The Accident

by S D Monaghan

  Tara closed her eyes. Maybe Fenton would become solely Christine’s problem. Christine would tell him that I’d slept with Ryan. Maybe she has already. But so what? That doesn’t mean I know where he is. Christine – telling me I’d get what I deserve. Is she some type of fucking witch? No, of course she isn’t. She just knew Fenton was closing in on us because she’s the one who sent him in our direction. Still, even she doesn’t deserve Fenton in her life. Especially after what happened with Ryan. Would Fenton kill her? He can’t. Things like that don’t happen.

  Forcing aside mutinous thoughts, Tara tried to focus on what would happen after she and David paid off Gordon tomorrow. The inescapable fact was that soon they would be just another couple with no money and a baby on the way. Their mortgage and bridging loan was supposed to be the doorway to all their finest dreams. Instead, it had ended up being their vow of poverty.

  There had to be a way out of this. She almost felt ashamed for looking for it. I just need to create another sure thing. But what was a sure thing? A sure thing is something that is guaranteed to impress everyone. A huge, rusty sculpture that millionaires will want on their lawns? It was impossible. She wasn’t a Banksy or an Emin or a McQueen. She’d simply had a baseline of raw talent, a singular very clever idea and amazing good luck: no one wins the lottery twice. Auction prices for her work in the secondary market had crumbled. Once the art magazines discovered her latest prices, they would announce the market’s verdict and her name would never recover.

  Still, Tara searched for a way out. But it was like trying to piece together a thousand-part jigsaw when most of the pieces were blue sky. And then, suddenly, she found an idea: ‘We can tell Fenton. We can tell him what really happened. That’ll make sure he backs off. And maybe he’ll help us. Maybe he’ll scare Gordon away, too. For money. For one hundred thousand. Two hundred. We can even afford three. He’s a scumbag drug dealer. He’d jump at that.’

  David shook his head and drained his glass. ‘Know what happens if we tell Fenton? He’ll just see me killing Ryan as me taking over Ryan’s problems. We’d owe him whatever Ryan owed him. Then after he got that, he’d take the rest off us – because he can. He’ll take all our money and then kill us. Because we’ll be nothing to him but messy loose ends. That’s the way people like him do business.’

  This is all my fault, Tara thought. If she had not insisted on having her final fling, she and David would now be enjoying a celebratory drink, honouring their house, their soon-to-be child, all their good fortune. Instead, she had fucked Ryan. It was neither right nor just that her life with David was a single bad decision away from imploding.

  ‘Look, Tara, even if I pay Gordon tomorrow—’

  ‘If? You’re paying him!’

  ‘If I pay him tomorrow, our problem will still never go away, even if Fenton does. After we give all our money to Gordon and lose the house – know what happens then? The new owners dig up the patio. That’s what happens. They dig up the patio because they extend this place further or they hate the travertine or whatever. But one day that patio will be dug up and—’

  ‘Fine. Then we’ve a few months before the repossession to… deal with it. A few months is all the time in the world to… figure out what to do about that. So forget about it. Focus on the now. You’re scared. Of course you are – you’re sane. Look at our situation. There’s nothing not to be scared of.’

  David spoke in barely a mumble: ‘You’re better off without me. I’ve decided to go to the police. This is all on me. That way, you can hang onto the house and give our kid the life it deserves. And that way, Fenton can’t touch you. Not if I’m arrested. Not with the whole world looking on. I’ll say I fought with Ryan over money. Just money. And that I panicked and buried him. Gordon will have nothing, and he can hardly contradict me without implicating himself with what went on.’

  Defeat seemed to be flowing out of David like ink, staining everything, ruining everything. It was as if, after all these years, Tara had suddenly lost the grip she’d had on him. And without that grip, they would both tumble and fall. Life had already taught her that the only way to know how much you love someone is when you lose them. And right now she felt a deep, essential hunger for her husband’s return.

  ‘I need another drink,’ David muttered, and walked out to the bar.

