by R. Jean Reid
“It’s locked to the stop sign at the corner,” Lizzie informed him.
“But I don’t want to leave it overnight,” he argued.
“We’ll get it in the morning,” Nell told them. She wanted them in the house, not standing here surrounded by shadows.
“But it’s just out on the street. Only the frame is locked up. I might not have much of a bike left in the morning,” Josh said.
Nell started to point out that Pelican Bay was not a hotbed of crime and Josh’s bike was likely to be unmolested, but she realized that argument would ring hollow to a boy who had just been assaulted; “they may have tried to kill you but your bike will be fine” wasn’t persuasive.
She settled for the more realistic argument. “Look, those two idiots may still be running around. I think we’re less likely to run into them in the morning. If something has to get damaged tonight, at least let it be the bike and not any of us. We’ll go first thing in the morning,” she assured him.
“Do we have to go to school tomorrow?” Lizzie asked as she switched on the light in the kitchen.
Nell again felt odd relief; the kitchen seemed so normal, even down to the breakfast dishes still in the sink. How could the day have changed so starkly in such little time? Even the familiar irritation surfaced, Lizzie with her seemingly unerring adolescent eye for seeking advantage in a way guaranteed to annoy her mother.
“Is there a reason you think you shouldn’t go to school tomorrow?” Nell asked, hoping her voice was merely cool and not irritated.
“Well, Josh got attacked going home and so we might be safer here.”
“The two of you home alone?” Nell queried. Not waiting for an answer, plus suspecting that any answer might be the one that would tip her into truly annoyed, she continued. “You’ll be much safer at school than here alone. The danger wasn’t school, but going there. I’ll drive you and pick you up.”
“What if Josh isn’t feeling up to school? Wouldn’t he be better off with me here?” Lizzie countered.
“He can come with me to work and hang out on the couch in the break room,” Nell answered. “We’re not debating this,” she added tersely.
“Sure, but if we get killed tomorrow, it’s your fault,” Lizzie retorted.
Nell felt herself starting to lose her temper. Why did Lizzie always have to push things too far, spar with her mother when she knew it would do no good?
“I’m okay,” Josh put in. “I’ll be fine for school tomorrow. Got a test in math that I don’t want to miss.”
“Oh, right, Brother Perfect,” Lizzie said, then mimicked his voice. “Don’t want to miss that math test.”
“I’d just have to make it up. I’d rather get it over with,” Josh said.
Nell grabbed the tail of her temper. Her son’s interjection gave her enough time to remember that Lizzie didn’t always do anything, including annoy her. She’d been remarkably mature taking care of Josh. Lizzie was in the sway of surging hormones, searching for adulthood.
“We’re probably all tired and hungry,” she said in her best calm-and-controlled mother voice. “Why don’t you two decide on a pizza and order it?”
That diverted their attention and they took the team approach to request the mega-meat pie, the one Nell usually called “heart attack by twenty-one.” But tonight she made no comments about healthy eating, even going so far as to eat two whole slices herself.
Josh watched a little TV, then went to bed. He mumbled about not having slept much last night, but Nell could see that the day had taken its toll. She wandered around the house, making sure all the windows and doors were locked, then sat down and tried to read, but nothing held her interest. She realized she was listening to each car as it passed. Waiting for one to slow or stop.
How can I do this night after night, she thought as she peered through the drapes as headlights slowly made their way down the street, finally pulling into a driveway halfway down the block. Mrs. Mertz coming home from her church social. Then Nell felt a stab of anger: am I giving them more power than they could ever take? The Jones brothers were probably plopped in front of a TV wrestling match and on their second six-pack already.
This is a quiet residential neighborhood and everyone knows everyone. A strange truck will be noticed, Nell reassured herself.
When Lizzie lifted her head from the computer screen, Nell pointedly looked at her watch. Her daughter got the hint.
“Just need to send some email and then I’m going to bed,” Lizzie said.
A few minutes later, Nell heard her in the bathroom. She softly cracked the door to Josh’s room, wondering if he, too, was sharing her fears and wakefulness. But he was asleep, his arm flung out as if reaching for the night and the stars in the sky, his hair tousled in a way that made him look even younger and more vulnerable.
Nell softly closed his door. As she made her way back down the hall, Lizzie came out of the bathroom, her face scrubbed, smelling of toothpaste and soap.
“Good night, Mom,” she said.
“Good night, Lizzie. Sleep well.” Nell reached out to brush a strand of hair off her forehead. She wanted to touch her daughter, make some apology, some connection, even though she knew Lizzie could be standoffish, as if needing her mother’s arms might keep her in childhood and slow her journey to being grown up.
Unexpectedly, Lizzie responded by hugging her. Maybe she knows I need it, Nell thought as she returned her daughter’s embrace.
“You sleep well, too. And thanks, Mom.”
“Thanks?”
“For being a good mom. Taking care of Josh and me.” Then Lizzie pulled away and went into her bedroom.
