The Family Across the Street by Nicole Trope
24
Katherine
Her mouth is gritty with bits of chocolate muffin, her throat dry, but she doesn’t want to ask him for water. She doesn’t want to ask him for anything except that he just go, just leave her and her children alone. There is mounting anger inside her but she knows that she needs to control it. His behaviour is not just unpredictable and violent – it feels like he’s on the edge of something worse, something that she will not be able to recover from. The room is warmer with each passing hour, filling up with the heat of their combined bodies, and she longs for the outside, for space to breathe and move. She can feel that there must be a way out of this beyond just sitting here and waiting for him to decide it’s over.
‘It’s getting late,’ she says. ‘Do you understand? This can’t go on.’ She speaks softly, gently. He is back in the recliner, the gun resting on his knee, pointed at the three of them. He is getting tired. It’s hard work to maintain the rage that’s keeping the gun pointed in their direction.
‘I don’t…’ he begins.
‘I understand. You don’t know what to do,’ she says. ‘But if you just get up now, just get up and leave, I won’t report you to the police. I won’t say anything at all. Take whatever you want and just go.’ She is in pain all over her body but she feels herself rise above the throbbing and the sharpness of it as she speaks. She has to end this. She cannot give in to the pain because she has these children to save.
He snorts, derision in the sound. ‘Of course you’re going to report me. I would report me.’
‘No one needs to know about what happened here today. I can say that I fell and hurt my wrist. The kids will keep the secret, won’t you, George? Sophie?’
The children rouse themselves from their light sleep. She knows they have been listening. ‘We can keep this a secret, can’t we?’ she repeats. They both nod, but cautiously. They’ve been told that lying is bad. She hopes to have a chance to explain this all to them, to be here still and to have them with her so she can explain.
‘It would be so easy to leave now. You can go anywhere you like. Where would you like to go?’ You have to keep a person threatening you talking. That’s what she’s read and heard. Keep them talking until you can see a gap, a space, a moment to change the balance of power and save your own life.
She keeps her tone light. He has responded to her a little, and all she needs is a little. The children watch her as she speaks. They don’t understand her calm voice when they know she should be angry or scared.
Outside the cicadas are screaming and inside the air conditioner rattles and wheezes. It is afternoon and the heat is thick and heavy, hanging in the air, the sun burning the grass brown in places. And he is tired. She can feel his exhaustion in the air, as though it is part of her. If she keeps watching him, there will be a moment, just a moment when she can make this work. She rests her damaged wrist on her knee, wincing at the continual pain there, and she slides her good hand between the seat cushions, surreptitiously, slowly and carefully. She feels the slightly rough plastic handle of the scissors and she grasps it tightly. Any minute now.