Dream Sweet
Page 6
“…and the best thing we can do for each other about what happened is to forgive each other, support each other, and leave it in the past.”
One of the reasons that Donna was so good at her job was that she was so good at reasoning through a problem. She was a little more unbiased at work than she was at home, but she eventually came to the same conclusions whether it was a situation with us, or a family who walked into her office. I know I was more worried about that episode of silence than I had been throughout our marriage, and I was relieved she found a way to sort through it in her mind and come up with a satisfactory explanation for herself.
“I agree with you, honey. I do. We all deal with stress in our own different ways. It’s going to take me some time to quit blaming myself, but I will, if Kate forgives me. I will eventually.” I put my hand on her knee. “I love you, though. Don’t forget that, okay?”
She turned to face me and smiled. “I know, honey. Me, too.”
~
When we got home, Donna led me up to the bedroom, made me lie on the bed and proceeded to remove all of my clothes a piece at a time while removing hers. I was somewhat surprised by her intentions because I thought she had to go back to work. I was more surprised when she grabbed my cock and started to lick it while she straddled my chest and fingered her pussy right in front of my face. My tongue was more than willing since it had been almost a year since she had wanted to do that. She went back to work 20 minutes later.
~
When I got out of my truck and stumbled around to the front, I found Donna bending over the hood of the Honda with her skirt up while Jim was behind her fucking her. Donna was stroking the hair of a severed head lying on the hood of the car, and whispering, “It’s okay, honey. Jim didn’t mean it.”
I shrieked when I noticed that it was Kate’s head and her body was slumped half in and half out of the Honda. Jim was holding a bloody butcher knife in his hand and was screaming, “Oh, yeah, that’s it, baby, how do you like that? Is that deep enough for you?”
I jumped Jim’s back and wrapped my hands around his neck. His skin slid off the bones and I slumped back to the ground as I ripped off most of his neck muscles and the putrid muscle of his right shoulder.
He turned around, glared at me, and said, “Now what the fuck did you do that for?”
He raised his right hand above his head, the one holding the butcher knife, and waved his arm once, twice, and then his hand fell off. He stepped in my direction and his leg buckled at the knee, backwards, breaking off from the rest of his leg and he tumbled to the ground. When he hit, the rest of his body splayed in all directions.
Donna looked over her shoulder at me and said, “Now what the fuck did you do that for?”
I looked at her in disbelief as she stood up, smoothed her skirt back down and smiled at me. The left side of her face slid down and hung from her jaw. She held Kate’s head in her right hand. It looked as though her hand was inside her head like a puppet and I heard Kate’s voice while Donna appeared to move her lips. “It’s okay, Daddy. Jim didn’t mean to.” A smile crept upon her face. “But you did!” she screamed and then began to laugh a deep throaty laugh, her face morphing into Mr. Evans.
I awoke with a start and sat straight up in bed. I felt the sweat as it dripped off my forehead and ran down my nose. My temples were pounding with the beat of my heart. It was bright in the bedroom. Still daylight. I yelled, “Honey, are you home?”
There was no answer. My hands trembled.
13
All of us sat down to dinner on Wednesday evening. Kate was on my left. She wasn't talking very much. Brandon was on my right. He wouldn't shut up. He kept going on and on about a new girl he met at school. It was her first day and Brandon volunteered to show her around and introduce her to people. Apparently, they had hit it off and Brandon was in love. At least that was the gist of what I was hearing.
Donna sat opposite me and was also very quiet. But she had a teasing smile on her face. I was pretty sure that she was thinking about this morning and probably thinking about tonight too.
“Darling, how about I give you a nice back rub tonight?” she asked.
“Yup, she was thinking about later,” I thought to myself. I just smiled at her and said, "Sure."
“Dad, are we going to go camping this weekend?” Brandon asked. He must have been done talking about Kayla, the new girl, for the moment.
“I was still planning on it, bud. I was hoping that your sister might want to go, too.” I looked at Kate for some sign of recognition. “How about it, Kate?”
I had to ask her again before she looked up and said “What? Oh. I haven't really thought about it. I...”
“I think it would be a good idea Kate,” Donna interrupted. “The three of you haven't gone camping in a long while. Everyone around here could use a little break, some fresh air, and exercise. Don't you think, Kate?”
“I don't know, Mom.” Kate twirled her fork in the middle of her plate. It looked as though eating was the last thing on her mind.
“Well you think about it, Kate, and tell me tomorrow, ’kay?” I interjected.
She nodded, absentmindedly and continued to twirl her fork.
“So when are you going to ask Kayla out on a date there, buddy?”
“Daaaad, I haven't even asked her to be my girlfriend, yet.”
“What are you waiting for?” I reached over and tousled his hair.
“Dad, I just met her today,” he replied as he tried to duck away from my hand.
“So you’re wasting time. That’s what I think.”
