Her eyes searched his. “Of course. You’re sure you’re okay?”
Stephanie knew damn well he wasn’t okay, not even slightly close to okay, but it was one of those things people asked. He nodded. He was fine, please, he just needed a few minutes with his wife.
He shut the door behind her, locked it, scanned the room, and dragged his chest of drawers from the opposite wall to the bedroom door. He stopped, appraised his work. He hadn’t even broken a sweat. This is what God wanted. It might not feel like God’s way, might seem even contrary to His path, but that was okay. God’s work is messy, Ellis said. And sometimes, very painful.
He went to her, sat on the edge of the bed. She squirmed at the vibrations. Her eyes were moving back and forth beneath her lids. He touched the side of her face, brushed her hair back behind her ear. She stirred but did not step out from the comfort of her drug-addled slumber. In one gesture, he grabbed the edge of the comforter and flung it down off of her shoulders, exposing her body all the way to her knees.
She wore a pink T-shirt and a pair of blue gym shorts. Curled with her knees near her chest, she was a fetal corpse left to rot on a tray. Since the baby’s death, Chloe had lost at least thirty pounds. He traced his hand over her skinny leg, across her skeletal hips, and hooked a finger under her shirt and dragged it up to her breasts that had once overflowed a C-cup but were barely A-cup material now. Her ribs pushed out from her skin like the bony fingers of some alien gestating inside her. Yet, the worst was her face, which almost resembled its old self when it was pressed against the pillow. When he took her chin and raised her head, her skin tightened over her cheek bones like plastic wrap sealing over a chicken leg bone.
This would be painful, but it had to be done. “Fruta de la vagina,” he whispered. It was funny how something so ridiculous as having sex in an old Pontiac while some guy was selling bad fruit outside could bury itself so deeply in your heart. He and Chloe would relive that moment again and again for the rest of their lives and every time they would laugh and rekindle, at least for a moment, a lost piece of their love. That sounded true, and he wanted it to be, but he was just fooling himself.
The call from Sergeant Fratto had ruined their last attempt at reminiscing on Saturday. He shouldn’t have answered that call; he should have just let it ring and kept sleeping, Chloe curled against him, the memory of their recent laughter fresh in the room. Maybe the phone would have stopped ringing and Delaney wouldn’t be dead.
Now, who’s fooling himself?
“Honey,” he said. “Wake up. We need to talk. Please.”
She grumbled something, rolled on her back and then onto her other side facing away from him. Her butt had shriveled into a boney angle.
He nudged her. She mumbled something that was probably go away. He grabbed her shoulder, pulled her toward him so she was on her back again, and shook her. He shook her until her eyes opened like the lethargic blooming of a flower. Instead of blue carnations, her eyes were gray marbles cracked with bloody veins.
“You want your Pilly Billies?” he asked.
Her tongue slithered from her mouth and traced a thin line of saliva across dry lips. “Where’s Stephanie?”
“Taking a break. Having a smoke.”
“What?” She was still in the throes of her slumber and spoke as if she might collapse back into sleep. “She doesn’t smoke.”
“Well. Whatever. You want your precious little Pilly Billies?”
A smile rose on her face and faded. “That’s Brendan’s. For sillies.”
For sillies. She hadn’t said that in years. That used to be what they said anytime either one of them did something unintentionally ridiculous or stupid and the other merely stared in disbelief. He’d put the milk in the pantry and the cereal box in the fridge without realizing and then her stare would clue him in. “For sillies,” he’d say and they’d start cracking up.
Was old Chloe, the woman he had fallen in love with, straining to be free? Were the drugs helping or hurting?
Ellis had the unequivocal answer to that one: All addictions impede our ability to experience empowerment.
“I’ll get you your pills,” he said, “but first I want you to listen to me.”
She chuckled to herself. “For sillies.”
“No, not for sillies anymore.” He hesitated. He had either to take the step forward and suffer the pain or retreat and try again later. “I’ve been somewhere tonight. Seen some things that have really helped.”
“Dr. Pilly Billie.”
“No. God.”
She considered this, as best she could in her state, and then burst out laughing.
He knew this was going to be difficult, knew his anger was liable to come back in full gale-force wind strength, but he hadn’t expected it would get so difficult so quickly. “Stop it,” he said.
Her laughter rolled out of her like the maniacal hiccuping laughs of a clown. In between bursts of laughter, she repeated, “ … saw God … oh, Jesus … good one, Anthony …” He could have taken the laughter (she was drugged, after all), but it was those stupid little editorializing comments that gnawed at him with the speed and veracity of piranhas.
“Shut up!” He punched the headboard and it vibrated against the wall.
Her laughter died quickly and she stared at him with wide, red-stained eyes. The dark crescents beneath her eyes made it seem like she hadn’t slept for days. Oh, the irony. She could play a zombie in one of those Living Dead movies without any makeup. If she wanted to be dead so badly, why didn’t she just overdose on her precious little pills? That would solve everything.
A new voice, one that hadn’t spoken in months, struggled to break through the angry chatter burning his brain. You don’t mean that, the voice said. This is the woman in front of whom you got naked and performed jumping jacks because she wanted to watch your “little soldier” jump, too. This is the woman who, on your wedding day during your first dance, whispered in your ear that she now knew what heaven was like. This is the woman with whom you had four children. This is the woman you love.
The voice stayed his next move for a moment but only a moment. That voice could tweak his heart whenever it wished, but sometimes it said the wrong things. It never should have mentioned the children. Four born, only two left. The woman he loved had died with those children, and this drug-addicted slop was all that remained.
He leaned toward her face. She backed up but only slightly. He wouldn’t hit her; he had never done anything physically abusive before, not even punched a wall. (Times are changing.) “I did see God, Chloe, and I don’t care if you believe me or not, but the one thing you will not do is laugh at me. Understand?”
She nodded.
“We’ve suffered more in the last few months than most people do their entire lives. But that is no excuse for destroying yourself. Whether it’s God or just Common Sense, you need to stop taking your damned little pills. You need to get yourself together and go back to being the mother and wife you were once. You need to get out of this bed and start living again.”
He was keeping his anger in check. Barely. Ellis had warned him against being too blunt with the message. Anthony needed to persuade her of her own volition, not scare her into submission. She was already scared and frightened people couldn’t be empowered. He gripped the edge of the mattress while he spoke and was now squeezing it so hard that his hands were cramping. She wasn’t ignoring him, as he figured she would, or mocking him with her famous rolling eyes, as she was fond of employing; she was staring back at him blankly, a deer caught in headlights, too dumb to know what to do.