The Girl From Home

by Adam Mitzner

  This freezes Rick, which allows Jonathan time to come to his feet. For a moment, everyone hangs in place, almost as if in suspended animation. Without notice, Rick bolts for the door, pushing so hard past the hotel steward that he knocks him into the wall. Once outside the room, Rick sprints away.

  * * *

  Jackie can’t understand what the hell Rick was thinking with that stunt, except then she realizes the obvious: he wasn’t thinking. No, he was being his usual hotheaded self. How did he find out where she was? He might have figured out that she was at the Hilton by a process of elimination, or by tracking her car, but how in the hell did he know what room she was in? She flashes on the mousy girl. Did Rick bribe her? Threaten her? If not her, maybe he got another clerk to do his dirty work. And doesn’t he know that hotels have security cameras? He’ll be on tape now, fleeing out of there.

  This last part concerns her. Not only has she created a record of checking into a hotel, which can only mean marital discord, but now Rick will be on the security cameras running from the room. Then she thought about the room service guy. How was it that he didn’t hear the fight? Maybe those guys are just programmed to deliver food and not ask questions. Or maybe he thought it was the television or something and didn’t realize what he’d interrupted.

  The busboy is not more than twenty, tops. He looks shell-shocked. Probably afraid that he’s going to get blamed for this. Still, she had to ensure that he didn’t tell anyone what he saw. That would ruin everything.

  Jackie signs the room service bill with a shaky hand, leaving a thirty-dollar tip for an eighty-dollar charge, even though an eighteen percent service charge was already included. Then she reaches into her purse and pulls out all the money she has—$120—and hands it to him.

  “I would greatly appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone about this,” she says, still holding the money even though it’s also in his grasp. “It would mean a lot to me. Can I count on you?”

  “Y-yes,” he stammers.

  Jackie studies him closely. From the look of abject terror on his face, she discerns that he’s more than willing to keep this entire episode to himself rather than become embroiled in her soap opera.

  “Good. Thank you. I put a nice tip on the receipt, and this is for you, too,” she says, and releases the money into his grasp.

  He leaves the room almost as quickly as Rick had a few minutes earlier. When the door closes behind him, she says to herself, Nothing has changed. Stick with the plan. Rick will be dead soon, and everyone will think it was an accident.

  * * *

  Jonathan emerges from the bathroom with a hand towel applied to his mouth. Its corners are speckled with blood.

  “I’m so, so sorry, Jonathan,” Jackie says. “Do you want some ice?”

  What he wants, first and foremost, is to kill Rick Williams. But since that option is not immediately available, he decides that he’ll soothe himself with some alcohol.

  “Can you see if there’s any scotch in the minibar? If not, I’ll take whatever is the closest thing.”

  Jackie opens the fridge and pulls out two small bottles. She pours them both into the glass next to the bar.

  “Here you go,” Jackie says, and hands Jonathan a glass of brown liquid, the color a deep copper. “I poured you a double.”

  With the first sip, Jonathan winces. He feels the sting of the alcohol when it seeps into the gash in his mouth.

  He didn’t see it coming. If he had, he’s sure the outcome would have been different. But he opened the door expecting their wine, and when he turned back to Jackie to allow the steward to enter, Rick laid him out with a sucker punch.

  His ribs were sore, but he was relatively certain that they were only bruised and not broken. So he brushes off Jackie’s request that they go to the hospital.

  “How the hell did he find you? You didn’t tell him you were here, did you?” Jonathan asks.

  “No, of course not. But . . . I don’t know, how many hotels do you think there are in East Carlisle? Knowing Rick, he bribed or tricked the desk clerks at all of them until he found me. Or he had me followed.”

  “I’m going to fucking kill him,” Jonathan says.

  As the words come out, he recognizes them as the truth, and not just some fantasy playing out in his mind. He is going to kill Rick Williams. No doubt about it. The sooner the better.

