You are stuck. So fucking stuck. So deal with it.
30
HIS FINGERNAILS DUG IN
Thirty minutes later I park directly in front of the Boone house. My window is open, and my elbow hangs out. I glance in my rearview. My hair is windblown and wild.
Gray sky is tinted fiery orange, streaked with yellow, and blotted with overflowing clouds. Birds shriek, panicking over the coming storm. Dogs bark and squirrels work their extreme sporting events, slingshotting branches and ruffling leaves.
You are going to walk right up. You are not selfish. You are trying to help them. You are trying to help their daughter.
They haven’t given up hope. Of course they haven’t. It’s their child. How could they? Ethan Boone posted days ago on Facebook.
The Boones’ garage door opens. Ethan Boone rolls his recycling bin down his driveway. Leaving my purse in the minivan but palming my keys, I walk up.
His face changes when he sees me. His disgust takes my breath away. He keeps rolling his bin. He’s trying to ignore me.
Don’t let it bother you. He is hurting.
“I found something,” I say. “It’s important.”
He lets the bin drop. His mouth remains an angry line, but his eyebrows raise in interest. His eyes are vacant and afraid. His expression is like a child’s discordant collage.
“I found a Shopkin under Leland Ernest’s mattress.”
Ethan closes his eyes, says nothing.
“He also had a little girl’s sock and a small plastic shovel. It’s yellow. Leland gave your daughter a Shopkin, didn’t he? Was it the broccoli Shopkin?”
He opens his eyes, and they’re wet. He clenches his fists, then splays his fingers. “How did you know that?”
“Someone told me.” I definitely can’t rat out the State’s Attorney’s Office rep.
His eyes are bleary, desperate. The corners of his mouth twitch. “Did you tell the police?”
“No. I broke into his house. I can’t tell them.”
His eyes flicker with shock. He pushes his palm through his messy, graying hair. He’s grappling with his thoughts. “Why? Why would you do that?”
Where to start? How to be concise? How to be gentle?
You’re past gentle. Just tell him. “I’ve been seeing things. I’m not sleeping. I thought I saw your daughter in his window, but wasn’t sure if it was real,” I say. Ethan winces at this. His shoulders droop. His eyes are like house windows, and no one’s home. “Leland’s back door was open. I searched his house. She wasn’t there, but I found the broccoli toy and a girl’s sock and a toy shovel.” The skin under one of Ethan’s eyebrows is twitching. Maybe he’s overcaffeinated or sleep-deprived.
Just like you.
“They were hidden under his mattress,” I say.
Tell him about the dog cage. I can’t. It’s too cruel. Too horrific.
He covers his face with both hands, stands like a statue for a few seconds. “Oh my God.” He wipes his tears away. His eyes are red from crying, bloodshot. He has aged so much since his photo in the paper.
“I have kids too,” I offer, gazing up at the gray A-bomb clouds. “I couldn’t stop worrying about this guy Leland. I wanted to know if you thought he was dangerous. Then I found those things. A little girl’s things. I’m out of my mind.”
He grabs my arms, gripping me tightly, his scraggly fingernails digging into the back of my triceps. It hurts, but I ignore the pain. This man is struggling. He’s angry, but he won’t hurt me. He won’t hurt you. He won’t hurt you.
Please don’t hurt me.
His eyes are angry and bulging and veiny and jaundiced. He’s got this weird black-red dot on his sclera, maybe an artifact of a burst blood vessel. From crying or vomiting. He gets in my face, stinking of alcohol and body odor. “Leave us alone,” he growls.
“What do you mean?” Was I unclear? “Is it your daughter’s Shopkin?”
He speaks slowly, squeezing my arms tighter, pinching my skin. “We can’t stand it anymore. We can barely breathe. Don’t come back here. Don’t fucking come back.”
“But you posted on Facebook the other day. Anyone who knows anything, contact you.”
I pull my right arm away, but he’s gripping me too tight.
“Let go of me.” My voice sounds paper-thin.
He lets go.
“You think he’s dangerous, right? He’s a dangerous man?”
