Survival Instincts

by Jen Waite

  “Why did you have to? Why her?” She flicked her eyes toward her daughter and kept her voice level, interested but neutral. The more he talked, the more opportunity she would have, if things kept progressing, to find a way in, to flip a switch in his brain, to get him to see them as people rather than objects—she didn’t know where that switch was yet, but she thought she could figure it out if she had some time. The man was not a straight-up psychopath, of that she was fairly certain, and the thought gave her some hope.

  “She had blond hair,” he repeated to himself, as if Anne’s daughter’s hair color was both the problem and the solution. “She’s the one. That’s just the way it is,” he muttered. His back was still to them and she feared she was losing him. He was retreating, so she asked another question to keep him talking.

  “‘She’s the one’? What do you mean by that?” Anne kept her voice soft.

  “You wouldn’t understand.” His voice dropped again and he turned to them and said loudly, “I don’t have a fucking choice.” She felt Rose tighten beside her. Anne’s eyes inadvertently dropped to the dark patch of blood on his pants, and she forced herself to look at his face, forced herself not to stop on the gun. “I’m sorry you’re struggling. Sometimes”—she thought for a beat—“sometimes it’s incredibly difficult to control negative thoughts.”

  “Do you have thoughts you can’t control?” The man was staring at her. She blinked. She wasn’t expecting a question from him.

  “Yes. I do,” she answered. “Or I did for a long time after my daughter was born.” She pointed with her chin. “Thea,” she annunciated and the man flinched, “was born very early and I became obsessed with her health. I would wear a mask out in public and use hand sanitizer fifty times a day so that I didn’t bring any germs home when she was a baby. It was mentally and physically exhausting.” She felt Rose look from the man to her and back to the man again. Her mother must have been hopeful that she was making progress and she allowed herself the same hope. Anne opened her mouth to keep speaking but the man had begun to move in their direction. He crossed the room quickly and knelt down.

  THE CABIN

  THE MAN

  The man tried to hide his smile while the mother therapized. She thought she was a hotshot. He had met people like her before, people who thought, if they could just get inside his mind and tinker around, they could fix him. He had had a guidance counselor named Ms. James who would sit down with him every week for an hour. During the first five or six sessions, he kept quiet, hardly said a word. Ms. James was young, probably the same age he was now, he realized, and it was her first job out of college. She told him that right away, as if that revelation, her incompetence, might bond them together. She asked him about the essay he wrote, the one that got him in trouble with his English teacher. She asked him why he never raised his hand in class, why he didn’t have any friends or participate in any extracurricular activities. For weeks he had sat silently, doodling on pieces of “draw your feelings” paper, but Ms. James, with her thick glasses and hippie skirts that looked like blankets, was so steadfast in her questioning that he finally began to answer. It was better than being bored for an hour. He told her that he wrote that essay because he fantasized every day and dreamed every night about what his classmates’ expressions would look like if they realized that he was in control, if he was the one deciding their fate. He told her that he wasn’t interested in school, no matter how much his mother wanted him to study; and no matter how hard his father pushed football on him, he just didn’t care. Ms. James still wanted to help him for a while; she tried to get him to “open up” about where these feelings were stemming from and she questioned him about his past, searching for evidence of trauma or abuse (“It’s possible you don’t even remember the traumatic event, that you blocked it out entirely,” she told him earnestly). He finally told her, a few days before he met Julia, exactly what his fantasies consisted of: what it would feel like to have complete control over someone else, to be able to look into her eyes and know that he alone was causing her fear and pain, how it would sound to hear another human begging him to stop. The man explained to Ms. James that he’d had these urges, to inflict pain on other people, since he was a young child, but that only in the past few years had the fantasies evolved to include sex.

  He became fixated on girls when he turned twelve, and by the time he got to high school, sex was all he thought about. Sophomore year, there was one girl in particular. Her name was Molly. She sat in front of him in chemistry and had ringlet curls. She was voted to be a “student helper” and sometimes she talked about the third graders she tutored on the weekends.

