The Family Across the Street by Nicole Trope

5

Logan

Six hours ago

Logan climbs back into the van, setting off and turning the air conditioning vents to face him. He feels like he’s been up forever but it’s only 8.30 a.m. This last delivery was heavy – two boxes of books for what looked like a university student, living in a building with three floors and no lift. The boy had been so eager to open the packages he had started tearing at the tape before he even closed the door. Logan wonders what it must be like to be that passionate about something, to want to read everything and know everything about a subject. He struggles now to remember what he was like when he was that kid’s age, eighteen or maybe nineteen.

Angry is a feeling that comes to mind when he thinks of himself at that stage of life, pissed off with everyone except Maddy, who was eleven years old at the time and had an infectious laugh that never failed to cheer him up.

His phone pings again and even though he knows he shouldn’t look at it while he’s driving, he risks a quick glance down.

Call me NOW.

‘Oh, it’s a command now, is it?’ sneers Logan.

At a traffic light, he taps the screen on the dashboard of the van and calls his sister instead. ‘Hi, it’s Maddy, leave me a message.’

‘Hi Maddy, just checking in. Wanted to see how things are going. Give me a call when you can.’

Maddy is probably already at university. She’s getting a teaching degree as a mature student although he would hardly think twenty-five qualifies as mature. She’s perpetually worried about falling behind so she works harder than most of the other students. That’s another reason why the idea of her still being with Patrick irritates him so much. He doesn’t like the fact that she works so hard because it takes her attention from him.

‘Tell him to get himself a job then,’ Logan told her. ‘He should work so you don’t have to waitress at night and study during the day.’

‘He’s trying, Logan, but he doesn’t have any qualifications. He thinks he may be interested in architecture. He draws really well.’

‘Does he?’ Logan scoffed.

Logan wishes she still lived in Sydney so they could see each other regularly, but he supposes he should be grateful that she is only two hours away by plane and they can speak all the time. Maddy had felt like she needed to get even further away from their family than Logan did. ‘I can’t be in the same state as them. They keep trying to get me to come over and I don’t want to be sucked back in.’ He couldn’t blame her for wanting to be away from them. He left when he was eighteen, having little choice but to leave. ‘Take me with you,’ Maddy begged but he knew he didn’t have the ability to take care of a kid, even if it broke his heart to say no to her. ‘I can’t, Maddy, I don’t have any money and I need to find a place to live, but I’ll call you all the time.’

‘Promise?’ she asked on his last day at home, as his father sneered and his mother ignored him. Only Maddy had tears on her cheeks and he grabbed her and held her tightly to him. ‘Promise,’ he whispered. No matter what happened in his life, he would never neglect his sister.

She struggled for a couple of years once she got down to Melbourne, but now she seems to have found her way.

It took a lot longer for Logan. He couldn’t see a way forward for himself in the world and so for years he knows he moved through his life letting things happen to him, getting involved in things that he never planned on being involved in. Until it all stopped, the night he met Debbie.

It’s only since they got together that he’s understood what a real family should be like. Debbie is forever on the phone to her mother and her sister-in-law and her various cousins. If someone is sick, everyone calls and worries. If there’s a birthday, presents are discussed. Triumphs are celebrated and tragedies fretted over.

He touches the screen on his dashboard as he drives, tapping Debbie’s number. She’s home today instead of at the hospital. She’s a nurse on the maternity ward, helping bring new life into the world every day. But it’s tiring work and she seems to catch whatever is going around. This morning he made her a very early morning cup of tea and left it on her bedside table so she could have something to drink when she woke up, even though it would probably be lukewarm then.

She’ll be up by now, he’s sure.

‘Hey babes,’ she answers, ‘is it hot enough for you?’

He laughs. ‘Are you going to ask me that every time I call today?’

‘Yep, I’ve just finished my book so until I download another one, you’re my only avenue for amusement.’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Yeah, slightly nauseous, slightly shitty. At least my nose has stopped running, but then I’ve taken enough stuff to help that.’

‘You poor thing. Hey, I had a weird delivery this morning.’

‘Ooo, do tell – a naked lady?’

‘Nah,’ laughs Logan. He had one of those once. Too bad she was at least eighty. He had felt really sorry for her, understanding that she wasn’t even aware she was naked. He had averted his eyes and pretended she was dressed.

‘I had to deliver a computer and that needs to be signed for but the woman wouldn’t open the door.’

