The separation guilt returned to me like a waterfall crashing down on my conscience.
I could feel the heels of my shoes burning my feet with each step. I could hear myself panting in rhythm as I fell instinctively into the habit of pacing my breathing. Houses seemed to whiz by at a snail’s pace as I climbed a steep hill. Each footfall made a grinding gravely sound like molars gnashing together.
The smells of autumn used to excite me. But as I huffed and puffed, sucking in the dander of the season, the smell of pumpkin and the trees and the leaves, the damp pungent odor of the blended convections of October, it made me nauseous. To this day those smells make me want to vomit.
And what of Catherine? The image of her cold and bluing corpse was etched vividly and perpetually in my mind. But she was safe in heaven if there was such a place. Or was she an unrepentant sinner like me? No, Catherine was a saint. She had to have been to have put up with me.
My thighs began to cramp and my knees to throb but I held my pace. My guilt fused with my fear and pushed me forward despite my staggering fatigue. Sarah needed me; and as long as I was moving forward I felt a little safer from my irrational demons. I pushed myself harder despite the taste of blood trickling into my mouth from my lungs as they were shredded by the steady pulse of cold air which I forced into them. I needed to get to Sarah. She needed me. Near the end of this road lay my house; and in my house, my daughter. Or would she be there? I suspended my jog and I pulled my cell phone from my pocket. I placed my hand on the stitch that was developing in my side and I tried to catch my breath. The road was almost pitch-black. The distant sky over the lake behind me retained a soft glow but it did little to emanate light and nothing to comfort me. I spied the surrounding woods for danger. I looked down at my phone and I dialed my house phone but found that there was no signal. I was too near the lake; too far from the cell-towers to get reception.
I bowed at my waist and touched my toes, or came as close to them as I could, trying to stretch my stiffened calf and thigh muscles and then I resumed my jog.
I tried to listen for the cars that approached me from behind but one car with only its fog lights lit surprised me and sent my pulse racing. The driver swerved to miss me at the last instant, then blared his horn and screeched his brakes and tires. I jumped and nearly dove into a culvert, staggering and stumbling to keep my balance thinking that I had just been attacked by a monster from the shadows. My heart raced even faster, pounding as if trying to evict itself from my chest. I stopped and tried to regain my composure but my eyes darted in every direction and the shapes of the shadows formed images of horrid creatures. If the driver shouted an obscenity at me I never heard a word.
I momentarily wrapped my hands around my body and I rubbed my arms in a vein effort to warm myself. I laughed out loud at how ridiculous I was for being afraid of a passing car; afraid of the dark.
And then I remembered:
Sarah
!
I jogged again, my legs weak and unsteady. I was still scared to death and I stumbled and trotted up and down several more hills until my driveway surprised me by arriving at my feet. My house lay down a long gravel drive sided by trees. It was a sprawling white ranch with black shutters and an overgrown yard. The windows were dark. Nobody home, I supposed. As I approached my front door a motion light illuminated my front walkway and I could see a yellow ribbon taped across the front porch warning that trespass was forbidden; that my house was a crime scene.
2
I steadied the steering wheel of my car and wrestled with my pocket to free my cell phone. I fished it free and dialed Catherine’s mother again.
“Hello.”
“Rita, it’s me, Mathew.”
“Oohh, Mathew, what have you done?” Her thick southern accent elongated her syllables.
“What have I done?” The fucking police! They had me tried and convicted. They must have already put ideas into her head. “I haven’t done anything.”
“The police said they think you killed her. My baby! How could you?” She was sobbing through her words.
“Rita, it’s me;
Mathew
. You can’t possibly believe them. I would never hurt Catherine. She was my life.”
“That’s not what I was told! Who is this Amber?” More sobs.
I was guilty of this indiscretion. This I could explain though. This was no motive for murder if there even had been a murder. I needed to speak to her in person. I knew that I could convince her of my innocence if she would just give me a chance to explain.
“I’ll explain Amber in a little while. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
I accelerated the car to fifty miles an hour though the speed-limit was only thirty-five.
“No!” She screamed into the phone. “Don’t you dare come to this house!” Her sobs were angry now.
“But Rita…, you don’t understand…”
“I understand that you cheated on my daughter!” She took a deep breath and I could hear her wipe her nose. “I understand that you killed my daughter to be with this….this….this
Amber!”
