Читать книгу Dying Breath - Wendy Corsi Staub - Страница 13

Rain started falling an hour ago, pattering into the metal gutters beneath the roof of the brick Colonial. It cools the damp breeze that ruffles the white curtains at the window above the sink and lightly mists Cam’s skin as she stands beside it.

Dinner finished, Tess is upstairs doing her homework.

Cam stares out the window as she drinks a glass of milk, Dr. Advani’s orders. She never could stomach the stuff, not even in cereal. She’d pour just enough into the bowl to moisten the flakes, then she’d drain it off the spoon before every bite.

Just another of my charming little quirks, she thinks wryly, trying not to gag as she drains the last few drops.

She drank a glass every day of her first pregnancy, too. Back then, though, it was chocolate milk.

This time around, she seems to have developed an aversion to chocolate, of all things. Usually, she needs a daily fix—preferably of her favorite: Godiva. Now she can’t even stand the smell of anything cocoa-related.

Last time, it was coffee she couldn’t stomach. And red meat. And garlic. But only for the first three months; then it all passed, along with the morning sickness.

Hopefully that will happen this time as well.

Right now, it’s been pure torture getting up and moving in the mornings, and has been ever since St. Patrick’s Day, when she discovered her pregnancy. The morning after, Cam did her best to muffle the sound of being sick in the master bathroom. She forced down some crackers before dropping an unsuspecting Tess at school.

Then she drove straight over to the musty basement of an Elks Club, where she uttered the stunning words for the first time.

My name is Cam, and I’m an alcoholic.

The moment she said it aloud, she felt an enormous flood of relief sweep through her.

Yet with that came a trickle of doubt and disbelief as well.

An alcoholic? How could she be an alcoholic?

It wasn’t as though she were a barfly with a string of DUIs and cirrhosis of the liver.

She never even drank in public, for God’s sake.

And she never once got behind the wheel after a drink.

She never drank herself blind drunk, vomited, blacked out.

Never did any of the uncivilized, abhorrent, illegal things so many people associate with alcoholism.

She was just…comfortably numb. That was it. That was all.

Like the old Pink Floyd song her father frequently listened to when she was growing up.

Obviously, the lyrics spoke to him.

It wasn’t until Cam was an adult facing demons of her own that the lyrics spoke to her as well.

“I hear you’re feeling down.

Well I can ease your pain…”

It took her a long time, though, to figure out how it worked.

To realize, as her father had, that booze was a guaranteed escape chute.

When she drank, she could block out not just the painful memories of her past, but the frightening visions that tormented her for all those years.

The premonitions were fewer and farther between. Whenever one did strike, it would be more fragmented than before. A muffled voice, a blurred face, perhaps a snatch of scenery. Wrapped in a liquor-induced security blanket no chilling premonition could possibly penetrate, Cam grew more and more detached from the imperiled strangers in her head.

Finally, the visions subsided altogether. She hasn’t had one since Tess was a toddler.

Now that she’s shed the security blanket, though, she’s been holding her breath, waiting.

Praying that if—when—the premonitions start up again, she’ll be strong enough to stay sober.

How many times has she tried to get to this point before, and fallen off the wagon? She’d never made it to an actual AA meeting before March, let alone admitted to anyone, least of all herself, that she has a problem.

No, but she did attempt to cut way back on the booze whenever Mike made her feel self-conscious about it; when he warned her that it was coming between them.

Only now that she’s stopped can she see that drinking didn’t just protect her from the visions; it insulated her emotions—all her emotions. Fear and sorrow, yes, but pleasure and joy as well. Eventually, she was going through the motions of marriage—and, yes, occasionally even motherhood. But it was the marriage that suffered most, because she mostly drank at night, when Mike was around and her time with Tess had wound down.

She never went cold turkey until now but she did manage, more than once, to limit herself to a single glass of wine with dinner—not the hard stuff, and she’d stop sipping right after they ate. When she got to that point, she’d have hope. And sometimes, hope would last for weeks at a time.

But never more than that.

Something would eventually trigger her to have an extra glass of wine one night, or to chase it with vodka, and the next thing she knew, she was back to her old habits.

