Surrender (18 page)

There was no blood — I saw that now. I gathered my thoughts quickly, my heart beating hard. I did not want to frighten her, but it was vital Evangeline understand and agree. At the back of my eyes I glimpsed Vernon, whom, in saving, I’d destroyed. Things would be different with Evangeline. I would make amends with Evangeline.

Then I heard Vernon say,
But I am safe, Anwell. Where I am, there’s safety. Enough for her, for you
.

I jumped from the bed, strangled with panic. “Evangeline,” I said, “you have to go!”

She looked dazed. “Go where?”

“Away — anywhere. You can’t stay here. You have to go.”

“What do you mean?” She smiled and frowned. “Anwell, I don’t —”

“It’s not hard to understand, Evangeline. Leave now, and don’t come back.”

Her gaze darted around the room. “But — why? Anwell, what —”

I shook my head, clapped my hands to my ears. There wasn’t time for this — there wasn’t time for her to fail to understand. I knelt on the floor in front of her. “I’m not joking, Evangeline. This isn’t a game. He’s coming —”

“Who? Who’s coming? Anwell, stop this —”

“Just listen!” I yelped. “You need to go before he gets here. You have to hide. You have to go somewhere and not come back. Don’t tell me where you’re going — he’ll sense that I know. He’s angry. He wants revenge. So he’s coming here to find you. To punish me.”

The words ceased with a jolt. He was very near. In the forest he had warned I’d rue my refusal to be rid of her. Now he was near, stinking like a wolf.

Now I was doing as he’d wanted, driving her away.

I raised my eyes and saw that Evangeline’s hands were around my wrists. I saw that she was frightened, yet determined to be brave. “Who is coming, Anwell? Who wants to hurt me? I’ll get my father — you can tell him this —”

“No! I can’t tell. He’s a secret —”

She whimpered in frustration. “Who’s a secret — why? You’re not making sense! Who wants to punish you? What do they want with me? Tell me, Anwell — who is it? Tell me the reason — tell me the name!”

I stared at her; my heart seemed to brim. She was brave as a queen in a tower. I swore to myself that she
would
be safe; I would kill Finnigan before I let him past me. For this tiny moment we were both safe, and I lingered on my knees with my wrists in her hands. We had not often touched. Around us, the party sounds nosed and slithered. Evangeline waited for me to speak; I said nothing. “I don’t understand,” she eventually sighed. “You’re not making any sense.”

If I spoke, she would surely let go of my hands. So I stubbornly said nothing. Finnigan was coming closer, but I kept a treacherous peace. She said, “I wish you would explain.”

I answered, “I can’t.”

“Then I don’t believe you,” she said.

I nodded tiredly. Her belief or disbelief would make no difference. Everything would happen regardless of her. Still, I was disappointed. If she had believed me, I would not have felt so alone. My gaze skated surfaces, avoiding her. The party sounds sniffed the door like inquisitive pets. My life was pouring out my feet and seeping through cracks in the floor; yet still I knelt and did not move, for fear she’d let go of my hands.
Let me stay
, I wanted to beg:
Please don’t make me go
.

My wrists warmly wrapped in her hands; the color of her dress, which was autumn-blue; the faint sweet smell of butterscotch; the curtain wafting in the breeze. These are things I can remember.

The noise of the party abruptly changed. It had burbled and snuffled in a way that seemed friendly; suddenly it became angular and jarred. Two or three voices fluttered up, like sparrows fleeing a dogfight; the music skidded to a halt. Evangeline looked toward the door; fear splashed like lava in me. “It’s him,” I whispered.

“Who?” She looked from the door to me and back again. “Who?”

I scrambled up. “You’ve got to go. He’s looking for you. And he’ll hurt you, Evangeline —”

“Who?” Her voice was stringy, afraid. “Anwell!”

Now I took her wrist, and towed her to the window. She struggled, but I had no choice. The voices were swelling. They were in the hall. Nothing would slow him or turn him off course. We had almost no time. With one hand I fumbled to raise the window high. The breeze blew the curtain into the room. Evangeline struggled, grunted, and I glanced at her. “He’ll kill you,” I said, and she went still. Her face went white, and her struggling stilled.

It made no difference: we were out of time.

The door swung back so hard. Evangeline shrieked and scrabbled. I turned to confront Finnigan. The wind hoisted the curtain, slicked it around me. Through it I glimpsed my mother standing in the doorway, thin as a blade. “Get out, Anwell,” she said.