Debbie is quiet for a moment. ‘Are you wearing long sleeves?’ She asks the question softly because she knows this is the worst aspect of his job right now. It’s fine in winter but he hates to be hot. It makes him feel trapped and claustrophobic and he hates feeling trapped.

‘You know I am, Debs. I promised Mack, didn’t I?’

It wasn’t that his arms were covered in tattoos; it was more the kind of tattoos. The knife dripping blood; the gun firing a bullet with the words ‘everyone dies’ written underneath. The skull and crossbones with a woman’s face screaming behind one of the eye sockets; the writhing, fanged snake creeping up his neck. Choices made when he was drunk or seething with rage. They are the choices he regrets every day. Removal would cost a fortune and leave him with scarring. He’s thought about covering them up with different tattoos but just walking into a tattoo studio made him uncomfortable, brought back memories he had no interest in revisiting. A different man got his tattoos and he never wanted to meet him again.

‘Course you did, sorry, babes. I know it must be really uncomfortable,’ says Debbie.

‘Don’t worry about it. Anyway, so the woman wouldn’t open the door and when I told her I would wait for her to get dressed or something she said that I needed to understand that she couldn’t open the door, like she made sure to emphasise the word understand.’

‘People are weird,’ says Debbie.

Logan shakes his head. ‘I think that something is wrong in that house. There wasn’t even any noise from the kids and I know there must have been little kids because there were scooters in the garden.’

‘It sounds like you’re reading too much into what she said. Maybe the kids were at school early, or with their dad, or staying at friends, and she was having fun with her husband or her lover. You never know what’s going on behind closed doors as they say.’

‘Maybe, but I think something’s wrong,’ he says, frowning.

‘Don’t overthink, babes, just get on with the rest of your day and there will be a cold beer waiting for you when you get home. Maybe if I feel a bit better, we can drive down to the beach for a walk.’

Logan bites down on his lip. He knew Debbie would tell him not to dwell on the delivery. He is probably making things up, letting his imagination run away with him, but he can’t help the unease he feels. It’s almost a physical thing, a churning in his gut as though his body is telling him to pay attention.

‘A cold beer sounds good,’ he says, knowing that there’s no point in saying anything else. He can’t make Debbie understand because even he doesn’t get why he’s worried about some woman he’s never met in a house he’s never been to before.

‘It will be. Love you, babes. Enjoy the rest of your day.’

‘Love you too – rest and get better.’

Debbie ends the call with a kiss and Logan smiles. He rubs at his chin as he remembers the first time he met Debbie. It was at three in the morning in a hospital emergency room.

He was covered in blood from putting his fist through a window, woozy from the taser and shaking from the effects of his first try of the drug ice wearing off. The police had brought him in to have his hand seen to. Logan knows there were two of them and that one was a man and one was a woman, but when he thinks about it now, he can’t remember their faces at all. It had been a beautiful high to begin with, as his body flooded with dopamine and adrenalin rushed through his veins. He can remember feeling invincible, believing that he could simply put his fist through the glass door at the side of a house where he had found himself standing, with no idea of how he’d got there. He didn’t think it would hurt at all; he wouldn’t even feel the pain.

He now knows that he had run five kilometres from Nick’s place. Nick was his partner in crime, literally. A mate from the gym. Gym was the only place Logan felt at home – where he’d found people who understood him. Nick was small and thin, with an innocent baby face. He talked more than he worked out. He had a drug habit but he told Logan he kept it well under control. His parents had tried to help, his school had tried, therapists had tried – it seemed to Logan that the whole world had tried to help Nick get his life back on track – but Nick had no desire to actually be helped.

Together they had amassed a small fortune picking the right houses to break into. Together they had hit houses where cannabis was being grown in the basement, and those where meth was being made in the back. There was always money there, lots and lots of cash, and no one ever reported it to the police. It was dangerous work because there were also always guns and junkies and those who meant to protect what they were doing. But he and Nick were smart about things. They would hit a couple of places and then lie low for months, living off what they’d made. They’d been doing it for years, ever since they’d met when Logan was twenty-three and looking for a way out of the menial jobs he kept getting fired from because he’d mouthed off or hit someone. He didn’t do well with authority and he took all criticism personally.

He and Nick didn’t start off with drug houses.

‘I know this house, near where my parents live,’ Nick said one night over a beer. ‘They’ve just moved in but they’re not actually living there because they’ve just painted. The house is filled with stuff and no people.’

