Sandman

by Sean Costello

  He left his cell number and Jenny jotted it down. Then she was dialing it, dialing it urgently. She held her breath...

  Voice mail.

  Jenny hung up and got a can of ginger ale out of the fridge. She went back to the garage exit, picked up the cage—and realized the cat wasn’t in it. The cage door was unlatched and Peach was gone.

  How...?

  “Peach? Come on, pet. Don’t play games with me now.” She set the can of soda on top of the cage and headed down the hall, mentally ticking off the cat’s favorite hiding places. “Come on, baby, please.”

  Jenny turned the corner into the living room and found her cat. Lid-eyed and contentedly purring, Peach lay curled in Jack’s lap in the La-Z-Boy recliner, pressing her luxuriously furred head into his caressing palm.

  “Going somewhere?” Jack said.

  * * *

  Nina stood behind the twins at their father’s open coffin, one hand resting on each of their slender chests. They looked like miniature men in their matching black suits and bow ties, but their faces were very much those of lost little boys. Even here, with their daddy stretched out before them in the absolute stillness of death, it hadn’t yet registered in their young minds that they would never see him alive again, never again ride on his shoulders or splash him in the pool or take turns using his belly as a trampoline. Nina could hardly believe it herself.

  The turn-out for the wake surprised her, considering what Will had been accused of. Most of her family members were here, and all of his, and dozens of Will’s colleagues and friends. But she missed Jenny. At first she was deeply hurt that her trusted friend hadn’t shown up. Surely Jack had told her about Will’s death? But then Paul had taken her aside and told her about Kim. It shook her that Jack hadn’t mentioned it.

  So much misery, Nina thought, hugging Jeffrey closer as the first tears of understanding slid down his cheeks. So much grief. She hoped Jenny was faring okay. Maybe she’d make it to the funeral in the morning.

  * * *

  Jenny was startled at first, then shaking with anger. “Jack, where have you been?” He was wearing a black cotton gi, smiling at her.

  “I think we should talk,” he said, stroking the cat. He pointed to the couch. “Why don’t you sit.”

  “It’s too late for talk. Our daughter’s in a coma, for God’s sake, and you don’t even have the decency to show up?”

  “She’s not our daughter,” Jack said. “She’s the diseased afterbirth of a whore. Why try to pretend differently?”

  “How dare you talk about her like that. She was no more responsible for her birth than you were for yours. And I love her, Jack, even if you don’t.”

  Jack smiled. “Sit.” He indicated the couch with an open palm. “We’ll talk.”

  “I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

  Jack’s gaze shifted to the cat. He resumed his petting.

  “I want to leave now,” Jenny said, hating the pleading waver in her voice. “Give me the cat, please.”

  Jack’s hand closed gently around Peach’s neck. The cat raised it’s chin appreciatively.

  Jack said, “Did you know the neck of a cat is exquisitely fragile?” His grip tightened and Peach stopped purring. Her haunches tensed and her ears came down. Her pink tongue flickered out.

  Jack raised his cobra like eyes to Jenny’s. “One quick twist—”

  “Jack, don’t.”

  He went back to petting the cat, but Peach had lost interest. She huddled in his lap, waiting for a chance to escape.

  “Sit,” Jack said. “We’ll talk.”

  As in a dream, Jenny walked over to the couch. It dawned on her as she sat that Jack was now between her and the nearest exit.

  She said, “Let the cat go. Please.”

  Jack obliged and Peach darted away.

  In the few strained moments of silence that followed, Jenny realized the central air-conditioning was off—That’s why my voice sounded so dead in here—and it struck her how terribly hot the house was. The heat was explosive. It stunned her that she hadn’t noticed it before now. Her clothes were tacky with sweat.

  “What did you want to talk about?” she said, hoping to get this over with quickly.

  Jack shrugged. “I thought we’d just sit a while.”

  Jenny made a huffing sound and started to rise. Jack’s gaze froze her as effectively as a loaded gun.