She won’t let it happen this time, though.

Cold turkey.

That’s what it takes.

Cold turkey. Twelve steps. One day at a time, with her sponsor, a woman named Kathy, promising to guide her along.

Now the stakes are higher than ever before.

Now she has to stay sober, for her baby’s sake, and for Tess’s, because Cam is on her own. Mike is no longer here to pick up the slack, to pick up the pieces…to pick her up—quite literally, at times.

That’s okay. I don’t need him. I’m strong enough now. I can do it, Cam thinks resolutely, setting the empty milk glass in the sink beside the two bowls from their meal. She’ll load the dishwasher later. Or tomorrow.

She puts the milk carton back into the fridge, noticing the World’s Best Mom shopping list pad stuck to the door. Tess gave it to her on Mother’s Day, apologetically saying it came from the dollar store—along with a box of drugstore chocolates Cam pretended she couldn’t wait to eat when in reality, just the picture on the lid—sickeningly sweet white cream oozing from a half-bitten chocolate—made her want to gag. They could have been Godiva and she’d have felt the same way.

She must not be that great an actress, because Tess said, “Sorry I didn’t get you something better. I would have if I could have.”

What she meant was, she would have gotten something better if her father had taken her Mother’s Day shopping as he had in years past. Last year, Mike and Tess gave Cam a designer handbag; the year before, tickets for the three of them to see Jersey Boys on Broadway. There were always flowers, too, delivered from the florist on Saturday: pink tulips, her favorite.

This year, Mike didn’t even give her a “To My Wife on Mother’s Day” card.

Did you really expect that from him?

Too bad Hallmark doesn’t make “To My Estranged Wife on Mother’s Day” cards.

Back at the stove, she ladles the hot chicken soup into a Tupperware container. She’s going to need a couple; there’s so much left over.

Once upon a time, she—being a model wife and mother, of course—made this whenever Mike or Tess came down with a cold. There’s something so comfortingly familiar, so homey about the distinct savory scent of chicken soup.

Maybe that’s what I’m craving now, more than the soup itself, she tells herself. Comfort. Familiarity. Home.

There was a time when she believed this two-story brick Colonial would fit the bill. A time when she, like Mike, believed that by moving to this affluent, desirable suburb, they could somehow reclaim whatever it was that had gone missing. The trust. The security.

Not the love, though. Never the love. That was always there, right from the start. Through everything, there was never a doubt in her mind that she loved Mike, that he loved her.

We still do.

That’s what makes all of this so damn hard.

As she inhales the fragrant steam wafting up from the Tupperware container, she begins to feel vaguely light-headed.

Dizzy.

Oh, God.

Oh, no.

Cam closes her eyes and finds herself abruptly staring at the unfamiliar, tear-streaked face of a child. A girl.

And now, mingling with the milky aftertaste in Cam’s mouth is the unmistakable, familiar taste of terror.

Not her own.

It’s the girl’s—the girl is in danger. She’s far from home, Cam senses. Afraid.

And so it has begun again.

Plugged into her iPod, Tess sits at the desk in her room, blatantly violating one of her mother’s dozens of rules.

No music while doing homework. And no TV, no phone calls, no Internet unless it’s homework-related, and even then, only with explicit permission.

Dozens of rules? Ha! More like hundreds, when you think about it.

Tess is definitely thinking about it, instead of about her English homework on a Shakespearean tragedy.

If she was to write it all down to prove a point—which is tempting—the list of things Tess is forbidden to do would dwarf the list of things that are allowed.

Homework, healthy food, sleep, exercise…that’s about all that has Mom’s stamp of approval lately.

As a result, Tess’s life is agonizingly boring.

Especially when she compares it to her friends’ lives.

She taps her yellow pencil—which she just overzealously sharpened to a needle point—against the blank lined notebook page before her, where she’s supposed to be writing an essay about Shakespeare’s theme of fate versus free will in Julius Caesar.

No wonder she can’t focus. What does she know about free will?

Everyone at school has more freedom than Tess Hastings has; as a result, their lives are much more interesting.

