by Rod Redux
He slept.
Part II
Love After Life
13.
It was strange, she thought, that death was not the end.
She knew she was dead, because she remembered killing herself. She’d taken her husband’s hobby knife from the desk drawer in his office, drew a warm tub of water and then cut open the veins in her forearms, first the right arm, then the left arm. She had laid there in the warm bath water—so like the womb, that warm water-- and watched the life run out of her body, bright and hot and red.
She remembered the heaviness of death. She recalled thinking it was like the pull of a collapsed star. Irresistible. Dense. Frightening at first, but then oddly comforting. Sweetly seductive. She remembered swirling away down that mouth of darkness, that hungry, bottomless hole.
The dark had promised peace. An end to her pain. An eternal sleep, with no dreams to mar its featureless sterility.
But the dark was a liar. She was still aware. She still felt. She remembered pain... and love.
It was hard to think in the darkness. She had no anchor, nothing to root herself to the world around her.
What world? There was no world. Only this close, chilling darkness.
But that was not true. If she turned her… what? Head? Eyes? Awareness?
Yes, awareness.
If she turned her awareness upwards, there was light. It was far away, dim and silverish. Was it the light at the end? Was that heaven waiting for her? If it was, she was a tad unimpressed. She would have expected heaven’s light to be a bit brighter.
Maybe she was just too far away from it.
Move a little closer, then.
Could she move?
Mary shifted her awareness in the dark, searching for her limbs. The infinitesimal buzz of the nerve endings that once delineated her body was absent now. She sensed no arms or legs sprouting from her torso-- no torso, in fact. No genitals, no breasts. Like the universe when God first bent it to his will, she was void and without form.
But she sensed she could move if she willed herself to do so. It would be slow, it would be exhausting, but she could move towards that fitful light if she wanted to do it.
The question was: did she want to?
What did she really want? Was the dark not enough? She had wanted it so badly, had endured the pains of death for it.
Yet, it did not satisfy.
What did she want? Retribution? Justice?
If she’d been cheated, she’d played no small part in the swindle. Passive-aggressive, even to the end, she had acted as she always had, as a beaten thing, afraid to fight for the things she valued.
Afraid to fight that whore for her husband, afraid to fight for her own happiness.
It was certainly too late for that now.
Wasn’t it?
We’ll see… she thought, moving through the dark.
We’ll see…
14.
Hank slept, and in his exhausted slumber, he dreamt.
Mary was still alive in his dream. They were in their twenties, newlyweds, all the revelations of incest and abuse and their painful married separateness still years away. In his dream, Hank was sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling on his socks and tennis shoes, getting ready to go for a jog. He still jogged in those days, every day. Didn’t feel right if he didn’t go for a run. Mary was in the bathroom, bathing. They’d just made love and a sweet-smelling early summer breeze billowed the curtains, carrying with it the scent of fresh mown grass and the fragrance of the flowers growing in the brand new flowerbed beneath the window. Mary had dug that flowerbed herself, on her knees with her hands in the earth. The smell of the bright pink buddlei drifted in the windows. Butterfly bush, it was called.
Hank was telling Mary about a new client. His law practice with Travis was just getting off the ground, and every new client was a small victory for them. This new client’s name was Orville Tucker. He was a local farmer, a well-to-do redneck with a penchant for talking too loud and picking his nose in public. He was suing a neighbor for cutting down some trees on his property. He’d given his neighbor leave to cut down some trees, but not the exact trees the neighbor had actually cut down, and he wanted to be compensated for all kinds of crazy supposed damages.
“I told him, the best he could hope for was a small settlement to cover the cost of planting new trees in their place, but he insists on proceeding with the lawsuit anyway. He says it’s a matter of principle,” Hank laughed. “Ah, well. It’s his money.”
Mary said something in reply, but the splash of bathwater obscured her words.
“What was that?” Hank asked, rising. He bounced on his feet a couple times, then trotted into the bathroom.