  “Sit,” he said. “There’s plenty of time.” He smiled and Jenny’s sweat turned clammy. “All the time in the world.”

  “Jack, you’re scaring me.”

  “Just...sit.”

  * * *

  The house cooled a little after the sun went down, but the air remained close and unpleasant. Jenny sat stiffly on the couch, waiting for something to happen. She was famished, her head ached and her bladder was full, but she couldn’t bring herself to complain. She’d never seen Jack like this and it frightened her.

  “I can kill a man with a single blow,” he’d told her one night years ago, after too much wine. “Any man. Most people don’t understand what that means. Think about it, Jen.” She’d written it off that night as drunken bluster. But she was thinking about it now. It was all she could think about.

  It was the baby, of course. He blamed her for its death.

  But it was you that pushed me, Jenny thought bitterly. That was your fault. But Jack would never see it that way. One thing he’d never had any problem with was revising the facts to suit himself.

  “Jack,” she said now, testing the water. “I’m hungry and I have to pee. Whatever this is, it isn’t getting us anywhere.” She stood and took a step away from the couch. “I’m going to the bathroom.”

  There was a flash of motion and Jack’s open hand stung her face, the impact sending her reeling backward onto the couch. Jenny sat down hard, one hand flying to her cheek, her injured eye filling with water.

  Jack took the three short steps back to the recliner and resumed his relaxed posture.

  “I said sit.”

  “Jesus, Jack, if you don’t let me go to the bathroom I’m going to wet myself.”

  “Then wet yourself.”

  No way, Jenny thought. I’ll let my bladder burst before I give you the satisfaction.

  * * *

  Jenny wasn’t wearing a watch, and without that concrete frame of reference—it was dark outside, that was all she knew—time became a blur. She was frightened—in Jack’s current state of mind she had no idea what he was capable of—physically and emotionally exhausted, and despair kept flaring up like a bird with enormous black wings.

  But gradually, a single maddening sensation overrode all of it: The need to urinate. It had built over the past few hours from a normal physiological urge into a screaming critical need, and if he didn’t let her go—right this minute—she was going to wet herself. And she didn’t think she could bear the disgrace. Not on top of all that had already happened.

  She hunched forward and pressed her knees together, trying to seal off her bladder.

  She’d peed her pants once in the fourth grade, when Miss Berringer made her stand at the front of the class until she remembered the name of the capital city of Alberta. The old spinster had continued teaching the others, then abruptly whirled around, slapped her hands together and said, “Well, Missy, have you got it yet?” And that slapping sound startled her, it made her lose control, and hot urine went streaming down her legs and everyone laughed, they laughed and the urine flowed and the shame burned in Jenny’s face like dry fire.

  “Son of a bitch,” she said now, urine scalding her genitals and seated buttocks. It just came and came. “I hope you like the smell.”

  In the dark, Jack smiled.

  * * *

  When she was a little girl and fear or sickness intruded on her otherwise contented existence, Jenny had a secret place in her mind she retreated to, a shady forest glen. Here she would curl up on a bed of fragrant clover, in a cubbyhole formed by the unearthed roots of a great willow..
.and she would sleep. There was refuge in sleep, even now, with her grownup bottom soaked in urine and her broken heart languishing in her chest. Sleep brought dreams, and in dreams you could have your babies back, as many as you wanted—

  The light was hot against her face. Jenny opened her eyes to watery slits, bringing a hand up to shield her retinas from the needling glare.

  It was a lamp. A lamp in her face.

  “Jack, stop that, please...”

  The light was withdrawn. “I don’t want you dozing off,” he said. He replaced the lamp on the end table. Until now the house had been steeped in darkness. “I want your full attention.” He made a slow circuit of the room, turning on all the lights, then returned to his chair.

  Jenny hung her head. She was utterly spent. She hadn’t slept a wink since Kim’s—

  suicide

  She still couldn’t believe it, could scarcely allow herself to consider it. If she hadn’t been so pitifully self-absorbed, she might have picked up on Kim’s darkening mood. Maybe....

  But it was too late for maybes.

