Ash Wednesday (49 page)

"I don't know that either. But I hope it won't." He pursed his lips and corrected himself. "I pray it won't."

Far ahead their children were calling to them. They walked faster, turning their backs on the darkness that was stealing over the trees from the east.

Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?

The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night.

—Isaiah 21:11-12

"Ted
Knotts
asked me over for poker tonight."

Christine looked up. Her face was little more than a gaunt mask stretched over bone. Brad had finally made her go to the doctor, who could find no physical problem. He'd given her the card of a psychiatric therapist in Lansford, which she tossed into the gutter upon leaving the doctor's office.

"Did you hear me?" Brad asked. "I said I might play poker tonight."

"So what? Are you asking for permission or something?”

“Not really. I just thought you'd want to know.”

“Well, I don't. Don't care."

His lips formed a thin line. "Fine. Then you won't miss me."

"No way." She didn't care anymore. Let him hit her, let him see how much good it would do. She was past fearing him now, having no room left for him. There was no fear left in her for anyone human. But there was hate.

She, who had once loved him mindlessly, possessively, had begun to hate him with an overwhelming intensity. He had kept her there in Merridale until inertia had claimed her.

She knew that she could not leave now, not ever, that she was there until she died. He had made her this way. It was his fault, his and the boy's. They had done other things to her too. To her body. Her hand went up to the wasted pits of her cheeks and above, to her eyes that had grown wide and large and luminous, her tangled hair, the pale temples where the muscles stiffened in constant tension, borne by the perpetual set of her jaw.

And her body, oh, her poor, poor body . . . gone beyond slenderness now to a wretched thinness, ribs easily visible, diaphragm slowly eroding into a hollow cave. Only the breasts remained in all their former fullness, absurdly huge on the withered body, as if refusing to surrender the last bastion of femininity, of motherhood.

It was a futile gesture on the body's part, for both sexuality and the maternal instinct had fled before the onslaught of mounting death-fear. She loathed her lover, hated her natural son. In her fantasies, she had gone a step beyond
Medea
.

"I'll probably be back around midnight," he said. Receiving no answer, he went down the hall into Wally's room. The boy was trying to teach Fluffy to sit up. Fluffy was uncooperative. "Hi, kiddo."

"Hi, Uncle Brad."

"Listen, I'm going out tonight, so I won't be able to tuck you in."

Wally's face fell. "Okay."

"Mommy can do it, can't she?"

"Sure. I guess."

Brad sat on the bed next to the boy. "Listen, kiddo," he said, "I know Mommy isn't . . . as much fun as she used to be. But I think she will be in time."

"She's just scared," Wally said. "She's still scared of all the dead people."

"Yeah, pal. I know she is."

"I'm not. Not anymore. Fluffy isn't either."

"I know you're not. You're a brave boy. But not everybody's as brave as you."

"
You
are."

"Well . . . I don't know."

"You think she really will?"

"Will what?"

"Get used to it?"

Brad sucked his lower lip. "Yeah. I think so."

"I don't. I don't think she ever will. She doesn't know any better. "

"Yeah, well, maybe she'll learn." He rubbed the little dog's ears. "Fluffy learned, right?"

"Right. Will you be back late?"

"Probably." The child's face contracted, as though he'd just tasted vinegar. "What's the matter?"

"Are you coming back?"

Brad's stomach tightened for a moment, as he realized the depth of affection that he had reached with the boy. "Of course. Sure I'm coming back. Did you think I wasn't?"

Wally spoke with the honesty of innocence. "If
I
went away, I don't think I'd come back. Not to Mommy. Not if I was you. And, and before, if I was
Mommy
I
woulda
gone away and not come back to
you
." The boy frowned. "Is that funny?"

"That's . . . kind of funny, yeah."

"It's like you and Mommy traded being nice. I wish you could both be nice at the same time."

He patted the boy's head, smoothing down the spot where an antenna of hair stuck up. "Well, maybe someday we will, huh? Give me a hug."

They had their usual Saturday night supper—a frozen pizza and canned fruit salad, a Coke for Wally, water for Chris, a beer for Brad. Christine served as though gauging the strength of the table, and did not speak throughout the meal. Afterward, when Wally was playing in his room, Brad and Christine cleaned up together.

"Look," he said, "do you want me not to go out tonight?"

"Since when has what I wanted ever stopped you?"

"I just asked. If you want me to stay home, I will."

She gave a short laugh. "It's too late, Brad. It's too late for little . . . uh . . .
whaddyacallems
,
gestures
on your part. You don't love me, you never
did
love me, so do me a favor and don't start to fuck with my head now, okay? I don't
care
if you go out, I really don't. I don't care if you lose money, I don't care if you get laid, I don't care—"

"About a damn thing," he broke in. "You don't care about me or your son or even yourself anymore, do you?"

