As I turned the knob and opened the door, I saw him in the middle of the room pulling on his suit jacket. Glancing at the alarm clock on the nightstand, I noted that it was four o’clock in the morning.
Drew turned and saw me lingering in his doorway. As usual, his face didn’t register shock or even mild surprise at seeing someone standing in his room in the dead of night. However, his expression was darker than I’d ever seen it.
“Did I wake you?” he asked, without emotion.
“Yes. Are you okay? I thought I heard you talking.”
“I was dreaming. Go back to sleep. I won’t wake you again tonight.”
I considered him, standing there, fully dressed. “Because you won’t go back to sleep.” I took two steps toward him. “Let’s talk about it.”
“Why would I want to talk about it?” He sounded angry.
“People say it makes you feel better.”
“I’ve been talking to a shrink for the past year,” he answered harshly. “I don’t feel any better.”
“But if we talked about it right now, maybe you could go back to—”
“Do
you
want to talk about it?” he asked loudly. “Will you get some weird satisfaction out of knowing what kind of crazy, sick stuff goes through my mind while I sleep?”
I could feel his rage growing, but I needed to see this through. I didn’t answer. Instead, I just looked at him.
He raked his hand through his hair, then started talking very quickly. “Okay… My dad was there, and I was a little kid again. He was angry, as usual, but I didn’t know what I’d done.” Drew looked away from me as he spoke. “When he picked me up by the front of my shirt, his eyes were glowing red, and it was like he had super-human strength or something.” Drew closed his own eyes and shook his head slightly as if to dislodge the memory of the dream. “He threw me and I landed across the room. When I looked up, you were there, telling him to leave me alone. Then he turned to you and the two of you were laughing. He started touching you, and…stuff…”
I was relieved he didn’t get any more explicit. I didn’t want to imagine his demon father all over me any more than he did.
“Anyway, you walked out together, and when I ran to the window, you were getting into his Corvette with him. You drove off and didn’t look back.”
I knew the psychiatrist would have a field day with a dream like this. It encompassed all of Drew’s fears, past, present and future, but I felt certain I could comfort him without the years of analysis. When I was finished with him, he’d know how ridiculous the dream was. In fact, he’d forget it altogether. If I could only touch him.
“Drew.” I started toward him.
“No, Mia!” He threw his hands up as if to ward me off, then squeezed them into fists and lowered them to his sides.
I stopped short. “But I want to be here with you. I want to make you feel—”
“You can’t make me feel anything. And you can’t be here now. Get out.”
“No.”
He was enraged. “
Why
do you want to be here? Think, Mia. It’s the middle of the night. I’m about to jump out of my skin, and you’re standing here in my bedroom! Are you crazy? Do you have some kind of death wish?” When there was no immediate answer from me, he raved on. “He’s supposed to be dead, but he’s not. He’s right here.” He put a finger to his forehead. “
Inside
me! DON’T YOU
GET
IT?”
Although Drew was screaming at me, I didn’t feel any fear, only his pain. I wanted desperately for him to let me stay, even if he had to yell at me for the rest of the night to exorcise the demon he believed he had living inside him. “You’re not Jack Larson. You’re not a monster.”
“You don’t know that!” Then, with forced calm, he commanded, “Go to your room and lock your door.”
“I’m not locking my door.”
He sat down on his bed with his elbows on his knees and squeezed his forehead between his palms. “Go, Mia. Just get out.”
Finally convinced my presence might be doing him more harm than good, I turned and walked out. As I entered my bedroom, I heard his door close firmly, and lock.
~
I sat cross-legged on my bed with my back against the headboard. I wondered if Drew’s failure on our outing that day had made everything worse. Regardless, it was so wrong to be in separate rooms when he obviously needed me. I didn’t believe for one second he would hurt me.
I pictured him again as he was on the bed, his head in his hands in absolute anguish. Would he hurt himself?
How long could a person bear to feel physically and emotionally tortured, deprived of normal human contact, isolated within himself? Drew was still in prison. He seemed so hopeless. What if he only saw one way out?
Somehow, I had to make a connection—one that wouldn’t be threatening to him. I knew my life hadn’t been as horrible as his, but I had felt alone for so much of it, and I understood how devastating the loneliness could be.
I’d always been a problem solver, and I was sure I could solve this one, too. A long buried memory materialized, of a friend, the one real friend I’d ever had.
Soon after my father left, a girl my age named Tanya had moved into the apartment next door. Her circumstances were so similar to mine, we’d bonded instantly. One day, we noticed our rooms shared a common wall. From then on, whenever I felt frightened because my mother was too wasted to know what was happening, or there were strange people hanging out in the living room, I’d go to my room, crouch in the corner closest to Tanya’s bed, and give the “secret knock.” I wasn’t sure why we called it the “secret knock” since everyone in the world knew it, but regardless, my friend Tanya always responded with two taps, and I wasn’t alone anymore.
