Coming Back (3 page)

October 2013

Christie

The loudest things in the room as we ate our dinner were the clock and the click and scrape of knives and forks on plates.  It was nothing like the meals we used to have while growing up.

We used to talk and laugh.  My mom would constantly rein in Amber’s potty mouth while Dad and I cracked up.  We had goals, dreams, news, all the good stuff.

Now it seemed that we were walking on eggshells around each other.  They didn’t want to make any of the normal venting complaints that people made because they didn’t want to upset me or seem ungrateful about my so-called miraculous return.  They didn’t want to talk about anything good that was going on in their lives, if there was anything, because everything in mine was obviously down the toilet and, again, they didn’t want to upset me.  It was like we were all strangers.

I looked around the table and saw my dad staring intently at his plate while my mom looked furtively from him to Amber and back again, avoiding eye contact with me.  Amber, for her part, looked openly miserable.  She’d never been so quiet, not even when I came home after Nick died.

It felt like my insides were made of lead, everything felt so
heavy
and it was all being pulled down, down, down.  I was nothing but a burden to them now.  They’d said their goodbyes to me long ago and now they had to go through this, to deal with me again.  I felt sorry for them.

Amber, apparently deciding she’d pushed her pasta around for long enough, stood and made to pick up her plate.  She’d been sleeping in her old room every night since I returned, and out of the blue I came up with something to ask her, something that might break this awkward, awful silence.

“Hey, Amber, how’s Trent?  He must be missing you.  You know you don’t have to keep an eye on me all the time, right?  I’m not going anywhere.  Like…
anywhere.
”

My sister’s eyes flashed sideways to my mom and then back down to her plate as she picked it up.  “We broke up.  I moved back in about eight months ago.”

“Oh.  I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t worry, I’m over it.”

“I thought you two were so good together, why the split?”

“Because he’s an asshole.”

“Amber! At the dinner table? Really?”  My mom had never really completely come to terms with how her daughters weren’t dainty princesses.

For a fraction of a second I thought I saw a defiant smirk raise the corner of Amber’s mouth, and I waited with bated breath, hoping she’d do her usual thing and say “Oops, I mean he’s a rectum, mother, a real shitty one.  Pass the ketchup,” or something that would scandalize Mom even more.  Instead, she looked at me, and her expression dropped again as she mumbled something about being sorry.

The message was unspoken, but clear to me.  By coming back, I’d made their lives worse, not better.  Amber cleared her plate and stacked it in the dishwasher before circling the table to my side and giving me a hug.

“Love you, sis,” she said.

“You too,” I replied.

An additional weight of guilt hit me because of what I’d thought about them.  This was my
family
.  I didn’t really believe they resented the fact that I was alive, but I still felt detached from them, from everyone, from life itself.  I was sinking.

Amber went to the living room and I gave up on dinner, rising to clear my plate as she had.

“You look exhausted, Christie.  Are those pills working at all?” my dad asked.

“Yes,” I lied.

I knew as well as anybody about the dark circles under my eyes that he was talking about.  The truth was that I’d given up on the pills, though.  They kept me asleep, but it came at such great expense that I didn’t think it was worth it.

When I went to bed and lost the battle against weariness, I was instantly transported back to the forest I thought I was going to die in.  Without the pills, I woke up screaming countless times every night. 
With
the pills, I was trapped there until morning.

There was nothing restful about fighting for your life all by yourself in the dark.  When the drugs wore off, I woke up sweating and with my heart pounding fit to burst out of my chest.  No thank you.

“OK, well, don’t be afraid to let us know if they aren’t.  We can probably get the dosage increased or try something else if that’s the case, alright?” he said.

“Anybody want to watch ‘The Right Stuff’ with me?” Amber called out.  “New series starts tonight.”

“The singing show?” I called back.

“Yeah.”

“OK.”

“Alright, Christie?” my dad repeated.

“Sure, no problem.”

I fled to the living room before the discussion could get any deeper.  Amber sat in a chair, I sat on the sofa, and after a while our mom joined us, sitting near me.

