The Wisdom of Evil (9 page)

They looked through
her with lifeless eyes, like those of a shark. It dawned on her that they couldn’t save her because they couldn’t see her. They were just as incapable of hearing her cries for help.

The train moved onward, to what destination
Glory didn’t know. But there they were, again and again, her parents, now both deceased. Their sallow, gray skin sagged about their face and neck and hollow eyes; they
looked
dead.

The doors would
n’t open. She was trapped here with no one knowing where or who she was!

Finally,
her mother burst into flames, grabbing onto her father who ignited as well, and they vanished into nothingness. In the very spot where they’d just stood, a misty substance much like fog began to take shape. Oh God, no! Not him, not the reaper! As the mist cleared, a figure came into view. But, it wasn’t the reaper at all. It was
her
…Olivia.

“My God…Olivia,” Glory whispered, incredulous.

Her face, her eyes and hair were as beautiful as they’d ever been and she was surrounded with an ethereal light, appearing as an angel sent from Heaven itself.

She held out her hand for
Glory to take. Although, she reached and reached, she couldn’t touch her through the train windows or doors. The image of Olivia was dissipating, becoming blurred and misty. The mist seeped through the doors, moving upward, obliterating the doors from sight. And then it took form.

Glory gasped!
The shape was no longer that of Olivia. Glory looked down as a cold, rotten hand had latched onto her own. She gazed in terror into the very face of death itself! Putrid and rotten flesh was sloughing off the face as well as the hand and no matter how hard she tried, it would not let go. She couldn’t escape!  She felt the cold creep into her hand, her arm, and watched helplessly as her flesh disintegrated. Muscle, bone, blood and tissue were now visible as death attached itself to her, eating her alive before she’d died. It did not want to wait.

“This is the only way home there is
,” the Olivia-thing hissed at her.

Glory
awoke gasping for air, her hair soaked all the way down to the scalp. She felt dirty. For a brief moment, she didn’t know where she was. The sound of the screeching wheels of the train followed her as she awoke, finally fading into the distance, as did the dream itself.

It was then that
she remembered that her little girl with the hair of silk and eyes of a doe was gone. She’d cried all the day it seemed, weeping silent tears of despair and loss. Now, though, she sobbed and shook and pulled her entire body up into itself. The tears wouldn’t stop.

She
hoped they never would because there was no other release from this agony.

Haley came up from his vigilant post at the bottom of
their bed and pushed his snout gently up to her face and licked at the tears, his tail softly swooshing on the soft down comforter. Glory grabbed him, holding onto him for dear life. It must have hurt him a little because he whimpered but withstood it.

He stayed with
her all the long, dark night, comforting even though there was no comfort to be found because he knew she needed him.

Michael was not in the room
, nor was he in the house. Glory heard Mickey roaming around, muttering to himself and crying. Michael must be out, probably driving around aimlessly like he did when he was really upset.

The next morning came. It made no difference to
Glory. Only the dawn itself knew day time had come into their home.

She
literally had to drag herself out of bed. She took a Xanax with her coffee and hesitated for a minute or two at the doorway to Olivia’s room. She had to choose an outfit for her to be buried in.

She
chose a simple white linen summer dress laced with embroidered flowers along the neck and hemline. She chose her favorite earrings, a pair of delicate white feathers embellished with small baby blue stones running parallel with the feathers.

Her
heart broken, she did all this numbly. That is, until it was time to choose her undergarments. Glory never knew that undergarments had to be put on the dead until she’d chosen them for her mother when she died.

Th
e intrusion into Olivia’s private garments brought her to tears, simple, quiet tears. She did all of this alone. She didn’t hear or see Mickey or Michael until it was time to leave for the funeral home. She’d gently touched each garment before putting them in the car.

“Hey
,” Michael said from the open doorway. “How are yah holding up, Glory?”

“I took enough
Xanax to put down a horse and still my heart and soul ache like nothing I have ever known.”