The fury in Ethan’s eyes vanishes and is replaced with a dementia-like confusion. As if he’s not sure how he ended up outside. As if he’s not sure he belongs in this universe. Abandoning his garbage bin in the middle of the driveway, he walks into his house.
I run to my minivan, my skin stinging where his fingernails dug in.
31
THE SHITFACED TODDLER HAS FALLEN ASLEEP ON A PILE OF STUFFED ANIMALS
I found an answer to Wyatt’s bird-formation question. I’m slow, but not apathetic.
Turns out, birds take turns being Point Bird. They are perpetually and seamlessly shifting their position in the V formation as they fly because leading the V quickly fatigues the Point Bird.
Other birds in the V cruise easily along the downdraft of the bird in front of them, getting free lift and saving their energy for when it’s their turn to step up.
Each one of them bears the burden of being Point Bird, briefly. Each bird spends less than a minute, often mere seconds, at the vertex of the V before switching places with another bird. Each takes a hit for the good of the team regardless of whether they are related and regardless of social hierarchy. It’s called reciprocal altruism.
It’s my turn to be Point Bird. I will not drop it. I will keep pushing and prying.
Ten years from now I don’t want to find out that Leland Ernest kidnapped and murdered a few kids. I don’t want to have to soothe myself with complacency and blatant lies. Oh well, what could I have done? I don’t want to be a gaper, a gossiper, a part of the inactive herd.
I vow to be Point Bird.
I vow to live for my kids.
The media terrorists have tried to shame me for this. They have told me, Put your career—your empty, unfulfilling career where you may have to jump through hoops and surround yourself with people you dislike and obey policies you don’t morally agree with—first. They have told me, Put your marriage—to another adult who might decide they don’t want to stay married because you don’t give enough oral or you are not as attractive and peppy as you used to be—first.
But what is more noble than to live for my children? To eat and breathe for my kids? To nourish their souls with stories, advice, encouragement, and confidence-building, intelligence-provoking games and toys? To love them so much I occasionally hover, eating up every precious giggle and discovery? To offer them all my time and energy so that they may look to me for guidance instead of looking to their binge-drinking, hormone-addled peers? To ultimately offer them, kind, capable, and free-thinking, to the world?
The media terrorists would label me a Helicopter Parent.
So fucking be it.
It is 7:23pm when I lie down on the couch and close my eyes.
Rain pounds the roof like falling nails, and its belligerence soothes me.
My mind, the snow globe, is serene and lucid. The shitfaced toddler has fallen asleep on a pile of stuffed animals, and the snow globe sits on the floor, clear and still. Crystal.
* * *
I wake up, horrified and shivering, my heart pummeling. I’m in my bathtub, steeped in frigid water. My nipples protrude like volcanic islands surrounded by murky seas. It’s dark, but there’s a faint, soft glow from the bathroom nightlight.
Sleeping in the fucking bathtub? You’re going to drown yourself, dummy.
My nightmare is still with me and, even though I’m shivering, it is fresh and hot and pungent as the trickling blood of a shot-gunned deer. I see the whole thing in sequence.
Me breaking into Leland Ernest’s back door with a crowbar and a junk-mail
credit card. It’s as easy as the bearded man decked in camo on YouTube promised me.
I leave the crowbar on the cement porch and enter his house, my nitrile-gloved fingers gripping and regripping my hammer, my hands sweaty inside the gloves.
My heart bangs loud and full against my ribcage. Sweat slips down my neck. Time slows.
The lights are off in Leland’s house, and it has that after-lunch, deli-meat, elementary-school smell. A half-eaten hotdog in a bun sits on a paper plate on the counter. A supersize plastic mustard bottle beside it. He left the mustard out. I hate when I do that.
My clothes are damp from the rain, but not heavy. I am careful in my strides, almost shuffling, so I don’t trip on his cat. I climb the stairs swiftly, drawing creaks, but for some strange reason, I’m not worrying about it. Dreams are weird like that.
Doors to the office and spare bedroom are closed. Bathroom door is cracked. Leland’s door is wide open. An open door leading to darkness. Beckoning me.
