She quit pretending to avert her gaze and looked me in the face.
Then why did she let Father beat you? Ask her.
“Then why did you let Father beat me?”
She sighed a wind of resignation, a graveyard wind, a wind that flapped the sail-tatters of a ship stranded on a great dead sea where mothers never had to say they were sorry.
“I don’t expect you to understand, Richard. Hell, I don’t even understand it myself. Sometimes, when he’d punch my eye or knock me against the wall, I’d be laying there, trying not to pass out. I’d be fighting those little fuzzy scraps of rags at the edges of my brain. Because I knew if I went under, I’d just keep on going down and down and disappear into the dark. And the voices. . .the voices would whisper... ‘Just come on down, you bitch, come on down and let’s play.’”
“Voices?” I grabbed her blankets and ripped them off the bed. The stench of unwashed flesh filled the room. She trembled inside her soiled nightgown.
I pressed my face close to hers, and I could feel my features contorting into a rubber fright mask. “What goddamned voices?”
She whimpered and raised her arms as if to ward off blows.
Like father, like son. The Coldiron Curse lives on.
No. It wasn’t her. It was the Insider. It had always been the Insider.
Is it, Richard? I’m only what you have made me. What all of you have made me.
I ran out of the room, slamming the door behind me. I went into my bedroom and began dressing. It had always been the Insider.
How convenient, Richard, that you’ve always had someone to blame. Father. Sally Bakken. Little Hitler. And now Mother. What do you care what happens, as long as Richard Allen Coldiron keeps his nose clean? Why SHOULDN’T you help me kill a dozen, a hundred, a thousand, since you can always pass the buck?
Why shouldn’t I? I knew that someone had to die before sundown.
The telephone rang. I picked it up.
“Richard Coldiron?” came a familiar reedy voice.
“Yes?”
“This is Detective Frye. I was wondering if you could come down to the station today.”
“Is something wrong?”
“No, no. Just have a few questions to ask you.”
“What about?”
“About the death of Monique Rivers. Thought you might help me fill in some of the blanks. We’ve got a person of interest.”
“Sure. But it would be simpler if you just waited for my autobiography to come out.”
“Funny. You’re a writer?”
“I don’t know. Would it make me a suspect?”
“Writers are known to be crazy, unless they’re bestsellers. Then they’re just strange.”
“Okay, Detective, I welcome the chance to assist you and prove I’m not crazy, but I can hardly wait to be strange. I’ve been rejected 117 times.”
“Wow,” he said, though there was not a hint of “wow” in his voice.
“But I’m revising as I go and–”
“I appreciate it. Is ten-thirty okay?”
“Fine.”
“See you here, then. Bye.”
The dial tone buzzed in my brain, stirring up Mister Milktoast. “What are we going to do, Richard?”
“We aren’t going to do anything. I’m going to think about what I want to do.”
“Do you think Frye knows?”
“He only knows what the Insider lets him know. I wouldn’t be surprised if the bastard was just trying to amp up the tension to keep us all juiced for the climax.”
“Is it time, then?”
“It’s time,” said Bookworm.
It was nine o’clock. By the time I dressed, the snow had completely covered the ground, a soft white shroud on the skin of the earth. I sat at my desk and looked out at the shadowed ancient mountains. Their peaks were capped like sharp teeth.
I folded the paper and slid it into an envelope, fearing that the Insider would stop me at any moment. This was its flesh, after all, finally, ultimately, forever. Past, present, future.
“Seal it with a kiss for me, Richie.”
“Sure thing, Loverboy.”
I wrote “Mother” on the outside of the envelope and went downstairs. The house was peaceful, empty. Mother must have rolled back into her stuporous slumber. The aquarium glugged on, oxygenating the water that held no life but scum.