“No, you have it all wrong!” How could I convince her over the phone? I needed to see her. I needed to persuade her of my innocence. I needed to get Sarah before Rita poisoned her mind against me.
“Don’t you dare come to this house!” “I’m coming to get Sarah.” I paused to try to temper my tone of voice. “If you’ll give me five minutes you’ll know that I didn’t kill Catherine. I don’t think she was murdered at all.”
“Don’t you dare come
here
! You’re not taking this little girl anywhere.” Her voice was indignant.
“She’s my daughter. I’m coming to get her whether you think I’m innocent or not. She is my daughter and she needs me.”
“She doesn’t need the man who took her mother from her.”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes. Have her ready. This is not a request!” I hung up the phone.
* * *
I could see Sarah run to the window as my car pulled into the driveway, her reddened round face pressed against the glass, her little nose smooshed like a pig’s snout. I got out of my car and made my way to the front door with no regard of my phobia. My mind was too focused on my task to think of my fear. Sarah’s eyes were red with tears, her cheeks pink from wiping them and she had dark grey smears around her eyes making her look like a pathetic baby raccoon.
Rita pulled her away from the window while Sarah kicked, screamed and cried, tears streaming down her face. That broke my heart.
I saw hatred in Rita’s eyes as she glared out at me. That made me angry.
I pounded on the door and leaned into the door-bell. I waited. Then I beat on the door some more. Rage filled my chest over the frustration of my situation. Sarah was trapped like a rabbit in a snare and I could do nothing to free her.
I couldn’t break in. The drama would only upset Sarah all the more and likely result in my incarceration. I didn’t want to call the police for help. I’d had enough of them for a lifetime. But I had a right to be with my daughter. I had a right to be there for her, and she for me, to share our grief. Rita was legally in the wrong, but what could I do? I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, leave without Sarah. I decided to wait there for as long as it took. I sat on the stoop and folded my arms. Rita would have to leave eventually, if for no other reason to go to her daughter’s funeral! She wouldn’t dare call the police. The police would be forced to give Sarah to me, her father.
I stood up and I leaned against the porch pillar. I was determined and impatient. I stood and I pressed my hands to the glass of the front picture window and I stared in at Sarah until she disappeared from view as Catherine’s mother dragged her out of the room. My heart was aching for Sarah. I didn’t know what to do, so I did the only thing I could do. I prayed to my God to help me to get Sarah back. I was not a devout believer in God and I had no faith that he would help me as he had never seemed to aid me before no matter how hard I had prayed but I must admit that the hairs on my arms stood up on end when after a few minutes of praying I heard the rear screen door slam shut as Rita’s voice cried out “Sarah, you get back here!”
But Sarah raced around the corner her little bare feet spanking the pavement like meat patties being slapped on a skillet. Her face was contorted in hysterics and her nose dripped with snot as she leapt into my arms and I held her like it would be the last time I would ever get to hold her.
I heard footsteps quickly pacing from around the corner of the house so I ran to my car and opened the driver-side door and shoveled Sarah into the passenger seat. Rita was outside screaming at me while tears of rage dribbled down her face as she approached us and then pounded on the hood of my automobile. She was dressed in only a disheveled nightgown and her feet were bare.
“You give me back that child right this instant!” she screamed, her eyes red with hate.
I wondered how she could have so little faith in me as to doubt my innocence without even the courtesy of a conversation. I shook my head at her and I backed out of the driveway. Rita, who had dropped to her knees and held her hands out like angry bear claws, disappeared from view as my high-beams slid off of her.
“Put your seatbelt on baby.” I smiled down at Sarah. She looked so pathetic, her face red from crying, her blond hair mussed from the wind. She wore a Disney t-shirt with a large Mini-mouse plastered across the front that I had bought her when we were on vacation in Orlando during that summer.
Sarah buckled her seatbelt and stretched to lay her head against my leg. I stroked my fingers through her hair as I drove.
“Are you okay sweetheart?” I rubbed her back.
“Yes daddy. But grandma wouldn’t let me leave.” She said with a pout of sadness in her voice. “She said you were a bad man but I told her you weren’t.”
I drove until I reached the only hotel near our house and Sarah fell asleep nestled safely beneath my arm as I lay in bed wondering how my life could have taken such a drastic turn. I wondered if Catherine was looking down at me and watching as my life fell apart.
