Water's End

by Jessica Deforest

  Anne could just imagine the sprinkler guy saying, "Defective? I'll show you defective!"

  In truth, the system didn't work properly, but the sprinkler company would not make any repairs and eventually refused to take her calls. Instead, Cindy pressed Tully into service to tinker with myriad pipes, junctions, and sprinkler heads. From then on the system worked sporadically.

  Anne thought more than a few people must have had a good laugh over the system's repeated malfunctions, and she loved it when the sprinklers sometimes blew up, sending geysers of well water onto Cindy's driveway, back porch, patio, and the street.

  There were problems, too, with Tully's parents, who were growing old. Just about a year after Cindy moved to Houston, Ida Lou, then eighty-five years old, called Tully, sobbing. "Your father is in love with another woman," she said. "Come and get me. I'm leaving him."

  In a panic, Tully drove seven hours to Mobile, only to discover that his father had a crush on the woman who delivered their mail. The next day, Tully met her when she made her rounds. She was pretty and appeared to be about twenty-five. She wore a wedding ring.

  “Oh, you must be Mr. Weldon's son," she said, handing him the mail. "He talks about you all the time. What a nice old man your father is. Reminds me of my own granddaddy.”

  Tully had a long talk with his mother and assured her that his father was not having an affair.

  From then on, once a week Tully called and talked with his parents, but on one occasion his father told him his mother wasn't there, so he called back the next day to talk to her.

  "Ida Lou's not here now," Big Tully said. The next day he said the same thing. "I don't know," he said when Tully asked where his mother was. The next day, sounding vague, the old man once again said Ida Lou wasn't home.

  On a hunch, Tully drove to Alabama to find his mother, home from the hospital with a fractured pelvis suffered in a fall, nearly dead in the guestroom.

  Big Tully had brought her home, installed her in the other bedroom, and forgotten she was there. Jess, who slept in the guesthouse out back, hadn’t realized she was home. Badly dehydrated after several days without food and water, Ida Lou had to be readmitted to the hospital.

  On that trip, Tully learned that his parents were eating canned goods and bakery items that Jess fished from dumpsters from behind stores.

  When his parents retired, they bought a 3,000-square-foot house, complete with central air conditioning. Off the kitchen was a spacious home office, which Tully found stacked wall-to-wall with boxes of food.

  "Where'd all this come from?" Tully asked his brother.

  "That's what I find in dumpsters," he said. "There's nothing wrong with it. When we were in the grocery business, we used to throw out lots of food because the expiration date had passed. But it was still good. Nothing really wrong with it."

  Now enormously overweight, Jess started walking for his health, but he was ashamed of his appearance, so he went out only when no one would see him, at night, which led him to trash picking in alleys

  “We donate most of it to the homeless shelter,” Jess said. “It feeds a lot of people, and Dad deducts $20,000 a year on his taxes as a charitable donation.”

  “That’s illegal,” Tully said.

  Later, Tully had a long talk with his parents. "I'm concerned about having you so far away at your age," he said. "You need to be close to family."

  It took little to convince them. Tully remained in Mobile until his parents' house and furniture sold. Then he brought his parents to Houston, where they took up residence in Cindy's guesthouse.

  They bought a used trailer for Jess, who didn't want to leave Mobile.

  Their arrival signaled the end of any relationship Anne might possibly have with Tully, whose every waking hour was consumed with his parents and sister.

  Not only was Anne forced to spend more and more time with Tully's parents, but Cindy began having parties at her house for them. At first Anne thought these gatherings were a nice gesture, and she attended for the sake of the old people, but the get-togethers were awful.

  Cindy's idea of entertaining was serving prepared food from a grocery-store deli or warehouse store, all of it tasteless and loaded with fat, sugar, and starch, at long folding tables on the back porch, a hot, airless addition that was not air conditioned.

