The Family Across the Street by Nicole Trope
44
Katherine
It’s a shocking thud to her body, more than it is pain. She takes two steps backwards and then her knees give out and she falls, expecting the floor but landing on the sofa. She looks down at her white T-shirt where the blood is growing and spreading, the red paint of her blood turning the white of her shirt dark pink. A firecracker smell is in the air. ‘Oh Patrick,’ she murmurs, ‘oh baby, what have you done?’
‘Mum,’ he says, a word she hasn’t heard from him in years. ‘Mum, Mum…’ and as she struggles to breathe, despite everything she is overcome with an overwhelming need to comfort him, to comfort her son. She starts trying to get up but her body won’t obey her.
She has always loved him, has been unable to contemplate not loving him. Where did all that love go? She held him to her breast, she kissed a scraped knee, she taught him how to sing the alphabet song. She bought him his favourite toys and cooked his favourite meals. She helped with homework and held him tightly in her arms when he was sad – but it wasn’t enough. It couldn’t combat what his father did, what he said. ‘What kind of a man teaches his son to hate his mother?’ was a question she asked of therapists and teachers and friends. When she married him, stars in her eyes and a silver ring on her finger, she had never imagined he would one day hate her enough to turn her own child against her. She could never have imagined this.
John’s face comes to her, a man on an elevator who became a friend and then a lover and then a husband. It was not expected, because second chances don’t come along very often. But there he was, willing to take on her baggage, to listen when she spoke of her first husband and lost son.
The perfection she had hoped for with her second chance was not possible because perfection doesn’t exist. She wonders if he’s tried to call her today, or if he is still angry. The argument from last night would have weighed heavily on his mind as it had on hers, before her son arrived to upend her life. It was another whispered, tense conversation, but it was one that could have meant the end for them. She had threatened and he had cajoled but she was tired of fighting, of fighting with him and for him.
‘Who is she, John?’Her hands on her hips. She believed she already knew the answer. She had done this before.
‘Just someone from work.’He looked down, not wanting to meet her gaze.
‘Why is she texting you with heart emojis like some ridiculous teenage girl? Why are you allowing her to text you?’ His phone was in her hand, the evidence on the screen. She had read and reread the messages, trying to discern their true meaning.
‘She’s just… that’s the way she is. She’s friendly. She knows I’m married. I talk about you and the kids all the time. She’s just like that.’ He threw up his hands and then reached for his phone but she pulled it back.
‘She’s like that because you haven’t made it clear that you have a wife that you love. Being married doesn’t mean anything to her obviously.’
He sighed sadly, shaking his head. ‘Kate, you’re not thinking straight. You’re blowing everything out of proportion these days. You can see that I don’t reply the same way. You can see that I keep my texts short and to the point.’
‘Maybe you knew I’d look at your phone.’
‘Why did you look at my phone?’It was a genuine question. He didn’t understand the fear of finding herself in the same situation once more.
‘I told you, I wanted to find mine. I put it down somewhere!’
‘Kate, if I had something to hide, why do you have my password?’He smiled as though he had bested her, proved her wrong.
‘What I’m worried about, John, is that there are things you’re saying and doing when you’re together at the office, and instead of reassuring me, you’re making me more worried. Are you having an affair with her or not?’ Some part of her wanted to let it go, to believe him, but she kept pushing, asking, almost needing him to confess so that she would know that she had been right all along.
‘Oh Kate, you make me sad.’
They went to bed separately, in different parts of the house. She curled up alone in their bed, fear over the future replacing anger, exhausting her to sleep. At some point, in the middle of the night, she woke to feel the bed dip and then a hand on her back. When she lay still, he climbed into the bed and pushed up against her and, knowing that she was awake, whispered, ‘Why would I cheat, when I have you? You and the children are everything I have ever wanted. I’m not cheating, Kate, I promise.’
She didn’t reply but she didn’t move away from him either, lying still until he returned to his sofa bed.
