This Is Not Over

by Holly Brown

  I ignore them, trying to catch my breath as I decide what to do next. A part of me wants to call the police myself. A man should not lay his hands on a woman, under any circumstances. He’s a business owner, or at least, his family is. I could do him harm.

  But I don’t want to. None of this is his fault. It’s hers. He’s just a fool in love. Like Thad.

  Rob isn’t willing to listen, not yet. But I’ve planted the seed, and it could grow fruit. In the meantime, I know her address.

  She’s not just messing with me anymore. I’m a mama bear, and she’s threatening my cub. He might be a grown man, but he’s stalled out emotionally, like all addicts. He’s so susceptible to her wiles that he would attack his own mother. That’s the behavior of an adolescent, someone who can’t see until tomorrow and the next day. A foreshortened future, that’s addiction in a nutshell. They used that phrase a bunch in Nar-Anon.

  I feel unadulterated rage. At Larry, and at Thad, and at a life that’s spinning out of my control. But really, it comes down to Dawn. She’s the one threatening to destroy me, and Thad, and I have to get to her first.

  I’m not going to leave Dawn alone, no matter what Rob says. On the contrary, I’m going right for her. She’ll never see me coming.

  For some strange reason, I find myself smiling. She won’t see me coming, but ultimately, she will see me and she’ll hear me, clear as bells.

  55

  Dawn

  Don’t let your grad be forgotten #engravingisthenewblack

  I don’t know how it happened, how the vodka got into the orange juice, but I’m feeling a whole lot better about everything now. Thad would never hurt me. He’s here for the opposite reason.

  I’m feeling good, actually, sitting here on the couch with Thad, buzzed, not drunk. At the moment, Thad seems neither ominous nor ridiculous but nearly attractive. He probably has a trust fund coming to him at some point, and an inheritance. There are worse horses to bet on.

  He still wants me to tell him my secrets, but now he says it lightly, teasingly, and honestly, I can’t seem to keep track of what I’ve said. Sometimes he’s nodding with his eyebrows knitted together like I’m revealing something deep as the cosmos, and then seconds later we’re both laughing, our heads lolling back on the cushions.

  I’ve gotten past the cadaverous appearance and the teeth. It’s like I’m looking through some kind of digital enhancement, a blue screen of sorts, and his teeth have lost that jack-o’-lantern quality and he’s put on twenty pounds. He’s the Thad I first saw on the Internet, the one at his high school graduation, flanked by his well-heeled parents, full of promise, headed to UC Santa Barbara.

  I’m not sure what the segue is, but Thad has gotten serious. He’s talking about his parents, and part of me wants to stop him because I’m just not interested in Miranda anymore. I finally am letting go of all that, but it seems like he really needs to talk.

  I’m not catching every single word through my buzz but I do get this: The good doctor is actually a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and he has screwed Miranda’s relationship with Thad big-time. When he was drunk, Mr. Hyde came out. He would go into Thad’s room for their late-night chats and he’d poison Thad against his mom. It went on for years and years, so long that it seemed like Thad didn’t know where his dad’s version of Miranda ended and his own experiences began. It was stressful, being fed all these stories about his mother, and it might have even been part of why Thad started using drugs, so he could be elated instead of confused, at least for a little while.

  “I wanted to be perfect myself,” he says. “I wanted my mother to love me like I was but she never could. It was all an act.”

  “How do you know it was an act?”

  “I could feel it.”

  “But did you feel it because you took your dad’s word for it?”

  “I’ll tell you a story,” he says, “and at the end of it, you’ll see.”

  I take a swig and get ready to listen.

  Thad tells me that when he was fourteen, his father came into his room, sobbing. He’d killed somebody on the operating table, an old guy who was probably going to die soon anyway, but his dad was such a good person that he was still royally torn up. “I’d had one drink,” he cried to Thad, “to take the edge off. To deal with the pressure your mom was always putting on me. I never should have done it.”