3
It is strange, but I don’t ever remember being alone in the dark without being scared before that time at Rita’s house while I fretted over Sarah’s confinement. I had been scared ever since I was a little boy, so much so that even though my father insisted that it was pure quackery, my mother, posing in the rare role of the fervent matriarch, forced my father, under threat of divorce, to take me to see a psychiatrist.
I remember playing with a friend down the street from my parents house and having so much fun that I did not realize that the sun was fading, and once I did realize that it was dark I abandoned my friend and ran home in a fit of hysterics. I didn’t think that there was anything wrong with me. I thought that all kids were afraid of the dark. I learned later that most of the other kids were also afraid of the dark, but not to the point of irrationality. So my mother put her foot down and made my father take me to a psychiatrist at great expense because we didn’t have health insurance.
My conversation with the
quack psychiatrist,
as my father called him to his face (I believe I must have been no more than eight or nine years old at the time), was followed, during our drive home, with one of the few loving and sincere conversations I ever had with my father; a conversation in which he explained to me that I must not only overcome my fear of the dark but that I also must not let on to anyone that such a fear existed within me lest I be ridiculed by my schoolmates. I gave him my word but to tell the truth I broke my vow and confided in the only person outside of my family whom I would ever let know my secret. The pressure of subduing my overt fear was too great and I had to confide in someone. It was shortly after my visit to the psychiatrist that my soon-to-be best friend Tommy Sullivan moved into my neighborhood. I disclosed my phobia to him and him alone once I realized that we were best friends and that I could trust him.
Tommy became my protector of sorts. Despite my small stature, no one dared pick on me for fear that they would have to answer to Tommy Sullivan. On the few rare occasions when they did cross the line Tommy put a thumping on them.
I stared at a watermark on the dark ceiling above my adopted bed thinking of how it would be nice to have Tommy Sullivan to talk to. But I hadn’t talked to Tommy since shortly before I got married. He was upset that I didn’t have him as my best man at my wedding, but Catherine refused even to let me invite him based solely on the basis of the stories I told her of his violent nature.
But my true thoughts were elsewhere. My stomach was still in knots now that I had time to think about the perils of my predicament. The only thing keeping me from losing complete control of my nerves was the warmth of Sarah’s little body next to mine; a reminder of my life’s purpose. She was my constant intimation that I had to fight to the end to prove my innocence; but my innocence of what? Murder? Was it true that Catherine was murdered? The thought was absurd. I was with her the entire night. She may have slipped out of bed for a glass of water but how would she have gotten back into bed and nestled me if she were dead? There was no sign of an intruder. No broken window-glass; no loud startling noise; no busted lock. Besides, who would sneak into our house and quietly kill my wife while ignoring the other lives in the house? What had they gained?
And there was no way, absolutely no way, that Amber came all the way to Cleveland Ohio, tracked me down, and killed my wife. Our connection was intimate but we shared the mutual understanding that our families were more important than our relationship was. Amber understood that our amalgamation was noncommittal; almost pretend. We never planned to actually meet. Neither of us had anything to gain by abandoning our families and uniting. Besides, Amber was not the sort of person who would take a life. We role- played and as we did we also got to know each other quite well. Amber was a nice young woman in her mid thirties stuck in a droll marriage to a man who paid little attention to her. She was a mother; a house-wife. She lived on a five acre parcel in the sticks of Kansas. She had once been a striptease dancer so her moral character could be called into question if one were a prude, but she was just a child at that time, a victim of a molesting father out on her own at the age of sixteen. She did what she had to do to survive. She was not psychotic. She was not in Cleveland.
That
made no sense. The detective was reaching; trying to bait me. He must have thought I was as guilty as a vice.
No, I could not be taken alive; or at least not lying down. Sarah needed me. It was bad enough that she would have to spend the rest of her life without her mother; knowing that her mother had been murdered; knowing that I was a prime suspect.
Would Sarah someday wonder if I had done it?
I had heard of and read so many newspaper stories about falsely accused and convicted individuals; innocents with the wholesome misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time or who were ill-fated enough to so closely resemble the actual perpetrators of a crime that the jury was convinced of their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I never thought that I’d be one of them.
Up to that point in time I had been a major proponent of the death penalty for all but the most accidental of murders.
Fry the bastards
! An eye for an eye! Only when I realized that I was in danger of being the scapegoat for a crime that I had not committed did I change my point of view. I knew that I might soon be Sparky’s next subject.
