The Mistaken

by Nancy S Thompson

  “You want to forget. I get that, Ty. I understand that, more than you could possibly know.” He jumped to his feet. “You wait here. I’ll be right back. I know exactly what you need. Just…just wait.” He ran out the door, slamming it shut with a bang.

  I wore myself out crying while he was gone. It didn’t make me feel any better though. I thought venting would release some of the pain, but my culpability never failed to focus it right back where it belonged, squarely on my shoulders. Even vengeance seemed somehow out of order, unless there was a way to punish myself.

  Nick wasn’t gone for very long before he burst back through the door. He carried two paper grocery sacks filled with clanging glass bottles. He placed the bags on the dining table with a loud thud and pulled out his purchases, placing them on the table in a neat row. It was a variety of hard alcohol: vodka, whiskey, and tequila. I sat on the floor, leaning back against the side of the living room chair. I ran my sleeve over my eyes and stared at the bottles of varying shapes, sizes, and colors. Then I looked up at Nick, wondering what he was up to. He turned to me with his hands on his hips.

  “You didn’t understand when I started drinking after my accident,” he explained, “when Mum, Pops, and Kimmy died. Do you remember how you scolded me? You preached to me, told me to man-up and all. I knew you were disappointed in me, which, of course, only made me feel worse. I couldn’t explain it to you then, what it felt like. You never would have understood. But now… Well, now I think you do. Don’t you, Ty?” He towered over me and nodded. “Yes, I think you finally understand.”

  He knelt down in front of me and looked me square in the eyes.

  “Let me explain something to you, Tyler. There is nothing...nothing…that will ever make it better. That pain…it never goes away. It’s a lifetime of shit, of frustration and guilt. Time may dull it, but it’ll always be there, kind of hazy in the background,” he explained as he twirled his finger around the side of his head. “And when you sleep, it awakens. And it pursues you—relentlessly—so that no matter how hard you try, you can never truly get away from it. But...” He stood up with his index finger raised.

  Nick stepped over to the dining table and selected a tall, clear bottle of vodka. He looked it over deliberately before presenting it to me like Vanna White on The Wheel of Fortune.

  “This, brother, will push it to the darkest corners of your mind, if for just a little while, so you can breathe again.”

  He grabbed two crystal tumblers from the china cabinet and poured us each a double shot.

  “Here,” he said, handing me a glass. “Bottoms up.” Nick tilted his head back and swallowed the liquid in one swift gulp.

  I stared at him open-mouthed before I turned my attention to my own glass. I studied the silver elixir as it swirled malevolently around the cut crystal, noting how it distorted my reflection and everything else around me. I was reluctant to go there, to that dark place I knew Nick had escaped after his accident. To me, it never seemed to do him any good, just an easing of the gravity that held him to the earth, a disembodiment of his grief, his capacity for being held accountable. But I was an outsider then, with no clear understanding of his pain, of the rage he felt at being left alone to carry the load made heavy by others, of the exhaustive guilt that consumed him.

  That is until now. I understood it all now.

  I copied Nick and swallowed the vodka in one shot, grimacing at the caustic burn as it slid down my throat. I was glad it hurt. I deserved every ounce of that pain and much more. With a shake of my head, I blew out a sharp breath, my mouth finishing in a tense and perfect O. I deliberated over the empty glass then held it back out to Nick. He refilled it, as he did his own, and handed it back to me.

  “May we both forget,” he toasted bitterly with his glass held high in the air.

  We slammed our shots together this time. Nick brought the bottle with him and joined me on the floor. I held out my glass and he filled it once more. I didn’t wait for him this time. I threw it down my throat as fast as I could then silently requested another. And then another.

  Soon, a fire burned inside me, its warmth radiating from my stomach and swirling into my limbs. It left my fingers and toes numb and my ears ringing. The thoughts and images that played mercilessly in my head blurred and moved about incoherently. I couldn’t remain focused on anything for very long before I forgot it altogether. The tension in my shoulders eased. I welcomed both the comforting release from tormenting thoughts and the soothing of my frayed nerves. We continued until the bottle was empty, another piece of trash littering the wood floor around us. Nick crawled to the table to select another.

