Poison

by Galt Niederhoffer

  Other than a handful of conversations about college tuition, this was the last time Ryan spoke to his mother. Which is not to say that she didn’t try. Throughout college, she called once a week, leaving messages on the answering machine in his dorm room or with his roommates, writing letters, and sending packages that were never opened. During architecture school, she drove up once and asked if she could take him out to dinner. She made one last-ditch effort to reconcile after graduation, sending a package to his first design firm with a box of ties and the transfer of the deed of the cabin. But Ryan was long gone now, and forgiveness had exceeded its statute of limitations. He had started a new life, safe from the turbulence of his mother, a life buttressed by a new career, a promising position at a hot design firm, a decent biweekly paycheck, and all the pleasures available to a gainfully employed twenty-eight-year-old man in a big city. He had no need for a ramshackle cabin in a distant cove on a dreary island or the long-overdue apologies of a woman he no longer needed. Truth be told, he was ashamed of his mother. The ties she sent seemed cheap and crass compared to the ones worn by his colleagues—bright shiny silks in pink, orange and gray, blue and silver—unlike the dark and heavy synthetic fabrics she sent him.

  Like most of the houses on this rustic, windswept island, Ryan’s cabin looks as though it could topple in a strong wind or current. The house is a wooden A-frame built in the sixties from a kit and looks like a house of cards compared to the rugged heft of the substantial Victorians that dot the island, which were built a hundred years prior. The wood is thin, the walls are warped, and the bathroom and kitchen are spare, but this house feels more like a home to the Connors than anywhere they have lived before, scattered with board games and puzzles, decorated with the children’s drawings and drying towels. And every time they arrive, the whole group changes, lightens. They grow closer and more entwined, like a family of cats, curled up in a laundry basket.

  This evening, the house enjoys the hush of physical exhaustion. The older kids listen, on repeat, to their favorite album, collaborating on a jigsaw puzzle of a gum-ball machine with more detail than the Sistine Chapel, while Sam adds a competitive element to the game by hiding puzzle pieces under the sofa cushions. Ryan tinkers in the back with a new project—he is teaching himself how to update the plumbing in the outdoor shower. Cass putters in the kitchen, making some very basic pasta. Her mind is still for the first time in months, unburdened by any discernible thoughts other than the most mundane: boil water, turn off stove, drain pasta. When things are calm like this, she cannot remember any other version. When life is good with Ryan, there is nothing better.

  Perhaps they have finally scaled the last peak in their marriage, set off across a peaceful plateau filled with lakes and meadows. She wonders if they have passed some test, finished a painful growth spurt. She starts to imagine contentment, a world in which the best is to come and the worst is behind them. But an odd and unwelcome image catches her eye as she cleans the counter: a tiny circle of black hair, and then another. She picks it up, holds it to her eyes. It is wiry and tightly coiled. Recognizing what it is, she feels suddenly nauseous. Repulsed, she flicks the hair into the sink and hovers, uncertain for a moment, like a confused hummingbird; then she tries to flick the thought out of her head, carries the steaming bowl to the table, and joins her family for dinner.

  * * *

  An hour or two have passed, and Cass takes a shower. She feels like a woman in a movie, a woman in the reflexive stage of bathing after trauma. Is it an attempt to wash off the pain or to reinstate ownership of one’s own body? The kids are reading in their room, or sneaking some time with a laptop movie. The baby is asleep—no sounds emerge from his room other than peaceful rhythmic breathing. Ryan lies in the bed in a T-shirt and his gray cotton briefs, holding his phone like a shield and watching something that seems, from the sporadic moans and shrieks emanating from his phone, to be extremely violent.

  Cass knows all too well the details of Ryan’s sexual preference. He has always liked to do it on the counter; backward, forward, one leg up, calf slung over his shoulder. Less so since the baby was born, but occasionally late on a Saturday night when the kids are sleeping and the house is quiet, as they sat, decompressing in the kitchen, him fussing with the furniture, her loading the dishwasher. And then, without warning, he would be behind her, lifting her skirt, wetting her with his fingers, and inserting himself without a word as though it was the next phase on the quick rinse of the dishwasher, as though it was his right to grab her ass and grip it calmly, then mash her breasts against the wood counter as he pounded her body.

