by Amy Lloyd
At the bottom of the steps, Dennis kicked back some weeds to reveal a trapdoor made of wood that led under the house. He lifted the door and she peered into the darkness, unable to make out anything inside.
‘There’s no electricity!’ Dennis shouted. ‘We need flashlights. I’ll take you down there and then I’ll go get the stuff!’
‘I don’t want to go in there,’ Sam said.
‘You want to get crushed when the old place falls down?’
‘I thought you said these storms are never that bad.’
In the distance Sam could hear the crack and groan of trees bending in the wind. She looked at Dennis again.
‘Trust me,’ he said, ‘You’ll be safer down here.’
Inside, the air was cool and dank. As her eyes adjusted she could see the detail around her: a cot on one side, a slumping, lumpy-looking sofa on another and a large plastic bucket in the furthest corner.
‘I’ll bring you something dry to wear. What else do you need? We could be here all night,’ Dennis said.
‘My pills,’ she said, quicker than she had intended. ‘And, um, my Kindle. Um …’ Dennis was becoming impatient as he hovered at the foot of the stairs ready to leave. ‘Can I wear your jumper? The one I like, the grey one.’
‘Sure, whatever, anything else?’
‘Be quick, please. It’s weird down here.’
‘Sure.’
As Dennis left he shut the door behind him and Sam found herself sitting in a darkness so thick she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. She forced herself to breathe slowly. It occurred to her he had never mentioned the storm shelter before. For a second she worried, What if I never get out?
Sam stood and held her arms in front of her, taking tiny steps, feeling for the stairs. If she could make it up there, she might be able to open the door. She reached the wall, the concrete smooth under her fingertips. The stairs weren’t there. She felt disoriented. Panic started to set in. She’d never known she was afraid of dark, enclosed spaces. She realised she’d never been in one before. The walls were thick; the sound of the storm above was a whisper. If Dennis were to lock the door from outside, no one would ever know she was there, no matter how much she screamed. She asked herself why she was thinking this.
Finally, the door opened, and Dennis returned with a bag and a lamp that wound up with a crank on the side and buzzed like a hornet.
‘What were you doing?’ he asked her, helping her back to the sofa.
‘I freaked myself out a little,’ she said, embarrassed.
This time he left the door open as he brought things down: water bottles, a box of food, the box of mewing kittens, their writhing and angry mother, a litter box and finally a sack of cat litter. Sam folded her damp clothes and changed into what Dennis had brought down: his jumper that smelled of him and which hung over her hands and made her feel petite. She pulled the neck up to her nose and sniffed.
‘Stop stretching it,’ he said.
Sam looked at the time on her Kindle and was dismayed to see she still had two and a half hours until she could take another Vicodin. Dennis changed from his damp clothes, his back to her. Every time she shifted on the sofa the rusted springs beneath her creaked.
‘Stop fidgeting,’ Dennis said.
The kittens were clumsily exploring the room, while Tuna sulked halfway up the stairs, ears flat. Sam checked the time again and felt a surge of irritated misery. Eventually she decided she would take just one extra tablet for now, to tide her over until later.
Dennis was pouring cat litter into the bucket. ‘If you have to go, go here. Then pour cat litter over it. OK?’
Sam nodded, though she was already dead set on not drinking for the night. Thankfully the pills made her constipated and she felt safe in the knowledge she wouldn’t have to shit in the corner while Dennis complained about it from the other side of the room.
‘It gives me the creeps down here,’ Sam said.
‘You get used to it,’ Dennis said. ‘My dad locked me down here once. I got caught taking some things at the old folks’ home. When he found out he beat me, threw me in here. Left me down here over a day, no light, nothing.’
Above them, the world was raging. In their quiet and airless room, she felt it trying to burst in.
Every now and again came these reminders of the horrible life Dennis had led before her, and it made her feel like shit that she couldn’t do anything to take away all that had happened. No, worse than that, she hated herself for the things she did to ruin the life he had now: whenever she didn’t trust him, whenever she started an argument, whenever she tried to make him be something he wasn’t, or do something he didn’t want to.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘For what?’