You’d think now that Dad has moved out, Mom would relax the rules to make up for screwing up Tess’s life, instead of the opposite.

That’s the way it works with other parents. Her friend Morrow Exley said her mother stopped enforcing curfews after the divorce, and Lily Chen, whose parents split when she was a baby and who has had two stepfathers since, has never had a curfew at all.

Neither Morrow nor Lily has to earn their spending money doing chores around the house like Tess does. Morrow’s mother has a live-in maid; Lily’s, a live-out housekeeper. Tess’s mother has a bimonthly cleaning service and a live-in slave: a fourteen-year-old daughter who picks up all the slack.

Granted, if Mom didn’t enforce the rules, Tess would probably keep things orderly by choice. She’s always liked to clean and organize. But the house never needed as much of her attention as it has lately.

Not that Mom was ever a neatnik—but lately, she’s gotten really lazy. She spends an awful lot of time resting, dozing off in front of the television or even, Tess suspects, taking afternoon naps. Lately, Mom’s always upstairs when Tess gets home from school, and Tess has noticed that the bed is usually rumpled.

There could be another reason for that, but she doesn’t even want to consider it.

“I guarantee you one of them is having an affair,” Morrow said, rolling her dark blue eyes when Tess told her and Lily about the separation that awful day in March. “My dad was having one.”

“My mom was, too, when she got divorced the second time,” Lily put in. “Like, six months later, she was already married to the other guy. Who she eventually left when he cheated on her. With my cousin, no less.”

“My parents aren’t cheating on each other.” Tess was disgusted at the sordid state of affairs—literally—in her friends’ lives.

“Then why are they getting divorced out of the blue?”

“They’re not. They’re just…”

“Let me guess, having a ‘trial separation’?”

“Right.”

“Yeah. That’s the first step,” said Lily, who’s been through it enough times to know. She tossed her long black hair. “But, hey, join the club. Hardly anyone’s parents are together, anyway.”

“Plus,” Morrow added, “just think: now your mom will be too wrapped up in herself to bug you about stuff all the time.”

That was it. No surprise from her friends, no advice, no sympathy.

Tess wanted to cry, but instead she took her cue from Morrow and Lily, pasted a big stupid grin on her face, and acted like her parents’ separation was no big deal.

But it is.

Even now, thinking about it, she feels miserable. So miserable that she’d rather think about Julius Caesar’s tragedy than about her own.

She looks back at her annotated text again.

Focus. Fate versus free will.

Tess writes:

Because Julius Caesar believed that “Men at some time are masters of their fates”—

Wait—Caesar didn’t say that about fate. The quote was from Cassius, talking to Caesar’s friend Brutus, right?

She checks the text. Right.

Tess rewrites:

Caesar continuously ignored the omens of his impending death.

Now what?

She should give specific examples of the omens.

Flipping back through the text, she comes up with a bunch: ominous storms, lions in the streets, sacrificial animals that are dissected and turn out not to have hearts…

It’s pretty creepy stuff, Tess decides, writing it all down.

And what about his wife’s foreboding dream about his statue covered in blood? And the soothsayer who warned him to “Beware the Ides of March”?

What are the Ides of March again?

Tess flips through her notes.

Oh—March 15. The day Caesar was assassinated.

Which also happens to be the day Tess’s father moved out.

She misses him desperately. The house feels hollow without him. She feels hollow.

It’s funny, because even when he lived here, he wasn’t around all that much. His job—something high-ranking in computer technology, which she doesn’t really understand—is demanding, and he was always at the office or traveling. But his stuff was here. When you walk past someone’s favorite Yankees cap hanging on a hook in the mudroom, or reach past their leftover midnight pizza in the fridge when you get milk for your morning cereal, it’s kind of like they’re there.

Now the hook by the back door is bare, and all that’s ever in the fridge is healthy crap Mom keeps trying to shove down Tess’s throat.

Also missing from the fridge, besides cold pizza: vodka, white wine, beer…all the booze that used to come and go, almost on a daily basis.

Mom drank.

Now she doesn’t.

Big deal.

