"No. I don't think so. If you hear anything from her or think of where she might have gone, you can let me know. She probably needs help.”
“For sure I will.”
“I could kick myself, I should have made her see a psychiatrist."
"You'll find her. Meanwhile, we'll be praying for you."
"Thanks."
Eric replaced the receiver. "She needs help all right. And I'll certainly see that she gets it. She won't pull a stunt like this on me again. Up to now, I've gone pretty easy on her. But, no more Mr. Nice-guy. She’s gonna pay for this one."
He got his beer from the fridge and took it to the living room. It was now 11:53. His schedule was thrown totally off. He leaned back in the chair, "Oh, boy, will she pay. She is going to regret the day she decided to walk out on me. Up to now she hasn't found out what real pain is but she's gonna learn. I'll make her the country's pain expert before I'm done with her."
He raised his bottle and toasted Emily, "Here's to you, sweetheart. 'Til we meet again and lesson-time begins.”
Chapter 14
The sun shining down on the billowy white clouds was the most beautiful thing Emily had ever seen. She laid her head back against the seat and stared out the plane window at the peaceful panorama that lay before her. She basked in the calm and serenity. She was free. Eric couldn't touch her now.
She looked at her sons who were enthralled with the new toys that Jan had given to them as they prepared to board the plane. “Wow, it has actually happened.” She thought, “We’re free! We’re away from Eric. Funny how it never happened until I finally made up my mind and began to seriously make plans to leave. I wanted to leave for so long but didn’t really believe that I actually would. But once I made up my mind that somehow I was getting out of there, things began to happen. And now here we are. And how is it possible,” she wondered, “that after all the years of being consumed by the fear that I would be unable to care for the children without Eric, I’m here feeling good and full of confidence. I know that we will be fine, especially with Dad to help us. That’s the most wonderful thing of all. Despite Eric's efforts, we aren’t alone. We have my Dad.”
She closed her eyes and thought about her father. What a change she had seen in him. He had always been so young and full of life, but in the past eight years, he looked as though he had aged twenty years. The jovial, vibrant middle-aged man she had left eight years ago was now an elderly gentleman, even though he was still only 64 years old. Much of that must have been a result of the months he had spent watching his wife slowly waste away, a victim of the terrible cancer that had taken her life. How she regretted that she hadn’t been there to share those last days of pain and grief with her father. Perhaps if they had been able to face Angie’s death together, it wouldn’t have taken such a terrible toll on this wonderful, caring man. A wave of sadness washed over her as her thoughts turned to her mother and the knowledge that never again in this life would she see her, hear her voice or feel her fingers twist the curls on the back of her neck as she had done since Emily was a very small child. She and her mother had been more than mother and daughter; they had been best friends during the years she was growing up and for the first years of her marriage. She remembered the happy hours they had spent together while her mother taught her to cook, sew, knit and play piano. She had always been able to talk with her mother about anything that might be troubling her, whether the problem was large or small, and yet, she realized that when Eric’s violence began, she had said nothing. Time and again she had tried to find the words to tell her mother how unhappy she was, but it seemed that something stopped her every time she attempted to put her pain into words. Many times over the years she had wondered why this had been so and had come to the conclusion that she was torn between wanting them to know what was happening to her and attempting to keep them from turning against her husband and making her life even more difficult. For had they known how he was treating her, they would have hated him, and the terrible balancing act she was doing to try to keep everyone happy would have crashed about her ears. It had not been easy to keep this from her parents, but she knew that it was the only way she could keep her parents in her life and maintain her marriage. Somehow she had to find a way to make him understand that he couldn’t continue to hurt her and that if only he would stop, their marriage would be all right and they could both be happy, for she wanted desperately for her marriage to work. Eric was her first love and the father of her child and when she had married him, in her mind it had been for forever. Telling her parents about the state of the marriage would have helped her in the short term, but long term, if the marriage were to succeed, it had been imperative that they not know what was going on in her life. With ever growing resolve, she realized that now, that had all changed. The marriage was over. It made no difference at this point who knew the truth, for finally she knew that nothing would induce her to return to Eric and her marriage with him.
How different marriage had been for her parents. Many times over the years as she had grown up, she had listened to the stories her mother had told her about herself and Pete. She had loved to tell about the handsome, young barber who had come to work at the barbershop on the corner and had rented a room from her parents. He had invited her to a concert in the park, followed by hamburgers and root beer. On the way back to the house he had taken her hand and stolen her heart. After that, there were many dates; movies, dinners, dances, hockey games. “That father of yours,” she would say with a smile, “My, how he could dance. No wonder I married him, I was dizzy from all that dancing.” Another time she added, “I saw the other girls watching us and I knew that they would have liked him to give them the eye, but once he made up his mind that he wanted me, he didn’t give them the time of day.” And, “He was a good looking man, your father. I was proud to be seen with him.” It was on Christmas Eve that he asked her to marry him, and then when she opened her gift from him on Christmas morning, she found a diamond solitaire. Six months later they were married, followed three years later by the birth of Emily's brother, Mark, who was two years old when she was born. Life had been good for the little family. Emily was four when they bought the house where she and her brother grew up and where her father still lived. It had been a happy home, full of love, laughter and lots of good times. The family had spent wonderful days together. They had all loved picnics, trips to the zoo, concerts in the park and fireworks displays. She and Mark quarreled occasionally, but for the most part got along remarkably well. Her parents, as far as she could recall, had never argued in front of the children and Emily's memories, as a result, were of a loving, peaceful home.
