Vicious (2 page)

I did not mind too much. After all, these were tragic times, and I knew very few people who wouldn’t fall apart in this manner. She always said that I was the strong one, always so dependable.

“The world could collapse around us,” she used to say when she used to speak, “and I wouldn’t be worried because you would be there to hold us all together on whatever rock was left.”

Well, a fine job I was doing now. I could do nothing but watch my wife turn into the walking dead and hear her sob uncontrollably every night. I was helpless but to let her. I had tried to stay close and hold her through the night, but that had only resulted in more crying and wailing incoherent things about this all being my fault. Like I could have done anything to foresee this. Didn’t she think that if I’d seen this coming, I would have ever let our girl out of this house?

So I gave her the space that she required, and I stayed close by in case she might need something other than booze. So far, it had been nothing but the same old crying and vacant stares. I felt like the shadow of a zombie just following blindly behind her, awaiting some kind of recognition.

The clinking got louder as she neared the wet bar that was positioned only a short distance away from the sofa that I was sitting on. The room was uncomfortably quiet except for the sound of her grabbing the glass bottle and unscrewing the topper. I heard the liquid slosh and spill over the ice in an attempt to muffle the clinking that would only resume when the glass was empty again. She threw back the contents that she had just poured and repeated the procedure two more times. I pretended not to notice.

“Did you hang the new posters today?”

This was the first full sentence that she had uttered to me in days, so I turned around to meet her gaze. Sadly, I found that she was staring at the floor a few feet in front of her and not at me. I was a little relieved that she didn’t see the dumbstruck look I knew I had to be wearing. She was wearing some dingy gray drawstring pants and that old blue T-shirt she loved because the cotton was so worn and soft after all the years of wearing and washing. Even though it was August in Texas, she also had her cream-colored long-sleeved robe draped untied and loose over her skeletal body. Her auburn hair was matted around her face, which retained none of its original color, making her look exceptionally frail and thin.

“Not yet. I was going to do that after breakfast. Would you like some breakfast, Beth? I could make pancakes or maybe migas? I have the stuff for migas.”

I looked for some sign of acknowledgment from her face, but her expression didn’t move or change in the least. She had eaten so little in the past few days. I kept putting plates with sandwiches or soft tacos or whatever I thought she might eat by the bedroom door, hoping to find the plate later empty. However, the best results I could attain were a few bites taken here or there and the rest left to the ants. But now she was up and walking around, and I knew how she loved my migas. Tragedy or no tragedy, she had to eat something.

“I’m not hungry, Howard.”

Disappointment filled me, but I tried not to show it. Obviously, she was only up and about because of the scotch run. She sipped at the liquid she had just poured without downing it this time and looked pensively at the floor just in front of me.

“You were supposed to hang the new posters today.”

“Beth, I promise that I will. I just was waiting to see if you wanted anything to eat before I went. Are you sure I can’t make you something?”

Suddenly, her eyes shot directly at mine. It startled me a little since eye contact was such a deviation from the normal zombie-like behavior I was beginning to become accustomed to with her. Those normally vibrant-blue eyes I adored were gray, and the white parts were dull and rimmed with red. Her eyes were deeply set, and I could see the dark circles trace their way underneath them. The look she gave me was full of scorn.

“Food is not important. Those posters are important, Howard. You promised you would hang them today. How can I eat when they are still just sitting there on the kitchen table?”

“I’m sorry, Beth. I just wanted to see you and make sure you didn’t need anything before I went. I’m here to take care of you, honey.”

I thought maybe the sentiment might soften this sudden onslaught of anger towards me that I’m pretty sure I didn’t earn. Patience is a virtue.

“I don’t need you to take care of me. Please just do one thing right in your life, and go hang up those damn posters. If I have to walk by and see them untouched one more time…”

She was so cold while she trailed off. I had never heard her be so cold to me.

“Beth, we just picked these up from the printer last night. They haven’t been waiting here long.”

She immediately looked away from me and slammed back the rest of the contents in her glass with a dramatic flare fit for a movie scene. I saw the wind up, and I ducked before I could see the glass and the ice sail across our living room. I heard the inevitable shattering sound as it smashed against the wall and fell to the wood floor in a million pieces. I suddenly realized I had been bracing myself. I relaxed and looked back to Beth who was panting, her shoulders moving up and down with the burst of exertion. She met my gaze angrily.

“Just do it!” She stormed off back to her room and slammed the door before I could say a word. It was probably best that I didn’t. I was livid at this point. Why were writers always so overly dramatic?

I looked across the room at the mess of glass and ice that littered the floor and decided not to clean it. Let her pick up her own pieces. I was tired of being the caring, strong husband who took the abuse because she couldn’t hold it together.

I flipped on the TV without really wanting to watch anything in particular. I just wanted something to distract me from my anger and hurt. Something to numb the stabbing sensation of the last few days. Something to keep me from storming into that room and yelling all my frustrations at her empty face.

Unfortunately, the very first channel that came up was the local news station, and there we were. I was in front at the podium with all of those microphones pointed at me, and next to me was zombie Beth. I was holding her with one arm as a constant stream of tears poured from her eyes. The Evertons were just behind us both just as grief stricken and tear stained as we were. I must have caught the program in the middle because they had spoken at the podium before we had, even though we had said basically the same thing. I listened to my TV self speak.

“Please if you have any information on the whereabouts of our daughter, please, please call us or the police. We love her and just want her home.”

