“You said you were in trouble. Something about the police and a fight. You said Kerri was messing you up, that she was inside your head.” Gail was frustrated. “I kept asking you where you were and what was going on but you were so out of it that I couldn’t understand what you were saying. Then the phone went dead and you didn’t answer when I called back.”
“She called me then,” Tina said. “We kept trying to reach you but there was no answer. We were worried. This is so out of character. So completely unlike you. We didn’t know what to do so we drove to Ohio.”
“You’re here!?”
“Yes. Since yesterday. Your place was empty. We waited and waited. We tried the school. All they could do was take a message. We were about to call the police when you answered.”
“Shit.” He had avoided the faculty area altogether and forgotten that he was supposed meet Robin after his Creative Writing class. “I didn’t get the message. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“We’ve been worried for months, Seth. You’re not yourself. You haven’t visited since Rita’s funeral.”
“Even on the phone,” Gail said, “it’s like you’re half there. All you talk about is Kerri and it’s usually some bullshit that I can’t imagine you putting up with.”
“Some of the things you’ve said about this girl,” Tina said. “Why are you with her?”
He tried to remember one of those phone conversations but his memories ran together like the colors of a freshly painted canvas left out in the rain. “I’m not. But I wasn’t sure then. About Kerri. About anything. I still wouldn’t know if it wasn’t for that fucking freak at that bar—”
“What?”
“Levi. As soon as he answered to Levi, I knew the website had been real and Kerri was lying and the doctors were full of shit and I was right! And if I was right about the website, I was right about…other stuff. But it seemed so unbelievable at the time. I was so…”
“What doctors? What website?” Gail asked. “What are you talking about?”
“That doesn’t matter right now,” Tina said. “Where are you?”
He wasn’t sure. He looked around. “I’m at a park. Maybe ten or fifteen miles from the house.”
“When did you last talk to Kerri?”
“I don’t know. It’s been days.”
“Is that because you two are fighting?”
“I think it started with a fight, yeah. She’s been blowing up my phone. That’s why I haven’t been answering it. Sorry.”
“Why didn’t she confront you at school?”
“I don’t know.”
“That doesn’t make sense. She’s not the type to be ignored.”
“What do you mean? You don’t even know her.”
“No, I don’t. But I know my brother and what I’ve pieced together over the past few months doesn’t bode well for either of you.”
“You sound terrible,” Gail said. “Come back to Cherry Run with us. Stay for a couple days. Get your bearings.”
“I can’t just leave,” he said, though he realized that was exactly what he needed to do. “I still have final classes and final papers to grade after that.”
“Someone could cover your last classes,” Gail said, “and you could grade the final papers back in Pennsylvania as easily as you could grade them here.”
He didn’t answer. The rain was coming down hard now. He tried to think but his thoughts were all over the place and he couldn’t seem to string them together. Going home made sense though, didn’t it? Being around his family was another step away from this madness, this mess. “I don’t know,” he sighed. “Maybe I could swing a day or two. I need to grab a few things at the house first.”
“We’re here,” Tina said. “We can get whatever you need.”
“How did you get in the house?”
“The back door was open.”
“It couldn’t have been.”
“It was. Tell us what you need and we’ll get it.”
“I can’t think right now. I’ll just come there.”
“If you’ve been ignoring Kerri,” Tina said, “she could show up here any minute.”
An image of wrapping his hands around Kerri’s pale neck flared across his mind.
“Tell us what you want us to bring,” Gail said.
He could imagine the bones in Kerri’s neck breaking in his hands. He slammed his palm into his forehead as if that would knock the images out. “Just some clothes,” he blurted, trying to force his mind elsewhere. “There’s a travel bag hanging in the bathroom next to the towels. Bring that too.” He tried to think of something else, anything other than choking Kerri to death. “The anthology and the creative writing books. They should both be on the kitchen table or next to the couch in the living room. If you happen to see my wallet lying around, grab it.” But they wouldn’t, he realized. Kerri, most likely, had his wallet. “My journal,” he heard himself say. “Bring my journal too.”
“Where is it? What’s it look like?”
He described it and told them where to find it when his phone beeped. “Shit. My battery is dying. Grab my phone charger too. It’s on top of the dresser in the bedroom, I think.”
“Do you have a car charger?”
“I used to.” He felt his blood pressure shoot up again. “I lost…it came up missing about a week ago.”
“Do you have enough time to give us directions to where you’re at?”
“I doubt it.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Tina said. “Just go straight to my place now. Mark will be at work by the time you get there, but you know where the spare key is. We’ll be right behind you. Just go straight there, okay?”
Before he could say anything, his phone went dead.
He sat there for a long while, his head pounding, he was watching the rain run down the windshield in tiny, crystal rivers, his mind replaying arguments with Kerri over the past months, fights, doomed evenings, all the insanity, the traps she set for him time and time again. The cuts on his face and the torn gums around the tooth that had been knocked loose were throbbing along with his head. True betrayal, he’d read somewhere, deeply wounded not just the heart, but the soul.
This was more than a betrayal. This was plain cruelty. This was unforgivable.