Mary was standing in the tub, pouring water over her shoulder with a small bowl, but it wasn’t water. It was blood. She was covered in blood from head to toe, her lithe body bright scarlet and shining wetly, her dark hair clinging in damp tendrils down the middle of her back. She turned her head to smile at him and her eyes and teeth were bright white in contrast to all the gore dribbling down her skin. He could see the inside of her left forearm, and it was unzipped from elbow to wrist.
Hank woke with a start, his sheets and pillow damp with sweat.
He’d spiked a temperature while he dozed, and his body was slimy with fever sweat. Somehow, he felt even more exhausted than he had when he first lay down to sleep. He turned over with a groan and pushed a pillow aside to check the alarm. 9:43 p.m., the digital display pronounced in bright red letters. Two hours. He’d only slept two hours.
He flipped onto his back and kicked his damp covers off, lying in the dark for a few minutes. He recalled the dream he’d just had, grimacing in disgust. Mary, covered in blood…
Well, what did he expect? Sweet dreams? He was bound to have nightmares for a good long time. All he had to do was shut his eyes and he could summon up the image of his dead wife as he’d found her, floating limp and lifeless in a tub of cold bathwater.
The water in the tub had been a candy-bright shade of pink.
An obscene, offensive shade of rich reddish pink.
Hank leapt from his bed, fleeing his grotesque thoughts. He fumbled his way toward the bathroom in the dark, thinking to take a quick shower. He felt dirty. He hesitated, staring into the dark throat of the bathroom for several heartbeats, then set his shoulders and walked on in.
You can’t be afraid of the bathroom for the rest of your life, he told himself.
He flipped on the light, blinking in the sudden glare. For a second, the tub was full of blood, bright pink bath water glimmering three-fourths of the way to the rim, making his heart jump up into his throat, but it was gone a blink later, just a figment of his imagination.
“Stop it,” he said aloud.
The words fell flat in the small, tiled room.
Hank grabbed a towel from the linen closet, pushed his boxers down and kicked them toward the hamper with a toe, then stepped into the walk-in shower. He didn’t think he’d ever use that tub again, but the shower was okay.
He turned on the water, letting it slash over him cold. His nerves gave a jolt at the sudden spray, but the icy water felt wonderful. It sharpened his thoughts, brought him quickly to full awareness.
Grabbing a bar of soap and a wash cloth, he scrubbed the fever sweat and bad dreams away, letting it swirl down the drain between his bare feet, the sudsy water spinning, sluicing into the dark with a gurgling sound.
He wondered if Steve was back from his parents’ home yet. He hoped Steve’s confrontation with Dean had not gone badly, that they were able to be civilized toward one another.
Deep down, he doubted it, but it didn’t hurt to hope.
He shampooed, rinsed, and that’s when the smell hit him.
Hank groaned, clapping a hand over his mouth and nose. The shower stall was suddenly choked with the smell of rancid blood, coppery and sweet. The smell was like the belch of a cannibal. It was coming, he realized, from the drain betw
een his feet.
A moment after that, he realized what the smell was.
Blood.
Mary’s blood.
It must have been sitting in the pipes, souring, and when he came into the bathroom and ran the shower, the gas had been forced up through the sewer lines, displaced by the water running down the system.
Gagging, Hank shoved the pebbled shower door open, making it strike the wall and bounce back into him. As he stumbled from the stall, some sharp edge on the doorframe sliced into his bicep and his knees buckled a little. He almost fell, but managed to catch himself and only did a clumsy little bob before flipping up the toilet seat and leaning over the bowl to puke.
The contents of his stomach came up in one convulsive lurch. All he’d had to eat that day was some wonton soup and lo mein—the meal he’d shared with Steve after making the funeral arrangements. It came up in a hot ball of acid, half the noodles still intact.
He dry heaved for a minute, spat a wad of acrid blood into his puke (his ulcer acting up again, no big surprise) then depressed the flusher handle. He grabbed a towel, mopped his face as lunch gurgled away.
Now my puke is down there with all Mary’s blood, Hank thought, and his stomach gave another roll. If there’d been anything left in there, it would have come up.
