There wasn't very much else I could do. I hobbled along into the living room. The closer I drew to him, the more my heart pounded. It was as if it had become a Geiger counter and he had turned into pure radiation. I placed my crutches beside me and sat on the sofa. He stood in the doorway a moment and then he went to the window and gazed out.
"Where are your girlfriends today?" he asked.
"They'll be here very soon," I said. "And they all know you're not supposed to be here. They'll go for the police."
He turned, his face stern, his lips tight.
"I doubt that very much, Cathy. Very much. Yes, I broke in here the other night. I couldn't understand why your mother was behaving like she was and I needed to get some things. Imagine my surprise when I saw what had been done to the house and to your mother's room. I left thinking maybe she had gone mad and was redoing it in some bizarre fashion. When I saw that old, cheap furniture out in the hall, I thought finally she's letting go of something. Maybe her attitudes about what's valuable and what isn't had changed and she wouldn't be as penurious.
"God, how she drove me mad with that 'a penny saved is a penny earned' crap. If I heard 'waste not want not' one more time, I think I would have gone mad. It got so I heard it in my sleep!" he cried, his hands turned up as if he was pleading his case in front of some jury.
"I knew she had hoarded every nickel I ever gave her and was ever given to her. She had a lot in that safe of hers. You know she never trusted me with the combination? What kind of a marriage is it where the wife wouldn't give her husband the combination to the safe in their bedroom, huh?
"I'll tell you," he answered for himself, much like she would have, "not much. It was never much. I was a fool to have let myself be talked into it."
He smiled.
"I found the letters in your room. You've read them, I suppose."
"Only the first two," I said. "You had no right to take them."
"Only the first two? I see. Well, you know enough about yourself and her then. The other letters are full of apologies and promises and all that phoney stuff that was never to be. You didn't get the safe open, did you?" he asked suddenly, his eyebrows hoisted and poised.
"Yes, we did," I said.
"We did? Oh, you and your girlfriends, huh? Of course. So you know the rest then. You know your mother was really adopted, right?"
"Yes," I said.
"Do you know that I never knew it?" he asked. "That's right. They kept that from me. From me! They probably thought I might think again about marrying her or something. I wish I had
"Never marry for money and comfort, Cathy. In the end you might have some money, but you won't have the comfort you so cherished.
"It was you, you only who gave me any comfort," he said in a softer voice, a voice that sounded as if it was filled with tears and pain. "When she took you away from me ..." He paused as if he was all choked up and turned away for a moment. I saw his shoulders rise and fall.
He gathered himself and when he turned back to me, there was no longer even a trace of softness in his face.
"She had no right, no right. I was the only one who ever gave you any affection, who sympathized with you, who cared for you. I was the one who gave you toys, wanted you to have things. She stopped me all the time. She was jealous of our relationship from the start. She'd rather you were alone, suffering, crying, than have me. What kind of a mother was she to you?"
He paused again and smiled.
"Yes, Cathy, was. When you told me she was in the hospital, you had me for a little while, even though I knew she would hate to be in any hospital," he added.
For a moment he stared, and I stared as his words twisted and turned in my mind, tying
themselves in a knot. The smallest, slightest chill started at the base of my spine.
"She was a remarkably healthy woman. I think her meanness made it so. No disease, no germ dared to locate in her inhospitable body. You know how rare it was for her to even have a cold. In all the years we were married, she never went for a physical exam or any of the regular checkups most women have. I kept thinking some day she'll have cancer and she won't be able to stop it, but not her, not even cancer dared invade her skin and bones.
"I was convinced she'd outlive me, maybe even both of us, and she might have, too. You see that, don't you? You think she'd ever have let you have a normal relationship with anyone? You think you'd ever have a boyfriend or do any of the things you wanted to do?
"Remember, it was I who bought you that party dress. Remember?"
He paused again and looked over the room.
"You girls are something," he said. "Those pictures out there," he continued, nodding and laughing. "She's spinning in her grave. Right, Cathy?"
I couldn't talk now. My whole body felt frozen. I couldn't even feel my heart beating.
"So what would she do to protect herself, to keep up her health besides eat like a bird and clean this house for exercise? Just those herbal remedies, remember?"
He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a bottle.
"This was one of her favorites." He looked at it and read, "Pycnogenol." He nodded at it. "I made fun of her all the time, but she was happy about it because that meant I wouldn't take it and she had more for herself."
"Why do you have it now?" I asked. My voice was so thin and small that I didn't recognize it when I spoke. It was as if someone else was in the room with us, asking the question.
"Oh, I didn't want it here any longer," he said. He paused and looked at me hard. "It's the real reason why I broke into the house that night. I didn't realize she had changed the locks on me. I had to break in when I thought you were all away."
"Why?" I asked.
"Why? I was afraid she might have finally convinced you to use this stuff, too, for one thing. For another, I didn't want anyone else to look at
it...closely. You might have noticed there were different kinds of pills in the bottle--though I doubt you would have guessed they were strychnine," he added. "It was sort of a game of Russian roulette I played with her, waiting for the day she would take the right pill. I had a half dozen in here, resembling her precious herbal wonder. I guess it's safe to say now that she did, right?
