The Family Across the Street by Nicole Trope
8
Katherine
‘Please just… please…’ says Katherine, because she has no idea what else to say. His hands are tangled in Sophie’s hair, yanking and hurting her.
‘What did you do?’ he spits. ‘What did you say to that nosy old woman?’
‘I didn’t say anything,’ Sophie says, tears on her cheeks, her hands raised to try and stop him pulling her hair.
‘Let her go, let her go,’ Katherine says, trying to inject strength into her voice as she rises off the sofa, but he pulls her daughter’s hair harder, bunches it in his fist. ‘Sit down now,’ he says and he points the gun, not at her because it would be fine if it were at her. But he knows better than that. He points the gun at Sophie – small, struggling Sophie, whose tears are streaking down her cheeks.
Katherine feels her body sink back down onto the sofa, the blue sofa that she chose with such care and admired every time she came into this room. This is her favourite room in the house. She loves the family photos everywhere and the large window that looks out onto the garden. When the twins were babies, she and John would sometimes find themselves asleep down here next to two baby rockers vibrating the children to sleep as the sun rose on another day. This is where the twins watch their movies and where she and John binge-watch television series together.
This was her favourite room in the house.
She is fighting a surging anger at Gladys for coming over and making things so much worse, and at the same time she feels a small flicker of hope that the older woman might have been suspicious, might have picked up on what Sophie said, although she has no idea what that might have been. Would her daughter have known to tell Gladys to call the police?
He watches her, a ghost of a smile on his face. He is enjoying her pain. She can see that. He is enjoying all of their pain, and it makes her feel sick.
‘I’m sitting, see, I’m sitting,’ she says, even though it’s obvious. But she needs to distract him, to keep him focused on her. Her daughter’s brown curls are tightly gripped in his hands and Katherine watches Sophie’s hand open and close to try and stop the pain. Her child, her baby. She wants to leap off the sofa and scratch his eyes out, rip at his face.
‘She didn’t say anything,’ says George, quietly.
‘No one asked you to speak. And we all know she said something. Now, Sophie, listen to me,’ he says. ‘You’re going to tell me what you said to her or I’m going to rip all of your pretty hair right out of your head.’
‘I said I wanted chocolate cake,’ says Sophie, her voice thick with tears and pain. Katherine knows she is lying and she is proud of her little girl. Never mind what she has always told them about telling the truth. The rules don’t apply today. All the rules have already been broken.
But he believes her. ‘Stupid kid,’ he laughs and he lets go of her hair and shoves her back towards Katherine, who opens her arms and wraps them tightly around her daughter as she sobs. She feels George start patting Sophie on the back, desperate to help, to somehow make things better, and she reaches out and grabs him to her too.
‘Just shut up,’ he hisses.
Sophie gulps and swallows the last of her sobs. The room is beginning to smell. The air conditioner is old and doesn’t work well in here, not well enough for this terrible heat, and Katherine and her children are sweating out their terror.
‘They need something to eat,’ she says, a plan forming in her mind. If they can all get to the kitchen, if they can get there quickly enough, then maybe they can get out of the back door. ‘Please, let me take them and get them some food,’ she says again because he hasn’t said no, which she thinks means he is considering it.
He rubs at his face. They’ve only been in this room for hours but it feels like days.
‘Fine, they can get some food,’ he finally replies.
‘Let me go with them,’ she says, hoping that she has kept the eagerness out of her voice.
‘Why don’t you go alone and leave them here with me.’ He grins as though he has made a considerate suggestion.
She takes a breath, wondering what would happen if she did run. His anger is for her, not them, but… he will hurt them to punish her. He will. She knows he will.
‘No, no… George, you go, take Sophie, have some… some fruit before you eat anything else.’
George gets up. She catches his eye, stares and nods slightly at him. Will he know to just leave, to just open the back door and run? If George and Sophie are safe, then she can deal with this. She can stay here all day, all night. He can kill her. She doesn’t care. She just needs her children to be safe.
George nods back and he takes his sister’s hand.
‘Oh, and George,’ he says casually as they get to the door of the family room. Her son doesn’t say anything but he stops dead-still. ‘If you don’t come back in five minutes, I will shoot your mum in the head.’ He sounds so matter-of-fact. So cold. She cannot believe that this is who he really is. She doesn’t want to believe it.
George casts a quick glance back at her and she nods her head again, hoping that he will disobey and leave, just leave, but from the way her little boy looks back at her, she knows he’s made a decision. She drops her gaze and stares at her hands where she is twisting the simple gold band on her finger, twisting it round and round as though she could unscrew it from her very being.
‘They love their mum, don’t they?’ he says, sneering, when they’ve left the room.
‘You’re torturing them. How could you do this to them? I understand to me. I get it – but them? Please, I’m asking you again to just let them go. I will listen to anything you have to say. Just let them go.’
‘No,’ he says shortly. ‘No.’
‘Why don’t you just say what you want to say? I won’t say anything. Just tell me what you want to say.’ She tries to conceal the rage that is inside her as she speaks. Rage will not help. She wonders if she could rush at him right now, and if she did, would she get to him before he shot her, and if he shot her, would he shoot them too? She believes him to be capable of this, even though yesterday she would never have thought it possible. Before today she was a different person. Before today she thought that her love could save him; today she knows that for all these years she’s been wasting her time.
‘Stop doing that,’ he says and she realises that she is still twisting the ring.
She can hear the children in the kitchen, packets being opened and something spilled on the floor. She closes her eyes and wishes they would just run but they won’t. She is their world, their whole world. They don’t know how to exist without her yet.