The thing is…

It’s a big deal. Whether Tess wants it to be or not. All of it: Mom drinking, Mom not drinking, Dad moving out, the countless rules that haven’t changed since then and the new ones that have been added, the silence, the boredom, the lack of freedom…

God, I hate my life.

Tess looks back at her notes again.

Beware the Ides of March.

Yeah. No kidding.

She scowls and jabs the VOLUME button on her iPod, raising it so that the hip hop bass throbs almost painfully in her ears.

She never used to like this kind of music, but lately the angry, rhythmic lyrics appeal to her. Lately a lot of things appeal to her that never did before.

Which kind of scares her—not that she’d admit it to anyone but herself.

The school year’s almost over, though.

Yeah. And as soon as it is, Mom’s going to haul her down to the beach.

Away from her friends.

Away from Dad.

Away from Heath Pickering.

Standing in her kitchen, eyes squeezed shut, Cam can see the girl pretty clearly: elfin features, upturned nose, straight, wispy, long blond hair. It’s hard to make out the color of her eyes, though—they’re tear-filled, and she keeps squeezing them closed.

She’s about thirteen years old—maybe fourteen, but small for her age.

What else?

She’s filthy, caked in dirt, huddled on the ground. She’s clutching a purple backpack and wearing what looks like a school uniform. One tail of her once-white blouse hangs below her navy vest, and her legs are scraped and bloodied between her blue knee socks and short pleated plaid skirt. Blue and green plaid—Black Watch? Is that what it’s called?

Around her neck, at the open collar of her blouse, is a silver chain with some kind of small, triangular black pendant hanging from it.

Watching the child’s narrow little body heave with silent sobs, Cam clenches her hands so hard that what’s left of her methodically bitten fingernails dig painfully into her palms.

Her own saliva is tainted by the metallic taste of the little girl’s fear; her thoughts by the little girl’s frantic introspection:

Oh, please, God, don’t let me die. Please.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…

What if she never gets to go back home?

Home…

The girl’s eyes squeeze tightly shut.

She’s picturing it, Cam realizes. Picturing her home.

Yes, show me, sweetie.

Cam does her best to zero in on the image inside the girl’s head.

Come on, let me see.

Slowly, it takes shape: a two-story frame house, the architectural style harkening a child’s crayoned drawing: a door centered between two shuttered windows on the first floor, three more windows above on the second, and an A-line roof with a brick chimney on one side.

The roof is gray-black shingles. The clapboards are white. The shutters are black.

Towering maple tree sentries guard the front yard.

There are hundreds of thousands of houses like it throughout the Northeast.

That’s where it is, Cam is certain—somewhere here in the Northeast. Not right here in Montclair, though. Maybe not even in New Jersey. New York? Pennsylvania? Delaware?

Where is the girl’s house, dammit?

Wait, there’s something to the right of the door, beneath the brass, lantern-style light fixture.

It’s a house number…42!

But 42 what? What’s the name of the street? Where is it? Show me!

Helpless, Cam can only watch the image give way to the girl herself again. She’s curled in a fetal position in the shadow of a wall, rocking back and forth.

The wall appears to be made of rock, the floor of dirt. She’s in some kind of cellar.

Cam zeroes in on the girl’s face, memorizing her features, watching her bite her trembling lip, wishing she would open her eyes.

Then, miraculously, she does, as if on cue. Her tear-flooded pupils, Cam sees, are a light hazel shade. Her lashes are sandy, barely visible.

She’ll need mascara when she grows up, Cam finds herself thinking idly…

Then, if she gets to grow up.

A familiar wave of hopeless, helpless panic is beginning to take hold.

Here is Cam’s own panic, mingling in her gut with the child’s primal fear that even now remains tempered by a wisp of naive hope.

But Cam knows better.

Breathe. Focus, she tells herself. Focus on that girl. You can’t help her if you don’t focus.

Look at the stone wall, the dirt floor…

Look! What else is there? Where is she?

Wall, floor—there are no other details; there’s nothing more to go on.

She’s in a basement of some kind. Where?

It, too, feels as though it’s located someplace in the Northeast.

Yes. And not far from the house with white clapboards and black shutters.