  One time the teacher paired them up to do an activity. They were handed a packet on the periodic table of elements. They had to draw the table from memory and answer multiple choice questions. He didn’t know any of the answers and Molly kept laughing at him, brushing her arm against his as she circled the answers, and telling him he should study more. He asked her if she would help him prepare for the test at the end of the week since she was a know-it-all. He said it with a half-smile, like he’d practiced in the mirror. She laughed again and said sure, she could help him after school the next day. When he got to the place they’d decided upon, near the swimming pool building and across from the tennis courts, Molly was already there, sitting on the grassy hill, books splayed open in front of her, waiting for him. He was ready. He had practiced in his head all last night, what he would say and do, how it would go. He watched the videos he had found online over and over. He started looking for videos of men doing to women what he imagined doing in his head—there weren’t any videos that got it exactly right, but watching every night helped him feel calm.

  He studied Molly as he approached her spot on the hill. She sat Indian style on the grass, twirling a pen through her fingers like it was a baton. He felt all the crackly fuzz leave his head, and his thoughts became very clear. As soon as he was close enough he asked if she could come over to his house instead. He had forgotten that he had to walk his dog. They could study there; it would be better anyway, quieter, they could get more done. Molly stared at him and then she laughed. The dumb fucking bitch laughed, just like she’d done in class every day for the past year. Like all the girls did. Laughed at him every time he got an answer wrong, every time he was forced up to the chalkboard, every time the teacher pointed at him and said, “We haven’t heard from you in a while . . . any lights on in there?”

  “Why are you laughing?” he asked. The fuzz started to trickle back into his brain.

  “I’m not going to your house.” She closed the books in front of her and stood up. “Nice try, though.”

  That’s when he knew, he told Ms. James, that if he wanted to have his way, he would have to make a decision. “If you couldn’t do the one thing that made you feel alive, what would you do?” He had genuinely wanted to know, but Ms. James just shook her head and told him quietly to leave her office. That night he heard his mother on the phone with the school, her voice breaking as she set up a time to go and sit down with the principal and Ms. James. He heard his dad ask, “What was that about?” And his mom said, “That was about our son. Again.” Then, “Oh, good, Rich, pour yourself another drink. That will really help.”

  Now, the man listened to the mother go on about her anxiety over her daughter’s medical history. She said her daughter’s name. Thea. He rolled the name around in his head. This girl was not like the others. She was different. If she woke up, everything would be different. He got up off the half-broken chair and walked over to the women. He knelt beside the older one, the one who knew what he was, and whispered in her ear exactly what he did to Julia.

  THE CABIN

  THEA

  The room was dark and cold. She was still in between sleeping and waking but thought she was closer to awake. She could feel that her body lay on a hard surface and her head was in her mother’s lap. She knew this because, even i
n the cold air, she could smell her mother, a mix of lavender and sage. She wanted to open her eyes, wanted to break out of the foggy place she was in, but her eyelids felt so heavy. She let herself sink back into her body. She felt a hand on her head, her mom’s fingers, warm against her forehead. There were voices talking above her head. Her mother’s voice and one she didn’t recognize, a man’s voice. There was something wrong with his voice, though—it wasn’t like Mr. Redmond’s voice, silky smooth, it was gruff and scary sounding. The words blurred together. She heard her mom respond to the other voice, but her mom sounded like she was talking to a friend and the other voice was fighting. There was something about the other voice that reminded her of something that she didn’t want to remember—a memory at the very edge of her mind. It didn’t make any sense, this memory—it was comprised of shapes and sounds and fear in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t want to remember this, whatever it was. Thea stopped trying to listen; she blocked the voices and drifted back into half-sleep.