‘For being pushy, for trying to force you to … you know, when you aren’t ready.’
‘Samantha.’
‘No. I’m always pushing you or I’m starting these fights. I always do this, always.’
‘It’s OK …’
‘It isn’t OK! I always fuck things up! I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with you.’
‘But there is. I’m a terrible person. I’ve done awful things but I think this is even worse.’
‘Even worse than what?’ he asked.
She shook her head, wishing she hadn’t said anything but also wanting to say everything, finally, to someone who wouldn’t lie to her.
‘Worse than what, Sam?’
‘I … when Mark broke up with me I …’
‘Your ex-boyfriend?’
‘We used to argue, a lot. I was jealous. Sometimes he really messed with my head, you know? One minute he said he loved me and the next he was saying how he didn’t want a relationship. It had been three years! When I think about it now, I don’t know if I even loved him. It’s like I was insane. One night I was driving us back from dinner. He was supposed to stay at mine but now he was like, “I don’t know if I should stay over, I feel like we need some time apart …” He’s saying all this after a whole evening of, “What’s wrong?” “Nothing.” “What’s wrong?” “Nothing.” You know? He’s telling me now, in the car, I’ve had a glass of wine, I’m tired.
‘I asked him, “Why? Why now?” He says, “I can’t keep hurting you.” Can you believe that? As if he’s doing me a favour. I’m like, “Fine, fine,” and he asks me to drop him back at his house. He lived with his parents still. He was always saying he was saving money but … He was a real mother’s boy. She never liked me. It drove me crazy. So I drove him there. I thought I could handle it but when we got there … he got out of the car like it was easy for him. I could tell he’d never loved me, he’d been lying the whole time. I followed him to the door, I was screaming. He was worried the neighbours would hear, I guess, so he let me in. I get in there and his parents aren’t home which just makes me scream even louder.
‘Then, I don’t know, I went up to his room. He was so precious about his stupid room. He had all these toys. Figures. Things he painted himself. I started breaking them, I was like, “Tell me, be honest. You’ve never loved me, have you?” and eventually he says it, he says, “I don’t love you, I’m sorry,” and then he says, “And I met someone new, OK?”
‘I didn’t expect it. I’m standing there, I’m looking for something else to break, just to try and hurt him, just a little, and I pick up this glass of water and I throw it. It hits the shelf and it explodes, glass everywhere. He screams; he’s holding his face. I panic. I try to pull his hands away but he won’t let me near him, like he’s scared of me. There’s blood rolling down his neck. I keep saying, “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!” but he tells me to get out. He says he’s going to phone the police and I beg him not to. I didn’t mean to hurt him like that, I really didn’t. I’d just wanted him to feel something!
‘I promise I’ll go if he lets me see his face. He can’t open his left eye, and there’s so much blood. I tell him he needs to
go to hospital but he won’t go with me. Instead he calls an ambulance. I wait because I don’t want him to call the police. He asks me to go, again, he says if I go and leave him alone, if I don’t call him again, he’ll say it was an accident. So I left. I drove the car to the corner and I cried. I waited until I saw the ambulance and then I left.’
Sam took a breath. It didn’t feel like a relief to say it all, the complete story. It felt dirty and wrong.
‘A few days later his mum rang me. She said that he was going to lose the sight in that eye. She’d wanted to call the police but he stopped her – I think because he was afraid of me, more than anything. Not because he cared about me.’
After a while Dennis spoke. ‘Is that it?’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ Sam said, confused.
‘Listen. Lindsay tried to run me over with her dad’s car when I told her I just wanted to be friends. Lauren threw a beer bottle at my head. This is just what girls do when they get pissed off.’
‘Lauren?’ Sam said. For the first time since it had happened, she started to feel a little better.
‘Yeah. Lauren Rhodes. I told her I didn’t want to go to this dance? She said she wanted to go so I told her to take someone else. I guess it was the wrong thing to say because she threw her beer at me. I guess it could have broken and I could’ve been just like – what’s his name?’