  “Eeny meeny miny mo,” he sang as he ran his finger down the line of shapely vessels. He grabbed the bottle where his finger landed, a square one filled with an amber liquid. Jack Daniel’s. Nick turned to me and laughed, that stupid crooked smile twisting his lips.

  “Hey Ty, would you like to meet my friend, Jack?”

  When I nodded, Nick crawled back toward me, careening head first into my side. I shoved him away and he rolled around on the floor, searching for the lost bottle of JD. We both laughed like we were children again, playing in the sunshine without a care in the world. It felt good to laugh, even though it had the bitter aftertaste of a long-gone happiness. I was glad that it was with Nick. I felt as though he was the only person who could possibly comprehend the range of emotions that seemed to flicker and flash through me at light speed.

  Nick and I shared the entire night together on the floor. Johnny Walker, Jack Daniel’s, and José Cuervo were our constant companions. After a time, I couldn’t hold my head up any longer, and Nick lay snoring along the edge of the area rug beneath the dining room table. I found my way to my bedroom, fumbling noisily through the empty bottles that rolled across the floor in my path.

  I fell into the middle of the king-sized bed and moved immediately to my side on the right where I lay gazing toward Jillian’s vacant spot. We had spent so many hours here together, making love, playing games, talking about our baby, and planning our life together. Tonight, for the first time in weeks, the good memories seemed easier to recall than the bad.

  As I stared toward Jillian’s side, an assembly of transparent colors oscillated above the bed, indistinct shapes quivering in the dim light. They merged and separated in constant flux then slowly coalesced into a translucent apparition. She smiled at me, her dark eyes sparkling brightly from an unseen source. Her long, dark hair danced around her shoulders like magic.

  I blinked once, holding my eyes closed for a brief moment. Then I opened them, hopeful my delusion would remain. And she did. A single tear rolled into the inside corner of my eye and pooled up before it spilled over. I reached out to her.

  “I miss you, Jillian. So much,” I murmured. “I love you.”

  Then, though I was unwilling and fought like hell against it, I closed my eyes and let oblivion consume me.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tyler

  The days and weeks after that first evening with Nick followed suit in pretty much the same manner. I don’t remember much of the passing of time except for the changing of the outside light to darkness then back again. Nick was right. The booze helped me breathe again for small increments of time. The pain and guilt always remained, but they were pushed to the outer reaches of my alcohol-soaked brain. I still felt it, but I could also ignore it, for a short time anyway.

  When I was too drunk to drink anymore, I usually left Nick snoring on the sofa while I stumbled back to my room to say goodnight to Jillian. In bed, before I slipped into the welcome embrace of senselessness, I conjured up images of Jill that made me happy. I looked forward to seeing her and talking to her every night. Afterwards, my mind remained in limbo for only a few short hours until the effects of the liquor eased. Then the dreams would begin.

  Sometimes they were simply pleasant memories that replayed in my head: the good times I shared with Jillian, our wedding, our honeymoon. But mostly I drea
med of the last time we spoke at length, our fight, Jill lying broken on the padded table with all those tubes and wires, a blood-soaked sheet enveloping her from head to toe. Maybe if I hadn’t recalled those images, I would have recovered faster. As it was, those dreams were what made me get up every morning and pour myself another drink.

  Sometimes Nick was there when I faltered out of bed, but often he was gone, and I was left alone to cope with everything I had pushed neatly aside the day before. It was during these first moments of each day when I often wished Jill hadn’t become everything to me—maybe then I wouldn’t have been so completely destroyed by her death. But that was just the pain talking, like a devil sitting on my shoulder, whispering evil thoughts into my ear. Most days Nick would return with breakfast, or lunch if the hour declared, and we would share a quiet meal before we returned to the bottle.

  I consumed more and more alcohol as my tolerance grew and the dreams became unbearable. Nick stayed with me most days though he didn’t try to keep up with me anymore. He looked amused at my drunken antics with one brow raised, his wry grin set askew. I suppose I was the inebriated loser now. It was amazing how the tables had turned. Having slipped into a dull state of apathy, I really didn’t give a damn one way or the other. But Nick grew concerned and suggested I back off a bit. That wasn’t about to happen any time soon though, not while I continued to feel the same way, day after day.

