Primal (19 page)

Alison looks up. She is on her back porch stoop breathing
heavily. How did I get home? Wait. She doesn’t remember. I ran? Did I run all
the way home? She looks down at her feet. They’re filthy and bleeding from
numerous cuts and stubs. Her toes are numb and white from the cold. Oh, god.
What’s happening to me? She raps on the back kitchen door. Jimmy opens the door
and looks warily at his mom.

“Mom?”

She forces normal, “Hi, honey.”

“What are you doing?”

“Left my keys by accident.”

“You don’t have any shoes on?”

“Oh, ah, yeah, stubbed my toe and I just…my shoe didn’t.
Enough questions young man.” She pushes past him and goes upstairs.

In the bathroom, she turns on the hot water faucet for her
sink. As it fills with steaming water she closes the connecting pocket door
that leads to Jimmy’s bedroom, leaving the door to her room opened so she can
hear. Pulling off her shredded stockings she tosses them in the little bathroom
trash pail. She pulls a bottle of hydrogen peroxide from the vanity cabinet and
pours a bit into the hot water. Sliding up onto the bathroom counter she plunges
her feet into the sink to soak. I know what I saw. The hot water hits her toes
and they feel like she is walking on fire! She scrunches up her face,
vigorously shakes her feet and leaves them to soak. She knows this happens when
one is close to frostbite. I know what I saw. She massages the toes encouraging
circulation. God, did I look like a crazy woman running barefoot down Hilldale?
Who saw me? She drops her forehead to rest on her bent knees and allows the hot
water to do its job, to coax life back to her damaged and frozen toes. I know
what I saw. The hydrogen peroxide will be an adequate disinfectant because the
street was so cold it is unlikely any kind of infection can result from these
cuts. I know. Over and over in her head like a line from a song she cannot let
go of: I know what I saw. It repeats without her thinking it. It repeats in
time with her heartbeat.

Jimmy watches his mom all through dinner with trepidation.
His conversation stutters around in aimless fits and he feels no subject is the
right one. Clearly, school did not go so well for his mom, but she is resistant
to discuss it. He thinks it could be because her car broke down, but he doesn’t
believe that is what it is. It feels like more of that other stuff, when she’s
here but she’s not here, he thinks. He keeps looking at her and hoping he will
see her like she was this morning. He desperately wants to see his mom again.

Jimmy answers his dad, “No I went home with Alan because we
had a project. Mom stayed after for work.”

“Oh.” Hank senses her slipping away just like Jimmy does.

“So…” Jimmy shrugs, “I guess I’ll go do my homework.”

“Okay, son, always a good plan.”

Jimmy carries his plate to the sink and goes to do his
homework.

“So you walked home then?” Hank asks her as casually as he
can manage.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you call Triple A?”

“I just didn’t.”

“Did the engine turn over?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of? Alison, did it seem like the battery or something
else? I can go over and take a look tonight at the school. Give me your keys.”

“No, I’ll figure it out tomorrow.”

“Honey, I’m happy to go and -”

“I’ve got it!” she snaps at him. She can’t tell Hank what
happened. This is an impossible situation for them, they are too close to hide
things from each other, but she knows she must stay quiet. She realizes some
people think she’s becoming unbalanced. And I suppose, she thinks, I’m not
altogether certain they aren’t right. I suppose there is a scintilla of doubt
there. How can I not have doubts when what I see and hear is inconsistent with
what everyone around me thinks and says? How do I rectify these contradictions?
She holds her husband’s eyes and Hank sees the confusion, he recognizes the
distant look, and they both know she is lying. Hank had believed they were
making progress and so he swallows the disappointment and he looks away. He
wants to be patient, but he is beginning to feel like Alison isn’t fighting to
come back to them. His impatience is becoming unwieldy and he wants their life
back. He can’t persist in ignoring the consequences of her continued detachment
on their son. It perpetuates Jimmy’s injury and lengthens his recovery time.
The impenetrable mask that seemed gone for good this morning is still there. It
separates his son from the mother he urgently needs and the threads of Hank’s
compassion are fraying as he saw unequivocally the loss on Jimmy’s face at
dinner. Alison picks up the dinner plates and carries them to the sink. She
peers out the kitchen window into the pitch black of the backyard. Get
spotlights, she thinks. She scrapes the leftovers into the disposal. Hank wipes
the counters. As he passes the controls, he switches on the music system and
Ray Charles enters the room. Hank sings along “Georgia…” At least there is
solace in the music. Alison lifts her head from the sink. She walks over and
switches off the music.