  Tully and his family, all southerners, had no trouble with the heat, but after twenty years in Houston, Anne still wasn't used to it and thought she never would be. She couldn't even cool off in Cindy's pool, which lay in full sun, surrounded by cement that absorbed and held the heat. It was like a hot tub.

  Worst of all, the gatherings dragged on all day, with all the Weldons who lived in Texas and Alabama in attendance. A few even came over from Mobile. Anne grew tired of spending even one minute with these ignorant, bigoted people, let alone giving up a whole day off and then being pressed into service to help clean up afterward.

  Before the Weldons moved to Houston, Tully and the children celebrated Mother's Day by taking Anne to dinner at a nice restaurant and spending the day doing something special. Now, Mother's Day meant an all-day ordeal at Cindy's, which Tully insisted Anne and the children attend.

  Anne resented spending all of what had been her special day at a party for her mother-in-law. She wouldn't have minded spending a couple of hours and then going out to dinner afterward, but Tully wouldn't consider it.

  After three years of Cindy's Mother's Day parties, Anne refused to attend, saying she was sick. Then she packed herself a lovely picnic and headed off to the beach with a good book and her portable CD player. Her solitary outing was a special treat, because Tully, who swam like a wounded duck and sank like a stone, hated the beach.

  Cindy’s next power play was an attempt to take over Christmas, and she had convinced Tully that another big Weldon gathering should be a new tradition.

  "I say we spend Christmas at Cindy's house," Tully said.

  "How about next year?" Anne said. "We can alternate, and that way there won't be so much work for everyone. But Christmas Eve is special to me. It's always been just us, ever since the children were born."

  "I don't know about that." he said.

  Finally, when Cindy invited them for both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Anne was firm about it being her turn to have Christmas Day at home. Christmas Eve passed without event and left Anne and the children with the same warm glow.

  But Tully refused to have Christmas with them, angrily stomping out the front door. "I'm going to spend Christmas with my family," he said.

  Aren’t we his family too? Anne wondered just what, if anything, they meant to him. She and the children spent that Christmas at home, and they didn't miss Tully at all. In fact, it was more comfortable without him. From then on, things began to unravel quickly.

  Her musings came to an end when the Fasten Seatbelts sign came on. By the time the plane dropped down out of the clouds to descend steeply, like an elevator in free fall, over the mountains into the Santa Barbara airport, Anne felt she was seeing things more clearly.

  As she had become healthier and more independent, David had resented her even more, doubling his efforts to control her. That alone was enough to destroy their marriage.

  But the added burden of the dysfunctional Weldon family, with all their complications, had killed any remote chance the relationship might have had. After those Jukes and Kallikaks swooped down on her life, she knew she had to leave Tully.

  Then she could divorce the whole lot of them.

  Chapter 19

  Anne spent a couple of days with her mother, whose temperament had become blissfully even, although she was much more forgetful. Amazingly, Agnes Mills had transformed from a fire-breathing witch into a kindly little soul. Anne could hardly believe how different she was. The woman had mellowed.

  Was it freedom from financial worry, old age, or even the climate? She didn’t know, but she was thankful. For the first time she could remember, Anne found herself having fun with her,
and their time together seemed too short.

  Before going back to Los Angeles, Anne set aside one day for herself so she could think. She visited the mission at Santa Barbara and the small art gallery downtown, as she and David had done years before. Memories of that trip so many years ago flooded her. Closing her eyes, she could see David's face, strong and tan in the sunlight.

  After a peaceful, relaxing day, she had come to some important conclusions. In the evening she checked into the motel on the beach in Ventura, musing about David, thinking about her life with Tully, and coming to some important conclusions.

  That night, she slept soundly, dreaming that David lay next to her, breathing softly, silvered in moonlight.

  The next day, hating to go back to Texas, she packed, loaded her suitcase into the trunk of her rental car, and drove to the airport. It was impossible to take her mind off Tully and her marriage, and she knew she didn't have a choice.

