Mister Tender's Girl

by Carter Wilson

  “And now I’m taking you with me.”

  “Stop. You don’t even know what you’re saying.”

  He mouths something to me. If I had to guess, he said I have to.

  “If you don’t come with me, Alice, I’m going to kill you.”

  “Jimmy, stop it already.”

  “Alice, just do as I say, please. Get in the car.”

  This whole thing is some kind of private performance staged just for me, but I don’t want to be part of it anymore.

  “I don’t care what he’s telling you. I’m leaving.”

  Jimmy takes out his gun and holds it by his side. He’s shaking so much, I’m not sure he could shoot me even from this short distance. But that’s a risky assumption to make.

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask, trying to keep my voice as calm and even as I can. “What’s he threatening you with?”

  “I never deserved you,” he said. He sounds on the verge of tears, and a spit bubble rides his lower lip. “Now get in my car, Alice.”

  “No, Jimmy. I’m not getting in your car.”

  He pauses just a moment, and I can tell he’s listening to the voice in his ear. Waiting for his next set of instructions.

  Seconds later, as he raises his arm and points the gun at me, I know my chance to attack is gone. I had it, right there, in that brief space of time. I could have pounced, but with the gun now trained on me, I’ve lost all the opportunity.

  “I don’t want to do this, Alice.”

  I chance a quick look around. There must be someone seeing a man pointing a gun at a woman, but if there is, I don’t notice them.

  “Put the gun down, Jimmy. You don’t have to listen to him.”

  He nods. Quiet, desperate, defeated. Then, with his free hand, he softly taps his chest.

  “What?” I say. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “Get in the car, Alice. I’m going to count to three.”

  Is this how it’s supposed to end, with Jimmy the proxy shooting me? Mr. Interested is a coward. He can’t even kill me face-to-face. I’m not getting in that car, not going anywhere.

  “One,” Jimmy says. His face is twisted in anguish, like someone is bending his arm to the point of the bone snapping.

  “You don’t have to listen to him, Jimmy. Just drive away.”

  “Two…” he says. Then he mouths something to me, something he doesn’t want the person controlling him to hear. I think I understand. I think he said Who are you talking about?

  This makes no sense. I’m talking about Mr. Interested. Who does he think I’m talking about?

  “Two…” he repeats, drawing it out.

  He won’t do it. He won’t. This is Jimmy. He’s not the greatest example of a human being, but he’s not pure evil. He wouldn’t shoot me.

  Then, in a sickening jolt of realization as he steadies his quivering hand, I think:

  He’s going to kill me.

  I pounce, knowing it’s too late, but it’s the only thing I can do. He’s going to kill me, but I won’t be running away when he pulls the trigger.

  The sound of the gunshot is not as loud as I expected. Just a muffled pop, but I hear it. Jimmy’s eyes widen as I launch my body at him, and in midair, I expect my world to go black.

  It doesn’t.

  I tackle him, and he falls to the ground with no resistance.

  He missed me, I think. No pain. No blackness. He missed me.

  He’s already released his grip on the gun, and I waste no time making sure he’ll stay incapacitated. I raise my fist and deliver a quick blow to his trachea.

  He should be gasping, struggling for breath against blinding pain. He should be reaching for his throat.

  But Jimmy does none of these things. He just lies on the cold asphalt parking lot of Hannaford Market.

  I rise from him and immediately see the blood on his dirty, gray T-shirt. The stain blossoms as I stare at it, growing until his whole chest is a deep crimson.

  “Jimmy?”

  He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t move. His eyes—wide open and staring into the gray skies—don’t blink.

  I reach down and lift his shirt, pulling it above his chest. There’s no way he could have shot himself—the gun was pointed right at me.

  It takes a moment to understand what I’m looking at. A thin metal band, around an inch wide, strapped around Jimmy’s chest so tight, his skin pushes out around it. I don’t want to see, but I have to see.

  I grab under his arm and roll him halfway over, and that’s when I see the little black box—the size of a cigarette pack—held in place by the metal band. It’s positioned directly behind his heart.

  “Oh my God!”

  The voice is behind me.

  I turn and look up at the woman staring down at me. I am suddenly aware of the warmth of Jimmy’s draining blood onto my fingertips.

  She drops a grocery bag at the same moment she starts screaming.

  A jug of milks breaks on the asphalt, and a pool of glossy white collects around Jimmy’s lifeless feet.

  Part III

  Mr. Interested

  Thirty-Seven

  Whatever decision I make in the next few moments will have a cascade of consequences. I have no idea what to do.

  The woman can’t do anything but stare at Jimmy’s body as she continues to scream. A man runs over and looks down as soon as he’s in full view of the scene.

  “Jesus,” he says. “Did someone call 911?”

  “I just did,” I lie. I begin sidestepping toward my car.

  “What happened?”

  The woman tries to speak but only manages a muttering of syllables. The milk has moved up from around Jimmy’s feet all the way to his thighs, making him appear painted on canvas. The other groceries have scattered around the woman’s feet, and I can’t picture her calm enough to ever pick them up.