  * * *

  They decide that staying in the room for a while is the safest course, just in case Rick is lying in wait. At five thirty, Jackie packs up her meager belongings. They leave together, both of them looking around every corner for Rick.

  “Give me your keys,” Jonathan says once they’re downstairs in the hotel lobby. “I’ll get your car and pull right up to the front.”

  She nods that she understands why that’s the safest course. “I parked about three rows back, to the left,” she says, handing him the keys.

  As he walks through the parking lot, Jonathan’s on careful watch. He’s not going to get sucker-punched twice by that bastard. That’s for damn sure.

  There’s no stir of activity, however. So he pulls Jackie’s minivan up to the hotel entrance, and Jackie and he switch positions. Outside the vehicle, Jonathan leans into the open window.

  “You be safe, and call me when you get to your mother’s,” he says.

  “I will. You be safe, too.”

  And then she kisses him on the mouth, and he winces.

  27

  It shouldn’t take more than four hours to drive from East Carlisle to Baltimore. Even allotting for time if Jackie stopped somewhere on the road for a snack, she still should have arrived at her mother’s no later than ten.

  It’s now eleven, and Jonathan still hasn’t heard from her.

  Each of his phone calls has gone straight to voice mail. Her phone must be off, or she’s in a place with no reception.

  At least that’s what he hopes is the explanation. He can’t rule out that she decided to stop at home first. To pick up clothes or something, and that Rick finished what he started.

  * * *

  Before she even enters her mother’s house, Jackie calls Jonathan from the driveway. “I’m so sorry” is the first thing she says. “I turned my phone off because . . . I know this is crazy, but I was worried that Rick might be able to find me if it was on. So I bought a prepaid one at a rest stop on the highway. It’s got like two hundred minutes on it, so I should be good for a while with this number. And then I hit traffic at the toll before the Delaware Bridge, and it was bumper to bumper for like an hour before the Harbor Tunnel.”

  “I’m just glad you’re safe, Jackie. I was starting to freak out a bit.”

  “I’m so sorry, Jonathan. I didn’t . . . I just didn’t think. To be honest, it’s been a very long time since anyone worried about me, and I’m out of practice about what that means. But thank you. Really. It means a lot to me. I haven’t even seen my mom yet, so let me go talk to her. I’ll call you in the morning, okay?”

  “Okay. I love you, Jackie.”

  These are the words she’s longed to hear. And they couldn’t have come at a better time.

  “I love you, too,” she says.

  * * *

  Jackie sometimes told people that she and her mother had a complicated relationship, but as Jackie got older, and her own children grew, Jackie wondered whether maybe the fault was hers. Perhaps she had been too demanding.

  Her mother divorced her father thirty seconds after Jackie left for college, which only reinforced Jackie’s perception that her parents’ marriage had been miserable for years. After Jackie’s maternal grandmother died, Jackie’s mother inherited her house outside Baltimore and relocated there to start her life anew.

  At the time, Jackie resented that her mother didn’t sell the house and stay in East Carlisle, but Jackie understands now what she did not then. Her mother wanted to be free to live her own life, and that meant she had to go back to where people remembered her for being her, and not solely as a
wife and mother. She sees the irony now all too clearly: her mother went home to come into her own, while Jackie’s return to East Carlisle snuffed out whatever chance she had of being the person she aspired to be.

  That was sixteen years ago. Jackie still thought of this place as Grandma’s house. And a lot of it hasn’t changed from when Jackie was a girl. The kitchen still looks like it’s out of Mad Men, and she can still see remnants of the stain on the rug from when she kicked over a glass of wine when she was six. But there’s a charm to the place that Jackie didn’t appreciate when she was younger, when it just seemed like an old lady’s house.

  Jackie called her mother on the drive down, asking whether she could come to visit for a few days. Her mother asked what was wrong, and Jackie had simply said that she and Rick had a fight, and she needed some time to decompress. Her mother let it rest there, but Jackie knew there would be a more thorough cross-examination to come.

