Never Smile at Strangers (15 page)

HE SQUIRTED THE conveyor belt with window cleaner and scrubbed it clean with a fistful of paper towels. A child had just pitched a fit, and slammed an opened bottle of juice he’d been drinking onto the conveyor. The juice splashed all over the tabloids,
TV Guides
, and booklets that held the never-before-printed secrets to losing weight fast. The same booklets women often bought, along with boxes of Hostess cupcakes and family-size Snickers packs.

The kid’s mother had been apologetic, but blood was pounding in his own ears, and he had refused to look up at her. She wasn’t the real problem though. Neither was her kid. He just hadn’t been feeling well lately. He craved the calm he’d felt. . . after Tiffany.

He was anxious again, and was plagued by the realization that only one thing could calm him these days. The thing he mustn’t do again. He thought of crack cocaine and what it did to its users between fixes. Killing. . . was just as addictive.

“Clean up on aisle ten,” a voice rang out. He looked up to see Henry, the store manager and the worst, red faced, alcoholic he’d ever met, through the smudged glass window of the office, speaking into the microphone. He thought of his father, who he hadn’t seen since he was four years old. He, too, had been red-faced. He’d been a docile, alcoholic waste who had once fallen for the dirty, dangerous woman who had been his mother.

His mother cursed his father’s last name over the years, and though it was listed on both his and Allie’s birth certificates, she would never acknowledge it. She went by her maiden name and insisted that Allie did, too. But she never insisted that he did. For as long as he could remember, his mother had hated everything about him. She didn’t care whether he lived or died. . . nor had a decent or, what she considered, a
despicable
name.

Lately, everything seemed to bother him more than usual. The television, all the images of the women. Horrible, trashy women. The women he abhorred. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. He really didn’t. But he did. Yes. . . oh yes, he did.

His mind was a jumble of pent-up energy—confused, dangerous thoughts, unmentionable urges.

That morning, he had ripped out the last pages in the filthy magazines. He ripped most of them to shreds—the pages, binding, and all. Maybe if he burnt them after his shift. Yes, that might make him feel better. If it didn’t, maybe he’d take a trip back to the Anderson’s.

Someone tossed items on the belt. He glanced at them. A box of condoms, a can of Spaghetti O’s, a pack of cigarettes, and a tabloid magazine. He looked up and nearly screamed.

“Why, hello, handsome.”

It was Allie.

“The nicotine gum you left on the counter don’t work too good,” she said, now standing in front of the credit card scanner. She reached in her pocket and popped a white square of gum in her mouth. “But the thought was nice. My big brother buying me gifts. My savior has reappeared in the form of a crazy fuckup.”

She flashed him a toothy grin and he had the urge to fly over the conveyor belt and strangle her. Now was not the time for her to ridicule him. Not in front of other people. She was crossing the line. His life with her was supposed to be separate. Could
only
be separate. What was she doing here?

A kid in a cart done up as a red and yellow plastic buggy wailed. He glared at the kid, then quickly returned his focus on his sister. She was wearing too much makeup. Her blue-red lips blared at him beneath the fluorescent lights of the store.

An older woman walked up behind Allie and placed a box of kitty litter on the conveyor, then picked up one of the juice-splattered tabloids.

“You wouldn’t be trying to get into my panties, would you, big brother? Giving me thoughtful gifts so that you can molest me?” Allie said, loud enough for the woman to hear.

“Shut up,” he snapped.

The woman’s jaw dropped. She picked up the kitty litter and walked to the next open register.

His blood boiling, he rang up his sister’s items and shoved everything into a plastic bag. The blip-blip of the scanners in the store was driving him mad. He wanted to jam his fist through the smudged rectangular panel of glass. “$11.66.”

Allie smirked. “I think I forgot my wallet. Can you, you know,
take care
of me?”

He glowered. Shoving the bag at her, he leaned in and hissed: “Get the fuck out of here.”