  David played no part in her decision. Leaving Tully was something she had to do for herself.

  During the flight back to Houston, Anne tried to think of ways to tell him she wanted a divorce. When they landed, she wanted to turn around and go back to Santa Barbara. Fussing with her carry-on bag, digging in her purse, she did whatever she could to delay her arrival. She was the last one off the plane.

  "Honey, I'm so glad you're back," Tully said as she came down the walkway into the terminal. "I missed you."

  Anne was surprised he had even noticed she was gone. All smiles and hugs, he acted as if he adored her. He was good at playacting in public.

  During the long, silent drive home she thought only of leaving Tully, but she knew it would be impossible to get away until she had more money. She didn't know how much she needed, or how long she would have to wait for support money.

  Her friend Nancy nearly starved during the seven months the judge took to award her temporary support.

  When they got home Tully immediately went into the living room and tossed down several glasses of straight bourbon. It wasn't long before he wore his relaxed drinking face rather than his usual stern mask.

  "Hey, baby, come here and give Tully some sugar," he said.

  Anne was disgusted and blurted out, "That's it. I'm leaving you." It wasn't the first time she had said it. But this time she meant it. And he knew it.

  Before she could move, Tully Weldon swung, with two hundred pounds behind his punch, and hit Anne between the eyes with his fist. The blow broke the frame of her glasses and knocked her to the floor. Her head buzzed, and for a second she thought she was outside, in the dark.

  Stars filled her vision, dancing, spinning, falling, just like in the Saturday cartoons. Tears stung her eyes and ran down her face, and she couldn't catch her breath. Between her eyes, a firebrand burned its way into her face, her skull, her brain, throbbing as it went. She heard Tully walk away.

  After several minutes, Anne found the strength to struggle up onto her elbows, then onto her hands and knees. When she tilted her head, it wanted to stay put, almost as if it had a weight in the left side. She looked around but couldn't tell where Tully was, because her eyes wouldn't focus. Inside, a voice screamed, rising in volume, beating in time with the pounding between her eyes, run, hide, get away, or this time he'll kill you.

  Then the trembling took over, and she wiggled onto her side. With a deep breath, she lurched forward and tried to crawl, but she made little progress. She knew she was pointed in the right direction, because she could see the light in the kitchen. Her right arm went out from under her, and her chin hit the teakwood tiles of the dining-room floor, but curiously, it didn't hurt. She turned her cheek to the smooth tiles and wanted to stay there, sleep, rest, have it over with.

  Tully's cough from the bedroom was the spur that got her up again, weaving on all fours down the hall, creeping along like a drunken tortoise on a hot highway. Tully kept a Beretta in his closet, high up in a green cardboard hatbox with his beaver hat from Germany, along with a World War II Bavarian police pistol. She wondered which one he would use.

  Leaning against the wall, Anne listened, at first hearing nothing but her own heart as it roared in her ears, and then Tully's snore. There were no other sounds. He had probably passed out; that was what she prayed for.

  The thought propelled her forward, head hanging heavily to one side, as if a weight inside tipped it off center. Something ran down her chin. Stopping for a second, she wiped her face with the back of a trembling hand. In spite of her blurred vision, she could see she wasn't bleeding and was thankful it was just her nose running furiously.

  Blinking, she saw more stars explode, but the red haze behind them began to clear. Still, her head hung over to one side, like a basketball half full of water. No matter how she tried to hold it up, her head flopped to the left.

  It must have taken her a good ten minutes to get down the hall and through the dining room before the cool ceramic floor tiles of the kitchen met her hand. The phone was on the wall, only five or six feet away, yet it felt like miles.

  Just let me make it to the phone. If he kills me, I want someone to know who did it. Then she suddenly giggled out loud. The sound startled her. If he kills me . . . what a silly thought . . . he's been killing me for years, in bits and pieces, inch by inch.