Mark went to a college across town the year he turned twenty and the white frame house on Broadview Street became filled with young men, raiding the fridge, playing the Beatles too loud and tracking up the floors faster than her mother could clean them. It was an exciting year for Emily, who loved the attention she got from Mark's friends. And it didn’t hurt that she was the envy of half the girls in her class because of the number of college boys who passed through her home.
In March of that year a tall, very slender, dark, and handsome young man was sitting at the kitchen table with her brother one day, eating a ham sandwich, when she came home from school. He looked up with his mouth full of sandwich and his dark blue eyes looked directly into Emily's. She knew immediately that this boy was different.
He chewed and then swallowed, not for a moment taking his eyes from hers. Then, slowly he turned to Mark, "Well, are you going to introduce me?"
Mark looked up from his sandwich, "Oh, that's just my sister, Emily."
"Hi, Emily. I'm Eric Thompson."
She swallowed and tried her voice, "Hi." Her face flamed and she hoped that he wouldn't notice the blush. He did, and smiled. Emily fled.
Eric was at the house more and more as the days passed and finally, finding her alone in the kitchen one day, he asked her to go to a movie with him. She said she would and from th
en on, if any other young men came by the house she didn't notice. She was in love.
She and Eric were sitting in the bleachers at a neighborhood baseball game just one month later when her neighbor came looking for her to tell her that her father wanted her to come home right away. She knew instantly that something was wrong and as they hurried back to the house one possibility after another flashed through her mind. But the news that greeted her on her arrival was far worse than anything she had imagined. Word had just been received by the family that Mark, on a fishing trip with friends, had drowned. The overwhelming grief that filled the little house was almost more than Emily could handle. Angie was in a panic state refusing to admit that Mark was gone and at some point the doctor was called, who prescribed something to sedate her. Once the medication took effect, she became almost numb and it took both Emily and her father to get her settled into bed where she immediately dropped into a deep sleep. And then Pete, with a lost expression in his eyes, withdrew into his own thoughts, where he remained for weeks.
Eric was there in the background that evening as the family tried to come to terms with this tragedy that had thrust itself into their lives, and once her mother was asleep and her father in his own world not aware that she was even there, he took her for a drive to let her 'get away from it.' He parked in a quiet spot and held her while she cried, brushing the hair back from her face and kissing her forehead. How it happened, she was never sure, but they made love there, in the front seat of his Monarch. She would come to regret the fact that they had first made love on the day of her brother's death. She had been so grief-stricken that she couldn't remember clearly the act that should have been one of the great events of her life. Although that was the first time for her, it was not the last, and before the summer was over, Emily was pregnant.
Her wedding to Eric was a small affair and lacked the joyousness that should have been part of their marriage celebration. Mark's absence was a tangible thing, felt by everyone. Emily met Eric’s parents for the first time on the day of the wedding and found them to be cold and aloof, not just to her, but to their son as well. They left the reception early without a word, and dropped out of the young couple's lives except for a Christmas card on their first Christmas together and a phone call on the day they brought Sam home from the hospital. She had spoken to Eric about the possibility of trying to build a better relationship with them but he had been totally unwilling, blaming his cold, nagging mother for him not wanting to be closer to them now that he had his own life apart from them. His father had a drinking problem, he explained, that was a direct result of his mother and her terrible treatment of the whole family. She was not a person that he would want around his wife and son. It was easy to believe that she was all that her son said, for she had certainly not given Emily the impression of being a very warm, caring mother when they had met at the wedding. She accepted his decision to keep a distance between them and the subject didn’t come up again.
After their marriage, Emily and Eric had moved into a small apartment on Tennis Crescent, and with the help of Emily's parents, furnished it and prepared for the arrival of the baby. By the time Sam had been born, Emily’s marriage, that she had seen as a fairy tale come true, was already beginning to unravel, for she had discovered that this wonderful man she had fallen in love with had a mean streak, a mile wide. His meanness, however, didn’t erupt into physical violence for another year. She remembered the exact moment it began. At 7:30 in the evening, two days before Sam's first birthday, she told him that she had invited her parents over to celebrate the birthday. She had experienced his temper before, but never anything like this. It was the first time in her life that she could remember being struck and the act, as well as the swollen, cut lip that she was left with, shocked and horrified her. Then out of embarrassment, she lied. She told everyone that she had been going to the bathroom in the middle of the night without turning on the light and had run into the door. It was only the first of many similar lies.
