by Glen Krisch
As she applied her makeup for the first time since the night of the accident, her hand gave off a slight tremor she couldn't quite control. She knew what would steady her hand, or at least allow her the numbness not to notice. At the thought, the telltale odor of a Vicodin high permeated her nostrils. She'd become used to anticipating the slightly metallic tang in her nostrils that let her know the painkiller was working and that soon her dark thoughts would leaven.
Angie felt a surge of anger at herself over her weakness. She capped her lipstick and tossed it into her makeup bag sitting open next to the sink. As she dabbed a tissue at the corner of her mouth, she considered herself in the mirror. The woman staring back at her looked familiar, almost like the déjà vu brought about by a stranger's eye contact while passing on the street.
"I know you," she said aloud. "You used to laugh. You used to never worry about tomorrow."
Tomorrow worried her like nothing else, tomorrow and every other day that followed. Tomorrow would be a time of loss, another day in a growing string of days without Paul. And as more tomorrows became yesterdays, she feared losing the memories of Paul, both the good and the bad, and having him fade from her life completely.
She realized she'd started crying and that if she didn't get things under control, she would have to reapply her makeup. If she had to bother, she would never leave the house today. She dabbed her eyes, pressed her fingers to the dark bags beneath.
"You can do this, Ang. Stop being such a baby."
After a protracted breath that hitched deep in her chest, the next came more smoothly, and with the next, she felt like she might not fall apart at the slightest provocation.
She didn't necessarily miss her job. Before the accident, it had been a typically boring eight-hour ordeal of filing papers, keeping track of invoices and payroll, and answering phones. Now, nearly three months since that tragic evening, she was starting to miss the daily human contact. Even the thought of seeing her mother-in-law didn't make her cringe.
Her image in the mirror had resolved into something much more familiar. Angie Chandler now stared back at her. A slightly haggard, tired version of Angie Chandler, but at least it was a start. She grabbed her purse and lunch, ready to leave.
As she rushed toward the front door, Bizzy charged after her, wagging her tail, anticipating a walk in the woods.
"No, girl. This is for real. I'm going to work."
With the wagging of her tail diminished to a meager twitch, the dog seemed to frown up at her, as if she really understood the implication of Angie being gone all day.
"After work, I promise, we'll get out for a nice long walk." She said and kneeled down to scratch the little terrier behind the ears. "I know, I've been a bad Mommy. You've barely been out. And I know how you love it."
Bizzy let out a single excited bark.
"Tonight. I promise."
Bizzy wagged her tail again. Feeling like she'd salvaged something in their relationship, Angie grabbed her things and made it out to the car before she could change her mind.
Paul's Honda Pilot had been totaled, so that left her to drive her ten year-old Accord. The car still handled like a dream, and it was comforting easing into the worn leather seat when she climbed inside. She managed to key the ignition on the second try. She wouldn't even acknowledge the shaking of her hand as she pulled the transmission into drive, or how her fingers blanched as she gripped the steering wheel when she left the tree-lined confines of the curving gravel drive as the tires met asphalt.
It was only several minutes later, after a minivan with its horn blaring whipped around the Accord to pass her in the oncoming lane, that Angie realized she was cruising at a steady twenty miles an hour, half the legal speed limit.
"Okay, asshole, I hear you."
She punched the accelerator and brought the Accord to a respectable thirty-five, but her chest tightened at the increased speed. The leafless trees blurred by in a brown and steel-gray tumult, a chaotic riffle of empty gaps, denuded branches, and low-lying fog. She focused on the road ahead while trying to control her breathing.
She knew why her body was reacting in such a way to the simple act of driving. This very action, carried out by her own hand, had killed Paul. And now, acknowledging her own trepidation, even to herself, the emotions resurfaced.
"I killed Paul. I killed my soul mate." Her voice sounded reedy in the enclosed passenger compartment, unhinged.