More. You need more. What else? Don’t just look. Smell.

Musty. Damp.

Listen…

There’s water nearby. Moving water.

Cam can hear it rushing; there’s some kind of current. A creek? A stream? A river?

She strains for something more, and gradually, she hears it. But not water.

A faint, rhythmic sound reaches her ears. A sickeningly familiar sound…

What is it?

As it grows ominously louder, she sucks in her breath and the smell hits her. The recognizable organic smell of soil. Rich, damp soil, pungent, black, and crumbly.

She begins to comprehend, and new dread sweeps through her.

Oh, Lord.

Lord help that child.

It’s a shovel; that’s what she’s hearing.

Every dull, clanging thud seems to slam painfully into Cam herself.

Somebody’s digging, not far from the girl, maybe somewhere above her.

Who are you? Cam demands of the person whose hands clench the wooden handle. Let me see your face, dammit.

The shovel merely continues to dig, and all she can see are gloved hands.

They dig, and all the while, the little girl is huddled somewhere nearby, rocking, crying, trying to catch her breath, missing her white house with the black shutters, missing her parents…

Mommy…

Daddy…

Show them to me, Cam calls silently. I need their names, or at least to see their faces. Something. Some detail. Some clue as to who they are; who you are.

But the child is too distraught for coherent thought; her mind fraught only with frantic, fragmented images. Every breath she takes sounds increasingly strangled, as if she’s struggling for air.

Mom!

Daddy!

I need you!

The terrible sound of her breathing is becoming more labored with every inhalation. Cam senses that she’s running out of time.

Who else, sweetie? Who else is there? Mommy, Daddy, Grandma…just give me a name. A street. A town…Please.

Please keep breathing. Please hang in there.

Dammit. Cam would give anything to actually make herself heard this time…

This time?

She’s felt this way every time.

But, of course, it’s never happened.

In all those years, she could only helplessly observe unsettling scenes like the one now unfolding in her mind’s eye. She was no more able to interfere in the action than a viewer of a movie can alter the plot.

Perhaps it’s human nature to try anyway. To attempt the impossible and permeate the translucent one-way veil that separates Cam’s world from this troubled stranger’s.

Give me a name, please, a sister, a brother, a pet…anything. Anything more specific than Mommy…Daddy…

The vision is fading already.

“No,” Cam whispers, “please…wait…”

But the image of the child has already dissolved.

Lingering in Cam’s head is an awful, shuddering gasp for air.

Moments pass.

Another gasp.

Then a terrible, deadly silence.

Tess has been in love with Heath Pickering, a senior, from the first time she saw him at the beginning of her freshman year.

She noticed him immediately, passing by her every day in the hall after homeroom. He stood out from the other guys, who always wear what Tess has come to consider the public school “uniform”: jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt—long-sleeved or short-sleeved, depending on the time of year.

Not Heath. He wears jeans, yeah, but he wears them with boots or sandals, depending on the weather, and usually with shirts that have collars and buttons. Not dress shirts, like Dad’s, but casual shirts, untucked. A few times, he’s had T-shirts on, and once one of them had a familiar L.B.I. logo on the front.

L.B.I.—Long Beach Island.

Tess has a couple of those T-shirts herself. She started wearing them to school more often, hoping Heath might notice, but if he has, he hasn’t said anything.

Well, it’s not like the two of them are the only kids at school with L.B.I. T-shirts. Plenty of people around here head down there for the summer. Tess can only hope Heath might turn out to be one of them.

She’s noticed he’s always got some kind of necklace on. Not a gold chain, or anything like that. More like something a surfer would wear.

Someone said Heath moved here not that long ago from California, so Tess finds it easy—and exciting—to picture him expertly riding the waves, tanned and naked from the waist up. She frequently daydreams about it.

Heath’s brows and lashes are darker than his hair, which is blond and kind of shaggy. He’s got big brown puppy dog eyes—kind eyes, Tess has noticed. Yeah, she can tell he’s a really nice guy. The type of guy who would make a great boyfriend.

She imagines that all the time—Heath coming over to her and introducing himself, saying he thinks she’s really cute for a freshman—no, just that she’s really cute, period, because in her fantasy, he has no clue she’s a freshman.

