The Mistaken (13 page)

Nick pulled himself up and sat cross-legged beside
me. “Ty, you loved her. She was your wife. Why in God’s name would
you want to stop thinking about her?”

I covered my eyes with the heel of my hands and
rocked my head from side to side. I beat them against my forehead,
trying to erase the last image I had of Jill. All the tears in the
world couldn’t wash that vision away, though I tried futilely to do
so. It burned through me on a slow, steady path, desiccating every
happy memory I ever had of Jillian.

“Because…I don’t... I can’t…remember her...like
that!”

“Like what, Ty? I don’t understand. What are you
talking about?”

“At the…hospital. She was so...so...broken and... Oh
God, what…have…I done, Nick? What…have I done?” I hyperventilated
as I rolled on the wood floor.

Until now, my grief had been contained, held back in
anger. But now it rolled over me like a tidal wave, pushing me back
and forth, unwilling to allow me to get my feet beneath me. I
couldn’t speak. I folded up onto my knees and laid my head in my
hands on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. I scared the hell out
of Nick, no longer the stoic rock he’d always known. He stared at
me silently then laid his hand on my back.

“You want to forget. I get that, Ty. I understand
that, more than you could possibly know.” He jumped to his feet.
“You wait here. I’ll be right back. I know exactly what you need.
Just…just wait.” He ran out the door, slamming it shut with a
bang.

I wore myself out crying while he was gone. It
didn’t make me feel any better though. I thought venting would
release some of the pain, but my culpability never failed to focus
it right back where it belonged, squarely on my shoulders. Even
vengeance seemed somehow out of order, unless there was a way to
punish myself.

Nick wasn’t gone for very long before he burst back
through the door. He carried two paper grocery sacks filled with
clanging glass bottles. He placed the bags on the dining table with
a loud thud and pulled out his purchases, placing them on the table
in a neat row. It was a variety of hard alcohol: vodka, whiskey,
and tequila. I sat on the floor, leaning back against the side of
the living room chair. I ran my sleeve over my eyes and stared at
the bottles of varying shapes, sizes, and colors. Then I looked up
at Nick, wondering what he was up to. He turned to me with his
hands on his hips.

“You didn’t understand when I started drinking after
my accident,” he explained, “when Mum, Pops, and Kimmy died. Do you
remember how you scolded me? You preached to me, told me to man-up
and all. I knew you were disappointed in me, which, of course, only
made me feel worse. I couldn’t explain it to you then, what it felt
like. You never would have understood. But now… Well, now I think
you do. Don’t you, Ty?” He towered over me and nodded. “Yes, I
think you finally understand.”

He knelt down in front of me and looked me square in
the eyes.

“Let me explain something to you, Tyler. There is
nothing...
nothing
…that will ever make it better. That
pain…it never goes away. It’s a lifetime of shit, of frustration
and guilt. Time may dull it, but it’ll always be there, kind of
hazy in the background,” he explained as he twirled his finger
around the side of his head. “And when you sleep, it awakens. And
it pursues you—relentlessly—so that no matter how hard you try, you
can never truly get away from it. But...” He stood up with his
index finger raised.

Nick stepped over to the dining table and selected a
tall, clear bottle of vodka. He looked it over deliberately before
presenting it to me like Vanna White on
The Wheel of
Fortune
.

“This, brother, will push it to the darkest corners
of your mind, if for just a little while, so you can breathe
again.”

He grabbed two crystal tumblers from the china
cabinet and poured us each a double shot.

“Here,” he said, handing me a glass. “Bottoms up.”
Nick tilted his head back and swallowed the liquid in one swift
gulp.

I stared at him open-mouthed before I turned my
attention to my own glass. I studied the silver elixir as it
swirled malevolently around the cut crystal, noting how it
distorted my reflection and everything else around me. I was
reluctant to go there, to that dark place I knew Nick had escaped
after his accident. To me, it never seemed to do him any good, just
an easing of the gravity that held him to the earth, a
disembodiment of his grief, his capacity for being held
accountable. But I was an outsider then, with no clear
understanding of his pain, of the rage he felt at being left alone
to carry the load made heavy by others, of the exhaustive guilt
that consumed him.