  The phone rang and Jenny lurched to her feet. “Jack, I’ve got to get that. It might be the hospital.”

  There was an extension in the room, on the side table next to Jack’s right hand. On the second ring he reached out and picked up the receiver.

  Thank God, Jenny thought. Thank—

  He lifted it an inch out of its cradle, then let it drop with a mocking clatter.

  You fucker.

  “Why don’t you get it over with?” Jenny said, her fury making her bold.

  “And what might that be, my beloved?”

  “Whatever you mean to do to me. Beat me up? Kill me? Is that what you have in mind? Kill me like you did our son—”

  The lamp flew across the room and exploded in the open hearth. Jack’s voice was a panther hiss. “Don’t you dare breathe a word about my son.” He leaned back in the recliner. “I haven’t decided yet,” he said.

  “What haven’t you decided?”

  “What I’m going to do with you.”

  Jenny chose not to press him further.

  * * *

  Wearing a plain black funeral dress, Nina sat on the edge of the bed she and Will had shared and watched Peter Chartrand on TV, fielding the questions of a group of reporters. The administrator stood at the Med Center’s main entrance, braving the drizzle on this gray Saturday morning. The man was positively jubilant.

  “What we’ve seen here is a kind of harsh justice,” Chartrand said. “Doctor Armstrong was a dangerously unbalanced man whose own wife was forced to take him down. This hospital, this community, owes that woman a debt of thanks.”

  A reporter said, “What are your plans now?”

  “As we speak a team of technicians is stripping down every anesthetic machine and operating suite, discarding every syringe and drug vial and meticulously restocking. They’ll be working around the clock to ensure the total safety of our operating rooms.”

  “How long before you expect to be up and running again?”

  “We hope to be fully operational by Monday morning.”

  Nina’s mother poked her head into the room. “Honey, it’s time.”

  Nina shut off the TV and mustered a smile. “Okay, Mom. I’ll be right along.”

  She listened to her mother’s receding footfalls, a brisk staccato of low heels on hardwood, a sound that had so often made her cower as a child. Now, strangely, the sound comforted her. Her mother had waded into this mess and taken control, not with the ranting meanness Nina remembered, but with quiet compassion, making the funeral arrangements, tending to the boys, dealing with the endless harassment of the media. It was amazing. Even a week ago Nina would have sworn the possibility of any kind of reconciliation between her and her mother was less than zero. Already good was coming from bad.

  As she stood Nina saw her wedding picture, a framed 10x12 that had hung on the wall for so many years she’d pretty much stopped noticing it. They were married in Jamaica, on the beach under a huge white parasol, exchanging vows of their own composition. Will’s grin was as wide as the Caribbean behind him.

  “I’m sorry, babe,” Nina said to that smiling face. “Sorry it came to this. And I don’t believe it was you. I’ll never believe it.” She touched a finger to her lips, then to Will’s beaming face, leaving a tiny wet spot on the glass.

  * * *

  Over the next twenty hours Jenny dozed off at least a dozen times—and each time Jack was there, pulling her ear, shaking her shoulders, and once, when fatigue dragged her to the cliff-edge of unconsciousness, he stood her up and smacked her across the face, first one side, then the other, leaving welts that would turn to bruises.

  “Sit,” he said. “And pay attention.”

  The phone rang twice more during that torturing period and each time Jack broke the connection, cruelly increasing Jenny’s certainty that Kim had died.

  After forty-two hours on the couch, after soiling herself not once but three times, after her first hallucination from dehydration and exhaustion, Jenny realized that her husband was insane. He’d had some sort of breakdown, and if she was going to get out of this in one piece, she had to figure out a way of talking him down. She should have twigged to this sooner, before things got so far out of hand. The trouble was, she wasn’t even sure she could compose a meaningful sentence right now, let alone convince a man who was temporarily insane that he needed help.

  And yet, to look at him, Jack seemed fine. In all this time he hadn’t eaten, slept or relieved himself either, and apart from a heavy shadow of beard he looked like a man who’d just stepped out of a refreshing shower.

