gone numb where they’ve been seared. My earlobe is gone. The road burn along my abraded left side has stiffened like old jerky. I am all cried out.

  Yet I, too, am feeling molten.

  Maybe that’s why I don’t bother to hide myself as I climb the center of the sprawling marble staircase, silent on bare feet. It’s past dusk, nearer to full dark than not, and I can almost sense the gathering on the other side of the lake. Tourists and residents will be leaning against wooden balconies, palming icy glasses of wine, eyes already turned up to the velvety sky. Maybe someone has noticed the smoke from the guesthouse as it plumes and rises into a darkening sky, but they’re too far off yet to smell it. More likely they just dismiss the strange flickering all the way across the lake. They’re not looking for mere light; they want an explosion. They are ready for fireworks.

  I think of Abby and realize—so am I.

  The stairs curve right to offer up a pretty but useless sitting area with chairs I’m sure have never seen a backside and books with uncracked spines. The most inviting thing about the area is the moonlight that filters through a leaded dormer window. It allows a clear view down the long, dark hallway and of the shadow just moving through the double doors beyond.

  The master suite doors are flung wide, and I walk through like I’m invited. Another lightly used sitting area languishes beneath a pale moonbeam while a solid four-poster bed lies in total darkness. I picture Daniel standing over it, above his sleeping mother, before I blink and slip further into the spacious room. The carpeting deadens my footsteps, but I’m no longer worried about sound. Jazz streams from around the corner, amplified by space and marble.

  I need to do something before Daniel’s questioning voice joins the scatting and the horns, but I’m afraid of the mirrors. I don’t know what he’ll do if Abby is within reach and I appear suddenly, reflected behind him.

  So I double back, fall to my hands and knees, and wriggle beneath the giant bed until I am facing directly into the cavernous master bath. There’s a full foot of space over my head, but my image does not, in fact, reflect back at me. Burlap and tarp are layered in mounds, no doubt dragged in from the barn in order to catch and soak up the blood Daniel anticipates spilling in this room.

  Blood, like that which covers Daniel as he stands halfway through the long, elegant bathroom, dead still and back to me as he studies my daughter. She is propped in the corner, just as I saw on the TV sets, except the sun no longer reaches in through the leaded windows. Yet he has strengthened the lighting, and the room’s two antique chandeliers cut sharp angles across her body. The small video camera is directly across from her, balanced on the vanity, and it also gazes at her with a steady red eye. Daniel has positioned himself just out of view of the lens, head tilted to one side.

  He finally gives a short nod and steps in front of the camera.

  I take the opportunity t
o roll from under the bed and slip to the threshold of that long, cavernous room, rope clenched in my hand.

  By the time I press my eye to the crack of the hinged door, Daniel has already folded himself cross-legged before Abby. My daughter lifts her head, sees him speckled red, and immediately begins to cry, curling tighter into herself. Daniel seems content to wait for her to calm and just turns—back still to me—and shoots a grin directly at the camera beside him. I step from behind the door, finger already pressed to my lips. Abby’s gaze immediately darts my way, and she whimpers, “Mommy?”

  “Yes,” Daniel says, shifting back, and her eyes swerve back to his. “Your mommy is watching.”

  Goddamn straight.

  I slip into the tarp-covered room, light as a ghost and moving to music from another era.

  “You know, I’ve always wondered why people have children,” he says, half to Abby, half to the camera. “I mean, I’ve heard all the reasons given, but the idea that it provides you with some sort of legacy after you’re gone, that it somehow marks you as having been here and makes your life somehow significant . . . why, that’s just selfish. And it’s a fallacy. As for unconditional love . . . why not just love yourself unconditionally?”

  Abby stares, her face a mixture of fear and confusion, but there’s a focus to it too. She is working actively to keep her eyes averted from me . . . yet Daniel senses the change in her too. He tilts his head at her and makes a low sound in the back of his throat. “You look just like her.”

  Then he edges closer to Abby, almost in a pout. I force myself to keep inching forward slowly. There’s still too much space between us for me to rush him, as evidenced by how quickly he reaches over and pulls his father’s old medical bag to his side. He doesn’t even hurry, yet I’ve only gained one more step.

  “My fault,” he says, and he almost sounds friendly, normal. “I meant to cut your hair before.”

  He slips a pair of long, black shears from the bag. He is prepping her, I realize, same as he would a patient in the OR, reducing her to her most essential parts. Angling himself so that the camera catches the action, he grabs a fistful of her long hair, and begins to snip. Abby’s gasp covers any sound I might make as I tiptoe across burlap.