Half-Drawn Curtains, Chapter One

 

    Megan woke with a start.

She reached over to the bedside table and ran her thumb over the smooth green stone next to the digital clock and half-filled plastic cup of water. “I am here,” she whispered. “I am safe.” She then slowly inhaled, held the breath for a few seconds, and exhaled.

A dog’s sharp bark echoed somewhere outside—probably Max, the Kowalski’s Irish setter. Uncle Bill liked to joke that Max alerted his owners if a leaf fell two blocks away. When Max was a puppy and terrorizing the neighborhood with his hypervigilance, everyone said, “He’ll calm down soon enough.” That was four years ago, but no one noticed Max’s histrionics anymore. It had just become background noise, like the sound of passing cars or the crickets’ nighttime chorus.

Megan took a sip of water from the plastic cup. Thirty-two years old and still afraid to sleep in a house by herself.  She yearned for her studio apartment, where she could see the door from every corner of the spacious room. But it was her own fault for not finishing her edits; otherwise she would be with her aunt and uncle right now at their fancy Gull Lake resort, rather than alone in their empty house. It was funny, in a way: so many years of therapy and yet here she was, awake in the middle of the night. Like Max she had never quite outgrown her hypervigilance.

You never forget, Janet’s voice reminded her. You just learn how to live with it.

Which meant forcing herself to go back to sleep. Megan lay down and closed her eyes again.

She tried to block out intrusive thoughts and instead focus on the gentle hum of the air conditioning. When this failed to work, she began cycling through the other tricks Janet had taught her: alphabet games, tensing and relaxing her muscles, and yet more breathing exercises. Just as she felt her body begin to settle back into the mattress, the soft click of a door rocketed her back into wakefulness.

This is ridiculous, she scolded herself. Her aunt and uncle lived in a quiet Minneapolis suburb where nothing ever happened, except the occasional bike theft. Okay, once Jim Clendenny broke into his grandma’s house to steal $10 for weed, but he’d said he was sorry and that was the end of it. During the six years Megan had lived here as a kid, she’d experienced nothing but perfect safety. There was even a cop next door, for god’s sake.

Megan touched the stone again and thought of Andy.  Earlier they’d agreed to have lunch together tomorrow. Just before bed she’d made her aunt’s special ice tea recipe, remembering how much Andy loved it.

Ice tea…Megan she slapped her forehead, irritated with herself.  She’d forgotten to check if there were any lemons in the produce drawer. Well, that was all right. She’d have plenty of time for a quick run to the shop in the morning—

A floorboard creaked. Footsteps moved down the hallway.

Megan hadn’t imagined it, dreamt it, or simply feared it. Someone was in the house.

The window.

She launched herself out of bed, but she’d left it too late.

A silhouette stood in the doorway of her bedroom.

“Megan Cooper,” a male voice said. “How nice to finally meet you.”

Clueless

 

I guess I expected a lot more time to pass before pictures with a new boyfriend appeared on her Instagram account. She'd claimed I was the love of her life. Didn't that deserve a solid year of feeling shit? Maybe even two?

The answer seemed to be no.  Or no was the answer to another question I was now forced to ask myself: had she ever really loved me?  Because she sure looked happy with her new meathead boyfriend way less than a year after she collapsed into my mother's arms at my funeral. She'd even scrubbed all photos of me from her social media. I mean, okay, I'd left her first, but she didn't know that. She thought I was dead. Didn't death count for anything anymore?

 

Nightmare

 

The dog disappeared.  

Although it was after midnight, I wanted to look for him. I asked my mother to come with me. She said no; I pestered her until she agreed. 

Even with the streetlights to guide us, the neighborhood felt eerily dark, and devoid of life. But this was suburbia. I told myself I had nothing to worry about.

 

My mother chose our route. At first we just walked on the sidewalk, like normal people.  Eventually, however, she started leading us across lawns, and then into backyards. When she opened the backdoor into a bungalow, I protested, “We shouldn’t be doing this.” 

 

She laughed at me. “You’re the one who wanted to take a walk.” 

 

Not knowing what to do, I followed her into the house. We moved through the unlit rooms, until exiting via the front door, unseen. But my relief soon flared into horror, because my mother now insisted on passing through the next house, and the one after. Each bungalow seemed emptier than the last, until finally, inevitably, we came across a woman sitting on her couch. She greeted us with a welcoming smile. “The way you came in is now locked,” she said. “I'll show you another way out.”

 

She brought us into the kitchen. With a flourish she opened the oven door. "I'm afraid there's no other choice," she said. "You'll simply have to crawl through it."

Blindsided

 

It was a lovely evening—typical Southern California weather. Busy with an inventory take, Rick couldn’t come over, so we talked for a while on the telephone. “I need to run to the art store,” I told him. “I should have gone earlier but I got caught up in a drawing.”

“Can’t you go tomorrow? It’s getting late.”

“It’s not even 7:00!” I reminded him. “The store is open for another two hours. I’ll be back well before bedtime. And Vince is hours away.”

“You should still be careful, though.”

“I will be. Now get back to work. You need to set a good example for your staff.”

“I don’t see why I should start now,” he answered, a classic Rick response that left me giggling. At the art store the clerk and I rued a discontinued line of much-loved brushes, and then I drove to a nearby grocery store for some laundry detergent and coffee beans. Just before I started the car to head back home I glanced at my watch: 8:45 p.m. Plenty of time for Daisy’s pre-bedtime walk. Now that Vince was in another part of the state, I had no reason to be afraid.

I pulled into the parking lot underneath my apartment building, musing at the little tricks life could play on us. Funny how it was my mother who had unwittingly engineered my present happiness: a cool apartment, a lovely neighborhood, and the boyfriend I never knew I wanted. I parked in my spot and got out of the car, chuckling to myself. I would have to point that out to her during our next phone call.

“What’s so funny?” someone demanded from behind me.

Startled, I turned around.

Vince stood just inches from me.

I started to ask him what he was doing there, or maybe to scream. But he lifted his arm, and the world went black.

Wake Up

 

I wait until you are

sleeping

let the heat from this being

sear the skin of

denial

if I burn down their treason

turn ash into reason

only then will I see their

lie

January's End

 

when I am the snow without 

the season

made to believe in the riddle 

not the reason

Breaking Point

 I woke up not in heaven, but in another hospital room. It took me a few minutes to get my bearings. 

When I did I saw Michael sitting in the chair next to me. He looked like absolute hell, but at least he was sober. 

“Wolff,” he said. “Welcome back.”

“Why am I not dead?”

“Because I woke up and found you before you had a chance to die. So here you are.”

A long, horrible pause passed. 

 “I’m sorry," I said.

Michael gave me a weird smile. “For what? Not dying, or trying to kill yourself six inches away from where I was sleeping?”

“...I don’t know.”

“Well, we’ll have words about it later, but it will have to wait because I have other places to be.”  Michael stood up, his car keys jingling in his hand. “Your mother is on her way. Our family is a major donor to this hospital so they're letting you go home with her.”  He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t make me regret that.”

Confused, I returned, “Where are you going?”

“Rehab. See you around, Wolff.”

In that moment I understood that he was not only going to rehab, but that he was also leaving me. As I watched him walk out of the door I never hated anyone more in my life.