Plush (30 page)

Breathe. I suck down the flying-bats-terror in my body and shrug and, for good measure, give a little laugh. Enzo smiles. He thinks I’m on his side. The little dog whimpers, and as he puts him in the playpen, I scan the room for a way to escape. I feel sick, so fucking sick.

He smiles: “I’ve been practicing on the dog! I put diapers on him yesterday. I’m going to be the best dad.” He does a little tap dance with his bare feet. What little was left that was holding me together – the band-aids – the stitches – they’re all splitting open. I don’t mean to, but I let out: “How did you know I was pregnant?”

Enzo’s face softens. He slides his finger down my cheek. He kisses my nose. “Hayley. You know we are two halves of the same heart. We can’t be far away. That would destroy me. Destroy you. This is why I always keep you close…” His hand is at my heart. I’m trying to deep breathe so he can’t feel it beating rabbit-being-chased-by-dragons fast. He rubs his nose again with the other hand.

“I don’t really get what you mean.” I try to be sweet and calm and cool. I need him to believe that I am not afraid, but I hear Benjy’s voice coming from the next room. My kids? He’s got my fucking kids too? Enzo is still so calm and his grin is growing and growing. “Such an imaginative kid, definitely your genes.”

I’m so fucking confused. “They’re here?” My world’s falling apart. My kids. My kids. Something kicks inside me again. The baby? Our baby.

I follow the voice to the kitchen. Enzo is right behind me, less than two feet, when I see the line of baby monitors near the sink – twelve monitors, each with its own little white label:
“Music Studio” “Kitchen,” “Hayley’s Bedroom,” “Carter’s Office.”
Benjy’s voice is coming out of the one labeled
“Twin’s Room.”

AAAHHHHHH!
He’s got every fucking room in my house all set up and bugged. I can hear the kids chatting in their room very clearly. Breathe. At least they’re safe right now. Fuck. What do I do? Be cool. I can do this. I can do this. I peek through the eyepiece of a huge telescope: it’s aimed right at my bedroom window. I’m flattered and grossed out. I hate that I have feelings for him. I hate him for fucking with my kids. The hate grows inside me. It grows and grows. The hatred is starting to eat me alive. But don’t let the hate show, the hatred and the terror. Make it like you’re on stage, Hayley. Play
that
Hayley. That’s what he’ll believe.

I try to go to the door with a casual step and Enzo, so soft in his walk, blocks me. What do I do next? How do I escape? I need to save Carter. I need to save my kids.

His head twitches a little. Too many drugs. His tongue swashes back and forth like a fisherman with a fish fighting to stay inside. Uppers do that to you. What is his cocktail high? And it’s more than that. All the DSM personality disorders are running through my mind. Is he schizophrenic? Bipolar? Borderline? Psychotic?

I need to play to his weakness… his love for me. He keeps chatting. I keep breathing, swallowing my emotions, swallowing the truth. I nod. Enzo cloud-touches my belly so soft, rubbing it: “I’m so excited to meet the ultimate creation of our love. And since we are geniuses, our baby will be the MESSIAH, HAYLEY. We’re gonna change the world. “ His eyes sun-on-water glisten. “We’ll set up our recording schedule and all our tour dates around the baby’s birth… We’re obviously going to need a new manager.” The way he says “manager” makes my skin crawl. He stands tall staring me deep down in a very fucked up way as he taps the baby monitor labeled
“Music Studio.”
Then he hisses, “I can hear everything you say. And I especially enjoyed your little conversation with Annie.” His voice slowly morphs from lambs-soft to dagger-dark. “About how indiscrete I was and how she wanted to ship me off to Australia.” His hand is so warm and twitchy on my belly, the home of our child. I hate myself. I hate you. I clench my jaw.

Play the character he needs you to play. I unclench my jaw and look relaxed and happy. I touch his hand that is now back on my belly again. I can do this… You let Annie die, but you can save your kids, Hayley… “But I walked out with Annie later, and we talked it out, and I realized I was just worried about the pregnancy, and we figured out how you and I could be together… You missed all that, right? You don’t have a monitor in the driveway, do you Enzo?” He laughs, staring at my belly like he owns me and the child inside of me. “Good idea. I should have put a baby monitor in one of those fake rocks.” I laugh and pull his hand to my mouth and kiss it.

Me: “So you didn’t hear the best part. We decided I would go to Australia with you. That we both could record together with Annie’s friend, and we’d finally be on our own together. Away from everybody and everything. Just us.” I look at him so sweet, so soft, like I mean it. He believes me..

