by Paul Lederer
He felt uncomfortable and less than secure walking the empty streets; the six checks he was carrying in his briefcase totaled $164,853 – no small amount. There was $36,000-plus apiece for Mother, Raymond and Aunt Trish; three checks for $18,317 for each of the younger Tuckers. He tried to stride on confidently, but he was wary. The neighborhood was no longer among the best, and in this thick fog….
‘Tucker?’
Edward nearly jumped out of his skin. A tall man wearing a red baseball cap and a green quilted jacket approached him from across the street.
‘Oh, it’s you, March. What are you trying to do, scare me to death?’
‘Sorry.’
‘What is it you want?’ Edward asked suspiciously.
‘I was out looking for Sarah,’ Don answered. ‘I saw you and figured that you would know where she is.’
‘I do.’
Edward had started walking on his way again. Don fell in beside him, hands in his jacket pockets, cap tugged low.
‘Look, March,’ Edward said in exasperation, ‘I believe that you were trying to help Sarah, I really do. But she’s not lost now. She’s with her parents, and believe me, they do not want to see you.’
‘Tough,’ Don said, and he was grinning. ‘I want to see them. I want to settle a few things.’
‘Leave well enough alone, will you? You’re not needed or wanted. Raymond would punch your head off. He doesn’t like you at all.’
‘Raymond doesn’t like anyone as far as I can figure,’ Don said. ‘That doesn’t matter either. I’ll just tag along.’
Edward halted. ‘Look, I don’t need you around to make a bad thing worse. Get lost, March.’
‘No. I think I’ll just walk along behind you if you don’t care to talk to me.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ Edward said, ‘come on, then.’
He marched on in squishy shoes. Don stayed with him, following three steps back.
Well, it figures, Edward thought. The most screwed-up day of his life. Well, maybe the second most … the night Raymond had caught Eric in Sarah’s bed had been worse. But that was long ago. As brutal as it had been, time had softened the impact. It’s my own fault for trying to take care of their legal matters, Edward decided. Well, it was the last time he would attempt to manage any ‘family business’. In half an hour, with luck, he would be away from them all for good … if only March could be persuaded to be rational about this.
‘Look, March,’ Edward said, slowing to talk to him. ‘Will you do me this courtesy? Let me go in and take care of the business end of things first. Then you can visit Raymond and say whatever it is you have to say to him.’
‘You want me to give you time to make your getaway?’ Don asked.
‘It’s … yes! If you want to put it that way. I just don’t want anything more to do with them, this town, or you.’
Don nodded, ‘That doesn’t seem like too much to ask. OK, we’ve got a deal, Tucker.’
‘Thank you,’ Edward said, with deep relief.
They went on in silence. At one corner, a car driving with only its parking lamps on nearly clipped them. The fog was deeper than ever, smelling of salt and kelp and distilled oil.
‘Tell me, March,’ Edward said after a while, ‘what is it you’re after? What is it you want?’
‘Sarah – it just sort of came to me suddenly, Tucker. I want Sarah.’
‘You…!’ Edward tried to laugh, but was too astonished. ‘Have you been drinking?’
‘Some. Earlier. I’m sober now.’
‘And you are going to walk up and say that to Raymond – that you want Sarah?’
‘Not in those words.’
‘You’re insane.’
‘Could be.’
‘He’ll kill you, or at least have you arrested.’
‘I don’t honestly think he can do either.’
‘Maybe I won’t take you over there with me,’ Edward said.
‘What’s it to you? I said I’d let you clear out before I talk to them. Hey, I’m sure not going to do anything to hurt Sarah. I know she has to go away to a hospital, at least for a while. It’s not like I’m planning on abducting her, running off with her or something. I am not actually crazy, Tucker, I just am in awfully deep.’
‘Jesus! If it’s not insanity, it’s the next thing to it. This is wild-eyed optimism, friend, bordering on criminal recklessness.’
