Self-Esteem (19 page)

Sunlight was now peaking through the corners of the windows, which were covered by dark Venetian blinds. Jenny liked her apartment dark, even though she was always talking about spending more time outdoors in the sunshine.

Then his senses stirred again.

The clock over the fireplace ticking. A faucet dripping in the bathroom.

“Hello?” he said, leaning forward. “Jen?”

Only the clock ticking. She isn’t dead on the floor, he thought. But the bedroom, the bathroom — she could be lying in there.

Crawford jumped as the phone rang next to him.

It rang again. Crawford sat down in a chair next to the phone.

It rang again.

He sat there watching the phone, like a child waiting patiently to receive a punishment he knew he deserved.

It rang again.

Then the machine picked up.

“Hi, this is Jenny.”

Her voice sounds so young. Why does it sound different?

“I’m not here,” she giggles.

She’s so sweet.

Shut up. She’s not that sweet, he thought.

“Maybe I’m not here. Just leave a message, okay?”

Wait! The message I left! Is it still on the tape?

Beep.

Crawford leaned over and listened.

There was silence. It was like there was someone on the other end. He couldn’t hear anything — no breathing, nothing — but it was like something told him someone was there. Crawford leaned further. Then he felt as if someone were watching him. Crawford heard him breathing. Or
her
? Was that breathing?

Click
. Dial tone. No message.

Crawford looked and saw a “1” blinking on the answering machine. But was it his message or the caller’s non-message? If so, someone had already listened to his message. Maybe it wasn’t even the same tape.

Crawford jammed his finger down on the play button. Nothing but silence. Wait… there was a quiet hum. Breathing, something.
Beep.
The message ended — the silent message he had just heard.

I dialed the right number, damn it!

Crawford flipped open the top of the answering machine, grabbed the tape and put it in his jacket pocket.

But what should I do with it? Destroy it?

I’ll decide later, he thought.

Crawford stood up and took a deep breath.

Okay, next. I have to.

He walked down the hall toward Jenny’s bedroom. Every other time he’d gone into her bedroom he didn’t walk — or he couldn’t remember walking. She had her legs wrapped around his waist, kissing his neck devotedly. It was all very symbolic, Crawford knew. He did it because Jenny loved the expression “swept off her feet.” He also did it because he liked the brief sensation of power.

He peeked around the corner.

“Hello?”

Nothing. The bed wasn’t made, just a scrambled mess of pillows and blankets, like it always was.

“Not making the bed helps me feel young,” she once told him.

Was she still young? Crawford sat down on the bed and it felt cold, he thought, so cold.

On her nightstand was a picture of the two of them, the only picture he had thought existed. It was a trip to Acapulco — a short vacation Crawford pulled off by saying he was attending a psychology conference in Detroit. Crawford told Dorothy she would be bored by the desolation of Detroit, and she agreed to let him go alone. It took more creative lies to explain the suntan when he returned.

Crawford picked up the picture and gazed at Jenny’s exuberance. Her smile was so genuine. Her bright yellow shirt, covered in palm trees, was so youthful. She really was a wonderful girl.

Was?

Crawford thought of the gruesome image on the tape.
The knife. The screaming.

God, I hope you’re okay.

But if you are okay, you’re an evil woman, he thought.

Crawford put the photograph inside his jacket and walked back into the living room, then the kitchen. Yes, the kitchen — or its contents — was the second important reason he’d come to Jenny’s apartment.

He opened the cupboard to find the standard assortment of bottles Jenny kept for basic entertaining. Jenny loved to have people over and she loved to drink. So being able to make her guests any cocktail they desired was something she cherished. Brandy, cognac, rum, vodka, tequila, a number of aperitifs — Jenny had it all. But Crawford’s poison was single-malt Scotch, and an unopened bottle of Lowlander Pure Malt would do him just fine.

Crawford took a paper sack from under the kitchen sink and put the bottle inside.

Chaser.

Then he reached inside the fridge and pulled out a couple of cold bottles of Budweiser and put them in the bag.