In a sort of daze, he started the engine and left the park. He realized that he was not heading in the direction of Pennsylvania, but going back to Dr. Jarrell’s house. Tina was right. Kerri was bound to show up there and he should avoid that probability. But it was as if some powerful, invisible force was pulling him to her, demanding to know the truth, determined to hold her accountable, make her pay.
Approaching the main highway, a deer darted out of a clump of pines and directly in the path of the SUV. Seth slammed on the brakes. The vehicle slid sideways, somehow missing the animal. Slammed back into the driver’s seat, he was once again fully present, aware of his breathing, the thumping of his heart, the beat of the rain, the windshield wipers flipping back and forth, the truck sitting stalled, in the middle of the road.
He started the engine and pulled off the highway.
You have to decide.
“Decide what?”
Is this the Book of Kerri…or is it the Book of Seth? It can’t be both. Not anymore. Your call, Professor.
He took a deep breath, then put the SUV in gear, turned it around and began heading for Cherry Run.
His sisters were shocked at his appearance. Gail immediately set to doctoring the cuts on his face and hands while Tina went to work on a pot of soup. They wanted to know everything. The obvious place to start was the fight that marked up his face. Once he got going, he couldn’t stop. Words flew out of him. The girls interjected questions as he talked, and scattered as he was, he answered them as fully as he could. He told about the website and going to the doctors. The blood pressure meds, the antidepressants, the sleeping pills.
Tina wanted to know the names of what he had been prescribed, but he couldn’t
remember off-hand. He did recall, however, that due to the circumstances of the past several days, he hadn’t taken the blood pressure pills or antidepressants. This was fine with him. He wanted off of the damned things anyway. These were not the kind of drugs that should be stopped cold turkey, but since he already had a few days under his belt, he decided to do just that by not taking anymore. This, he kept to himself since he knew his sisters would both strongly advise against it and push him to get the opinion of yet another doctor he couldn’t afford.
As he recounted the unsettling events of the past few months, he fought hard to stay present. It was like he was talking about someone else. “There are a lot of details that I can’t even remember,” he said, “but I wrote them in my journal. Did you remember to bring it?”
“We couldn’t find it,” Gail said, putting peroxide on the raw, swollen knuckles of his right hand.
“Did you check under the blankets? Under the bed?”
“Yes,” Tina said. “We knew how important it would be to you so we checked the whole house. Every room.”
“We even looked between the couch cushions, any place it could have possibly been.”
Tina scraped diced onions from a cutting board into a frying pan with garlic and chopped carrots sizzling in oil. “It’s not there, Seth. I’m sorry.”
“She took it,” he muttered. Anger and the deep ache of betrayal swelled inside him again, crashing into each other and mixing with the horrible feeling of knowing that the most personal, private thing he owned was in someone else’s hands.
“Why do you think she would do that?” Tina asked.
Answering the question, he held nothing back, one outrageous notion after the next. How he thought that Kerri may be living a double life, how he suspected that she did things like secretly move his books around and deny it, possibly steal his belongings and then return them days and weeks later. He knew he sounded paranoid and delusional and that was how he felt, as if he were coming apart at the seams and the only thing he could do was keep talking. Keep driving forward. Keep looking for the truth. Seeing his sisters give each other a sad, concerned look, he said, “I can’t prove any of this. I know I sound crazy and I’m sure you think I am but—”
“We don’t think you’re crazy,” Gail said. She explained that his situation with Kerri had been a topic of discussion for a while now and it had been all they’d talked about since his frightening call Sunday morning.
Emptying noodles and chunks of chicken into the large pot of broth and vegetables, Tina lowered the flame and took a seat next to him. “I’ve had several clients over the years—men and women—come to see me because they were having a mental breakdown. Then, after a while, it was obvious that the root of their problem was their significant other. In one case, that person was doing exactly the kind of things you’re describing. It’s called gaslighting.”
They believed him? “Gaslighting?”
“It’s a control tactic. It’s abuse. Emotional and psychological abuse. The victim is made to doubt their own perception and memory. They are steadily broken down over a period of time, picked apart, driven over the edge. Eventually, the only thing they have left to cling to is their abuser. They are obsessed with them, addicted to them.”
“Christ.” He tried to let the words sink in. It sounded like a Dean Koontz novel, he thought stupidly, and must have said it out loud because his sisters smiled sadly at him.
“It’s more common than you’d think,” Tina said.
Shouldn’t there be a sense of relief here? Validation? Someone outside of the voices in his head was telling him that he was not crazy, that his wild assumptions were not absurd. That was a good thing, wasn’t it? But it didn’t feel good. Instead of relief, he felt confused all over again. He’d been trying so hard to convince them that he suddenly wasn’t sure if he believed it himself anymore. “Why? Why would she do that? Why would anyone do that?”
“Cause she’s a crazy bitch,” Gail said, apparently louder than she’d meant to. “Sorry.”
“It’s a defense mechanism. Sometimes it’s done consciously, sometimes not.”
“I’m not following.”
“A person who would do this to such an extent is beyond manipulative and unsympathetic, beyond self-centered. They’re mentally ill. Probably a personality disorder. Narcissistic? Borderline? Sociopathic? They control their own lives by manipulating and controlling those close to them.”
