by Owen Thomas
My lawyer, raising a finger and objecting to the one word he did understand, breaks the silence.
“Now Mr. Johns, it’s not necessary to swear…”
“Fuck you too, Lonnie,” I say, not taking my eyes off of North.
“I don’t have the slightest idea what anything you just said means,” North lies.
“If you say so. Just don’t talk to me about sexual perversion in my family.”
“…”
“Cat got your tongue, officer?”
“Get the fuck out of my face. DJ.”
“With pleasure… Fernando.”
CHAPTER 53 – Susan
Dear Hollis –
If you are reading this letter then it is because I have found a way to overcome the fear I have in sending it to you. After a long ride with my thoughts to myself, I have summoned the courage to actually commit these words to paper. It is another question entirely whether I will have the strength to let you read them. I guess we will see. But for now, I at least owe it to myself to write the words down.
I am sad to tell you that after nearly four decades of marriage I am very unhappy in my life. I am suffocating, Hollis. I am being crushed. Every day takes away a little more oxygen and adds a little more weight in its place. It’s not that I hate my life exactly. I love my children. We have nice friends. We have nice things, a nice home. Clothes. Cars. But it is not enough. It never was. The thing I identify as my life is too small for me. It’s like my wedding shoes. Remember those? Remember that they were a half-size too small but I made them work for that magic day because they were the ones I really wanted and there were no others like them? Maybe you don’t remember. Hollis, it’s like I have been wearing those shoes ever since. It’s like I thought they would stretch; that they just needed breaking in. I told myself that you would change, that we would adapt together, that our life together would expand to fit both of us. You haven’t. We haven’t. It hasn’t. It doesn’t. Your approval still matters to me, Hollis. I know you will not believe that, but it’s true: what you think of me does matter and always has. It matters too much to be healthy and I think that is why I have let this go on so long and why I am shaking now even as I write these words. But I can’t take the pain any more. You want me to be someone I am not and I just cannot do it any more.
You will read this – if you read this – and think that I am blaming you. I suppose I am to some extent. If I am to be honest in these words, I must tell you that I am disappointed. But the fault is mostly mine. I have not asserted myself. I have – you are right – “pretended,” although not in the way you have accused me of pretending. I have pretended for decades now that my feet fit these shoes. That is not something for which I can blame you. I should have taken responsibility for myself. I should have made it clear that I need more from life than what you can give to me. I should have told you. I should have gotten angrier sooner. I am a peacemaker by nature, but making peace with you all of these years has been killing me. You have been a wonderful provider. And I have been a wonderful house pet. Wanting to please. Grateful for my food and my bed. I have come too late to these realizations. I know that is my fault.
I have just reread this clumsy thing. There I go again trying to delicately suggest my feelings in a language you do not speak. Enough about small shoes and grateful pets. You are a banker, so here is a banker’s metaphor: there is a mortgage against my adult life that has been accruing interest. The note has been called. I can either pay off the debt or die. Either way, the violence to our marriage would seem inescapable. To pay the debt now, while I am still able, while I still have good years in me, is to leave you; to become my own person again; to be the person I really am. To stay in our marriage – to cheat my own fulfillment in the way I have for so many years – invites certain foreclosure. God is a banker, Hollis, and as you have always said, bankers care mostly about the number on the bottom line. Well, I’ve been behind on my payments now for almost forty years.
We cannot go on as we have. I will become resentful and bitter and ugly to be around. The terrible, hurtful argument we had the other day – an argument that still tears at my heart and for which I am so, so sorry – was a symptom, Hollis. There will be many more of those to come unless there is some radical change in our relationship. You will grow to hate me, and I will grow to hate you and all with good reason. I love you too much to put you through that kind of ending. I love Ben too much to poison his life with that kind of anger. And, I would hope, that I have too much respect for myself to allow that kind of future.