  Now, against her will, she begins to test various theories. If the hair belongs to Stephanie, it is from the root. Over-bleached hair is likely to break due to all that damage. But these strands are long and black, longer than the root of hair in need of touch-up highlights, and no blond in sight. Is it possible it belongs to someone else? she now considers. That she was wrong about Stephanie and Ryan is fucking someone else entirely? That Stephanie is one of many? Or has she truly lost her mind and missed some reasonable explanation?

  Cass tries to wrangle her thoughts and dispel the new image, but like so many crimes of the heart, it has already made an indelible mark, like the shape of a bare bulb on the retina after facing it in a basement. And even before she can do the work of denial or self-inflicted amnesia, she is staring at more disgusting proof. It is as though he has set a trail for her, a sinister treasure hunt in which each bread crumb leads closer to a trap, closer to certain ruin.

  Clumping up the shower drain is another nasty blockage: swirls of black hair fill the grate like hundreds of tiny spiders. She crouches to see them better. The hair is dark, the shade somewhere between brown and black. It’s thick and wiry as pubic hair, but long enough to be from someone’s head. It obstructs the shower drain in clumps, as though it has accumulated over time, or come from a person who sheds more hair than most people. Cass fights her gag reflex as she reaches into the drain and removes it. Repulsed, she releases a clump from her hand and flushes it down the toilet, but as it starts to swirl away, she reaches in and grabs it. She rescues and saves several strands with this desperate gesture as though the rescue of this hair will amount to the rescue of her self-respect, the salvation of her marriage. She pulls her hand from the toilet water, dripping and covered by the hair of a stranger, the hair of her husband’s lover. She wonders which is more disgusting: the ugly facts she must now confront or the person she has become in the process.

  Cass enters the bedroom where Ryan is lounging. Intermittent zombie sounds punctuate the silence. It’s fine that he loves zombie shows, like every other male carnivore, but the fact that he finds it relaxing, that he likes to fall asleep to this—tonight this strikes her as disturbing. The world abounds with options—porn, football, boxing—for condoned male violence. She enters the room and stands at the door, watching him for a moment, then holds up the hair like a prosecutor showing evidence to a jury. The force of her pose is undermined slightly by the fact that a minute passes before Ryan acknowledges her presence.

  “What’s this?” she says.

  He doesn’t look up. More shrieking. Moaning. Howling. “What’s what?” he says. He looks up now.

  “This,” she says.

  He squints and leans toward her. His stomach muscles sharpen. “What do you have there, Sherlock?”

  “Don’t talk to me like that,” she says. It is a toothless but valiant effort.

  “I thought we came here to relax. I thought we had moved past this.” He goes back to his entertainment.

  “Ryan, this isn’t your hair. This belongs to a woman.”

  “Go easy on me, Cass. The stress is making my hair fall out.” He grunts something between a laugh and a sneer. Cass ignores the deflection.

  Ryan looks up finally and stares at Cass with utter loathing, as though she is vile and filthy, as though she is an untouchable and he is something royal. “I’m done with your paranoia,” he s
ays. “I told you I was finished.”

  But Cass is amped now. She won’t be cowed or bullied. Cass is bolstered by the thing in her hands, the weight of physical evidence, the heft of empirical data. She is holding a grenade, and Ryan is an enemy soldier. They are in a four-walled room. He is in a corner. “Ryan, whose hair is this? Ryan, who did you bring here?”

  Ryan looks back at his phone, retreating into his next move. The best defense is indifference. “I’m not going to live like this anymore. I am sick of your sickness.”

  “Stop turning the tables, Ryan. Don’t tell me it’s paranoia. I’m looking at it. Holding it. In my hand. It’s not yours or mine. Now tell me whose the fuck this is, or I’m waking the children and leaving the island.”