  “I saw him waving a gun,” I say. “He yelled at me to get out of my car, which I did. I think he’s just some strung-out homeless guy. Then, there was a bang, and he just fell over.” I look over to the woman to see if she immediately contradicts my story, but I don’t even think she’s processed my words.

  “He shot himself?” the man asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I think so.”

  The gun rests a few feet from Jimmy’s hand, next to the front left tire of the Challenger.

  The woman finally speaks.

  “Is…is he dead?”

  I don’t answer.

  Three other people are coming our way, and I know I have to make a decision soon. A quick glance at the parking lot lights tells me there aren’t any security cameras out here. For all I know, this woman is the only person who even saw me attack Jimmy, and she couldn’t have heard our conversation.

  I realize I have Jimmy’s blood literally on my hands, and then add, “I tried to help him, but I don’t have any medical training. I didn’t know what to do.”

  The man nods at me and then puts his arm around the hysterical woman and squeezes her shoulder. His close-cropped hair, square jaw, and solid build assign him an authoritative look. Military, even.

  “Come on,” he tells her. “You don’t need to be looking at this. There’s nothing we can do… The police are on their way.” He turns her away from Jimmy, then bends down to pick up her groceries.

  “Look,” I say to him, “I don’t want to be involved in this.”

  “I think you have to wait for the cops to come,” he says. “They’ll need statements.”

  This is when I make my decision. I like to think it’s a calculated one, that I’m playing to odds I’ve fully weighed, but the truth is I’m scared. I’m getting the hell out of here.

  “Sorry,” I tell him. “I’d like to help but I can’t talk to the police. I… There’s someone looking
for me, and I don’t want him finding me. If I’m in the paper, he’ll know I’m here. I can’t keep running.”

  My words are only half lies. As I walk to the car, I half expect this man to stop me, yet he lets me go. But as I pull away, I look in the rearview mirror and see the man holding up his phone at eye level. He’s taking a picture or video. Of my car. My license plate.

  My hands start to numb as they grip the steering wheel, an icy flow that starts at my fingertips and makes its way up my arms, through my shoulders, and then finally fills my chest, making it difficult to breathe. My limbs begin with that familiar, prickly tingling. Panic attack coming. I can feel it as much as I can feel the stickiness of Jimmy’s blood on my fingertips. I’m due for one. Overdue, really. I made it through the events in London without one, and I was beginning to think that confronting my fears head-on was curing me. Seeking Mr. Interested in earnest, visiting the site of my attack, taking control for once—that somehow those were steps to freeing myself of constant fear.

  But now I feel it all slipping away with every shallow, gasping breath.

  I’m on the highway before I even consider the idea of going back home. I can’t be alone for this. Not this time. This is going to be a bad one. I keep going, gaining speed, focusing only on the road, the white lane markers slipping by in a blur, knowing after thousands of them I’ll be at my mother’s house. I’ve never wanted to be taken care of as much as I do in this moment. I want to surrender and have someone there to hold me when I do.

  My phone buzzes, pulling me out of my trance. A text. I glance down at the console where the phone sits. It could be anyone, but of course it isn’t. I know exactly who it is. I can’t not look at it, just as I can’t stop any of this anymore. I reach for the phone and flip it over, and there’s only a one-sentence text waiting for me from an unknown number.

  I’ll always be there to save you, Alice.

  These words fill me with dread, because the pattern is now both obvious and insane.

  Mr. Interested forced Jimmy to threaten me, just so he could then kill him.

  Yes. All the same pattern.

  He told Freddy Starks where to find me, then planted a gun to let Thomas and me kill him.

  He sent a man to confront me in London, and probably would have done something to stop him, had I not attacked the man first.

  And it all started the moment he called the police when I was bleeding to death in Gladstone Park.

  I’ll always be there to save you, Alice.

  It’s a circle, a demented, fourteen-year-long cycle of abuse and rescue. Mr. Interested has a savior complex. He’s been tracking me for years, probably fantasizing about the high he got rescuing me. But only recently did he finally act on it.

  Because he’s sick, I tell myself. He said he was dying. So now he’s living out his fantasy before he no longer has the chance.

  I fall back into a trance, trusting instincts to guide me to my mother’s house. I’m slipping away, and I’m not sure any amount of breathing exercises will keep my car from careening over the median into oncoming traffic. Or even if I want it to.

  Focus. Keep focusing. One mile at a time. Don’t think of anything. Clear your mind. Let go.

  I am in control, I tell myself. Then I say it again, this time aloud.

  “I am in control.”

  Over and over again, hundreds of times, each aloud, and it’s just enough to get me to the exit at Arlington. I weave through the small city streets, past Mount Pleasant Cemetery, until finally I jolt to a stop in front of my mother’s house. The second I open my car door, all the focus and control I’ve clung to spills from me. The dam has burst. I nearly collapse as I stagger up the steps and grab the doorknob.

  Locked.

  I pound weakly on the door, then ring the bell over and over again. What if they aren’t here?

  Then I hear movement inside, and I lean against the sun-warmed door, using it to heat my freezing bones.

