Who Loves Her? (19 page)

“Yeah?
Well I wish you could start acting like a normal man like my Dad!”

Bob’s eyes flashed dark in anger
.  He stomped away and went to go take a shower.

I screamed and slammed the door to our apartment to go have a cigarette and calm down
.  The thing with our fights was I never could go home to have someone be on my side.  They always sided with Bob no matter what he said, and I’m sure that if I repeated back what he said, word for word, they would have spun around to mean I wasn’t good enough for Bob and that I was lucky to have him.  Back then, Anna still was able to date some of the guys around church and college that hadn’t been picked already, and she was pretty cocky about her chances of snagging a man and running a perfect house.

I just sat there, pissed as hell, tapping my foot and smoking my cigarette
.  Then quietly I heard a “click” and Bob waving at me.  The deal was that I was supposed to quit smoking when we got married and it was going okay until…well it wasn’t going very well.  I grabbed the door and screeched.  “LET ME IN, YOU S.O.B.!!!”  I pounded on the door loud enough for a couple of neighbors to poke their heads into the hallway.  I just started crying again and ran out into the parking lot.  I didn’t even have the keys to the Nova, so I couldn’t squeal my tires to show how pissed I was.  Also, I didn’t have any more cigarettes or money.  The frustration and overwhelming sense of impotence was too much.  I wanted to be tough and fight back.  I wanted to show Bob that I was not a weak, meely-mouthed girl, but I had no options.  He had robbed me of control when he locked the door to the house.  Even as he was waving at me, it felt like he was mocking me and calling me weak.  Somehow I had taken a wrong turn.  Rather than being the strong woman that Bob fell in love with, I had become a weak, demanding woman.  I did not like her very much, and obviously, Bob was not liking me very much these days.  I remembered how he had locked the door right in my face.  I felt empty and lost inside.  I fell to my knees and curled up on the curb.  I waited systematically going from sobbing to waiting.  Finally, when I couldn’t cry any more, and my blood was boiling angry, I got up and began walking in search of help.  It was a good way to take control of the deepening sensation of being out of control. I got up and started walking.  I blew off steam by walking around the Marina and through the back alleys of the restaurants.  It was a Friday and people were all clinking glasses and having a great time.  Eventually, I was also hungry, and decided to go back to the apartment and kick him in the nuts or something.

When I got there, the door was unlock
ed and I was going to come at him with both claws flying.  The room was a little dark except a candle on the coffee table.  “Hungry?” he asked.  His back was to me at the kitchen table.  It was a dinky table and he always looked like a gorilla shelling peanuts hunched over that thing.

“You hurt m
y feelings.”

“I know
.  I am sorry.  Come eat.” Then as I looked up, I saw he had cleaned off the paw print from way up on the wall.

“I just…
”

“You’re perfect the way you are
.  Sorry I screwed up.  Just let the bat-shit sisters over the hill keep their screwy ways.  I’m not even sure how you came out of that nut-house, you’re so gorgeous and normal.”

Well
, with all my eye make-up streaked and my hoodie smelling like the grease pits of chowder houses down off Main, gorgeous or normal wasn’t what I was feeling.

After we ate, he turned up the lights and I found out that he had cleaned the whole apartment while I was gone
.  Well, it was dinky too, so it didn’t take that long.

“Baby, I…”

He put his finger to my lips.  “We just need to stick together.”  One of the best nights of our life was that one….if you’re counting.

All that love; all that understanding
.  And now all that’s left is Mom and I with the battle of the casserole.  She wants me to live with her, but then she doesn’t understand that after all these years I don’t care about coupons or IGA, or even why Mrs. Spencer on Third Street is having her third knee replacement in five years because of the doctor’s mistake.  It scares me that I even know that about Mrs. Spencer, because she’s the church organist and I’m positive we haven’t spoken two words in twenty years.  I want to stay in my tiny little apartment and rent rooms to weary travelers.  I want to dream of better days and wonder about the lives of the people who stop through Alexandria.  I absolutely do not want to live with my widowed mother and pretend to be my dead sister, Anna.

