Fatal Option

by Chris Beakey

  And then he looked at Aidan again.

  “Nice job little brother.”

  “Thank you,” Aidan said.

  “It really was,” she reaffirmed, and touched Kieran’s arm again. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Yeah.” There was a tic in his cheek, another nervous blink of his eyes. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “For a minute there…it was like you kind of went away.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  The testy tone of his voice made her sorry she had brought it up. “Okay…sorry.”

  There was a long moment of quiet, an undercurrent of agitation in the way Kieran was looking at her.

  “I want to draw a picture,” Aidan said.

  “Aw not now. It’s so late.” Kieran yawned in a slightly exaggerated way.

  “I want to draw a picture of Sara.”

  Kieran sat up, and headed toward the hallway off the living room. “I’m going to get your toothbrush and toothpaste ready and then we’ll do good-night time.”

  Aidan stayed where he was, looking at her. When it was obvious he wasn’t going to follow, Kieran came back and wrapped him in a tight hug.

  “I’m too tired to rumble again little brother. Come on and help me get you ready.”

  Aidan squirmed but Kieran held him tighter. His face reddened. He looked distressed.

  “Good night, Aidan,” Sara said. “Thanks for hanging out with me.”

  Aidan said nothing, but lowered his head, looking as if he might cry as Kieran turned him toward the hall.

  She felt sad as she watched them go. A lot of the literature about autism focused on the sense of alienation and inferred that some autistic people liked being in their own world. But she knew that Aidan truly enjoyed interaction with other people. Yet he was largely left alone and even shunned at school. And now he was being sent away alone in his own home.

  The depressing nature of it stayed with her as she looked for the first time at a series of large drawings on either side of the television. She had glanced at them when she had come in and she realized now they were simply tacked to the wall, without frames.

  She got up, looked closer. The drawings were of people she recognized: Ms. Carson, Aidan’s English teacher. Melissa Carroll, another autistic seventh-grader at Langford. Ms. Bernard, a large black woman who managed the cafeteria.

  She noticed the printed letters in the bottom right hand corner of each drawing: Aidan O’Shea, and felt an unexpected tremor of emotion as she stepped back and observed the nuanced shading and expertly rendered facial expressions.

  He’s gifted, like Kenneth, she thought.

  She heard the sound of running water, then the murmur of voices behind the closed bathroom door; Kieran’s gentle tone punctuated by a sudden “No!” from Aidan.

  Kieran suddenly became more insistent.

  “You have to get to bed buddy.”

  “I WANT TO GO OUT IN THE SNOW!”

  “It’s late. You need to brush your teeth and get to sleep.”

  “I WANT TO GO NOW!”

  She nervously sat back down on the couch, her palms pressed between her knees. She had experienced one of Aidan’s outbursts during a tutoring session a few weeks earlier and had been unable to say or do anything to stop it.

  She looked anxiously toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms as Aidan yelled, “NO!”

  And heard the smack, the sound of an open-palmed slap.

  A low moaning sound came from the room. It was Aidan, sounding as if he’d been struck, and hurt.

  “You’ll be good now, right?” Kieran’s voice was tense. “You’ll listen to your brother?”

  Aidan moaned again.

  “Listen and do what I tell you to do? Come on. Brush your teeth. And tomorrow we’ll go out in the snow for a long time.”

  She heard a sniffling sound, and then a change in the sound of the water, as if Aidan was finally sticking his toothbrush underneath it. She turned and went into the trailer section of the house, which Kieran had told her they no longer used. There was a short hallway that had a piece of plywood, nailed to the wall. It was yellowed with age, and slightly warped in the middle. She stepped closer and realized it was covering a space that must have been used as a closet.

  It was a strange sight. Kieran taught people how to build things. If the closet door had been broken she would have expected him to fix or replace it. But the plywood was old and looked like it had been there for a long time.

  She stepped into the bathroom. It had an ugly vanity cabinet that was a different color from the toilet and a cheap pre-fabricated shower unit with faucets that had been taken apart but abandoned, a screwdriver and wrench and a plastic container of nuts and bolts left open on the floor.

  She shut the door and turned on the light and tried to make sense of what she had just heard. She didn’t want to believe that Kieran had hit Aidan but the sounds were lodged in her mind now, as violent and ugly as the attack on Kenneth at school.

  You must have heard it wrong, she thought. Must have been the wine.

  Of course she had. Kieran lived for his brother. He had shaped his whole career as a teacher around the need to be at Langford, where Aidan had been mainstreamed, so that he would always be within reach.

  He’s a caretaker, like you. The conversation in Kieran’s office drifted back through her thoughts, reminding her of everything they had in common. She loved Kieran and was coming to love his little brother. She would be good for Aidan; would help him find guidance for his talent. Soon Aidan and Kenneth would become friends, bonded by their artistic abilities.

  The thoughts made her smile as she checked her purse for the condoms she had bought, just in case he didn’t have any.