“
I know, Glory, me too. Jesus Christ, we…lost a child! This ain’t supposed to be how things go; she was innocent!” He’d been drinking, which was very unusual for him, but totally understandable under the circumstance. Sometimes, even someone as strong as Michael needed to become numb, she thought.

They held each other wordlessly, sharing the immense
weight of their loss, locked together in lost love and grief most unbearable. There was nothing either could say to the other right now to make it better.

If it weren’t for Michael, Mickey and Haley
, Glory would have been happy to die right there in her daughter’s room. She thought of how much she needed Joan right now, but she was gone too.

The
wake was beyond traumatic; it was like a nightmare without end. Michael had insisted they release butterflies at the end of the sermon before Olivia was put into the ground, forever out of their reach. It was poignant and beautiful. Glory hoped the butterflies would follow Olivia’s soul into Heaven, if there was such a place. She forced herself to believe there was because the alternative was too horrific to contemplate.

L
ater, Glory would remember some odd things she hadn’t noticed before.

For one thing,
Sean wasn’t there. She didn’t know if he was afraid to face them or if he was home wallowing in a drug induced pity party.

Her
brother Ted was there, although when he came up to Glory and Michael to pay his condolences, Michael visibly struggled to control his disgust and anger. This wasn’t the place to fight with Ted. It would be disrespectful to Olivia.

Glory
allowed Ted to take her hand and hug her. She didn’t hug him back as he sobbed into her shoulder saying over and over, “I’m sorry, so sorry.”

Glory could feel a numbness begin its slow descent over her, the numbness she
’d fought against throughout her life, now welcome. She had no words for her brother. None.

Another oddity was that there wasn’t any sign of the black cloaked, green
-eyed, skull of the Reaper. She’d thought for sure he would show his face now when she was at her most vulnerable, but he didn’t.

Perhaps, like
the king on the chess board, he felt he’d reached the “end game” with her. That he, the king, had come out to fight and had won.

C
hapter 12

Olivia had died in June. As the months passed, summer gave way to autumn, but none of it mattered; Glory was never fully present in any of the passing seasons. She hadn’t been to work in over three months now and still she requested a longer leave of absence. She lived each day unfeeling, dead inside, in a drug induced emotional coma.

She
’d become fully dependent on the Xanax and Clonopin and took them in ever increasing amounts. Ironically, she’d started taking drugs to get over a loss due to drugs. She no longer wanted to feel the pain of loss, which she’d experienced so much of in her life. She was tired of losing so many loved ones, tired of grieving, tired of living period. Still, as weary of life as she’d become, she was still afraid to die. She just wanted it all to go away. To wake up on a sunny morning and hear Mickey and Olivia arguing over the bathroom as they got ready for school.

She
and Michael were becoming distant. Why couldn’t he see how much she needed him? Probably because he was grieving so deeply himself he had nothing to give to her, or Mickey. Nor had she told him she needed him. Glory knew what losing a child could do to a marriage, had seen it in other families, even read about it in psychology books; the couple could no longer stand to look at each other. In many cases, it was the beginning of the end for the marriage. It was unimaginable that this could happen to
their
marriage. It terrified her to think they might become one of the sad statistics, a cliché even of a couple who could no longer bear to be in the same house together. Each walled off by his or her own guilt, and sadness.

While Glory wallowed in self-pity, Michael
stayed out taking long rides and harboring his hatred of Sean and his grief for Olivia.

His jaw line remained firm and tense all the time and though
she was worried about him, all efforts to console him were rejected. He barely looked her in the eye anymore. He was lost; that was certain. They both needed each other, but couldn’t make that connection, the one they’d taken for granted they’d always have.

It seemed she
had nothing left to give to her family, nothing they wanted. Even Mickey stayed out late with his friends, not wanting to be in the house anymore either. Who could blame him, really? His parents had become emotional zombies.

