Staycation, page 4
“Please, calm down, dear.”
Suddenly, his attention shifted from The Dog to her.
Shit, she thought. His face was so red. Even his eyes, which were normally blue, appeared crimson. She’d never seen him this angry before. The word fury raced through her mind. He wasn’t just angry. He was downright furious. She worried his head might actually explode. Boom!
A second later, without a word of warning, the shit-stuffed sneaker cracked her square in the face with a loud slap! Excrement went up her nostrils and splattered across her cheeks and forehead. Droplets flew into her eyes. The lonesome shoe fell to the floor like an anvil in those old Looney Tunes cartoons she used to watch on Saturday mornings. How she wished she could beep, beep and haul ass in a cloud of dust like the roadrunner now.
“Shut the fuck up,” he began, stopping only to catch his breath, “you stupid bitch.”
He took a step into the pantry, and she took a step back while Fido let out a deep, low growl.
She wiped at her face, angry and embarrassed. “He has to go out. We have to take him outside to go. This is our fault, dear.” Her voice trailed off, and she realized she was not just crying but sobbing. The Dog whimpered in agreement. “This is our fault.”
He stopped and considered her. The red slowly faded from his cheeks, along with the fire burning behind his eyes. She began to relax, but Fido did not. He remained on high alert, ready to pounce. “You’re right. Mmhmm. You’re right. This is our fault.”
She sighed, relaxing more. “Yes. Yes, it is, dear.”
“But whose job is it to take care of the house?” She held her breath, the dread coming back to her belly, knowing exactly where this new line of questioning was heading. “Whose job is it to take care of the kids? And the good-for-nothing dog?”
She felt as though a ten-thousand-watt spotlight shone on her. The Dog’s shit dribbled down her face as her hands fell lamely to her sides. And while the pallor of his face had returned to normal, her cheeks now reddened behind the flecks of shit.
“Mine,” she mumbled.
“What was that?”
She cleared her throat. “Mine, dear.”
“That’s right. And why is that?”
Son of a bitch, she thought. Don’t make me say it. Don’t you dare.
Her gaze drifted to her feet. He took another step closer. The Dog shifted with a low but menacing grumble.
“And why is that?”
“Because…” she began, but the words wouldn’t come. She choked on them. Choked on the poisonous thoughts before she could vomit them out for him to hear.
“Because?”
He took another small step into the pantry, and she inched back. Fido was now square between her legs, and her butt touched the back shelf.
“Because a woman’s place,” she started, crying again. The rest came through gritted teeth. “Is in the home, taking care of her family.”
He grinned as she cringed at the sound of her own words reaching her ears.
“And?”
She looked up at him. “And?”
“Yes, and.” He took another step, now within striking distance.
“And…” She considered his question again, and what she thought he wanted to hear; what he needed to hear to stroke his inflated machismo. “A man’s home is his castle?”
“That’s right. Very good. This is my castle. All of it. And every goddamned thing under this roof and on these shelves—”
He knocked several cans of string beans and creamed corn to the ground. Fido inched back, but remained alert and ready to attack. “Belongs to me. You… belong to me. Every inch of you is mine. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, dear,” she cried, nearly inaudible.
“How can I enjoy what’s mine if you’re not taking care of it? Why should I do my job if you’re not doing yours? You know what happens if I don’t do my job?”
She nodded.
“Tell me.”
“You get fired.”
“That’s right. I get punished for not doing my job.” He sneered at her. “Now, you should be punished for not doing yours? Don’t you think that’s fair?” She looked up at him, and their eyes met. Slowly, he unbuckled the long black leather belt around his waist and slid it out of his jeans. It dangled ominously in his right hand as he grinned at her. “Don’t you think you deserve to be punished?”
She shook her head and mouthed with more air than voice, “No.”
“Punishment,” he said as he whipped the belt above his head. “Punishment is good.”
He cracked the belt like a whip and struck her in the face with it. She shrieked in pain. He whipped her again before Fido sprang from between her legs and knocked him to the ground. The belt fell from his hand as he tussled with the large dog. They rolled around the cramped pantry, their bodies blurring and blending. Fido snarled as he sank his teeth into The Dad’s neck, forearm, and then shoulder. A family-sized jar of watery Italian tomato sauce shattered on the ground, hurling bits of glass and sauce in all directions. Their entwined bodies smashed into a shelf, knocking boxes of penne pasta and some canned vegetables to the floor.
She screamed until she could hear nothing but the horrible sound of her own shrill, terrified voice. Blood reddened the floor. Somehow, he flipped Fido onto his back. He bared his teeth and snapped his jaw ferociously in the air. She thought Fido looked almost rabid then. Crazed. He hovered above the snarling beast, raising a fist and striking The Dog right in the nose.
“My god! My god! Stop it,” she screamed. “You’re hurting him!”
He cocked his fist again, and this time, he brought it down on one of The Dog’s bulging eyes. Fido howled and snapped harder at him. He punched The Dog again and again. Its hot blood painted his clenched fist red. She grabbed the belt and whipped his back as hard as she could. The bulky buckle end smacked into his soft flesh, drawing blood that made a small dot on the back of his shirt.