His lumpy shape tents the blanket on his bed. His drapes are closed, but parted ever so slightly, and the barest sliver of blue moonlight casts a thin rhombus on the wall beside me. Rain patters and pings on the shingles. He left his window wide open. Why?
I take a silent breath, tighten my clammy, nitrile-gloved hand around the wooden handle of my rain-moist hammer, and in one quick movement pull back the blanket.
My heart drops into my uterus.
Empty. His bed is empty. But he was just here?
Are you sure?
I saw the outline of his body.
Did you?
Then where is he? Bastard turned the tables on me. How did he know I was coming?
He didn’t. He couldn’t.
I’m blinking hard, staring at the empty bed, out of breath and grasping for explanations. He’s in the basement. He’s working the night shift. He’s out drinking. He sleeps in the guest room. He’s in the bathroom. He’s in the fucking closet.
I shake my head, trying to loosen the cobwebs. But why did I see him in the bed?
You wanted to see him there.
I turn fast, my back to the wall in case he’s in the closet.
There he is, blocking the doorway of his room. He is a dark silhouette, without eyes, without a mouth. Sparse moonlight casts a faint plank of light on the wall inches to his left. His silhouette is gorilla-like, slouched, jutting chin, thick arms. The bat he holds in his hand hangs down, brushing the carpet. A caveman carrying a club.
I am out-weighed, out-muscled, and out-weaponed.
I have screwed up, made a phlegmy string of bad choices that is suddenly, grotesquely obvious to me.
Leland Ernest stole six or seven nights of sleep from me, molding me into a jumpy, irritable, unpredictable soldier, my jittery finger stiff and sore against my machine gun trigger, my elbows in the mud, blinking my eyes over and over to keep the sweat out and because I’m seeing ghosts of friends I know aren’t there.
My pants are soaked through, but it’s not piss; my crotch and ass sweat profusely. My hands are sweaty and freezing inside the nitrile gloves. I have the adrenaline shakes. I am in the throes of fight or flight.
No one knows I am here. Leland Ernest is going to kill me. My children will be motherless.
Stop. You have already thought this through. He took Ava, but he will not take Chloe.
Leland’s cat slinks behind him, brushes against his leg, and creeps toward me.
“What do you want? Who are you?” Fear and threat meld in his words. His voice is husky with sleep.
I say nothing.
“You broke into my house.” His tone is wet with fury and accusation, but his voice rises into a question with a hint of bewilderment and awe.
I say nothing.
“Who are you?” he spits.
I say nothing.
I wear a black winter beanie and dark clothes. My only advantage right now, if you could even call it that, is to say nothing. I’m not sure I am capable of speech anyway.
Standing here, as far away from him as possible, seems to be my best option.
Halfway to me, the cat pauses near the bed and sniffs at the mattress.
Above the gentle sound of rainfall, sirens rise in the distance.
I am not a religious gal and, even if I were, even in my exhausted, frenetic state of lunacy, I am still not crazy enough to believe some deity would help me out with murdering my neighbor, heinous as Leland Ernest is. Nevertheless, I am thrown a bone. I would be stupid if I didn’t try to catch it.
“Before I came over, I called the police,” I say. “They’re on their way.”
He doesn’t flinch at my voice, the revelation of my womanhood. It’s as if he knew. “You lie.”
The sirens, still blocks away, stop, leaving the room silent but for the soft rainfall outside and my pulse banging against the backs of my eyeballs.
He laughs but the cadence is off and he sounds slightly girlish. Like an adolescent boy, his voice occasionally losing its masculinity and fluttering away.
He was flirting with Ava. My adrenaline-flooded arteries, my tremoring bones, my thumping pulse cannot sustain this intensity. You found a little girl’s sock under his mattress. The cat brushes against my pant leg and skulks under the bed. He was trying to teach Ava to whistle. He gave Chloe candy. My skin is hyper-sensitive, and bile lurches up my throat. He gave Ava candy. He was trying to teach Chloe to whistle. You need to protect Chloe. With my free hand, I grab the mason jar full of pencils from his nightstand, and throw it at him. Pencils go flying.