"You could've stopped it. You could've helped me—"

"By what, running away? I don't run anymore, Chris, even if I can afford to. I'm too
old
to run away. This is my town, my hometown, and I'm not leaving because of blue goblins."

"It would've been
better
someplace else,
dammit
!"

"No! It
wouldn't
have been! If there aren't any ghosts, you make your own!" He hurled the tea towel onto the counter with a wet slap. "Everywhere has ghosts. The only difference is we can
see
ours, and I'm not so sure that that's not good."

"
Good?
You think it's
good?
"

"
Yes
. Damn right I do. 'Thou art dust, and unto dust thou
shalt
return,' ever hear that? Well, sometimes we forget it. But if we can't, if we're not
allowed
to forget, then maybe we act differently, we live differently."

"I don't want to hear this." But as she turned he grasped her arm firmly and swung her around.

"But you will. Look at me. It took me a while, but it's finally started to sink in. I thought about it more and more until I asked myself, What do you leave? What will you leave behind? And I left nothing,
nothing
. So I decided to leave Wally."

Her face twisted. "
Wally?
"

"He's a bright kid, a nice kid, and the way I was treating him he was going to grow up to be a shit. So I stopped, for him and for me and for you, too. But when I stopped, by the time I came to my senses, you'd lost yours."

"You think I'm crazy?"

"I think you're confused—confused and scared.”

"Scared, yeah. Oh,
hell
yeah! But not confused . . . and I haven't lost my fucking senses either.
You're
the crazy one!"

"Chris . . ." His hand went out to her in compassion, but she jerked away as though she'd seen violence in it.

"No! Just don't touch me!" she cried, and she ran to the basement door, her shoes pounding down the steps to the
rec
room.

Brad gazed at the door, thinking that although it looked open, it had in truth been closed for a long time. He went into the living room then, where Wally was watching the Muppets, his puppy resting beside him, chin on paws. Leaning down, he kissed the boy's hair, then watched him watching television for a second before he turned and left the room, hearing a softly spoken something that might have been "Bye."

He drove to the poker game through the warmth of an early spring.

~*~

Alone in the basement, Christine's thoughts gnawed at her like a rat at an ear of corn:

Sonuvabitch
.
Sonuvabitch
. He should talk, he should talk about Wally, he should talk after all he's said and done, calling me a whore, making my boy call me a whore, and hitting him, I know, I could see it, I could tell, and now he acts like I'm shit, like I'm nothing, like I'm a rotten fucking mother (MOTHERFUCKER!) because now he's nice, he's so goddamn nice, isn't he, buying the kid a fucking dog, a dog for
crissake
. Who needs a dog? Who the hell needs a goddamn dog?

She needed no drugs to feed her rage, no alcohol to muddy her mind or dull her edge of sanity. That edge was sharp, honed razor-thin by the powerful whetstone of fear. Her thoughts felt bright and crystalline, sane as sunlight, sensible as earth, clear as seawater. Sanity in a world of madness, that was her. Was it crazy to harm what was harming you? Was it lunacy to want to survive? Was it madness to even
kill
to keep from dying yourself?

He wants to hurt me. He wants to kill me. I'm dying now, falling away, and he still won't let me go. I'll hurt him. Yes. I'll hurt him.

It all seemed very logical. So she thought and thought about how to do it, and thought some more, sitting on the hard-cushioned couch in the half darkness, until her son called to her from the top of the stairs. "Mom?"

Wally
.

"Mommy? The Muppets is over."

Leave Wally
.

"Mommy?"

He wanted to leave Wally, that was what he said, wasn't it? Not leave, not go away, but leave him behind, leave him after, leave him to the world. Silly stupid thought, leave a little boy. Nothing else, he'd said, he would leave nothing else.

Only Wally. Only the boy.

"Mom, are you going to put me to bed?"

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I'll put you to bed. To sleep. That'll hurt him. Then he'll have nothing to leave. He didn't want to leave, so he won't. Never leave. Never leave anything.

"Are you?"

Are you, Mom
? "Yes," she answered, a hollow voice coming from a hollow under the house, "I'll put you to bed."

When she climbed the stairs to the kitchen, they did not seem as long and as steep as they had before, and when she reached their top, she was smiling.

Hours later, midnight came. It was a new day, Quinquagesima, the last Sunday after Epiphany, the Sunday before Lent. It arrived in darkness, under an early March sky in which moon and stars were smothered by clouds, clouds that soon disgorged a cold, sheathing rain.