Goodnight Blackbird (16 page)

S
unday.

The Denison Park pool was filled with kids wringing the last drops of fun out of the final weekend of summer. Their raucous voices carried across the soccer field to where Jacqueline and Kayla sat on a bench by the playground. They watched Kayla's eight-year-old, Zach, climb the monkey bars and spin himself on the tire swing, lost in a daydream where he was perhaps a space pilot saving the galaxy from alien peril.

"He's getting tall," Jacqueline said.

"In a couple years he'll be my height. It's incredible." Kayla glanced at her. "Don't take what Allison said to heart. She's always been hot-tempered. And she's pretty much angry at the whole world now."

"What happened? She and Mark always seemed happy."

"I guess they drifted apart. He's always been a workaholic, and Allison says that when he'd come home at night—usually pretty late—he didn't seem to have a whole lot of interest in hearing about the PTA or problems with the dishwasher. She resented it. I certainly would have. She gave up her career to be a full-time mom."

Being an office worker at a dental equipment distributor hardly constituted a career, but Jacqueline kept her mouth shut.

"Then his company hired this woman last year," Kayla said. "Tina. Apparently they started instant-messaging each other, then they'd go to lunch.... You can guess the rest of it."

"She never mentioned any of this to me."

"Well, she told me." There was a touch of reproach in Kayla's words, as if she were really saying,
I still remember what it means to be a friend
. Maybe Jacqueline was being paranoid but she also sensed a note of triumph in Kayla's tone. For the first time in the history of the three girls' friendship, Kayla was the confidante, not Jacqueline. It was an upheaval of the dynamic they had had in school. Jacqueline and Allison had been the worldly, popular insiders and Kayla had been their sweet, chubby, often witless sidekick. One day during lunch period Kayla had asked them, in all seriousness, "Who exactly is this Fellatio?", as if he were an obscure character in
Two Gentlemen of Verona
or something. Jacqueline and Allison had mocked her mercilessly (usually behind her back) for that for months.

What a difference twenty years can make. Kayla was no longer chubby and she was now Dr. Kayla Woodhouse, professor of comparative literature at Ursuline. She and her radiologist husband Ted would be celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary in a couple weeks. It was no wonder Allison turned to her now instead of Jacqueline. Kayla's life did not resemble a burning car wreck.

"Ten more minutes, Zach," Kayla called. "Then we'll all get some ice cream, okay?" She patted Jacqueline's hand. "I want you to come to our anniversary party at the beginning of October. It's just going to be us adults. Zach will be spending the night with my sister. So we'll all have a regular adult party, just like old times."

Somehow Jacqueline doubted that. Everyone would be talking about home schooling and the interest rates on money market accounts. Once you were past thirty the old times were gone forever.

You're an exile,
Darren had said. You don't fit anymore.

"Will Allison be there?" Jacqueline said.

"Allison, you, me, Ted, maybe my colleague Francesca. You can bring Darren if you like."

Jacqueline was grateful Kayla didn't burnish Darren's name with irony or distaste. "We're not dating, you know. He's only a friend." The words shamed her. They felt like a betrayal somehow. In her head was the image of Darren at the playground, sitting at her feet, telling her that he loved her, and now she had casually consigned him to that drawer that all women have, the drawer full of disposable relationships.
He's only a friend
. Once you append the word "only" to someone, it was the kiss of death.

"Do you remember the first time Ted told you he loved you?" Jacqueline asked.

Kayla squinted at her. "Why do you ask?"

"I'm just curious."

"First year of grad school. It was January, and we'd been dating, like, three months. It was at this tire place, of all things! He was helping me get new tires. We were sitting there in the waiting room, and it was snowing and we were talking. He took my hand and said he loved me." Kayla smiled. "God, that year was the best time of my life."

You were young and you were pretty, Jacqueline thought, and you were at the peak of your powers. Maybe it was too easy to love someone when the person was at her best. It was like only cheering for a team when it's on a hot streak.

"Maybe I shouldn't come to the party," Jacqueline said.

"Come on, Allison's not going to eat you. I promise you, it'll be good for both of you. You'll patch things up in two minutes. You know how she is. She blows her top and regrets it five seconds later. Please come."

"I haven't been much of a friend to either of you. I'm sorry about that."

"You've been going through a tough time." After a long pause she said, with what Jacqueline thought was practiced nonchalance, "Strange that you're friends with Cassie Christopher after all these years. We all thought she was bad news in school."

Jacqueline said, noncommittally, "Yeah."

Kayla seemed to wait for her to elaborate, but Jacqueline only watched the swimmers at the pool.

