Red House Blues (3 page)

A few days before winter break she came home
to an ice-cold apartment. Had she forgotten to pay the gas bill?
Wouldn’t be at all surprised. Keeping her jacket on, she went to
the kitchen and pulled a can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle from the
shelf. As an afterthought she rummaged around in the cabinet and
pulled out the tag end of a fifth of scotch left over from
Christmas.

Not being much of a drinker, she wasn’t sure
scotch went with chicken soup and there wasn’t anything in the
cupboard to pour it into besides a chipped coffee mug. She decided
as long as she was alone and not expecting Martha Stewart it would
do. The first gulp seared its way through the ice crystals in her
stomach. Just the thing to thaw her out enough to get the soup on,
she thought. She took another sip or two to keep the process
going.

“Now, to find that stupid
can opener,” she muttered to herself. It turned up under a
newspaper at the end of the counter. Now for a spoon. Not a single
one left in the drawer.
Great. Knew there
was something I forgot at the store. Dish washing liquid!
Every single item of kitchen gear was in the
dishpan under cold scummy water.
Suzan
would have to go fishing for a spoon she could rinse and
reuse
.

The whiskey was working its magic. She
pushed up her sleeves and thrust her hand down into the water.

“Damn!” Suzan screamed. Something had sliced
straight through her palm in the cold sludge. Grabbing a dishtowel
from the rack to wrap her hand, she knocked the open soup can to
the floor. The boning knife. Forgot the damn boning knife was in
the pan. The room took a slippery lurch as she felt herself sliding
to the floor, unsure whether the dizziness was a result of the
scotch or shock. Suddenly there seemed to be blood everywhere and
soup spreading out over the floor.

She didn’t hear the knock on the door,
didn’t hear Claire let herself in with her house-sitting key.

“God, Suzan, what the hell did you do?”
Claire ran to where her friend was sitting in a pool of soup and
blood, her back against the kitchen cabinet.

“Hold out your hand and let me see. Damn!
You’re going to need stitches,” she said, inspecting the damage.
“Can you get up?”

Claire managed to get her to her feet,
sitting her in a kitchen chair.

“I’m going to get your coat. It’s pouring
out there. Will you be okay while I get your coat? We’re going to
have to get you to the hospital. ”

“I can’t.” She buried her face in the bloody
towel. All she wanted to do at that moment was curl into a tight
ball.

“Okay, suit yourself but hold onto that
towel.”

Claire retrieved Suzan’s blue jacket from
the back of the couch.

“Let me put this around your shoulders. I’m
taking you to my car.”

Suzan shuddered as Claire eased her into the
passenger side of the old Ford Escort.

“I don’t know what to do, Claire,” she
whispered. There seemed to be blood everywhere.

“No, probably not. For now what we’ll do is
get you stitched up, then go out for pizza. Your kitchen is a
garbage dump on steroids.”

“Not much of a plan,” she
said, noticing for the first time that Claire was wet from the
rain, her face chalky, her lips pinched to a thin line.
She’s scared. Claire, who’s always in control.
Some friend I turned out to be not to notice.

“Remind me to give you a piece of my mind
after I’m patched up,” said Suzan. “You know, for the kitchen
remark.”

“Sure,” the ghost of a smile returning to
her face.

The emergency room at St. Joseph’s was
filled with coughing old men, and a collection of screaming babies
wrestling with their frantic mothers. All appeared to have been
waiting for hours. Magazines littered every surface including the
green vinyl floor but no one was reading.

Claire filled out the admission forms while
commenting on the idiocy of asking people to fill out endless
paperwork while bleeding all over themselves and their
surroundings. What did people do who had no friends or family to
wield a pen?

Blood must be the magic key to unlock the
medical machine, thought Suzan, as a wide nurse in blue scrubs
materialized from down the hall to escort her to a treatment room.
What followed was a triage nurse, a rapid parade of medical
personnel, a pinching blood pressure cuff, a shot of anesthetic and
twenty stitches expertly rendered by a very solicitous
internist.

They wheeled her back to the E. R. entrance
a few minutes over an hour after she had entered, her damaged hand
bandaged and held in a navy blue sling. Claire draped her jacket
over her shoulders.

