Poison

by Galt Niederhoffer

  Alice continues to scrutinize her mother. She knows there’s something more to this. Intuition, after all, is a trait shared by mother and daughter.

  “Ryan would like to come,” Cass says.

  Alice’s face wrinkles in confusion. The mixed relief and dread of confirmed expectations.

  “Are you getting back together?” says Pete.

  “No,” says Cass. “No, we’re not. But we’ll always be tied to him because of Sam. And he says he wants to apologize, be a better man, and keep his promise.”

  Alice gives her mother a withering look. She is torn between misgiving and desire, torn between yearning for the past and her memory of Ryan’s exit. Understandably, she is vexed by these conflicting feelings.

  Cass meets her daughter’s gaze. Her concerns are valid and Cass knows this. She understands the risks of what she is undertaking, but feels it is the only way to achieve long-term safety.

  Pete bounds ahead to the car, determined to get home and start packing.

  Soon enough, they are all consumed by the excitement of travel. On the car ride home, the kids devolve into talk of their beloved tropical haven, who will ride shotgun, which bathing suits and books to pack, whether this year they will surf or snorkel, and a heated debate over the merits of the vanilla versus the chocolate milk shake. They are the picture of a functioning family again—loving, fighting, reconciling, staying together. The picture, at least, on the surface.

  At home, Cass makes a call. A precaution for the vacation.

  “Hi, this is Cass Connor,” she says. “We’re so looking forward to our visit. Just wanted to confirm we have two separate rooms. In the main house.” A pause. “Yes, five. Two twins will work well for the kids. And a queen and a crib in the other.”

  Once again, she questions the wisdom of agreeing to this trip with Ryan, but the risk of continued dismissal is too great, and the need for proof too crucial. They will be buttressed by the earshot of so many respectable vacationers. For now, she must rely on the safety of numbers.

  * * *

  It is late now, and Cass does her rounds as resident lamp-snuffer. She works silently in the children’s rooms, choosing and setting their clothes in a pile, hauling shirts and shorts to the laundry room, locating swimming suits and sun hats, toothpaste and sunscreen, running the loads of laundry for a week’s worth of clothing, placing her own and the kids’ clothes in one large suitcase. The simplicity of the task calms her racing mind—grasping all they will need for the week, placing it in one container. Shorts, shirts, socks, shoes, bathing suits, sunscreen, diapers, books, crayons. This is her job, and completing it gives her purpose.

  Cass walks into Alice’s bedroom and sees that she is awake and restless. She sits down on her daughter’s bed and runs her fingers through her hair, trying to restore her sense of comfort, but Alice is not consolable. She has a question for her mother.

  “Mommy, what happened to Marley?” she says.

  Cass pauses, unsure how to answer. She wants to reward her daughter for asking, commend her for knowing, but she doesn’t want her to be scared, does not want to share things that a child should and could not fathom. “I just didn’t think she was right,” she says.

  “I didn’t like her, Mom. There was something weird about her.”

  “Yes,” says Cass. She runs her hands through her daughter’s hair, this time pausing with her palm on her forehead, as though she can take the worries from her mind simply by keeping her hand there. “What did she do that was weird?” She cannot resist the question.

  “Just something about her,” Alice says. “The way she kept bragging about her tattoos.”

  “That was a little annoying.”

  “And the way she kept trying to get me to do things I told her I wasn’t allowed to. One day she tried to make me drink tea she said she got from her boyfriend.”

  “What do you mean?” Cass says. “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

  “Because I told her we’re not allowed to drink tea. And I kept telling her that, but she kept trying to get me to do it.”

  Cass takes a sharp breath. “You didn’t drink it, did you?”

  “No, of course not,” Alice says. “I know we’re not allowed to, so I got a little suspicious. And then, when she made us dinner, I didn’t want to eat it, but Pete was really hungry.”

  “Alice.” Cass takes another sharp breath. She does not want to appear frantic. “Did this really happen?”