  They were there, zippered into an inside pocket. She remembered one of the many conversations she had had with her mother about sex—something that “shouldn’t be taken lightly because of all those consequences that I’m going to make you uncomfortable lecturing you about,” her mother had joked, both of them content to talk around the edges of any kind of promises or warnings.

  The memory of that conversation was an uncomfortable intrusion—another sign of the forces that were meant to keep her apart from Kieran. Because of the age difference, which didn’t matter, or his role as a teacher, which also didn’t matter.

  All that really matters is that we’re meant to be together.

  There was a sudden vibration in the floor, a thumping sound on the other side of the wall.

  She opened the door and almost bumped into Kieran in the hallway.

  “Whoops, sorry.” He smiled down at her, seeming taller in the close space. “Had to put a load of clothes in the dryer.”

  She looked past him, into another shallow closet where the washer and dryer sat side-by-side, the dryer shaking and rumbling as if it was very full. The glimpse of domesticity, Kieran O’Shea doing laundry, was surprisingly endearing.

  “I think we finally get to be alone,” he said.

  She smiled, mysteriously, she hoped, and they walked hand-in-hand back to the living room. The fire had burned down low and the candelabras sent shadows of their bodies flickering against the walls. The music was different now. There was a slow, rolling, electronic beat to it. During the past few minutes Kieran had brought out a large glass bong and put it on the table alongside a plastic baggie.

  He placed his hand on her cheek when he saw her gazing at the bong, and then suddenly pulled her closer, his arm tight against her back. She felt a wonderful, anticipatory tension, like the last few moments before stepping onto a rollercoaster as he whispered “I’m going to take you so high,” his hand moving downward, his fingertips pressing gently against the racing pulse in her neck.

  Later, Stephen would wonder if the switch from red wine back to bourbon was prompted more by Kenneth’s i
nconsolable sadness or his knowledge of Lori’s unhappiness in the weeks leading up to her death. The excessive drinking was a bad move either way but it calmed his mind as he ate a solitary dinner at the kitchen counter and watched the snow piling up to the midpoint of the French doors that led out to the back deck.

  And then, with only a brief thought about the ramifications, he went online.

  The office email came first, and gave him a page with dozens of messages. He gazed at the subject lines without opening them, knowing that he was only killing time.

  He went to Sara’s Facebook page next, and skimmed through what he knew was a version carefully chosen for his eyes, a parental profile that probably obscured other content viewable to her friends. He followed with a visit to Kenneth’s page, which likewise told him nothing he didn’t already know.

  He stood up and stretched and walked around the family room before continuing on; stood by the fire and told himself it was best to just shut the computer down and head up to bed even as he made his way back to the kitchen and filled his glass with fresh ice and another shot.

  The screensaver image floated onto the computer as he sat back down. It was a photo of Lori and himself in front of the house the day they had moved in, the white siding and green trim gleaming in the late September sunlight. He squinted, noticing for the first time the tentativeness of Lori’s smile in contrast to his own.

  Should have taken this down, he thought, found something better.

  His fingers moved quickly across the keyboard, taking him to the address ingrained to his mind. The screen seemed to freeze for several seconds, giving him the uncanny feeling that he was being warned not to continue.

  And then he was there. At a screen filled with images of Lori from her childhood, teen, and adult years, right up to a week before she died. It was a multimedia collage created by Kenneth, which served as a homepage to the online memorial site created by Lori’s parents.

  He continued on to a page of videos that had been uploaded from friends and family, and watched a few minutes of two short clips from a Boys and Girls Club theatre production with six- and seven-year-olds that Lori had directed a few years before, and smiled at the sheer sweetness of the children riding an imaginary bus across the stage as his eyes filled with tears.

  He knocked back most of the bourbon and went on to a page of tributes that had been spoken at her funeral, and clicked through and read the first few lines of each one. A few drops of the whiskey caught the back of his throat as he reached his own tribute and sent him into a minor coughing fit. He made his way over to the sink when it passed and grabbed a paper towel to wipe the moisture from his eyes, and then without much thought poured another shot over the melting ice before sitting back down.

  There was a tab marked Photo Albums at the top of the page. He touched the mouse and clicked through. The albums had been uploaded by Lori’s family and friends, and the page allowed photos to be added on an ongoing basis.

  He skimmed over the titles, and landed on the one titled “Work,” which had a notation, “2 New Photos.”

  The next click of the mouse brought up the entire collection, the page filling with rows of thumbnail photos of Lori from her last ad agency position, all of them from parties and office functions. All of the photos on the page were familiar, all taken during happier days as his wife rose to the top of her company through talent and drive and charm that made virtually every one of her colleagues a treasured friend.

  The belle of the ball.

  It was an expression he used time and again when he watched the way people responded to her; drawn to the same effervescent southern persona that had captivated him from their very first moment together.

  He clicked through to the next page, yearning to see more of her wide, happy smile.

  And then he saw the photos that had been added. Both showed her alongside the agency’s creative director, seated at a banquette in a bar during the last holiday party she attended. The man had dark hair, dark eyes and what looked like a calculated two-day growth of facial hair. He appeared to be in his late thirties, which made him ten years younger than Stephen. His arm was draped over Lori’s shoulder, and both of them were laughing with unmistakable camaraderie.