She was met by the hum of the Accord's engine and nothing more. Her admission hung in the air. There was no one else to blame but herself. The Accord slowed again, and she watched the road through a blurred veil of tears.
When she turned down the road that would lead her to downtown Grand View and Chandler's Salvage and Restoration, her heart galloped in her chest, feeling like it would burst as it pummeled her sternum.
"This is it. The street..." she whispered. "Oh no, Ang. You stupid idiot."
Time slid into slow motion.
The street, with its gnarled oaks and poplars crowding the lanes, Chase's Pitstop with its blaring OPEN sign stood just north of the road.
Flashes from the night of the accident burst into her vision:
Paul, drunk and nearly passed out, muttering, "Angel... love my Angel..."
The falling snow deepening across the road, the fluffy white nearly blinding in its intensity...
And the deer (no, it had been a man, a man dressed in black) stood in the road.
Angie had a nearly uncontrollable impulse to yank the steering wheel hard to the right in order to avoid the deer (manmanman, stupid cunting man) in the road.
But the road was clear. The snow had melted after a succession of warm days.
"It was a man, not a deer," she admitted. Speaking those words solidified her memory. She could remember him standing in the road, moving to center himself with the Pilot's grill even after Angie attempted evasive action.
Her mouth tasted suddenly sour, and then it watered, craving the sweetness of wine. Her chest continued to tighten, compressing her rollicking heart in its panic-stricken grip. Her heartbeat echoed in her ears as glittering sparks shot across the darkening backdrop of her vision.
Nearly blind, she eased the car to the shoulder and put the car in park. Angie grasped her arms across her chest and rocked herself, focusing on nothing more than that simple motion. Nothing else mattered, nothing else existed, just the soothing movement, the slight pressure of her own arms across her chest.
Her heartbeat eased. She opened her eyes and her vision had cleared. When she took in her surroundings, she saw tire marks gouged into the gravel skirting the road, and the marks trailing away, leaving deep treads plowed through the winter-gray grass. The treads cleaved a path clear to the edge of the woods. And there, at the wall of trees, broken saplings marked the Pilot's journey into the woods; broken teeth in a wounded mouth.
Of all the places in the world for her to have a panic attack, it had to be here. The last place in the world she ever wanted to visit again.
She tilted her head back against the head rest and closed her eyes.
The image of the man in the road resolved in fine focus behind her eyelids. The man dressed in all black... his face a jumble of familiar curves and sharp angles, a brown beard growing wild across his chin... and the way he touched her when the fog of wine and Vicodin descended over her... the way her body responded... full of wanton lust and loneliness...
"No!" she screamed, shaking her head to clear it. "Fucking, no! That didn't happen. This isn't happening."
She opened her eyes and took in her surroundings (ignoring the tunnel into the woods forged by the Pilot), seeing everything, the salt-stained asphalt, the mournful winter trees and dead grass, the occasional mailbox near the road, everything and anything, just so that whatever she saw was real and would root her to both the real world and the now, and push away the knowing, the full-blown understanding of what she had done, what she had allowed to enter her body...
"Paul,"
she sighed, her temples throbbing with a budding migraine. "What's happening to me?"
A car rushed by, its side view mirror dangerously close to clipping her own.
"Am I going crazy? Are you haunting me?"
The car was silent. No answers were forthcoming.
Angie pulled herself together. She would never make it in to work, let alone through an entire eight hour day, in her current state. She wondered if she ever would.
When she'd pulled the Accord around, heading for home, and the broken teeth in the wounded mouth that represented the ending of her former life drifted from sight within the rearview mirror, the tightness in her chest began to ease. As it did, she felt an almost unbearable fatigue settle over her muscles. It felt like she had been holding her breath ever since Nathan and Macy brought her home from the hospital, and that she was finally able to exhale. She had been holding her breath, waiting for the world to decide what to do with her.