  As soon as Jackie enters her mother’s home, her mother’s eyes go straight to the side of Jackie’s face on which Rick had inflicted damage.

  “Oh my God,” her mother says.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks,” Jackie says.

  “Did Rick do this to you?”

  Jackie nods.

  “That bastard. You can’t stay with him.”

  “I know, Mom. I know. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Are the kids okay? Does he hit them?”

  “They’re fine, too. They’re with friends for the rest of the week.”

  Jackie has never felt so ashamed. Her mother’s look is the one Jackie recalls from high school when she came home an hour after curfew. Complete and utter disappointment.

  “Did you call the police?”

  “No.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “It’s complicated, Mom.”

  “It isn’t, Jackie.”

  “I want to think through my options before I do anything that I might regret, okay? I’ve just driven five hours, and it’s late, and I’m exhausted. I promise we can talk about this as much as you want tomorrow, but right now I really just want to crawl into bed and go to sleep.”

  Her mother’s response is a frown, followed by a disappointed shake of her head. This gesture, too, Jackie recalls from her high school days.

  “Okay,” her mother says. “Sleep well. But tomorrow, we are definitely going to talk about this.”

  Jackie is thankful for the reprieve, so she capitulates to her mother’s terms. After hugging her mother good night, Jackie heads upstairs to the room she stayed in whenever she visited, her mother’s childhood bedroom. Jackie always enjoyed sleeping here as a child, imagining her mother at her age, playing with her dolls on the floor, sleeping in the same bed.

  Tonight she hopes that she’ll fall quickly asleep, but she’s not that lucky. Instead she lies awake, thinking about the life she has and the life she wants. They’re so far away right now, but she’s hoping that soon, maybe very soon, they will merge.

  28

  Rick Williams wasn’t at all happy about not being able to reach his wife, although that disappointment was nothing compared to his anger that the fucking room-service guy interrupted his kicking the shit out of that scumbag Johnny Caine. The guy was an absolute nothing in high school. Didn’t even register. Unless you were on the chess team or into astronomy. It was just like Jackie to go for that type of asshole. Thinks he’s worth fucking because he went to some college with ivy on the walls.

  Rick soothes himself with the thought that his bitch of a wife can’t hide forever. She’s going to have to come back for the kids, and for the time being, he’s just as happy to have the house to himself. In fact, after the fireworks at the hotel, he decided to give Brittney a good fuck in his marital bed. And he’s got no interest in changing the sheets, either. Let Jackie do it, the whore.

  Rick’s even thinking that maybe he’ll bring Brittney back again tonight. Nothing he’d like more than to have his wife walk in on them going at it.

  The one thing Rick knows for certain is that when his slut for a wife does show her face, she’s going to be in for a world of pain. He no longer cares about leaving a mark. In fact, he wants to brand her so the world will know that she couldn’t get away with the shit she was doing. After Jackie has been dealt with, he’ll turn his attention to cutting the balls off Johnny Caine. He wishes he’d saved the scumbag’s cell phone number from when he called him last week because at least then he’d be able to let little-boy Johnny know what was going to befall him.

  He figures that he can find out where the guy lives easily enough, though. His Google search indicated a New York City address, but Rick doubts that this prick is coming through the tunnel to fuck his wife. He must be local now. If need be, he’ll call Caine’s old man and pretend he was Johnny’s asshole buddy from back in the day and he’s trying to reconnect.

  First things first. Jackie is the top priority. So that morning, on his way to work, he dials her up. Of course, he fully expects Jackie’s going to let the call go to voice mail, just like she has every other call.

  After four rings, that’s what he gets.

  “Hey there, sweetie. I just wanted to hear your voice. I love you.”

  He’s laughing out loud after he disconnects the call. Jackie will know the coded language. Only an idiot would threaten his wife before beating the crap out of her. Jackie will find this message twice as terrifying as any threat he could make.

