The Uninvited

Home > Other > The Uninvited > Page 23
The Uninvited Page 23

by Tim Wynne-Jones


  Keep her on task, thought Mimi.

  “My father,” said Mimi. “Marc. You want me to phone him?”

  Mavis looked suspicious, as if this was somehow a different proposal than the one she had made. Slowly she nodded. Then she smiled expectantly. “Bet he’ll be surprised.”

  “Yeah,” said Mimi. She cleared her throat. “But my phone is in the kitchen.”

  Mavis shook her head. She backed away toward the bedroom doorway, tripping on the mattress, but righting herself too quickly for Mimi to do anything. At the doorway she picked up her handbag and reached inside. “Your little phone was just lying there on the kitchen table,” she said. She pulled it out and crossed the room, stepping around the mattress this time. She handed the phone to Mimi.

  Mimi stared at her. This was totally insane. Even if her father could pay whatever Mavis asked for, how did she expect to get her hands on the money or get away?

  “Do it!” said the woman.

  “Mavis, it’s just that…”

  “It’s just that what?”

  Better not try to explain, thought Mimi. So she punched in Marc’s number. “What am I supposed to say?”

  “Leave that to me,” said Mavis. Her beat-up eyes glowed as she waited. But after a long moment, Mimi handed her the phone. It was an answering machine.

  “You want to leave a message?”

  Mavis glared at her. “Don’t get smart with me,” she said. She handed back the phone. She looked bewildered, as if her crazy plan had not included Marc being out. Mimi glanced at the phone’s clock. Where is Jay? Is he here? If he was, he was being quiet, which meant he must have realized something was up. Her only hope was to keep talking and be ready to create some distraction. She quailed inside.

  “Do you know what my boy did? My good boy?”

  “What?”

  Mavis moved closer to her, leveled the gun inches from Mimi’s chest. “He destroyed merchandise worth thousands of dollars. Plasma televisions. Destroyed them.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He made some people very, very unhappy. And do you know why? Do you know why he did it?”

  Mimi heard a clunk. Surely Mavis must have heard it, too, but she seemed beyond hearing anymore. “I don’t know why he did it,” Mimi said. “Tell me why, Mavis.”

  Mavis poked her with the gun. “Shut up! What kind of game are you playing?”

  “I’m not playing anything.”

  “You think I won’t use this thing? You think I have anything left to lose?”

  “No, no,” said Mimi. “I mean… I don’t know. It’s just that I don’t have any idea what you are talking about.” There was another clunking sound, but Mavis only stared at her as if her anger was using up all her attention. As if whatever dimension Mimi was in was fading on her.

  “Cramer went berserk,” she said. “That’s your doing.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You drove him out of his mind,” said Mavis, poking Mimi in the chest.

  “Ow! Stop it!”

  “I ought to just shoot you for what you did to him,” said Mavis. And she brought the gun right up under Mimi’s chin.

  “That hurts!”

  “You wanna know about hurt? Huh? Do you?”

  “If you shoot me, you won’t get anything out of Marc,” said Mimi. She watched the woman try to piece together in her shattered mind what she was telling her. “He’s got lots of money,” said Mimi. “He’ll probably pay anything you want. But not if I’m dead.”

  At first Mimi thought she had gotten through to Mavis. The woman’s eyes seemed to clear. But as Mimi watched, the look on Mavis’s face went well beyond anything rational. She looked sad-deeply sad-and Mimi had the feeling that Mavis was realizing the terrible lunacy of what she was doing.

  “He’ll never give me anything,” she muttered. She lowered the gun but not far. “Why would I have thought Marc would ever give me anything?”

  She seemed to actually be asking the question, and Mimi was about to answer her when she saw something out of the corner of her eye. Her foam mattress moved. She stared into Mavis’s eyes, hoping the woman wouldn’t see the hope in her own eyes.

  “Let me try him again,” she said. “He might have just been on another call.”

  Behind the woman with the gun, the trapdoor was opening slowly, silently. Mavis, oblivious, only shook her head. “Don’t bother,” she said. “Don’t bother to call.”

  “Let me try,” said Mimi, her voice a little shrill.