  “Yes,” says Alice, “but don’t worry. I made sure he didn’t.”

  “How?”

  Alice smiles, covers her mouth. “By putting hot sauce in it.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope.” She chuckles, unsure if she is due for praise or reprimand.

  Cass exhales. “I’m proud of you, Alice.”

  “Why?”

  “You did something awesome.”

  Alice is beaming now.

  “Not only did you protect yourself, you also protected your brother.”

  “You said I should speak up if I ever think I’m in danger.”

  “That’s right, sweetheart. You listened to your gut. You used your brain and your courage.”

  “Do you do that?”

  Cass pauses. Her daughter is too smart for her. She hears this as it was intended, as a critique and a reminder. “My job is to protect you. That’s my only purpose.”

  “And yourself,” says Alice.

  “Yes, and myself, but you don’t have to worry about me. I’m strong and self-sufficient. It’s the same thing your teachers tell you in school. If someone treats you badly on the playground, you tell them not to. And if they don’t listen, then…?”

  “Then you tell the teacher.”

  A pause, as though all is solved, certain.

  “But what if the teacher doesn’t help?”

  Cass takes her time now. This answer will be remembered. “When you can’t count on the authority whose job it is to protect you, then you have a problem. At that point, you enlist your friends, your neighbors, strangers. You form a chorus. You lean on these people for the power of their eyes as witnesses and their hearts for support. And no matter what, you call for help—you yell the moment you feel you’re in danger.”

  “Was I in danger?”

  Cass pauses. This time, the pause is conspicuous. “You’re safe now, sweetheart. That’s all that matters.” It is a clumsy dodge, but she feels it is the right one. She lowers her cheek to her daughter’s cheek, attempts to impart all her love and strength through simple osmosis, and stops for one last kiss on her forehead. Then she stands. Alice needs to sleep. The day ahead will be exhausting. She kisses her plump little cheek once again and tiptoes across the bedroom.

  “But what if you don’t know?” Alice whispers. She has questions, and she wants answers. “What if you think you’re in danger, but you’re not? And you get someone in trouble. Or what if you are and you don’t call out and the bad person gets away with something awful?”

  Cass stands in the middle of the room, arrested by her daughter’s fear, immobilized by her questions. She takes her time before she speaks. She knows she needs to give a very definitive answer.

  “We all know about the boy who cried wolf. No one helped him when he needed it. And, as you say, waiting too long can be a recipe for disaster. So, if you’re in doubt, the best thing to do is take ten deep breaths and get very quiet.”

  “Stay quiet?”

  “Not stay quiet. Get quiet. Quiet for a moment. Quiet enough to listen to your gut, listen to your surroundings. Quiet so that when you speak, you say exactly what you mean and speak very clearly. I want to make myself clear: I am not advising silence. Never silence. You must speak up always. What I’m saying is take a deep breath first and then choose your moment. Time is information. The more information you have, the more likely you are to take the best action.”

  “But waiting can be dangerous.”

  Cass nods. The statement is chilling. “
That’s true, sweetheart.”

  “And how do you know which is which? Crying wolf or calling for help when you need it?”

  “You don’t, sweetheart. You don’t always know.”

  “So how do you decide?” asks Alice.

  “When your gut tells you,” says Cass. “It will be clear. And when it is, you yell, ‘Fire!’”

  The sound of footsteps rustles in the darkness near the washer. A doe-eyed child, drunk with sleep, stumbles toward his mother. The commotion of his sister’s fear, this late-night lesson, has stirred Pete from his dreams, sparing him from his own nightmares. He makes his way across the room and climbs into bed with his sister.

  “Okay, you two.”

  “Where are you going?” says Pete.

  Cass takes in the sight of her two strong, sizable children, nestled into a twin bed, enormous and yet still tiny. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  And before she has made a conscious choice, she joins them in their cramped twin bed and crumples herself in between her two oldest children, arms laced around each other, a mother and her kittens.