“No Ray Charles? Feel like someone else?”

“No music.”

Hank looks at her as if she is speaking gibberish. “What do
you mean?’

“No more music. We can’t have music.”

“All night?”

“No music for a while.”

“Why not?” He’s been patching the family back together by
himself, trying to be everything for both her and Jimmy, but now the nightmare
is over. He does not have any more energy left for this. His music is not
negotiable. It is his identity. He feels his temper rise up and his face turns
red. She knows me, he thinks! She knows about music and me. She knows this if
she knows anything.

“This is a little like telling me to stop breathing.”

“It’s too loud,” she says.

“So I’ll turn it down.”

“No. We can’t hear.”

“Can’t hear what?”

“Anything.”

Hank raises his voice as he eggs her on, “Like what?” He
whips down the kitchen towel and turns to her taking it on. The vein on his
forehead is pulsing. She stops scraping the dish, carefully puts it down, and
turns to face him.

“We need to hear if someone is around.”

“Someone who?”

She grits her teeth, “We can’t get sloppy!”

The scab is ripped off between them.

“He’s dead, Alison!”

“On the contrary, he is loving this! The squirming, the
fear, the game of us wondering.”

“We’re not wondering.”

“Yes.”

“Alison! For god’s sake, wake up! This isn’t a game it’s our
lives! You’ve got to pull it together. I’ll do whatever I can to help, but
you’ve got to try!”

Jimmy innocently opens the swinging kitchen door.

“Hey, Dad, I need robot batteries.”

“End table in the foyer.”

“Okay.” Jimmy turns and exits.

Alison remembers that is where she keeps the handgun. She
goes after him. “No! Wait. I’ll get…”

Hank grabs her arm. “It’s not in there.”

“What?”

“The gun isn’t in there.”

Angrily, “Where is it?”

“I got rid of it.”

Furious, she yells, “Have you lost your mind?”

For a sour moment, they stand like that: Hank with his
fingers harshly gripping her arm and Alison half-turned toward the door. The
words she just spoke bang around the room. She knows what he is thinking. He
thinks
she
has
lost her mind. That is what he thinks. That is what everyone
thinks. Too bad, I know what I know. I know it’s not over. I can feel he’s
around.

“Hank, something strange happened out there between us.”

“No, we’re still the same.”

“Not you and me - me and him.”

“You and him! Now there’s a you and him? There is no you and
him.”

“Something…some kind of animal thing passed between us and
I’m trying to protect us.”

“You want to protect us? To protect our family? Give me back
my wife! Give Jimmy back his mother!” They are squeezed in a fist of conflict.
It is all so wrong. They know it is wrong, and they both want it to end, but
they cannot see through the fog of the storm between them. They are both
certain they are right and being so certain makes compromise untenable.

“I wish you understood.” She pulls her arm away. “But I
can’t pretend it is not happening.” She walks toward the swinging door.

“Alison!” She stops never having heard that tone from her
husband. There is danger in it; it feels like a tipping point. “It is not
happening.” She does not feel quite as defiant as she looks when she spins
around and pushes through the swinging door. Hank pushes his way out the back
kitchen door. He shoves his hands into his pockets and walks around the frozen
backyard in circles crunching the rigid blades of grass under fuming feet.

* * *

The following morning the pacing continues unabated inside
Doctor Cartwell’s office. Hank walks around with such concentrated power he has
created an oblong-shaped discernible path in the freshly vacuumed carpet.
Inside the office, with its cushy armchairs and dark linen drapes, Hank feels
it is allowable to let go. A candle burns on the shelf of the bookcase
soothingly scenting the air with lavender heightening the sensation of being in
a meditative space, a place where it is okay to lift the burden from his
shoulders and stash it by the door until he can pick it up on the way out. Hank
oscillates between anxiety and wrenching sadness, but his most pressing emotion
is his mounting anger, an anger that has begun to bleed through the reinforced
borders of his façade His goodness is leaking.