Then there’s the whole church thing
.  I mean it’s great that it means so much to so many of the old people there, and I grew up singing everything.  Just not my gig…well at the moment.  Bob said we should have been better, but it’s great right where it’s at.  Some time after the accident, I began to question my life and its worth.  During my darkest times, I would try to imagine God’s decision to take my loved ones, because I had lived such a sinful, dishonorable life.  In my loneliest times, cut off from the world, I wondered if my time had been spent at church rather than getting high, would I have lost my dad? Would we still have Anna and Bob?  Or maybe, if I had been a godly woman, I too, would have found the end on the day of that terrible accident.

So much for
Room Fourteen.  I pushed those sheets down in the bin and finished my game plan.  I’ll get those sheets in the dryer right after I finish RoomsTwelve, Fourteen and Sixteen.  I’d bet a week’s pay there’s fluids in at least one of the beds.  Sometimes you just have to check some of the rooms nobody ever rents to see if there’s any mice.  I’ll have to check Room Twelve before anybody goes in there.

The one thing I know is that none of us are fooling God that much
.  Some of us are just willing to admit it.  Hope he understands.  That damn fool on the phone better stop calling.  Well what if Mom’s gone off her rocker?  Maybe she’s got some TV show or recording of Anna there and she’s the one pranking me?  Oh, sure, Susan…your mother, who can’t figure out the TV remote is suddenly producing haunting audio tapes for your listening pleasure.

Well that’s it
.  Next time they call, I’m going to play along.  I’m just going to get it all out in the open and flush them out.  That way I can tell Bernie down at the station, and he can go toss them in jail.  Great headlines.  ”Prank psycho caller apprehended at the Skylark…slow crime day in Alexandria and we are grateful to live here.”

Well look here
.  Looks like we’ve got a Mr. and Mrs. Strawberry…or maybe a lemon.  Hard to tell from this distance.  They’re in a car, and she should’ve had some work done.

“I’ll be with you in a minute!”  I yelled as they approached the office
.  Scuttling behind the laundry room and into the back of the office, I met them as they came to the front counter.  Definitely Lemon.  She looked down her Roman nose at me as if she was doing a sniff inspection.  She was not going to be happy with what she finds on this carpet.  Uncle Lars used to let his Irish Setter, Muffy, hang out all day with him, here.  Sometimes Muffy didn’t make it outside when she needed to.

“May I help you?”

“Do you have non-smoking rooms?” Mr. Lemon asked, with a twinge of a British accent.

“Yes, sir
.  We have non-smoking rooms.”  Usually I didn’t care enough to smile, but her twitching nostrils struck me as funny, so I was playing it up.  They just missed their turn.  Ten bucks said they’ll turn tail and run.

“We’ll take that one,” h
e said, pointing to RoomTwelve.

“
I’m afraid that one will take a bit.  I’m covering for the maid here, and that room is in the process of being cleaned.  Would you like Room Ten or Eleven?”

“No, we can wait
.  How much?”  He pulled out a wallet with a wad inside.

“
Seventy-nine ninety-five plus tax.”

“And
when will the room be ready?” the lady asked, not looking at me.

“Um…I guess I could get it finished in about an hour.”

“That will suffice.  Any places to eat around here, besides fast food?”

“There’s Luigi’s down on the m
ain strip.  You can’t miss it.”  The woman sniffed again.

“Come, Charles
.” She flicked her finger and started for the door as he tossed me a hundred dollar bill.

“I’ll get you
your…”

“Don’t bother
.  Just prepare the room.”  He gave me kind of a creepy wave of his hand as he followed, dutifully behind Cruella Deville. Definitely, she had some work done.  Maybe it was just a high-classed skank-and-ride.  Doesn’t quite fit the profile.  At least Uncle Lars would be happy with the generous tip.

I busied myself finishin
g the rooms after putting the “back in thirty minutes” sign with the little clock on it in the office door window, and locked up.

I was finishing the bed in
Room Sixteen when I heard someone rattle the office door and then pound on the window.  I didn’t want them to break the glass.

“Can I help you!”  I kind of yelled to get their attention.

“My wife
!  Help me!”  This guy’s face was covered in blood.  I didn’t see a car anywhere.