  A minute passes in silence with no grenade thrown, no words between them. Nothing but the sporadic sounds of humans eating human flesh while Cass is eaten alive by the lies of her husband.

  “There are no boats off the island right now,” he tells her.

  “I’ll borrow one from the harbor,” she says. “I’ll row a boat across the bay. I’ll steal one if I have to.”

  “You’re so far gone.”

  “You’ve said that, Ryan. And I don’t believe you.”

  “You’re nuts.”

  “Am I?” she says. “Or am I onto you?”

  “You’ve lost it, Cass. You can’t trust your own judgment.”

  “No, I haven’t. And yes, I can. It’s you who can’t be trusted.”

  “Listen to yourself, Cass. You can’t tell the difference anymore between appropriate and inappropriate behavior.”

  “If I’m crazy, you drove me to it,” she says. Her arms are on her hips now. Her stance is defiant.

  Ryan nods and reclines. His face softens so that he looks almost gentle.

  “Don’t tell me what’s appropriate,” she says. “You’re a cheater and a liar.”

  Another moment passes in which Ryan does nothing. He has defused his anger, like a bomb whose code is punched seconds before explosion. He sits up on the bed now in the most inviting manner, as though entreating a child to join him for a bedtime story.

  “I rented the house, Cass. I put it up on one of those sites and got a bunch of offers. In fact, I made a really good deal. Paid a month of the mortgage. There were people here over Labor Day. A nice Jewish family. With dark brown hair. Are you happy now, Raymond Chandler?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” she says. “You never mentioned a summer rental.”

  “Why would I tell you about this?” he says. “Do you have any idea how many things I do on a daily basis to take care of our family, our finances?”

  This, it must be said, is a sophisticated pivot. But still a variation on a theme, a 3.0 version. He has moved from “I didn’t do it” to “You imagined that I did it,” skipped “You made me do it” this time, and gone on to “You are guilty of doing something ten times worse.” Cass is baffled, immobilized for the moment, if only by the flair of Ryan’s pyrotechnics.

  Ryan pats the spot on the bed next to where he is sitting, as though the fight has not occurred, as though he is sitting on the beach and inviting her to watch the sunset.

  But Cass does not sit. She remains standing. She knows what he is doing now. He’s trying to distract her, trying to make her feel guilty. This is his favorite strategy, a tactic designed to sedate the advancing party. But tonight she will not fall for it. Tonight she will not feel feelings. Tonight she has something stronger. Facts and conviction. Tonight she has this hair in her hands, slicing the pads on her fingers. Tonight her heart is split in two, and the intensity of the pain will make her stronger.

  “I’m done with this,” Cass says. “The yelling, the lies, the secrets. This is the last time you’ll bully me, intimidate me for asking, threaten me for knowing. Try to make me doubt my own perceptions. Twist the facts. Shift the blame. Blame the victim.”

  “That’s it,” he says. “We’re finding you a shrink on Monday.”

  Ryan shakes his head and sighs in an apparent surrender, as though he has finally accepted her characterization. It is an unexpected withdrawal, a triumph for Cass. He lies down on the bed again, stretches his legs, theatrically fluffs a pillow. Then the bomb accelerates and descends to zero. Ryan springs from the bed and lunges at Cass, pinning her against the wall with the force and skill of an assassin. His hands close in around her neck like metal on a buckle. With each second, he presses in, pushing deeper into her skin, as though to touch the muscle.

  Her back is against the wall. His chest is crushing her chest. He is pushing the force of his weight into her body, using his body as a weapon, the wall as his accomplice. His eyes are large and shiny. His mouth is wet and open. “You are going to exit my life.”

  “Stop. Let go. You’re hurting me,” she whispers. It is hard to breathe now. Her neck is cinched, constricted.

  He pushes farther into her, slowly and with power, as though he is a bulldozer and she is a mound of dirt in the path before him.

  “Let go. I can’t breathe,” she says.

  He somehow gets taller. “How dare you speak to me like that after everything I do for you, the sacrifices I’ve made for you and your children.”