Feeling weak and dizzy, Hank dried off quickly and found a pair of pajamas to put on. He searched under the sink then, looking for the bleach.
The odor was spreading through the entire bathroom. Hank grabbed a washcloth from the linen closet and held it over his lower face. Unable to locate the bleach in any of the cabinets, he trotted downstairs to the utility room. There, in a cabinet over the washer, he found a big white jug of bleach. He shook it. Half full.
Returning to the bathroom, Hank put the cloth over his lower face and approached the shower stall. He upended the bottle and poured half its contents into the drain. Walking to the tub then, he emptied the rest down that drain.
He put the lid back on the jug and left the bathroom, leaving the exhaust fan running and shutting the door.
“You’re sleeping downstairs tonight,” Hank said to himself. The bleach had killed the smell of his wife’s blood, but it also made him feel wheezy and short of breath.
If he could go back to sleep at all, that is. Sleep didn’t seem very likely the rest of the night.
Hank pulled on a clean tee-shirt and went downstairs to wait for his brother-in-law. He hoped Steve returned soon. He needed some company.
15.
He was checking his cell phone when the headlights of Steve’s Kia splashed across the bay window and the lawn out past the back patio. Thirty-seven missed calls, Hank noted with a grimace. He didn’t think he’d ever had so many calls in such a short space of time. Two were from his mother, one from Travis, and one from his cousin Billy Joe, the Elvis impersonator. The other thirty-three were from Penny. Nine from the Dutch Bakery, twenty-four from her cell phone. Surely she’d heard about Mary by now. Couldn’t she give him a day or two to attend to his wife?
Then Steve was pulling in and Hank shut his phone off.
He’d deal with Penny later.
He heard the patio door open. Steve slipped inside and padded quickly across the kitchen, headed toward the guest bedroom.
“You’re back,” Hank called. Steve hadn’t seen him standing in the dining room.
He heard Steve pause in the den, then call back, “Yeah… I’m back.”
Hank came around through the living room, but Steve had already hurried on down the hallway. Before Hank could say anything else, Steve shut the door of the guest bedroom.
Guess he’s tired, Hank thought with a frown.
He was a little disappointed. He was hoping for some conversation. That’s when, for no particular reason, he remembered the name of the song Mary liked, the one he wanted to play at her service, and he walked down the hall to tell his brother-in-law he’d remembered it, excited.
Hank and Mary had always had an open-door policy in their marriage, so Hank pushed through into the guest bedroom without thinking.
Steve was standing with his back to the door. He’d just pulled off his shirt and was naked from the midriff up.
“Jesus Christ!” Hank exclaimed.
Steve wheeled toward him, startled. His flesh, from the waistband of his jeans up, was mottled with bruises. It looked like someone had tried to draw a map of the world on his torso with brass knuckles. Steve tried to cover the injuries by crossing his narrow arms, but it was too late. Hank had already seen them.
“Did Dean do that?” Hank demanded.
“No!” Steve answered quickly. It was such an obvious lie that Steve’s cheeks grew red and splotchy.
“Bullshit!” Hank hissed. “Tell me what happened, right now.”
Steve hesitated, then dropped his arms to his sides.
He was a skinny fellow, all ribs and stringy muscle, and he had one of those sunken chests. What was it called? Cobbler’s chest, or something like that. He didn’t look Hank in the eyes, just stood with his head hanging down, his bangs obscuring his face, while his brother-in-law ogled his bruises.
They were fresh-- purple and swollen and rimmed in red. There were three or four on his belly and the left side of his ribs, then two more on the right side of his chest. His back was similarly discolored. There was a red mark just above his elbows, as if someone had grasped his arms too tightly, and his right cheekbone was a little red and swollen, too, though it wasn’t bruised. Not yet, anyway.
“Steve?” Hank pressed him.
Hank’s brother-in-law looked up at him then, a bitter smile on his face. “Dean doesn’t really believe in turning the other cheek,” he said. He laughed as he said it, but it wasn’t really a laugh, just a shaky exhalation.