I have to go. There is still much to do. Much to fear. Much to conquer. Everyone is waiting on me. I will see you in a few days and when I do I hope this letter, if I choose to send it or hand it to you in person, will have convinced you that we need to have a long, life-changing talk.
Love (of course love),
– S.
CHAPTER 54 – David
The sun is out, scouring the pavement like a stiff soapy brush. I am vampiric. I feel like I haven’t seen daylight for days and its brightness has a noxious, enervating effect on my senses. I stand with Lonnie on the sidewalk outside the Westerville Police Station. His lips are moving, but all I seem to hear is my head pounding. There is a small volcano at the point in my scalp where my kitchen cabinet used to be. That is the place Thor keeps pounding his hammer.
“So what was all that about your sister?” asks Lonnie, entirely too chipper.
“What? Oh, Tilly. She’s in the papers a lot.”
His eyes grow wide. His jaw swings open on its hinge. Christ. Not this. Not now.
“Oh my golly!”
“Yeah.”
“Are you for real?”
“Yeah.”
“Tilly Johns?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s your sister?”
“Yeah.”
“The Tilly Johns?”
“Yeah. We about done with this?”
“Wow!”
“Guess not.”
“I saw that movie she made… oh what was it…”
I tune Lonnie out and try to quantify the pain in my head on a scale of one to ten. It’s at least a fourteen. A car on the street is taking too long to park. The guy behind him punches his horn and it feels like a kick in my temple. There is a sticky sweetness in the air and for the first time I realize that it rained during the night. It rained while I was in jail. This cannot be my life.
When I close my eyes, all I can see is the disbelieving, accusing face of Chuck North. Incredible as it had sounded, Lonnie was right; I am worse off now than before Brittany showed up. In Chuck’s eyes, it is entirely possible that I am a violent sex fiend trying to make a living in the drug business. He may or may not completely believe it, but it’s an option for him. A realistic option. The very idea that anybody could think that of me hurts my head more than the car horn.
“… Peppermint Row…”
“Peppermint … Grove.”
“Really? You sure? Oh… look who I’m talking to!”
Is it really possible anyone could think I was capable of … all that? I’m a teacher. I drive a Civic. I like classical music. I own a thermos.
I try to neutralize the feeling by telling myself that it’s not me; that it’s possible to imagine such horrors of anyone. I look at Lonnie’s big moon pie face going on and on in front of me and try to imagine him hunched over in a bathroom stall sticking a needle in his arm, or holding a baby hostage, or setting fire to his grandmother. But as hard as I try, the Lonnie of my darkest imagination is the Lonnie in front of me.
And what of Detective North? Can I really imagine him bedding his own sister? As noxious as I find him – as bullying and sanctimonious as he is – can I really imagine that him that twisted? I cannot. It’s a lie. It must be a lie. It is a lie told to me that I cannot tell to myself. And yet, I keep trying, because this is a lie I would love to believe. The macho, self-righteous cop having sex with his own sister. What a headline.
&nbs
p; “Hey, let me ask you something, Lonnie.” He stops in mid-syllable, hands in mid-air, describing something big or great or wide, I have no fucking idea. “Is it illegal in Ohio for a guy to have sex with his own sister?”
The moon pie face begins to shrivel a little as he looks down at me. The hands float back down to his sides.
“Uh…”
“Consensual. You know, nothing violent.”
He stares, quizzically, with a face suggesting a gastrointestinal concern. Or perhaps moral revulsion. I realize that the only brother and sister in his head at the moment are me and Tilly.
“Not me. Christ. Not me, Lonnie. Forget Tilly for a second. Someone else. It’s just a legal question.”
“Oh, well, uh let’s see. Brother and sister? No. That’s not illegal. It’s gotta be parent and child to be illegal in this state. Why do you…”
“Never mind. Stupid question. Forget it. Hey look, are we done? Gotta get going.”