Logan frowned. ‘So what?’

‘So maybe we go in and help ourselves to some stuff. I know a guy who can get rid of it all. No mess, no fuss and they have insurance – they won’t even care.’

‘I’m not a thief, Nick.’

‘Yeah, what are you, Logan? Just looking to finish your medical degree?’ Nick raised an eyebrow at him, a smirk on his face.

‘Don’t be a dick.’

‘I’m not being a dick. I’m saying this is easy money. We get in, we get out and we enjoy the cash.’

And it had been easy money. Logan remembers the feeling of control as he counted the notes in the pile that was his share. It had taken them an hour and they had the money for the stuff two days later. He put fifty dollars in an envelope and posted it to Maddy, telling her to hide it well and use it to buy what she needed for school, knowing that cash in his parents’ house disappeared on cigarettes and alcohol pretty quickly. He felt like he was good at something for the first time in his life.

It wasn’t always easy. There were houses with alarms and barking dogs and enraged owners. They would leave if there was any noise, and by the time the police arrived, they were long gone.

It was Nick who suggested targeting places where the thin blue line was crossed every day.

‘No one calls the cops when you steal money they’ve collected from selling their product – no one.’ He was so sure of himself, and he always believed that he would get away with it. And he did – mostly.

Nick’s cocaine habit was still under control, or so he said, but he was starting to experiment with other things.

Logan has no idea why, on this particular night, they took some of the drugs as well as the money. Usually they left the drugs alone – that was part of their strategy. And that meant that they managed to get away with it for years.

Now, as Logan drives the van, he understands that whatever you do for a job, it’s better than not having one. At the end of the day, he can sit next to his wife and know that he has done something – if not worthwhile, then at least acceptable and helpful.

Logan dismisses thoughts of Nick, who is still in prison because his self-belief could not keep the police away forever, and who is still raging at the world. Still intending to go back to his old life.

He pulls to a stop in front of another house and gets out of his van, noting the large German shepherd standing rigid at the gate.

He searches the wall of the house, relieved to see a keypad with a bell. He pushes the bell and steps back as the dog stares at him. ‘You’re a protective bugger, aren’t you?’ he says to the German shepherd. The dog growls softly.

The door opens and a young girl dressed in shorts and a tiny tank top comes running down the path. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she smiles. ‘James, you be a good boy. I’m going to open the gate and you’re not to move.’

‘His name is James?’ asks Logan as she opens the gate and he hands her the box.

‘It is. Thanks so much.’ The young girl looks a little like Debbie, with the same tiny frame and big hazel eyes.

He returns to the van and thinks back to that night that landed him in the emergency room. He has no idea why he decided to take a hit at Nick’s urging. He was a beer man, sometimes a good Scotch, but he never, ever touched drugs. He’d grown up in a neighbourhood where he’d watched what happened to those who succumbed to the promise of some time out from their misery. He’d watched Nick get all jittery and sweaty when he needed his next fix.

But that night he had agreed, had smoked what Nick had rolled for him, mistakenly assuming that smoking ice instead of injecting it would lessen its effects. He was tired of what he did with his time, tired of his lonely life and of Nick. Tired of himself. Why not? he had thought. He remembers the rush now, the feeling of being so powerful he could lift a car if he chose to.

He knows he stood up and left Nick’s house and he knows that he started running. He felt like he could fly. When he found himself in some garden, in a suburb that he had never been to before, he looked at a pair of glass French doors and thought, Those’ll be easy to open. And then he put his fist through the glass, smashing it, cutting his hand, causing the alarm to scream and the owner to come running. He smiled when he saw it was a woman – a tall woman, but a woman he could deal with. He would grab what he could and fly away again. But she swung out at him, furious and strong, and caught him on the nose. Blood gushed from his face and his own anger rose up and he swung back. He broke her cheekbone and fractured her eye socket and she went down.

He remembers the woman from his trial. He hadn’t recognised her, hadn’t even remembered what she looked like, but her victim impact statement bruised him with its fear and pain. He wrote to her in prison, asking for forgiveness. He wrote three times and then he stopped. He reasoned she had a right to move on with her life and hopefully think of him less with each passing year.