Shelley Birdsong was dreaming her everlasting dream in a distant basement. Monique had cashed her check for the bit part, wandered out of the script and on to other roles where she would play the minor romantic interest. Brittany would never know how close she’d come to celebrity, and she’d probably live out her life married to some Alpha male psycho instead of ending up on the victim list of whatever snazzy name the press would give me after I got caught. I could afford a moment’s nostalgia, but I was spiritually bankrupt.
“Nobody’s vault but yours,” Mister Milktoast whispered.
Bookworm tried to send a tear down my cheek. I left the letter by a half-empty bottle of bourbon where Mother would be sure to find it. I stopped at the front closet and put on my coat. The Insider checked to make sure the knife was still in the front pocket.
It’s not the end, Richard. It’s never the end.
“No, it’s not the end. Just good-bye for now.”
I wasn’t leaving. I was going. Icarus in a no-fly zone, Ishmael in a paper boat, Cupid playing Russian roulette with a squirt gun.
Every door has “Exit” on one side and “Entrance” on the other. Depends on whether you’re inside or outside.
Me, I could never tell the difference.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Storytelling tradition demands that you hide your transitions, that the ventriloquist’s mouth doesn’t move, that the stitches on the B-movie monster costume don’t show. Sleight of hand is for sissies, something those cotton candy-assed “literary writers” pull while they’re in their Parisian garrets jacking off to James Joyce. I told you I was a liar right from the beginning, but you didn’t believe me. Fuck. I might as well have said, “I love you.” You’d fall for that one, too, wouldn’t you?
I know I have. Every single time.
We only see what we want to see, only hear what we want to hear. And though this is my autobiography, you maintained the illusion that somehow you were part of the story, that without you this was merely some words on paper. That my life had no meaning until you made your interpretation.
You know something? I think you’re right.
So let’s finish it.
Downtown was desolate. Half of Shady Valley’s shops had closed early because of the weather. Christmas lights spasmed in pulses of green and red from the storefronts, vomiting color onto the snow-covered sidewalks. Decorations sagged from telephone poles, silver-tinseled bells tangled with loose red ribbons. Cars lined the streetsides, cowering under the weight of the storm like mastodons caught by a sudden ice age.
The roads were completely blanketed, except for twin sets of black stripes made by the few cars that were out. I peered through the windshield, driving mostly by memory as the wipers beat like frozen drumsticks. The surrounding mountains were white, silent, elegant temples, all granite and ice and bare trees. The sun cowered behind the clouds, throwing the sky into early twilight.
Nearly four inches of snow were on the ground by the time I reached Beth’s apartment. Her building was empty. Most of the people who lived in this section of town were students who had left for the holiday. The whole street seemed dead, but the peace was tense, like those hours just before Christmas morning when the world is ready to explode with song and laughter. Or like a battlefield where armies are waiting for the smoke to clear so they can clash again.
I let myself in with the key Beth had given me. I flipped the switch, but she must have already had the power turned off. The living room was so cold that I could see my breath, even in the weak light. Cardboard boxes were stacked in one corner near the door. I walked past them to Moniq
ue’s old room.
The emptiness of it taunted me. A shiver crawled across the loops of my intestines. It had to have been a dream. That couldn’t have been us.
Never us. Only you.
“No.”
“She didn’t love us,” Bookworm said. “It was the Insider, making her pretend. Making you pretend, Richard.”
“You’re right, Bookworm. She could never love us. That was all a trick. Hear that, Insider? We’re not playing your damn game anymore. Take your ball and go home.”
Richard, my loving, loyal host. My dear faithful servant. My brother. My father. My SON.
You will do as I say, when I say, no matter what I say.
“No. You can make me murder. You can make me feel guilty. You can make me hate you. But you can’t make me not love.”
The Insider was rising fast, poking its orange spears of pain through my flesh. My brain was a cauldron of simmering tar. My Little People were in pain, too. There would be no more hiding under beds and in closets. It was time to clean house.