"Cat got your tongue, Cathy? I remember her asking you that occasionally." He started to laugh and then stopped.
"I was able to check to see if you were telling the truth about the hospital simply by checking on my hospitalization plan, Cathy. She kept that because I had to pay it. To be admitted to any hospital there had to be contact made with the plan, even after an emergency, and none had been made, and as you know, I called every hospital anyway. So I knew you were lying, and when you went through that charade to pretend to go get her, I nearly had a heart attack from laughing. I must say your girlfriend did a nice job sitting in this chair, looking like Geraldine.
"Tell me," he said, "where did she die? Were her eyes wide open, was she grimacing in pain? She was in rigor mortis pretty quickly, right?"
I felt as if I was shrinking, melting, and soon I would disappear in the sofa. Movement, speaking, even breathing seemed out of the question. He didn't notice. He put the bottle back into his pocket and smiled again.
"When you began to do things I knew Geraldine would adamantly forbid, I began to suspect she was indeed gone, but then I thought, if she was, why weren't the police here? Why wasn't someone calling me?
"And then, after I had been here and seen what you and your girlfriends had done and were doing, it came to me. What a wonderful surprise!" he said.
"At first," he continued, "I thought you had just packed her up and taken her someplace and then I saw the changes in our backyard and realized what you and your girlfriends had accomplished."
"You... killed her?" I finally asked.
"No. I helped her out of her misery because that's what she was in ... misery. And she had no right to take you from me like that. None. She was just being vengeful, taking out her miserable life on me. On u
s," he said. "We were happy for a time before she destroyed it, weren't we?"
"No," I said, but my answer was weak and I was terrified. If he had heard, he decided to pretend he hadn't.
"It's over now, anyway. We can forget about it all. But we can't stay here, Cathy. Don't worry. I have a nice surprise for you. Guess what I did. I bought a houseboat. That's right. I don't know if you'll remember when I took you to the marina one afternoon and you were so intrigued with the sea and with the boats, and then we went on that houseboat one of my clients owned. Remember that? You thought it was a fun idea to live on the water so you could move your house around whenever you wanted to. Remember?"
I shook my head even though I did.
"Sure you do. Anyway, we have it now. We're going to have such a good time," he said. "Just the two of us, away from all this, and anytime we feel like it, we'll move." He laughed. "Isn't it wonderful?"
"No," I said. "I won't go with you."
His smile softened and then faded. The dark, gruesome face that replaced it was very frightening because I hadn't ever seen him so angry.
"Sure you'll go, Cathy. If you don't," he said, "you and especially your friends will be in a great deal of trouble. You girls buried her, not me," he pointed out. "And when they come and dig her up and examine her, they'll think you and your girlfriends killed her, too. They'll all go to prison. Do you want that to happen?"
My eyes began to fill with hot tears, so hot they burned under my lids. I shook my head.
"Good," he said, clapping his hands. "It won't happen then. You go upstairs and pack a little bag. Take what you want for now and we'll come back in a few days and get more. Eventually, we'll take whatever we want from the house and then one day, we'll have a convenient fire. Maybe Geraldine will be consumed in it. I'll figure it out for us, don't worry, and none of your friends will be in trouble. Until then, let's start to enjoy our houseboat.
"Oh, it's so much fun, Cathy. You can't imagine what it's like to wake up and smell the sea every morning. It stirs up your appetite. You'll be able to make me breakfast. It will be wonderful. Just what Geraldine would have hated to see:' he said, laughing.
"Okay." He continued moving toward the front door. "Now that I know what is happening here, I'll bring the car around. You go upstairs, pack your stuff and I'll be right along."
He crossed the room and leaned down to kiss me on the forehead.
"I'm here for you again, sweetheart. Daddy's back."
His hand brushed some strands of hair from my face and then he walked out.
When he closed the front door behind him, it was as if a clap of thunder had sounded through the house, shaking my very bones.
What evil had we buried when we buried Geraldine?
18 Treacherous Waters
For a few moments I was actually unable to move. Every muscle in my body was frozen with fear. I couldn't even take a deep breath because I felt as if I had as much-earth on my chest as Geraldine had on hers. The air around me was thick and heavy, too. Tiny electrical charges crackled and sparked. I closed my eyes and prayed all this had just been another nightmare, but when I opened them again, I realized, of course, that it had been real. He was here and he was coming back for me.
What was Ito do? With the speed of lightning, different options passed through my mind. I could get up and go out the back to hide or maybe escape over the wall. But where would I go and what would that solve? I could do what Stuart had told me to do and call the police. How would the girls feel about that? What would I have done to them? I could stay here and plead with my father, maybe try to bluff him with threats, but I was never good at that sort of thing, and I was far too fragile now to put up anything
resembling a convincing facade.