She picks up the stuffed monkey that Sophie carries everywhere with her when she’s home. It started off a rich, soft brown but it’s faded now, the face grey, one eye a little wonky where it has fallen off and she has sewn it back on, not quite in the right place.
‘I don’t think you deserve these children,’ he says. ‘Some women shouldn’t be mothers. Some women are too selfish.’
‘Some men shouldn’t be fathers,’ she says softly and then instantly curses her stupid words.
She glances over at the bookcase where her wedding photo stands. She and her new husband look impossibly happy. From the slight creasing of their eyes, it’s obvious they were standing in the sun when the photo was taken. ‘Let’s turn around,’ the photographer said when he noticed, and she and John laughed as he picked up her long train, helping her turn. It had looked beautiful going down the aisle of the church with the white lace roses on the end but was impractical for the reception. She put this picture on display even though she has better ones because of the way he is looking at her, because of the palpable feeling of love that exists in the image. Now, she looks away from it, feeling sympathy for her younger self, for everything she did not know then.
He is standing by the window that looks out onto the garden and the pool. Katherine can see it’s shimmering in the sun, perfectly blue and inviting. It’s too small for proper laps but she and the children would have spent the afternoon there, waiting for the oppressive heat to pass. He turns away from the window and looks at her and then down at the watch he has on his wrist, silver with a white face and an engraving on the back: With all my love, Katherine.
‘I don’t care about your opinion on fathers. I really don’t care at all,’ he says softly. ‘They have two minutes left and then I will shoot you.’
She has no idea what to say to this, so she just keeps quiet, remembering her joy at finding out she was pregnant and the frisson of fear upon learning that it was twins. She had no idea how she would cope. The utter exhaustion of the early weeks is a surreal memory now, and what she mostly feels is joy that they have each other, that there are two people in the world who will forever be joined. Friendships break, marriages end, even sibling relationships and parent and child bonds can fail, but it must be different with twins. Even when they fight, there is something that she can see between them, some connection that she feels can never be broken. One whole wall of the family room is covered in framed photographs of the twins at every age from scrunched-faced newborns until now. Sophie loves to hear the story of their birth, of the night they arrived.
Katherine had woken from a deep sleep – unusual because she had barely slept in the last month of her pregnancy. She was huge and waddled when she walked, her knees and back struggling with the weight. The twins moved all night, kicking and shoving for space. The night they arrived she had opened her eyes in the dark and moved her hand next to her leg to feel the soaked sheets. She knew what it was but fear had paralysed her as she contemplated the possibility that it could be blood. ‘John, John,’ she said, hearing her voice catch in her throat as if she was in a bad dream, screaming for help. He sat up instantly. ‘They’re coming,’ he said.
‘I don’t… I don’t know,’ she replied. He turned on the light and helped her sit up, throwing back the duvet so she could see that the liquid on the bed was clear.
‘Right,’ he said. Completely in charge, he helped her up and into the shower so she could clean up before they left for the hospital. The contractions only began when she was in a bed in her hospital room, and she knew it was because she had been afraid to begin until the doctors were close by. ‘You were born as the sun rose and light filled the room, and the doctor said that summer babies were the cleverest babies of all.’ Katherine always ends the story with these words.
Once upon a time John had sat with her and listened. Once he had enjoyed hearing the story as much as she enjoyed telling it.
‘I will love and protect you forever,’ he had whispered to them both as they lay cocooned in their clear bassinettes in their hospital room. She had been relieved to hear the words, to know that she and John were in this together. But now… now, her mind goes back to last night’s argument with him.
‘I’m not going to accept this behaviour, John, I’m just not.’She was walking around the kitchen, putting dishes away and then wiping the counter, scraping crumbs into her hands. She always cleaned like this when they argued, feeling the need to control something, anything.
‘And what are you going to do for money without me? How are you going to take care of these kids?’He was leaning up against the sink, his arms folded, watching her, just watching her work.
‘I’ll figure it out.’She threw the crumbs in the garbage and dusted off her hands.
‘You are so ready to toss me on the trash heap, Katherine, so ready to just get rid of me.’
She turned to look at him, reading the despair on his face. ‘You’re the one who wants to be with someone else.’ Her anger rose at her own words and she picked up her cloth again, wiping down already clean surfaces.
‘That’s crap and you know it. Just let me explain – I can explain if you just stop talking, stop bloody cleaning and listen.’He slammed his hand on the countertop.
‘I know what I read. There can’t really be any other explanation.’ Without another word she walked out of the kitchen, leaving him standing there with his explanation on his lips and no one to listen to what he had to say.
How has her life come to this? She cannot even begin to unravel the threads that have led her here to this day.
He is watching her closely now. ‘What are you thinking?’ he asks.
She shakes her head. Whatever she says now will be the wrong thing. She can sense that.
The children come back into the room; Sophie’s face edged with chocolate. ‘I made her eat a banana,’ says George, and Katherine nods, swiping at tears that arrive because her little boy sounds, all of a sudden, decades older.
‘You always do what Mum says, don’t you, George?’ he sneers at the child.
George doesn’t reply, knowing even at five years old when to keep quiet.
He looks at George and gestures with the gun. ‘I’ll tell you what my father told me, Georgie boy, something someone needed to tell you one day, and maybe today’s the day and maybe you’ll listen because you’ll always remember me saying it. If you get the chance to grow up and go out into the big, wide world… big if… but if you do, you need to remember: never trust a woman. Don’t ever trust a woman.’