The Family Across the Street by Nicole Trope
12
Katherine
She sits on the sofa, cradling Sophie’s stuffed monkey. ‘Stay here,’ he warned her, and then slowly, horrifyingly, he followed them up there. She stands up and sits down again quickly. He told her to stay.
She is trying to think of a prayer, any prayer beyond the words ‘please God’. She wants to say something different but her mind is incapable of forming proper thoughts right now. She closes her eyes so she can hear better but only silence wafts down from the children’s bedrooms.
He has taken the gun with him. She could, theoretically, run now. She could get up and race to the front door and outside. Theoretically – but as if she would leave the children, as if it would even be possible. And he knows this.
She looks over to the window that faces out onto the garden. If it were closer to the street, she could open it and call for help, but all the houses in this road have large gardens and thick walls. And it would only anger him further if he heard her.
Glancing at the shelves above the television, she studies the rolls of wrapping paper, waiting to be used. The twins will be six years old in three days. She drops her head into her hands. They have a party planned for Sunday afternoon. They have hired a jumping castle for the garden. Her pantry is filled with party bags and last night she wrapped the first of the presents she had bought them. She has possibly gone overboard this year because as she was shopping for them a few weeks back, she thought, What if John and I are no longer together next year? A stray thought that shocked as it appeared. This is not a space she expected to be in, not now. She believed she had chosen John so carefully, been so sure. This shouldn’t have happened.
But by last night she was certain that she was headed for a divorce, that it was only a matter of time, and John knew it as well. ‘You can’t do this,’ he’d said to her a week ago, when she first suggested that they take some time apart. ‘It’s starting to affect the children,’ she’d said. ‘We need to just give this marriage some space to breathe. You’re always angry at me.’
‘You make things so hard.’ His jaw clenched; his crossed arms locked out any real discussion.
‘I understand you think that. I know you’re unhappy and I’m unhappy too and… maybe we need some time.’ She had rubbed her eyes, keeping away tears, needing to show strength.
‘You can’t do this,’ he’d said, shaking his head. ‘I won’t let you do this.’ What had she felt then? Relief, she thinks. She had assumed it meant he wanted to really talk, to understand her concerns.
And then everything changed. Last night’s argument, over texts from another woman, and now Katherine is here… her world upended.
Standing up, she goes to the door of the family room. She’s not going to sit here any longer. But then she panics at what he might do if she disobeys him. If something happens to the children… I will not be told what to do. Easy to say if there were no children involved. They make a woman, a mother, so vulnerable. She is terrified to disobey him. Terrified for her children. Quickly, she sits down again.
Last night’s argument repeats itself, John pulling at his dark hair, frustration making him grit his teeth.
‘Your fault, Katherine. You’re the one who’s been pulling away.’
‘I have twins to take care of.’
‘And I have a job. We’re both busy!’
‘So you’re texting another woman?’
‘It’s not like that, it’s just a friendship. I don’t get anything from you anymore, not even that.’
‘Rubbish. Friends don’t end their texts with heart emojis.’
There is a shriek from upstairs followed by a scream and she leaps off the couch and runs to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Sophie, George… Sophie, George!’ she yells, the words a strangled squeak, but then he appears, points the gun at her. ‘Stop right there.’ She freezes.
He turns around, snarls, ‘Get out here, you brats,’ and the children appear from Sophie’s room. They are holding hands and they are also each holding their iPads. George’s cheek is flaming, a bright, deep red.
‘What… what happened?’ she begs.
‘Get back in there,’ he hisses at her and she darts back into the room, her eyes falling on the wrapping paper again and the blue handle of the scissors underneath the rolls. She grabs at them, scraping her hand on the blade as she does so, and sits back down on the sofa, pushing the scissors down between the two seat cushions, feeling the blade catch and rip the fabric. Her heart pounds as she tries to breathe evenly, to give nothing away, when he comes back into the room with the twins. What have you done? What if he sees? What have I done?
They run to her and cling on to her, their arms around her waist, little bodies shaking, such fear she thinks it may break her.
‘Sorry, Mum,’ sobs Sophie.
‘What happened? What happened?’ she repeats, her voice high – terrified – and she’s panicking that he will somehow figure out that she has the scissors.
‘Just shut up,’ he commands and they do as they have been told, all three of them scrunching up together on the sofa that Katherine decides she will throw away, should she and her children make it out of today alive. She gulps down a moan of despair as she realises how impossible that idea is beginning to seem. What on earth could scissors do against a gun? The children are silent, disbelieving, as they watch him.
‘George tried to make a sign to alert the neighbours, didn’t you, Georgie boy?’ he says, and he sounds amused that a child should try something so stupid.
George nods his head slowly and Katherine knows without a doubt that he has taken the fall for his sister. Sophie is a child of invention and ideas: ‘What if we… why don’t we… let’s try.’
She remembers walking into the kitchen when they were three years old, after having left for just five minutes to put on a load of washing, and finding the whole floor covered in white flour.
‘I did it,’ George said immediately and she simply laughed at the mess. Then Sophie, knowing there would be no consequences, said, ‘I saided we should try to do baking.’
It is so like him to say it was his fault, so protective of him, and her heart melts for her child. As the redness on his cheek begins to fade, a clean handprint is left. He has been hit with a lot of force. He has never been hit before and she can see from his red-rimmed eyes just how shocked he is. Her children are lectured, given time out, their misdemeanours explained. They have never been hit. Not until today. They have never been hurt. Not until today.
‘I’m so sorry, baby,’ she says.
‘Just play on the stupid things,’ he says and both children obediently open their iPads to games they like. She can see little hands trembling, can feel their shock and horror. He has hurt George and she has not protected them. A mother needs to protect her children against everyone, even against their own father if that becomes necessary. She should have done a better job of that.