  Rick steps out of his truck with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. Nobody but nobody gets the better of Rick Williams, he thinks to himself. And those who try . . . well, they regret it in a hurry.

  Rick doesn’t see the weapon that ends his life until it’s already speeding toward him. By the time it registers as a threat, it’s too late. The truck closes in within a second. No time to even move one way or the other. It’s just barely enough time for the thought to register that he’s seriously underestimated his wife in the worst way.

  Part Three

  29

  Jackie woke to see that she’d received yet another voice mail from Rick. Same modus operandi as before.

  “Hey there, sweetie. I just wanted to hear your voice. I love you.”

  She didn’t delete it. It may come in handy.

  * * *

  When Jackie comes downstairs, she follows the aroma of the coffee and finds her mother sitting at the kitchen table. She doesn’t have a newspaper or other reading material beside her, just a mug of coffee. It’s as if she’s been waiting patiently for Jackie to come down and explain to her why she’s still married to a wife-beater.

  “Good morning, Mom,” Jackie says brightly.

  “Did you sleep well, sweetheart?”

  “I did.”

  Jackie helps herself to a cup of coffee, but she can’t find the sugar in her mother’s kitchen and has to open several cupboards before her mother says, “It’s the one over the sink.”

  “Thanks,” Jackie says, and then opens the refrigerator and pulls out the milk.

  “Are you ready to talk now?” her mother asks as Jackie sits down at the table.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose.”

  “So, tell me.”

  Jackie shrugs. “There’s really nothing to say that you don’t already know, or couldn’t have guessed. Rick’s a son of a bitch. He drinks too much, he chases anything in a skirt, and he’s got a temper. The trifecta. The other day we got into a fight about something and he hit me. And I decided enough was enough. I arranged for the kids to be with friends for the rest of the week, and I ran away to see you. End of story.”

  Her mother takes in this information without showing much reaction besides offering a soft nod of support. But when Jackie’s finished with her tale of woe, her mother takes her hand. Jackie enjoys the warmth of her mother’s touch, which was intensified because her mother had been cradling her own coffee cup in her hands.

  “I’m proud of you, Jackie,” her mother finally says.

/>   Jackie laughs. “It doesn’t take much to get hit. You just need a face.”

  “You know what I mean. I’m proud of you because you realize that you’re worth more than that. I’m proud of you because you’re able to fix things when they need to be fixed. And I’m proud of you that you’re not going to take Rick’s shit anymore.”

  “I’m glad you’re proud. I’m just ashamed. How did I ever let things come to this?”

  Jackie’s mother offers a sympathetic smile. “I think that’s what everyone says before things get better, right? There’s no shame in finding yourself in a bad situation, Jackie. The shame is in being in that situation and not doing anything to fix it.”

  Jackie nods that she understands. She wonders whether her mother will still be proud of her when she realizes how Jackie had decided to fix this problem.

  * * *

  Jackie’s mother’s favorite place to eat breakfast is the Flashback Diner. They go there every time Jackie visits. Sometimes more than once. It’s about a five-minute car ride away from her mother’s house and is hard to miss from the street on account of the fact that it has mirrored siding. There’s a life-size cutout poster of Elvis beside the door, and to the King’s left is a case full of desserts of every conceivable variety.

  The hostess tells them to take any seat they’d like, and they find a four-top near the window to call their own. They both ask for coffee, and the waitress returns with a small coffeepot for them to pour themselves. Jackie’s mother orders a Greek omelet, which has been her standard diner breakfast for as long as Jackie could remember. Jackie is not one to throw stones on this issue, as she selects egg whites with tomato, her invariable selection.

  As soon as the waitress leaves, Jackie’s cell phone rings. She expects to see Rick’s number on her caller ID, but instead it reads: Unknown Caller.

  “Hello,” Jackie says tentatively.

  “May I speak to Jacqueline Williams, please?”