"I hope you'll come," Kayla said. "But, no pressure. It's no big deal, just some wine and crackers and cold cuts." She stared at her shoes for a long time. "I should tell you something, though."

"What?"

"I don't know if this means anything or not. Last week, Ted, Allison and I were planning to go out to a movie. Mostly to cheer Allison up. So we meet at the pub by the Cedar-Lee Theater before the movie. A few minutes later Kevin shows up. Allison said she invited him to come along."

"Kevin. My Kevin?"

"It was sort of strange. I mean, Ted and I really didn't know what to say. It was pretty awkward. But they didn't seem... you know. They just acted like friends, people who knew each other socially. They weren't holding hands or anything."

Jacqueline looked at the kids dunking each other in the pool. What had her mom said during the intervention?
Kevin called me last night.... He called Allison too
.

Any port in a storm, was that the way it was now?

She wasn't sure how she felt about this. The situation defied a simple, blunt emotional reaction like anger or hate. The feelings swirling in her head now were in the most subtle, variegated shades of grey, like a post-modern monochrome photo of some Manhattan street scene, ugly and beautiful and timeless and mundane all at the same time.

Jacqueline watched a teenage boy cannonball into the water as his friends cheered and splashed water in his face. When Jacqueline had been on the swim team at Shaker Heights High, Coach Herbert once told her that she had perfect form coming off the board. The water hardly ever splashed.
You look like a switchblade snapping open
, he said.
Absolute perfection
.

And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, Jacqueline thought randomly.

T
uesday evening.

The Beachwood Place food court was crowded with teens—goateed guys in too-large football jerseys, girls in tight jeans and midriff-baring babydoll t-shirts that said things like Too Sexy and Jailbait. Darren and Jacqueline moved among them like ornithologists in the field studying a flock of wild peacocks with the most exotic of plumage.

"Remember when hanging out at the mall was the pinnacle of excitement?" Jacqueline said. "Were we ever that simple?"

Darren usually grabbed dinner at least once or twice a week at the mall. "Some of us still are that simple."

They found a table. Darren munched his chicken sandwich and tried to guess Jacqueline's mood. On the phone she'd been all over the map—fury, cutting sarcasm, resignation. The Three Faces of Jacqueline. She hadn't even mentioned that night at the school, which annoyed Darren to no end. Did she even remember it?

"Maybe you should skip the party," he said now.

"I know."

"If she's there, it might be pretty uncomfortable. If she's there with
him
, that's just a big ol' bucket of angst. A smart woman would call Kayla and say sorry, I've got the flu."

"I know."

"Besides, if you start questioning her about Kevin, she'll get defensive and next thing you know you're having an argument in a room full of strangers. Who needs that?"

"You're right."

"You're going, aren't you?"

"Yes."

Darren sighed and offered her some fries. "I wish I'd paid more attention in freshman psych. I'm sure there's a name for this."

"It's called unavoidable stupidity. But I have to get to the bottom of this."

"Going to the movie together could be just a one-shot thing between friends."

"And it could be something more. Maybe she's doing it deliberately to get back at me for being such a crappy friend. Maybe she can't wait to see my reaction when she and Kevin play kissy-face in front of me."

"All the more reason not to go," Darren said. "You keep telling me how you'd like nothing better than to have a peaceful, simple life. This isn't exactly the way to achieve it."

"It's that sort of maturity and wisdom that my friends will find so impressive when you accompany me to the party."

"Oh Jesus."

Jacqueline clasped his hands in hers. "For moral support. Please."

"Jacqueline—"

"I know I have no right to ask you for anything after all you've done, but I'm asking anyway. Please."

He could have held her hands all night. "Okay."

Her eyes looked into his for a long, uncomfortable moment. "We should talk about the other night."

"Nothing to talk about," he said. "Dead issue."

An hour after Darren got home that evening, glaring headlights pulled into his driveway. Someone knocked on his back door.

Darren was surprised to see Sam standing on the porch, his lime green polo shirt half-soaked. It had been raining much of the evening, a light, misty mid-September rain that hissed through the reddening leaves on the trees.

Sam's holster was clipped to his belt.

"Sam. What's up? Is something wrong with Julia?"

"I just want to ask you something. You remember your parents' anniversary party, right? When I said I wouldn't ever have my kids come back to this house after what happened?"

Darren did not reply.

"I'll take that as a yes," Sam said. Even though his voice was calm, the tendons in his neck stood out, quivering like high-tension wires—a sure sign that Sam Wilcox was not a happy camper. "You were sitting three feet away, so I know you heard me. So imagine my surprise when I hear Maddie talking about the nice girl named Rachel who helped her bake cookies at your house. She said, 'Rachel's an angel, and she lives in the walls. She tries not to disturb Uncle Darren 'cause spirits make him nervous.'"