I take my leave. He stops me. He wants to go to breakfast. I lie and tell him I’m not hungry. He asks if he can give me a ride home but stupidly I decline. I keep moving. I don’t have money for breakfast, let alone a cab and I don’t particularly care to walk to the bus station or figure out the routes or actually take the bus since public transportation always seems to require conversations I do not want to have with people I do not know. I’d love to be transported to my front door for free. Except that I am tired of being so dependent. I’m tired of needing a ride home. And I can’t take another minute of Lonnie Lumkin.
I leave him on the sidewalk looking at his watch and head for the nearest COTA station. Business people cannot help but rubberneck as they pass. The workday has just started. They want to know what the fuck kind of meeting I led off with this morning and how I am going to make it through the next one. My suit, such as it is, lacks only the tire-tread marks to really complete the look. I’m still holding my tie and my belt, restored to my custody by Officer Babs, who was wholly unconcerned that I might use them to hang myself someplace other than a municipal facility.
At the transit station, I splice together the two routes that will get me closest to home. I sit outside in the sun and I wait. My mind spins like tires in wet mud, spraying bits of nonsense and a lot of generalized dread against the back of my skull. I’m too exhausted now to feel terrified about my future. I just want to sleep. In thirty minutes the bus is here snorting and hissing. I climb on and pay the fare, which is most of my money.
I am prematurely pleased to find plenty of space. It doesn’t last. A jowly, Buckeye emblazoned man boards at the first stop. He wears a red cap with the fightin’ legume on the front. From its vantage point over the bill, the fightin’ legume seems to look around the bus, this way and that, for just the right seat, ready to kick ass.
As he gets closer I know I am doomed. I don’t know how I know. I just do.
He looms. I see that he must be fertilizing his eyebrows and the inside of his nose. For all of the open seats, he chooses the one next to me, pinning me against the window and shattering the still non-codified proxemics standard for spatially entitled Americans. I know this does not bode well. He looks over and nods. He is preparing. My guess is sports. I am wrong.
“You ever seen such a thing as them Eye-rackies?”
The honest response is something like, what the hell do you mean? But I know from painful experience that honesty is a trap in these situations. I don’t want an explanation, because I don’t really care. Yes, is also bad because it invites disbelief and further interrogation, as in: Oh no you ain’t! You ain’t seen nothin’ like them Eye-rackies. Go on, now. What you seen? What? So I do my best to render pointless all further discussion or explanation on the subject.
“Nope.”
“Yeah, they’re something alright. All over the news last night. Again. Carrying on. You know how they do.”
“Yep.”
“That Sader fellow? Saydeer or Sadder or Sidar or…”
“Sadr. Moqtada al-Sadr.”
“That’s the one. Boy, there’s a piece a work. Shooting off his mouth. Think they’d be … I dunno… grateful.”
“Grateful?”
“Yeah. What’d we do? Huh? We got rid of Saddam is what we did. Saddam and his WMD’s.”
“There are no WMD’s.”
“Oh, they’re over there. You can believe it. That’s the reason we went in. Get Saddam. Payback for 911. Get the WMDs. They’re over there. Why else would we go?”
“Gee, you got me there.”
“Spread democracy. That’s another one. We brought ‘em democracy. They voted in what was it, January, and they all get to vote again in December with their purple fingers and all that. You seen the purple fingers?”
“Yeah. I’ve seen the fingers.”
“Right. And what thanks do we get? Americans are dyin’ and all they can do is shoot their mouths off and rant and rave like a bunch’a damn crazy people. We shoulda been greeted…”
“Liberators.”
“Right. Liberators. But they’re over there waving and hollering. Like a bunch’a damned crazy people. You think we should pull out?”
“Me? Oh. Well what do you think?”
“Hell no I don’t think we should get out.”
“Then that’s what I think too.”