***

AFTER HIS SHIFT, he got into his truck and drove home. The evening was calm; but he was not.

On Coontz Road, he passed a girl who looked to be Allie’s age, hitchhiking. She was wearing next to nothing, her thumb in the air. A sitting bird for predators like him.

Without thinking, he jammed his foot against the brake and the truck lurched to a stop, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. Seeing his taillights, the girl jogged up to the passenger door, her breasts nearly bouncing out of her tube top. He lowered the passenger window halfway.

“Where are you headed?” he asked.

“Grand Trespass.”

His mind manufactured a scenario not unlike the one with Tiffany: snuffing out the life in this half-dead girl. The opportunity to take another evil out of the world and quiet the rage.

His eyes left the girl’s and settled on a dried up, flattened bullfrog on the road ahead of him. How dare his sister show up at the grocery store. How dare she humiliate him when he was outside the house. She knew the rules. Giving her the gift had been an unwise move, and he wasn’t even sure why he had in the first place.

Yes, he was responsible for her. And yes, in a twisted way he guessed he might even love her. But that didn’t mean he had to be nice. She would just see it as a weakness and use it against him. She always had.

He’d learned his lesson.

The hitchhiker lifted the handle on the door. Discovering it was locked, she looked up and scowled. “You givin’ me a ride or what?”

HIS EYES FLEW open, and he found his naked torso slick with sweat. Sitting up in the small bed, he struggled for air. It was five o’clock in the morning. The stress had brought on the nightmare of the last moments with his mother. Sweat chilled the sides of his face, and he let out a sob before lying back down.

He looked out the small window, listening to the faint crooning of Bob Dylan. He’d set the CD on loop the night before, and now Dylan’s
Lay, Lady, Lay
played softly on the floor beside his bed. The sky outside was splattered in shades of gray and pink, the beginnings of dawn. Ian brushed against the window, mewing loudly. Wickedly.

In the nightmare, her face had been so vivid. Her features true to that night, even down to her smeared eye makeup and the mole above her lips. Her words as sharp as they had been in life, still echoed in his head.

She had regarded him with eyes that knew he would be just as twisted as she was.

She was wearing one of her many wigs, and speaking in a voice he hadn’t heard before. He knew the night would be bad. Even worse than the others.

The door to the basement stairs was open and she balanced on her bare, calloused heels in the doorway for a bottle of liquor. Her red nightgown was too sheer, too short. “We’re going to have us a little quality time tonight, boy,” she said.

He’d been trapped, standing next to the recliner, trying to find a way back to his room. He glanced at the carpet. Allie had been gluing leaves to a sheet of pink construction paper. A bottle of paste lay on its side next to his feet. Glue was dried to the carpet.

Sashaying into the kitchen, his mother reached into the cabinet and pulled out two shot glasses and filled them with whiskey. Hugging the bottle in the space between her arm pit and her side, she walked into the living room carrying the shot glasses.

They drank in silence for the next half hour. He knew better than to say no. He just prayed he’d be able to outlast her, and that she’d pass out on the couch before being able to do much harm.

As they drank, she looked past him. “I never wanted a boy,” she admitted. “Men are manipulators. No good.” A smirk. “Look at you,” she said, venom in her voice. “Yore pathetic. You’ll always be pathetic. Ruled by women.”

His erratic heartbeat, the wind outside, his mother’s smoker’s cough, the liquor trickling into his belly, all blared inside his head. His fists clenched. Rage had already become one with him, and he was powerless against it.

Allie appeared in the living room, rubbing her small eyes. “What’s going on?”

His mother’s expression softened. “Your brother and me are bonding, beautiful,” she said. “Go on back to bed.”

Allie yawned. Then she stood there, unmoving. “Can’t I stay awake?”

“No. Get some rest.”

“But Mama?”

The woman’s tone hardened. “Allie,” she warned.

Allie scowled, then went back to her room.

When she was gone, his mother leaned forward and ran a rough hand down the side of his face. “So, what shall we do tonight?” she asked.