She was roused from her thoughts of the past and brought back to the present by the stewardess asking her if she would like anything to drink. It took a few moments for her to become fully aware of where she was, "Pardon."
The stewardess smiled, "I wondered if I could get you a drink."
"Oh, yes, please. I'd like a ginger ale, and could I have two for the boys?"
When the drinks arrived, she poured a little from Kyle's bottle into the sipper cup she had brought for Danny and they settled back to enjoy the drinks.
After a short time Kyle turned to his mother, "Is Dad ever going to come to Toronto to live with us?"
"No, honey. Dad's going to stay back home."
"We aren't ever, ever going back, are we?" asked Scott.
"No, not ever."
"Will Dad be O.K.?" Kyle was the family worrier.
"Yes, I'm sure he will be fine."
"But he'll be all alone for Christmas."
"Perhaps he can go to the pastor's house."
Kyle thought about that for a minute then smiled, "He likes the pastor. He'll be O.K."
He thought again for a few minutes, then, "Mom, will Santa find us?"
"Yes, he sure will."
"How?"
"I'm not sure. But he's really good at finding boys and girls no matter where they are."
"What will we do if he doesn't?"
"You don’t have to worry about that. I know he’ll find us. But, my little worrier, I guess if he didn’t we would just have to have a great Christmas anyway. We’d have the presents from one another, a turkey dinner and Grandpa. Do we really need more than that?"
"I guess not. But I sure like Santa coming."
Emily smiled, "He'll find you. Don't you spend even one more minute worrying about Santa finding you, his job is finding kids all over the world and he’s really good at it."
"Mom." This time it was Scott. "I need to go to the bathroom."
"Me, too." piped up Kyle.
"Come on." She got a diaper for Danny, then slowly and carefully got to her feet and led the way to the bathroom.
They were only back in their seats for a short time when dinner was served. The small tables that folded down from the back of the seats and the foil-covered trays of food spread before them amazed the children. This was truly an adventure.
Things were not as pleasant for Eric. Last night, he had polished off eight beers before finally climbing the stairs to bed and they had done nothing to improve his mood. He had still been furious; more so when he went into the bedroom and realized that he had to make the bed before he could get into it. He grabbed the fitted sheet off the floor and attempted to put it on the bed. No matter how hard he tried, it wouldn't fit. "I’ll kill her when I find her for putting me through this." he shouted and threw the sheet back into the corner. Finally, he lay down on the bare mattress with only the blanket to cover him and tried to sleep. This night, however, sleep was a long time coming. He lay there for hours, cursing Emily for daring to take his children away from him, wondering where they had gone and how she had managed it so quickly.
He woke just about the time his family was boarding the plane. It took only a minute for him to remember the events of the night before and once again anger washed over him.
"I’ll get that woman if it’s the last thing I ever do." he muttered, as he tossed the blanket aside and got up. Two steps from the bed, he stepped on a pair of nail clippers, jerked his foot away, lost his balance and banged his shin on the over-turned dresser.
"Damn," he swore between clenched teeth. He picked his way carefully through the litter on the floor and went downstairs where he was met with more mess. He had a quick shower, and then put the kettle on for coffee. He used the coffee to wash down a couple of Tylenol, then made a second cup and went to the living room. He was trying to think of something he could do to find Emily and bring her back when he heard a knock at the door.
"Now who on earth could that be? Frig, I don’t need company today."
"Good morning, Eric."
"Uh, h-hello."
"I thought you might need someone to talk to this morning so I came over."
"No, well...I guess...you see...uh."
"Can I come in?"
"Uh...I guess." Eric moved back from the door.
The pastor came in and Eric showed him to a chair in the living room. It was impossible to ignore the damage that had been done to the room and he searched desperately for an explanation. As he sat down in the other chair, he spoke, "Actually, I guess it’s good that you came. Something terrible has happened. My wife and the children are gone and I have no idea what has happened to them. I've gone over every possibility. It's crossed my mind that maybe there is another man; or maybe she had a mental breakdown. She's never been very stable."
The pastor sighed and looked at this man whom he had regarded so highly for so long. "There wasn’t any breakdown or any other man and I’m sure you know that as well as I do."
"Then how do you explain this? The house has been trashed. She must have thrown a fit."
"I was here last night and Emily was barely able to walk. She couldn’t possibly have done this damage. As a matter of fact, I know that she didn't do it for the house didn’t look like this when she left. I was here. I was right here.”
Eric's face drained of color. "I-I don't understand."
"Last night I got a call to come out here to see Emily. She was leaving and wanted me to see her condition before she left. She had been terribly beaten by you, Eric."
Leaving Sharpstone Page 11