If I didn't do what he wanted, he would call the police himself and all of us would be in big trouble. I could envision even the girls wondering if I hadn't been the one to put the poison in Geraldine's jar of herbal remedies. At minimum there would be significant enough suspicion to have a long and painful investigation. All of them would be in big trouble and now, when they were all having such a good time finally. Larry might change his mind about marrying Star. David would certainly stop seeing Jade, and Misty would lose her new boyfriend, too. All this would happen, not to mention it would wrench their families' lives even further apart than they were.
Just thinking about Star's granny, how kind she had been to me and how fragile she was, made me shudder at the possibilities. How much were they supposed to bear? Their own problems had ruptured their relationships and their home lives. They didn't need mine, too.
I had no real choice. I had brought them into all this. I couldn't be selfish and cause them all this grief. It was too late to think about myself anymore. I had given that up when I had called Jade and told her Geraldine was dead. I should have called the police immediately. Should have, could have, hindsight, the moans and groans of the guilty and stupid, Geraldine used to say. "When you're drowning because you were careless or foolish, wrap an excuse around yourself and see how long it keeps you floating."
She was right. It was too late for excuses. None would keep me from drowning.
Leaning heavily on my crutches to pull myself up, I rose and started toward the stairs, walking, I'm sure, like some convict heading for the electric chair. Visions of my future made me numb. I was
mechanical, taking one step after another, holding onto the railing as I ascended. When I got to my room and gazed around, I couldn't think of anything I wanted to take.
For a few seconds, I contemplated suicide. I could go into the bathroom, lock the door, cut my wrists and put them in a sink filled with hot water. Maybe before he got the door opened I would die. But then what? Would the girls be safe? He would be free to say whatever he wanted, wouldn't he? He would tell the police I couldn't live with what I and the girls had done. They might even pity him, not me, not us!
All I could come up with finally was the hope that if I gave myself some time, I might think of something. For now, there was nothing to do but follow his orders. I filled a small overnight bag with necessities. Before I was finished, he came charging up the stairs.
"How we doing?" he asked, his face flushed with excitement.
"I don't know what to take along," I said.
"Don't worry about it. We can come back from time to time and get whatever you want." He clapped his hands together, rubbing the palms as he walked into my room and looked at everything, smiling.
"I like the changes you made: new curtains, bedding, pictures, but wait until you see the houseboat. It's luxurious, everything Geraldine hated and thought opulent or ostentatious. I've got oak cabinets and paneling, with solid oak trim throughout, chrome faucets in the bath- rooms, a Sub-Zero refrigerator, a deluxe sound system, big screen television set." He laughed. "She thought she knew where all my money was, but I was smart," he added, pointing to his temple with his right forefinger. "I envisioned this day would come and I stashed money in places she couldn't ever find. She thought she was so perceptive when it came to that, checking on every penny. That was her biggest trouble- thinking she was smarter than me in every way."
He saw I was just standing there staring at him and he blinked and glanced once more at the room. Then he laughed.
"What the heck did you girls do with our bedroom? What's that supposed to be in there, huh?" He brought his face closer to mine. "Is something weird going on here, something you want to tell me?"
"No, nothing weird. It was our meditation room, where we went to calm down and think and be ..."
"What?"
"Together," I said. He'd never understand what MP meant, and he might even get angry, I thought.
"Right. Well, you won't need that sort of thing anymore. Let's get going," he said. "I want to get some things from the garage. I'll meet you outside."
He left and I gazed at the clock. The girls would be here in less than an hour now and they wouldn't find me. What would they do? I wondered
and it occurred to me that they might do something that would get them into trouble. I had to leave them a note. I was positive they would go around back to get into the house so that would be the best place to leave it. Not sure what to say, I started to write.
Dear Jade, Star, and Misty,
I'm sorry I can't continue with things the way they are. I'll be all right if you all would simply concentrate on yourselves now and find happiness. Please just turn and walk away and forget everything. Don't come back to the house. Don't try to call me or find me. I love you all and appreciate everything you've all done for me, but now it's time for you to do things for yourselves and your own families. Please, please, please, for my sake, do what I ask.
Love always, Cat
It was the first time I had ever signed my name like that. It brought tears to my eyes. I quickly folded the note and headed downstairs. I could hear him opening and closing cabinets in the garage, so I made my way back to the kitchen, found Scotch tape in the drawer where it was kept and taped the note to the outside of the back door. I put the tape on doubly thick to be sure the wind wouldn't blow it off.
"Cathy?" I heard him call.
I closed the door softly. If he found the note, he would be angry, I thought. Almost tiptoeing, I returned to the front of the house. He was at the front door.
"Where were you?"
"I was very thirsty, so I got a drink of water," I said. He stared, his eyes darkening with suspicion.
"Did you call someone?"
"No," I said quickly.
"If you did, you'll only make things harder for everyone," he warned.
"I didn't call anyone. I swear," I said.
He considered and then he smiled.
"No, I don't think you did. I think you want to be with me now. I know you realize I'm the only one who really cares for you, right? Isn't that right?" he insisted.
"Yes," I said. I tried to swallow after I said it, but my throat wouldn't open.
"Good. Well," he said, looking at the house, "let's bid this prison good riddance once and for all. Need help?"