Mister Tender's Girl

by Carter Wilson

  The way he speaks makes me feel there’s more to the story, though maybe I’m just trying to find something, anything, to propel me forward.

  “Did anything happen between you and my parents?”

  “What do you mean, Alice?”

  “I don’t know. Like an argument. Falling-out. That kind of thing.”

  He looks surprised, but I’m not sure I’m buying it.

  “Oh, heavens no, no. Nothing like that. I mean, sure, Margaret and your mum didn’t always see eye to eye, but what two women do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He’s clearly uncomfortable. “It was a long time ago, Alice. I don’t remember all those things.” Then, he deftly changes to a topic I can’t brush off. “And I’m so sorry to hear about your father. What a horrible, horrible shame. I mean, I could hardly believe it. You know, because…” He loses his words.

  “Because I was stabbed and he was stabbed?”

  Another sip. “Yes. Something like that.”

  The whiskey is starting to take hold of me. “I miss him,” I say. “I feel like…like he was the biggest thing I lost.”

  “Good man, he was. Sweet natured. And, of course, immensely talented.”

  “That talent got him killed. And me nearly.”

  A deep, lonely sigh. “I never understood the obsession,” he said. “I mean, for God’s sake, it was just a cartoon. And yet the girls were plain obsessed. I didn’t think much of it. Hell, fourteen-year-old girls get obsessed by any number of things; it’s wired into their brains that way. But I think the fact they actually went to school with the daughter of the creator… Well, that turned it into something else entirely.”

  But it was more than an obsession, I know. There’s another layer in explaining the depth of the twins’ love of Mister Tender. There were the notes. Melinda even mentioned as much seconds before Sylvia stabbed me.

  He writes to us, Alice.

  Typed letters, as were later shown in court. Source unknown. A total of three of them, each one mailed to the girls with no return address. The content was similar: You will be famous, but you need to sacrifice someone. Signed, Mister Tender. It wasn’t until the third letter that the target was identified: me.

  The Mister Tender graphic novels were a sensation at the time, and nowhere was their popularity greater than at my school. Rather than featuring superheroes or extravagantly overdrawn villains, the Mister Tender stories were simple, dark, psychological studies, all centered around one man and his power of persuasion. A man obsessed with the question of How far would you go? Mister Tender didn’t have to lure his pawns in. They simply walked up to the bar and started talking—and everyone at Mister Tender’s bar had a story. All he had to do was listen. He had intense charm, bottomless empathy, and the ability to ask the right questions at the exact right times.

  He spoke in veiled hypotheticals. What would you do to get rid of that boss you hate? How badly do you need ten thousand quid? If you had to hurt someone innocent to save someone you love, would you do it? The person with the problem would leave the bar, often drunk, mostly dismissing the ideas that had been planted in their head. But there was still a trace. The thinnest of roots. And then there would be notes, left for them at their workplace or on their doorstep. Simple, typed notes, messages of vague inspiration.

  Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

  Dream big, act big.

  You can’t get what you want if you don’t even try!

  Everyone who talked to Mister Tender ended up listening to him. Sometimes the recipient of his advice ended up dead or in prison. Sometimes they got away with murder and were rewarded with everything they wanted. In all cases, none of them ever saw Mister Tender again, for he wandered from pub to pub, and rarely could anyone who knew him in those brief periods quite remember what he even looked like. Handsome was all the detail most could summon. Mister Tender was more a ghost of one’s conscience than anything else, a mirage of want, greed, fear, and all things desperately human.

  The novels were especially popular among teenage girls, who are avid readers but not the typical graphic-novel demographic. But rather than the novels making me popular, I was seen as a bit of an outcast, the daughter of a warped mind, and no one really wanted much to do with me, though they loved talking about me. So when the letters came into evidence in court, and since no author was ever connected to them, it was widely accepted they were written by a fellow student who knew the Glassin twins were already deep into Mister Tender fandom. Whoever wrote them signed my death warrant, either wittingly or not.

