Coldwater Revenge, James Ross [books for 9th graders txt] 📗

a car scything through the mailbox at the bottom of the driveway and her mother stumbling through the front door. The child ran to her mother and held onto her leg until almost the top of the stairs before losing her grip. Andrew stared frozen as the frenzied toddler hurled her tiny body again and again against the locked bedroom door, screaming for a mommy who either didn’t hear or didn’t care. Through the door, he could hear his wife on the phone with her latest doctor calmly asserting that she was not really sick at all and that she was not going to take any more goddamn medicine!

That was six weeks ago.

“Karen,” he said, his voice almost without expression. “It’s not a contest between you and Maggie. Kids her age are helpless. You’ve got to feed them, change them, play with them—keep them away from hot stoves. None of that is optional.”

“Mr. Mom!” His wife emptied another miniature bottle of booze into her glass. “You think you’re a better parent than me?”

“Frankly, I’m the only parent, Karen.”

“Not for long.”

Goosebumps erupted on the surface of Andrew’s arms and across the top of his scalp, heedless of the moist, tropical air. I guess we won’t be going snorkeling tomorrow, he heard himself think.

“I met someone,” Karen explained.

“In the bin!” The surge of incredulous anger took Andrew by surprise, but it made no visible impact on his wife. “Some crack-head biker?”

“A cop,” she said proudly. “And he’s only mildly depressed.”Andrew looked at his wife over the top of his glasses, wishing at that moment that she were wearing something more than just flaming nail polish. “You know the irony of it all is I did it for you.”

“What?”

“Motherhood. I did it for you…to keep you…”

“Right.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” his wife hissed. “You never have. I LOVED YOU!” she shrieked. Then she grabbed her crotch like a ballplayer, “But all you ever loved was this!”

That’s all you’ve left me to love, thought Andrew while the rest of his mind split and tumbled down a dozen different paths at once. ‘Can I afford to quit work and stay home? Can Karen get medical insurance on her own? Is my mother too old to come and help take care of Maggie until things settle down?’

Karen watched the play of emotions ripple her husband’s face. “Let me guess,” she said. “You’re thinking about me. About how you’re going to fight for me and win me back, no matter what.” HHHhhhh

Her husband sighed. “I don’t know what to think,” he admitted.

“I’m so surprised.”

A rumble of receding thunder filled the silence before he could respond. “What are your plans?” he asked, noting wearily the puzzled expression that was his wife’s only response. “You haven’t had a full-time job in over five years and your knight in shining armor is a patient in a psychiatric facility,” he explained. “What are your plans, Karen?”

His wife opened another mini-bottle and took a defiant pull. “We’re leaving as soon as Tom gets out.”

“We?”

“Maggie and I.”

Andrew Ryan’s throat clamped shut over lungs that fought to surge their way up and out.

“She needs her mother.”

“You’re joking,” he stuttered. “You’re not fit.”

“My doctor says I am.”

“When you lie to her! ‘Yes, doctor, I am taking my medication. No doctor, I haven’t had any hallucinations in quite some time’. And what happens when you crash and burn?”

“You’ll come to the rescue. That’s your role. Remember? ‘The Rock.’”

“I’m worn out with it, Karen.”

“Then you’ll come for her.”

Andrew sat hard on the rattan couch and waved a hand at his naked wife. “Put some clothes on, will you?”

“Oh.” Karen looked around as if there might be a suitable change of costume nearby. “I guess I thought we might be making a fresh start on our romantic weekend,” she said. “I thought I owed you one last chance, at least. You blew it, Mr. Perfect.”

The long-time lovers stared at each other, the one numb, the other uncertain but vaguely triumphant. Then the telephone trilled back to life. Andrew picked it up, and his face, which a moment ago had been flush with blood, drained abruptly and then slowly engorged again. “Jesus Christ!”The receiver pressed the side of his head and his free hand cupped the ear on the opposite side. “Get her to the Emergency Room!” Andrew whirled on his naked wife and, in a calm more menacing than fury, explained, “It’s the babysitter, Karen. Maggie found your ‘candies’ and ate them. What the hell was an open bottle of anti-psychotics doing in the nursery—on the nightstand—next to her bed?”

Karen Ryan did not respond, but the look on her face was chillingly familiar. Neither guilt nor fear, Andrew remembered it clearly from the very first time they met. “Oh, my god,” he whispered. “You left it there on purpose.”

***

Karen stared through the cottage window at the tow truck that was hauling away the wrecked rental car and at the men who had driven over the replacement vehicle and who were exchanging papers with her husband. Waves of nausea oozed through her pores in emulsions of heat and sweat. “Radio says there’s another one coming right behind this,” she heard one of them say. “You got maybe twenty minutes. Waiver says it’s your nickel for any damage if you get caught in it.” The brew inside Karen’s gut heaved suddenly and her legs propelled an unwilling head toward the bathroom. With her face half-buried in the toilet, she heard thunder begin to roll again. Then Andrew was standing in the doorway, the keys to the rental car squeezed through the side of his clenched fist.

“Do you have any idea how terrified Maggie must be?” he asked, in a voice that was no longer the patient instrument of reasoned persuasion she had come to resent. “Lying on a gurney, surrounded by strangers. One of them shoving a tube down her throat to pump her guts out, and no mommy or daddy anywhere near?” Karen gave him the