Through a crack in the curtains, I saw a pumpkin-colored Volvo wagon pull up to the curb. After a moment, the passenger door opened and an ugly mukluk touched the ground and tapped as if testing for thin ice. Then she stood, her golden-brown hair spilling from the rim of her red toboggan and over the collar of her trench coat. Plumes of mist came out between her pink lips. A dandruff of snow collected on her shoulders as she said something to the driver, who looked a lot like Ted. I would know those horse teeth anywhere.
The Volvo pulled away and Beth stood looking at my tracks heading up the sidewalk. Her hands were in the pockets of her trench coat. She smiled. She was dreamy beautiful, as if she were being filmed with a soft-focus lens, like Lauren Bacall in “Casablanca,” Vivian Leigh in “Gone With The Wind,” Linda Blair in “The Exorcist.”
She loves you, Richard. You know what happens to the people who love you.
I left Monique’s bedroom to its ghosts and cobwebs and met Beth at the door.
“Hi, handsome.” She threw herself into Loverboy’s arms. “I missed you so much.”
“Yeah, me, too. I missed you so much I almost died.”
She kissed my neck and both cheeks and then my lips and I smelled her hair. Hope Hill and Sally Bakken and just-baked freshness. I held her at arm’s length and looked into those swimmingly sea-green eyes.
“We’re going to be so happy together.” She kissed me again and I didn’t fight it. Finally, she came up for air.
“Tell me about the secret,” I said.
“Good things are worth waiting for.”
“The waiting’s over, Angel Baby.”
“It’s cold in here.”
“Maybe things will heat up.” Loverboy. His idea of foreplay was to skip the first three numbers.
She looked at the room, at the darker squares on the walls where posters had been taken down. She looked at the sofa, at the crusts of snow on the carpet, at the windowsill, everywhere but at my face. This was the place where she had lost a roommate and gained a soul mate. “I hope you’re as happy about it as I am,” she finally said.
I held both her hands in mine. How could these hands ever hurt anyone?
“I’ve got a secret of my own,” I whispered, pulling her close. Loverboy tingled. The Insider tingled. The knife tingled.
“Tell me,” she said.
“Ladies first.” Little Hitler hissed. Bookworm hissed. The knife hissed.
She looked down again and I kissed her forehead. I was going to miss her face. But maybe I’d hang on to it for a while.
“Richard. . .you remember the first night we made love?”
“How could I forget? That was the best night of my life. That was the first time I really felt…like a man.”
“You’re sweet. It was wonderful for me, too. In a way, I think I knew even then.”
“What? That you’d end up falling in love with me?”
“Well, that and the secret.”
She must have forgotten everything. She had forgotten Ted, Monique, the “I have to be sures.” The Insider had great power. If only he could bottle it and sell it on the drugstore shelves, or maybe in churches, we’d all be rich and the Bone House could get a new paint job. Better yet, why not a bestseller that told you how to make money through artificial self-confidence? Bookworm could burn it along with his pile of rejection slips.
“Then tell me the secret.”
“Promise you won’t get mad?”
“Have I ever been mad at you?”
“Cross your heart and hope to die?”
“Maybe we’d better sit down.” I squeezed her hands a little and looked into those green eyes, into the dark pools of her pupils. What monsters might rise from them as the Insider fed?
Her eyelashes fluttered. “We’re pregnant, Richard.”
Silence.
More silence.
A long eternity of silences.
The sound of snowflakes falling.
How much candy could you buy for a dollar these days?
Tension hung in the room like thunderstorm static, like an anvil over a cartoon character, like a drunken Mel Gibson at a bar mitzvah.
Beth flinched, awaiting…what?
So, Richard. What do you think of this little development? Isn’t it absolutely to-die-for perfect? I saw this one coming five chapters ago. You should have read the outline.
I felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach, as if a black hole had stolen the oxygen out of the air, as if my head was a bright yawning canyon of sunbursts.
Pregnant.
So the Coldiron Curse would live on. What a perfectly beautiful ending to the Insider’s visit. A guilt feast, a banquet of bitterness, a host’s holiday.