My family had seemed hell-bent on keeping me away from the TV, radio, and the Internet since I’d been back, so I was glad for a bit of mind-numbing entertainment.  They said it was to stop me from listening to the sensationalistic news reports speculating about what I’d been through and, again, it was in aid of keeping me from getting upset. 

Sadly, it seemed that ‘The Right Stuff’ had fallen prey to the same pitfalls that other reality TV shows had.  Blatantly manufactured drama abounded, taking away the focus on talent that it used to pride itself on.

Right from the start it was obvious that the producers, or writers, or whoever was in charge of these things, were setting up a grand face-off between a country singer by the name of Bert Dunlop and a pretty blonde woman named Beatrice Holt, whose husband was a billionaire technology tycoon, of all things.

It sounded like the set-up for a joke.  Mr. Holt probably owned the TV show.  I was ready to zone out completely but, when they finally moved past the awful filler-auditions and arrived at the real music, Bert was good and Beatrice performed a cover of The Verve’s ‘The Drugs Don’t work’ with a voice that could tear your heart in half or send it shooting into the sky like a firework.

I liked it before, but this was the first time I’d ever felt like the song was all about me.  It wasn’t easy to listen to.

All the marginally-good television in the world couldn’t have delayed the inevitable though, and eventually I dragged myself upstairs as if there was an electric chair where my bed was.  It was soft and warm, but it offered no comfort.

I sat on my bed with my back against the walls, right in the corner, and hugged my legs as I looked out at the room I grew up in, turned alien by the soft illumination of the night light and the crowded boxes stacked against one wall, all my possessions that my family had packed up from mine and Nick’s house.

Every sound held ominous potential, and as the hours wore on, I felt myself beginning to lose another round with the Sandman.  Sounds mixed with dreamlike hallucinations and that gust of wind turned into a scream, the branches of a tree being blown around against the roof becoming somebody trying to get into the house.

I pinched myself, I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands, I made myself sit as bolt upright as I could.  It was no use, there was no escape…

*****

My internal monologue is no voice of reason, it is hysterical, it has been driven insane.  And it’s catching.

Run!  Run!  RUN!  He’s coming!

It screams at me, and I force my legs to listen to the shrieking voice in my head and nothing else.  I must not listen to the sounds of cracking twigs and thudding footsteps behind me, or I might curl up and die.  Or worse,
he
might catch me again.

The voice is crazy, but it has only one goal, and that is for me to live.  I don’t have any better ideas, so I do what it says.

The trees seem to crowd together in every direction I try to run, their branches scratch me until I feel like my skin has been taken off, but I’m still running.  Ahead of me I see a gap, with some bright light beyond, and I stumble towards it with the last of my strength.

I’m almost there when a grip like a bear trap bites my ankle and I slam into the ground hard enough to knock all the breath out of me.  I gasp at the receding light as I am dragged back into the dark forest, my fingernails tearing off as I try to find something to cling to.

There is nothing. I am not strong enough.  The monster with no face twists my head until I hear creaking sounds coming from my neck and shooting pains…

*****

“Wake up! Wake up!”

I blinked, and the scene dissolved and reformed in front of me.  My mom was holding my shoulders and shaking me.  It took me a moment to realize it was
me
who was screaming.

With great effort, I gulped and focused on my mom.  My neck was in agony. I must have fallen asleep sitting up.  My pajamas were drenched in sweat, rivers of it were pouring down my face, and I was panting like I’d been through the most intense workout of my life.

My mom pulled me into a hug and rocked back and forth as if I was a baby.  I had no energy to fight the unrighteous indignation, it was all I could do to try and breathe as I stared over her shoulder at the feet of my sister and father.

I squeezed my eyes shut against the world and cried as my mom shushed me and stroked my matted hair.  I hated being seen like this.

Maybe it would have been better if I
had
died in that forest, or in that house in the woods.  Then my family could remember me the way I used to be.  Not this.  Just by being here, by ‘making it’, I sent my past to the grave along with my future.  My stomach clenched painfully and I curled into my mother even more.

Dean

It was time to break out the big guns.  I’d seen Christie sitting at the back porch of her house, staring into the distance, time after time.  We all had, every local police officer had taken shifts specifically guarding the Jayne residence.