  Thad said his dad was obviously tormented, crying and shaking. What he’d wanted was for his wife to tell him it was okay that he’d made a mistake. He wanted her to tell him that he didn’t need to be perfect, that he should own up and take responsibility, which was what he really wanted. He wanted to make things right with the hospital, and with the family. But of course, she’d never tell him that. She didn’t want a black mark on him, and on her. So he had to cover it up.

  Over the coming months, he cried other times, too. He always felt so bad about it, but there was no way to make it right now, was there? He had to live with it.

  “I said to my dad that he couldn’t admit that he’d lied, after the fact. It would ruin him, and my dad said exactly, he was trapped. That fucking bitch. She trapped him. She destroyed my dad.”

  “He doesn’t sound so destroyed when you talk about him,” I say. What he sounds is evil. He kills someone while he’s drunk but he can’t come clean because his wife won’t let him?

  “That’s because he’s strong. He found a way to deal with it.”

  Poor Miranda. Her whole relationship with her son’s been hijacked by Mr. Hyde, and I bet she doesn’t even know it. Thad clearly doesn’t get it. I’m trying to think how to break the news when the front door flies open.

  My reflexes have been substantially slowed by my buzz. Before I can even register what’s happening, Rob’s standing in front of the couch, his chest heaving. He looks massive, like Thor. It must be the contrast with Thad. My vodka goggles disappear instantly, and I see Thad as he in fact is, as Rob must.

  I stand up. “It’s not what it looks like.” Oldest line in the book. Alcohol has never sparked my creativity. If only Thad had brought some meth.

  Rob ignores me. He’s focused on Thad. “Get up.”

  Thad puts his hands in the air. “I come in peace.”

  “You came to fuck my wife.”

  He shakes his head. “Like she said, it’s not what it looks like. She needed a friend, I was in the area.”

  “I bet you were!” Rob roars. I didn’t even know he could access that decibel. No, wait, I heard it once before. The road rage incident. Rob, my protector. “Get up!” Wait, wasn’t he screaming that at me last night? He was spoiling for a fight then, too.

  “Let’s talk this over, man.” I imagine Thad’s been in situations far more dangerous than this one. Maybe you stay seated so that you’re nonthreatening. It’s zoo rules: You don’t taunt the gorilla. Or you stay low to the ground and sweep the leg, like in The Karate Kid.

  Thad could have tricks up his sleeve, though. He must go to all sorts of shady places to buy drugs. He has to know how to defend himself when he spots trouble. Rob went to a Christian college full of rich preps. He’s the one in over his head. Whatever the state of our marriage, I don’t want to see him hurt.

  “Rob,” I say, “Thad was just leaving.”

  “Thad.” Rob nods briskly. “Of course. This is Thad.”

  “She’s talked about me?” Thad queries.

  “I just met your mother.”

  “My mother?” Thad glances at me, like we’re on Candid Camera.

  His mother? Rob met Miranda? So Miranda’s in Oakland, trailing her son like a bloodhound? I know I’m a little slow on the uptake, but this is a lot to process.

  “She said her son, Thad, was fucking my wife. I told her she was crazy.” Now Rob’s glaring at me. “I told her to get out of my store.”

  “You kicked my mother out of a store? Awesome!” Thad claps his hands together with a childish glee.

  Rob turns back to Thad. “You’re a real piece of work.” Disres
pecting mothers is definitely not the way to Rob’s heart. His face has hardened to pure hatred. He advances, grabs Thad by the throat, and lifts him. I’ve never seen a maneuver like that in real life, and I wouldn’t have expected my first time would be with Rob. Thad is dangling like a skeleton, and Rob actually hurls him toward the front door, then advances again. I think it has to be the adrenaline, the same thing that allows moms to lift cars off kids. Dads must be able to lift cars off kids, too, but you never hear about that.

  Thad is scrambling backward, still on the floor. Rob is walking slowly, like he’s relishing this moment, and that lets Thad get to his feet and sprint out the door. Rob looks back at me, like he’s debating whether to chase Thad, and I say, “Let him go. We just texted sometimes, that’s all.”

  Rob is looking back and forth, between the door and me, considering his next move. By now, Thad’s got a head start. I hear the outer door to the building slamming shut downstairs.