She knew that
all she cared about could be taken away at any time by a God that she’d come to hate for his cruelty, his lack of intervention on behalf of her daughter, and the evil he’d allowed to come into their home. At other times, she didn’t believe he was there at all. Yes, that made more sense. But, somehow, hating God felt better than the thought of being truly all alone with no meaning to any of it. No meaning to life at all. Couldn’t the Grim Reaper himself just as easily have been the very angel of death?

Glory’s
brother Ted had been calling and leaving messages on their answering machine for months after Olivia died.

The messages were long litanies
full of drunken self-loathing at first. However, as time went on, he’d ask if they knew where Sean was. No one in the house picked up the phone and the messages were promptly deleted. None of them ever returned any of his calls.

Sean had been missing since the day after Olivia died. At first, Ted must not
have been too concerned. Sean was known to disappear, sometime for weeks on end, without contacting his dad. But now it had been months with not a word from him.

Finally, Michael couldn’t stand it any longer; he picked up Ted’s call
.

Glory
lay on the couch, wrapped in an afghan blanket Joan had made for her many years ago; Haley was curled up in a contented “doggie” ball next to her.

Michael
listened intently for what seemed like forever.

“
When was this? Where’d they find him? You…what? Are you fuckin’
serious
? I had nothin’ to do with this. I can’t believe you’d think I did!” Michael said angrily. “I’m a
cop
for Chrissakes!

Motive
? You bet your
ass
I had motive. Your son dragged my daughter down with him and…it killed her. For all I know, he put the needle in her arm. But…I didn’t hurt him!”

Glory
could only hear one half of the conversation. Her curiosity got the better of her. She struggled out of the blankets and picked up the phone extension in the master bedroom.

“Well
somebody
shot him, and a gut shot at that, someone who wanted Sean to die a slow, painful death.” Ted was screaming at Michael.

They
’d found him in Charlestown, floating in the Mystic River.

“Do you have any idea of how that body looked when they dragged him outta there? I couldn’t even…recognize him. Had to identify him by his fingerprints from the skin that…that…slid off his hands!”
His voice broke.

Michael was well aware of what a body looked like when it came out of the water after even a short period of time. He’d only seen one “floater” in his career and it was the most sickening sight he’d ever seen.
If the body was submerged in cold water, such as the Mystic, decomposition was slower than in warmer waters.

However,
even in the icy waters of the Mystic, in as little as three weeks, the body tissue would convert to “adipocere,” a compound that stopped the activity of bacteria. It appeared as a greasy, soapy, yellow-white substance, which formed on the fatty parts of the body such as the cheeks, abdomen wall, and buttocks. And the smell! It has a very distinct, strong, musty odor. Because so long a period had gone by before Sean had been found, he would have been bloated from the formation of bacterial gas. The body would’ve turned to a greenish black, making identification difficult. The skin and hair would slip off. Due to the “gloving” of the hands and feet in which the skin fell off, intact fingerprints could be obtained from the “gloves.” It was gruesome to say the least. Michael shuddered at the thought.

“
You fuckin’ did it, didn’t you, Michael? Admit it, you and my high an’ mighty sister who never does
anything
wrong. Mr. and Mrs. Fuckin’ Perfect! You’re a
murderer
!”

“Ted, calm down
.” Michael’s anger dissipated and turned to sympathy.

Glory
dared not speak; she was shocked at this latest twist in an already horrendous situation.

She
knew Michael couldn’t take Sean’s life because he’d suffered the most unendurable of losses, that of their own child.

“I didn’t do this, Ted. I couldn’t. At first I blamed Sean, but I realized after a
while that Olivia did what she did of her own free will. Maybe his friends know something about it. The crowd he hung out with wasn’t exactly the cream of society.” Michael still sounded calm, but a subtle hint of sarcasm crept into his voice.

“You
miserable bastard! I don’t for one minute believe you’re not involved in this somehow! I have to go down to the morgue and sign papers for an autopsy. You can bet your ass I’ll have a lot to tell the police about you as soon as I’m done there.” With that, he hung up the phone.

