Away From Everywhere (12 page)

He headed for the shelter, desperately hoping to see Abbie waiting outside with his mother. He daydreamed of her confessing her love, or at least asking him to a movie.
Sure.
He'd say it nonchalantly. He practiced a warm-but-not-desperate tone. He pictured himself calling her, contemplating the opening lines, the options:
Hello
or
hi
, or
hey Abbie? Hey Ab?
Maybe
hiya
. You can come at some girls with a
hiya
, he figured. Girls like Abbie anyway.

But as he approached the building, neither of them was outside. They were both inside the door, trying to tug it shut as a man tried to force his way in. His arm, from the elbow up, was trapped between the door and the door frame, and he squealed in pain as they rocked the door against him.

Owen parked the car and met his mother's frightened eyes: the blue cast out of them by the black of her dilated pupils. She shook her head and yelled, bashing a palm off the glass of the window. “Owen!
Stay!
Stay in that car,Owen! Owen, you stay in that
CAR!
”

Adrenaline made the man look more manageable, less dangerous.

“Owen,
don't!
Stay in the car, lock the door! The police'll be here any minute! Owen, the police are on the way! Janine's on the phone with them.”

Only in hindsight was it obvious that Jim Croaker – drunk and reeking of stale whiskey – could
never
have pried open that door.

There was something disgusting and inhuman about the shape of his face: the features so small and indistinct and rat-like. And the way he ground his teeth. His faded jeans were stained with blobs of motor oil, some fresh and some set, and his black track jacket reeked of sugary, cheap whiskey. His jacket was only half zipped, and a gold chain disappeared into a thick mat of chest hair lining the edges of his white tank top. Owen recognized him as Jim Croaker from Abbie's description: “A badly groomed mustache and hair so greasy you want to vomit.” Jim had been desperate to get inside the shelter for over a month now, to apologize to his fiancée with his fists and insincere words. The last call to the police station had only kept him away for a week.

“
You fucken whores!
” He tugged at the door, and both of their bodies rocked with it. “I'm going to kill
both
of you sluts! Do you hear me! I am going to stamp your skulls into dust, right fucken here on this pavement!” His pasty white saliva sprayed on the window before their faces.

Owen figured he could easily take Jim down from behind, since he was pinned in the doorframe and obviously drunk. He wrapped an arm around his neck so tightly that Jim gagged and crashed his head back into Owen's face, smearing his greasy hair across Owen's cheeks and mouth. It tasted like rancid fish. Owen jabbed his hip into Jim's and swung around, taking them both to the ground. All two hundred pounds of Jim fell on Owen's chest, squatting the air out of his lungs. Within seconds, Jim was on top of him, his knees and elbows boring into Owen like screws as they struggled against each other's bodies.

It was already too late when Owen realized Abbie and his mother had had Jim much more secured than he did now, and that look in their eyes as he approached the door, a look of paralyzing and throat-clenching fear, registered as an omen that he'd made a mistake in tackling this man all by himself. Their lack of confidence in him was contagious.

Owen was not yet twenty. Jim was forty, drunk, and coursing with adrenaline. He belted Owen with three solid punches to the face, not the kind of falsely depicted punches Owen had seen in movies, where two grown men can slug away on each other. They were three unobstructed, powerful shots that had him scared for his life. Each one felt like a car slamming into his face. His head bounced off the ground with each punch, and the recoil hurt as much as the blow. His left eye swelled, clouding his vision and making him feel even more helpless. His nose had made a distinct popping noise before he felt liquid warmth spilling over his mouth and down his neck. Jim fired one more, before wrapping his bony, sweaty hands around Owen's throat.

“Still feel like being a fucken hero! Huh? I'm fucken talking to you, kid! How about I crack your neck? How about I choke you until your brain pops out your ears?”

Owen's arms were pinned down, and he was already winded before Jim had started choking him. His face was getting hot, and his ears were ringing, and then he heard the door open and saw his mother and Abbie dive at Jim. They took an arm each and tried to free Owen from his grip. He groaned and rolled off Owen and onto Abbie. He grabbed her wrists, pinned her arms down, and stared down at her, laughing maniacally. A string of drool fell onto her face.

“Now what, you little
bitch
? Huh? Now what?”

His mother looked down at him, sobbing, and Owen imagined himself physically deformed by those four blows. They both got up to go help Abbie just as Jim sank his head into her chest and bit viciously into her left breast. She shrieked and squirmed beneath his weight. They kicked at him and pulled at every limb, but it was futile. Owen threw himself down on Jim and tried to pry them apart, but couldn't without hurting Abbie even more. She screamed all her pain, unintentionally, into his ear as he fought against Jim. The neighbours kept their distance but were shouting at Jim like he was a rabid dog, reassuring them all that the police were on the way.

Jim crawled off Abbie when he saw the police car storming down the road. She rocked back and forth, crying, hurt badly, violated. She didn't even look up. She just rocked back and forth, her arms in a V across her chest.

As the police approached,Owen saw the look on Jim's face change in slow motion: furrowed eyebrows slowly unclenching and rising, an open mouth. He looked more panicked and flighty now than he did vicious, spinning around in one quick circle like he was being surrounded by a firing squad. When they were within ten feet of him, he grabbed Owen's mother and held her down in a headlock.

“Back off! Now! I'll snap her neck. I swear it! Back, the, fuck, up, now! Go get me Janine out of that goddamn building and let us go, or I'll fucken snap this bitch's neck.” He was nervous now and watching his back. “She fucken deserves it, after nearly breakin'my arm like that!” His eyes darted around like a wild animal's. Like a cornered fox.