"Sam, come in, you're getting wet—"

"Now, two things are possible. One is that my daughter is like most kids and has an active imagination and has imaginary playmates and all that shit. Which is fine. Or it's possible she really did see something here, something that has clearly shown a tendency towards violence. This is not so fine, Darren. What also isn't fine is the fact that she was even here in the first place, after I told you I didn't want my kids coming here."

"I was babysitting her, Sam. We were here for maybe an hour. She had a good time. What did you expect me to do, drive around the block for four hours? I was doing you and Julia a favor."

"By undermining my authority as a parent?"

That was just a bonus. "Maddie is fine. She had a good time. I'm speaking slowly and using small words, so I don't know how else to make you understand."

That was when Sam pressed the muzzle of his service .45 between Darren's eyes. "Yeah, keep using that smug, condescending tone with me. Let's see if you have the guts for that now."

Darren didn't feel frightened, which was odd. He felt more confused than anything, as if he were watching a movie with a scene missing so that the characters are suddenly acting and talking in strange, contradictory ways. How had they moved from a boring family disagreement—one of many—to a felony in less than a second? Darren assumed pulling a gun on an unarmed man was a felony. "What are you doing?" Darren asked. "Put the gun away."

"Why don't you try to take it away from me? Or are you pretty much just all talk? Go ahead." With his free hand, Sam pushed Darren hard in the chest, sending him stumbling backwards into the kitchen table. Sam moved into the kitchen, pressing the gun to Darren's forehead once again.

Darren backed up toward the living room. He held his hands out to either side in what he hoped would be interpreted as an unthreatening gesture. His mouth was dry and he didn't know what to say.
My brother-in-law has pulled a gun on me
, he thought. The thought kept repeating itself on a loop, an idiotic car alarm in his brain.

"Come on, Darren. Technically, I just assaulted you. Why don't you be a man for once and stand up for yourself? Here. You want a fair fight?" Sam slid the automatic back into its nylon holster and then he too held his hands out to either side. "Now it's fair. Come on."

"What do you want?"

"I just want to see what kind of man you really are. And it's what I figured. You're just another one of those smug, holier-than-thou liberals who loves to look down his fucking nose at guys like me, like I'm just a worthless slob. Ever since I married Julia you've been treating me like I'm the scum of the earth, even when I've tried to be friends with you. And you're so goddamned dumb you think I don't see how you treat me."

"Sam—"

"But you know what? I can live with that. Big fucking deal, I've been treated like that by a lot of people, your darling parents included. I'm used to it. What I do take exception to is when you interfere with how I raise my family." He shoved Darren again, and this time Darren stumbled and fell on his ass on the living room floor. Sam stood above him, hands on his hips.

"What I do take exception to," Sam said, his face reddening, "is when you put my daughter's life in jeopardy by exposing her to God knows what in this shithole. A few months ago that fucking table was jumping up and down like a prop from
The Exorcist
and you have the gall to bring my daughter back here? What is the matter with you?"

Darren tried to sit up but Sam kicked him smartly in the ribs, making Darren emit a half-grunt, half-cry as a lightning bolt of pain detonated on the left side of his chest. He was going to be beaten up. It was really going to happen. Even his tense run-ins with Scott Slifka, bully of Mrs. Andrews' fourth-grade class, had amounted to little more than name-calling and a few shoves on the playground after school. This, however, would be a genuine, bona fide ass-kicking, a first for him.

Sam crouched and grabbed Darren by the face, enveloping Darren in an intense, sinus-clearing cloud of Aqua-Velva. "If you have no problem putting my daughter's life at risk, what else do you have no problem doing? Do you touch her, too?"

"Stop—"

"You're a cowardly piece of shit. You are never to see Maddie or Brandon again after this, you understand? That's the first thing. The second thing is you have a choice whether I break your nose or your jaw. You pick."

Then all the lights in the house went out.

"What the hell did you do?" Sam said.

Every door on the second floor slammed shut, one after another, each one sounding like a gun going off. Then the back door shut, an even louder shotgun blast. The efficient metallic
snick-click
that followed was the deadbolt being turned.

Darren's living room stereo sprang to sudden life in a flurry of twinkling red and green lights. The speakers blared a few seconds of the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up," with Mick Jagger lasciviously saying that if you start him up he'll never stop. Then the stereo went dead.

