Four Thrillers by Lisa Unger

by Lisa Unger

  “Which leads me to ask, little miss,” said Oscar. “Just who the fuck are you?”

  “I’m no one,” I answered.

  He gave a soft grunt. “Aren’t we all?”

  “Queen of hearts,” I challenged.

  “Go fish.” I’d seen the card when he inadvertently revealed his hand earlier. But I drew from the pile between us, anyway. I figured the fact that we were both cheating made us even.

  I just say the one-word code Oscar gave me, years ago now, on the night he checked out of the hospital. “Maybe you never need it,” he said. “Maybe you and me never see each other again. But hey, just in case.”

  “Vanish,” I say, and hang up.

  It seems improbable that he’ll remember me, but I don’t have any choice other than to follow the instructions he gave me back then. Or maybe he was crazy, as crazy as I am, and this call will come to nothing. In any case, as I drive away, I feel light-headed, sick to my stomach that I’ve even taken things this far. I have a kind of vertigo as I lean over the edge of my life and look down. I will just tip over and be gone.

  17

  Everything that happened next happened so fast that I remember it like a landscape passing outside the window of a moving train. Believe it or not, my mother succeeded in getting Frank a new trial. The young death-row appeals lawyer she found was hot to make a name for himself; a high-profile case like Frank’s was exactly what he needed. After a few phone calls back and forth, and my mother scurrying off to the post office with newspaper clippings and the research compiled by the private investigator, he agreed to bring Frank’s case before a judge.

  Between the dirty arresting officer and new testimony from the deceased eyewitness’s ophthalmologist, who claimed that the old woman’s vision was so poor she wouldn’t have been able to see much of anything at night, this lawyer was able to convince a judge that Frank deserved a new trial.

  I came home one day to find my mother on the steps of our trailer surrounded by reporters. They flitted around her like moths to light, asking their questions. She looked beautiful and regal; no one would have guessed she was a waitress with a ninth-grade education. She spoke with the authority of someone who’d done her research on the legal system, mimicking all the right phrases, certain of her convictions. I stood in the back of the crowd and listened to my mother crow about her crusade, her faith, her belief in Frank Geary’s innocence. I felt dizzy as I determined from their questions that a new trial would begin in a month.

  I pushed my way through the crowd and past my mother, shaking her off as she tried to introduce me to reporters, not hearing the questions they shouted.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she complained when she entered the trailer. “Everyone will be looking at us now. We have to show our support for Frank.”

  I was speechless. I felt like my chest and my head were going to explode with the sheer force of my anger and disbelief. How could this be happening?

  “I told you, Ophelia,” she said triumphantly. “I told you the Lord wouldn’t let an innocent man die.” She was behaving as if he’d already been acquitted and was moving home.

  In a desperate rush, I told her all the things that Marlowe had told me, about the purses and the shoe under the porch. She scoffed, pulling her shoulders back and sticking out her chin.

  “Marlowe’s testimony was thrown out of court, Ophelia. Do you know why? Because he’s a compulsive liar, just like your father. A child psychologist testified that Marlowe’s statements were unreliable. No one ever found those purses or that shoe.”

  “Mom!” I yelled. “He’s a rapist and a murderer. He is going to kill you.”

  She slapped me so hard I saw stars in front of my eyes. I stood there for a second, my face burning, my eyes filling with tears. My mother took a step back, closed her eyes, and rubbed her forehead with both hands.

  “Ophelia, I swear,” she said in a gasp through her fingers. “You bring out the worst in me.”

  I left with her yelling after me and went straight to the pay phone outside the gas station across the street from our trailer park. I was sure this would be the thing that convinced my father to come get me.

  “I need to speak to my dad,” I told the woman at the tattoo parlor who accepted my collect call. I think her name was Tawny.

  “Ophelia, honey,” she said, sounding strained. “He’s gone.” Something about the way she said it made my throat go dry.