“I need to get a doctor, some police, something
!  We were run off the road and…”  I ran to the front door all freaked out and unlocked it so that he could make his phone call.  Actually I was trying to calm him down and not flashback to how bloody I was during the wreck.  But there was urgency in his voice and there were red stains smeared across his face.

“Please
!  Hurry!”

“
Nine-one-one.  Please state the nature of your emergency.”

“This is Susan down at the Skylark
.  A guy just ran into our motel and says his wife and he were run off the road.”

“You’re current address, Miss.”

“5614 South Highway 29.”

“And how far is the accident?”

“How far is the accident, sir?” he was crying and shell shocked.

“I don’t know
.  Maybe a quarter of a mile that way.”

“He says a quarter of a mile down the 29 to the East.”

“We’re on our way.”

“They’re on their way
.  Just sit here and let me get you some water,” I told him.  My voice was calm, but I was totally freaked out.  I pulled some towels out of the laundry and they were a little too wet, but I handed them to him to wash off his face.  He just let his face stare straight ahead.  He didn’t make any attempt to wash off the blood.  Then he rushed out into the parking lot to see if the ambulance was coming.

“Sir
!  Wait!”  Shit, he’s going to get hit by traffic at this rate.  He stopped and turned around.  I remember that look.  I just needed to calm him down.  “Over here, sir!  Over here!”  He let me put my arm around him and guide him back to the office.

“I know you feel like you are in a dream
.  That is how everyone feels after a carwreck.  I am sure your wife is fine.  We will wait for the police and you will be okay.” Susan felt like the worst liar on the planet.  Even as she spoke the soft, reassuring words, she remembered the look on Bob’s face.  The terrible stillness that somehow made her think of a plastic mannequin.  She could not see Anna, but she had been beside Bob at the moment of impact.  Susan forced herself back to the present and rubbed the weeping man on his arm.  “Please sir, just one drink of water.  It will make you feel better.”  As the trembling man took the bottle from my hand I noticed the glint of gold on his finger for the first time.  There, the same unusual ring she had seen on the salesman down at Bill’s Chevrolet.

The ambulance was there about five minutes later
, and the paramedics asked him to get in the back in case they needed to know more.  He rushed to the back and started babbling.  Both doors slammed shut.  As the sheriff and his two deputies approached her, she saw the same, anguished face she had seen on the face of her mother.  I knew then that the wife was dead.

It was brutal
.  She must have died instantly, with the car flipping over and over.  The sheriff came and interviewed me and asked if I saw any speeding cars or anything.

“No
,” I answered solemnly, “but I often write when no one is in the office, so I probably would not have seen anything.”  The small deputy with an attitude mumbled something about me making things easier, but I ignored him in favor of watching the old man weeping over his wife’s damaged body.  “Well, tell us how long the old man has been here. Why did he come to you? Do you know his wife?” asked the portly sheriff.  I looked at him and shook my head in silence.

One of the deputies was getting a
little testy with my answers because they weren’t getting answers anywhere, when I finally I blurted:  “When you lose your husband in the exact same kind of crash, asshole, you can ask me more questions.  I don’t know shit and neither does that poor bastard who lost his wife today.  Get out of here and do your damn job!”

The other sheriff p
ulled his buddy away, and said:  “Thank you for your time, Miss.  Sorry for your loss.”

In all the scrambling, I just handed Mr
. and Mrs. Lemon the key to the room they asked for and went back to watching the parking lot security cameras as if I was watching six screens of Let’s Make a Deal.”  The old one with Monty Hall.  Not the new one with the singing black guy.  He’s okay, but Monty is better.  I was in a fog and daze remembering it all again.  Suddenly Mr. Lemon came through the door about five o’clock that night with the key.

“We will be checking out,
m’dear,”  he said with a small smirk.  My glazed eyes gave him a deadpan: “Do I look like I care you got lucky?” look.  I gave it to all the skank-and-rides.  It was my little contribution to cleaning up the streets of Alexandria.  Thinking about cheating husbands and payment for sex, I offered a thinly veiled look of disgust on my face. “Maybe if he felt guilty enough he’d…”