Crawford approached the door and felt vile. He had just rationalized a trip to Jenny’s to see if she was there safe (and if she wasn’t, to find out why), but he had really been interested in getting something to drink.

He pulled the picture from his jacket.
I’m such a selfish piece of shit
.

He took one last look at the living room and then the kitchen, trying to find one small sign of abduction, or perhaps her involvement with the production of the tape. He couldn’t keep his mind off the bottle in his hand longer than a few seconds, but he tried.

Anything?

He turned toward the door and noticed something.
Scratches
. He looked closer. There were four small scratches, about three inches long, along the right side of the doorframe. He tried to remember if he had seen them before. Was this damage old? He ran his gloved fingers along the unusual abrasion. It didn’t look old, but it didn’t look brand new either.

It doesn’t matter, he thought.
What can I do?

Crawford slipped into the hall and out of the building, just as he had come in. The rustling of the sack under his arm made him nervous, but the contents would take his paranoia away soon enough. Crawford walked down the stairs and out into the early sunlight, pulling his sunglasses from his jacket. As he reached his car he realized that he hadn’t locked Jenny’s door.

Go back?

But then, that’s the way I found it, he thought.

The sack rustled under his arm, and the sound was reassuring.
I deserve to have these friends with me.
After all, he wasn’t responsible for all of this chaos. It wasn’t his fault.

“Anxiety is sometimes just a product of guilt, which is sometimes very irrational — a product of unfortunate circumstances,”
he had written in
Self-Worth
.

He put on his sunglasses and got in his car, putting the key in the ignition. He pulled the bottle of Scotch from the paper sack and put it on his lap. There was nothing so pleasurable as popping open a brand new bottle of 12-year-old single-malt Scotch. He turned the bottle top slowly with his thumb and index fingers, leaning over to savor the first draft of bouquet escaping from the bottle. On the console between the two front seats rested Crawford’s stainless steel coffee cup. He took off the plastic cover and poured four fingers then put the lid back in place and capped the bottle. He thought what a shame it was to pour such fine Scotch into an ordinary coffee cup, but what the hell.

Crawford took the first swig, letting the flavor saturate his mouth. He could taste the mild influence of the coffee, but actually, it wasn’t that bad.

“Be optimistic like your life depended on it,” he had written in
Self-Worth
.

Or was that
Self-Respect
?

He took another sip, then another. The coffee taste was kind of a nice change.

See, he thought, most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

I wrote that in, um…

He felt warm. He turned the key in the ignition.

Oh, that was Lincoln.

Anxiety: gone, for the time being.

Abe had a corncob pipe.

Dorothy was getting into her pink sweat pants and black tank top, talking to herself in teeth-grinding tones that she longed to unleash on Crawford. But her husband was nowhere to be seen. And during Jim’s long absences, during these moments of frustrating powerlessness, Dorothy felt she was constantly on the defensive, arguing why she was the kind of person that deserved better, arguing points that no one could hear.

There was almost nothing that could help, almost nothing that could chase the arguing demons away, except a little exercise. Time for
Swing and Sweat
.

“You got rhythm and it’s time to swing and sweat!” Johnny Campa, the announcer/singer/coach, said in his tuxedo workout suit.

“Okay,” Dorothy said aloud, taking in a deep breath before bending down to touch her toes.

“Okay, our warm-up. Let’s slo-o-o-owly touch our toes,” he said, bending over. “While remembering that we love ourselves. And we love our bodies too, don’t we?”

“Yes,” Dorothy whimpered. “We love our bodies.”

Jim obviously doesn’t love his body, or mine either.

Johnny began with a slow, soft rendition of
When Somebody Loves You
.

Dorothy sang along while doing her deep-knee bends, thinking about her heart and what it had felt, and about those kisses and when they are more than just kisses. She thought about looking and touching and how those things mean so much. She thought about discovering how it is to be a lover.
Or not.

The song was once a favorite of Jim’s when he only knew the Sinatra version.
Swing and Sweat
had put an end to that.

And I guess that’s my fault too, she thought.