“Owww! Jesus fucking Christ!” He stopped punching The Dog and sat up, feeling around his back.
Fido whined and slid out from under him. Despite the fight, The Dog was only mildly injured. A few scrapes and bruises here and there. It scampered out of sight as quickly as it could, leaving a thin blood trail.
She whipped his back again, even harder this time. The dark red stain enlarged on his shirt. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” Whip. Whip. Whip.
“You fucking dirty cunt!” he howled as he stumbled to his feet.
She whipped at his front, but missed as he swerved just enough to dodge the belt. Then he was on her. One solid, brutal slap across the face that sounded like a gunshot, and she fell back, her body sinking limply to the ground. She lay still in a heap, sobbing into a spilled bag of rice. Her face stung. The faint red outline of a distinct handprint slowly formed across the flesh of her cheek. And although she couldn’t see it, she sure as shit felt it.
“I’ll say this,” he said, a grin widening on his face as he inspected the bite marks on his body. “You never broke character.” He waited for her to say something smart, something cute, so he could strike her face again. When she said nothing, he added, “Now clean up this fucking mess.”
He shambled out of the pantry, and she heard him cursing under his breath as he stomped up the stairs, muttering fucking dog this and dirty cunt just loud enough for everyone to hear. Eventually, the bathroom door slammed shut. She imagined he would tend to his multiple wounds.
The Dog needs tending to, she thought. She’d have to find him first. And the kids. She’d heard the young boy screaming. Then, she wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard him laughing. Why was he laughing?
She closed her eyes, imagining herself in a sudsy hot bath, and her body relaxed. I’ll check on the kids. In a minute…
The thought trailed off there as she curled into a ball and cried quietly into the sleeve of her shirt.
14
Rabid
The Dog emerged from the fight almost unscathed. She tried not to take joy in knowing Fido had gotten the better of him, had gotten a small piece of him, but she did. Other than a minor bruise on The Dog’s face, it appeared to be unharmed. It acted as if it had spent the morning playing fetch at the park and not tussling with the self-described master of the house.
Thank god, she thought.
After she’d wiped the blood—his blood—off Fido, she got down on the floor and rolled around, playing with the unfazed pup. Its barks once again sounded happy, and it even uttered a long trail of guttural grunts as she rubbed its belly and stroked behind its ears. She knew the sound of their joyful laughter would carry through the house and irritate him to no end, and that only made her playtime with Fido that much more enjoyable. The less time she spent with him, the better.
She thought he might end the game, but he didn’t. When he finally emerged a few hours later, bandages covering the multiple bites, it was business as usual. He never mentioned the incident. Nor did he look at The Dog again for the rest of the day.
He left her alone for the afternoon, choosing to play video games in the living room with the kids. But he had that look on his face, like he was dreaming with his eyes open. Occasionally, she felt his eyes on her, studying her, examining her. Sizing her up. Traveling up and down the length of her body. Stalking her. Whenever she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, he’d turn away. It didn’t matter if she caught him red-handed or not. She knew. They both did. And whatever he was thinking, obsessing over in that head of his, she knew it wasn’t good. Only, she didn’t have a clue how bad it was, either.
15
Gots to Have Faith
Much to her relief, dinner was uneventful—at least in comparison with the earlier events of the day. Her cheek stung a bit, and there was still a red welt on the skin where he’d slapped her. But it would go away in time. “Time heals everything,” her mother used to say. It was the woman’s favorite expression. Her mother used it sarcastically, like when she’d missed out on getting tickets to see Shania Twain at The Garden, and endearingly in equal measure. Barely a day passed that she didn’t hear the woman exclaim those words at least once. She said it to herself now, repeatedly, like it was the sacred text of an age-old spell, a panacea to end her troubles—the goddamned game. But the words somehow felt empty and weak when she said them.
There was an old horror movie that her dad liked to watch around Halloween. A vampire flick. In it, the fearless vampire hunter tries to ward off the evil vampire next door with a crucifix, but the vamp only laughs. “You have to have faith for this to work on me,” the creature of the night taunted. And indeed, it wasn’t until the hunter saw the first rays of the morning sun that he found his balls and, by extension, his faith in the religious curio, and the vamp was dust.
She wondered what it would take for her to believe everything would eventually be okay, that things would return to the way they were before the game. As though they could just return to whatever had once passed for normal in the Miller house. The image of their past life blurred more and more with every passing minute of gameplay.
She feared that one morning she would wake up with no recollection of who she really was and would be trapped in this life forever. She’d heard the stories, like everyone else, of actors getting lost in their roles. Believing that they were the characters they portrayed. That one guy, the young, handsome one who’d played that famous superhero on television, hurled himself off the roof of a psychiatric facility where he was being treated for delusions because he believed he could fly. She moved the food around on her plate with little interest and wondered if the actor finally remembered who he really was just before his body splattered onto the pavement.