  She let her mind wander back to another memory from Mr. Redmond’s classroom. She sat at her desk. She was early, one of the first students to arrive for class. She pulled out her book, not really seeing the words, waiting for Mr. Redmond to notice her. A popular boy, one of the most popular boys in her entire grade, entered the room and broke the tension. Thea kept her eyes on the pages, but she felt that the popular boy was moving toward her instead of his own desk across the room. Her stomach fluttered as he approached her. He was coming over. He was going to talk to her for the first time. She looked up from her book, anticipation filled her stomach. She said, “Hey,” right as he said, “I’ve never seen you from the side before. You have a pointy nose. Like a witch.” He kept walking. Deep shame welled inside her. She looked up at Mr. Redmond, but he was riffling through papers at his desk. He didn’t hear, thank god. Her face burned and she fought down the lump that was rising in her throat. She couldn’t cry. She spent the rest of class in a daze, trying to work out in her head what to do, but there was nothing she could do about her nose. She didn’t even know it was pointy. She hadn’t ever looked at her own profile. At the end of class, she stood up numbly and walked out the door. She felt someone tug on her backpack and spun around.

  “I wanted to tell you before you ran out of class—I saw that short story you wrote. The one that made it into the school paper. It’s brilliant, Thea. I was very, very impressed.” Mr. Redmond’s eyes sparkled with admiration. Before she could respond, he had turned around and walked back into his classroom. She spent the rest of the day fighting a smile.

  Her mind ricocheted further back to a memory from when she was seven or eight years old. She was looking out the car window as they pulled into a farm. Wide, open fields and bales of hay and barns scattered all around.

  “Are you excited, Thee? You’re going to ride a horse!” her mom called from the front seat.

  She was excited, and a little scared. She loved horses more than anything, but horses were big in real life. “Yes,” she said, still looking out the window as their car rolled into the dirt parking lot, kicking up dust. “How many other kids will there be?”

  “I don’t know, honey. Maybe five or six?”

  When they got into the ring with the horses and the instructor and the other kids, Thea watched her mom pull the instructor aside. She could hear bits and pieces of their conversation. She tried not to listen but she heard the word condition and the instructor nodded vigorously. She looked at the other kids standing with their parents and then down at the ground.

  “Ok, one at a time, guys,” the instructor called out. “Get into a line. I’m going to help you onto the horse and then walk you around the ring, ok? Slow and easy. I know for a lot of you this is your first time on a horse. Let’s have some fun, ok?”

  Thea watched the first three kids go, each of them scrambling up onto the horse with the help of the small, sturdy instructor. When it was Thea’s turn, her mom got on the horse first and she heard someone yell, “Hey, why does she get to go on with her mom? That’s not fair.” The instructor helped her up and then her mom pulled her the rest of the way. As the horse started to move, she jolted forward and panic flooded her body. She was really, really high off the ground. The horse was even bigger from this perspective. Her heart started to race. She wanted to get down. She could feel tears starting behind her eyes. Her mom leaned forward, a warm pressure against her back, and wrapped her arms around Thea’s middle. “You’re ok, Thee,” she whispered in Thea’s ear. “You’re on a horse, Thea. You’re doing it.” Thea’s heart slowed. She felt her mom’s warm cheek against her own. For a moment, she let herself believe that her mom wasn’t riding with her because of her condition, because she was “different,” but because she was special. By the time they had walked around the circle, Thea was glowing and she gave her mom and the instructor each a high five as she dismounted the horse.

  The nice memory dissipated and her mind and body snapped back to the cold floor and the dark room. At first she didn’t know why, and then she heard a voice, not her mother’s, say very clearly, “It’s time to wake up now, Thea.”

  TEN YEARS

  BEFORE THE CABIN

  ANNE

  Six months after Ethan showed up at Anne’s door, he showed up again, for his first court-ordered overnight with Thea. Two court hearings, in which Ethan had played the genuine, loving father, had resulted in the judge’s granting Ethan supervised visits and then one overnight every other weekend. The week prior to the first overnight, Anne burst into tears eating a tuna sandwich, typing out an e-mail, walking to get a coffee, on the toilet, folding laundry. She couldn’t eat more than a couple of bites before the food going into her mouth would feel like sludge on her tongue. She told Thea several times that the man, who was a friend of Mommy’s, the one who had played with her in the children’s room of the library, was going to be picking her up for a playdate and that she would be coming home in the morning and everything would be fine. Everything would be fine.