That is until now. I understood it all now.

I copied Nick and swallowed the vodka in one shot,
grimacing at the caustic burn as it slid down my throat. I was glad
it hurt. I deserved every ounce of that pain and much more. With a
shake of my head, I blew out a sharp breath, my mouth finishing in
a tense and perfect O. I deliberated over the empty glass then held
it back out to Nick. He refilled it, as he did his own, and handed
it back to me.

“May we both forget,” he toasted bitterly with his
glass held high in the air.

We slammed our shots together this time. Nick
brought the bottle with him and joined me on the floor. I held out
my glass and he filled it once more. I didn’t wait for him this
time. I threw it down my throat as fast as I could then silently
requested another. And then another.

Soon, a fire burned inside me, its warmth radiating
from my stomach and swirling into my limbs. It left my fingers and
toes numb and my ears ringing. The thoughts and images that played
mercilessly in my head blurred and moved about incoherently. I
couldn’t remain focused on anything for very long before I forgot
it altogether. The tension in my shoulders eased. I welcomed both
the comforting release from tormenting thoughts and the soothing of
my frayed nerves. We continued until the bottle was empty, another
piece of trash littering the wood floor around us. Nick crawled to
the table to select another.

“Eeny meeny miny mo,” he sang as he ran his finger
down the line of shapely vessels. He grabbed the bottle where his
finger landed, a square one filled with an amber liquid. Jack
Daniel’s. Nick turned to me and laughed, that stupid crooked smile
twisting his lips.

“Hey Ty, would you like to meet my friend,
Jack?”

When I nodded, Nick crawled back toward me,
careening head first into my side. I shoved him away and he rolled
around on the floor, searching for the lost bottle of JD. We both
laughed like we were children again, playing in the sunshine
without a care in the world. It felt good to laugh, even though it
had the bitter aftertaste of a long-gone happiness. I was glad that
it was with Nick. I felt as though he was the only person who could
possibly comprehend the range of emotions that seemed to flicker
and flash through me at light speed.

Nick and I shared the entire night together on the
floor. Johnny Walker, Jack Daniel’s, and José Cuervo were our
constant companions. After a time, I couldn’t hold my head up any
longer, and Nick lay snoring along the edge of the area rug beneath
the dining room table. I found my way to my bedroom, fumbling
noisily through the empty bottles that rolled across the floor in
my path.

I fell into the middle of the king-sized bed and
moved immediately to my side on the right where I lay gazing toward
Jillian’s vacant spot. We had spent so many hours here together,
making love, playing games, talking about our baby, and planning
our life together. Tonight, for the first time in weeks, the good
memories seemed easier to recall than the bad.

As I stared toward Jillian’s side, an assembly of
transparent colors oscillated above the bed, indistinct shapes
quivering in the dim light. They merged and separated in constant
flux then slowly coalesced into a translucent apparition. She
smiled at me, her dark eyes sparkling brightly from an unseen
source. Her long, dark hair danced around her shoulders like
magic.

I blinked once, holding my eyes closed for a brief
moment. Then I opened them, hopeful my delusion would remain. And
she did. A single tear rolled into the inside corner of my eye and
pooled up before it spilled over. I reached out to her.

“I miss you, Jillian. So much,” I murmured. “I love
you.”

Then, though I was unwilling and fought like hell
against it, I closed my eyes and let oblivion consume me.

Chapter
Fourteen

Tyler

The days and weeks after that first evening with
Nick followed suit in pretty much the same manner. I don’t remember
much of the passing of time except for the changing of the outside
light to darkness then back again. Nick was right. The booze helped
me breathe again for small increments of time. The pain and guilt
always remained, but they were pushed to the outer reaches of my
alcohol-soaked brain. I still felt it, but I could also ignore it,
for a short time anyway.

When I was too drunk to drink anymore, I usually
left Nick snoring on the sofa while I stumbled back to my room to
say goodnight to Jillian. In bed, before I slipped into the welcome
embrace of senselessness, I conjured up images of Jill that made me
happy. I looked forward to seeing her and talking to her every
night. Afterwards, my mind remained in limbo for only a few short
hours until the effects of the liquor eased. Then the dreams would
begin.