  As time passed and I grew accustomed to the intensity of my pain, I spoke to Nick about Jillian, about how much I missed her, how empty the house felt without her. Nick and I eventually straightened out the place after he reminded me how much Jill hated a messy house. It once again looked as it did when she and I lived as a couple, but it certainly didn’t feel the same. The emptiness tormented me. Everywhere I looked there was something that had a memory of Jillian connected to it, especially her photographs which still lined the walls, and what remained of all the things we had bought for our child which lay refolded and untouched in a dark corner of the den.

  It was just too much for me to see every day. My guilt and loneliness gradually evolved into bitterness and rage, the venom of each so pungent and sharp it soured my only refuge, my treasured nightly sojourn with Jill’s haunting apparition. My last solace was gone, betrayed by the very bitterness that corroded my soul. That was when I first seriously considered suicide, contemplating the effectiveness of different methods. But there was one thing that held me back. Once I’d read the police reports and ascertained the extent of Erin Anderson’s role in Jillian’s accident and death, I knew I couldn’t leave this world with her still in it, especially when the cops refused to arrest and charge her.

  Whereas I once spoke to Nick about Jillian—my memories of her and our life together—I now shared my fantasies about gaining revenge on the woman who had provoked Jill into such reckless behavior. It soon became a favorite pastime to lie drunk around the house and spin wild tales of vengeance against Erin Anderson, the bane of my existence, the core of my deep-seated hostility.

  They started simple, as visions of setting her house on fire with her trapped inside, or perhaps I would run her car off the road and down into a steep ravine where she would lie immobilized, entangled in the wreckage, unseen from the roadway far above. I had an endless reservoir filled with pernicious scenarios. I found that when I fantasized about a long, tortuous death, I felt a greater sense of vengeance and a considerable awareness of relief, as sick as that was. And I knew it was sick. But I didn’t care anymore. I wanted Erin to suffer for a long time before she died. Or maybe…maybe she shouldn’t die. Maybe she should just suffer. Forever. I could think of many ways to make that woman suffer forever.

  At first, it gave me some relief to savor the vision of retribution. Yet, I always woke up the next day with the realization that Erin Anderson was still alive and well, walking the earth, enjoying her life, enjoying her family, while my wife was not, while my child lay eternally buried in Jillian’s cold womb six feet beneath the heavy earth, a tiny speck of immeasurable possibility heartlessly quashed into nothingness. I spoke to Nick about this train of thought and how crazy it was making me, how utterly enraged I felt, powerless and impotent.

  “Tyler, do you think if you were to somehow get even with her that you would actually feel…I don’t know...better? Relieved maybe?” he asked late one afternoon.

  “Hell yes,” I admitted. “Most days, it’s the only thing that keeps me from drinking until I just fucking die.” I shook my head, disappointed in myself, far removed from the man Jillian once loved.

  “Well then, maybe we should do it,” he suggested. “Get revenge. Go Old Testament on the bitch.”

  I snorted and rolled my eyes. “Don’t get me started, Nick.”

  “Why not, Ty? I mean, we could probably do it, figure out a plausible way to really get back at her, to completely ruin her life. How hard could it be?”

  “Nick, as good as that sounds, I don’t think I’m actually up to killing someone. Even that rotten whore.”

  Nick walked around with his head down, his finger drumming absently along the sharp edge of his jaw, deep in thought. He turned to me, rather excited at the plan forming deep within the dark confines of his mind.

  “We wouldn’t have to kill her, Ty. Just make her wish we had. What’s the worst thing you can think of to do to a woman, especially someone like her, to make every day of her life a living hell?”

  I thought hard for a minute then snapped my fingers, leaving one raised in the air. “I’ve got it. We could sell her to the Taliban.” I snorted with derisive laughter and took a long pull on a bottle of beer.

  “What? Come on, be serious, Tyler. The Taliban? That’s ridiculous.”