Brandon rolled his eyes at me and took a big forkful of potatoes and shoved them in his mouth. That was his way of saying to me that he wasn't talking anymore about it.
Conversation ceased and the sound of forks and knives clinking plates and mouths chewing food reverberated throughout the room.
I was thinking to myself that I would probably take tomorrow off so I could get ready for Friday and we could leave early Friday. I reached out and tapped Kate on the arm.
“Kate, did I happen to mention that you wouldn’t have to go to school on Friday?” I asked.
She quit twirling her for and looked up at me. I thought that might have increased her interest. But, she replied, “I have a history test on Friday, Dad.”
“So skip it. If you want I can call the school and tell them that you have a family emergency and that you have to go out of town on Friday and ask your teacher if you could make up the test.”
She was quiet for a moment then said, “I wasn't really ready for it anyway.” Then looked back down at her plate.
I turned my head toward Donna and shrugged my shoulders. She raised her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders back at me while mouthing the words, “I think that means yes.” Then she shook her head once which I took to mean leave it be.
“I'll just plan on her coming with,” I thought to myself. This is going to be good. Kate and Brandon both like camping. Donna usually stayed home, which lets them think that they were doing something special just with me. I thought that's why she stayed home. That and well, she was just not that much of an outdoor girl. Her idea of hiking was walking around the park a few times. Which was fine. Donna appreciated the fact that I could spend time with the kids doing something that they liked to do. She used to go with us, but staying home gave her a break she usually needed anyway. If only from being mother for a day or two. Cooking and cleaning and chauffeuring the kids everywhere. I used to do a lot of that too, but eventually the man always seemed to find other things to do. And the woman got stuck with the majority of the housework. Donna didn't mind though, because she wasn’t very good at fixing things, so it was really a wash. In a sense. I never took her for granted, though. That was one of the secrets to a good marriage. Don't take your spouse for granted and don't end up a couch potato watching every sporting event televised. Do your share. Oh, and it goes without saying, keep your dick in your pants.
Some guys
just can't. Tad, my brother for instance, the last time he got a divorce I remember giving him “the lecture.”
“You are just like a lot of men who are always looking for the bigger and better deal,” I said to him. “I would think that eventually the bigger and better deal would start being the lesser and worse deal. There's got to be a certain turning point where it goes from better to lesser. For me it was the day I met my Donna. I married her for better and for worse. If I didn't really mean it when I stood up in front of the preacher and said those words, I shouldn't have been doing it.
“That's the problem with many marriages, though, not just yours,” I continued. “People are just horny and lonely and when they end up together in the same house some of them start to realize that being lonely and horny was better than what they have now. You have to want to be with your spouse. That's rule one. If you get tired of hanging around her or you find yourself needing more and more personal time, then you should probably rethink the commitment and stop it before both of you get hurt. If you keep thinking that the girls are always prettier on the other side of the room then you should probably rethink the marriage thing, too.”
I also told him that I was allowed to preach because I had been married for 25 years and I was happier than the day I got married. That was when you knew you did it right. The problem I saw in the marriages of my friends and my siblings was that people were too quick to do it without taking the real meaning into consideration before they did.
“I'm sure there are a lot of reasons people get married outside of the true meaning to the commitment. They do it for tax reasons, perhaps, for citizenship, perhaps. Or, just for keeping up appearances. I personally think that is an atrocity to the institution of marriage. If you want to stop getting divorced, Tad, stop marrying people you really don't want to marry. If she's not “the” one. The one you think about every time you're playing with yourself in the shower, then she's not the one. Keep looking.”
Donna was definitely the one that I was looking for. No question about it. We did some things apart. We had different likes and dislikes but we had happiness and love and friendship and communication and good sex. That's all I ever wanted. That's what I had been looking for. That was my ideal. That’s what I had with her.
14
That night after Donna and I had another bout of uncommon sex, I couldn’t sleep. I didn't want to go to sleep, for that matter, so I got myself a tall glass of iced tea from the refrigerator and went into my den to do some research on the internet.
There were a few things that I was interested in finding out. I was interested in trying to find out if there was any bad press on Janie's father, Gerald, and I was interested in knowing more about the science of accidents and multi-car pileups.
Outside of being listed as Janie’s father in an obituary, there was nothing, not one thing, about Gerald Evans on the internet. He wasn't even listed as a pharmacist. It was almost as if he didn't even exist before the death of his daughter. I would have thought that I’d have found an obituary for his wife, at least, but there was nothing.
On the other hand, the information that I found out about multi-car pileups was overwhelming. There were hundreds of incidents and hundreds of pictures. It would have taken me weeks to read all of the stories concerning them. The one thing that I found repeatedly throughout many of the photos from the accidents I had looked at was that most of the vehicles, when hit from behind, the vehicle in the back ends up under the vehicle in the front. This was the case in even 6 or 7 in a row. I supposed because the engine is heavier than the back of the car that the force would pitch the back of the car in front above the hood of the one in back and the one in back wouldn’t need much persuasion to continue on its path underneath the back of the front one.