  One small shove against the wall to punctuate the sentence and then he walks back to the bed, leaving Cass crouching, breathless. Ryan reclines again, settling into the pillow, facing Cass but staring at the wall as though he can see through her. It could be called a hundred-yard stare, that amazing feat of vision, but in fact it is Cass who now can see the future.

  Cass sits on the floor and struggles to get her bearings. The sound of her children sleeping nearby, the feel of the wall against her back—these are the first, the best ways to orient herself and confirm her presence.

  As unsettling as Ryan’s rage was, so is Cass’s reaction. It makes her feel equal parts aroused and alarmed, repelled and attracted, damaged and valued. It is wilderness itself that she sees in him, more than the type she has glimpsed in most men—and the feeling is narcotic. In Ryan, it is more pronounced, the snarl more sudden, the growl more ferocious. But it is all part of knowing, of loving this man, all part of being with Ryan. She feels pressed to take the good with the bad. Who is she to be exempt from life’s imperfections? And so she becomes guilty, first, of looking away, then tolerating her own degradation.

  She sits like this on the floor for several minutes. Reality shifts slightly, she learns, when your safety is threatened, when oxygen is diminished and the flow of blood to the brain is slowly constricted. In place of calm is high alert. In place of time are endless minutes. In place of normal low-res life is total saturation, excruciating detail. This is what is meant, Cass decides, when people describe “being present.” Everything is heightened. Images are sharpened. Her brain is buzzing like a high, but with no euphoria, just the focus. The flimsy wood of the wall, the way it creaks when she leans on it, the itch on her left eyebrow, the way the big toe of her bottom foot and pinkie from her top one interlock on her crossed feet, the prickle of cold air on her skin as the wind comes in from the ocean.

  And yet with this precision comes consuming confusion. A mental replay of a match, a play-by-play in slow motion, a person on a losing streak, but here, there is no referee, just you and your decisions. The thing that’s lost is you. What follows is a gradual return to one’s senses. Time resumes its normal speed. The wall no longer makes a creak, or you no longer notice. The cold no longer feels like something present, incarnate. Now it is just you and him, two people in a room, one on the bed, one on the floor, a universe between them.

  There are things to attend to now. New details to reconcile, new questions: Why does a woman stay a day with a man she knows is capable of violence? Culpable of violence. He is now culpable of violence. Does that mean you are culpable too? For causing it, as he tells you. For imagining it, for deserving it. Or simply for staying? Does that make you complicit? And now the newly minted hashtag. Why, dear woman, did you
stay? Because you are afraid of him or afraid of losing him? Or worse, did you get off on it? Did it make you high? Feel alive? Make you feel special, wanted? Did you, in fact, like it? Are you, in fact, by staying, subscribing to a repeat performance? A better question than #WhyIStayed: How did you escape alive?

  Adding to the confusion of questions are so many statements. A new list of pros and cons. Reasons to be grateful: a growing family, a lovely home, all the comforts of lucky people. To bitch about his flaws could be construed as a lack of perspective. She has certainly lived through enough to know that no life is perfect. She has been taught to take the bad with the good, to focus on the positive. To work through it. Just as anger plays into her love, so does love excuse his anger. Ryan is a textbook case: the son abandoned by his dad, the teenage boy who rebelled against the mom who let it happen. The foregone father. How could she not see his temperament as the outcome of others’ failures?

  Ryan is sleeping now. Peaceful as a child. Cass stands from her place on the floor, regaining her indignation. She pads across the room, removes his phone from its cord, and, in the blue light of the quiet house, resumes her investigation. But she is stopped at first attempt by a changed password. Perhaps it would be foolish for him to trust her at this point, but the act reveals more than any clue. Why would a person have reason to hide if not to cover proof?

  * * *

  The Connors take the early ferry home the next morning. The kids are light and free of cares, but Cass and Ryan are changed by the night that passed between them. They have crossed an invisible line, traveled too great a distance. There’s no turning back after words like this, no unhearing or unseeing. His mouth so close to her mouth, shining with saliva. Strands of wiry brown-black hair slicing the tips of her fingers.