  The ease of lovers.

  He felt a sudden, unbearable tightness in his chest, and leaned backwards on the kitchen barstool, one hand gripping the edge of the marble countertop; one becoming a fist that he pressed hard against his lips. He looked at the “date added” tab; saw that both photos had been uploaded within the past few weeks, by the man who still grieved for Lori a full year after the brief series of sexual encounters that had riddled his wife with guilt.

  He shut his eyes and took several deep breaths as he thought once again about her confession; his initial shock giving way to a feeling of pity as she stood in front of him, sobbing, begging him to forgive her as she told him of the man’s unrelenting pursuit and her weakening resolve. Admitting, nearly outright, that none of it had occurred on the spur of the moment. Telling him, in a fit of complete truth, that for a brief while she thought she had loved him.

  She had quit the agency the following day; then committed herself to a self-imposed purgatory in the months that followed, telling him of her gratitude for his “forgiveness,” deciding to give up her career completely. In retrospect the slide into depression seemed as if it had been inevitable; a penance. She had told him—promised him—that she would never see the man again. He wanted to believe her. But he knew that the emotional cost had been supreme.

  He stepped off the barstool and leaned forward, both hands on the counter, imagining his wife’s lover loading the photos onto the page, thinking of her, missing her still.

  As if he had a right.

  His dinner threatened to come up, a sign of the gastric problems that were beginning to make him wonder if the acids were eating his stomach away. He grimaced and waited for the feeling to pass; reminded himself once again that Lori had told him she loved him nearly every day after the confession; that she really had been content to “start over and just stay home” with her husband and kids. Assuring him the relationship had indeed been a mistake and that it was completely over.

  He did not want to think about the hours she spent alone on the laptop she kept in the spare bedroom. Or his certainty that she viewed the sex between them as a physical obligation while her mind went somewhere else. Or his suspicions about what he had seen on her computer, two days before her death.

  He kept the lights low as he wiped down the granite counters of the kitchen and listened to the soft swish of the dishwasher and watched the snow pile up higher outside the French doors. And then to ensure that he really would fall headlong into sleep he poured one more drink. In a crystal shot glass; filled to the brim. Took it upstairs and sipped it in the bedside chair until his throat swelled and his eyes began to sting with images of the Lexus being pulled from the bottom of the flooded gorge, the questions drifting once again through his mind:

  Why did you have to go out that night baby?

  Why did you have to be on that road?

  And then he was in the bed and under the blankets, his face turned toward the windows and the still-falling snow, his mind drawing down into darkness as he felt the soft pressure on his cheek, the touch of an unseen hand.

  He wrapped his arms around a pillow, whispered “Lori.”

  And once again slipped into the nightmare of the summer thunderstorm and the mountain road as the phone began to ring.

  Sara had always wondered what it would be like to fly and now she knew. With her eyes closed she saw herself drifting over the rooftops of the houses in the neighborhood where she used to live and then soaring up the mountain to Kieran O’Shea’s house in the woods. Here, in a room lit only by the fire and the candles as they reclined over a blanket and floor pillows, lying sideways, kissing. It was either hours or minutes ago that K
ieran had slipped his hand up her blouse and unsnapped her bra and she had no idea how long it had been since he had unbuckled his jeans and pressed himself against her. That was where they were now, on the edge of being joined; everything moving so slowly and gently with the smoky-sweet scent of pot lingering in the air and the chanting voices on one of Kieran’s special music mixes like an ambient force in the room.

  “Sara…”

  She loved the way he whispered her name; loved the feel of her rapidly beating heart as he slipped his hand down her skirt. He’s here, she thought. We’re here. Touching. His fingers were moving perfectly, as if they were somehow guided by the force and direction of her imagination on all of the nights when she had been alone. After a moment he took his lips away, pressed his chin against hers, and tilted her head upwards. And then he was kissing, then sucking, her neck, his mouth pressing firmly against the pulsing vein there, the sensation sending an erotic current straight through the rest of her body.

  She tried to say his name but her voice was breathless as he drew her flesh even tighter against his lips and flicked it with his tongue. She opened her eyes and broke the kiss. But before she could speak he guided her face upward once more, exposing her neck, running the tip of his tongue along the length of it. Then he touched her again, just right. She moaned softly, feeling a surge of wonder at the pleasure that swept through her. The feeling lasted until the slight shift of Kieran’s weight as he nudged the inside of her knee, opening her legs wider.

  She smiled, encouraging him, then slipped her hand under the back of his shirt.

  Her fingertips touched raised ridges of skin along his spine, the texture as coarse as corduroy.

  He gasped, jerking upwards as if he had been shocked.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He moved back, then sat up on his knees, and looked anxiously toward the front trailer section of the house.

  “Kieran?”

  She heard a faint grunt, and then his mouth opened and moved as if to say something. He looked down at her but the sockets of his eyes were shadowed above a strange grimace.