‘Mark.’ Sam laughed in spite of herself.
‘Right. No big deal. It was just an accident.’
‘You don’t think I’m crazy?’ she asked.
‘I think all girls are a little crazy,’ he said.
It was something Sam wanted to believe. Since it had happened, all she’d felt was shame and guilt. Now she felt absolved, relieved.
‘You’ve never talked about Lauren before,’ she said after a while.
‘Not much to say, really. At the time we barely knew each other. I don’t know why she flipped out so much.’
Sam thought of how Dennis must have looked back then and of Lauren: the cheerleader and the football player. It made perfect sense to her, and she understood why Lauren would be driven mad by him.
‘Anyway. After she … I can’t talk about any of this stuff without people making something of it.’
‘Wait … Lindsay tried to run you over?’ As Sam laughed he fell on to the sofa next to her and pulled her into him.
‘Like you can talk,’ he said, teasing. He held her close and kissed her head. She shivered. ‘You’re so cold,’ he said, holding her tighter, moving his lips to her neck, biting her skin. He ran his hands up her thighs and under her clothes. She stayed still, letting herself enjoy it, not pushing him. He kissed her ear, cupped her breast, ran his nails over her skin and down her back. She turned her face so he could kiss her, and he bit her lip slightly too hard, and she pulled back but he pulled her forward. She put her leg across his lap. Then it stopped, his hands still.
‘Do you want a drink?’ he asked, getting up to grab a bottle of water from the corner.
‘No,’ she said, her whole body hot with warm, rushing blood.
He didn’t return to the sofa. He lay back down on the cot, his back to her, too still to be sleeping. She listened to the faint sounds of the storm purging the air. She imagined opening the hatch in the morning and finding the air crisp and unburdened but she knew that it wouldn’t be. The air would already be full, the pressure rising in anticipation of the next storm.
Thirty-three
The light was dazzling when Dennis eventually opened the door to the storm shelter the next morning. They ran inside the house, desperate to clean their teeth and get into fresh clothes. At first the faucets ran brown, then clear, and Sam hesitated before running her toothbrush under the water. Tired and sore from the night in the damp shelter, Dennis suggested she lie on the bed in Lionel’s room instead of their air mattress. It was the only thing left in the otherwise bare room. Sam resisted, but Dennis made the bed with clean sheets and she was too tired to argue. Before leaving her to sleep, he placed a cup of green tea on the floor by the side of the bed. She was determined to learn to like it. Instead of coffees with four pumps of sugar syrup she would drink the flavourless green teas Dennis enjoyed. It was cleansing and she knew she needed to be cleansed. Inside she was black as a smoker’s lung, the jealousy and the hate and the lust all seeping deep into every part of her.
When she woke up the tea had been replaced by a glass of water and two Vicodin, stacked one on top of the other. She leaned over the edge of the bed and looked at them, held one between her fingers. She remembered the night before only hazily and wanted to be clearer today. But her head was aching, her leg was sore, and – promising herself she would cut down later – she threw both pills into her mouth. As she swallowed, one stuck at the back of her throat and she gagged. With another gulp she loosened the pill and lay back down.
She’d been aware of a general amount of noise since she’d woken up. The sound of chat shows on the TV. It seemed strange that Dennis would be watching television, she thought, let alone a chat show. Then it dawned on her that Lindsay might be in the house. Hesitantly, she limped out of bed and into the hall.
Around the door she saw the side of Lindsay’s head, flyaway hairs clinging with static to the cheap material of the sofa. She was scooping up Doritos that left the tips of her fingers stained with orange dust.
Sam considered turning back, but before she could Lindsay had seen her. ‘Fuck’s sake, you scared me. What were you doing?’ It had a high-school twang to it: What are you staring at? Are you, like, obsessed with me? Sam felt it bone-deep; she wanted to hurt back, but she didn’t.
‘Where’s Dennis?’ Sam asked.