He checks for his next delivery. It’s close by and in a street he’s been down before so he doesn’t need his GPS. As he drives, he wonders what would happen if he turned up to a house he had broken into. Would he recognise it, or have they all blended into one? He doesn’t even know the address of the one where the woman he hurt lived. What if one day a front door is opened and she’s standing there? The thought makes him push his shoulders back, suddenly uncomfortable. The image of her body sprawled on her stone-coloured kitchen floor comes back to him. He stared down at her, and then the police were there, appearing out of thin air. Now he knows she made the call before she confronted him. She had heard the glass break. He had thought he was moving quickly but in reality, he’d stood there for a few minutes watching the blue whirling light of the alarm glint off the shards of broken glass from the French door, mesmerised by the shiny flashes.

The police told him to stop, to get down on the ground, but Logan was still flying high and he advanced towards them. They told him once, twice and then the taser struck him in the chest, paralysing him and forcing him down. Tingling pain seared through his body and the high wore off.

The police got him up after a few minutes and he was given a towel for his hand. Only one ambulance arrived and Logan remembers hearing the words, ‘We’ll just take him in ourselves,’ and then he was in the back of a police car, his body shaking as shock replaced every other emotion.

He knows that the hands of the male police officer were large and strong and that they wrapped around his arm tightly, pushing into the muscle so Logan understood exactly who was in charge. Once they’d got him onto a bed in a small curtained-off bay in the emergency room, he dropped his head as he felt tears pricking at his eyes. He was twenty-six and he had wasted his whole life without meaning to, without thinking anything through. He’d never had a plan or a dream and now he was going to prison. And no one would care, except Maddy – she would be bereft and disappointed in him. That is what made the tears burn in his eyes.

He knew he was screwed, knew it without a shadow of a doubt. He also understood that there was a small feeling of relief. He was never going to stop unless something stopped him, and now it had.

‘Can you lie back please?’ He heard a soft voice. He shuffled backwards and dropped his head onto the pillow. He felt his uninjured hand get handcuffed to the bed rail. ‘I think he’s calm now, officer,’ said the voice. ‘Perhaps you could just give me some space.’

Logan looked at the nurse, who was delicately probing his hand, wiping and touching softly to see if there was any glass stuck in his flesh. Her skin was pale in the harsh hospital light, but smooth and perfect. Her hazel eyes were fringed with long black lashes and a curl had escaped her neat bun.

‘This looks clean and I don’t think any of the cuts are deep enough for stitches. I’ll clean it up and bandage it and then the doctor will be along shortly.’

Logan nodded, horrified to find that the way she was speaking to him, the kindness in her voice, was leading to more tears, slipping down the side of his face.

‘Hey now,’ she said gently and she reached up and wiped a tear away. ‘This can be the worst day of your life if you want it to be. There can never be another day as bad as this. If that’s what you want.’

Logan smiled. ‘It’s what I want,’ he said and he looked at the nurse, her clean soap smell comforting, the hint of floral perfume a scent he would always remember. ‘Debbie’, her nametag said. She had a small mole above her full red lips and he wanted to touch her mouth, but he knew better and he was grateful that at least he had begun thinking straight.

‘I bet all those tattoos hurt more than this anyway,’ she said and he nodded. He couldn’t explain then that there was pleasure in the pain of a tattoo, in the repeated sting of the needle, in being able to bear the ache that changed his skin, changed him. They were his pain and his anger detailed over his body, scars that could be seen.

He had never expected to see Debbie again. But in the months leading up to his guilty plea and being sent to prison, he’d thought about her. In prison he held on to her words. He needed to make sure that the day he was caught high and violent – the first time he had actually hurt someone who didn’t deserve it – was the worst day of his life. He was a model prisoner, recommended for parole after three years. He worked out, took classes and wrote his final exams to complete his schooling. Most importantly, he stayed out of trouble. He was big enough to be left alone, quiet enough not to bother anyone, and on the day he got out, he took the biggest chance he’d ever taken in his life.

He went back to the hospital and asked for her, knowing that they probably wouldn’t be able to identify her with just a name and a description, knowing that even if they could, he would probably get in trouble for behaving like a stalker. But the need to tell her that her words had meant something would not let go.

‘I’m looking for a nurse,’ he explained to the woman sitting at the front desk of the hospital, and then he stood quietly, trying not to let his six-foot-four, tattoo-covered frame look threatening. He hunched his shoulders and bowed his head, meek and mild. Nothing to worry about here. ‘Her name is Debbie and she treated me a few years ago. She has blonde hair and hazel eyes and a mole just here,’ he explained as the woman’s lips thinned into a disapproving line.