‘Yeah.’ Don was still smiling. ‘I’m not going to say this again, Tucker: I am not going to harm Sarah in any way. If Raymond and I get into it … well, you don’t care if I get whipped. Why should you? And I don’t think you’d care much if your father got his butt kicked. Besides,’ Don said with a wink, ‘as far as not taking me there – that looks like a motel right up ahead, doesn’t it? I’d bet I could probably find my way there from here, wouldn’t you think?’
‘I think….’
From around the corner, an ambulance appeared, red lights flaring against the fog, siren blaring piercingly. The banshee wail covered Edward’s words.
‘Christ,’ Edward said a moment later, ‘it’s the motel! The ambulance is pulling in there!’
Both men started running. It could be anything; a heart attack, someone with food poisoning. It could be anyone at all in the motel that the ambulance had come for, but they both knew something had happened to the cursed Tucker family.
‘Why in God’s name did she have to follow him here!’ Edward shouted to the skies. Why? He had tried to talk Ellen out of it, but Mother’s mind had been made up. What was he supposed to do, tie her down?
Don was thinking only of Sarah as they ran between two brooding olive trees and out onto the damp asphalt parking lot. People were crowded around the white ambulance. The two-way radio inside crackled; a blue light rotated lazily on top of the vehicle. The ambulance attendants were wheeling a gurney out from one of the rooms. Raymond and Ellen Tucker walked along beside them.
Sarah!
Don and Edward fought their way through the gathering crowd. Everyone was talking at once; nothing could be heard. Edward was cursing – his parentage, his fate, the Universe – Don couldn’t tell which.
March frantically shouldered his way past two middle-aged people in bathrobes and reached the ambulance just as Sarah was being lifted up and into it.
‘What happened? How is she?’
The attendants only looked at him. No one answered; they were trained not to. One tall, freckled ambulance guy pushed Don away with a hand to his chest, not angrily, but firmly.
Don could see the bloodstained bandages on Sarah’s arm, the blood on her face. She lifted her head and her uncertain eyes met his briefly before the door was closed in his face. He grabbed the ambulance driver’s arm.
‘Which hospital are you taking her to?’
‘Northshore.’
Don turned away in a daze. The ambulance was on its way within seconds, the siren screaming. Don ran to where Edward stood speaking to his parents. He grabbed the lawyer’s arm.
‘Are you going out to the hospital?’
‘I don’t know … let go of me.’
‘I need a ride.’
‘Get the hell out of here!’
‘What’s he doing here?’ Raymond Tucker demanded.
‘I don’t know!’ Edward said. ‘I don’t care!’
‘We have to get to the hospital!’ Ellen said. Her hair was in wild disorder. Don noticed that she smelled of whisky as did Raymond Tucker; his eyes were red, bleary and hateful.
‘You get out of here,’ he hollered, leveling a finger at Don.
‘What happened?’
‘… Glass,’ Ellen was saying to Edward, ‘she just threw herself at the window!’ She was gripping one of her son’s hands tightly with both of her own.
‘… Be all right,’ Raymond said, ‘they’re taking her where they can help her.’
‘Why did you bring her here!’ Edward shouted. Still a knot of spectators hung around, listening.
Don asked i
n anguish, ‘Are any of you people going to the hospital?’
‘I told you to just get out of here!’ Raymond bellowed in response.
‘Let’s go into the room,’ Edward said, not liking this public forum.
Ellen began to cry.
Now Don could smell sex all over her as well as liquor; everything about her was disarranged.
The ambulance’s siren had faded into the night, and Don turned and began running through the fog toward Jake’s house. He had to be with Sarah. There was nothing to be had from that family. Nothing. They had done something once again to hurt Sarah. What, he did not know, but they had hurt her, and he hated each and every one of them. He ran on through the endless, darkly unfolding fog.
‘Get inside,’ Raymond Tucker said sharply. The gathered crowd infuriated him. ‘Let them find their own little crises to slaver over.’ He grabbed Ellen roughly by the arm and turned her back toward the motel room. Edward followed with his briefcase, moving heavily, repeating to himself endlessly, ‘No more. No more….’
Inside the room, Raymond despondently inspected the empty whisky bottle. Ellen sat on the bed, trembling.