“Yeah, these colors don’t run. Hell no. Got a son in the Ohio Guard. Not a cut-n-run bone in his body. He ain’t runnin’ from a bunch’a damn crazies. Theirs or ours. Cause we got our own damn crazies. Out there protestin’. We otta send our crazies over to Eye-Rack if they like it so damn much. That’s just treason if you ask me, blaming our president like that. He’s not perfect, I know that much, but Dubbya bleeds red, white and blue. He’s a patriot. More than those yahoos. He ought’a ship those people out of this country if they hate it so damn much. They’re just as crazy as the Eye-Rackies. None of ‘em appreciate this country. Ought’a pack ‘em all on a boat together and ship ‘em over to France is what I say. And they can leave the Freedom Fries with us!”
He is pleased with himself and laughs and slaps the backs of the empty seats in front of us with his hands, which are tanned and hairy and liver spotted. He looks at me intensely, clearly hoping I will join in. I smile and nod and shake my head as though words don’t do justice to the idea of exporting our rabble-rousing undesirables to France.
“While he’s at it, he should get rid of about half of those damn crazy people in New Orleans. Don’t you think?”
“Sure. What the hell.”
“I think so too. Not all of ‘em. It’s a sad thing and I know they didn’t ask for no hurricane, but there’s no need to blame your troubles on the government. Give ‘em money and they want more money. Give ‘em help and the help ain’t enough, ain’t fast enough, ain’t the right kind. You see all of that damn lootin’? You see any of that?”
“Yep.”
“Me too. I’m not feeling the least bit sorry for a criminal. No sir. They should’a got the hell out before landfall. That’s just damn common sense is what that is. I understand if they want to stay, since it’s where they live, I guess I can understand that, but if they stay then that’s just the consequence of waitin’ out a hurricane and there’s no use complaining or blaming George W. Bush who has other damn things to worry about, like a damn war. Half of ‘em in New Orleans are on drugs anyway. Damn drugs. You know if there was the death penalty for possession of drugs we wouldn’t have a drug problem in this country? You know that?”
“Oh, you’re letting them off easy. France is far worse than death.”
It is much too long before I am free of him. When he is gone, passing slowly beneath me on the sunlit sidewalk, I find myself wishing I were the type of person with no qualms about shouting something petty and cutting out the window at him. Something like, Boy that damn Dubbya sure had himself a damn drug problem. He did cocaine like a damn crazy person. You see any of that lootin’ of the damn Treasury? You see that damn federal deficit?
&n
bsp; But as good as it would feel, I don’t. He looks up at the last minute and waves and smiles like he’d give me the shirt off his back if I needed it. I wave back and smile like he is my irascible uncle. He is surely somebody’s irascible uncle.
I disembark at the northern-most stop on the route and wait, leaning up against the metal signpost. I seriously consider laying down on the sidewalk because I feel too tired to stand. It is the thought of some civic-minded motorist calling the police to report me as a suspected inebriate that keeps me upright. The last thing I need is to be taken back to the police station; square one in a day that, so far, has played like the ever-lengthening hallway of nightmare clichés.
The next bus ride is, ironically, more crowded but mercifully quiet. It drops me at the community center, which is a good mile and a half from the ground-zero detonation crater that I call home. By the time I round the final corner, I am moving like a man in his early eighties stooped and shuffling more than actually stepping. I resolve that my first order of business upon reaching my front lawn will be to strip naked and to set fire to my suit which I had donned roughly thirty-six hours earlier specifically because it was the best of my two suits and I wanted to make a good impression with the judge who may hold my life in his hands, but which I now loathe with the unnatural intensity of a man who has been forced to walk around town inside a wet, navy blue mattress.
My car, no doubt thoroughly swabbed, dusted and photographed, is still by the curb where I had abandoned it for a midnight face plant on the lawn. In my driveway, where my car should be, is a decommissioned ambulance. Caitlin Carson Lewis is at my front door, knocking. She turns in defeat to see me trudging up the street. She crosses the lawn and sits on the curb next to my hapless steed to wait as if holding vigil.