by Erin Healy
Once, he tried to die. He took the relatively simple approach of starving himself, which was ridiculous in hindsight. When lack of food made him weaker than he was in the first place, all the authorities had to do was pick him up off the floor of the cell and stick a feeding tube in his stomach.
At the time, Grant believed that resurrecting a dead man against his will was worse than the death penalty. Because even in something as selfish and simple as suicide, he was a complete failure. And he’d proved his idiocy again by letting Alice take that letter to Molly instead of going to Lexi himself first.
He willed his thoughts to stay under control. If he let them run on like this they’d only take him right back to where he started, which was at the bottom of a tar pit that would suck him down for good next time.
Take every thought captive.
That’s what Richard had said, wasn’t it? Grant planned to look it up when he got back home.
Take every thought captive. Richard must have known how brainless that directive would sound to a man sitting in Terminal Island prison for four years. As if Grant’s thoughts weren’t already captive, banging like a riot on the bars of his head, demanding to be heard, cursing him and condemning him to die.
Richard said that wasn’t what the saying meant. You gotta take command of those thoughts, he said. You have authority over them and not the other way around, he said. If you don’t corral those guys and keep them in their place, you won’t be able to sort the lies from the truth any more, and then whadya think is gonna happen?
What did Grant think was going to happen? Nothing worse than what had already happened, that was for sure.
The sound of Richard’s voice willing Grant’s accusing thoughts to be silent made him smile now. But back then, Grant thought the guy was just another wacko, like him but high on a different kind of drug. A religious one. And Grant sure couldn’t see how that was any improvement over his own choice of anesthesia. He figured religion did as much damage, killed as many people or more, triggered far greater wars than a few cartels ever managed to pull off.
Maybe that was true on some level. But eventually Grant came to see that it was beside the point.
Because what was going to happen was that Grant was going to die. Either way, he was going to die. He’d die if they let him out at the end of his five years, because he’d go back to his bongs and blades and papers and syringes and cookstoves and off himself right that time. And if he couldn’t, if he was still such a failure that he couldn’t do even that, he’d die behind bars, where a second round of cold-turkey withdrawals would do what he was too weak to do himself.
Grant decided he’d rather not die alone. Richard was a little off in the head, but he was a warm body and a decent listener. So when he’d come to Terminal Island twice a month with his ratty paperback Bible, Grant went to hear him talk in the drab room where cons with nothing better to do would trickle in. Then after he was done and the men all filed out, Grant would hang around to have someone to talk to, and Richard would listen to him.
They sat on a worn blue utility carpet that had been unrolled on the concrete slab. The prison didn’t allow folding chairs, which only begged men like Grant to pick them up and hurl them at each other.
Sometimes Richard pointed out Scriptures that he thought would interest Grant. Sometimes he’d loan Grant the good book.
It was something to read.
Grant started dreaming about Richard between his visits. He’d dream they were in a boxing ring and Richard was Triple H, even though the only similarities between the two men was their long blond hair and their weight. The match was never fair, as Grant had never even qualified for the lightweight wrestling class in high school. Richard would beat Grant until he couldn’t see out of either eye, then scoop Grant up by the armpits and tell him to fight, that he couldn’t do it for him.
You gotta fight your own demons, Richard kept shouting.
Once, Grant told Richard about this recurring dream and the minister laughed. That’d be a sight, he said, you and me on WWF. Richard was almost sixty, at least three twenty-five and paunchy, and four inches taller than Grant. He kept his receding hair tied back at the base of his neck.
Grant had wanted to know what the dream meant.
Richard said he didn’t know, but maybe it had something to do with how Grant felt about their meetings.
I don’t feel like I want to beat you up, Grant said.
Good, Richard said, ’cause if you can’t even do it in a dream you’re in a world of hurt.
That was the first time Grant had laughed in . . . well, the first time that he could remember he’d laughed since he hadn’t been blitzed.
Then he told Grant maybe he was getting ready to do some mortal combat with the truth. Those were his very words: “mortal combat with the truth.”
Grant crossed his arms and slouched over the thin carpet.
“What if all these months we’ve been talking, you’ve actually been hearing me?” Richard asked.
“Of course I’ve been hearing you.”
“You been listening, but hearing? No, that hasn’t happened quite yet.”
“You’re splitting hairs.”
“No, no. I’ll tell you the difference: You listen, you can tell me what I’ve been saying. You hear, you do more than that. You take what I say to heart. You think maybe it’s true. You think maybe you should quit arguing with it and give it a try.”
“Well then maybe I don’t believe it’s true yet.”
“I think you’re coming up on the idea.”
“I’m a hard man to convince.”
“What if it’s true, then? What if everything Jesus said is right? What if a man can change?”
“No offense to Jesus, but I haven’t seen much proof of it in me or anyone else.”
Richard guffawed at that. “You’re still a kid. You haven’t even hit thirty. What do you know?”
“I’m just saying.”
“Would you want to know if you could?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, what if, then? What if? That’s all you have to ask yourself.”