‘We should go to the hospital. We have to go,’ she said in a whisper.
‘There’s nothing we can do at the moment, Mother,’ Edward said, ‘except sit and wait. She’s in good hands. Raymond will drive us up there after a while.’ He patted his mother’s shoulder consolingly. Edward had no intention of going out to the hospital tonight or any other time. ‘Let’s do what we can here for now.’
He opened up his briefcase and sorted through the papers, solemnly handing each of his parents a copy of the property papers with a check in the amount of $36,034 attached.
‘Aunt Patricia’s check will be sent to her in the morning. I will keep Sarah’s money in trust. Eric’s.…’
Edward offered the blue check made out to Eric Tucker to each of them. Neither accepted it.
‘For God’s sake!’ Edward said in exasperation. ‘I am leaving tonight. Tonight! I have a law practice to see to if you all have somehow forgotten. I refuse to continue this hide-and-seek game any longer. I’ve done enough, haven’t I?’ he asked nearly pleadingly.
‘You should’ve left his check with Dennison,’ Raymond said coldly. He was carefully folding his own check, placing it in his worn wallet … they had all given him that wallet at Christmas so many, many years ago….
‘Eric’s here,’ Ellen said suddenly.
‘What?’ Edward stumbled through momentary confusion. Would this never end? He had a legal practice and Jill, a stenographer with sharp humor and lazily emphatic moves in bed, waiting for him at home in Barrett Point. Home! It seemed moon-miles, centuries away.
‘What do you mean, he’s here?’ Edward asked.
‘Somewhere around,’ Raymond said, rising to shove his wallet down into a front trouser pocket. ‘We saw him earlier. Drunker’n shit. Staggering around out there. I don’t know what he was doing – looking for his check, I suppose. He must’ve spotted my car out there.’
‘Well … then I’ll leave his check here,’ Edward said.
Anything. Anything to detach himself and get out of this town!
‘We don’t know if he’s coming back,’ Raymond said, reaching for the jacket he had left over the back of a chair.
‘We have to go see Sarah!’ Ellen said, her voice bordering on a shriek.
‘Mother,’ Edward said sternly, reviving what was left of his patience, now strained and ragged, ‘you will still be staying up at the old house for a few weeks. Let me give you Eric’s check to hold for him. Please!’
Please! No more of this!
He forced the oversized check into her hand; she accepted it as if it were a repugnant thing.
‘OK, god-damn it,’ Raymond Tucker said, ‘that’s settled. Let’s go up to the hospital.’
It was all nearly solved now. He had his check – they all had their rotten checks. He would drive Ellen up to Northshore to check on Sarah. Then he would leave. Go! Leave Ellen there at the hospital. She could afford a cab, right?
All that the evening had taught Raymond was that no matter how you looked at it, a piece of ass always cost something.
Eric, still waiting in the shadows as the commotion died down, was thinking other thoughts as he watched most of the guests wander back to their rooms, switch on TVs or roll into the darkness to make love. His thoughts were that, in time, every sin a man commits will be paid for. In time, all of the dirty, fumbling, crimes, the secret offences of the soul garner a retribution, and retribution – in time – gains its own inevitable urgency.
‘Drunk. I must be stone drunk,’ he thought, snickering at the mock-philosophical, pseudo-Biblical turn his thoughts had taken.
Revenge is resolution, he told himself, not bothering to pause to examine the maxim to see if it made any sense. He understood it well enough, and he liked the sound of it. He repeated it silently.
He was standing next to one of the motel’s row of old, far-branching olive trees. The night had returned to its silent coolness; the flashing lights and jumble-garble of voices had drifted away on night-fog wings.
The gun was heavy in his hand. Cold and damp; inert. One could almost disbelieve that it was a deadly thing promising heat and destruction; a sudden rearrangement of reality. It was even capable of producing Truth.… Eric walked forward, the old pistol tightly in his grasp, some indefinite, eager dream of redemption in his wildly beating heart.
Revenge is love.
‘I love you, Raymond.’