‘I don’t know if she still works here,’ he said, holding his hands up, ‘but I just wanted to thank her for being kind to me. I’ll sit down over there.’ He indicated some fake leather sofas. ‘I’ll wait for a few minutes and if you want me to leave, I’ll just go.’ He moved away from the desk, the woman’s eyes watching every step, and he sat down. He was being an idiot, but he couldn’t seem to do anything else. He knew that he had to see her and thank her and then he could go out into the world and try to start rebuilding his life.

He watched as the woman lifted the telephone to her ear. He waited for the security guards to come over to him, waited for the police to walk through the front door. He stared down at his new phone, scrolled through news websites as his heart raced, noticing that his fingers were trembling a little. He took a deep breath, catching the smell of antiseptic in his throat.

‘Excuse me,’ he heard and he looked up and there she was. She looked exactly the same, except her hair was in a low ponytail and he could see that when it was loose, it would hang down her back. The floral scent was there as well, bringing the night they’d met back to him in a heady rush. He stood up, towering over her, then quickly sat down again when she took a step back.

‘I don’t know if you remember me, but you treated me three years ago and you said… You were so… I just wanted to…’

She smiled, a dimple appearing on one cheek, her teeth an even white line. ‘Of course I remember you. It’s hard to forget a six-foot-four, heavily tattooed man who cries. I was only on emergency duty that night because we were short-staffed. I usually take care of much smaller people, ones that cry all the time.’

‘Can I take you for dinner? Or coffee? Or lunch? Or anything? You helped, you really helped, and I just wanted to thank you…’ It took all his self-control not to reach out and touch her. He had not intended to ask her out, just to thank her – but that dimple, that smile. He prepared himself for a no. He couldn’t remember half the women he had slept with before going to prison but he knew he had never cared if he saw them again or not. He knew she was going to say no.

‘I get off at five and I’m very hungry because I missed lunch. How about then?’

‘Tonight?’

‘Yes, is that too soon?’

‘No… it’s… I’ll be here. Thank you, Debbie – can I call you Debbie?’

‘You can and I can call you… I’m afraid I have forgotten your name.’

‘Logan.’

‘I’ll see you at five, Logan.’

She wasn’t afraid of him, even though she must have known he was someone to be afraid of.

After they had been together for months, she told him, ‘I saw something that night, the night I treated you. I figured you had gone to prison. I saw the boy you must have been once, and I knew you were mostly a threat to yourself. I mean, I wasn’t stupid. I was shocked to see you again, but the way you held yourself told me something, and I was interested in who you were. I was a little scared, and I told about five people where we were going, and I didn’t let you take me home. But I was just being safe. I knew you were a good bloke.’

And he has tried to be that ‘good bloke’ since he got out of prison. It hasn’t been easy. Getting a job as an ex-convict is near impossible, which is why so many people end up back in prison. He has experienced moments of desperation since his release and when he thinks about the risk he almost took – a risk he prefers not to think about – he is grateful that he caught himself in time, that he didn’t go through with it. He can only hope that nothing is ever going to come back on him.

His phone pings but he doesn’t look at it as he pulls up outside the next delivery. He knows who it’s from and he’s not going to respond. Not today.

He looks at the clock on his dashboard. It’s nearly ten and he could use a coffee and something to eat.

He thinks about the woman in the house again as he slides open his van door and grabs the right box. When he was breaking and entering, he developed a keen sense of danger. He would feel his heart rate speed up and his skin tingle, even when the house was silent, and he knew to be extra careful because it meant that something was off, that there was something he was missing, something that was a threat to him. That’s what he felt speaking to that woman this morning, he now realises. He felt danger.

He stands at the front gate of this house for a moment, his skin tingling as he understands that this is what happened this morning. Old instincts returned, telling him to pay attention.

‘Is that for me?’ asks an old man who is standing in the front garden with a spade in his hand. Logan hadn’t even noticed him. ‘Oh yeah, sorry,’ he says.

The man laughs. ‘This kind of heat can make you lose your mind.’ He opens the gate and takes the parcel from Logan.

‘Thanks,’ he says, and Logan nods and walks back to his van. His instincts are never wrong except for the one time when he was out of his mind on ice. Instinct kept him safe in dangerous situations for years.

And he knows it now, for sure. The woman is in danger.