Anyway, he says he’s been noticing her. Then he asks her out.

Lately, she’s been taking her daydreams a step further: she imagines what it would be like if she marries Heath someday.

“Tess Pickering.” Sounds good. She likes to whisper it out loud, when she’s alone in her room at night.

Sometimes she even writes it down, practicing her future signature.

She does that now: Tess Hastings Pickering. Analyzing it, she decides, as always, that there are just too many ings. But she’d probably get used to that. Or she could drop her maiden name, like Mom did when she married—

Stop it. Don’t even go there.

Lately, Tess tries not to ruin rosy thoughts about her imaginary future relationship with Heath by thinking about Mom and Dad.

After all, her parents first met when they were in school. College, not high school…but still. Only a few years older than Tess and Heath. Well, Heath, anyway.

Look what happened to Mom and Dad.

But that wouldn’t happen to Heath and me.

Nope. When they get together, they’ll stay together forever.

Tess Ava Hastings Pickering.

Time is running out, though. The school year is almost over. It’s been months since she did some detective work and memorized Heath’s schedule so she could detour into his path between classes all day long.

She always tries to lock eyes with him when they pass each other in the hall, but he doesn’t seem to notice her. Sometimes she thinks she should just crash into him so he can’t help but notice her…only then he might think she’s just some stupid freshman klutz, and not his future wife.

Tess Hastings-Pickering.

Yeah. Maybe she’ll hyphenate.

Her friends aren’t even going to take their husbands’ names when they get married. Lily, whose mother has had four different last names in her life, thinks it’s a stupid, demeaning custom. Morrow said she and her husband will just make up a new name for themselves, so that it’s fair to both of them.

Tess thinks that if you’re married to someone, you should have their name.

What if you get divorced? Is Mom going to go back to being Camden Neary again?

Tess hopes not. But if her parents get divorced, what her mother chooses to call herself will probably be the least of her problems.

Don’t think about divorce. Think about Heath, or homework, even.

Julius Caesar.

Heath.

He plays on the school baseball team. Tess almost died the first time she saw him a few weeks ago in his uniform, those snug white pants and a cap pulled low and sexy over his eyes.

She decided right then that she had to do something soon.

Otherwise school will be out, and she’ll go away for the summer, and he’ll find a new girlfriend. He used to have one, in the city, but they reportedly broke up last fall, right before Tess discovered him. His single status can’t last, though. Tess has to make her move soon—or get one of her friends to make it for her.

Tess Ava Picker—

Oops. The tip of her overly sharpened pencil just snapped.

She shudders. To her, the scraping of the splintered wooden hollow of broken lead across paper is like fingernails on a chalkboard.

She trades the pencil for a fresh one with a slightly duller point, flips to a clean page, and decides she’d really better get busy on her homework.

Fate versus free will.

She flips pages, rereads the passages about Caesar’s death.

“Et tu, Brute?” he uttered on his dying breath, realizing that his trusted friend was among the conspirators.

Deciding Caesar was a fool for not paying more attention to the signs all along, Tess goes back to her essay.

It’s dark, and it’s late, and it’s raining.

The drive from Long Beach Island took hours longer than it should have, thanks to a train derailment near Camden. A toxic one, as it turned out, which led to the road being closed and a detour through the suburbs. A wrong turn from there led to the streets of this so-called family neighborhood in East Greenbranch.

A wrong turn?

Or fate?

She’s here somewhere, nearby.

I can feel it. I just have to figure out where she’s been hiding from me…and why.

For now, it’s enough just to cruise along these residential streets beneath a canopy of maple trees, passing rows of older houses, wondering which one is hers.

I’ll come back tomorrow, when it’s light. When all the pretty young girls aren’t safely tucked into bed, having sweet, naive dreams.

The shark’s tooth—the sign—is safely wrapped in several layers of Kleenex and stashed in the glove compartment.

The rain beats down on the car roof, the radio plays soft jazz, and the windshield wipers swish rhythmically, seeming to echo the silent, soothing mantra.

Find…her…find…her…