Rise: How a House Built a Family(70)

He may have said more, but my ears were washed over with heat, and my heartbeat, and a scream that sounded real in my head without ever passing my throat. I looked at my feet, expecting to find the perfect rock, one that would fit in my palm and against the side of his head. Cave it in. End this.

“What’s wrong? I’m going to take care of you. I can take care of my wife.” He stepped back, hands up by his shoulders as if to say, I got this.

“You’re scaring me,” I yelled, but it came out as a tear-coated whisper.

His jaw dropped, reminding me for a split second of what he looked like in the hospital room when his feet were too heavy to lift off the tile. He was not only surprised, but hurt, so unaware of what he had said that I looked away, evaluating if there was some way I had misheard him. I hadn’t.

“I’m going to kill you.”

Clear as day. Sharp as night.

“I’m going in. The kids—I’ve been out too long.” I swallowed hard, hating the familiar tiptoeing around, weighing each word before handing it over like a peace offering.

“I don’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry about—all of this. You know which words I mean.”

I had started walking and couldn’t stop even though I knew I should stay and say more, that I should smooth this over. Walking away was just the sort of thing to set him off. I waved over my head, flapping my hand like I’d been attacked by a plague of gnats. But I didn’t look back; I couldn’t turn, even though I was half convinced that he was following, stomping up the driveway, crushing dandelions along the way.

Hershey appeared next to me, a shadow materializing like a phantom. I wondered where she had been while I stood under the manic shower of Adam’s words. I didn’t blame her for disappearing; it was the smartest move when he came around. Maybe she would have jumped up to defend me if he had lifted his hands around my throat, or maybe even that wouldn’t have penetrated her own post-traumatic reaction to the scent of him. “Good girl,” I breathed. “Stay close. I won’t let him hurt you.” I tapped my thigh and made a soft click with my tongue.

The garage door had never taken so long to close. I imagined him rolling under it like Indiana Jones, crooked smile and all, grabbing an imaginary fedora.

When I walked into the dining room, I expected the kids to be pressed against the windows, terrified of all the things that might have happened. The downstairs was empty, and I could hear thunder over my head in Jada’s room, which meant she was jumping from her bed onto her furry purple beanbag chair. Tiny white balls would be puffing out the zipper like snow.

I ran to my closet, Hershey sticking close. My .38 Special—plain-Jane instead of plastic pink—was on the top shelf. I had to climb my sweater shelves like a ladder to reach her and then had to reach behind a dusty pair of five-inch heels for the bullets. My fingers were steady when I slipped the shells into the chambers and swung the barrel closed.

Locked and loaded. A phrase from one of my dad’s stories from the Honor Guard in DC. I hefted the gun, remembering his lessons on aiming and shooting so many years ago.

My hands started shaking then, jostling Karma like popcorn in a popper. Not cool. Not cool at all when I had hard decisions to make and no room for nerves. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. The gun was cold and heavy. I had bought it thinking I could shoot anyone threatening my kids. Even him.

Adam wasn’t just anyone, though, and the reasons he had for being there were understandable even if I didn’t like them. It wasn’t hard to imagine shooting the person leaving knives in my bed, or torturing my dog, but he wasn’t that person all the time. In some moments he was still the yesterday Adam. The one who had sat with me, dreaming of our future at beaches and mountain cabins, of growing old together.

How could I ever reconcile him with the person who had looked me straight in the eye and said he was going to kill me?

I put Karma back on the top shelf without unloading her. Rest up, girl.

The kids hadn’t noticed I was gone. We did our bedtime routine and everyone was asleep before I identified what bothered me most about the night encounter.

It wasn’t the person or the words as much as it was who I became because of them. The kids never suspected I even went outside. But I knew that and a whole lot more. I knew great big scary things. I was planning ways I might have to kill someone if they came too close even one more time. I was telling tall tales, about how safe and happy we were, and sealing them with a false smile. I was pretending I was strong when no one had ever felt as small and weak as I did.

Of course I was doing it to protect them, both from thinking about the crazy man and from the fear the truth would bring. Then again, if they weren’t afraid of him, they might let him get too close. The balance was lost somewhere between feeling safe and being safe.

I was beginning to think there was no such thing as safe anyhow. Nowhere we could hide.

That was enough reason to be a liar, I told myself that night, with the shadows growing deep around my bed and the window frames locked tight around glass that was as laughably easy to break as my courage.





–19–

Rise

I Am My Plumber

On Friday after work, Roman and I went to the Plumbing Warehouse, where a lanky man in a Where’s Waldo? shirt and gauges large enough to shoot marbles through was unfortunate enough to be the one to ask, “May I help you?” He nodded at my clipboard in a patronizing way, squinted at my explanations and looked at something over my left shoulder, and finally suggested, “It would probably be easiest if you send your plumber in to make the order. Or he can even do it over the phone and you can do the pickup.” He smiled and actually patted my shoulder.