I was stunned. I was astonished and horrified. I gazed at her, scarcely believing — for a moment I wondered if this wasn’t some trick or disguise. But it was her, like antarctic gales. She had left home for the first time in months. She was not so frail as she pretended. She must have thrown back all the doors in this house until she discovered the right one. She was ruining the party. Somehow she had known I was here.

Evangeline and I stood like pillars of salt, crumbling. I must have released her wrist, for both her hands covered her mouth. The curtain sank against the wall, the dolphins bobbed against the ceiling.

My mother, not Finnigan.

The moments were solid, encased in concrete. In the hall a herd of pale faces were corralled. They leaned past each other for a better view, excited and intense. None of them moved, not a flicker — they were frozen as a stage backdrop. My mother seemed chipped out of granite. Evangeline was a doll plastered to the wall. The room was frosted over with an ice field of silence. I, too, must have been still.

Mother spoke.

“I won’t tell you again, Anwell.”

I stepped away from the window and Evangeline. The lemon-colored bedspread sighed as I brushed past. I crossed the threshold, through Mother’s overhang, and out into the hall. A multitude of eyes scanned my face eagerly. I stared at the floor, but saw eyes and noses and mouths nonetheless. I saw the Duffs and Nightingales, the Lowes, Torquils, Gilligans, Bunkles. I saw shuffling feet and writhing hands, shoulders straining for a better view. I saw the Marcuzzi children clustered like mice. I saw Miss Pree, the school ma’am, mistress of the fine homebrew. Daniel Collop, who had survived his youthful fast-car years to marry his beloved Lissie Skene. Constable McIllwraith, the shiny buttons of his uniform like small spot-fires. I saw these faces as I walked down the long hall and was pulled backward through my life — past neighbors, shop-keepers, councilors, sweepers, farmers, teachers, carpenters, chemists, librarians, choirboys, potters, pickers, bottlers, gravediggers, junk-men, thieves — all these people who had held up my world and were now privy to it breaking apart. I saw the faces of my schoolfellows threaded through the crowd, their dingo eyes leveled on me, their dingo lips curved. All these whom I’d known forever now formed a guard of honorlessness for me, which stretched to the front door.

Everyone had been invited except my parents and me.
Kooksville
: Finnigan’s word for it made me smile.

The front door was open, letting in the flies. I crossed into white sunlight. I had to shield my eyes. The heat pressed against me, heavy as wings.

Mother had not brought the car. She preferred not to drive. She had walked, so we walked. I followed her down the garden path and past the squeaky gate. Pigeons browsing on the nature-strips waddled to safety as we walked by. I kept close to Mother’s side so her voice didn’t need to rise. “You know I’m unwell. You know the doctor said I’m not to get upset. The entire town saw everything. You made me look a fool.”

I did not really listen. I didn’t see the need.

“As if things aren’t bad enough for us. They all whisper about us, you know. They all talk behind our backs. Oh, they’ll love this. They’ll dine out on this for years.”

I thought, instead, of Surrender.

“I know you’re upset about your dog. But your father did what needed to be done. The dog was a killer. I won’t have any more trouble. Running off, swearing, screaming. It’s not good for me. The doctor says I need rest. You’ve heard him say so yourself. Instead I’m out here, in the blazing heat, having to bring you home. Being humiliated for my efforts. It’s thoughtless, Anwell.”

I thought of the unendurable shame.

Of the next day, and the next, and the next and the next and the next.

“I need my tablets. God knows, I’ve hardly any left. Possibly insufficient to even get me through the night. Tomorrow, you’ll go to the pharmacy. You’ll face these people, and your shame.”

A small mutt yapped as we passed by.

At home she pushed me through the front door. I stumbled in the darkness of the hall. The pink rosebuds rained down the walls; the grandfather clock tisked crossly. My mother’s form filled the doorway like spider web. “Your father’s waiting for you in the kitchen.” She closed the door behind her, turned over the brown key. I gazed toward the kitchen. The afternoon sun filled its doorway with stripes of bleached light. I kept a hand on the wall as I walked, dragging my fingers behind me. I was no longer steady on my feet. There was not enough left inside me to weight me firmly to the ground.

The air in the kitchen was dry. Dust capered through the stripes of light. My father was sitting at the table, a newspaper open before him. He glanced over his glasses. “She found you,” he observed.