  “Did you know about the letters?” I ask Charles. I know what answer he had given at the trial, but I want to hear it again.

  “Heavens, no, Alice. If I had known those letters were being sent, I would have gone to the authorities.”

  I expected this.

  “So, did you ever…” How do I word this? “I mean, was there ever an indication?”

  “What? That my daughters were capable of doing what they did?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is the cursed question I’ve asked myself for fourteen years. Was there a sign? If there was, I could never figure out what it was. To me, they were normal girls. Normal. Not seeing any warning signs makes me more of a failure as a parent than anything else.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Well, Alice, that’s kind of you to say. But you don’t really know that, do you? Besides, I’m not to be pitied. Not with you sitting here in my living room.” Charles swirls the last licks of his second whiskey around in the tumbler. Then he says, “Alice, I never got to tell you how sorry I am, not really. If there’s anything I can do to help you out in any way, please let me know. It would…help me as well.”

  I know just what to ask for.

  “I want to see them,” I say.

  “Who, the girls?”

  “Yes.”

  He considers this. “Why?”

  “Because someone is following me. Has been for some time. Years, I think. I thought I had finally left my past behind me, but it turns out there’s a small community dedicated to my every movement, and there’s one person who seems to be leading the charge.”

  “Good lord. And you think it’s one of the girls?”

  “No. Well, I suppose it could be, but that’s improbable since this person has actually been to my house, and your daughters have been in prison until recently. Anyway, I think it’s a man. He goes by the screen name Mr. Interested. But your daughters might have an idea who he is. There’s a connection to England, to my father, to his artwork. But this Mr. Interested knows everything about me.”

  Charles swallows what’s left in his glass and then just stares at it. He remains this way for several seconds, and I know the glass is just something to keep him from looking at me. He seems to be considering his next words carefully.

  Then he says, “And what will you do when you find this person?”

  “Well, in a way, I have found him. Or at least communicated with him. He even knows I’m here.”

  “Where?”

  “In England.”

  It suddenly occurs to me perhaps he is Mr. Interested. That Mr. Glassin has somehow orchestrated everything, and in his perfect predictability of my thoughts, he somehow even lured me to his very doorstep. A very cunning spider.

  I try to shake off my paranoia, knowing thoughts like this one make everything more dangerous. Whoever Mr. Interested is, he’s only human. I can defend myself against him, and if I can find him, I can attack. But the mental threats against me know no bounds. They are capable of far more lingering damage than fists or blades. If I begin suspecting everyone around me, I’m only helping Mr. Interested’s cause.

  Charles thankfully interrupts my thoughts. “If it helps you, Alice, I can take you to see the girls.”

  “Tomo
rrow,” I say.

  He exhales so forcefully that I can smell the whiskey from my end of the couch.

  “It scares me,” he says. “I haven’t seen them in so long. I don’t have any relationship with them.”

  “Just take me to them, Charles. You don’t need to see them. Just wait for me while I talk to them. Please.”

  Charles sets down his empty glass, stands, and smooths the front wrinkles of his blue oxford shirt with his palms. “Well, hell, Alice, if you’re going to see them, I have no excuse not to. I can’t imagine how difficult that will be for you. Tomorrow, then. We’ll go tomorrow. Are you staying close by?”

  “I’m just over at the Quincey House Hotel.”

  “Okay, good, yes, I know it. I’ll pick you up at, say, ten in the morning. All right?”

  “Good. Thank you, Charles.” I’m thankful for his help, but the idea of actually visiting the twins suddenly fills me with dread. It will be a long night tossing in my bed, and the jet lag will only make it worse. I swallow the last of my whiskey and flirt with the idea of asking for more but decide to leave.

