Mister Tender's Girl

by Carter Wilson

  It’s true. I didn’t want to be alone. The visions of yesterday afternoon stab at me.

  The parking lot.

  The fear in Jimmy’s eyes. His gun pointed at me.

  The explosion. The screaming woman.

  The blood.

  I hold my hands up and see the faded red stains of Jimmy on my hands. Did my mother see the blood?

  “You were in fits, Alice. What happened yesterday?”

  “Where’s my phone?” I ask.

  “Downstairs,” she answers. “Alice, what set you off yesterday? You were screaming, you know.”

  Screaming? I close my eyes and concentrate. Before she moved me to the bedroom, I was on the living room floor. Thomas was there. Trying to comfort me, I think. My mother told him to leave me be, that she would handle it.

  Then Thomas was yelling. At her, I think. Telling her It’s all your fault.

  Then she moved me. Gave me the water with the powder. Then there was just darkness until I woke this morning.

  “I don’t remember much,” I tell her. “God, I could go right back to bed. Sleep for a week.”

  Her eyes widen at this. “Alice, yes, of course, dear. Go back to bed. Take as much time as you want. You could stay here for a bit, you know.”

  “I can’t. I just can’t.”

  “You’re falling apart at the seams, Alice. I can see it. You look terrible, you know. Does this all have to do with that book you received in the post? Is that why you went to London? You never tell me anything, and all I can do is sit here and worry.”

  Thomas still hasn’t moved an inch, but I don’t want to wake him by continuing the conversation in his bedroom.

  “Can I get some coffee?”

  She wipes her hands on the front of her pants. “Yes, of course, dear. Come on, then.”

  I follow my mother down the stairs, watching her take each tread carefully.

  In the kitchen, she prepares a pot of coffee and offers me crumb cake, which smells the way God must. I take only a small piece, knowing too much sugar will make me want to crash even harder than I already do.

  “I went to see the twins,” I say.

  “The twin what?”

  “The twins. The Glassin twins.”

  Her eyes widen, and her fleshy cheeks immediately redden. “Jesus and Mary. Why on earth would you care to do such a thing?”

  “I’m trying to figure out who sent me the book.”

  When she puts her hand on her hip, it sends me back to every argument we’ve ever had. “So you flew to England and went to a prison to see those wretched girls?”

  “No. I went to their home. They just got out.”

  “They’re out? How are they allowed back into society?”

  I shrug. “I don’t make the rules, Mom.”

  “You don’t even seem upset,” she says.

  “Well, I’m sure you wouldn’t have said that last night,” I say. “Right now, I don’t have the energy to be bothered by anything. Pour me a cup, and maybe that’ll give me the strength to work myself up a bit.”

  The coffeemaker has spit out just enough to fill a mug, which my mother does and hands it to me. Dark and delicious.

  I take a deep breath and try to find a solid, balanced center within myself. When I feel I’m close enough, I look down to the countertop and say, “Mom, whoever sent me that book—whoever did those drawings—has been following me. Stalking me. Is obsessed with me and the stabbing. I think he’s been following me for years. In fact…”

  When I look up, I find my mother staring straight at me, the kind of stare that is so focused, it can only be used as an effort to keep from shouting.

  But very softly, she does speak. She says, “In fact what?”

  I let another long breath out. “In fact, this person might be the same person who found me that night. The one who called the police.”

  “That’s ridiculous. That person was just a bloke who didn’t want to be involved. He saved your life.”

  “I know he did. And now he seems to be obsessed with the idea of continually doing that.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, not wanting to reveal to her how deep this all goes. I don’t know if I’m trying to protect her from the truth or just don’t want to have to manage her reaction to everything. God, if she knew about Thomas shooting Freddy Starks…

  “Wait, have you had contact with this person?”

  “Some,” I admit. “A few emails. He’s baiting me, and I’m trying to find him.”

  “Why in the world would you want to do that? What would you do if you even found him?”

  That’s the question, really. What happens if you find Mr. Interested, Alice? Just tell him to please leave you alone? Or would you do what you did to that poor British man and nearly beat him to a pulp?

  “I don’t know. But I can’t keep living my life knowing he’s out there.”

  She shovels a generous piece of the crumb cake in her mouth, swallows quickly, then says, “Alice, you needn’t pursue bad things. Enough bad things have found you without any effort on your part. Leave the past in the past. Ignore this person… I'm sure he'll soon leave you be.”

  “I don’t understand why you want me to sit back and be a victim.” Although I do understand. It’s the role in which she excels.

  “I just want you to be safe.”

  “I think I’m past that point now.” I allow a moment of silence between us, then say, “I also saw Charles Glassin.”

  “Charles Glassin? I haven’t thought of that name in ages.” She takes another bite.

  “He said you all used to get together way back when. Before I was even born.”

  She looks startled, and for a moment, I think the crumb cake has perhaps cut off her airway. But she regains composure, swallows, then says, “We did a few social things, but not much. I hardly knew them, and what I did know of them I didn’t much care for. The mother’s a bit of a tart.”

  “What did you used to do together?”