A good mom? For a cynical moment, Nell decided that good mom meant letting them buy pizza packed with calories. She didn’t much feel like a good mother, by any scale, except perhaps compared to a crack addict. Maybe I’m a good mother because I’m the only one she’s got; if I don’t love her, no other mother will. The thought was less cynical but still put a sting in her daughter’s compliment. Nell had covered some court cases, watched children begging to have their drug-addicted parents back. The bond was so elemental and important; to be clung to and fought against, as Lizzie was doing.
Nell suddenly felt an overwhelming ache of loneliness. She made her way to the kitchen, hoping that its cheerful normalness would assuage her gloom. But without the voices of her children, the bright kitchen seemed barren, even mocking, the cheerful colors a place Nell could no longer enter.
She turned to confront a face in the window and startled for a moment before realizing it was her own, a wan pale moon reflected against the black glass. Her hair turned from a chestnut crown into a gray smudge in the dark reflection. How did I get so old? Nell wondered. Then she spun away from the dark mirror, pulling a strand of her hair out and holding it in her hand to assure herself that it was still a vibrant brunette, not the faded gray of the murky glass.
She listened to the night, for her children. Then she found the bottle of Scotch and poured a generous shot. The harsh taste did what she wanted it to do, pulled her into the immediacy of the burn in her throat, the taste on her tongue, then the blurring of edges. Even the mirrored image didn’t seem so sharp anymore.
As she poured another glass, she wondered if this was wrong, if she should stay awake and vigilant for her children. It didn’t save Thom, Nell thought. She’d been stone-cold sober that night, the perfect wife and mother for years, and nothing had saved him. She took a long swallow of the amber liquid.
Before she took another sip, she put the Scotch bottle back exactly as she found it, then returned to the kitchen, carefully avoiding the window into the darkness even as she stood in front of it, pouring the remaining Scotch into a plastic tumbler, the kind she used for water on the nightstand. She rinsed her glass, drying it instead of leaving it on the dish drain.
After putting the glas
s away, Nell turned out the light in the kitchen. The outside came in; all the shadows left by the streetlight were visible without the glare of inside light. She stared, but the night gave back nothing.
Nell went to her bedroom, detouring upstairs to pause and listen at both Josh’s and Lizzie’s doors, but she heard only a soft snore from her son, and the rustle of Lizzie turning in her sleep.
When she came to her door, she again paused. There’s a ghost in there, Nell thought. I keep him at bay with the details of a day, work, the children, exhaustion at night. But her anxiety from the day’s events kept her awake, and the alcohol had loosened the tight reins of control that kept her from seeing all the places Thom had been.
He lived in every inch of this house, but most especially in their bedroom. That was where she alone had seen his playful side, his passionate side, his worried and vulnerable side.
Nell turned away and went to the bathroom. She finished the Scotch in one long gulp. I’ll be in bed by the time it hits me, she thought, rinsing out her mouth so the taste of mundane toothpaste wouldn’t be jarring. Her routine was perfunctory; she was careful only in rinsing the glass before refilling it with water, as if that had been its purpose all along.
Again, at the bedroom door, Nell paused and considered sleeping downstairs on the couch or in the guest room. It won’t banish my ghosts, she thought, slowly turning the doorknob. Maybe someday the ghosts of memory would be friendly, comforting, but now the loss was too raw, and the memories seared.
The bed was as she had left it that morning, a hasty pulling-up of the covers, halfway in between being made and left as she had rolled out of it, as if she were rebelling against something but couldn’t quite bring herself to mutiny fully.
Several of her brothers had come for the funeral, and they now had sons old enough to wear the garments of a man. They had taken most of Thom’s clothes. Nell kept some, the ones she occasionally wore, including a tweed jacket he had once wrapped around her shoulders on a cold night. She couldn’t let go of that memory of enfolding warmth.
But still he was here; the sheets on the bed were ones that they had slept on, made love on. There was no washing that could take away those memories. Nell recalled the last time they had done so. It was a weeknight; they had sent the paper to press that day, always the busiest day of the week.
He had stripped off his clothes, and was lying under the sheet, catching up on last week’s New Yorker. Nell had been lying beside him, wearing the old T-shirt she usually wore to bed. She remembered debating whether to roll away from him and shut her eyes and let sleep take her, or to ask him what he was reading, to talk for a few minutes before drifting off. She had rolled to him, draping her arm across his stomach, her head on his chest. They lay like that for several minutes; the only sound their breathing and the turning of pages. She remembered feeling the heat from his body, her mind wandering to the ease of their touch, him naked, her in only a T-shirt, and they could simply be together. But thinking about the absence of passion brought memories of being without the absence. Nell listened to his steady breathing, the beating of his heart; he was, as he said, “built on the slim, academic line,” but she knew the power in his arms from the times he had held her fiercely. She put her hand under the sheet, trailing her fingers down his stomach, not stopping until she reached her destination.
He turned another page, but she knew him well enough to recognize the slight change in breathing. Nell often made the first move. This was one of the secrets they hid behind closed doors. She had once referred to herself as the aggressor; Thom had stuck out his chest, curled him arm muscleman fashion, and said, “No, I’m the aggressor, you’re the instigator.” That had become a shorthand. He would sometimes ask, “Is Ms. I in the house?” Or she would say, “I really need to meet with Mr. A soon.”