  Tara walked over to the fridge, opened it and grabbed the bottle of chilled tequila that was in there for the celebratory shots she’d planned to pour for her friends when they were due to visit later in the week. Slipping through the breach in the slider and out onto the patio, she stared down at the travertine. Where was her disgust? Where was her guilt? Were those emotions just postponed until after the crisis was dealt with? She sniffed at the air. The smell of new cement, drying paint and solidifying glue amalgamated into the single scent of Ryan. His aroma had stayed behind like a haunting.

  She unscrewed the lid of the bottle. You can’t lose a baby with a single shot of tequila. It’s a party drink. Sure, you’ve drank it since you were fifteen. The doctor had assured her that everything was fine. The baby would keep growing, eating up all the clean space. David’s child was inside and beginning to communicate with her. Soon she’d have to share it with the world.

  She took a deep slug and winced. There’s too much going on. I can’t deal with it. The baby will be fine. It’ll be worse for the baby if I flip out for hours. It’s medicinal. I can’t fucking deal with anything right now. She waited for that inherent, gut-wrenching response to stop her from taking more. But it didn’t come. She took another gulp and, step by step, everything about her that had been fuzzy and grey was changing to bright Technicolor. It was like having her brain shaken out like a towel. Bit by bit her thoughts became uncrumpled, creaseless, simple and straightforward.

  Taking a final deep slug, she shoved the bottle into the hedge and out of David’s view. There – baby is fine. I’m better. I can deal with this. Tara returned to the kitchen with shoulders spread, running her hands through her hair. It was strange how the entire situation now seemed more distant – like a horrific news story unfolding live on TV rather than in her kitchen. But she also knew that soon the dreadful reality would collapse on her. So it was important to get David back onside now – to kill, once and for all, his crazy idea about going to the police and leaving her behind, alone, for years and years.

  David was leaning against one of the supporting roof columns. Tara pretended not to notice that he had poured himself another triple measure. You don’t punish each other for figuring out how to survive.

  ‘You’ve given up?’ she asked.

  ‘There is no way out. I don’t have any cards left to play.’

  ‘Don’t be a coward.’

  ‘A coward? A coward? It’s the right thing to do, Tara. The only thing to do. For you and the baby.’

  ‘I’m looking at my husband and I don’t see the man I married. This is not the guy that saved me in a bathroom. This is not the guy who took my going-nowhere life outside the Shelbourne Hotel and moments later made it into something amazing inside its lobby. This is not the guy who I chose to have a kid with.’

  ‘Listen to me for a minute. You’re always wondering what your father would think of your life. Well, what would he think of it now? Do you think he’d agree with your choices? That he’d want you to stick with the man who murdered Ryan and buried him right under his daughter’s feet? The man who not only murdered Ryan, but then gave all your money away?’

  Tara glared at him. ‘My father’s dead. He doesn’t get a say in this any more. There’s just us now.’

  David straightened against the pillar. ‘Tara, there’s no “us” any more. There’s just you and me. Tara and David. So you – you have to hold onto what you have, to make a life for yourself and the baby. Me, I murdered someone. There isn’t anything worse a person can do. I’m screwed. The end.’

  She could feel her heart pounding. ‘In our current situation, a killer is not a bad thing to be. Killers are
the type of people that survive these situations.’

  Astonished, David stared at his wife. ‘I’m not a killer. It was an accident. I didn’t like Ryan, but I didn’t hate him. I didn’t hate him enough to kill him. I’m a university lecturer. I’m a historian. I am not a killer.’

  ‘Act like a killer, or you’ll never lecture again,’ Tara said, justifying the unjustifiable. She knew that she and David now had to be above humanity’s laws. In order to survive, they needed their own new moral code.

  David was clearly stricken by the callousness of his wife’s comments – their rashness. He took a step back and made a tent with his fingers. ‘Where did that come from? What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Nothing. Jesus. I just had a few shots of tequila.’

  David increased the steepness of his tented fingers. He recognised the first phase of her tequila buzz – the phase he never liked, before it mellowed out into being affable and funny.