‘Running, I guess. He said not to wake you up. That you were, like, sick.’
‘I’m OK now.’
‘Thank God.’ Lindsay raised an eyebrow and turned back to her chat show.
‘Did he say when he’d be back?’ Sam asked.
‘Nope.’ Lindsay tipped the bag back to her open mouth to catch the debris and dust at the bottom. Her can of beer had a crescent of orange below the lip. She looked at Sam out of the corner of her eye, and sighed. ‘You can, like, leave, now. We’re done here.’
Sam turned, but then caught herself. ‘I don’t have to leave. This is my house.’
‘Excuse me?’ Lindsay forced a laugh, her eyes livid.
‘It’s our house, mine and Den’s. And he’s my husband. So you can’t tell me to leave.’ Sam took a step closer to the sofa and crossed her arms.
Lindsay let the empty packet she was holding fall to the floor. ‘Fine,’ she said, turning back to the television. ‘Don’t leave. Do whatever you want. Like I give a shit.’
‘What’s your problem? I mean with me.’ Sam tried to keep the tremble out of her voice. She only argued with people she knew intimately, those with actions she could predict.
‘My problem?’
‘Yes. You’re always trying to come between us. Me and Den.’
Lindsay rolled her eyes. ‘You mean your husband?’
‘But it won’t work,’ Sam said. ‘We’re leaving soon.’
‘When?’ Lindsay asked, looking uncertain suddenly.
‘Soon,’ Sam said, wishing she had a date.
‘Whatever. Dennis and I, we have history. It doesn’t matter where he goes, he always comes back.’
Sam wanted to wipe the complacent smile off her face. ‘Well, it’s funny because actually he told me last night about how you went psycho when he told you, flat out, that he only wanted to be friends.’ As soon as Sam said it she wished she hadn’t. It felt like a betrayal.
‘What did he say?’ Lindsay was up from the couch, so close now Sam could smell her breath, the tang of beer.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sam said, backing away.
‘What the fuck did he say?’ Lindsay said, grabbing Sam’s arm. ‘Tell me.’
‘He … he was only joking. He said you tried to hit him with your car, that’s all. He said it was funny.�
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‘We’re friends.’ Lindsay’s grip tightened. ‘We’re practically blood. You think this marriage of yours is deeper than that? He don’t like you that much, believe me. I’ve seen it all, I know what happens when he likes somebody and, guess what, you don’t want it.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means I’m the one still here. That’s what it means.’
Sam tried to twist free, but Lindsay dug her nails into her forearm. They froze when they heard the back door. Dennis had returned.
‘You’re threatening me!’ Sam said, loud enough that she hoped Dennis would hear.
‘Shut up,’ Lindsay hissed. ‘Don’t try to make anything out of this.’ She let go.
Sam rubbed her arm. Lindsay’s nails had left deep crescents in her skin. Lindsay sat back with her eyes fixed on the television, as if nothing had happened.
‘You need to take me to Target and Wholefoods,’ Dennis said as he walked through the house from the kitchen. ‘Not now, later. I’ve got stuff to do here first. I got a call from …’ Sam looked at her arm; she thought about running straight in to Dennis to show him. Look, look what that bitch did, she’s crazy. But something stopped her. The way Lindsay looked so serene, like someone had flipped a switch. It was as if the whole thing hadn’t happened.
‘Sure,’ Lindsay was shouting back.
‘Oh, hey,’ Dennis said as he walked into the living room. ‘You’re up.’ He sounded, Sam thought, almost disappointed to see her.
Thirty-four
That evening, before they left to go shopping, Dennis helped Sam get showered and dressed, made her a sandwich and tipped out another two Vicodin. ‘You’re running low. I’ll pick more up at the drugstore for you,’ he said, kissing her on the head as Lindsay rattled her keys impatiently in the background.
As the truck lights disappeared around the corner and the noise faded, Sam rolled off the sofa and heaved herself up on to her crutch. She was bored, antsy. She limped from room to room, lonely and searching for something to occupy her thoughts.