He swallowed.

“You think yore mama looks pretty in this little nightie?”

He studied the carpet, knowing that if he looked full-on at the nightgown, he’d be able to see the evil beneath it.

“I thought you would.” She took a long sip of her drink and set the glass down hard. “You know better than to let me down, don’t you, boy?”

Yes, he did. And he was terrified of doing it again. . . of giving himself the chance to. But he was more weary of being terrified. Little did she know, he’d finally learned to transform the terror into anger.

Not fifteen minutes later, he shoved his mother down the basement stairs, and when he charged down, carrying the foot of rope he’d kept hidden beneath his bed for months, he made certain she wasn’t getting up.

AS HE JOURNEYED through the woods to visit the Anderson family later that evening, he thought of the girl hitchhiker he’d almost picked up a few days before. It had been a near disaster, how close he came to inviting her into the truck, possibly doing what he had to Tiffany.

He floored the gas pedal as she tried to open the door. It had been amusing to watch her through the dust the truck kicked up. She flipped him the bird, her hand no doubt stinging from the truck’s sudden lurch.

Now he was at the opening of the woods, but the Anderson’s windows were dark and neither automobile was parked in the driveway. Cold fingers of disappointment tugged at his heart, threatening to strangle it. The familiar stir of despair crept in.

But then he had an idea. One that both excited and frightened him.

Minutes later, he felt so alive, tiptoeing through the murkiness of Kelsey’s room with his flashlight trained on the carpeted floor. Clothes were strewn all over the place—tops, jeans, shoes, a dirty dinner plate and a sci-fi paperback. He looked at her bed, but had no interest in laying on it again.

He entered the family’s hallway, keeping the flashlight trained on the floor, and wandered into another bedroom. Her son’s. Posters of rock bands covered the walls. School books, a laptop computer. A CD rack, twisted bed sheets. He wondered if they were anything alike, but doubted it. The boy would go places, and he was wondering if he’d ever really get to see Nevada.

Walking into his angel’s room, he breathed in the soothing scent of lavender, and let the flashlight shine across her king-sized bed. His mind racing, he walked into the master bathroom. Cosmetics and lotions were neatly arranged on a shelf above the toilet. He picked up a few, imagining her holding them. Squirting a perfume on the back of his arm, he sneezed as quietly as he could manage.

Her large walk-in closet was painfully organized, seventeen pairs of shoes lined up in a perfect row. He touched her clothes and after much consideration, gently removed one silky dress from a hanger.

He went to her bureau and opened the first drawer. Her panty drawer. The underwear was chaotic, an array of whites, blues, blacks and pinks. He gazed at them for a quick moment, before closing the drawer. Then he saw something that really interested him. A gold bracelet. He stuffed it in his jeans.

Being in her room both excited him and calmed his nerves in a way that only one other thing did. He drew air into his lungs and allowed himself a few moments of complete ecstasy.

What kind of person would he have become with a mother like her, he wondered.

He left the master bedroom and moved through the front of the house where the living room and kitchen were. There were so many shadows but everything was still, calm.

Wandering into the living room, he paused by the huge windows. Then it happened. The inevitable. A loud noise erupted from one of the bedrooms.

Rock and roll music.

He flipped off the flashlight and crouched down. Then instinctively, he backed into a corner. There was another noise, something right next to him. He dropped the flashlight and dress, and, his hands trembling, felt along the floor for them. Something wet was on the carpet. And there was a. . . a glass. He’d tipped a glass over. That had been the noise. The music still blared in the back of the house. He listened hard for movement, so intently his head ached.

Then, headlights bounced off a wall and he heard a car approaching the house. The engine died and a door banged shut. Then another.

He hurried across the room, to the back door. In less than five seconds, he was safely back in the woods.

Winded, he turned back, hoping to get a look at his angel. But the night was too dark.

Leaves crunched a few feet away. His heart sped up and he took cover behind an oak. His eyes darted toward where the sound had been.