He starts to make us drinks and I start to look around the kitchen to figure out what I’m dealing with. I see scribblings of poems and lyrics and mirrors and blades and powders and tons of used poppers and opened light bulb straws and Xanax and mysterious drugs I know nothing about and home-brewed gin… Who knew he was even more of a druggy than me?

On the counter, I lift up a shimmery silk scarf and find… a small and delicate skeleton hand with a dark, velvet bow tied around the ring finger. Wait a second. I’ve seen that before in his music video as the rocks were crushing his sister, burying her alive. Her delicate hand was trying to claw its way free… and the delicate hand wore a dark velvet bow on the ring finger. He did kill his sister, his own fucking sister.

Fuck.

I really am in the lair of a murderer.

Don’t shake. Don’t show you’re scared. I want to collapse on the floor, collapse in the lies of our love.

“Everything I do is for you now, Hayley. Everything… I will make sure no bad people are in your life.” He’s taken too many drugs with too little sleep. I’m out of my league with how to deal with his insansity. . I must try to reason with him. I remember Carter telling me: “dangerous people appear much less crazy to the outside world than they do in their home.” His hands are shaking like Jack’s used to towards the end. He picks up a glass and crickity-crackity drops it, but it doesn’t break. Stay SANE, HAYLEY. For your kids. For Carter. “Enzo, honey, I think you’ve been hitting it too hard? Maybe you need a little sleep? Or coffee?”

He picks up the glass, “I’ll be fine.” But he won’t be. I won’t be. Breathe, Hay-ley. Breathe.

“Maybe you just need a bath or something to calm down. I mean. I’m really worried about you..”

“You’re so sweet to care.” He pours me a drink; the liquid sloshes. He pushes a glass up to my shaking lips. “Enzo, alcohol?”

He looks down at my belly, then down at the martini. His voice is crazy now “FUCK! I’m a bad, bad, bad man… Sorry! Sorry, SORRRY!” He’s really scaring me now, fisting his own head with his hand, over and over.
BAM, BAM, BAM
. “Daddy is not thinking is he? I would never hurt our lil’ prodigy. Our greatest creation. So sorry, my love. How about a papaya smoothie? Lots of vitamins.” I’m so afraid. His eyes twist in wild ways. He’s walking to the fridge. Ok, I can do this. Enzo hands me a tall a glass of thick, reddish-orange smoothie. I take a sip.

“NO, NO, NO! PUT THAT DOWN! IT’S MINE!”

I hear my kids fighting on the monitors, and I to try to hear what’s going on. Enzo stops me with a hug. He pulls me in so close, too close – ahhhhh – then he kisses my cheek with twitchy lips. He clicks off the monitors himself, “Don’t worry about the kiddies. I’ve got it all covered.” Got it all covered? What the fuck does that mean?

This is something straight out of Carter’s crime stories. How do the villains die? Who catches them in real life? I wish I had paid more attention to his writing the way he paid attention to me. I want to turn into a mouse, but I can’t. I can’t scratch my hand. I can’t run. I have to be brave for once for my kids and for my husband.

I wipe away my sweat as Enzo runs over to the stereo system. “Listen, I re-mixed ‘Half of Me.’ It’s a duet now; I’m channeling Jack.” He grabs a remote and presses buttons.

A hypnotic synth intro loop starts the song, now with more instruments layered, and then my voice comes in singing:
“Half of me is gone, gone, gone.”
Enzo answers back with: “I’m
right here, ready to feed”
and other demented lyrics. My beautiful ballad, my ode to my brother, is violated. I forget for a moment the role I’m playing, and I curl my face. Enzo’s face contorts and he hits the table and says in a superior voice, “It didn’t work the first time, Hayley. You need me.
You’ll always be nothing without me
.”

The music builds and he’s looped my voice and sampled it and twisted it around his vocals:
“ready to feed inside you.”
It’s crazy and ruined and horrible and I hate him more. He took my anthem about loss and destroyed all its raw meaning. Maybe he’s not a fucking genius. Maybe I don’t need him. Maybe my music is not the same as it used to be but that doesn’t make it less than what I did with Jack. It doesn’t make me any less of an artist. So what if not all the fans get it. So what if sales aren’t as good. I made it. I made truth. I did it. Enzo. I don’t need you.

He jumps up and sings along with his demo like he’s possessed, like Nick Cave on stage. I keep a straight face and say, “That’s so intense… ”

He drinks in the praise: “I am the world’s most brilliant man. And I will be the best thing you’ll ever have. You will be my queen…”

I’m searching for a way out, anywhere, anywhere. The baby… that’s what I got on him. I double over and moan.