  He’d switched off all the lights sometime during the afternoon. The house was dark again.

  Jenny said, “Jack, maybe I was wrong about leaving. Maybe we need each other right now. We should talk. I was angry, humiliated, so full of pain. I needed you and you weren’t there. But now...can’t we try to work things out?”

  Jack chuckled. In the faint glow from the street lights Jenny saw his head angle toward her. “There’s a lesson here, Jen,” he said. “I hope you can pick up on it. I hope you can accomplish that much.”

  “What lesson, Jack? Really, I’d like to know.”

  Jack’s gaze returned to his feet. Without hesitation Jenny plucked a heavy wooden statue of a tiki god off the end table beside her. Then she stood up, her legs sagging like unwatered stems. Concealing the statue with her thigh, she said, “I’ve had enough of this, Jack. If you want me to stay, you’ll have to kill me.”

  Jack said, “Have it your way,” and got to his feet.

  Marshaling the last of her strength, Jenny bolted past him into the hall. She was halfway to the basement door when a hand fell on her shoulder and she brought the statue around in a savage arc. It met something solid in the dark—there was a bright smacking sound—then it was gone.

  Jack stepped into the faint column of street light that bathed the hall, the carving in his hand. Grinning, he snapped it in two across his knee.

  Jenny lunged for the basement door, got there one short step ahead of him and slammed the door behind her, shooting the heavy bolt. She tramped down the steps, almost falling, and grabbed the phone on the rec-room wall.

  “Hi, hon,” Jack said from an upstairs extension. “You’re learning.”

  Jenny dropped the receiver and ran to one of the windows. They were small and high, but she thought she could fit if she sucked in her tummy. She stepped onto a chair, twisted the security latch and opened the window, then punched out the screen. She chinned herself up, got halfway out into the flower bed—and bumped her head against Jack’s knee. He was hunkered down on the grass in front her, offering his hand.

  Jenny wiggled back inside, scooping black earth into her shirt. She sprinted upstairs, flung open the door...and ran headlong into Jack in the hallway. He held her in a firm embrace, one hand encircling her neck.

  “Did you know the neck of a human being is exq
uisitely fragile?”

  Jenny brought her knee up into Jack’s groin. Jack pivoted, deflecting the full force of the blow, but Jenny managed to slither free of his grasp. Without looking back, she raced to the front door, yanked it open—

  And Jack slammed it closed.

  “Come,” he said in the dark. He led her back to the couch. “We’ll sit.”

  Jenny wept. She wept and wished Jack would die.

  He resumed his position on the Laz-Y-Boy, feet crossed, arms perched on the armrests, face a smooth, unreadable blank.

  This time when Jenny curled in the dark a helpless delirium claimed her and she sat sobbing and sniffling, all traces of concrete thought abandoning her so completely, she might have been born and suckled on this very couch, then shackled here for a lifetime marked only by misery. Her memory offered no alternative. In the few black hours that followed her mind simply disconnected and she stared unblinking into space.

  Sometime later, crouched in the kitchen over her empty dishes, Peach gave voice to her hunger, uttering a drawn-out, mournful caterwaul that finally broke through Jenny’s paralysis. It sounded like a baby crying.

  “I can’t take this anymore,” she said, getting to her feet. The room spun for a beat, then stood still. “I’m leaving.”

  “You’re welcome to try.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Jenny shuffled past the recliner like a zombie. Jack’s foot popped out and tangled her legs. Jenny went down hard, her head missing the edge of the coffee table by bare inches. She started to push herself up and saw Charlie Haid’s switchblade glimmering under the loveseat where Jack had kicked it a lifetime ago.

  Six inches from her fingertips.

  Concealing it’s length with her forearm, Jenny picked up the knife and got to her feet. Then she stumbled into the hall.

  Jack remained in his chair.

  “Peach,” Jenny said, arresting the cat’s wails. She could see its eyes, cool amber moons in the shadows of the kitchen. “Come on, kitten.”