  The hatred is still on Rob’s face, and now it’s directed at me. “Lift your shirt.”

  Is he saying he wants to have sex? Now? I don’t know what I feel. His anger doesn’t seem so attractive at the moment, but I know I need to do penance for Thad. “Nothing happened with Thad.”

  “Lift your shirt.” Each word is guttural, through gritted teeth.

  I find myself complying.

  “I knew it,” he spits out in disgust. “I knew you’d be wearing that bra.”

  It’s not my workaday seamless T-shirt bra with the racerback; it’s the one with the lacy cutouts around my nipples. Now, it’s evidence. I wore it for Thad. Just in case.

  “You would have fucked him if I hadn’t come home.”

  “I wouldn’t have.” I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t. “Did you see his teeth?”

  “You would have fucked that nasty track-marked piece of shit in the apartment I pay for. On my couch, or in my bed?” He looks like he still wants to hit someone. “My father was right. You’re a gold digger.”

  “You see any gold around here?”

  “I’m going to inherit the business.”

  I guess we’re all delusional in our own ways. “A business that’s worthless.”

  “We’re tweeting now.” There it is, that Thiebold optimism. I never stood a fighting chance at becoming one of them. “You don’t know anything about the business.”

  “I know you have almost no customers. I know you lived in this apartment for three years before me, and we’ve been here more than three years together. That’s not exactly upward mobility.”

  He looks away, like he’s fighting for control. His fists clench and unclench. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you.”

  “About me being a gold digger. Which I’m not. I’ve just been unhappy. My father pimped me out, my mother’s a waste of space, I’m begging Big Pharma for a job I don’t even want, I’m texting a junkie, I’ve been harassing his mother for weeks. I’ve got to figure my shit out, I know that. But I’m not normal, and I never will be, and that needs to be okay with you. It needs to be okay with me. Can it ever be okay with you?”

  I see the answer in his eyes at the same time that I hear a male scream of agony from the street below. It’s followed by a door opening and slamming, and a woman yelling, “Oh my God, help!” Then there are only wails.

  56

  Miranda

  I don’t know what happened. I was sitting in my car outside Dawn’s house, boiling for a confrontation, and a voice inside told me to wait. I thought it was some kind of guardian angel, or my mother coming through at last (maybe my mother died after I left and she was the guardian angel), and I trusted that voice.

  I was parked there, and then Thad came running out of the building. A scarecrow of Thad, but a mother can always recognize her son, no matter how much he’s deteriorated.

  There he was, running, and my first thought was not, Someone’s chasing him, or, Is he okay? No, it’s, Oh my God, he’s robbed someone. He’s hurt someone. It was a robbery gone wrong. Do I cover for him? Do I turn him in? For years, I’ve expected it to come to this. I should have had a plan.

  Is Dawn dead? It would be so like the universe to solve one of my problems while creating an entirely worse one.

  So I decide that I need to follow him. He doesn’t even notice the car trailing him, he’s in full flight. One block, then two, then he stops. He bends over, out of breath, and when he looks up, I duck down. He wouldn’t necessarily recognize my car. Then I realize he’s not looking in my direction at all. He’s looking back the way he came, and a certain resolve comes over his face, and he’s headed back. Back to the scene of the crime, perhaps. This time, he’s walking instead of running.

  These are residential blocks in midmorning in what looks to be a depressed area. I bet no one goes anywhere in midmorning. This place comes alive at night, with drug deals, probably. This is just the kind of neighborhood Thad should be avoiding. It’s a trigger.

  But he clearly hasn’t been avoiding anything that’s bad for him. I know that look. He’s emaciated. He’s been lying to me about being clean these past months.

  He’ll never be clean. Never.

  I’m filled with a hopelessness and fury that can’t even be expressed as I follow him back toward Dawn’s apartment. I’m wondering if the meth has done something to his hearing because he never turns toward the car, and while it’s a luxury machine, it’s not soundless.