  I stand and walk over to the front door. Charles follows, and I can feel him close behind me. When we reach the door, I open it, and the outside world feels like a relief. I suddenly feel the heaviness of this house, the staleness, the sense it’s little more than a shoe box holding a bug hostage for as long as it takes that bug to die.

  I turn. “Charles, why don’t you have anything on the walls? Photos, keepsakes, artwork. Anything.”

  Charles Glassin puts his hands deep into the front pockets of his corduroy pants and offers me the simplest of shrugs.

  “There’s nothing left I want to remember.”

  Thirty-Two

  Thursday, October 22

  We drive in silence, which suits me fine. Charles seems lost inside himself, and I try to wonder what it must be like to see his daughters for the first time in a decade. My wondering doesn’t last long, as I have my own host of emotions to manage.

  It’s a two-hour drive, and we rumble along the M2 in Charles’s silver Fiat. The shades of gray in the clouds number nearly as many as the shades of green in the patchwork of the landscape. It’s so unmistakably English, that contrast of green to gray at the horizon. I find myself almost hypnotized by it as we drive, and for a little while, I’m happy. Nostalgic, perhaps, for the innocence of my childhood, but behind the melancholy is nervous excitement. As if maybe I can get another try at all of this. A new life waiting ahead of me, where there are no memories of anything horrible chewing at me every day. I don’t want to end up sixty years old with bare walls.

  That positive feeling is fleeting, as it always is, and I shift my gaze out the front window and think about what I’m going to say to the twins. I get as far as hello in my mind, then visualize myself grabbing one of their heads and twisting her neck until the vertebrae offer a satisfying crack.

  So I distract myself with my phone, which is freshly equipped with a local SIM card I picked up this morning. Now I can get data, plus I’m unreachable at my normal phone number. No more texts from Mr. Interested. I thumb through the news, focusing especially on New Hampshire happenings. Still no stories about a body in the White Mountains. I check in with Thomas, wording my email carefully. No red flags there either. Even my mother’s Facebook account has been blessedly free of pleas for attention. Brenda tells me all is well at the Rose, and I even send Richard a light How are you? email, though I don’t expect an answer.

  In this moment, everything is quiet. Everything is still. It’s the kind of silence I imagine two opposing battalions experience as they fix their bayonets and eye one another across a long, grassy expanse. It’s a wonder I haven’t had a panic attack since Starks’s murder. Perhaps attacking real threats rather than memories is doing wonders for my psyche.

  Sometime later, Charles speaks. “Almost there,” he says. We’ve just passed the first sign for Dover, and the clouds, fittingly, have darkened. “Do you want to stop for lunch first?” he asks.

  “I don’t think I could hold anything down.”

  He nods. “Me neither.”

  He fiddles with the GPS on his phone as he slows upon entering city limits. “Just up ahead.”

  “What time are they expecting us?” I ask.

  “They’re not.”

  “What?”

  He shoots me a sidelong glance.

  “I figured it might be best not to announce ahead of time I’m coming, since I’m bringing you along.”

  “Why?”

  His hands seem to grip the steering wheel a little tighter. “I don’t know. Don’t suppose there’s a real reason to it. Maybe I felt like had I called and told Melinda we were coming, I wouldn’t have the ability to change my mind.”

  “Do you feel like changing your mind, Charles?”

  He thinks on this for a moment. “Not really sure what I think,” he says. “But…this sounds crazy. I feel a little scared.”

  “That doesn’t sound crazy at all,” I say. I know exactly what he means. Then something occurs to me. “Am I even allowed to see them? I mean, would this be a violation of their parole or anything?”

  “Huh,” he says. “Guess I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose if you’re the one who wants to see them, should be okay. But I suppose they’ll tell us if it’s a problem.”

  The British voice of the GPS tells us to make a right turn, and then a left. Finally, she commands us to make another left turn on Noah’s Ark Road and that our destination will be ahead on the left.

  “Noah’s Ark Road,” I say. “There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.”