  “Gone where?” I asked, trying to keep the shake out of my voice. “When will he be back?”

  “Honey, I thought he would have told you.”

  “Told me what?” My voice broke then, and I couldn’t hold back my tears or the sob that lodged in my throat. There was a long silence on the line as I wept, cradling the phone in my hand.

  “He got himself a new Harley,” she said gently. “He’s taken off on a road trip to California. We don’t know when he’ll be back. It might be a month or more.”

  Marlowe’s words hit home then. He’s not coming for you, he’d said.

  “I don’t have any way to reach him,” she said. “But if he calls to check in, I’ll tell him you need him.”

  I hung up then without another word. I remember holding on to the phone booth for support, feeling as though someone had punched a hole through my center, where a cold wind blew through. I don’t know how long I stood there, crying hot, angry tears.

  Drew and Vivian are at the house when I get back, sitting in the kitchen with Gray, drinking coffee and looking grim. They all turn to look at me when I walk through the door from the garage. The small television on the kitchen counter is on, with the volume down. I see the face of the murdered woman again; she looks so sad in the photograph they chose. Couldn’t they have found a picture where she looked happier? I don’t know why it should bother me, but it does.

  “What is this?” I say with a fake laugh. “An intervention?” They must know what I’ve done. I check the coffeepot to see if it’s still warm, and I pour myself a cup. I keep my eyes on the black liquid in my mug as I turn around.

  “We’re just worried about you, Annie,” says Vivian. “You seem…frayed.”

  “I’m fine,” I say, looking up at them.

  “Where were you just now?” Gray asks, standing and walking over to me.

  “Out. Driving. Thinking,” I answer. I am washed over by annoyance and anger; I’m sick of being treated like a mental patient. It has been more than four years since my last episode. I know why they’re concerned—they’re alarmed by my recent black patch because I haven’t had one of those in Victory’s lifetime. But I don’t answer to any of these people.

  When Gray takes me into his arms, my anger fades and is replaced with guilt for lying, for doing what I did. I’m suddenly unsure of myself, of this flight response I’m having to the threats I perceive in my world. The worry on their faces reminds me that it could be real or all of it could be imagined.

  “We were wondering if we could have Victory for the weekend, Annie,” says Vivian from the table. She is a big, strong woman, but beautiful and feminine, with a neat steel gray bob, flawlessly smooth skin, and square pink fingernails. She’s always in silk and denim. “It will give you and Gray some time to yourselves.”

  I don’t say anything but my anger and annoyance creep back. There’s always this implication that I need time away from Victory. Or is it that they think she needs time away from me, her crazy mother? If I protest, it makes me seem selfish or unstable or both.

  “Just tonight and tomorrow night,” says Vivian soothingly. “We’ll take her to school on Monday morning, and you can pick her up Monday afternoon.”

  Drew says nothing, just sips his coffee and looks out the window. He never says anything unless absolutely necessary. He lets Vivian do all the talking for him. Gray says his real mother wasn’t strong like Vivian, that the life Drew led was hard on her, that she suffered. She spent some time in hospitals, I think, though Gray’s memories are a touch vague. What he d
oes remember pains him—more than he says, I suspect.

  He remembers bringing her glasses of water and small blue pills while she lay in bed, the shades drawn. He remembers listening to her cry at night after she thought he was asleep. There were long absences, when it was just Gray and his father. Your mother needs some rest, son. She’s not well.

  I’ve seen pictures of his mother looking thin and unhappy, dwarfed beneath Drew’s possessive arm. In some of the old photographs, there’s a little girl, blond and cherubic like Victory, a sister who died before Gray was born. It was an accident Drew has never been able to discuss, Gray tells me. She drowned somehow…in a pool, in the bathtub or the ocean, Gray doesn’t know. It is an absolutely taboo subject, never once discussed between father and son as long as I’ve known them. The thought of this drowned child, the forgotten girl whose name I don’t even know, makes me shudder. I hate the water.