Enzo stops in his tracks and goes back to being sweet. “What is it, are you okay?” I rush down the hallway, searching for a door… “I drank the smoothie too fast. My stomach gets all weird when I’m pregnant. I need the toilet.” I can see Enzo’s face ticking. I can see he cares about this baby in his weird fucked-up way. “Use the one in the master suite!”

Enzo is following me. I am so fucking sick, so sick… so emotionally sick. But I don’t go to the master suite. I know that will lock me in. I grasp my stomach hard and dash into the hallway bathroom and slam the door. I lock it. I can hear him pacing outside fast, back and forth, back and forth. Now that I’m alone I start to fall apart. His voice goes desperate and high-pitched: “EVERYTHING I DO, HAYLEY, EVERY LYRIC, EVERY NOTE, EVERY POETIC DEATH SENTENCE I DELIVER… ALL FOR YOU!”

I search for the light in the bathroom, fingers groping for hope. I turn the lights on – Holy fucking shit.

In the bathtub…

are my neighbors – Evie and Carl.

They’re blue and rotting, grasping their knees with horror expressions on their faces and maggots crawling out of their Munch-scream mouths. The white shower curtain is stained in stale blood. The smell – oh, fuck – the smell is overpowering. Murdered. I forget and lose my cool and gasp. Enzo is laughing loud and crazy just outside the door. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Please, please get me out of here, someone. Enzo yelps, proud and crazed: “Guess they never got to take that dream trip after all. sayonara!”

Fuck… Who is this guy? How could I have been so blind? He bangs on the door: “HAHAHA! Comedy, Hayley… COMEDY” He paces out from the door and back, so it sounds like his voice is coming in and out of focus. “Why aren’t you laughing?”

Me: “I am laughing… just give me a few minutes… girl stuff.”

Be calm, Hayley. Be like him. I laugh and breathe deep, making my voice calm: “I’ll be out in a minute.” Quick. My hands earthquake as I struggle to turn the sink metal water knob to camouflage the noise. I throw up in the sink a little orange-red liquid. I’m so fucking sick. Is this the end? I turn the other knob. The water grows louder and louder.

I push out a small window pane. I hoist myself up, struggling with my weight. I can hear Enzo still singing ‘Half of Me,’ trying to sound like Jack. Fuck. I squeeze through the window. Good thing I’m not any more pregnant than I am. I’m out the window, but I can’t see how high up I am, and these hill houses have weird drops. Fuck. I can hear him banging on the door, louder and louder. He can bust through that lock at any second, so I have to go and go now. JUMP, HAYLEY, JUMP!

The cold air hits me like bricks. I’m falling, falling, like Alice in Wonderland to her most certain death.
Bam!
The ground hits my feet and they burn in the shock. I circus-mime-clown-tumble into the cacti, slicing my leg. Fuck. My ankle is getting that twisted feeling like it’s sprained. Go, Hayley, go. Fuck the pain, just go.

I run towards my house, faster, faster. Branches whack my legs, cutting my skin. Faster, I don’t care. I’m breathing hard, panting. I’m still withdrawing from Xanax and booze. Nature scrapes a little blood down my legs. Tears burn my face. My body is cold-heart destroyed.

68

I try to open the latch to the gate of my yard so slow. I keep messing it up; my hands shake like I’ve lost all self control. Do it. Do it…
Clang
. It’s open. I run.

KWEEEEEEEEEE!
– Fuck, that sound again. I jump steeple-chase-horse high, even though I know it’s just the sprinklers. I land and my ankle twists further.
AHHHHH!
The path is soaked in mud and I can’t see. The pain in my ankle is too much. I feel myself tripping, tripping, tripping, falling, falling.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
. A hole. An endless rabbit hole. I land in Carter’s large, fucking, tree hole: the grave.

I hit the bottom of it hard. I’m in pain everywhere. From the back of my neck down, twisted tingling sensations everywhere. Fuck. What about Carter? What about the boys?

My back is burning; my head is wet and dirty. Sprinkler water is coming into the hole, and the water rises. I have got to get out of here or I’m going to drown. The water makes me colder and colder and colder. Please don’t let me die like this. I can’t die until my kids are safe. Please, fuck, let me save my family.

Someone is next me grasping for air. It’s Carter. Alive? I try to pull him up, but he’s dead weight. He must be drugged. Poisoned. FUCK. But I feel his chest moving. He’s breathing. He’s alive. Enzo, he’s still fucking alive.