This had only happened once before: the song becoming difficult to listen to during the second verse — the part about every smile becoming worthwhile, about the caring and sharing, when somebody loves you.

Jim had such confidence when they first met. Sure, it was the liquid kind, but it was still confidence.

He had confidence in my love,
until he wrote
Self-Confidence
.

“Isn’t this great? Just take a deep breath now,” Johnny Campa said.

And she did.

Dorothy was on the phone with her mother, having called her because she didn’t know who else to call. Now she was starting to regret it.

“You can’t do this forever,” her mother told her.

“Yes, mother, I know,” she said.

Dorothy, still in her pink gym clothes, sipped her coffee nervously, keeping her eye on the hall, waiting for Cal to come down.

“What did I tell you when you married him?”

“A lot of things, mother. Maybe I should call you later.”

“I don’t see how you can…”

Dorothy took the phone away from her face and yelled into the ceiling. “Cal. I need to talk to you.” Again she listened to her mother rant.

“Talk to him. Right now. Talk to him. Tell him you’re taking a stand.”

“I don’t know where he is.”

“You don’t know where he is?”

Just then Dorothy heard Cal’s car screech out of the driveway. She looked out the window just in time to see the 911 speeding down the street.

“I have to go, mother. Now my husband
and
my son have disappeared. I’ll call you later.”

“Listen,” her mother said harshly.

“Goodbye.” Dorothy said, hanging up the phone.

Dorothy was angry with herself for calling her mother. She often called her when she needed someone to unload upon. The problem was that she never felt comforted after a conversation with her — just the opposite. But she kept calling. Year after year, drinking episode after drinking episode, she would call her mother, give her a synopsis of the current crisis, and then hang up with regret after listening to her mother’s unwelcome lecture on her recurring oversights and failures. But Dorothy couldn’t help it. She considered it her only addiction. She was wrong.

Dorothy liked to take a bath instead of a shower when she was depressed, and this morning she was ready for a long one. She turned on the water, ready to shut the bathroom door and shut out the world for a while, when the phone rang. She knew who it was.

“Yes,” she said sternly. There was a long silence. “Hello.” Nothing. “Speak!”

“Dorothy?” the gravelly voice finally said.

“Where the hell are you?”

“I just wanted to talk to Lee about the Hershey show, that’s all.”

“And you went to talk to him in the middle of the night?”

“Like I used to tell people,” Crawford said in a mumble, “when you have the courage to do something…”

“Yeah, yeah. You should go ahead and do it. That’s bullshit, Jim. What are you doing?”

“I’m… I can’t talk right now.”

“You called me to tell me you can’t talk? Why can’t you talk?”

“Because I can’t.”

Dorothy could tell he was smashed, but she wasn’t going to mention it. She knew, and he knew she knew. “I feel like I’m talking to a child, the same child I’ve put up with for almost 20 years.”

“You are,” he said softly. “You are.”

“Look. Call a cab right now. Or have Lee bring you home.”

He calmly told her that Lee was not there.

“Then call a cab,” she shot back.

“I’ll be home soon.”

“You better be. If you take too long I might not be here when you get back.”

“That might be better for both of us, sweetheart.” He hung up.

Dorothy’s heart pounded with anger. She started to think of all the episodes she’d been through with Jim, trying to get him sober while trying to remain hopeful.

She went back into the bathroom and slipped into the soothing tub. She stared at the tiny bubbles that clung to her pale skin.

Maybe it’s time to go, she thought. Maybe it’s time.

CHAPTER 11

Darrin asked Cal to pick him up in front of Tom’s Pool Hall around eight o’clock. Cal thought this was a strange request since Tom’s didn’t open until one in the afternoon. And none of the other businesses on the block were open since most of them were drinking establishments. Cal wondered why Darrin didn’t just invite him over to his place. But he never talked about where he lived. The area code of his telephone number, Cal knew, was either near downtown or the south side — most likely not a very good neighborhood. But since Cal didn’t want to offend his new friend or make him feel inferior, he picked him up at the pool hall, no questions asked.