I looked over at the wall dividing my room from Drew’s and wondered if it was too thick. Since I could hear his pacing, I thought there was a good chance he would hear my message. It was ridiculous, and maybe childish, but if I could only break through his misery and get him to answer, I’d know he would be all right.
Heart racing, I walked softly to the other side of the room. I chose a spot on the wall and knocked,
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap,
and waited for an answer. When there was none forthcoming, I tapped out the same rhythm, except, this time, a little louder. I thought I heard him open his closet on the other side of the wall. Once more, I tried,
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.
Knock-knock
.
Relief flooded through me. I was as sure as I’d been when I was a child that no one could answer the secret knock and still feel completely alone. I pressed my hand to the place on the wall where I’d felt the vibrations come through. Then, I walked over to my bed and climbed into it, certain Drew would be okay until morning.
Chapter Ten
For the next few days, Drew treated me like we were on our honeymoon, except for the very obvious lack of any physical contact whatsoever. It was clear he preferred to pretend the nightmare and ensuing confrontation never happened, since he made no reference to it. I respected his wishes and pretended right along with him.
Meanwhile, he cooked me meals and showed me planets through his telescope. Insisting we pick out furniture for my “office,” he actually managed to go into the store with me. I wondered why we were making me an office when I didn’t have any clients now, and was supposed to be leaving in six months, but I didn’t want to go there, so I went along with his plans. The only time Drew and I were apart was when Meridith showed up one day and whisked me away for a shopping spree.
The days flew by and the nights dragged on. I would often hear noises coming from his room for hours after he’d gone to bed—pacing and clanking. It was almost like the place was haunted. I’d get up several times a night, planning to go to him, but would lose my nerve and settle for checking to make sure my bedroom door was unlocked.
~
One day, out of the blue, Drew said, “Let’s go out on a date tonight…wherever you want.”
I liked the way he used the word “date,” and immediately got excited.
“Well, dinner and a movie would be great for me, but I don’t know any restaurants around here.”
“There’s an Italian restaurant that got rave reviews in the paper.” He was obviously prepared.
I couldn’t wait, since he’d been avoiding me most evenings after supper. There had been a couple of nights when I was able to talk him into staying downstairs to watch television with me, but when I tried to touch him, other than a few seconds of hand-holding, he would suddenly be “beat” and have to go up to bed.
Days were a little better, but the two times he’d actually agreed to go into stores with me, he refused to let me walk hand-in-hand with him. He told me it was better if people weren’t sure we were a couple to avoid causing a scene. Around the house, he always managed to find something to do—often in the kitchen, where I had no business being—whenever I made a move toward him.
A “date” sounded like progress, as backward as it might be, considering the fact that we were already married. Maybe he was finally comfortable enough with me to make his own move.
I chose a dress I’d purchased with him in mind a few days before. I remembered that on the day he proposed, as well as a few other times, his gaze had lingered on my bottom. Maybe showing it off a little would help.
The dress was made of a thin knit, with a tie belt at the waist. It had a simple, casual style, and appeared to be gray at first glance, but when the light hit it, there was a silvery shimmer. The reason it was my choice for the night, though, was because it clung to me in all the right places.
After I checked and re-checked myself from head to toe in both of the mirrors I had at my disposal, I walked hurriedly over to my bedroom door and opened it. I jumped when I saw Drew standing on the other side.
My hand jerked up to cover my heart. “Drew, you startled me!”
“Sorry, I was ready to get going, so I came to check on you.”
Later, in the car, I kept thinking about what had happened. “Drew, how is it that you always seem to know I’m there?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you don’t scare…or startle.”
“You don’t scare too easily yourself.” His tone was light, but his grip tightened on the steering wheel. He was avoiding the topic.
I needed to know why. “I don’t mean fear. I mean, most people get startled. You don’t react, even if I appear in your room in the middle of the night.”
“It’s a survival skill I had to learn.” His knuckles were turning as white as they had at Meridith’s, the day he’d accused her of talking me out of marrying him.
I wasn’t sure I should keep prying, but my natural curiosity got the better of me. “What do you mean, ‘survival skill’?”
He didn’t answer at first, as though he was trying to decide if he wanted to reveal another part of his awful past.
I waited on pins and needles, needing to know and not wanting to at the same time. Finally, he spoke.
“When I was a kid, it was pretty easy to startle me, but as I got older, I realized when my dad saw that reaction, it…spurred him on.”
“You mean, he’d hurt you worse if you acted scared when you saw him?”
“Yeah, like an animal smelling fear, but if I acted like I didn’t even notice him, sometimes he wouldn’t remember to…” Drew stopped in mid-sentence as though he didn’t want to be any more specific about his father’s punishments.
“So, a person can learn not to be startled?” I wondered out loud.
“No. I don’t think so. You still feel it inside. You just push it down and keep it from showing.”
After spending a few seconds trying to imagine how many emotions he had “pushed down” over the years, I decided to start a more upbeat conversation about the restaurant.