Eight
THE FIGURES IN the motel room now formed a grim tableau. Washed in murky light, poised on the rim of activity, yet somehow unable to move as if the corrupt night had enervated their lives, ambitions and souls. Their faces were lost in accusing shadow, except for the intermittent flash of neon impulses striking at their eyes like a distant remembrance of morality.
Edward spoke first. He stood near the open door, watching the creeping fog, foolish in his damp and rumpled suit. A bit of his own reflection, caught in passing in the shoddy bureau mirror, disgusted him. He had been transformed in one day from dapper, quite talented young attorney to a shabby never-was. All he could do was drag his Hydian replica home. Away….
‘Are you going out to the hospital tonight?’ Edward asked the shrunken woman in the disarranged dress; his mother. She looked up at him – hopefully, despairingly? He didn’t know which.
‘Are you, Edward? Are you taking me to see Sarah?’
‘No….’ He shook his head. ‘No, I’m not. Nothing can be done.’
‘Oh,’ she said simply.
‘Of course I’ll still be managing all of her affairs.’
‘Of course.’
‘Edward’s right,’ Raymond said, sounding confident again. ‘Sarah’s in the best of hands; there’s nothing we can do for her tonight.’
‘She’ll need a nightdress,’ Ellen said, but it was obvious that she did not want to go to the hospital either. She sat looking at her hands, the carpet, sparing only one meaningless glance for Raymond.
‘Well, then….’ Raymond told his son. ‘You have my home number. There’s nothing more we can do here. Not tonight.’
That was the moment Eric entered the room.
He was a bleak and battered fog-wraith. It took Edward a full half-minute to recognize his own brother.
When Raymond Tucker lifted a warning finger, Eric raised the gun.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Raymond demanded. He took a menacing step forward. Eric cocked the pistol and Raymond froze in mid-stride, not liking the crazed look in his son’s eyes at all.
‘Look here!’ Edward said, attempting to intervene.
‘Shut up, Edward!’
The muzzle of the pistol briefly drifted in Edward’s direction. Then Eric returned his attention to his father; there was a hard focus in his eyes. Now he spoke with soft contempt.
‘How can you say “There’s nothing more to do
here”, Raymond? There is so much to do.’
‘Like?’ Raymond asked suspiciously.
‘Like getting at the truth, Raymond. Daddy … get back a little! I mean it!’
Raymond tried to laugh, but it was mock bravado at best – more likely it was simply nerves. There is nothing funny about anyone with a gun in his hand.
‘What did you come here for?’ Edward asked.
Eric looked at him. There was an unhealthy glimmer in his eyes.
‘Why, Edward! To kill our father, of course.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Eric mocked. ‘Don’t go crazy. Live and die in your father’s shadow.’ He spoke as if reciting Commandments.
‘Eric, don’t do it,’ Ellen pleaded, but she was not begging for Raymond’s life; she had a premonition of what was to come.
‘Oh, yes, Mother. It can’t wait any longer.’
‘What can’t wait?’
‘Don’t you know, Edward? Can’t you guess?’
‘No, damn it! What?’
‘What…?’ Eric’s face became a stony copy of his father’s as his rage spread. ‘Sarah, you goddamned idiot!’
‘Sarah…?’ Edward spread confused hands. ‘What about her?’
‘Eric, no….’ Ellen said burying her face in her hands. They saw her shoulders begin to tremble.
‘Shut up, Mother!’
‘All right,’ Raymond said, ‘I give up! What in hell is this all about? Maybe you can tell me when you’re sober. First you tell me that you want to kill me, then you want to talk about Sarah.’
‘It’s because of Sarah that I’m going to kill you, you bastard!’
‘What in hell are you talking about!’ Raymond asked. He was growing a little hysterical himself.
‘Tell him, Mother!’ Eric demanded.
Ellen only wagged her head heavily, remaining silent.
‘For God’s sake, Eric!’ Edward shouted. ‘Why don’t you just come out with it?’
‘Mother?’ Eric asked again. ‘Mother!’ Then with disgust, ‘God, what a faithful bitch you were.’