This morning he was having breakfast when she woke up. ‘We need to talk,’ she told him, when she walked into the kitchen. Maybe it was the end of their marriage, maybe it wasn’t, but she knew that it couldn’t continue. He didn’t want her to leave but he didn’t want to change, to reassure her as she needed to be reassured even when he knew her history with cheating husbands. And she wasn’t going to live that way. She had done that for years once before. Her marriage to John was a second chance, but she wouldn’t sacrifice the happiness of her children by staying in a bad marriage. She thought about her lost son, the one who would not speak to her, the one who had been estranged for years, and she knew that she couldn’t let that happen again. Better to divorce early and remain amicable than to let a situation descend into enmity and blame.
‘I can’t live like this, John, I mean it. Either we sort it out or we part.’
‘I agree,’ he said. He took a bite of his toast and chewed. A small dab of butter was on his lip and she watched him, remembering that at one time she would have kissed it off or wiped it off for him. The twins had been her full focus for a long time. They only had sex occasionally, laughed very little together. There was some distance between them that they needed to bridge, she thought. And it was getting bigger every day. And then he looked at his watch. ‘Oh shit, shit, the mechanic, I forgot about the mechanic. I thought I had more time… We’ll talk, I’ll call you from work. Wait, I have that conference today,’ he rubbed at his hair, messing it up and then smoothing it down again. He sighed. ‘It may end early… We can go for a walk later, or get a babysitter…’ He looked at his watch again. ‘Shit I’m so late.’
‘You’re not allowed to swear, Dad,’ said George, coming into the kitchen, his yellow shirt tucked neatly into his khaki-coloured shorts, his curly hair slicked down with water. He liked to look smart for school and her heart melted at the sight of her little man.
‘You’re right, George,’ she said, ‘Daddy shouldn’t swear,’ and he rewarded her with a smile.
John dashed out. She picked up his plate and took out a bowl for George to pour his cereal as she heard John’s car screeching off. And then she looked at the kitchen table and felt laughter bubble up inside her.
‘What’s funny?’ asked George.
‘He forgot his briefcase and his phone,’ she said. ‘He’ll be back soon enough.’
And he was. A few minutes later, he walked back in and said, ‘I—’
‘Here you go,’ she laughed and handed them to him, but she didn’t kiss him goodbye, stepping back just a fraction so he couldn’t kiss her either. And she saw the hurt that caused in the way his green eyes darkened. Green eyes like her ex-husband’s eyes but a different green. Anthony’s eyes were a pale green, light and touched with brown, but John’s eyes are deep and intense, almost emerald in colour, just like her children’s eyes.
Dismissing the hurt on his face because she needed to get on with her day, she went to the laundry to start the washing machine.
‘Mum… Mum… Mum, come here,’ George called.
‘What’s wrong, sweetheart?’ she said, following his tentative call. He was standing at the open front door.
At first, she hadn’t recognised him. His hair was longer and he was thinner than she remembered. But then he took off his red cap and smiled and she experienced a moment of delirious happiness, because she thought he was back, in her life, in her family – that he had come back. But then she saw the gun and her body felt cold in the morning heat, and fear made her silent.
She has never stopped contacting him. Pregnant at twenty, she had imagined that her hastily arranged marriage to Anthony would survive. They had both loved their only child, adored him and each other until marriage and a child began to stifle Anthony and he became secretive and sly. She hadn’t trusted her intuition about other women until money disappeared from the bank account and he couldn’t hide what he’d been doing.
Patrick was her only concern and she was willing to give everything to their relationship. But she hadn’t understood the level of manipulation her husband was employing against her as he worked to sever her relationship with her son.
Patrick has an email address that he has never changed, and all these years, every once in a while, so that it wouldn’t be too much, she has sent him a message.
Dear Patrick,
I miss you every day.
Each email is begun the same way, the same way for seven years now. And each time she has typed it, she has known it to be true. He rejected her. He moved in with his father and then cursed her for the man his father was. After Anthony died, after he killed himself with two packets of sleeping pills and a bottle of whisky, she had begged him to come home. But he wouldn’t. He blamed her and didn’t want to be anywhere near her.