  I rocked my head from side to side. “Right. Okay well, maybe not the Taliban, but you know what I mean.”

  He shook his head. “No, actually I don’t. Enlighten me, brother.”

  “Haven’t you ever read those stories out of Afghanistan or Pakistan? Women under the Taliban have no life of their own. The men lord over every aspect of their miserable lives, and when they break some tiny rule, those sick bastards set them on fire, or cut off their nose, or beat them with a stick, right out on the street for everyone to see. And no one does a bloody thing about it.” I gave him a drunken smirk and took another long drink, draining the bottle. I sighed then expelled a loud belch. “I saw it on the news once.

  “God, I’d love to see someone beat Erin with a stick,” I continued. “I’d love to see someone snuff out the very essence of who she is. She could be a fucking slave for all I care. That bitch deserves to live in misery for the rest of her insignificant life.”

  Nick stared at me in disbelief. He’d never heard me speak that way before. Neither had I for that matter. Nick had always thought of me as the perfect son, a brother who was hard to live up to, who could do no wrong. He’d told me so a thousand times. And maybe I was before, but Jillian’s death had changed me. I was bitter beyond reason, and I knew it. But I didn’t care anymore. I’d played by the rules my whole life, and where had it gotten me? It was my turn to be bad, to ruin someone’s life like mine had been. Vengeance seemed the best course of action for me. But what did I know of that sort of thing?

  I stared at Nick who returned my look fixedly. He smiled at me, and I smiled back with a careless shrug. He obviously had something in mind. I was just waiting for him to share his depraved idea. But for all the twisted things I had ever dreamed up, I still wasn’t prepared for what Nick had in mind.

  “What are you thinking, Nick?”

  He shook his head and waved his hand. “Nah, forget it. You’d never go for it.”

  “Try me.”

  “All right then. What would you say if I talked to Alexi?”

  “Alexi? For God’s sake, why? What could he possibly do?”

  It was no secret that Alexi was an evil bastard, as was Dmitri, but I didn’t know the extent of their operation. I’d like to believe that Nick would never be involved i
n the sort of things I’d been fantasizing about, but perhaps he had knowledge of others who were, like Alexi Batalov and his boss, Dmitri Chernov, the reigning czar of Little Russia.

  “Dmitri caters to a lot of important men. He provides certain…favors and entertainment, and has a rather large stable of, uh...ladies who work for him,” Nick explained. “Occasionally he buys and sells them to a few of his foreign clients, wealthy Russian oil barons, businessmen from the Middle East and such.” He glanced up at me for my reaction. “Perhaps he might find a useful occupation for our little friend, Erin.” Nick smiled at me as if this was the answer to our prayers. “It could be the perfect solution, Tyler. You get your fill of sweet retribution and that bitch gets what’s coming to her.”

  But as much as I enjoyed fantasizing about torturing Erin, I didn’t think I actually had it in me to follow through. It just wasn’t in my nature. What I wanted and what I was capable of doing were two different things entirely, and I was a little shocked that Nick might actually feel differently.

  “For God’s sake, Nick. That’s a bit much, don’t you think?”

  He snickered. “Says the man who wants to see her beaten with a stick.”

  “Come on, Nick, that was just a…a daydream. What you’re talking about, that’s brutal.”

  “Brutal? Are you fucking kidding me? Ty, she’s the reason your wife is dead. She’s the reason you drink yourself into unconsciousness every goddamn day of your pathetic life.” He shoved his nose in my face and tapped his finger against my temple. “Why you can’t get the image of Jillian’s broken body out of your fucking head.

  “Remember Jill on that hospital bed, brother, the way they pounded on her chest, shoved tubes down her throat, and needles into her arms. You said it yourself. She died alone and afraid. That’s brutal,” he said, poking me in the chest. “How can you not want to be brutal right back? Fuck that bitch! I would see her sold to a butcher if I could.” Nick paced around the room, looking at me with anger and disappointment. “Now who’s the one who should man-up, Ty? You bloody fucking coward. She was your wife!” he screamed, his face crimson with indignation. “Or perhaps you’ve forgotten what that means yet again,” he added cruelly.