  “No,” said Mavis, her voice resigned. “I didn’t think this through very well.” Then she smiled, as if a new idea had come to her. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Maybe you should phone him. Yes. It isn’t what Marc should give to me that matters,” she said, her voice getting louder, more enthusiastic. “It’s what I should give to him.”

  “Okay,” said Mimi. “So I phone him again?”

  “Yes,” said Mavis, her eyes wide now, as if everything was suddenly becoming clear. “You phone him. And after you say hello, I talk to him, tell him where we are, the two of us. Tell him exactly where we are and that I’ve got a gun. And he starts talking about all the things he’s going to give me so that I don’t shoot you. And maybe I say, ‘I’ve heard that before, Marc Soto.’ I say that and then, with him right there on the other end of the line, I do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “It. You. Shoot you.”

  The mattress erupted behind them as the trapdoor flew back on its chains, and in the same moment that Mavis spun around and Mimi drew the canister, Cramer emerged, head and shoulders, from the hidey-hole, his arm shooting out across the floor, grabbing Mavis by the ankles and pulling her off her feet.

  She crashed to the ground, and her flailing arm knocked the canister right out of Mimi’s hand. Mavis writhed on the floor, kicking out at Cramer’s grasping hands.

  “Run!” shouted Cramer.

  Mimi pasted herself against the wall behind Mavis, inching toward the door, but Mavis, from where she lay, twisted around, so that the gun was aimed up at Mimi.

  “Mimi!” Now Jay was at the bedroom door, and Mavis swung around to face him.

  “Don’t do it!” screamed Cramer, clawing at his mother’s leg.

  “You!” said Mavis, swinging her attention back to him. “You!”

  Then the gun went off. The trapdoor shuddered with the impact of the shot, and Cramer, howling in pain, crumpled out of sight.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  There was a man standing on the bridge over the snye, squinting into the light of the Mini Cooper’s headlights, holding up his hands to shade his eyes. His shoulders were hunched, pelted by the rain. It wasn’t even six, but the storm clouds made it seem like twilight. Jay switched off the lights but not the ignition. The guy was his age but looked huge somehow, standing like that alone on the crumbling bridge, muscular, his head shaved, dressed only in a T-shirt and black jeans. Cramer.

  He wiped his face with both hands, squinting from the rain. It was still coming down hard. He waved his arm urgently, then made his way toward the car. Instinctively, Jay locked the doors. What was going on? Where was Mimi? But now Cramer was at his window, his hands pressed against the glass, framing his face, and his face was filled with earnestness and fear. His mouth was moving. He was saying something. Jay turned off the engine. “Mimi!” he said, pointing toward the house. “Hurry!” Jay nodded and Cramer stepped back to let him out. Jay opened the door.

  “It’s Mimi,” said Cramer. “She’s in trouble.”

  “What did you do to her?”

  Cramer looked exhausted. He shook his head. “Have you got a cell phone?” Jay nodded. “Call the cops. And you’d better call for an ambulance, too.”

  “What the hell-”

  “Just do it!” said Cramer, his voice urgent but not much above a whisper. Jay climbed back in the car, to make the call out of the rain. He punched in 911. Cramer was looking back toward the house, his fists coiled,
his face filled with a gravity that frightened Jay. He made the connection, gave the directions.

  “Tell them she’s got a gun!”

  “What?”

  Cramer swore and grabbed the phone from Jay. “There’s a crazy woman with a gun,” he said. “Hurry!” Then he handed the phone back to Jay.

  “You get that?” said Jay. The dispatcher did.

  “Do not attempt a rescue,” she said. He flipped the phone shut and jumped out of the vehicle, because Cramer was already hotfooting it back toward the bridge.

  “They said not to try anything.”

  Cramer turned and cried out in a harsh whisper, “Don’t slam the door!”

  Jay caught the door in midflight and closed it quietly. Then he ran to catch up.

  “They said not to try rescuing her,” he said.

  “Shhh,” said Cramer. “Keep it down.”

  “But-”

  Cramer turned to him, his face stern. “I heard you. I just don’t know if we’ve got that option.”

  They had to cross the plank portion of the bridge single file, but as soon as they were on the other side, Jay caught up with Cramer. “For God’s sake, tell me something!”