Glory was aware that
all suspicious deaths required an autopsy by law, but still, the thought of it made her ill.

Was this the justice that God had doled out in his infinite wisdom
, or had Michael played a part in Sean’s death? She couldn’t believe that Michael was even capable of such a thing, but she had to ask.

“Michael? Did
you…were you involved in this in any way?” she asked, dreading the answer.

Michael’s back was to
her. She couldn’t see his face as he hung up the phone.

“No, Glory. I didn’t do
it.” He spoke in a calm and even tone of voice.

“
Then look at me. I need you to look me straight in the eye and tell me you didn’t do this!”

He turned to
her, held her face tenderly in his big, rough hands, looked her directly in the eye, and shook his head.

“No
, Glory. I could never live with myself if I had. You should know me beddah than that after all these years.”

At th
at point, Glory wasn’t sure that she knew anyone or anything anymore.

“But your
anger
, Michael. You’ve been…
different
. I don’t know where you go on those long drives you take. No one knows where you are or what you’re doing. How do I know you didn’t just…go down there one night and shoot him? We have guns in the house, so…”

“I
’m really hurt that you think I could do that. Sean is still
blood
. Whatever else he was, he’s still your brother’s son!”

She
looked deep into his eyes and still was unable to detect anything that would lead her to believe he was anything but innocent. “I believe you. So…what are we going to do?” Glory asked. “Ted will tell the police it was you, and they’ll come here for sure.”

The thought of the police coming to
their door brought back memories of that sun-filled nightmare of a day when the two officers had come to bring them the news of Olivia’s death.

“I’ll tell them the truth. They don’t even know how long the body was there and I work nights, so I have an alibi
.”

“Michael, where were you all the times you weren’t home or at work
? I need to know.”

“I was at the cemetery, visiting my mother and tellin
’ her my feelings about Olivia…and yes, about my anger with Sean…and Ted. It made me feel beddah. Sometimes I sat in the grass next to my parents’ gravestones for hours, sipping hot coffee and just talkin’. I thought…maybe Mom and Dad were able to hear me. Thought if I listened close enough, I just might get some answers, some peace.”

“And did you find any answers?”

“No. But I did find a little peace.”

“Why couldn’t you talk to me about it?”

“Glory, I know you’re suffering with this as much as me, and then with the drugs you’re takin’…Well…it’s like you aren’t here and I’m…afraid to push you over the edge. And then there’s the whole death phobia and that premonition you had in North Conway, like you knew somethin’ bad was gonna happen and I…got mad at you. I shoulda listened, although I don’t suppose it would’ve made any difference. She was probably already dead by then.”

Glory
felt an unwelcome emotion climbing up through her drug ridden numbness; failure. She’d failed her family at a time when they needed her. This time, she hadn’t been able to tap into her inner strength and get past her own grief to take care of them.

She
was ashamed at her own self-absorption and lack of consideration for Michael and Mickey’s pain. Ashamed that she’d even for one moment entertained the notion that Michael had murdered their nephew.

“Michael,” she said timidly, “I don’t wanna end up one of those couples whose marriage fails after the death of a child. I…love you, can’t imagine my life without you. And I need you. Please, tell me you still feel the same way.”

Michael was silent for a moment before answering, as if what he had to say would cause them both pain.

“I haven’t been able to
…look at you, Glory. Because…every time I look at your face, I see Olivia’s. She looked like you, yah know?” His voice trembled with emotion.

He sank to the couch, his misery palatable. Glory tenderly put her arms around him. He
rested his head in her lap and bawled. She stroked his hair quietly, tenderly.

“I’ll always love you, Glory
. We’ll get through this…together, just like always.”

When Glory looked away from Michael, there was Mickey standing stock still in front of them, tears falling silently on his cheeks. He came to his mother as well, resting his head on her shoulder.
They stayed like that for what seemed the longest time, comforting each other. Glory, without tears, was the strength for both of them, taking care of her family because that was her job, and she wouldn’t fail them ever again.