  “I need some time with you,” Gray whispers in my ear. I look over at Drew, who still stares out the window as if he has nothing to do with this. But I know that this is coming from him; Vivian and Gray are his foot soldiers. There have been other conversations like this—about the beautiful house that I never wanted to live in, about the wonderful preschool I thought Victory was too young to attend, about the luxurious family vacations that I didn’t want to take.

  I feel trapped, like I have no choice but to agree. There’s no space for me to say no, no way. I don’t want to be away from my child right now, not even for two nights. It will make me seem clinging and desperate in this context.

  “It would mean a lot to us, Annie,” Vivian says.

  That’s the other thing they do: make it seem like I’m doing them a favor, that if I refuse, then I’d be denying them something after everything they’ve done for me. I move away from Gray under the guise of getting some cream from the refrigerator.

  “Sure, Vivian,” I say. “Of course.”

  I know they treasure my daughter and that Victory loves every minute she spends with them. She’ll be thrilled, won’t even throw a second glance back at me and Gray. I take my coffee and go up to her room to pack a bag without another word. I can feel all their eyes on me as I leave the room.

  After a minute Gray follows me up the stairs.

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask when he has entered Victory’s room and closed the door. We are surrounded by smiling dolls and plush animals. The walls are painted blue with clouds, stars on the ceiling. The space is a happy clutter of all manner of toys, a tiny white table with four chairs, stacks of books and games. This is my favorite room in the house, the place I made for my daughter.

  “Honestly?” he says, sitting down on Victory’s bed, atop the comforter that is a riot of orange, yellow, and pink flowers.

  “I’m concerned. I want her gone for a couple of days while I figure out what’s going on. Don’t you agree?”

  I give him a grudging nod and sit beside him.

  “And I meant what I said.” He puts a hand on my leg and rubs gently. “We haven’t had a day to ourselves in months. I need some time with you.”

  “We have live-in help,” I say. “We have all the time alone we want.”

  I let him pull me into an embrace and I rest slack against his chest. I don’t like it when he aligns with Drew and Vivian against me. They all seem so strong, so certain. I am flotsam in their current.

  “You do whatever he wants,” I say. I feel him tighten up. It’s an old argument, a sore spot for both of us. Bringing it up is an invitation to rumble.

  “That’s not true,” he says stiffly. “And you know it.”

  “It is true,” I say as he releases me.

  “This is not about my father.” His tone holds a familiar controlled anger, the tone he always has when we fight about Drew, as if there’s a well of rage he would never dare acknowledge.

  “Whose idea was it?” I ask. “To get Victory out of the way for a few days so you could figure out what’s going on?”

  He walks over to the bookshelf and lifts a snow globe up to the light. He stares into the orb at the pre-9/11 skyline of New York City. He is all hard angles, a dark tower against the sherbet-colored plush of toys and downy blankets. His silence is my answer.

  Gray’s working with his father represents a kind of cease-fire. After a troubled adolescence and many years of estrangement in adulthood, Gray and his father have finally come to a demilitarized zone in their relationship. I think Gray likes it there; he doesn’t want to go back to war. I understand this, but I resent it, too. We fight again and again about it, with no resolution.

  “You know, I’m not crazy,” I say, apropos of nothing, after a few minutes of silence, each of us isolated by our private, angry thoughts. I just feel I have to assert this.

  “I know that,” he says, returning to sit beside me again. He has a look on his face that reminds me he’s seen me at my worst. Sometimes I think those memories prevent him from seeing how far I’ve come. I worry that I’ll always be the crazy girl he found and rescued. Maybe part of him wants me to be that.

  “The doctor says I’m stronger than I’ve been since he’s known me.”

  “It’s true,” says Gray. “This is not about your mental health. There are real threats we have to assess. Victory is safer with my father than she is with Esperanza, right?”