She approached Chase's Pitstop. She felt like pulling over and storming inside to chastise Chase for leaving that goddamn sign on every hour of the day. Didn't he know how ignorant that made him look?
She was nearly pastthe gas station when she slammed on the brakes and pulled into the parking lot. She parked near the door, grabbed her purse, and stormed inside.
Her mouth watered, sour and sweet at the same time, the craving of wine pushing aside all other thoughts. The watering of her mouth was followed by the haunting metallic tang of Vicodin in her nostrils. So the world had decided what to do with Angie Chandler, and what it wanted of her was oblivion.
"That asshole!" Angie slammed her palm against the steering wheel, a short sharp pain in her wrist reminding her that it was still in the process of healing. She'd left Chase's with a case of wine and a spur-of-the-moment pint of Jack Daniel's. "Who gives a condescending look like that? Like I'm a crazed lunatic or something."
Her voice felt hoarse, but her anger had begun to ebb. She wasn't mad at Chase. Not really. So, he'd given her a dirty look because of her purchase. For all she knew, he figured she'd been drunk at the time of the car accident. A dozen rumors were probably making the rounds around Grand View about what really happened that night. Even the facts would seem like rumor to Angie, since she didn't fully remember what had happened, either.
Sure, she shouldn't be mad at Chase, but rather, at herself.
Angie twisted off the pint's cap and downed half of it before the burning could register. She coughed and sputtered, tears formed and fell from her eyes, she leaned back and stared at the car's gray ceiling. Only after she had things under control, when she knew she wouldn't vomit up the whiskey, did she consider making sure no one was observing her illicit behavior. Luckily, Angie had the parking lot at Chase's all to herself. She hoped the streets would be similarly empty during the remaining drive home.
A buzz was already building as she pulled back out onto the street. Without the addition of Vicodin to still her churning thoughts, her mind drifted back to the night of the accident and the memories of traveling this very road and the moment that instantly transformed her from being a devoted wife to forever a widow...
One oxford shoe tipped on its side on the Pilot's hood...
Snowflakes falling through the shattered windshield, melting on contact with Paul's fleeting body heat lingering in the upholstery of the passenger seat...
The man in black standing in the clearing, his feet buried in snow, his shadow falling over her as her body succumbed to shock and the freezing cold...
"No! Jesus, stop it, Ang. Just stop!"
The Accord slowed as she pulled into the driveway. The sight of the house was both welcoming and an emotional torture.
"Living isn't the same as existing," she said aloud, wondering what she meant and where the words had come from. Living and existing... She pondered the existential bullshit as she hefted the case of booze and made for the door. Whatever the fuck... there is no more meaning to anything.
Once inside, she hurriedly dropped her keys in the bowl on the entryway table and set the case next to it just in time to catch Bizzy in her arms as the dog came rushing in from the kitchen.
"You make everything better. You know that, girl?"
The little dog wriggled in her arms and licked her chin. Just seeing Bizzy normally put a smile on Angie's face, but not today. She could feel darkness pulling at her, could feel the tears once again building in her eyes.
She'd failed, on multiple levels, she'd failed.
She'd never made it in to work. She'd allowed the bizarre memories or distortions of memory to surface. And seeing the box sitting on the entryway table... the worst failure of all.
Angie set Bizzy down and started for the great room, eyeing the phone sitting on the end table. She didn't even get halfway to the phone before she returned to the case for the bottle of whiskey. With Bizzy following her every move, Angie uncapped the bottle as she returned to the great room. She took a long swig, relishing the liquid burn in her throat, hating herself for not being able to move on with her life.
She dialed with one hand, while tipping the bottle with the other. By the time the phone started ringing, only dregs remained in the pint.
A click sounded as someone picked up on the other end.
Angie set the empty pint on the end table and turned away from it. Out of sight, out of mind.
"Hello?" a voice said.