  Charles pulls the car over to the curb and looks up at the clouds, which struggle to hold back a heavy, powerful storm.

  “This is it,” he says, and though I know he’s referring to the address in front of us, he may as well be talking about some point of no return in my life. This is it, Alice. No going back now.

  I look at the row of flats outside my window.

  “Which number?” I ask.

  “Two twelve. They share the same flat.”

  “We don’t even know they’re there.”

  “They’re not allowed many freedoms outside of going to work, which they don’t do on Thursdays. I expect they’re there.”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  I open the car door and step out. As I do, I feel the first of a billion rain drops.

  Charles gets out, and we walk to the door together, slowly, as if marching in a funeral procession. A few feet from the door, we both stop, as if allowing the other person to take the final step forward. After a long moment, Charles moves first.

  He rings the doorbell.

  I don’t hear the footsteps. There’s no warning. Just the sudden rattle of a lock being unlatched. The doorknob turns, then the door opens.

  The woman looks first at Charles, and then her gaze locks directly on me.

  I stare directly back at Melinda Glassin.

  “Praise Jesus Christ,” she says.

  Thirty-Three

  Like her father, Melinda Glassin has aged beyond her years. She’s not even thirty, but her long hair has stray, kinked strands of white, and her pale face looks, ironically, as if it’s weathered in the sun for far too long. Fierce blue eyes blaze against the dark bags beneath them. In one look at her, I immediately think of black-and-white images from America’s Dust Bowl years, of the hardscrabble farmers’ wives, wiry and beaten down, strong but ultimately helpless, working the fields until the ground has no more to give.

  But yet in all this severity, she smiles, and her teeth are a dull yellow, the color of white plastic aged by the elements. It’s the smile that unnerves me the most.

  She reaches out with bony arms to hug her father. Charles seems surprised but steps forward and lightly wraps his arms around her back.
r />   “Daddy,” she says. “You came. I’m so happy you came.”

  Her voice is similar but not identical to the one that haunts me. The one I hear in my head has more of a malevolent hiss to it.

  “I…” Charles finally breaks the hug and stares at the ground. “Yes, I came. I brought someone.” Then he turns to me, as does Melinda’s attention.

  “Yes, I see that.”

  The first words I say to Melinda Glassin in fourteen years are “Do you know who I am?”

  “Yes,” she says. “You’re an angel.”

  “What?”

  She smiles again, not quite as widely as before. “Jesus brought you here so you can forgive me. I’ve been waiting so long to see you, Alice.”

  Whatever I was expecting to happen here, this wasn’t it.

  “I’m not here to forgive you.”

  “You are,” she says. “You just don’t know it yet.” Then Melinda steps back inside the house and beckons us. “Come inside. Oh, please come inside.”

  Charles looks at me, saddened by the whole scene, then turns and enters the house. I hesitate, then decide to follow. As I pass Melinda, she stops me and places a palm on my cheek. Her skin is cool.

  “Oh, Alice,” she says. “It is really you.”

  I remove her hand, fighting the temptation to snap her twig-like wrist. “Don’t touch me. Ever.”

  She nods, keeps smiling. I walk inside.

  The Glassin family seems to share the desire for closed-in spaces, because Melinda and Sylvia’s flat is as dark, musty, and suffocating as their father’s house. Shades are drawn against an already gray day. Few lights are on. Perhaps after a decade and a half in prison, one becomes rather agoraphobic.

  There is no sign of Sylvia, though I imagine her lurking within these shadows.

  Charles says, “I didn’t tell you we were coming. You must be rather surprised.”

  “I’m not surprised in the least,” Melinda says. “God is mysterious, but He is also reliable. He has delivered, quite literally to my doorstep, two people who will forgive me. And when you forgive me, you will see the full extent of His beauty, maybe for your very first time. I first saw it five years ago, in prison. And now…” She clasps her hands together like a little girl watching a butterfly land nearby. “I see it everywhere.”