Mother had stayed in the hall.

“You know your mother is ill. It makes me wonder why you try so hard to distress her. It makes life unpleasant not only for her, but for me and yourself as well.”

I flexed my fingers. They were greasy with sweat.

“We ask very little from you, Anwell. You’re well provided for. You do not go without. But you will persist in being resentful, and ungrateful. You persist in behaving like a spoiled child. As such, you’ll be treated accordingly. Go and get my belt.”

I almost laughed. Father’s belt was an old and unprincipled acquaintance from my boyhood. Like a creature of toil, it had never lived inside the house. It hung in the shed where Father kept his gardening tools. Its leather was stiff and riddled with cracks from age and neglect.

I nearly said,
I won’t. I am sixteen years old
. Then I changed my mind.

I crossed the kitchen to the back door and stepped out into the yard. The sun was impossibly bright. The heat drove claws into my neck. The concrete path seemed spongy, molten. I stopped, and sank up to my ankles. The brilliant sky made me squint. The yard was quiet, the branches still. Midges hovered at the tips of the neatly mown grass. Roses slumped against each other, confetti of petals on the ground. The ducks and chickens were dozing in dust bowls beneath the trees. Their small heads came up and they watched me with wary eyes. At the side of the shed was a long lean bundle, hound-brown, motionless. Flies flew through the air around it. I wished I had something to cover him.

A knifelike sound cut the peace. Looking back to the house, I saw where it had come from. Either Mother or Father had closed the kitchen venetian blinds. Now no one could see into the kitchen, and no one could see out.

I did not look again at the bundle on the ground. I gave it a wide berth. I went to the door of the shed and looked in. The shed was crammed with flowerpots, buckets, seedling trays, a bicycle, yet the first thing I saw was the scar-face belt hanging from its rusty hook. It was a long belt, too long for my slim father, its silver buckle more ostentatious than something he would wear. It was brown — my father preferred black. I ran my knuckles down its hide and realized that this belt had been acquired for the purpose it had always served. It wasn’t meant to be worn.

I was sinking into the concrete to my shins, to my knees, yet I drifted somewhere up near the threadbare clouds. It wasn’t I who, turning away, saw the hatchet resting on the tree-stump chopping block. I was elsewhere. Yet — somehow — I agreed, and approved — I must have.

Because I picked it up without a second thought.

They weren’t looking when I walked into the kitchen. My mother was recounting for my father’s benefit the happenings at Evangeline’s. She had her back to me. “As if I don’t have enough to worry about,” she was saying. “You know about my health. I swear I’ll go mad, I will.”

It took hardly more than a flick of the wrist to bury the hatchet in her neck. Another flick to remove it. She swayed and leaned against a chair, which slid across the linoleum. “My health,” she repeated, somewhat distractedly.

I scarcely paused. Even as Mother tilted, I brought the blade down on Father’s skull. His mouth flopped open with the blow and I expected him to say,
Damn you
. He didn’t — he kept silent. His arms twitched like landed fish and rumpled the pages of the paper.

Mother reeled away from the chair. Blood had rivered down her back. I’d always kept the hatchet sharp, as a mercy to the ducks and chickens. Now I stepped forward, and was merciful to her.

When I looked again at Father I saw that he had spilled across the table and that the newspaper was flattened with red.

It was very quiet in the kitchen now. Only I was holding my head up.

I put the hatchet on the draining board and rinsed clean my hands. My knees suddenly wobbly, I sat down on the floor. The lino was cool. Mother was tangled against the wall but the kitchen was wide, and she didn’t touch me. I searched for horror or grief, repentance or surprise. But there was only a kind of exhaustion, and peevishness at the heat. My eyelids drooped; my thoughts meandered. A myna’s screech dragged me back, and I pinched my hand until I was awake. I climbed to my feet and, spinning the tap, washed and dried the hatchet. I took it outside and returned it to the chopping block. The ducks and hens were still dozing in the shade. I glanced up at the kitchen window, and the closed gray venetian blinds said everything was the same.

I searched the toolshed and eventually found a piece of hessian. It was large enough, though somewhat grubby. I took it outside and spread it over the hound-brown bundle, foiling the flies. I supposed I would have to do something about digging a hole. Later, though; when it was cooler. I returned to the kitchen, to escape the heat more than anything.