Sometimes they were simply pleasant memories that
replayed in my head: the good times I shared with Jillian, our
wedding, our honeymoon. But mostly I dreamed of the last time we
spoke at length, our fight, Jill lying broken on the padded table
with all those tubes and wires, a blood-soaked sheet enveloping her
from head to toe. Maybe if I hadn’t recalled those images, I would
have recovered faster. As it was, those dreams were what made me
get up every morning and pour myself another drink.

Sometimes Nick was there when I faltered out of bed,
but often he was gone, and I was left alone to cope with everything
I had pushed neatly aside the day before. It was during these first
moments of each day when I often wished Jill hadn’t become
everything to me—maybe then I wouldn’t have been so completely
destroyed by her death. But that was just the pain talking, like a
devil sitting on my shoulder, whispering evil thoughts into my ear.
Most days Nick would return with breakfast, or lunch if the hour
declared, and we would share a quiet meal before we returned to the
bottle.

I consumed more and more alcohol as my tolerance
grew and the dreams became unbearable. Nick stayed with me most
days though he didn’t try to keep up with me anymore. He looked
amused at my drunken antics with one brow raised, his wry grin set
askew. I suppose I was the inebriated loser now. It was amazing how
the tables had turned. Having slipped into a dull state of apathy,
I really didn’t give a damn one way or the other. But Nick grew
concerned and suggested I back off a bit. That wasn’t about to
happen any time soon though, not while I continued to feel the same
way, day after day.

As time passed and I grew accustomed to the
intensity of my pain, I spoke to Nick about Jillian, about how much
I missed her, how empty the house felt without her. Nick and I
eventually straightened out the place after he reminded me how much
Jill hated a messy house. It once again looked as it did when she
and I lived as a couple, but it certainly didn’t feel the same. The
emptiness tormented me. Everywhere I looked there was something
that had a memory of Jillian connected to it, especially her
photographs which still lined the walls, and what remained of all
the things we had bought for our child which lay refolded and
untouched in a dark corner of the den.

It was just too much for me to see every day. My
guilt and loneliness gradually evolved into bitterness and rage,
the venom of each so pungent and sharp it soured my only refuge, my
treasured nightly sojourn with Jill’s haunting apparition. My last
solace was gone, betrayed by the very bitterness that corroded my
soul. That was when I first seriously considered suicide,
contemplating the effectiveness of different methods. But there was
one thing that held me back. Once I’d read the police reports and
ascertained the extent of Erin Anderson’s role in Jillian’s
accident and death, I knew I couldn’t leave this world with her
still in it, especially when the cops refused to arrest and charge
her.

Whereas I once spoke to Nick about Jillian—my
memories of her and our life together—I now shared my fantasies
about gaining revenge on the woman who had provoked Jill into such
reckless behavior. It soon became a favorite pastime to lie drunk
around the house and spin wild tales of vengeance against Erin
Anderson, the bane of my existence, the core of my deep-seated
hostility.

They started simple, as visions of setting her house
on fire with her trapped inside, or perhaps I would run her car off
the road and down into a steep ravine where she would lie
immobilized, entangled in the wreckage, unseen from the roadway far
above. I had an endless reservoir filled with pernicious scenarios.
I found that when I fantasized about a long, tortuous death, I felt
a greater sense of vengeance and a considerable awareness of
relief, as sick as that was. And I knew it was sick. But I didn’t
care anymore. I wanted Erin to suffer for a long time before she
died. Or maybe…maybe she shouldn’t die. Maybe she should just
suffer. Forever. I could think of many ways to make that woman
suffer forever.

At first, it gave me some relief to savor the vision
of retribution. Yet, I always woke up the next day with the
realization that Erin Anderson was still alive and well, walking
the earth, enjoying her life, enjoying her family, while my wife
was not, while my child lay eternally buried in Jillian’s cold womb
six feet beneath the heavy earth, a tiny speck of immeasurable
possibility heartlessly quashed into nothingness. I spoke to Nick
about this train of thought and how crazy it was making me, how
utterly enraged I felt, powerless and impotent.