  She seems to be filtering through her mind for the right thing to say. She decides on, “Drink, mostly. That’s more or less what everyone did back then. Drink and smoke.”

  I accept this answer as at least some of the truth and press her no more.

  “How did you find Charles?” she asks.

  “He’s still in the same house.”

  “You went back to the neighborhood?”

  “Yes. The neighborhood. The park. I just knocked on his door, and he was home. He’s a very sad man. His wife left a long time ago. I think he said to New York.”

  “What else did he tell you?”

  I think back to my time with Charles in his suffocating little house with bare walls. “He talked about how they split up after what happened. How it felt to fail in doing the only job that’s important: raising your children. He took a lot of responsibility for what happened.”

  My mother turns her back to me and starts wiping an already-clean counter with a dish towel. “Understandable, I suppose. He did raise those little monsters.”

  The word strikes me. “Yes. Monsters. He said that, too. I remember thinking how very sad it was to hear someone call their own children monsters, even if that’s what they are.”

  She stops wiping, turns, and walks directly to me, and then finally takes me into her arms and pulls me hard against her. I don’t know if she’s shielding me or if I’m shielding her. She holds me tight and says, “You need to let go of the past, Alice. Whoever is stalking you will surely tire of their little games. You should come home. Live here. Let me take care of you. It would be good for all of us.”

  I gently push away from her. “Mom, this doesn’t all go away. He’s not going to tire of me. He’s been watching me for years, as far as I can tell, and now he’s slowly making him
self known. He’s not going to stop until he gets what he wants.”

  Or until he dies of whatever ails him, I think. But waiting that out is dangerous, if it’s even true. I suspect he wants some kind of closure with me before his life ends.

  “Your father created him,” she says, and I don’t know what him she’s referring to, the character or the real-life stalker. Perhaps she means both. “He destroyed everything, and I’m left to deal with all the pieces. Thomas is a zombie, and you’re just a little bag of nerves.”

  This is where it all turns. It’s like she switches into another role, or perhaps the exterior dissolves and the real her is exposed. But it’s always ugly, because all she can focus on is her. I don’t want to engage, so I need to leave.

  “Mom, thank you for taking care of me last night. I do love you for it. But I have to go.”

  “That’s right,” she says. There’s a fierceness in her tone. “Because that’s what you do best, Alice. You run away. Just like your father, you don’t look behind you to see the mess you’ve left.”

  “I can’t do this, Mom. I can’t do this.”

  “Then go, Alice.” She wipes her hands on her hips, back and forth, back and forth.

  Then I see her from my dream, the one where she was teaching Thomas to swim. That awful, sickening moment when she lowered him into the water and calmly walked away, letting him drown, wiping her hands on her hips as her son’s lungs filled with water. I will get him out of here, I resolve. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I will take Thomas from here.

  She shuffles after me as I grab my purse and phone and walk out the front door.

  She stands in the doorway, and I can hear her huffing. She wants to shout something, and I’m waiting for it.

  Maybe she can’t think of anything to say, or maybe it’s just all been said before, because, for a rare time in my mother’s life, she chooses to be silent.

  I pull out of the driveway as she is swallowed back inside the house, back into her world of self-pity and control. As I drive, the tears well up in my eyes, and I begin to softly cry as I head back to Manchester. I cry not because of everything happening in my life, but for things that aren’t happening.

  I miss my dad more than ever.

  Thirty-Nine

  Thursday, October 29

  Today was so close to being a normal day that it felt oddly peaceful. A storm chaser would liken it to the eye of the hurricane, and soldiers would recognize it as a temporary truce on opposite sides of a battlefield. Calm, quiet. A sense of the rare, delicious ordinary.

  I worked a full day at the Stone Rose, spending more time than usual chatting with the regulars. Charlie told me how his grandchildren bought him a La-Z-Boy chair for his eightieth birthday and even mentioned he’d missed seeing my face lately. Jim and Linda ordered matching macchiatos and told me about their CrossFit gym, which they refer to as “the box.” I listened not so much with interest as with pleasant comfort.

  Brenda signed up the Rose to be a part of a Halloween window-decorating contest, and for two hours, a troop of ninth-graders painted away. Their amateurish strokes turned into something quite impressive: a pumpkin patch under a full midnight moon, overlooked by a ratty, old scarecrow whose face conveyed a profound loneliness, an expression I would not have thought possible with window paint. Brenda chooses a window all to herself, where she paints a mesmerizing depiction of Simon, a beautifully imaged vapor of a ghost, rising up in the form of steam from a coffee cup. Simon is smiling and holding in his left, ethereal hand a blueberry scone, just like the ones we sell at the Rose.

  Before leaving the shop for the day, I check the news online once again for anything about Jimmy. The story seems to have remained local, and there’s been nothing more detailed about his death other than a small explosive charge killing him. Nothing being ruled a homicide, and no mention of a woman fleeing the scene. Just the all-encompassing term ongoing investigation. Jimmy’s behavior was described as “erratic” by witnesses, and I wonder who those witnesses are since really I was the only one to whom he spoke. Still, I’m grateful nothing has led the police to my door. Yet.