I realized that there were rear and mid engine cars, also, and I'm sure accidents with those types of cars were different, but they did not pertain to my accident.
I also noticed that when semis were involved there was complete devastation of the vehicle directly in front of the semi and the devastation ended there. The only thing I could figure was that the extreme force of the semi must have pushed the pile forward, too.
Although Janie’s car was turned sideways and I could not find any particular accident with the same series of wrecks, the information I found did not discount the theory that I drove my truck on top of her, because, for one, since the Honda was turned to its side that ruled out the weight of front vs. back. And if my truck was on the ground, then it would seem by the evidence I found that the semi would have crumpled my truck into the Honda, probably crumpling it too. But that was not how I remembered the accident being shown in the photo in the paper. My truck was most certainly on top of the Honda. However it got there, I was beginning to believe more and more that I drove on top of the woman and killed her. I couldn’t come away with any other conclusion than that. I wasn't even sure if I needed to see the police reports now. If my truck was on the ground then it would have stayed on the ground and the semi would have crumpled it into the Honda. If my truck was on top of the Honda, in the first place, then the semi just moved the whole pile and my truck stayed where it was because of the weight of the engine and the force of the semi’s impact.
I spent the remainder of the night slumped in my chair in front of my computer screen frantically looking for some evidence, some picture, some scientific fact, that would alleviate those fears. Some little thing that would put the smallest dent into my conclusions. Even the smallest dent would keep my optimism alive for another day.
But I was starting to feel there was nothing more to do but accept the facts as I remembered them, when I remembered them, and to learn how to live with myself as the man who killed Janie Evans. In fact, I was pretty sure I didn't even want to remember what happened. I think that actually made it worse.
I believed not remembering was the only thing that was keeping me from diving head long into a great big depression. I wasn’t so sure I wasn’t going to be heading there anyway, with all of the new information that corroborated my killing Janie Evans that night.
~
Donna found me in my desk chair on Thursday morning with my eyes closed and my head back against the headrest. I wasn’t sleeping but she must have thought I was because she turned around and left the room.
“Donna,” I croaked.
The door closed behind her without a response.
I opened my eyes, turned my chair towards the window, and looked out upon the multi-colored points of light created by the sun reflecting off of the dew on the grass. It looked to be another gorgeous spring morning. I went to the window, opened it, and stood looking out upon the yard, listening to the birds singing, and breathing the fresh morning air.
15
The kids had breakfast and went off to school. Donna had her coffee and followed shortly thereafter. Not one of them came to say goodbye. I supposed Donna told them I was sleeping and to not disturb me.
I went into the kitchen and filled a cup with coffee and sat down at the breakfast counter. The message light was blinking on the phone and I sat there puzzled. I did not remember the phone ringing, and I was positive the message light wasn’t blinking last night when I came out to get my tea. I was also sure my mind did not send my trembling hand to push the message button, but apparently that’s what happened.
“Howard? Oh, Howard? I know you’re there?” a female voice said. It was not a voice I knew.
“Howard, why did you kill me? Why did you kill me, Howard? I didn’t deserve to die,” the voice continued. I stopped breathing.
In the background I could hear what sounded like a busy roadway. Only a little bit odd. I couldn’t quite figure out why.
“Howard? Are you there? Howaaaaard! I know you’re there! Pick up the fucking phone!”
“My God, what is this, some kind of joke?” I said to the empty kitchen.
“No, Howard, this is not a joke. I want to talk to you. Do you know why, Howard?”
My hands trembled. My heart thumped. My temples throbbed with each thump. I was beginning to feel nauseous.
“Howard? I want to kill you.” Her voice gurgled. The same voice I heard in my dreams. The same wet gurgle. A gurgle that a throat full of liquid might make. “A throat full of blood?” I thought.
I suddenly remembered why the road traffic sounded odd. It was a wet road the cars were driving on.
“I am going to kill you, Howard. After I kill your children, and your wife. I want you to watch them die so you know how I felt when my mother was killed and how my father felt when his wife and his daughter were killed. I didn’t deserve to die, Howard.”
The cars splashing by on the wet road in the background was all I heard for a moment.
“BUT YOU DO!”
The last words reverberated through the tiny speaker of the answering machine making a crackling sound, and then black smoke came out of the speaker hole.
“This must be a dream. I’m hearing things because I’m tired. This must be a dream. I’m hallucinating. I’m tired. I’m tired,” I said to the rising black smoke.
The phone rang. I jumped out of my seat, grabbed the phone and ripped it out of the wall.
“I need to lie down. I’m not feeling well,” I thought as I collapsed onto the ground.
~
I got up off of the kitchen floor and had gone to the basement door. There was a scratching sound on the back side of it. It sounded as if someone was running their fingernails over the wood panel. But, when I opened the door, I found nothing but darkness.