That’s when he saw her. First her outline, then a few features. But he knew exactly who she was.

His angel’s daughter, Kelsey.

She was frozen in a crouch, staring at him.

But before he could decide what to do or even react, she dashed out of the brush and to the safety of her home.

MILKY, EARLY MORNING light streamed through the window, illuminating a stack of essays Rachel had been poring over since early dawn.

With a cup of hot tea in hand, she re-read Erica’s essay for the third time, this time even slower than the second. She wasn’t sure what to make of the fixation Erica had with her mother. Rachel had known of Norah, Erica’s mother. But she didn’t remember Norah in the same light Erica did.

Every assignment: short story, essay, poem. . . was about Norah. The teenager was bright and she possessed exceptional determination, but her obsession with her mother made Rachel uneasy. From what she understood, the woman had abandoned her. And Erica had responded by making her mother out to be a heroine. That level of worship had to be unhealthy.

Rachel tossed the essay onto the table and walked into the living room for the first time that morning. She studied the furniture.

She and Tom had replaced their transitional set just two years before when they had inherited money from his now-deceased parents. They had also remodeled the kitchen and bought the two SUV’s. She had been proud of the changes, how classy the place had begun to look. But now everything looked cold.

She walked to the tall windows. Mid-way, she stopped. One of her dresses was lying on the floor. She picked it up and tried to remember when she last wore it. A year ago? The college’s last homecoming? Maybe. . . but why would it be on the living room floor?

With the dress under her arm, she moved through the room, picking up a half-filled glass of milk, an empty can of soda, another partially-filled glass of milk. Tommy had left his homework on the sectional. She went to pick it up and noticed a glass lying on the floor, then felt something cold and moist beneath her bare foot. She sighed.

After cleaning up the spilled soda, she walked over to the Van Gogh print that hung next to the staircase and straightened it, something she found herself doing several times a week for all the door slamming in the house.

She thought back to the figure she’d seen in the yard. Tom’s first question had been: ‘Were you drinking?’ Remembering his words infuriated her. But they were also beginning to make her question herself.

A clock alarm went off in the back of the house filling the air with the din of rock music. It was Tommy’s. Last night when they walked into the house after a trip to Wal-Mart, it had been going off, too.

A door opened and she heard footsteps. Rachel glanced at her watch. It was already seven o’clock. Tom and the kids were getting up. Tom had some days off and was going to take the kids to his sister’s for a couple of days. Lately, he’d made a point of spending time with them. Though she was relieved he was finally making an effort, she couldn’t help but notice that he scheduled special outings without considering her calendar. Or even inviting her. But it was probably best, she thought. They needed time away from each other. Time to cool down and figure out where the relationship was headed. Having the kids with him during that time at least brought her some peace.

Taking a deep breath, she smoothed her hair and carried the dress to the laundry room. She headed back to the kitchen to make everyone breakfast.

***

WHEN HER AFTERNOON class ended, Rachel dodged Myrna and the other teachers who routinely stayed late for afternoon coffee. She wanted to go straight home and use the time alone to finally look over the manuscript. She needed desperately to focus on something besides Tom. And she needed a drink. Maybe two. Two strong ones.

As she turned into the driveway, she saw Mac pulling the lawnmower out of the shed. Hearing the car’s engine, he waved. Surprised by the intoxicating tug she felt in her chest, Rachel climbed out of the car and walked up the little path that bordered the house. She grinned at the young man. “I have a craving for a glass of wine. Care to join me?”

Mac, wearing a Dallas Cowboy t-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts stood next to the mower, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Ma’am?”

“Let’s have a glass of wine.”

“Mrs. Anderson. . . the grass. . . I really oughta—”

“Rachel, call me Rachel. And don’t worry about the grass. It’ll be here later. Unless you have somewhere else you need to be?”

Mac shook his head. “Nope, nowhere other than here.”

“Well, c’mon, then.”