She wonders if they are both thinking about this now, about her failure to do the one thing all mothers are supposed to do.
She watches their hands move across the screens in lacklustre fashion. They are not interested in the games that they would so willingly play at any other time.
‘I want to tell you a story,’ he says.
Katherine looks up at him, noting the change in his voice. Is he regretting this now? Is he trying to find a way to reverse this situation? His tone is softer, his body more relaxed. Perhaps he has shocked himself with how terrified George and Sophie are.
‘It’s a story about this boy who found a girl that he thought he could love forever. She was pretty and funny and clever and all the things a woman is supposed to be, and the boy treated her with great kindness.’
Flowers for you and chocolates too because I love you – yes, I do.The words written on a card return to her now, and she feels her smile inside her, hears the joyous laugh that had bubbled up at the time. He did love her as she loved him.
There is a ping from George’s iPad, which is synced with her computer, and she turns to look. Her son panics and mistakenly touches the email to open it and she realises it’s a survey about a parcel, the attempted delivery of the computer from earlier this morning. She lifts her hand to close it but George taps on one of the numbers and then quickly gets rid of the email.
He gets up and grabs the iPad from George. ‘What are you doing?’ he roars, bending down to yell in her son’s face, furious at being interrupted. All softness gone, all possibility of her finding a way out of this disappearing.
‘He didn’t do anything, it was just an email!’ she yells, needing to be as loud as he is. Needing to keep his attention on her.
‘Nothing is just anything with you. I can see you planning something. Do you think I’m an idiot? Do you?’
‘No,’ she says, shaking her head frantically, ‘no, I don’t, I don’t.’
He lifts the iPad above his head and then he throws it down on the ground, the glass splintering. Lifting his foot, he stamps on it two or three times until the screen is completely shattered.
‘See what happens?’ he shouts as he stamps. ‘See what happens?’
‘Stop it, stop it…’ she yells, standing up, ‘you’re scaring them.’ Please let the scissors be far enough down in the sofa. Please don’t let him see.
‘Am I?’ he yells and then he lifts the gun and cracks her across the cheek. She falls backwards on the sofa, feels her mouth fill with warm blood. ‘Oh,’ she says, a numbing shock of pain rendering her speechless.
‘Mumma, Mumma,’ shouts George, a word he hasn’t used since he began school and settled on calling her Mum.
‘You hurt her. You’re being mean!’ screams Sophie, her little face red with indignation.
‘I’ll do the same to you too if you don’t shut it.’
Katherine’s head spins, she feels woozy. She, too, has never been hit. She cannot quite believe it of him… and yet it’s happened. She would like to close her eyes for a minute, just rest and let the pain fade so she can think, but if she closes her eyes the children will not cope. The rich metallic taste of blood coats her tongue, and she suppresses the urge to spit it out, to rid herself of the thick, gluggy feeling.
She pulls up the white T-shirt she is wearing and uses it to wipe her mouth but the blood keeps coming. She doesn’t want to take off her T-shirt, doesn’t want to be half-dressed in front of him, even more vulnerable than she is.
‘I need a towel,’ she says, her voice garbled because of the blood in her mouth, vomit rising in her throat. There is a sharp pain where he hit her and she can feel that a tooth has been cracked, slashing the skin inside her cheek.
‘Get her something,’ he says, pointing with the gun, and George dashes out of the room and returns with a large pale blue towel from the bathroom. Blood soaks into it, changing its colour, changing everything.
‘Oh, Mumma,’ whispers George. He has never seen her bleed before. Even when she gets sick, she conceals it from them, taking all sorts of over-the-counter medication to stop a runny nose or bring down a temperature so they still believe that she is able to function no matter what. She can see that George’s view of her is changing, altering – and with it his view of the whole world. If your mother can be hurt this way, then what else is possible? It is this that brings tears to her eyes. He still needs to believe that she is invincible. He still needs to believe in this and the tooth fairy and Santa Claus but mostly he needs to trust that his mother and father and home are his safe space. It’s not true anymore and her children have lost something huge, something unseen and enormous that will forever alter who they are.
Katherine holds the towel against her mouth. Things feels out of control, surreal. She needs to reassure her wide-eyed, stunned children. ‘I’m fine,’ she says and then she repeats it, ‘I’m fine,’ because George and Sophie are pale with shock. They don’t believe her but she repeats it, hoping that repetition will help, will convince them. ‘I’m fine, I’m fine, it’s okay.’
‘She’s fine,’ he says and he returns to the recliner.
She presses the towel against her mouth with enough force to cause pain, hoping to stop the bleeding.
‘I hate you,’ hisses George, standing beside her, little shoulders back, small and fierce.
He laughs. ‘Yeah, well I’m not fond of you right now either.’
She grips her son to her side with her free hand, as if by doing so she can absorb the hurt. So cavalier, so selfish – how can it even be possible? How can someone look at a five-year-old child in distress and not care at all?
She takes the towel away from her mouth and is relieved to see that she is no longer bleeding as much. There is a sting on the side of her cheek and she lifts her hand to touch where it hurts and feels that it is cut but only bleeding slightly.
‘It’s time to stop this now,’ she says. ‘Let them go and tell me what you want me to hear.’
She looks out of the window where she can see plants and flowers in their garden beds wilting in the heat. She would have given the garden a sprinkling of water by now, just enough to keep everything alive, just enough to stop leaves browning and drooping flowers dropping their petals. But it’s too late for that. The merciless heat has taken hold.
‘You know what, I think I’ll take my time. I’m actually kind of enjoying this and I haven’t enjoyed anything in a very long time.’
‘There’s something very wrong with you,’ she whispers.
‘Yeah, well,’ he sighs, ‘you would know.’