He raises his hand to block the jar. He deflects it, and the jar hits the wall behind him, shattering spectacularly. I charge, lifting my hammer and swinging it down, aiming for his temple. Bone cracks, thunderous and awful. Before his back hits the doorframe, I strike him again in the same spot.
He stumbles sideways, putting a hand out to break his fall. Another cracking sound. Maybe his wrist. His cheek hits the carpet anyway, and his face is exposed by the faint blue moonlight. Thick dark blood runs into his open eyes, into his open mouth.
His leg goes out and trips me. I’m not sure if it is accidental or intentional, but I go down. I scramble back, out of his reach, and get back on my feet.
He has managed to push himself up and he’s sitting with his back against the wall as if he were relaxing, except his face is veined in blood. Half his face falls within the beam of moonlight, the other half blends into darkness. He moans, whimpers, and coughs. It’s the wet cough of a pneumonia patient. A string of bloody phlegm dangles, wiggling, on his meaty lower lip. He opens his eyes, then closes them.
I don’t want to do this. It’s disgusting. Regret swells inside my belly like menstrual blood. I stand over him, breathing loudly and open-mouthed, winded. I have rolled up my sleeves for numerous disgusting jobs without complaint, but this, this is beyond anything I could have imagined.
I struggle for an alternative. Too late. There is no alternative.
This is the way you protect your children. This is for Chloe. This is for Ava.
I swing my hammer at him again. His blood hits my tongue. Oh, God! Disgusted, I want to spit, but can’t leave my spit in his house. I close my mouth around his blood, tasting metal and salt and meat.
His body is entirely on the carpet, but his head is contorted, kinked awkwardly against the wall. He says, “I know—”
“What? You know what?”
Moments ago, standing in the doorway, he looked like an angry troll. Now he is childlike and sleepy. His eyes flutter open, but they are too heavy, too much of a burden, and they close. He is drifting.
As if he is going to whisper some valuable insight or secret or forgiveness, I plead, “What is it? What?”
There is no mystical secret. No penance. Nothing. End this. Get out of here.
I am sobbing without tears. I don’t want to, but I hit him three more times in the same spot. This time with my mouth shut tight and my eyes squinted. Clots of tissue splatter my cheeks and for
ehead. Two or three bone shards bite my skin.
I back away, chest heaving.
My mind breaks from the gravity of the situation and leans toward absurdity and facetiousness. Exercise gurus never speak to the physical benefits of violent, gunless murder! Good thing I’ve been sprinting a mile. This is the hardest damn workout I’ve ever had.
From under the bed, the cat’s glowing marble eyes mark me.
Now shivering in cold bathwater, I’m staring at black specks of moldy grout between my bathroom tiles. Nightlight’s glow is faint. Go to bed. Forget about Leland. Forget about your violent nightmares.
I grab a crumpled towel from the bathroom floor. It’s damp and mildewy, but I use it to dry off anyway. My clothes are in a pile near the tub. They’re damp too. You must have sloshed water. You’re as bad as the kids. I catch a faint whiff of bleach. Glance at my watch. 3:53am. You can still get a few hours. I pull the plug, and water glugs down the drain.
My nightmare is fading. My heavy exhaustion burns away at the vivid details, leaving the edges black, singed, and hazy with smoke. Dialogue, gone. Internal thoughts, gone. I only remember the plot. That, and the supersize mustard.
My skin still damp, I pull on my warmest fleece pajamas—polar bears riding sleds—and collapse into bed.
32
BRAND NEW TATTOO ENGRAVED IN MY SKIN, JUST BEGINNING TO BLEED
My alarm wakes me at 6:30am, the latest I can get my ass out of bed and make it to work on time. I am the type of tired reserved for the heavily medicated, my limbs filled with liquid metal. My body got its first taste of deep sleep in over a week and, with the decadent taste on its tongue, it is ravenous and gnawing for more.
Hulk is tip-tapping her nails on my floor because she is excited I’m awake and also because her bladder is full. I really should get those nails trimmed.
My hair is damp. Oh, that’s right. You woke in the tub. Dull aches in my forearms and the backs of my knees urge me to stretch, so I take a minute to do so, reminding myself nagging aches are good; they suggest I am a hard worker and I am lucky to be able to move.
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