“You’re telling me she’s…?”
“No. I don’t know her. I’m telling you what could be going on here based on looking at and listening to you. Something is very wrong and all I’m saying is that your suspicions are not as off-the-wall or uncommon as you might imagine.”
He had expected them to argue with him, to bring him back to reality, to assure him that he was making something out of nothing. It would have been easier to believe he was overreacting than to accept that she was someone capable of this and he was someone who had allowed it. The adage ‘the truth hurts’ came to mind, and for a moment, it seemed valid. Then he saw Kerri smiling into his eyes telling him she loved him. He thought of the woman she was with him and the man he was with her, the weekends she’d christened their own Garden of Eden and he’d described as the essence of being alive. It was not the truth that hurt. What hurt was letting go of the lie.
Gazing out the window at a humming bird tapping at a feeder full of red, sugared water, he heard himself ask in a voice that was and wasn’t his, “What now?’
“Take care of yourself. Try to heal. Move on.”
“A good start,” Gail said, “is changing your phone number and email address. You don’t ever have to talk to her again.”
“She’s right,” Tina said. “Any contact with her right now will only add to your confusion. Just go and stay gone.”
“Seems cowardly.”
“The opposite. Most people don’t have the courage to do it. They get sucked back in and cycle endlessly, making up and breaking up; things get uglier every time, more and more destructive. Or worse, going back leads to a crime of passion. Happens every day.”
“It’s not a normal relationship,” Gail said. “You can’t treat it like one.” She put her hand on his shoulder and gave a squeeze. “Why don’t we drop it for a while? We can talk more tomorrow.”
“Eat some soup,” Tina said. “Get some sleep.”
Frog Eyes was the only person at the bar when Seth walked in. He hadn’t seen Frog since high school. He looked too old, too worn out for forty, but it was still obvious how he got his nickname. He smiled wide which showed that he was missing some important teeth. “Seth-freaking-Hardy,” he said.
“Frog-freaking-Eyes.”
“What in the hell happened to you?”
Good question. “In the last,” he counted in his head, “twenty-two years? Everything. Every damned thing.”
Frog Eyes giggled. It was a creepy sound. “I mean your face.”
“Oh. Got in a fight.”
“Cool. Anybody I know?”
“I seriously doubt it.”
“What you doing back in the Run?”
Another good question he didn’t know how to answer so he simply said, “Visiting the family.” He’d made the necessary calls to the school and with the few belongings his sisters brought from Ohio, set up camp in Tina’s guest bedroom. Camp Necessity, he thought, Camp Get-Your-Shit-Together. “Anyone pouring drinks?”
“Hey Stink Weed!” he shouted. “You got a customer!” He looked at Seth and smirked, which made Seth wonder if rumors of what really drove him home were already making the rounds. “The famous Seth Hardy. Living the dream.”
“Yeah, right.” He wondered if this was a dream or rather another nightmare and any moment now, he’d wake up.
“Hey, you’re famous around here. Or at least you was when that book came out a few years ago. I feel like I should get me an autograph.”
“You bought my book?”
“Hell, no.”
He giggled again. “How long you here for?”
“Not sure.”
A guy came shuffling out of the back room behind the U-shaped bar. He looked vaguely familiar. He was overweight, unshaven, glassy-eyed, and his thinning hair was a mess. Wearing sweat pants, a t-shirt that was all stretched to hell, and of all things, slippers, he might as well have been sporting a banner that read, I gave up.
Stink Weed looked at Seth like he was a nuisance. “What do you want?”
“Whiskey.” Stink didn’t ask for further instruction and Seth was fine with the two or three shots of Jack Daniels dumped into a glass without ice. “You Jerry McClain?”
“Don’t look so surprised.” He sat the drink on the bar. “You’re older than I am.”
That was surprising. And sad. For both of them.
Sitting behind Stink Weed and opposite of Seth, Frog Eyes mimicked smoking a joint with his big eyes half closed like he was way stoned. The barkeep didn’t notice or didn’t care. “Must be nice, huh, Stink,” Frog Eyes said, nodding toward Seth, “to come and go like this guy does. Free as a bird.”
Seth’s hand was shaking as he reached for his drink. He was feeling the effects of stopping the prescribed medications too quickly. Last night the symptoms were so severe—leg cramps, the sweats, a monster headache—he almost started taking the pills again. Instead, he’d removed the temptation. The image of dumping them in the toilet at 3 AM flashed across his mind. Like tiny pebbles, they burbled gently and neatly into the bowl, green, blue, and yellow dots drifting in slow motion through the water, coming to rest on the white porcelain bottom before being violently flushed away.
Frog Eyes rattled on. “Not tied down to a wife and kids, not having to work a regular boring-assed job.”
Stink didn’t respond and shuffled back through the doorway. Seth took a hefty swallow of whiskey and said, “Oh, yeah. It’s barrels of fun. ‘Money for nothing and chicks for free.’”
“Dire Straits,” Frog said, naming the band from back in the day like he was a contestant on a game show. “Someone said you was looking for odd jobs around town.”
Something Fierce Page 25