  One last email demands her attention before sleep relieves her:

  I’ve consulted a lawyer, and it’s legal for you, as an owner of the building, to install cameras for your own safety. But I want something in exchange. A few hours of your time when you get back. Uninterrupted. Just you and me. To talk sense into you. Whether or not you stay with this guy, you’ve gotta admit he’s messing with your head. As your friend, I want to spend some time talking with no distractions about the wisdom of staying in what I have come to believe is a very destructive and dangerous relationship.

  Before she can go to sleep, one last act of preparation. Unpacking, more than packing. She cannot bring Ryan’s phone. Too risky when he is so close to her and she is so close to knowing. No need for a crystal ball. Prophecy is both a curse and an asset. Cass takes the phone from its place under her mattress and walks upstairs to find a better place to stash it. She paces the hall for a moment before deciding on the best option and then places Ryan’s phone in a dark, unreachable crevice behind the washer and dryer. It is a perfect hiding place, as one thing is for sure: Ryan has never done his own laundry.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Vacations are like medicine, working their magic even before the dose is ingested. The prospect of being secluded together for several days away from home, away from other families and distractions, cinches around the family like a belt, making them tighter and smaller. Brother and sister reinvent their notions of one another, reconsider the idea that they are stuck with an ally as opposed to the usual opponent. Husband and wife, too, are paired up, forced to reckon with the perks and price of their privacy and isolation. The Connors are headed to their favorite place, poised for sunshine, sand, and surf, and all the giddy promises that come with them: health, healing, and restoration.

  In the airport, the kids huddle around their parents in a state of tweaked excitement. Cass does the mental math that parents do in a crowd, counting the children in her sight, calculating possible hazards, predicting suddenly closing doors, unexpected falling objects, and potential outside intruders. A last stockpile of candy, magazines, and sundry useless items, and then it is time to sprint down the terminal, cram into line to board the plane, and walk into the blinding maw of the jet bridge to begin their adventure.

  * * *

  Cass stares out the window and focuses on the sound of the engine. Pete and Alice sit on one side of the aisle, immersed in their snacks and headphones. Ryan and Cass are on the other side with Sam in Cass’s lap. Ryan has borrowed a marker from the kids. He is also busily drawing.

  Cass thinks back to the last time Ryan was in their home. It has been nearly one month since he slept in their bedroom, ate with the family at the dinner table, but he seems oblivious to the time that has passed since then.

  “Please give me a chance to be better. A chance to finish the home we built together.”

  She nearly laughs out loud at the absurdity of his pretense. Then again, is she any better? They are both excellent actors.

  “This is what we should do with the kitchen,” he says.

  He hands her a piece of paper. He is back in his obsession, demolishing and reconstructing, moving the stove, the toilet, the tub in infinite permutations. This is her husband, Ryan, the trained architect, the self-taught scientist, this grown-up dreamer, the builder and destroyer of the home they’d planned to share forever. He could teach himself anything: fix the tired plumbing, rewire all the fraying cables, cook a meal for twenty, lace it with poison. Could he teach himself to be happy again? Could he teach himself to love her?

  As though in answer to this question, Cass feels a resurgence of symptoms. A powerful force splits her in half, sending an electrical current to her head from her fingers. Her hand convulses as though she has invited voltage into her mouth and her body has formed a closed circuit. She thrusts the paper from her hands before she understands the impulse. Her body has rejected it because it contains the substance. The paper is saturated with the poison. Or is it only her perception that is tainted? Seconds are long in this state. Seconds become minutes. Minutes blend into hours. But she has little sense anymore of the quantity of these units. Time is just another thing at the mercy of her beliefs, subject to her warped senses. The baby is crying now and needs her attention. He sits, facing her, on her lap, trying to get her attention. Ryan is standing above, asking her if she is all right. Her mouth is moving, but she cannot speak. He looks worried. It is entirely impossible to tell if he is sincere or if this is a performance.

  “What happened to you, Cass?” he says.