Doctor Cartwell says, “I want to talk about you, Hank. What
you’re feeling.”

“What I’m feeling? Okay. Sure. Let’s see. I feel infuriated
beyond reason. The blood in my veins is angry, the hairs on my head are angry,
my skin is cracked and itching because the anger has dried me out.” His voice
grows louder as he rants. “I’m mad at the streetlights, at the clock on the
stove. I’m mad at the food on my plate. I’m mad at a god I don’t even believe
in! I feel like shaking someone to death! Yes, to death, that’s it! That’s how
I feel like I want to shake and shake until I shake the life out of something
and after all that shaking I know I will still be the same joke of a man I was
before all the shaking.”

“You think you’re a joke?”

“The whole time, from the first moment at the camp, I’ve
been worthless as a father, as a husband, as a man. I couldn’t protect my son. I
couldn’t help my wife. I can’t control anything. I can’t fix anything. I’m
useless.”

“You were tied up.”

“I’m not tied up now! She’s losing it and I still can’t
help. I thought after a little time things would return to normal. The guy is
dead. We have proof he’s dead. I thought she would feel safe again, safe with
me, but the truth is she isn’t safe with me and now she knows that - she knows
that for sure.” He is shattered. “And that really hurts, you know, for the
woman you love to see you in that way. Isn’t there some kind of tacit social
contract, or maybe it’s a basic instinct thing that the female is protected by
the male? We’ve upset some kind of natural order.”

“I don’t think she’d feel safe with anyone right now. This
is really not a reflection on you, Hank.”

“I wanted to save my family. I still want to save my family.
Maybe another husband, another man, could’ve done something dramatic, or
heroic, or at least mildly effective.”

“You’re confusing real life for any number of fictional
Bruce Willis characters. If you would have been the one left out in the cold
that night at the camp you would have done as much or more than Alison.”

“I don’t know that. You didn’t see what she did.” Hank stops
pacing and leans against the large desk. His voice becomes distant. Doctor
Cartwell listens with great focus and lets Hank’s thoughts wander aloud. “Even
though we are aware on some practical level from hearing the news every day
that there is no such thing as “fair” we still function as though there is. I
guess we have to. We live in this pathetic illusion that if we are good people
then life will be fair. Maybe that’s the only thing that keeps us civilized.
The bottom line for us all is the belief that being good will lead to some kind
of cosmic fairness, maybe we all believe in that kind of karma. Maybe that’s
why religions invented an afterlife: how else could you explain the unfairness
except to believe there had to be more, that there must be a payoff later? And
even when people say all the time, well you know life isn’t fair, of course you
know that,” Hank throws up his hands, “we all
know
that, but we still live every day as though it is fair, and we
still act surprised when it isn’t. When Mike hit the floor dead at my feet, I
knew that fair thing was over for me. Life is random. Death is random. Goodness
is a choice with no predictive value. Any one of us good or bad can die face
down in the gutter tonight. I remember reading about this woman who had been a
foster mother to like fifty kids, and who was a revered and loved woman in this
poor neighborhood, and she was murdered one day on her front lawn for the four
dollars in her purse. There is no balance. The lady holding the scales of
justice isn’t blind so she can be fair, she’s blind so it is random, she’s blind
because the facts don’t matter, the circumstances don’t matter, she’s blind
because it’s a game to her, she’s like a little kid with her hands over her
eyes playing fucking hide ‘n seek with all of our lives! And, you know what,
Doctor, knowing all of this is not particularly comforting.”

Cartwell waits before he speaks as a show of respect. Hank’s
words have been heartfelt and revealing. Then, he says gently, “Perhaps
goodness is its own payoff.”

“Resorting to platitudes, Doctor? What if people start to
actually believe, believe every day the real truth, the truth that life isn’t
fair, does civilized society fall apart?”