“I’ll go get the car,” she said. “Don’t go
anywhere until I get back.”

“Funny girl. I’m not sure I can even get out
of this wheelchair. I’m up to the gills with pain pills.”

“Nice rhyme, sweetie. That may or may not be
a good sign,” she said. “How about we go get us some pizza? My
treat. Your chicken noodle soup is on the kitchen floor back at the
apartment.”

“I’m not hungry, Claire.”

“It’s the least you can do to indulge your
long suffering driver, she famished.”

“You’re always famished. I think you have a
tape worm.”

Chapter 3

The pizza was pepperoni with mushrooms and
jalapeno peppers. Claire, who ordered with no input from her quiet
friend, dived in like a cougar on a Bambi breakfast. Suzan nibbled
listlessly at the first slice she managed to tear off with her
remaining operational hand.

“You’re going to make me feel bad if you
don’t eat up,” said Claire between bites. “Come on, you have to
keep up your strength.”

“Something’s bothering me.”

“You think? Hey, I got that part. You sliced
and diced your hand. Life has been living hell lately. God, Suze,
don’t know how you’ve managed this well with what’s come down the .
. . well, pike at you,” she said. “Anything in particular you want
to share?”

“You know the first thing that triage nurse
asked me, Claire?” she began. “She asked if this was a
self-inflicted injury. I got all smart-mouthed and said sure it was
self-inflicted; I jam my hands onto boning knives every day of the
week just for kicks.”

“Jeeze, it’s a wonder she didn’t send you
off to the psych unit.”

“I knew that legally she had to ask the
question. But it just ticked me off. Okay, it wasn’t the best thing
to say, under the circumstances,” said Suzan. “But you know, it got
me to thinking. What if I really did cut myself on purpose? Not
consciously of course. Isn’t it possible I want to suffer for what
I did to Sean?”

“You didn’t do a thing to Sean, you moron.
He drugged himself up, got busted, then bailed on you.”

“You think Tony would agree with that?”

“That’s just Tony. He has his own demons and
they have nothing to do with you.”

“Well sure, I understand that,” she said.
“But when the nurse asked me that question I saw myself through her
eyes as some pathetic head case. I thought maybe I might have gone
a little crazy lately and not realized it until just now. Does that
make sense?”

“Not even remotely. You’re just having a
delayed reaction. It’s perfectly normal.”

“I’m not sure what I know anymore. Today I
did something really embarrassing, something I never thought I’d be
tempted to do. I gulped down some whiskey just to warm myself up. A
couple of glasses. For warmth. At least that’s what I told myself
but I think I wanted to get drunk, and fast. I wanted to blot
myself out. Isn’t that how it starts? The slippery slope toward
alcoholism. That makes me no better than Sean.”

“That’s a load of bull, Suzan Pike. I did
wonder why you smelled like a long night in Vegas,” she said. “But
sweetie, everyone feels like that sometimes. Everyone cuts loose
and gets wasted once in a while. After all you’ve been through I’m
surprised it’s taken you so long to decide to get hammered.”

“You may be right, but with my history . . .
I never told you about my mother. She had a problem with alcohol.
It scares me that it wouldn’t take much for me to go that way. She
tried to negate herself. I understand now that Sean wanted the same
kind of oblivion. It’s a knife-edge and I was that close
myself.”

“Knife edge,” said Claire. “Good choice of
words in this case. But hell, Suze, not everyone tempted by ‘the
dark side’ dives over that edge. You’re stronger than that.”

“Maybe, maybe not. I swear
I don’t know anything anymore. How do I know how much it would
take?” she said. “Mom didn’t start out a drunk but in the end she
just couldn’t cope with being a Navy wife, being on her own so much
of the time, moving us all over the world. I was just a kid but I
can still see her sprawled on the couch, her hand brushing the
carpet where a glass lay on its side. She failed us and she failed
herself.”
And now I’m failing
myself.

“Did Sean know about your mom?”

“No. Dad didn’t want anyone to know, even
Sean. We told everyone Mom died of cancer. I think he was ashamed
of what happened, that she drank herself to death.”

“Do you think he might have felt partially
responsible?”

The implication hung in the air.

“You’re saying I’m doing the same thing,
blaming myself for something I couldn’t have prevented?”

“What do you think?”