  She shakes her head and waits for words to join the lips that form them. “Not feeling well,” she says. This is all she can manage.

  “It’s okay, babe,” he says. “It’s all okay. I’m here now.” And then, as though in explanation, “We’re all together.” He extends his hand to her. She withholds hers on instinct. He smiles. The smile is loving, patient. Once again, she reminds herself why she has taken him back, embraced this violent person. This was her only option: to engage in this dangerous game, to collect the proof of his guilt and get this psycho locked away before he takes her life or her children’s. Breathing deeply, she takes his hand. Or she thinks she does this. Reaching for his hand is the last thing she remembers.

  When she regains composure, she is sitting at the gate in a different airport. She has lost time or lost her family or lost herself. One or all of the above is equally possible.

  “You okay now, honey?” he says. Ryan is blurry. Ryan is getting closer. Ryan is circling. No, he is standing in the middle of the luggage carousel and, much thanks to Einstein, he appears to be revolving around her, as opposed to standing still in the middle of the luggage conveyor.

  “Where are we?” she asks him now.

  She hears Alice’s worried voice. “Are you okay, Mom?”

  “Everything is fine,” he says. “You need rest, Cass. We’re going to get you better.” He says this in a loud, clear voice, as though for the public record. And then, in a lower voice, he adds, “Try not to look so upset. You look like you’ve been abducted. Someone might report me. And you’re scaring the children.”

  She stares at him with knowledge now, knowledge and intention. Cass is done with doubt, doubt in herself and her perceptions. Cass is weakened, but she knows the truth of action and reaction, the truth of causal connections. She knows how she felt when she got in the car, how she felt when she entered the airport. She knows how it feels when the toxin enters through her skin and swirls through her bloodstream. She knows how she felt when she got on the plane, how she felt after he handed her the piece of paper. She knows how she felt when he held out his hand, that she hesitated to accept it. She knows what came before and what happened immediately after.

  It may be true that she has ingested so much that she is compromised in her perception, so confused about right and wrong, action and reaction, tha
t she has invited this threat, this malignant, evil person into the confines of her haven, but she has not lost the faculties of her senses, the ability to see, to taste, to touch, to feel, to know the difference between health and sickness, between calmness and convulsions, between her old self and the new creature she is becoming.

  She looks at him with loathing now. The glare does not escape detection.

  “Ouch,” he says. “Some thanks for the guy who’s taking you on vacation.”

  They wait for a second plane now, a puddle jumper from the mainland to the smaller island. Cass tries to still the feeling that the ground is shifting, as though she is on the plane already, not waiting for its departure. She tries again to focus on the faces of her children. They look contented in a way that soothes her slightly. Their gait already evidences the healing power of travel, a respite from the stresses of school and the hazards of the home environment. Alice and Pete are busy with a cutthroat game of spit. The baby is doing his best to join, sporadically removing and replacing cards much to the chagrin of his brother and sister.

  The contrast between the jet and the commuter airline is immediately apparent as it rattles down the runway and launches into the sky as though it has been thrown there. Clouds rise like steam from a cup of coffee, clouds so welcoming as to invite passengers to reach their hands out the window as though they are sitting in a car, driving eighty on the highway, not cruising at an altitude of five thousand feet in a plane the size and make of an old jalopy. Now they are surrounded by blue, blue in every direction. Light blue, baby blue, powder blue, clear blue, cornflower blue, teal, turquoise, aquamarine, navy, and purple, blue so mesmerizing that they barely notice the sea and the dunes rising from underneath like naked drowned women.

  Much to Cass’s surprise, they land safely at the second airport. Now it is time for the journey’s last leg, the challenges of which add to the travelers’ sense of a well-deserved destination. The hotel is on a small exterior island, a spot of land just off the northeast coast, connected by a jetty at low tide, accessible by boat at high tide. The island is etched by a dirt road that runs the perimeter with a couple of cuts across it. Visitors welcome the fact that it can be traversed only on foot or in the occasional golf cart owned by the hotels and locals.