But that last time, the time they didn’t know would be their last, they had said little. Nell had begun a gentle massage and was rewarded with another change in the rhythm of Thom’s breathing.
A stray practical thought filtered in. Tonight was a weeknight, with children to be readied for school. That gave Nell justification to skip a slow buildup. She slid down the bed and replaced her hand with her mouth. Thom gasped and the magazine fell to the floor.
It had become one of the covenants of their relationship, Nell often made the first move, but Thom rarely said no. She was safe being bold and showing her desire. It was a secret they kept from the world. Out there, she was practical, mundane; he was the talker, the social person. To see them together, few people might guess how they would change behind closed doors. Thom, leaving aside the burden of leading, allowing Nell to change from mundane to wanton, a woman who took her passion. It was a comfort and release for both of them, this reversal of roles; it increased the possibilities of who they could be.
Like that night, with Nell changing from soft cuddling to hard desire. Thom’s response had been quick, a testimony to Nell’s experience of his body. She alternated light teasing touches with sudden hard strokes until she was ready. Then she slid back up his body, straddling and slowly lowering herself onto him. Again, the reaction she wanted and anticipated. Thom gasped as her weight lowered and his hips began a hard rocking motion, his hands pushing under her T-shirt to find her breasts.
His explosion came quickly. He wrapped his arms around Nell in the fierce, possessive way he often did after they made love, as if to say he would never let her go. Remembering, she knew it would be one of the things she would miss most desperately, the tightness, the feeling of forever, in his arms.
He had murmured a soft apology, then confessed that instead of reading the magazine, he had been watching her undress, lingering on her breasts as she removed her bra. “They’re quite lovely and I’m the only guy that gets to have my way with them,” he had whispered.
After another deep breath he said, “Roll over, woman, I’ve got something important to take care of.” He was always enough of a gentleman to make sure her pleasure equaled his. Like her, he was familiar with her body, knew just where to kiss and touch to take her both slowly, as if time were nothing and this moment was to be stayed in as long as possible, and inexorably over the edge.
Again, his arms wrapped around her, this time added to by his weight on top of her, another moment of the fleeting sense of forever. Then he had softly kissed and caressed her until she noticed that he had become aroused again. Sometimes once was enough, but other times, like a delicious gift, they just kept going.
Nell couldn’t remember if they said anything. She knew she had spread her legs wide, opening herself to him. She had wanted it as much as he did. She remembered this second time had followed the usual pattern for them. He was slower and she, as if their first love making had primed her body, responded more quickly, holding him tightly, even digging her nails into his back, passionately kissing his neck, his face, his mouth, her hips thrusting, urging him on. Her orgasm had come first, her gasping and writhing had triggered his. Then they had lain together for a long time, not talking, just holding each other.
The bedroom suddenly became unbearably lonely, everything still here, still in place, only Thom missing, irrevocably gone. Nell grabbed a pillow and held it over her face, to muffle the moaning sob she couldn’t contain.
Then she flung herself across the bed, face down, still hiding the sobs in the pillow. They racked through her body, the shudders of grief replacing the remembered shudders of passion.
Finally the tears subsided, and the anguish settled into a rage. A rage at herself for being weak and sneaking drinks to get through the night—and knowing she might easily do it again tomorrow. A rage at the absurd randomness that had torn apart her life. Just a few seconds would have made all the difference. To that rage, she added a fury that J.J. and his brothers would try anything, including attack her son, to avoid suffering consequences from his drunken stupidity. Another rage piled on that, at the murderers who
had callously left three bodies hidden in the woods, men who had escaped justice. Those rages blended.
Nell slowly sat up. She again caught a flash of her face reflected in the dark glass of a window. It was still pale, ghost-like. But even the wavering image reflected the fury, the grim set of her lips, the furrow at her brow.
They might win, Nell thought, but it will be a fight.
She got up to wash her face, to dry away the tears and leave only the anger.
eight
Josh insisted on going to school, even hurrying Lizzie so there was time to get his bike. Nell had to rush Josh through his inspection but allowed him to lock his bike in the bike rack at school. She would pick him up in the afternoon, but this way he could take more time with it at lunch. The bruises and scrape looked ugly, but Josh seemed okay, even oddly proud of his injuries, as if they were proof he could take it. With a final reminder she would be by to pick them up right after school, Nell headed for the office of the Crier.
As usual on school mornings, she was the first one there. But unlike usual, she locked the door behind her.
She had made her decision last night. The front page of this week’s paper would be about the bones left in the woods. She used the quiet time to work on a first draft. She wanted to call Kate and get the final report on the dig but felt it was too early for long, probing questions. She would also call the morgue and the sheriff’s office. They would adhere to harsh morning hours, but she wanted to have Kate’s information before calling them. The more she knew, the more she would know to ask.
A little before nine, Nell heard the first set of keys in the lock. She got up and looked out of her office, both to see who it was and to let them know she was here.
“Oh! You startled me,” Ina Claire said as she noticed Nell. Part of the startle might have been having the boss catch her with a half-
eaten doughnut in hand.
“I’m sorry,” Nell said. “I got here early and didn’t want to be alone in the office with an unlocked door.”