"Hi, Steph, it's me. It's Angie..." she started before her voice cracked. She took a deep breath and continued. "I was going to come in today. I really was. I was going to surprise you and just show up, but I couldn't. I just couldn't make it."
"Angeline... this is Imogene. Stephanie is scheduled off today."
"But wait... who's running the office?"
"I am, of course. Same as always. Don't worry about coming in. We have everything working like a fine-tuned watch."
A wave of dizziness made Angie nearly drop the phone.
Imogene. That overbearing, controlling harpy. Why of all people did she have to answer the phone? Angie remembered her mother-in-law sitting in a cozy recliner near the fireplace at Fletcher's party on the night of the accident. With her smug look, her snide tone.
Oh, really, Angeline?
Angie could hear Imogene breathing on the other end of the phone. She had no doubt that she was smiling as well. Neither spoke for an uncomfortable length of seconds that felt more like minutes.
"I'll be back to work soon. I just need more time," Angie finally said. "When I come back, I want to be there 100%. I want to be back to my normal self."
"I know I said don't worry, Angeline, but what I should have said was, don't bother."
Chapter 8
Bizzy's frenzied barking woke Angie sometime in the middle of the night. The moonlight streaming through the windows looked like midday sunlight as a late-season snowfall magnified its intensity. The flakes, flurrying like those in a shaken snow globe, sparkled like fairy dust sprinkled from the eaves of the house.
Angie groggily pulled herself into a sitting position on the couch, her head spinning with drink and her tongue tasting vile and thick in her mouth.
"Oh, no. I forgot, didn't I?" Pressing her palms to her temples, all Angie could think about was how she had failed to take Bizzy for her promised walk, only allowing her a short excursion limited by the length of the tether outside the sliding back door and how long it had taken to open a fresh bottle of wine.
Angie wiped a pasty spit from her lips with the back of her hand. She stood stiffly, unsteadily, waiting without daring to move, her eyes pressed tightly closed. With Bizzy still barking a mile a minute, she wondered if her legs would hold her up or if she might vomit.
When she opened her eyes, the first thing she noticed was that an empty wine bottle and a partial second had joined the empty pint on the end table. Bizzy ran into the great room and nudged Angie's ankle with her cold nose, then scampered off into the kitchen again.
Thinking back, in the jumble of wine,
whiskey and pills, she did remember putting the dog out. Bizzy never had to go out in the middle of the night. Besides, the little fluff ball was afraid of the dark, so much so that she would hold off until morning instead of relieving a painfully full bladder in the dark. Even inside, she would be a panting bundle of nerves if there wasn't at least a nightlight plugged into the outlet near her dog bed in the kitchen.
"I'm coming. Just hold your horses. I'm not in the mood to clean your piddle off the floor."
Bizzy was frantically pawing the door when Angie entered the kitchen.
"Okay, okay, I'm here."
Angie unlocked the door and slid it open on its track. Normally she wouldn't let Bizzy out without her tether, but with the dog's fear of the dark she figured there was no risk of her running off. Plus, the whole idea of bending over, reaching out to find the metal clasp, with how her head was pounding...
Bizzy dashed out into the grass and squatted to pee. Before she could ever be finished, the little dog stood at attention, and peering off into the dark woods, let out three sharp barks. She took a lunging stride forward, both paws slamming into the dead turf, and let out the throatiest growl the seven-pounder could muster.
"Come here, girl. It's okay... just a squirrel." Angie didn't sound confident, even to her still half-drunk self, and she felt even less so. Her groggy eyes panned the woods. The details blurred and started to spin, the liquor still not clear of her system.
"Bizzy. Come here. Now!" Hoping to sound forceful, she only succeeded in making Bizzy glance at her over her shoulder. But then a noise came from the woods from the direction that had so captured Bizzy's attention
A breaking twig.
Another snap followed the first like an echo. No, not like an echo. Like footsteps.
Bizzy let out a shrill bark and sprinted off into the darkness, her fear be damned.