“I hate when people answer a question with a
question,” said Suzan. “Damn, Claire, I had my life so well planned
I thought nothing could derail me. Sean and I used to talk about
what we were going to do. We had it worked out to the last detail.
I’d complete my masters degree while he worked until we had enough
saved, then we’d open our gallery downtown. I took it for granted
that it was all settled.”

Suzan pushed an uneaten scrap of pizza crust
from one side of her plate to the other.

“Well, best laid plans and all that. In my
limited experience it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense
compulsively planning for the future. Always seems to go to crap
when you least expect it.”

“All I wanted was . . . I don’t know,
something to depend on,” said Suzan. “Growing up, all we did was
move from base to base. I hated it. I saw kids whose families had
been in the same place for generations and I wanted that kind of
security so bad I could taste it. Was it too much to ask to have a
normal life? Husband, job, home?”

“Trouble is, sweetie, you have an
expectation disconnect. I’m no expert on normal but I’d say you’re
like a wild bird that envies the caged birds their endless supply
of birdseed. Ask anybody if their lives are safe and secure. I’m
willing to bet you nobody’s going to tell you yes. The life you
think you want doesn’t exist.”

“That isn’t very comforting right now. At
this point I’d settle for a life that doesn’t include abandonment
and murder.”

Claire reached across the table and clasped
Suzan’s good hand.

“It’s not your fault, sweetie. None of this
is your fault. You did the best you could.”

“I wish people would stop saying that. I
know you mean well, Claire, but it’s not true. At some point Sean
started wanting something else from our marriage while I just
blindly continued to slap paint on paper, oblivious to his needs. I
had the power to save him but I didn’t.”

“We grow up, Suze. Everybody changes.
Whatever happened wasn’t your responsibility alone. You can’t
control everything in the world.”

“I should have known what was going on with
him. I thought I knew him so well but there he was disintegrating
and I didn’t have a clue. I slept next to him every night and all
along he was somewhere else. I was somewhere else too. And even
after I found the drugs, did I talk to him? Not me. I just had him
hauled away so I wouldn’t have to deal with it.”

“You got him into the system. You got him
into detox. That was the point. What more could you have done,
Suze?”

She didn’t answer for a second. She had been
going over that question in her mind since Sean walked out but
still had no answer.

“
At the time I really did
think what I did was for his own good, Claire. Now, I’m not sure.
Maybe I just didn’t want to think about it. He said I betrayed him.
I’m so afraid he had a point, that I destroyed our
marriage.”

“I doubt that, but you are destroying the
moment. And if you don’t eat that last slice of pizza you’ll be
destroying my diet because I’ll have to finish it.”

“Can’t you take this seriously? You are
supposed to be my friend.”

“You’re having a good old wallow, but this
isn’t just about you. You know that. How do you think Tony feels?
His best friend vanishes without a word, and now this. Don’t you
think he’s grieving too? My Tony can fix any broken program but he
can’t fix this. And I’m trying to hold him together, and you
together. And it’s pissing me off,” said Claire. “Now, Tony’s
waiting for us to bring him some pizza so what say we get you out
of here and bed you down on my couch for the night. Tomorrow
morning over bagels and cream cheese we’ll sort out your life.
That’s soon enough.”

“If you start singing something from ‘Annie’
you’ll be wearing that last slice of pizza,” said Suzan. “Your
positive attitude is so irritating I could scream. Wish I knew your
secret, a steady diet of bagels and cream cheese?”

“That and congenital insanity. Or the double
lattes I can’t seem to get enough of. Who knows? Come on, we’re out
of here.”

* * *

Tony Gabriola logged out and shut down the
last of the lab’s computers, and threw his day-end report in the
desk drawer. He checked the restroom to make sure he didn’t have a
leftover student still hanging around. Knowing that no one would
hang around the lab if they didn’t have to unless they were hiding
out from someplace worse. Or had just pulled a double shift in the
lab rather than go home. Tony could have turned James down when he
asked him to sub for the evening. He knew there was no reason James
couldn’t have toughed it out with some cold meds and a pot of
coffee. But here he was, dragging his feet like the coward he knew
deep down he was. Now he had no option left, no excuses. He turned
off the overhead lights, and locked up the lab.