An officer called out, his words slow and deliberate, “Sir, you are not going to hurt her. You are not going to hurt her because harming her any more than you already have is only going to add to your charges. You don't want that. End this now, before you get yourself in even
more
trouble.”

Owen was nervous about how the cop was handling the situation. He knew what they didn't know: Jim Croaker was no more human than a shark. He was drunk, violent, and irrational. He'd hurt her to prove a point, Owen knew it. The policemen were making all the false assumptions he'd initially made. And it didn't seem right to threaten the man. He'd only hurt her to prove that
he
was the one in control.

Jim stepped back against the building with a new surge of anger, like a tortured rodent just let out of a cage. He looked over at Owen and Abbie, now side by side and holding each other. He squinted at them in a cold, hard stare.“You think you fucken bitches won, huh? Is that what you think?”

“Sir–”

Owen stepped in front of the police officers and put up a hand to interrupt them.“Listen! This isn't about winning, okay? And even if it was, you won, look at my face.”He tilted his neck left to right and back again to show Jim his swollen eyes.“This is about you getting what you want, and I'll give it to you. You let my mother go, and we'll let you in to see Janine.”He turned to the police. “Won't we?”

The policemen looked at each other and changed the wording a little. “The
only
way you'll see Janine is if you let go of that lady,
right now!
”

Jim looked down at a football-sized rock by his feet. “Okay.”He feigned defeat. “I'll let her go.”

He said it so sarcastically it unnerved them all. He released her and stepped towards the police with his hands up, but swiftly bent down, picked up the jagged rock, and swung around. With all his weight and strength, he brought the stone down across Claire's head. Her skull cracked, she fell slowly but with a thud of dead weight, and Jim dropped the rock. Stared at her. Shocked at the damage. He took off running, not once looking back. For five seconds, even the policemen were silent statues: taken totally by surprise before gathering themselves. One of them called an ambulance as the other took off after Jim.

His mother had fallen like a building: slowly, until gravity took hold and ripped her down. There was a noise to it: a thud, a slight bounce, then her heels clapped. She convulsed, twice, maybe a third time. There was a lot of blood, but it was all contained in one giant pool at the back of her head. Like a pillow.

Owen felt all the weight in his body leave him. He had to consciously draw air into his lungs, and he couldn't get them full. Her eyes were still wide open and staring at him as he ran towards her, crying. He checked frantically for a pulse – his fingers fumbling around her wrist, trembling – but didn't know where to try and feel for it. He was squeezing her wrist too tightly anyway, feeling his own pulse, not hers, as he begged her to speak. She didn't say a word. He cried harder and shook her more vigorously, as if he could bring her back with the right jolt or tear-laden plea.

Abbie lay lengthwise along Claire's body and rocked her like a baby, combing the hair out of her eyes, crying violently, skipping breaths. His mother looked peacefully absent. It was the same look of goodbye he'd seen in his father's eyes, the day he went catatonic.

Owen turned to charge at Jim Croaker with the very same rock, but he was gone. One officer had apprehended him and taken him away, the other waited at the scene for an ambulance to show up, and, when the time was right, to collect a few witness statements.

By the time the ambulance showed up for his mother, her head was sunk into the ground and covered with flakes of soil. Bits of dirt rolled over her face with each gust of wind. She looked fake, like a mannequin. Abbie wept as wildly as Owen while the paramedics loaded his mother onto the stretcher, and they held each other the whole ride to the hospital. With everything happening at once, there was nowhere to lay it all except on each other.

They washed, numbed, then stitched his left eye and lower lip. Owen felt no pain, just a dull tug of thread and the impossibility of having to tell his brother about their mother. When the doctors were done, Owen borrowed change from Abbie and phoned Alex. The black receiver of the payphone felt greasy and slippery in his hands. He put in two dimes without hesitation, but held back on the nickel until he was sure he had the right set of words ready.

“Hello?”

Alex spoke like he knew: slow and soft and ready to be shattered. It had been two hours since Owen left to get their mother. Owen tried to talk in a tone that didn't reveal the news before the words, but even he didn't recognize himself in his voice. He laboured over every detail, and standing in that hospital hallway, under the harsh fluorescent lights, it struck him only then why it had all happened. It wasn't because Jim Croaker was a violent mule, and it wasn't because their mother had taken that goddamn job. It was because he had gotten out of the car, and she'd pleaded with him not to.

“C-can you come get me …then?”

“I don't know, because, what if there's some news about Mom and I'm not h–”

“Do you h-have any money in your room I can take for a cab then?”

“Take it from Mom's piggy bank.”

“Wha–”

“The second drawer in the nightstand on …on …Dad's side. It's full of change, but there's some bills too.”

“She's still alive, right? Right,Owen?”

“They took her into the ER, so, that means yes …right?”

Abbie sat with Owen as he waited for his brother to show up, and her being there made it all more bearable somehow. They leaned on each other. The scent of her hair on his shoulder – rainclouds and wildflowers – made him feel like
something
was still okay. She held his hand and shared his pain; she took some of it out of him. The bench was hard and too long front to back, so he couldn't recline and get comfortable, other than against her. The whole scene with Jim Croaker had removed any unfamiliarity between Owen and Abbie, because two people cannot live through something like that without being bonded by it.

In the black of the night, through the rain-streaked window pane, Owen recognized his brother's hurried gait before he recognized his face. He leapt off the bench and burst out through the hospital doors to greet his brother, his hands in his pockets and his head slung down. Immediately, in each other's presence, Owen felt a slight but pronounced sense of relief. They exchanged a look, not words, and Owen guided him to the bench where a nurse had told them to wait for some news about their mother. An old woman across the hallway, in a paper-thin black trench coat, coughed and wheezed incessantly.