  He’s right, I know he is. Why do I feel bound and gagged by his logic? Why does every nerve in my body tingle at the thought of being separated from Victory right now? But I go along. Of course I do.

  Gray and I finish packing Victory’s little pink suitcase, and we go with Vivian and Drew to pick her up at school. She is predictably delighted. Disney is in her future. She kisses us each carelessly and hops into the car seat in the back of Drew and Vivian’s SUV. I see her tiny hand lift above the car seat in a wave goodbye. And they’re gone. I fight the urge to run after the car.

  “Why didn’t you just say no?” asks my shrink later that afternoon.

  “Because they were right. I am frayed.”

  The problem here is that I can’t really tell him about the intruder on my property, the visit paid to my father, the cop and his questions. There’s too much about me that he doesn’t know, that I used to be someone else. That the person I used to be is guilty of some grave mistakes. He thinks I’m Annie Powers, formerly Annie Fowler. He thinks my husband is an insurance investigator. He knows about my dreams, the black patch, my history of fugue and disassociation, my choice to stop taking medication. He knows that I’ve been well and stable since Victory’s birth. He knows a version of my past wherein names have been changed to protect the guilty, myself included. But he’s ignorant of some crucial details and the very real recent threats. I think he must be aware of this, that he knows he’s helping me only as much as I’ll allow.

  “Well, even so. You have a right to say what you want, Annie. Even if other people have legitimate and well-meaning reasons for asking something of you, it doesn’t mean you have to comply.”

  I know he’s right, and I tell him so. “Anyway, they’re gone.”

  “It’s something to keep in mind for next time. You have a right to say no, even if your reasons don’t seem logical to anyone else. Due to traumatic circumstances in your life, you have had breaks from reality when you were unfit to make judgments. But it has been nearly five years since one of these episodes has occurred. You have been dealing with the root cause of your illness, and you are well, even without your medication. You aren’t defined by those moments in your life; don’t allow your husband and in-laws to make that mistake, either.”

  He’s right, of course, even with all he doesn’t know. The essential truths of our lives sometimes exist above day-to-day events. He thinks Gray found me in a bus station, that in a fit of altruism he took me to a hospital and, in an unlikely turn of events, fell in love with me during visits he made while I recovered. This is not very far from the truth, without being the whole truth.

  “Gray fell in love with you
while you were helpless and mentally unstable,” the doctor reminds me.

  “So maybe he doesn’t want me to be strong?”

  “Is that what you think, Annie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Someone like Gray is at his finest when there’s a crisis to be handled. He is the man you want when the sky is falling. But when the sky is not falling, does he feel a little lost? I think about our family and all the things we are forced to conceal, all the secrets we keep.

  Florida rests on a network of limestone mazes, a labyrinth of wet and dry caves and crevices referred to as a karst topography. A layer of quartz sand thinly mantles the underground landscape formed by the movement of water through rock over millions of years. It’s another world, filled with dark passages, populated by creatures that couldn’t exist on the earth’s surface. Sometimes I think of Florida’s secret places, its wet darkness, its silent corridors, and I feel right at home.

  18

  Most of us don’t live in the present tense. We dwell in a mental place where our regrets and grudges from our past compete with our fears about the future. Sometimes we barely notice what’s going on around us, we’re so busy time traveling. Before Victory was born, I could spend whole days trying to sort out the things that have happened to me, the terrible mistakes I’ve made. I marinated in my anger and self-loathing, cataloged all the different ways my parents failed me, cast myself as the victim and played the role like I was gunning for a gold statuette.

  Motherhood changed that for me. Victory forced me into the moment. She demanded that I focus on her needs, that I live by her schedule. When I was with her—feeding her, changing her—just looking at her or playing with her, everything in the past and the future fell away. I was aware that we would be together like this for only a short time, that in a heartbeat she’d be walking away from me, living her own life. I didn’t want to waste a second thinking about what might have been, what might be. Love makes you present. So does mortal fear.