  Cramer took Jay by the arm. “It’s so fucked up.”

  “But-”

  Cramer’s hold on his arm tightened painfully. “Just stay with me,” he said. “We can do this, right?” Then he was moving again, without waiting for an answer, moving in a crouch as if someone in the house might see them. There was a bag attached to his belt and banging against his hip. They moved swiftly up the wet lawn to the house and stopped, near the shed.

  “What do we do?” whispered Jay.

  Cramer was breathing hard. His face was filled with consternation, but his eyes were quick with possibility, and Jay stopped pressing him. Under the shed roof, the noise was deafening from the rain on the tin. “They’re in the bedroom,” he said. “I’m going to go in through the storm door-”

  “You can’t,” said Jay. “I locked it.”

  Cramer shook his head. “I know,” he said. “I can get in.” His eyes slid away from Jay’s, embarrassed, but Jay didn’t press it.

  “So I’ll go in the back door,” said Jay. “The noise of the rain will cover any noise.” Cramer nodded, then looked down.

  “Take off your shoes,” he said. “Get as close to the bedroom door as you can. I could see through a crack in the curtains; the bedroom door’s open. Be ready, okay?”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know,” said Cramer. “I don’t the fuck know!” His eyes were filled with pain. He swallowed.

  “So, be ready for anything,” said Jay. “Any opportunity.”

  “Right,” said Cramer. His eyes widened. He nodded. “Yeah.”

  So it was half a plan, but at least it was something. Then Cramer punched Jay on the arm-comrades-and disappeared around the shed.

  It was like some nightmarish game. For all Jay knew, Cramer was nuts! But he didn’t look nuts. He looked scared shitless. And, anyway, it was Cramer who’d suggested calling the cops.

  As soon as he opened the kitchen door, he heard voices: Mimi’s voice and the voice of another woman. There was an edge to her voice that confirmed the panic Jay had seen in Cramer’s eyes. He crept through the kitchen in his stocking feet, turned left, and slid along the wall toward the open bedroom door.

  The woman’s voice grew louder, more strident, more threatening. They were talking about Marc, about a phone call. Jay hardly dared to breathe. He tried to place the figures in the room by the sound of their voices. Mimi was facing his direction; the stranger must have her back to the door. It would be safe to look, he thought, unless Mimi saw him and the woman noticed. But if she did-if she turned-maybe Mimi could hit her or something. No, it was too dangerous. And then suddenly nothing was as dangerous as what the woman was saying.

  “Do what?”

  “It. You. Shoot you.”

  Jay hurled himself into the room just as the trapdoor flew open, and Cramer exploded up out of the hole like a jack-in-the-box. The woman crashed to the floor. Her hand flew out as she fell and hit Mimi’s hand, sending her mace canister flying.

  “Run!” shouted Cramer.

  “Mimi!” shouted Jay.

  And then everything was happening too fast.

  Jay dragged Mimi out of the room and there was a gunshot and Cramer howled with pain and the woman screamed.

  “He’s hit!” cried Mimi, and Jay clamped her hard around the waist to stop her from going back in there.

  Then the gun went off again, and Mimi didn’t need any urging to leave. They skittered through the kitchen and out the door into the shed.

  “I called 911 fifteen minutes ago,” he yelled into her ear. “The cops are on their way.”

  “He’s hit!” yelled Mimi. “She killed him.”

  “They’re sending an ambulance, too. Come on. There’s nothing we can do!”

  She was sobbing. She turned to him, looking lost and small, and he threw his arm around her, glancing over her shoulder, nervously, at the kitchen door, expecting to see the madwoman any minute. “Come,” he said. “Quick.”

  They ran, hand in hand, down through the sopping grass toward the snye and were halfway there when they heard the third shot. They were far enough away now to stop and look back through the drifting veils of rain at the little house. And then they heard the sirens.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The gunshots of that night would stay with Mimi for a long time. It was as if the bullets had exploded inside her head and her bloodstream had carried the fragments to every cell in her body. She imagined minuscule shards of metal lodged in the mitochondria, or whatever subcellular organism it was that stored foreign bodies. So deep was the sense of those gunshots, Mimi wondered were she ever to have children whether the shots would be part of their memories, too.