The boarding school she sent him to was on a large piece of land where students were part of a working farm and completed their studies. She had thought he would love it. She had gone without to pay for it, taking on a second job doing cold-calling at the weekends just to keep him there, in addition to being a saleswoman in a department store. She hoped he would find friends and a purpose in life, but he had only grown angrier with each passing year.
Please don’t come to my graduation. I don’t want to see you there.
He had emailed the words as she got ready to get into her car to drive out to the rural property, imagining a reunion where they would be able to talk things through. She had gone anyway. And he had refused to get on stage or to see her.
‘I would give him some time,’ the headmaster of the school comforted her as she sat weeping in his office. ‘He’s struggled with discipline and he needs some time away from everything. He’s an adult now. Sometimes it’s best to set our children free so that they can return to us when they’re ready.’
But what if they never return?she wanted to ask the man whose glasses had slid down his nose as he tried to look capable of dealing with her tears.
But she had done that, as much as she could. She had pulled back, let go and tried to move on with her life. She kept emailing him and occasionally, rarely, sometimes not for months, he would reply. Terse missives that broke her heart.
I’m getting on with my life, you get on with yours.
When she married, she contacted him because she never wanted him to find out from anyone else but her. When she got pregnant, she did the same and she sent him pictures of the twins when they arrived. And she kept hoping that something, anything, would get through his anger at her. She always sent him a birthday message, and as he entered his twenties, she thought that there might be a shift in how he felt – that along with age-maturity, an ability to see her as a person would come.
She was wrong. She can see that now.
His anger has grown, thrived. He has kept it fed as his father wanted him to do. Anthony never thought about the cruelty of turning a child against his mother, only of finding a way to cause pain. The idea of her child as a pawn between them has eaten away at her but she could never fight Anthony’s skill at manipulation.
But something has happened to bring him here today, to do this. She has known this all day as she has watched him, and it seemed to her that something was missing in the way he looked at her and at George and Sophie, some spark of compassion that all human beings should feel for each other. And she knew that she and her children were in danger. The man Patrick had no shred of the boy Patrick.
He was an angry, hate-filled stranger. And that meant he was capable of anything.
She should never have given him her address, never have let him know where she was and what was happening in her life – but how could she have known what he would one day do?
Blinking slowly, she watches him as he rubs his head in distress, remembering him as a toddler doing the same thing. I can’t do it, Mum, help me, help me.
And then he lifts the gun to his own temple and she wants to shout no, to scream it and grab the gun, but she can’t move.
Her body is heavy and she is no longer hot but growing cold.
A sound makes her try to turn her head and she manages a slight movement. Everything is hard, impossible.
Someone else is in the room. A giant of a man, tattoos everywhere.
Katherine thinks she may be hallucinating.
‘What are you doing here?’ Patrick asks him, and she has a moment of feeling grateful that the man is indeed there. Perhaps he has come to help, but she finds that she doesn’t care if he has or not. The children aren’t here. She cannot hear them in the house and she prays they are with Gladys or another neighbour. George will tell someone to call the police.
And then… her eyes blink slowly. She is very tired. She wants to sleep. She cannot feel any pain in her wrist and she’s happy that her children are not here to see this. Only one child is here, only her first-born, and it seems to her now that this is always how it was supposed to go. She used to worry about him so much when he lived with his father and when he was at boarding school and when he became an adult and moved away. What will become of him? What kind of a man can he be after everything that has happened to him? He never wanted to meet John, never wanted to know his half-brother and sister. George and Sophie were her second chance at motherhood and she is grateful that they are here in the world. They will miss her but they will be alive to miss her and that’s the most important thing.
I can let go now, she thinks. I can close my eyes and rest. Patrick and the man are talking, arguing, she’s not sure but it goes on and on. Her eyes open and close, open and close. She needs to rest, but as her eyes begin to close again, she hears shouting, running. Her second son, her little boy, bursts into the room, arms whirling, and launches himself at Patrick, fury in his words.
‘You leave my mum alone!’ Such strength, such determination.
No!she wants to tell him, to shout to make him stop. He’s not supposed to be here but she cannot speak.
‘Wait!’ shouts the man, and he moves as her body gives up the fight to stay conscious.
She doesn’t hear the next gunshots. She doesn’t hear anything else.