  ‘You need to stay focused,’ Tara continued, ‘on what’s important. We need a plan. Stop staring at me. Jesus. You can slam back half a bottle of Scotch and I can’t have one drink? Is that all you’ve got to worry about? Can’t we just sort this?’

  He reached out and pushed her backwards until she was pressed up against the glass of the sliding door.

  ‘You’re hurting me.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  She looked to the ground. It was true, he wasn’t hurting her. He wasn’t even trying to demonstrate how angry he was. That had never been David’s style. He was simply trying to get her to look at him.

  ‘Jesus, if there was just one time in the history of the fucking world when a fucking few shots is justified then this is fucking it.’

  ‘You’re pregnant!’

  ‘I know! I know! And Ryan is buried there!’

  ‘First you have sex with Ryan. Now you throw back tequila while pregnant with my baby. Who are you? Jesus Christ.’

  ‘Ryan is dead – DEAD – next to our kitchen. You fucking killed him and Gordon caught you. And Fenton’s... And then I had fucking Christine here today.’

  ‘Ryan’s wife? Here? What the hell did she want?’

  ‘She admired my shoes. I liked her dress. What the fuck do you mean “what does she want”? She was asking about her husband. She’s in shock. She needs to be doing something but there’s nothing she can do. And she fucking slapped me. In my own kitchen. I had to take ten minutes of abuse off her because she knows all about... She knew about Ryan and me.’

  ‘How the hell does she know about that?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue. But believe it or not, that was about as good as my day got. And you, you just expect me to just... to just... I don’t know what you expect me to do!’

  ‘I don’t expect you to lash into a bottle of tequila while pregnant with my child. Are you mad?’ David held up his hands to show her that he was cooling down, that he was still in control, because he rarely raised his voice. He patted his breast pocket for the cigarettes he wasn’t allowed to smoke, took them out and put one in his mouth. ‘Tara, you can’t hurt the kid. OK? No matter what happens to me or between us. Got that?’

  She nodded. ‘Of course I’ve got that. I’d never hurt the baby. Baby’s fine.’

  There was a twinge inside her womb. One of her college friends had a baby that had died when it was one year old. It was like it was just raptured out of the world; its entire life taken away at once – its schooldays, romances, its own children. Another of her school friends had miscarried last year, her body dumping the non-viable foetus like bad stocks. Tara pictured the image of her own baby on the doctor’s monitor – a black stain just floating there, like an oil slick on an ocean.

  ‘David, I need to sit down... No, I think I’m going to be sick.’ And then she ran out to the toilet. But she didn’t vomit. Instead, she locked the door, placed her hands over her stomach and wept. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  * * *

  The rest of the evening passed in a sweaty blur of anxiety and doomed resignation. Tara showered and drank herbal tea with Dora on her knees like a calming stress toy. All the while, she talked and talked, working herself around the same problem again and again, as if she was missing something, as if it would be obvious soon enough. She pleaded with David not to hand himself in, and while he could barely bring himself to talk to her, he eventually reassured her that he wouldn’t, that he would meet Gordon as planned and transfer the money. He would’ve said anything to ease her stress. Finally, she crashed with the mental exhaustion of it all and David walked her to their bedroom at eleven thirty.

  ‘Are you coming, David?’

  He shook his head. Now that the alcohol was on the way out of her system he could barely bring himself to look at her again. I can’t believe what I’ve done to you, to us, to our future, to our child.

  ‘Are we going to be OK, David?’

  ‘I have to lock up. I’ll come to bed later.’

  He shut the door, knowing that she’d be unconscious by the time he got back up. Sleeping for a straight ten hours was not unusual for Tara. He’d seen her sleep peacefully in a New York hotel with a dumpster screeching beneath the window. He’d watched her napping serenely on a Thai night train with all its windows open. But that was back when David’s wife had been his. That was before Sunday night.