“And then what? Abracadabra? Poof?”
Richard smiled. “That’d be step one, or something like it.”
“And after that?”
“When’s the last time you had contact with your wife?” he asked.
Grant got up and left. He skipped Richard’s next visit.
Lexi probably had divorced him—should have divorced him—on grounds of abandonment. The possibility stayed in the front of Grant’s mind like a splattered bug on a windshield. If she hadn’t divorced him already, she would when she learned why he’d left.
There was also the possibility that his little girl had become another man’s daughter. He wasn’t sure what the worse failure would be.
Grant lived the dream two more times before seeing Richard again.
The first time, Lexi and Molly, still a toddler, were standing in the corner of the spotlit ring, watching Grant fall under Richard’s devastating fists. You gotta fight your own demons, Triple H kept saying. You gotta want to.
Lexi picked up their daughter, who hid her face in her mother’s shoulder. Lexi looked away, disgusted, when Grant took a hit to his groin. He woke on his cot curled in a fetal ball, feeling humiliated.
The second time, it wasn’t a dream at all.
On a blistering summer day out in the yard, where Grant had no friends and, therefore, plenty of enemies, he was jumped by a rookie who had something to prove for a gang initiation. The guy was no Triple H, but he was bigger than Grant anyway and probably in for something like armed robbery rather than drug possession. He hit Grant from behind, driving between his shoulder blades and pinning his arms. Grant landed on his nose, breaking it. His mouth filled with blood and dry yellow dirt. The dude landed on Grant’s back, held his wrists in one hand and grabbed his hair with another, then started pounding Grant’s face into the ground.
He sensed more tha
n saw the men in the yard clear a circle.
He tasted liquid copper while his forehead beat a small crater into the dust. A black fog rolled in over his mental landscape, and he relaxed. This would be a good way to die.
But Richard was shouting at him.
Darn that Richard, Grant couldn’t get him out of his head even then. The one-voice riot was louder than any of the crowd’s cheers, rooting for the sake of small-minded entertainment.
Prove it, Grant thought. He wasn’t sure if he was talking to himself or to Richard.
Grant freed one arm and rolled out from under the attacker, trapping the guy’s hand by lying on top of it. Grant held him in place and kicked the side of his head.
The kid swore and dropped to the dirt, clawing at Grant’s neck. His knees fired like pistons and the men tumbled, a mass of sweat and teeth, and blood from Grant’s nose.
Grant still wasn’t sure how long the fight went on, nor how it unfolded from there, but when it finished they were both in the infirmary and the other guy had a dislocated shoulder and was crying. He was just a boy in spite of his size, and scared to death about what had happened. Grant wasn’t sure what consequences he faced as far as his little gang was concerned, but it seemed clear enough that the kid was afraid of him.
That was a change.
“Please don’t kill me,” he blubbered. “Man, I’m sorry.”
Kill him? Grant thought he’d been fighting for his own life.
“Relax,” Grant said. “I’m not going to kill you.”
A nurse was taping his nose, and the agony of it was a knife into his eyes. Grant yelled at her and gripped her wrist to release the pressure of her fingers.
He opened his eyes and saw it was Molly standing over him with gauze and a calm expression. His brain’s manifestation of a grown-up Molly, who looked so much like Lexi the day he married her, looking at him like he’d never do her any wrong.
“Relax,” she said. “I’m not going to kill you.”
The pain shot into his skull.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.” And he gave in to the overwhelming ache.
The next time Richard came to the prison, Grant asked him for help. Help without Jesus needing to be part of the deal. He wasn’t ready to commit to something he wasn’t a hundred percent sure of. Truth was, he doubted God’s willingness to forgive him. Some things were too wrong. Too big.
Richard seemed to understand but stuck with him anyway. Ten months later when Grant got out, Richard set up the trailer arrangements in Riverbend and got him three job interviews and a used car.
Today, Grant still had no answer on the question of Jesus, though he’d recently taken up the habit of praying—in an eyes-open, send-up-your-random-thoughts kind of way. A thank-you-God-my-daughter’s-safe kind of way.
Grant had recognized Molly the instant he saw her at the hospital, her ankle propped up on that wheelchair. He would have recognized her on the street. She was so beautiful, like her mom. The sight of her punched him in the gut. He was overcome with relief that her injuries weren’t worse. He felt the strangest combination of pride and heartbreak and protectiveness and shame.
She saw him too, and he thought she might have known who he was. There was no hate in her eyes, not that he could see. She was young enough that he figured maybe he could repair the damage he’d caused without terrible lingering effects. He needed something in his life not to fail, and he saw the greatest hope of that in Molly.
Her mother was a different story. Still, he’d try to fix those problems too. He’d try and try.
As much as he’d wanted to say something to Molly there in the hospital, there was no appropriate moment. Lexi stood between them, and then, by way of announcement, Norman Von Ruden was there in the room too.