  We’re almost there, and that’s when he spins and sees me. I slam my brakes, and he narrows his eyes. He doesn’t look entirely surprised, is the strange thing. But he does look hateful.

  He hates me. After all he’s put me through and everything I’ve sacrificed—even right now, I’m here for him, to pry him from Dawn’s clutches—and still, he hates me.

  He steps out in front of my car, and he bangs on the hood. He’s yelling that I need to get out of here, that I don’t belong, not here, and not in his life. He’s cursing prolifically, even though he knows I abhor that. It’s because I abhor it. Another slam on the hood.

  He’ll never be clean. The addiction is a monster that’s devoured my Thaddeus, my little boy, the one who had dreams and potential and a heart. This is the monster he will always be.

  That’s what I’m thinking, but what I’m not thinking is: Reverse. Then put your foot on the gas.

  I swear, I never once thought that.

  57

  Dawn

  I’m chasing after Rob, down the flight of steps, and he stops so suddenly that I nearly run into him. “Oh my God,” he says.

  Thad is half-under a large Audi sedan, and he’s not moving. Miranda is kneeling on the ground by the front tire, her hands over her face, genuflecting. Sobs escape from between her fingers.

  “Did you already call 911?” Rob asks Miranda. She shakes her head, panicked. That’s my first clue.

  Miranda is not what I expected. She’s wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Her hair looks like it hasn’t been washed or brushed today or maybe yesterday either, and she’s wearing no makeup. I was sure she’d be Botoxed to within an inch of her life, but she’s got deep frown lines beside her mouth and pleats in her forehead.

  “It’s you,” she says.

  “And you,” I say.

  Rob ducks under the car and reports, “He’s breathing.”

  “Thank God,” Miranda says. But there’s something in her tone . . . that’s my second clue.

  Having met Thad, I get it. I really do. I feel like I get her. Yes, her grief is real, but there’s nothing simple about it, or about her. I’ve misjudged her all this time, same as Thad has. Miranda has layers. She’s more conflicted than I could ever be, until I have kids of my own.

  Now that I’m looking at her, I can see so clearly that she’s not the one I’ve been mad at all along.

  The one I’ve been mad at is me. I married Rob to become someone else, and I did the getaways for the same reason, and here I am, still me. All that darkness insisted on comi
ng out anyway. In fact, I don’t see how I can be any brighter until I’m on my own. I can’t be a good person by osmosis. It’ll never work.

  Rob is talking to the dispatcher now, describing the situation. “An ambulance is on the way,” he mouths to Miranda.

  “I don’t know if I should touch him,” she says to me. “Should I hold his hand? You know him. Would he want me to?”

  I say, with full compassion, “Probably not.”

  “Would he want you to?”

  “Maybe. But I can’t.” I indicate Rob with my eyes. Just because my marriage is ending, that doesn’t mean I need to hurt him any more than I already have. I married him under false pretenses, even if I didn’t know it at the time. I was digging for gold, of a sort. I wanted the Thiebold golden aura, the one bred of years of care and love. But instead of absorbing those rays, after a time I seemed to refract them. Rob has begun to take on my worst qualities, and while they were the very qualities I’d hoped to eradicate by marrying him, they’ve actually grown stronger. We’ve begun to make each other worse instead of better.

  “If this is it,” Miranda says, her eyes glistening, “if these are his last minutes, he needs to know he’s not alone. Doesn’t he?”

  “He’s still breathing. He’ll be okay. Thad’s the type with nine lives.”

  Miranda begins to shake. “I don’t know what happened. How did all this happen?” I can see she doesn’t just mean hitting Thad with her car. That’s the culmination. I feel her pain, and her bewilderment. Neither of us meant to get here. We’ll be intertwined, forever.

  “It was an accident,” I say. “I saw the whole thing from my kitchen window. He ran in front of your car. I’ll tell the police.”

  The look on Miranda’s face—that’s the third clue. She meant to do it, and she didn’t. I’m intimately familiar with that. We’re more the same than we are different. Otherwise, it would never have come to this. One of us would have turned back long ago, given in, but instead, we kept driving right for each other.