We parked out in the street and regularly did a patrol around the house, the rear garden of which backed on to a small forest with nothing separating it but a waist-high fence.  Officially we were on the lookout for anything suspicious, but the reality boiled down to chasing away nosy photographers.

Oh, they were vocal about how they had the right to make life as tough as they possibly could for Christie, but they didn’t count on how far we’d go to protect one of our own.  They lost interest surprisingly quickly when the next big story came out.

Captain Lewin let the Jaynes know it was probably safe to not keep the curtains closed all the time and that they could start easing back into a more normal life.  Shortly after that, Christie started spending her days on the back porch, and every time I saw her, it broke my heart.

It looked like she was losing weight instead of gaining it, and her skin was so pale except for those bags under her eyes.  I was no doctor, but it looked like it was bad and getting worse.

I’d tried to spark up conversations with her, but although she remembered my name after all these years without my needing to reintroduce myself, she didn’t really seem able to focus, and eventually she’d just go quiet and start staring out into that forest again.  There was no telling what she saw there, but I’d have wagered my monthly salary that it was nothing good.

I thought about her every day, the beautiful girl from school and the haunted woman on the porch.  I thought about what her sister had said the day she came back and similar little comments her family continued to make.  Nobody, not her family, friends, or shrinks seemed to be getting through to her, and I couldn’t stand it.  Everywhere I went, I felt like a magnet was pulling at my very core, telling me to go to her.

Today was my day off but I’d had a quick conversation with Rusty, who was on Jayne-duty, and confirmed that Christie was in her usual spot.  Five minutes later, I pulled up in front of their house.

I walked around to the rear passenger door like the driver for some important businessman and opened it.  King leapt out, tennis ball in mouth, and immediately set off to sniff everything.

“Hey.  Hey!  Get back here.”

King came back, his jaws rapidly opening and closing on his prize to adjust his grip, or to kill it, or whatever it is dogs think about doing to tennis balls.  I dropped to one knee as if I was a coach giving a pep talk.

“Sit.  OK, King, big day.”  I put my hands on his sides to hold his attention.  “Now, I think we can both agree that I don’t ask for much.  The time you ate my shoelaces, I didn’t get mad, did I?  I did not.  I give you everything you need, and even when you were a puppy I never took you to the park to help me pick up chicks.  You’ve had it easy.  You know that, right?”

King’s eyes shifted from left to right, and then back to me with an expression that said something along the lines of ‘good grief, man.’

“I’m taking you to meet somebody.  Somebody special, King.  There’s nobody like her in the whole world.  Best behavior, she really needs a friend right now.  Here, ball.”

I tried to grab the ball in King’s mouth, and he growled as if he was going to tear my arm off.

“Fine, keep it, but if you pull any of that with Christie, I swear I’ll turn you into a rug for in front of the fireplace.  Heel.”

I rose to my feet and stepped around the back of my car, spotting Rusty in his police cruiser and waving at him.  He wound down his window.

“Did you just propose to your dog?” he called out.

I flipped him the bird.

“Did he say yes?  I don’t think that’s even legal in California yet.”

Rusty didn’t need to be dignified with any further attention, so I walked to the left of the Jayne property with King sticking close by on one side and their fence on the other.  More and more of their back yard came into view until I could see it in its entirety, along with Christie sitting on her seat with a light blanket over her lap.  I leaned against the fence.

“Hey Christie.”

Christie startled slightly and wiped her eyes with the back of one hand as she searched out the source of the sound in a bit of a daze.  She blinked a few times as if clearing away some sleep and licked her lips.

“Oh, hi… uh… uh… Dean.”

“How you feeling today?”

“Good,” she lied through her teeth.  “A bit tired.”

“They not giving you any pills for that?” I asked.

“The drugs don’t work,” she said, and looked away as if remembering something.

She looked as if she was drifting off again, so I hurried to keep her talking.  “I brought somebody I wanted you to meet.”

I patted the top of the fence and King jumped up on his hind legs, peering over with unabashed curiosity.  Christie looked back, and I saw a spark of interest for the first time.