In the reflection of the dark hospital window, Grant watched the officers speak with Lexi. He turned around at the sound of Von Ruden’s name and saw Lexi blanch. She tucked her hair behind her ear, then rested her pointer finger on her lips, a gesture he recognized as belonging to frayed nerves. The news that her sister’s killer was here, tonight, could only add to her stress.
His eyes met Lexi’s for half a second. The anger in her glare at the restaurant had been replaced by anxiety, he thought, and he wondered why. Grant took a step toward her without evaluating whether he should.
She spun away from him and took hold of Molly’s wheelchair.
“I need to get my daughter home now,” she said, pushing with the full weight of her small body.
Alice said something. Grant didn’t hear the words, nor Lexi’s terse reply, because Molly was looking at him. She lifted her fingers off the arm of the chair in a barely perceptible wave.
Grant waved back. Lexi didn’t seem to notice.
{ chapter 12 }
Saturday morning Lexi woke with her arm slung across Molly’s flat narrow belly. She hadn’t let her daughter out of reach since she’d been discharged.
Oh God. Thank you for protecting her. Thank you for not taking my precious girl from me. Please tell me what to do so Ward can’t touch her.
The doctor expected Molly back for a cast when the swelling went down. A pillow propped up her braced foot, and a cardboard-box tent surrounded her ankle to protect it from the tug of blankets. She snored.
Miraculously, Lexi had been able to sleep a few hours. But she awoke with the churning mind of a woman who did not know how to untangle the sheets of the bed she’d made for herself.
She woke thinking of Norman Von Ruden. When Grant and Lexi had been married one year, and Grant’s attention was riding away from her and Molly on a wave of methamphetamines, Lexi had an affair with Norm—an affair that no one ever discovered, an affair that she never broke off.
His murder of Tara was what finally ended things. Not some courageous act on Lexi’s part. Saturday morning, she woke with no feelings toward him except hatred and hostility. The morning marked no change in what she’d felt toward him for years now, except that circumstances had split open her tidy storage of feelings like a rotten, fermenting melon. He had destroyed everything she held dear. Everything except Molly, and Grant was doing enough on that side of things to make Lexi want to drop the fetid melon on his head.
She held Grant responsible for the whole mess. He was the one who brought Norman and Ward into their home. While Lexi held Molly on her hip, Grant told her to fix up some supper for them while they took care of some business.
Business. The business of death. Ward, as it turned out, was Grant’s supplier of far more than meth ingredients. Though she didn’t know it at the time, Grant could get anything from Ward. Anything illicit. Which was why Norman, a sensible businessman of good means, had come out of Riverbend to find Grant. He needed antidepressants, which shouldn’t have been hard to come by except that he and his wife were going through adoption proceedings, and if he’d gone to a physician for any diagnosis that warranted such pills, their application would have been blacklisted.
Lexi knew none of this about Norm until after the trial.
It was a strange and backward world, she thought afterward, that Norman would go to such pains on behalf of his family and simultaneously dash it to pieces by getting involved with Grant and her.
When Ward told Grant he could get Norman something more effective than the standard Prozac, Norman decided to look into it. Lexi never knew why. Nor did she know why Ward agreed to meet Norman.
What she did remember about that first night when Grant brought them home was how stunning Ward was. Handsome was not an adequate word. Beautiful, imposing, perfect came to mind. It was hard for her to reconcile this memory of Ward to the greasy-haired smart aleck who showed up at her car like a sloppy valet Friday night. But when Grant first ushered him into their little one-room house all those years ago, Lexi stared too long at Ward.
“You’re a gorgeous woman,” he said when he noticed, extending his hand. Grant had failed to introduce them.
Lexi blushed and returned
his grip without looking into his eyes, inexplicably embarrassed about her plain, underfurnished home. His hand was cool and dry. She couldn’t imagine what she’d dig up to feed these men. Glancing sidelong at Grant, she wondered if she should refuse.
Ward and Norman both acted like white-collar professionals who were out of Grant’s league somehow, all politeness and good manners. Molly started to fuss. Grant and Ward moved into the living room.
Norman smiled at the baby and waved. She reached out for him.
“She likes you,” Lexi said, holding on to Molly.
“For now,” he said. He looked at Lexi the way she imagined she’d been looking at Ward.
He played with Molly’s pinkie finger. “Kids love unconditionally, but not forever,” he said. “Enjoy it while you can.”
“You have kids?”
He shook his head.
She noticed a ring on his left hand, then wondered why she’d looked.
“She’s happy,” he said like a man full of envy. Molly’s fussing was almost a genuine cry by then. Lexi’s gentle bouncing had no effect.
“Apparently not.”
“No, I mean you can tell by looking at her. Under the complaining.” Lexi had no idea what he meant. “You must be a good mom.”
She cleared her throat. Grant had never said a word to her about her mothering.
“Ruden,” Grant called from the living room.
“Keep being a good mom,” Norman said to her before joining her husband.
Lexi’s memory of their strange introduction was interrupted by a pounding at the front of the apartment. She threw back the sheets, hoping whoever had come knocking wouldn’t wake up Molly. She pulled a sweatshirt on over her pajamas as she hurried down the hall.