  And yet he also took comfort from the fact that she was still there – that Tara hadn’t left; that she was staying with him. The reality was, David loved her for who she was even as he hated her for what she’d done. And he knew his love for Tara was vastly more powerful than any smear of hate. That knowledge was reassuring because it meant that he could vent his anger, knowing that by venting he would diminish his umbrage rather than let it take root.

  Going back downstairs, he walked through all the rooms, holding the purring lump of Dora to his chest, taking everything in, trying to imprint it all onto his brain because soon he’d never see it again. Despite having assured Tara that he wasn’t going to the police, David was resigned to handing himself in. There was no alternative. If he met Gordon in the morning at the bank, then Tara would be implicated in covering up the murder of her lover. In fact, from the moment he’d told his wife the truth, she was implicated. Plus, sooner or later the real police would have to get involved with Ryan’s disappearance. And when they did, Christine would tell them about Tara having slept with her husband – which would have been the last time anyone had seen him alive. From there it was just a matter of joining the dots before it was all over. If Tara and his child were to have the future they deserved, then David would have to take the blame for everything. By him going to the police, Tara would hang onto the house, have a few hundred thousand left over and a bright future once the inevitable hoopla from his trial blew over. She would eventually get used to him being in jail and then maybe move on. She mightn’t want to at first – but he’d make her. He’d make her because he loved her utterly.

  After letting Dora out, he sat at the kitchen counter, staring out into the garden, wondering if Fenton’s men were going to return; if they’d already returned; if they were now down there in the woods, watching everything. Turning on the flexible spray tap, David filled a glass. For a moment, he marvelled at the water pressure. Then his eyes closed as he tried to examine the future in the darkness. Ahead, the tracks of their lives had been blown apart, and all they could do was sit tight and wait to see where their out-of-control carriage would land.

  * * *

  Later, David lay in bed, staring at the ceiling while listening to the fan. How could Tara sleep so peacefully beside him? Didn’t she know that they were on the wrong side of a lost war? He closed his eyes and waited to fall asleep. Over the last few hours he’d drifted off here and there, but every ten minutes he’d awake with a fresh smear of sweat across his chest. Surely sleep would have to come soon? Proper sleep. Not this broken kind that merely teased him with moments of relief punctuated by depressing jolts back to reality
. He’d endured many sleepless nights before Tara came into his life. Back then he’d often dress before strolling around the docklands, drifting by the apartment complexes, envying the darkened windows shielding the sleepers within from the tick-tock of night outside. But he’d also gained comfort from his nocturnal walks, because insomniacs tended eventually to stumble across one another; the world narrowed down significantly at 4 a.m.

  He found Tara’s fingers and enclosed them gently in his. Every man wants a woman who will lie for him no matter what he’s done. Why did you do it? Why did you have to do it? What was the point? Despite what she’d done, Tara deserved the world – he’d always known that, from the moment he’d laid eyes on her as she took her seat at the back of his class.

  At eight o’clock, after the bits of sleep he had managed to extract from the previous six hours, David stepped into the shower and let the water from the rainforest head drill his back. Then he shaved before the steam-covered mirror. Gradually, drops of condensation cut narrow paths of clarity through the mist; streaks of lucidity in which he could see his reflection. He felt no identity with the man who stared back. His dark, saturated hair had a haze about it from the light, giving him a vague, unfinished outline, as if his signal was weak. The bruise was still there on his forehead – but fading – and the skin beneath his eyes had become papery. He could even see the tracery of the blood vessels. Five years older in twenty-four hours – thanks for that, too, Ryan.

  Outside on the landing, he looked up the stairs towards the attic. Intuitively he made a mental note to get Ryan to fix the stain on the wall before the absurd impossibility of that resolution dawned. He thought that he could smell a hint of stale smoke beneath the fresh paint, drifting down from his office. Ryan’s molecules were still in the air. They would always be. He descended to the kitchen, where he opened several cupboards until he found the jar of instant that the builders had left behind. The coffee was so hard that he had to stab at it to loosen the granules before scraping them out.