  Back home, the sun sets through my kitchen window as a cold October wind whips up the trees in my front yard. I build a fire and prepare a simple dinner, which I eat sitting on the floor in front of the flames. It feels good, the heat on my face and arms, and I try not to think too much about the evidence of Freddy Starks’s murder burning to ash in this very fireplace. I try to sustain a sense of normalcy, of comfort, but don’t try too hard, for often that’s when it slips fastest through my fingers.

  Then the doorbell rings, and in an instant, all feelings of security disappear. My body tenses against my wishes, a Pavlovian reaction. It’s just after six o’clock, and I can’t imagine who’s on the other side of the door.

  But I can imagine, can’t I?

  Is it so hard to picture Mr. Interested at my door, in whatever form he takes shape? In a brief, strange moment, I picture a man at the door in a tuxedo, getting on his knee and flashing me an engagement ring. I don’t know why that enters my head, but it’s nicer than picturing a maniac with a knife and a rope.

  I slide an iron poker from its hearthside harness and grip it in my right hand. It feels wonderfully assuring, an extension of my own hand. My brain instantly processes the amount of damage I could do with this, which makes me think of all the blood that’s already been spilled and cleaned in this room.

  I creep up next to the door and slide the curtain an inch away from the window, then peer outside.

  Richard.

  The tension drains from my body, causing my shoulders to slump. I lean the poker against the wall, deactivate the security system, and open the door. Richard seems even taller and more gaunt than usual, and his cheeks are a gray, ashen hue.

  He holds up a bottle of wine.

  “Can we talk?” he asks.

  I take the bottle.

  “Sure. Guess we never did have that bottle of wine earlier, did we?”

  “No, we didn’t.”

  He walks inside and looks around, as if expecting to find I’m not alone.

  “I know you were gone for a few days and just got back. You sure this is a good time?”

  I close the door and lock it. “I’m surprised you want to talk to me at all.”

  “I just…just need to work through some things. Out loud.”

  “Of course,” I say, a little worried about what he means. “Do you want to take off your coat?”

  “Sure.” He shrugs off his bulky army coat, revealing his long, wiry frame beneath a black T-shirt and faded jeans. His arms are even paler than his face, and blue, ropy veins track down his biceps and into the crooks of his elbows. For the first time, I notice the bottom of a tattoo poking out beneath his right sleeve.

  “I didn’t know you had ink,” I say, pointing to his arm.

  “Oh, yeah, yeah.” His left hand goes up as if to cover his tattoo for a moment, but then he pulls up his sleeve, revealing what looks like the pi sign, only with a line along the bottom as well. “It’s my birth sign. Gemini. I know, it’s stupid. I was young and drunk. Suppose I could’ve gotten something much worse.”

  “I like it,” I say, not sure if I mean it or not.

  He pulls his sleeve back down.

  “Have a seat on the couch,” I tell him. “I’ll go open the wine.”

  He does, and a minute later, I return with two glasses and set them on the coffee table, then go back to grab the bottle. I pour us each a glass, place the bottle on the table, and then sit, leaving a cushion of distance between us. For a brief moment, I have a flash of sharing a couch in a dark room with Melinda Glassin, which feels like a year ago. Or maybe it didn’t happen at all.

  “I haven’t been sleeping much lately,” he starts. “I can’t get what happened here out of my mind. I mean, did th
at all really take place?” He runs his fingers through his hair as he looks down at the floor.

  “Yeah, it did,” I say. “What happened was terrible. I think about it, too. But you had nothing to do with it, Richard.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “You were trying to help. I didn’t expect Thomas to do what he did. I didn’t want that, but it happened. That man was going to kill me, Richard.” The last thing I need is a guilt-torn Richard going to the police to wipe his conscience clean. “Even if we’d dropped him off at the hospital and he got fixed up, he was going to come back for me. I know that doesn’t make what happened in here any easier, but it’s the truth.”

  “Alice—”

  I talk over him. “And no matter how you feel, you weren’t involved, but if the police find out, it could make things very tricky. We need to make sure this stays with us. God, how you must hate me for making you a part of this.”

  “Alice, you aren’t listening to me.”

  I lean back on the couch.

  “What?”

  He leans forward and sets his wine on the coffee table.

  “I don’t hate you. I want to help you. Any way I can.”

  I shift my weight just a fraction away from him.

  “I don’t need you to save me, Richard.”

  “I didn’t say that. I said I wanted to help.”

  “Why? If you were smart, you’d move out. Get as far away as you could.”

  “It’s hard to explain,” he says.

  And for a moment, I have a flash of what he’s about to say. It’s something ridiculous, like he’s falling in love with me. Or that he feels we’re supposed to be together.

  “What is it, Richard?”

  “It’s just… Well, this is going to sound strange. But I don’t feel guilty or bad about what happened. And maybe I should. Hell, I’m a nurse, aren’t I? But I feel just the opposite. He was going to hurt you, and then…what Thomas did. Once I got over the shock, I realized…I realized it gave me a rush, you know? The power of that moment. That man came here with a plan, thought he was in control. And then, bam.”