  Grasping the countertop, she hauled herself up and snatched the phone off the wall. Her hand was numb, and the receiver fell to the floor. Turning, she put her back against the cabinet, slid down to the floor, grabbed the phone, and scooted on her behind into the corner by the trash compactor. After a few shakes, her hand came to life again.

  She dialed 911. A woman's voice came on the line. "Help me. My husband hit me," Anne whispered into the mouthpiece. "He's got a couple of guns, but I think he passed out."

  "Try to be calm," the dispatcher said. "And stay away from him. The officers are on their way."

  She huddled in the corner, fearing with every sound the house made that Tully might come down the hall. The air fairly crackled as electric sparks of fear snapped through her body.

  Will I feel the bullet rip through me, and will it hurt, or will I just see a flash and then not be here anymore? Will I go off into the universe and have some peace at last? Or will my neurons simply cease to function, like a flashlight turned off?

  Shivering so hard her teeth chattered, she curled herself into fetal position and prayed some more, wondering what she had done to deserve such treatment.

  Tully had been a good man when she married him, or so she thought. What had she known about alcoholism? What did anyone know of it then? She grew up in a time when alcoholics were bums on skid row. Everyone else was considered a social drinker, especially if they had money.

  Over the years she had gone to counseling, to support groups of all kinds, and had read every self-help book she could lay her hands on. As she grew stronger and healthier, she and Tully drifted farther apart. And so it had come to this. They had separate rooms, the children were grown, and there was no sense staying together.

  The doorbell roused her from her thoughts. To her surprise, Anne found she couldn't stand up. Tully let someone in the front door. She peeked around the corner.

  Two men dressed in blue, one tall and thin, the other pudgy, chatted with Tully at the door.

  Anne's fear galloped away with her. Tully, with his handsome, wide-eyed face, could charm them into believing anything. He wasn't much good at holding a conversation for very long, or maintaining any sort of a sustained relationship, but he could fake being a nice guy for a short time better than anyone she knew.

  Knowing she had to get the officers' attention, she said, "Help me, please."

  The two men in blue elbowed their way past Tully into the kitchen. The chubby one helped her off the floor and into a chair. Her head still hung crazily, and she could barely see the man.

  He bent down and peered into her face. "Have you been drinking, ma'am?" he said.

  A wave of anger overcame her, and she could feel her face a
nd neck turn red. "No. I called you because my husband hit me. Why don't you ask him if he's been drinking? That's his territory, not mine. He's an expert, in fact, with about fifty years of practice."

  She was shocked so many words had come out. Tears ran down her face. She was embarrassed, knowing she needed a tissue, as her nose unleashed a flood down her face and onto her shirt.

  The policeman walked through the dining room and into the living room. She could hear him and the other one talking to Tully, but she couldn't make out what they were saying. Anne put her head down on the kitchen table and wished she could die. It would be easier than having to go through all this.

  After an interminable time, the skinny policeman came back into the kitchen, with the other one behind him.

  "Ma'am," the skinny cop said, "your husband is going to file charges against you if you file a complaint. Under the law he has the right to do that."

  The fat cop looked embarrassed but said nothing.

  Anne's head spun as she lifted it to look at the officer, whose face faded in and out of her vision. "What do you mean?" she asked. "How can he file charges against me for beating me up?"

  The skinny policeman cleared his throat and crossed his arms. "Says you attacked him, punched him, and scratched him with those nails of yours. His face is all red."

  Although she could barely see the man, she recognized his cold, passionless stare. It was just like the cruel expression on her husband's face. Two of a kind, she thought. Anne couldn't believe a law officer would think such a thing, say such a thing.

  With intense effort, she kept her speech clear, even though her mouth was numb, like the side of her head. "He's an alcoholic," she said. "His face is always red. And those scratches came from pruning the roses out front."

  The skinny cop narrowed his eyes and shifted his weight. "Ma'am, do you want to file charges or not?"

  She couldn't believe the direction things were going. "Get out of my house," she said.