The eternity stopped. The silence died as it had lived, without a squeak of protest.
“Are you sure?” I said, gasping like a trout in a saucepan. She nodded and her pretty hair shimmered in the half-light.
“Are you sure...it’s mine?”
“That was the only time I forgot.”
She hadn’t forgotten. The Insider had simply prohibited her from remembering. The Insider had planted that seed as surely as if it had ridden down Loverboy’s spermatic duct itself.
No. It must have been the first time, before Loverboy took over.
You got it, Richard. Do you think I’d let anybody else have that honor?
“Prophylactic prophecies,” Mister Milktoast said. I sent him to his room without dinner.
“I missed my period,” Beth said. “And then I got one of those little test kits at the drug store. And the rest...well, that’s the big secret.”
My hands went cold in hers.
“Are you happy?” she asked. Her shoulders were hunched in a shrug. The dusty, patchouli-choked air in the apartment made my head reel.
Was I happy? Would my face break if it showed my true feelings? What were my true feelings?
Whatever I make you feel, Richard.
“We’ll have to change our plans,” Beth said. “And I guess I’ll have to drop out of school after next semester, but that’s okay, I can always go back and finish up later.”
She spoke hurriedly, as if the words were rushing out in a race against the future, as if hoping that if she said them fast enough, it would hasten the happy ending.
But sometimes, there were only the words “The End.”
“And we’ll have to get married,” she continued. “I told you how my parents are. And we’ll have to save money, it will be hard but I know we’ll get by. We’ll have lots of love, and that’s all anybody really needs, right, honey?”
The temperature in the room had dropped ten degrees.
“Honey?”
My face was debating who would wear it.
“Are you happy about it?”
The Insider won. We smiled, deep and wide, with lots of teeth.
“Yes, we’re happy,” I said, and the smile felt rigid on my face, like a death mask. Then it fell awa
y.
“No, not happy,” Bookworm said.
Beth’s eyebrows veed in confusion.
“Do you love us?” I said.
“Us? You mean you and the baby? Of course.”
I let go of her hands and gripped her by the shoulders. I shook her and her head flopped so hard that her toboggan fell off. “Tell me the truth. Do you love us?”
The rose blush faded from her cheeks as her eyes widened. “Richard, you’re scaring me.”
God, she was beautiful. How could I have ever hoped someone like this could love me? How could I have fooled myself so completely? My voice fell, defeated. “Do you love us?” I croaked.
“Of course I love you. What’s the matter?”
I slumped and put a hand in my pocket. The knife pulsed and throbbed in my sweating palm, almost as if the Insider had vested it with a life of its own.
I’ll bet you’re dying to see little Junior, aren’t you? A do-it-yourself ultrasound? Well, you might not find anything, he’s a little small yet, but we’ll have so much fun LOOKING.
“But do you really love me?” I whispered. “I need to know.”
“Of course,” she said. She put a hand on my cheek. “I love you a thousand times a thousand bunches.”
“No matter what?”
“No matter what. Forever.”
“Even after I tell you my secret?”
“Nothing can make me love you less. Nothing can be so bad that we can’t get through it together. That’s what people do when they love each other, they get through things.”
Where had I heard that before?
“The carnation,” I said, and the word hung in the air like a threat, the sword of Damocles, the Reaper’s scythe, other types of sharp similes.
“Carnation? What about...oh, you mean the flower?”
“The flower. Remember where you found it?”
“Yeah. On Monique’s floor, that morning she…don’t make me remember that, Richard, please don’t make me remember that.”
“Where did I go the night of the Halloween party?”
“You were with me...and then...later...I don’t know, you left early.”
“And Monique left the party early, too.”
“She was a peach,” Loverboy said. “Stone fruit juicy. But Little Hitler had to come along and fuzz it up.”
Scott Nicholson Library Vol 1 Page 89