“A Shepherd?  I always wanted one of them, they’re my favorite.  What’s her name?”

“
His
name is King,” I said grandly.

“Any reason for that?”

“He thinks he’s master of all he sees.  You want to throw the ball for him a few times?”

Christie couldn’t see it, but mentioning the words ‘throw’ and ‘ball’ in the same sentence sent his tail into a wide swishing blur of happiness.  Her mouth pulled to one side and she looked doubtful.

“Oh… I don’t know… I…”

I snapped my fingers on the other side of the fence and King dropped back to the ground, bunching himself up before leaping and scrambling over the top.  His tail didn’t stop wagging as he turned and looked at me, and I in turn pointed at Christie.

“Don’t look at me, with that attitude you just gave me on the street, give the ball to her.”

King made a beeline for the steps and dropped the ball right on Christie’s lap.  I waited with bated breath as she stared at the big dog, hoping against hope that she would engage in some way, to maybe make a friend who she could be sure wouldn’t judge her at all.

For his part, King looked from the ball to Christie’s face about fifteen times, then to me once, and then repeated the whole charade another time.  At last she picked it up and threw it to the far end of the yard.

King scrambled for it, failing to gain purchase on the hard wood of the porch and spending a few seconds doing the canine version of the running man dance before making it onto the grass and going in for the kill.  He brought it back to Christie, chomping on it a few times along the way to make sure it wasn’t going to try any funny business.

I saw Christie’s mom peek out of the window just behind her, and I raised my hand in greeting.   She tentatively returned the gesture and watched her daughter, who was totally engrossed with the show King was putting on.

“Good boy!” she said with the most enthusiasm I’d heard out of her when King dropped the ball in her lap again.

Christie bent down and wrapped her arms around him, rubbing his side as he panted happily for a moment before urging her to not forget about the ball.  She threw it and King, having learned quickly, didn’t attempt full speed until he could tear up the grass.

“How old is he?” she asked.

“About three and a half years. I’ve had him basically since he’s been weaned.”

“Is he a police dog?”

“Well, no, he’s a bit silly in the head for that kind of work.  He’s smart when he wants to be though.  He comes from a long line of police dogs, really good ones.”

“He’s beautiful.”

“Don’t say that too loudly, or he won’t ever leave,” I said.

“That’d be fine, wouldn’t it, King?”  Christie scratched behind his ear before throwing the ball again.

Distracted as she was by King’s antics, she managed to hold up her side of the conversation and I felt about the same as I had when we were lab partners in school for a week.  When you were a high school kid around a girl as pretty as her, everything was hyper-critical.

I stammered my way through that project, trying to be witty and charming, and it didn’t matter that I was the football hero, it didn’t matter that I wasn’t exactly hurting for romantic options.  With Christie, I felt like I had to be the best I could be.

After about twenty minutes of chatting, Mrs. Jayne poked her head out of the back door and said it was time for lunch.

“OK, I’m coming,” said Christie before turning back to the tireless dog and giving him a good rub.  “It was nice to meet you, King.  Thanks for bringing him over, Dean, he’s awesome.  I guess I’ll see you around.”

“Well, I was actually wondering something,” I said.

Christie stood up and paused.  “What’s that?”

“Would you, maybe, want to come out sometime and help me give King a bit more exercise?  If I keep on bringing him back here, it’s only a matter of time before he destroys your dad’s garden.”

Christie folded her arms over herself defensively and looked doubtfully at the German Shepherd, who tilted his head to the side and wagged his tail.  I saw her gulp and lick her lips again.

“Well… OK.  I… that might be nice.  I guess you know where to find me, huh?”

“I’ve got some very promising leads I’m following up on.  I’m sure I can track you down.  Thursday’s my next day off, sound good?”

“Alright, see ya Dean.”

“Bye Christie.  King!” I whistled at him and moved to the side when he bounded over the fence again as Christie disappeared inside.

By the time I was buckled into the driver’s seat again, I couldn’t stop myself from smiling.  I looked in the rear view mirror and saw what could only be described as a smug look on King’s face.

“OK, you still got it.”