  The first bullet had ricocheted off the open trapdoor and smashed downward through Cramer’s cheek, fracturing his upper jaw and jawbone and lodging in the anterior skull base. In an emergency craniotomy, his contused brain was cleared of damaged flesh and metal splinters, the fractured bone plugged with bone wax and mashed muscle taken from the fascia lata of Cramer’s thigh. There were tubes to help him breathe and to keep down the orofacial swelling. There were cerebral decongestants being dripped into his head and antibiotics to fend off meningitis. There were anticonvulsants.

  There were so many things that still might happen. Time would tell if there had been traumatic brain injury.

  Mavis Lee was dead. That was the third shot. And Mimi found herself trying to imagine the madwoman’s last few minutes. What happened between shooting her son and shooting herself? Did she look down into the hole where Cramer lay, half his face shattered, and realize who he was? Because Mimi was pretty sure it wasn’t Cramer that Mavis thought she was firing at. “You,” she said. “You!” There was so much in those words. Surprise mixed with some kind of weird delight in the first “you” and then utter, soul-wrenching fury in the second. Did she think it was Marc? Was it Marc’s blue eyes she saw peering up at her from that face emerging as if from the grave? Is that who she intended to kill? And when she was alone, did she come to her senses long enough to realize that she had it all wrong?

  The police dug the second bullet out of the wall above the desk in the front room. It was lodged in the plaster not a foot from where Mavis’s initials and phone number were framed in pencil-crayon splendor. The irony was incidental and unintended. Mavis had been shooting at someone in the doorway-two someones-who were there one moment but gone by the time the gun went off. Jay had saved Mimi’s life. And Cramer had saved her life, too, and might still lose his own.

  He had been airlifted from Ladybank to the city, where he underwent a series of operations. Even when they moved him from intensive care, his head wrapped up like a mummy and with only his left eye and ear exposed, he was still unconscious. His one visible eye was closed, but Mimi watched it twitch, im
agining he was trying to say something and trying to decipher this inarticulate language. She spoke to him, to his one open ear, imagining he could hear her-needing for him to hear her.

  “We found the bag you left,” she said softly, “with the picture in it and the stone.” His eye twitched and she looked, hopefully, at Jay, who was sitting silently on a chair on the other side of the bed. He didn’t believe the twitches were communication at all, but he was being indulgent about it. “Thank you, Cramer,” she said. “It means a lot to us that you returned the things you took.”

  Mimi came often to the hospital. She had found a brother and then a second brother. It was the summer of discovering brothers, and she was going to do everything in her power not to lose either of them. All she could do right now, however, was be there, bear witness. At first, even the thought of Cramer’s broken face made her feel sick. But she found herself drawn into his medical care, wanting to know about it in every detail. It became less gory the more she learned. The injury, the materials and methods required to reconstruct his face: she found that her repulsion eased as her interest grew. She asked questions-too many questions, Jay thought. She demanded to know how words were spelled so she could ask Dr. Lou what they meant or Google them herself. So “proptosis” was the displacement of the eyeball, and “pneumocephalus” was the presence of air in the brain cavity, and “hematoma” was the mass of clotted blood that formed in the tissues and body space as a result of broken blood vessels, and “debridement” meant the surgical removal of lacerated and contaminated tissue. She wrote these things down and wrestled them into the form of a report. In her clinical account of Cramer’s suffering, she felt as if she was writing something that mattered. She had played at writing that summer. Writing fanciful scenes loosely based on her life. But this-this was hard and important. It was training, she thought, good training, she wasn’t sure for what.

  What she did know was that she was writing it for a very particular audience. She had told her father next to nothing so far about the extraordinary events of that summer. So she was going to write an account of meeting Jackson and Cramer and of what had happened in the end. The account, especially the last bit, would be in painful detail. Excruciating detail. Through the police, she was able to get a copy of the autopsy report of Mavis Lee. She was part of the story. Mimi would lay all this at her father’s feet. She wanted him to know in a very itemized way what he had done when he promised Mavis Lee that he would marry her, what happened when you walk out on people.

 

‹ Prev