No matter how hard she thought on it, she just couldn’t understand how a person could just forget who they were, who they really were. There had to be a part, no matter how small, that tried to claw its way out, fighting to live. A lone sane voice in an asylum of lost, forgotten souls. A voice that fell on deaf ears in the end, she imagined.
She thought about that long summer month so many years behind her now, when she had grown so bored with teasing the neighborhood boys, that she pretended to be a Portugese foreign exchange student named Beatriz. Her mom caught her smoking a Tiparillo cigarette and had nearly caught her in a compromising position with their neighbor, Brad, who was playing the role of Francisco, a Portugese prince with amnesia.
Oh yes, she’d been a damned fine actress back in her heyday. But she’d never lost herself in her imaginings. Or, had I?
There was never a moment she wasn’t fully aware that it was an act. Wasn’t there?
But then, something else bubbled to the surface of her brain. Not a memory, exactly. Just a name—Mary Rabinowitz.
Who the hell is Mary Rabinowitz?
It felt like some forgotten part of her past, part of herself, was knocking on the door of her memory to be let back out. Or was it, back in?
16
Dead Air
She tucked the kids in that night. If he had any objections, he didn’t voice them. Tucking them in wasn’t her favorite motherly thing to do, but after the incident in the afternoon, she needed to make sure they were okay. And that they saw she was, too. At least, she would do her best to make them believe she was okay. She could be a damned good liar when she needed to be. After all, she almost believed herself when she said everything was still going to be all right.
“Here,” she said, slipping The Girl the inhaler. “How’s your breathing?”
The Girl took a quick puff from the inhaler and handed it back. “Good.”
“No wheezing?”
She shook her head.
“Good. You’ll let me know, though, if it starts, right?”
“Of course I will, silly.” The Girl laughed.
She kissed the younger girl on the cheek. “I love you.”
“Me too,” The Girl said, smiling up at the maternal figure.
She slid the inhaler back into her pocket and hoped he wouldn’t notice the bulge it made in her pants. For once, she prayed he’d be too busy staring at her ass to see the outline of the inhaler. “Oh, hey,” she said faintly as she lowered her head to the younger girl. “Keep this our little secret, okay? Can you do that for me?”
The younger girl appeared to mull it over in her underdeveloped brain. “You mean don’t tell… Daddy?”
She nodded. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
The younger girl sat quietly with her thoughts. For a moment, she wasn’t sure if the young girl would sell her out or not. But then, finally, she whispered, “Okay, Mommy. It can be our secret.”
“Good,” she said before planting another set of kisses on the younger girl’s cheeks.
The child swatted at her face. “Hey, enough already. I’m drowning over here.”
They both laughed. “Good night, sweet prince…ess.”
“Goodnight, Mommy.”
She was almost at the door when the young girl spoke again. “Mommy?”
“Yeah,” she replied without turning.
“What’s gonna happen when I’m out?”
Her forehead wrinkled a bit. The creases appeared across her face and felt, to her, deeper than they had been only forty-eight hours previously. “What do you mean?”
“When the puffer’s empty? What will we do then?”
She didn’t want to think about it. “The game will be over before it runs out.”
“Are you sure, Mommy?”
“Yes,” she lied, hoping and praying it would be.
“But,” The Girl began, then finished in a quieter tone, as if the walls themselves had ears, “what if it isn’t?”
“I promise it will be,” she said, just above a whisper. And she meant every word. Somehow, like the vampire killer in the movie, she’d find her faith—and her courage—and end this stupid game before that damned inhaler was empty.
17
Silent Words
She popped into The Boy’s room across the hall. He was sleeping like a rock, as he always did, and looked like an ancient mummy wrapped in a stack of fluffy blankets. She poked a hand into an opening and dug around the cave of cotton, searching for the child’s head.
The tips of her fingers brushed up against the child’s thick mane of curly hair. She knew it would be there, but she breathed a small sigh of relief anyway. A child physically disappearing under a mountain of blankets was just about the last thing in the world she needed to deal with. She tapped The Boy’s head gently enough to register affection but not to stir the child from slumber, and silently left the bedroom a moment later.
As she headed down the hall to her bedroom, she heard the kids giggle softly in unison behind their doors.
And then she said, “Stop talking and go to sleep.”
A moment later, she heard them each hop back into their beds and then their rooms were once again quiet, save for the gentle rhythm of their slowing breaths. She couldn’t help but wonder if they were still silently talking in their sleep.
18
Jeepers, Peeper
Against her better judgment, she decided to soak her battered body in a hot bath before bed. She knew from her days of playing volleyball that neglecting soreness only deepened the pain. The stinging in her cheek would go away in a day or so, leaving only a purplish bruise to remind her of the incident. But a raw soreness remained in the small of her back from when she struck against the corner of the shelves in the pantry after he’d slapped her. It felt so tender she could barely put her finger on the area without wincing in pain. She was sure there was a colorful shade of black and blue there already. The spot was just out of view, and no matter how she stretched and bent her body, she couldn’t find it in the mirror. And she wasn’t curious enough yet to ask him to look at her back. That was definitely a can of worms she had zero interest in opening.