  The door opens, and I fall into the house, weakly bracing myself with my hands as I hit the hardwood floor.

  My mother stands over me, and for the first time in a very long time, I’m happy to see her face. She is my mum, and she’ll take care of it.

  “Alice, dear. My God.”

  Then I slip beneath the surface into the silent, deep, dark waters.

  Thirty-Eight

  Wednesday, October 28

  I wake with a jolt, unsure of where I am, how I got here, and even very nearly who I am. It’s very dark. Hot. A dry, static hot, and my tongue swells in my mouth, begging for water. Yet my skin is covered in sweat.

  In seconds, bits and pieces flash back to me. I was driving to my mother’s house, racing against the onset of a very bad panic attack. She opened the door, and I collapsed inside the house.

  I’m in my mother’s house.

  In a bed, must be the guest room upstairs. My body is so tightly spooled by sheets that I feel mummified. I try to lift my arms but my movement is restricted, and this alone makes me want to scream in fear. Relax. Move slowly. And when I do, I free my right arm, and then my left.

  More memories flood in.

  Of my mother taking me upstairs by the time the attack took complete control of me. Of being in a ball on the bed, immersed in the blackest of thoughts. The absence of all hope. The desire, the thirst, to kill myself, and the thought that even death wouldn’t provide me relief. The hell of everything.

  I sit up and stare into the darkness long enough that I can finally make out the cracks of light around the windows and door. No idea what time it is, or even what day. I can hear the familiar sound of a space heater whirring somewhere nearby. My mother always uses these, because she thinks they cost less than the central heat, and the one in this room has raised the temperature to a thousand suffocating degrees.

  I remember sobbing uncontrollably, crying until my lungs hurt.

  There’s something else.

  I was saying something, over and over.

  It was…

  I miss Daddy.

  Rocking back and forth in the bed, crying into the dark like a scared, little girl, sobbing I miss Daddy.

  More images from last night slowly take focus. My mother entered the room. Her hand on my back, there there-ing me, telling me she had a glass of water. Me, reaching for it, gulping it down greedily, feeling that it didn’t taste right.

  Her telling me she’d put a little something in it. Just to help me sleep. Just a little special powder she sometimes gives Thomas when he’s upset.

  Then it’s all a blur. But there was sleep. Sleep like death, deep and shapeless, dark and vulnerable.

  And now I’m awake. Alive, I think. Feeling like I’ve been hit by a truck.

  I get out of bed, stand with unsteady legs. Move to the wall, flick on the light, brace against the brightness. My eyes adjust, and I scan the room. No purse, no phone. Still in all my clothes.

  Open the door, head into the hallway. Hazy light streams from the far windows, but it’s soft and weak, the light of morning. Thomas’s room is next to mine. I crack open the door and peek in. He’s asleep, headphones on, a bottle of prescription pills and a Mountain Dew can on the dresser next to him. I’m about to leave him alone, let him sleep, then choose instead to go inside. I’m pulled to him out of some emotion I can’t quite define, but its closest relative would be sadness.

  I watch him sleep, listen to his heavy, heavy breaths. I feel weak just looking at him, knowing how much he struggles just to live a normal life. But Thomas isn’t normal; he exists in a state of arrested development, and the growing chasm between his biological and emotional years will forever define him. We are all defined by something, and in this moment, I think how I’ve been solely focused on my own labels, not considering nearly enough that Thomas’s struggles are no less real or significant than my own.

  I neve
r should have left him alone.

  It’s a sudden, jarring thought, one as clear as if being spoken directly into my ear.

  He should not be here.

  I should not be here.

  I came here seeking my mother’s comfort, and she responded by drugging me.

  My gaze flicks to the bottle of pills on Thomas’s nightstand, the white, plastic cap resting, but not secured, on its top. I pick it up, remove the lid, and find the bottle half-filled. The capsules are the blue of a robin’s egg. So simple and pretty, in their own way. The label lists the drug name; it’s long, stuffed with vowels, and unfamiliar to me. Must be one of the meds for his bipolar schizoaffective disorder. Who knows what effect, good or bad, it’s having on him? I have an urge to take the rest of these and flush them down the toilet, along with the past fourteen years.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  My mother stands in the doorway, her frame filling a good portion of it.

  “I don’t know,” I say. My throat is painfully dry. “I just wanted to see him.”

  “He needs his sleep, Alice. As do you. You had quite a night. Poor, poor dear.”

  I gave the pill bottle a little shake. “What are these for?”

  She lets out a breath with effort. “They calm him down.”

  “They’re a sedative?”

  “Alice, please don’t come here and start judging. You don’t understand the needs your brother has.”

  I put the pills back down on the side table. Thomas hasn’t stirred an inch. That whispered voice is back in my ear.

  Don’t leave him here, Alice.

  “What did you give me last night?” I ask. “I can’t remember much, and I feel like I weigh a ton.”

  She takes a step inside the room and crosses her meaty arms against her chest.

  “Something to help you sleep.”

  “You sedated me?”

  “You were quite a mess. I helped you. That’s why you came here, right, Alice? Because you needed your mother, and I helped you.”