“What’s going on here?” Jay asked himself as he crumbled dry leaves between his fingers. It looked like more than just neglect contingent upon failing health. It looked as if Abe had deliberately poisoned every plant in the place.
Jay started for the garage, intending to pull out a shovel and test the hard-pack soil in the front yard when a shriek from inside the house drove any such ideas from his mind.
Elizabeth!
He recognized her voice, recognized her cry as one of pain and fear, not just the petulance of a ten year old. He slammed through the front door. Elizabeth stood in the center of the family room. One hand cupped her chin, from which blood was flowing in a steady stream.
“She’s dying, she’s dying,” Anna whimpered from her corner on the couch. Jay took in the scene at once. Thad was not in the room. Thirteen-year-old Josh stood defiantly with his back to the television screen, on which an electronic Mario whistled and burbled unnoticed. A heavy glass ashtray was clenched in his fist. One edge was starred and stained with deep red.
“Shit!” Jay said, “Now what.” Even as spoke he was lifting Elizabeth and rushing her down the hall to the front bathroom. He heard the back door slam as he disappeared around the corner-that would be Linda and Ellen and Mitch. They could take care of the kids in the family room.
He set Elizabeth on the toilet seat and gently pried her fingers away from her chin. The skin was sliced, shallowly and neatly, for perhaps an inch just to the right of her mouth. Jay dabbed at it with a hand cloth from the rack next to the sink. It was bleeding heavily, but it looked like the blood was more superficial than serious.
A hand touched his shoulder. It was Linda.
“How is she?” Linda did not try to keep the fear from her voice.
“All right, I think,” he answered. He held a clean hand cloth to the cut and pressed. Elizabeth winced but didn’t say anything. Her eyes were still clouded with tears, but she was no longer screaming.
“More frightened than anything.”
“Let me see,” Linda said. Jay gently released the pressure on the cut. He pulled the cloth away. The wound was now a thin red line, oozing lightly but no longer flowing.
“Where are the band-aids?” Linda asked.
“Up there,” Jay said, motioning with his head toward the medicine cabinet. Linda opened the mirrored door and rummaged for a few seconds in the depths. She took out a box of band-aids and small pair of scissors. With the deftness honed by years of motherhood and family crises she snipped at the band-aid until it was butterfly shaped.
“Move a minute.”
Jay shifted away from Elizabeth. Linda carefully positioned the butterfly band-aid on the cut, then lifted Elizabeth and sat down on the toilet seat, her daughter securely on her lap.
“It’s all right, honey,” Linda murmured. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
Jay reached out and touched his daughter’s forehead. As he moved, he noticed that Abe was standing in the hallway, watching the proceedings intently.
“She’s fine, Dad,” Jay said in an attempt to reassure the old man. “Just an accident.”
“Huh-uh,” Elizabeth said. “Josh hit me.”
“What!” Jay swung his attention back to the small, pale face pressed against his wife’s shoulder.
“Josh hit me.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to play. With the video game. He didn’t want me to, and he grabbed that glass thing and hit me.”
Jay surged to his feet. Linda grabbed his arm and held him tightly.
“Jay, please, try to stay calm and find out what happened.”
“Calm! Stay calm! That little bastard nearly kills your daughter and you tell me to stay calm.”
Linda blanched at the anger in his voice, then her face flushed red and hot.
Jay was out the door in an instant. He shouldered past his father, not noticing the distanced, glazed expression in the old man’s eyes, not noticing that as he passed his father Jay almost knocked him off balance. The old man slumped against the wall. Already Jay was in the family room yelling. But Mitch was there also, running interference, hunched aggressively between his son and Jay.
Jay accused. Mitch defended. Josh burst into tears and threw the glass ashtray. It spun in the bright winter light, catching sunlight and refracting it in rainbow spirals as it shattered the family room window and disappeared into the dead yard.
The crash of glass startled both Mitch and Jay, enough at any rate for the nearly crazed fathers to catch their breaths. They stared at each other, realizing with a unanimity that was itself breathtaking how close they had come to blows. Mitch’s fists were clenched at his sides. Jay’s breath was ragged and shallow, and his voice shook as he spoke.
“Anna, come here.” She came. Without a word, she slipped across the room and stood behind her father. Jay took her by the hand and led her down the hall. As he passed the bathroom, he looked in at Linda and Elizabeth.
“We’re leaving. Now,” he announced. “Anna, pack your things and Elizabeth’s.”
“Yes, Daddy.” She disappeared into the bedroom the girls had shared.
“You stay here with Elizabeth,” Jay said to his stunned wife. He rushed down the hallway and threw his and Linda’s things into their still-open suitcases, hammered the Samsonites shut, and yanked them up. Without speaking to anyone, he stalked through the hall and out the front door. He thrust the unoffending cases into the trunk of the car, slamming the lid hard enough to jostle his key ring loose. The keys dropped to the pavement with a harsh, raucous clatter. Blood throbbed in his temples as he leaned over to retrieve them.
He re-entered the house, carefully avoiding any words with Ellen, who now fluttered protectively around her boys. Thad was in the family room as well, Jay noted, his long frame slouched in Mattie’s favorite chair, his feet hooked over the arm. The boy’s shoes were filthy.
He helped Anna close her bag and Elizabeth’s, then took them outside as well and, moving like an automaton in spite of his mounting fury, went inside for a final time. By then Linda and Elizabeth were on their feet, standing together in the bathroom doorway.
“Jay,” Linda began. “Don’t you think…”
“Think, nothing. I’m leaving. Now.”
He swept Elizabeth into his arms and carried her outside. Anna followed, her eyes dark with unwept tears. Jay sat Elizabeth on the back seat, then held the door open for Anna and waited until both girls were securely seatbelted in. He looked up. Linda was on the door-step. He could see Abe’s silver hair glistening in the darkness behind his wife.
For a moment, Jay faltered. This is absurd, he heard himself argue. You haven’t even talked to the boy; you don’t know what really happened. Elizabeth is fine; she probably won’t even have a scar in a couple of weeks-shallow cuts like that bleed like hell but don’t really do much damage. Why are you acting like this, like Attila the Hun with raging hemorrhoids, setting out to rape and ravage and slaughter.
For a moment, he almost turned back to the girls and unbuckled their seatbelts and helped them from the car. Part of him wanted to. But that part was weaker than the part that repeated incessantly Get out get out get out. Even that part knew that Elizabeth’s injury had little to do with the need to be away-away from obsessive Ellen and her obnoxious brood, away from Mitch’s unfeeling superciliousness, away from…
Away from this house!
Admit it, Jay old boy, that’s the real thing. Away from this house. He swallowed convulsively and gestured for Linda to get into the car. As she passed him, she reached out for his arm again, as if she were his mother trying to help him realize for himself the enormity of his mistake before things went too far.