  The night before, she took Thea’s hand in hers. “So.” Anne searched for the right words. “Remember how you’re having a sleepover tomorrow with the man from the library? He’s an old friend of mine, and he had to go away for a bit, but he’s back now. Technically, he’s your father,” she finished, the words stilted, too adult. Thea cocked her head to the side. “Technically he’s my fathah?” she repeated in an accent that varied between Boston and Scottish on any given day.

  “Yes,” Anne said. “You’re having a sleepover with your dad. It’s going to be fine!”

  The next morning, Anne was waiting on the other side of the door, pacing, when the doorbell rang.

  She opened the door, sweat coating her palms. “Hello.”

  Ethan flashed a bright smile. “Is she ready?”

  “She is.” She gripped the doorknob. “Thea!” She couldn’t keep her voice from swinging up at the end; the sickly sweet intonation glaringly disingenuous even to her own ears.

  Thea came bouncing into the entryway. Anne could see immediately her daughter was in one of her “I Love Everyone” moods. Thea ran to Anne’s leg and peeked out from behind up to Ethan, wanting to stay hidden and be seen. “Hi,” Thea sang. “I’m feeling shy.” She bounced out from behind Anne’s leg. “Ah we going to have a sleepovah?”

  “You bet we are.” Ethan crouched down to Thea’s level. “How’s my baby girl?” Anne watched as a tear formed in one eye and rolled down his cheek. She thought about how her knee was level with his nose. How her booted foot could easily smash down. Ethan straightened up. “Is she ready to go?”

  “Mama.” Thea looked up at Anne. Anne ran her hand along the top of her daughter’s head, through her hair. Anne’s chest tightened. Thea was going to leave, just like that. She knew it could have been the opposite just as easily, sobbing and screaming, having to drag Thea to the car, that was what she had prepared for, and this was better; she knew that
logically.

  “Of course!” Her voice came out in a falsetto again. “Do you have a car seat installed?” She couldn’t look at him, her eyes were starting to blur over, but she kept the smile plastered on her face.

  “Yes, Anne, I have the car seat installed,” Ethan drawled. “Thea, want to ride in Daddy’s cool car?”

  They walked to Ethan’s car, a black Maserati, with a car seat jammed in the back seat awkwardly. When they reached the car, she thought, I can’t do this. Then she picked up her daughter, kissed her on the head, buckled her in, and handed her overnight bag to Ethan. She told Thea that she loved her and she’d see her in the morning, and then she walked back to the apartment building, through the front door, into the kitchen, and squatted down in front of the kitchen sink. She opened the cabinet and pulled out the Windex, all-purpose counter cleaner, and a bucket and spent the next hour scrubbing down the kitchen. Everything will be fine. She mopped and vacuumed, used a roll of paper towels on the windows, scrubbed the fridge with a sponge. She got down on her hands and knees and scrubbed the tub, sprinkled blue powder into the toilet and flushed it down. She even took the grates off the stove and rubbed the grease and soot from the hidden crevices of the oven. She looked at the clock. Nine p.m. She peeled off her sticky, dirt-stained clothes, showered quickly, and then climbed into bed, exhausted.

  She tossed and turned all night. It was too hot, so she threw the covers off, and then too cold, so she got up and rummaged around for pajamas. She must have finally fallen asleep for a few hours because the next thing she knew she jolted awake, upright in bed. The clock read seven a.m. Three hours until Ethan returned Thea. She called Rose but the phone rang and rang and then her mother’s machine came on. Rose had been working nonstop at the bakery lately. Rose’s Sweets had taken off years ago after a write-up in Bon Appétit magazine (THESE ARE THE TEN BEST NEW BAKERIES YOU HAVEN’T HEARD OF), and she was always working, either at the bakery in the kitchen, baking and supervising, or in the basement of the bakery, creating new menu items, redesigning the layout, strategizing growth for the booming business. Lately, she was working even longer hours and never home. Rose’s coping mechanism for Ethan’s reappearance seemed to be to ignore it completely and hope for the best—“Don’t worry, honey, everything is going to be ok”—a technique that had apparently trickled down to Anne.