Hearing that felt disgusting and wrong. I vaguely remembered saying it. Everything had been such a blur. Everyone at the police station kept talking about forty-eight hours. The best chance of finding her would be in the first forty-eight hours. That’s why we had done the broadcast right away. But now it had been closer to ninety-six hours, and hope was thinning. We didn’t even know the exact time she’d disappeared, nor did we know an accurate location of where they might have been seen last. Everything was getting bleaker, and the bleaker things got, the more Beth seemed to blame me.

I immediately stood up and made my way to the wet bar. I grabbed Beth’s precious bottle and downed what was left of the scotch in a few good swigs. It burned down my throat, but I was enraged. Where was my little girl, and who had her? What had they done to her? Was she even alive? I grabbed another bottle from the bar, ripped off the cap and threw back another couple of swigs of the scotch and let it burn my throat again.

I looked back to the mess of glass and ice shards on the floor and became angrier still. How could I have known? Why did Beth blame me so? She was my daughter too, damn it.

That last thought felt so right and true, I decided to say it out loud.

“She is my daughter too!”

I yelled this. I screamed this until I felt a raspy, strained sensation in the back of my throat. It felt good. Well, as good as anything could feel right now, but I liked allowing myself the anger. I felt like breaking down too. Screw being the strong one anymore. Why couldn’t I retreat into a zombie state? Why couldn’t I run away from the world?

I walked over to the stack of posters that sat innocently enough on the kitchen table. I looked at them with new eyes. I saw her picture clear as day on the first page right underneath the all-too-real word
MISSING
. My little girl had her mother’s blue eyes and my blond hair, before my hair had turned grey. She looked so lovely in this photo. I remembered taking it of her out back in her favorite childhood rope swing.

That swing had been a joint project. I had built it with the thickest rope I could find and a sturdy plank of wood for a seat. Beth had painted the wooden seat red with little green vines and yellow flowers and finished it with lacquer. She had carefully woven little flowers all throughout the rope with such a delicate hand. I told her that real flowers would just die, but she didn’t listen to me. Anything for our only girl. Sure enough, the flowers in the rope didn’t last much longer than a week, and I had nearly killed myself trying to hang that thing in the tree, but it had all been worth it when our little girl ran screaming with joy toward her new swing. She’d only been five years old then, but in this photograph, she was a young, beautiful woman of nineteen years of age. She still loved that swing even though the paint had faded significantly and all of the flowers had wilted and blown away years ago. She had insisted I take her picture while she sat on it.

The sudden urge to cry softened me. I went back into the living room and slipped on my shoes, stuffed my wallet and keys into my pocket and returned to the kitchen once again. I picked up the posters and cradled them in my arms like I would a sleeping child. Maybe it was past forty-eight hours and things were beginning to get hopeless. I didn’t care. I would try anything to get my little girl back. The breakdown would have to come later. Right now, I had some posters to pin up around town.

I walked back through the living room and passed the broken mess on the floor. I knew that I would clean it when I got back.

Chapter Three

Howard, three years later

Work had been hell, and when I went to the store, it had been packed full of sluggish, idiot people. There were only two cashiers to work the eleven checkout stations, and they both seemed completely unaware that their slow and careless manner was only making their impossibly long lines even longer. When I finally reached the front of the line, the rather large girl scanning my groceries rolled her eyes in disgust every time she pulled fresh produce that required her to weigh it and key in a code. The price for buying fresh fruits and vegetables was the disdain of the youth who only wanted to scan everything with as little effort as possible. God forbid you pay them in large bills. The mere thought of figuring change was the bane of a young cashier’s existence.

Despite all of my adolescent wishes about yelling at everyone around me, I found myself pushing a rickety shopping cart full of bagged groceries through the parking lot, murmuring grouchy profanities about the wasted youth of today. I had become that grumbling old man. The old man that complained about how things were done properly in his time and kids this day and age were completely inept and spoiled. I had become my father, and I winced at this realization as I reached my truck.

“It would be different if you were here, baby,” I said to the empty passenger seat of my truck.

I finished loading the grocery bags in the back of the old Ford and pulled myself into the driver’s seat.

“You never were goofy or stupid though, were you, Anna? You could make change if you had to. I remember when you got a cashier job at this very grocery store. You were so proud of your very first paycheck. You had wanted to frame it, but I explained that you wouldn’t get the money if we didn’t cash the check with the bank. So I took your picture holding it up.”

I smiled to myself for a moment as I turned the ignition key. When I looked back over to the empty passenger seat, the smile faded and my shoulders slumped. She wasn’t there. She was never there, but I talked to her anyway. The seat in my truck was a bench seat, and I remembered when Anna was a little girl she loved to lie down across the seat and sleep with her head in my lap while we drove around. She would watch me shift gears with her big blue eyes until the gentle rumbling of the engine lulled her to sleep. I had had that old truck for so long because it worked and I liked it better than the newer models. Now I kept it mainly because of those memories of my daughter sleeping across that bench seat with her little hand on my knee, her tiny mouth breathing a gentle cadence of air into the truck’s cab.

“If you were still here, I wouldn’t be this grumpy and sentimental,” I said with one more glance at the empty seat as I pulled out of the parking lot and started for home.

The road was bumpy and it hurt my aching back. All of the sadness of time lost filled me, and I thought I might cry right there. I swallowed hard and shook my head.

“If only you were here. I could endure such things if you were here to tell me how old and silly I was.”

I made my way home in silence without speaking anymore to the phantom of my lost daughter. I drove slowly, not wanting to get home any sooner than I had to. I knew what would be waiting for me at home, and I avoided it like a child dragging their feet on the way to school for fear of a math test.