“That’s ridiculous. This is nothing to laugh about. You need to press charges on that motherfucker!” Hank said hotly. “What happened, Steve? How did you guys get in a fight?”
Steve sighed, his bony shoulders slumping. “All right… I’ll tell you what happened. Just let me put on a clean shirt.”
“Okay,” Hank said.
“You mind giving me a some privacy?”
“What? Oh, sure! Sorry. I’ll go put some coffee on.”
Hank left to give his brother-in-law some time to himself.
As he set about the task of making the two of them a fresh pot of coffee, he wrestled with his anger. He tried to tell himself that this wasn’t the time to get in a big family row, but all he wanted to do was grab his baseball bat, jump in his Mustang and go pay big brother Dean a visit. He couldn’t believe how badly the bastard had worked his little brother over. Steve was so scrawny!
The image of Steve’s bruised torso rose up in his mind, and Hank ground his teeth together, fighting the temptation to go kick his brother-in-law’s ass. The problem was, he knew once he started swinging on the creep, he wasn’t likely to stop.
Steve exited the guest bedroom and started up the hallway as Hank was pouring their drinks.
“Just cream?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you.”
They sat together at the dining room table. Steve had put on a clean blue tee-shirt and combed his hair. Before Hank could say anything, Steve spoke quickly. “I know it looks bad, Hank, but I hit him first.”
“What do you mean? Damn it, Steve, that’s no excuse for him to work you over like that!”
Steve shook his head. “It’s worse than it looks, Hank. I bruise really easy. You know how skinny I am, and I have really thin skin—“
“Steve…” Hank said with a frown.
Steve laughed. “I know! I know how I sound. I just can’t… I just don’t want to make any more trouble. I’ve already caused enough trouble tonight. Mary’s visitation is tomorrow evening, and you… you have enough on your plate right now without getting involved in our ridiculous family problems.”
“You are my family, Steve,” Hank said. “I’m already involved.”
Steve l
ooked intently at him, his eyes shining. Finally, he said, “That’s really sweet, Hank, but—“
“Just tell me what happened,” Hank said gently.
So Steve told him. He told Hank how he’d driven to his parents’ home and invited Dean outside to talk. “When I told him you didn’t want him to come near you, or speak at Mary’s service, he wanted to know why,” Steve said. “He acted like he didn’t know why you’d say such a thing. Like his feelings were hurt.” Steve laughed in disbelief. “Oh my God! That made me so angry! I said, ‘Just drop the act, Dean. Hank knows all about what you did to me and Mary when we were kids, and he doesn’t want anything to do with you.’ Then he got mad and said I was crazy, just like my crazy sister, so I hit him. I didn’t hurt him. Look at me. I couldn’t punch my way out of a wet paper bag, but it made him mad and we started fighting like we were kids. Rolling around in the driveway. And just like when we were kids, he got the best of me. He always does. He sat on me and started wailing on my ribs. I think he was really trying to bust a few of them. Mom came out while we were fighting and started screaming at us to stop, then told me to get off her property. If I couldn’t act like a civilized human being, she didn’t want me to come around. Bad enough--!” and there his recounting faltered as he gulped back a tear. He dabbed his eyes and cleared his throat. “Bad enough I was a God damned queer and I had shamed the family--!”
“All right,” Hank said sympathetically, seeing how close his brother-in-law was to breaking down completely. “It’s okay. I get the picture.”
Steve wiped his eyes again and then laughed, somewhat hysterically. “What a fuckin’ family, right?” he asked, his voice overly cheerful. “Pillars of the community! Ah… fuck.”
“It’s okay, Steve. So what do you want to do?”
Steve looked up at him, eyebrows arched.
“If it was up to me, I’d press charges, but this is your call, man.”
Steve shook his head. “I just want to bury my sister and go home. I don’t want any more trouble with my mom and Dean. I just want this whole bad dream to be over with… so I can go home and…” He did break down then, putting his face in his hands, shoulders trembling.