Darren struggled to get to his feet. Every breath and movement sent hot filaments of agony radiating out from his ribcage. Sam must have cracked one of his ribs. When he got to his feet he stayed doubled over, his hands on his knees like a tired shortstop. He felt queasy. Then he clamped a hand over his mouth and tried to pull his chin in close to his neck to stave off the sudden and violent retching that seized his throat. The house had filled, in a matter of seconds, with the acrid, unmistakable stench of feces, as if a hundred toilets had backed up and ruptured in the middle of the living room.

"God, what the hell is that?" Sam cried, his voice muffled by his own hand over his mouth.

The smell dissipated almost instantly. Then the floorboards creaked on the second floor. It wasn't the house settling. The sound was footsteps. Someone was coming down the stairs.

In the darkness, Darren could see the hunched lump that was Sam draw his gun again and drop into a shooter's crouch. He aimed at the stairway. "Who the hell is in the house with you?" he yelled.

Darren's voice was a hoarse gasp. "No one."

Whatever was coming down the stairs was heavy and moved with a lurching, staggering gait, like a massive dead animal that had been reanimated. Darren found himself thinking of his high school calculus teacher, Mr. Burl, a sprawling, six-foot-six man who had been in the early stages of multiple sclerosis; when Mr. Burl moved around in class it was a grim, almost frightening spectacle as the shambling sad-faced man limped and staggered, bumping into desks (often making some of the girls yelp in horrified surprise) and dragging his recalcitrant left leg like Ahab with his wooden limb. The thing moving down the stairs now sounded much like that, but the groaning floorboards and booming footsteps suggested something that was twice the size of Mr. Burl.

A loud, insistent thought flashed into Darren's mind—
don't look at it, look somewhere else
—and he wasn't sure if the thought was coming from him or from some other source. He spun his body a little so that he was facing away from the staircase. Sam scrambled on the floor, backing away from the stairway landing, trying to put Darren between him and the intruder on the stairs.

The lights came back on. Sam cried out as his gun arm was jerked upward by some unseen force and the gun itself slipped out of his hand. The .45 flew upward and attached itself to the ceiling as if drawn by a supercharged magnet. A fresh crack appeared in the ceiling plaster.

Darren's body was wracked with gooseflesh. The gun was stuck to the ceiling. Dear Christ, this wasn't an hallucination. The gun was actually lying on the ceiling.

Sam didn't have much time to react to being disarmed because he became transfixed by what he saw on the stairway landing. Darren was still doubled over and turned away from it, so he could only get a sense of the thing from watching Sam's reaction.

Sam, a fifteen-year police veteran who had encountered his share of dead and disfigured bodies and who got a childish kind of pleasure in telling the stories at family parties, turned pale and his eyes opened as wide as the sockets would allow. His mouth hung open and contorted itself into a half-comical, teeth-baring expression of disgust. It was the same expression Darren probably wore that morning three months ago when he lugged a wet bag of garbage to the curb and saw that the bottom of the bag was covered with an undulating, semi-solid layer of squirming maggots.

Then the sounds came. Darren thought they sounded like the barking of a sick, choking Rottweiler. They were violent, abrupt, unclean sounds—a series of wet, rumbling explosions that formed a hybrid of barking and gagging, as if whatever was emitting them was vomiting up its life through plague-ravaged lungs. Though Darren's body was drenched with warm sweat, the sounds turned the perspiration icy and clammy.

The thought-alarm kept clanging in Darren's head, a wailing siren:
Don't look. Don't look
.

"Oh sweet Christ," Sam muttered. His momentary paralysis broke and he lunged into the kitchen, toward the back door. He slipped on the floorboards and fell once to his knees but picked himself back up again. He grabbed at the lock, trying to work the deadbolt with trembling fingers.

Darren was right behind him, still unable to rise to his full height without feeling a hot, pulling sensation in his side. While Sam fought with the lock, Darren fumbled around in the broom closet for the crowbar he kept in there. In the past it had come in handy for prying up the balky windows in Rachel's room or in the basement. Now it would come in handy for other purposes.

Sam got the back door open and he hurried out into the gently falling rain, digging around in his pockets for the keys to his Grand Prix. PROUD TO BE PRO-LIFE, said one of Sam's bumper stickers. BUSH/CHENEY '04, said another. Darren lurched a step behind Sam, the rain refreshingly cool on his face and neck.

"Where ya going, Sam? Hey, don't rush off so soon. The party's just getting started."

Darren swung the crowbar and obliterated the back windshield of Sam's car. It made an anticlimactic
psssssht
sound, like someone crushing a handful of Saltines. There was a tight warning flare of pain in Darren's side. He grimaced as he brought the crowbar down solidly on the trunk, right above the pro-life sticker. The trunk dented like an empty beer can.