But how does one prove that one
didn’t
do something? I didn’t have much of an alibi. I was at the scene of the crime. But there was no contrivance.
No
weapon. But how was
Catherine killed? What sort of instrument would there have been? There were no marks on her body. I would have noticed if someone had hit her in the head; there would have been blood. Poison perhaps? But how and who? And how would the cops have jumped to
that
conclusion so quickly? They knew something that I did not. They had a weapon of some sort; or knew that there was a weapon; knew that she did not die of natural causes. But what could it have been?
A dull headache gradually gripped my head like a steel vice and I reached up with my index fingers and massaged my temples and closed my eyes and tried to blank my mind and to forget for a while where I was and why I was there.
The hotel room was like many I had stayed in. Not high class, but not quite dumpy; no cockroaches or bed-bugs but few amenities. The linens smelled clean enough. The quilt was the kind of neutral beige you find in such places with a red royal pattern. The quilt, though, was slightly damp. Not damp from being to quickly removed from the dryer, but rather musty from too much exposure to the moisture in the air. The furniture was the built- in sort of indestructible prefabricated mass produced and maple colored Formica that was crafted for so many such suites before the seventies. The carpeting was new, or at least newer; a brown durable Berber of thick and tightly woven yarn. The heavy gold curtains were drawn, by me, to block out the hastily approaching morning sunlight.
I needed to sleep, but every time I tried I would find myself still
thinking
twenty minutes later. I could almost feel the windy wake of the earth’s rotation rushing too quickly for my prelation, forcing daylight upon me before I could steal so much as a nap. I flipped and folded and crumpled my pillow for the umpteenth time, trying to delude myself into thinking that it was the un-moldable hotel pillow that was prolonging my exhaustion; denying me the bliss of torpidity. I watched as the clock crept in ten and twenty minute intervals from midnight until four in the morning. I slept like a corpse until seven a.m., and then played the clock game again until ten, waking from my shallow sleep just long enough to see that time had advanced a few minutes or a quarter of an hour. Sarah, other than occasionally feeling for me in the dark with the extension of a limb or the bob of her head, slept like a stone.
At ten-fifteen I finally decided that I wasn’t going to get any more real sleep and I got out of bed. I opened the curtains and found that the hotel room looked less desirable in the light of day than it had at night. There were coffee stains on the sink outside the bathroom. The carpet, while newer, was badly worn at the threshold and the wallpaper was yellowed and curled in places where it was peeling away from the wall.
After I showered and dressed I sat down on the bed next to Sarah where she still slept. It seemed a shame to have to wake her. She was so beautiful in her sleep; so peaceful.
But was she too peaceful? Was she a bit blue?
I panicked and jostled her awake and you would have thought that I’d won the lottery by my expression when her soft blue eyes opened, peaking sheepishly through strands of her sandy-blond hair. She looked up at me confused.
“What’s wrong daddy?”
I didn’t realize it right away but I was crying; dripping rainforest sized droplets onto her face while smiling in relief; she was not dead. One such experience was enough for a lifetime. Sarah reached out to hug me and I pulled her to me.
“Nothing baby. Nothing at all.”
I couldn’t handle any more death;
certainly not Sarah’s. She was my only reason for living now that Catherine was gone. I was a man that needed to be needed. That is why Sarah was such a Godsend. She came to us just as we had given up all hope of ever having a child. As a parent I became unwittingly addicted to being needed. I never even realize my addiction until Catherine died. Sarah was my crack cocaine.
“Were you thinking about Mommy?” “Yeah, honey. That’s it. I was thinking about Mommy.”
“It’s okay Daddy. Grandma said that
I’ll get to see her when I go to heaven.” “That’s right honey.”
“So can we go to heaven today? I want to see mommy.”
I held her to my chest and rocked her. No one she had known had ever died. No pets. Not even a goldfish. To her, heaven was a place not so far away. I guess in reality that was true.
* * *
Sarah bathed and then we dressed back into the clothes we had worn the day before. We had no choice since we had arrived at the hotel late and exhausted. We had no toiletries so I had the hotel’s maitre’ de send up toothpaste, toothbrushes and deodorant.
We could have gone to the store to buy a change of clothes but I figured that we could stop by the house and get what we needed. If the police were there I we could talk them into a couple of t-shirts and a few pairs of jeans from our laundry room. If no one was there I figured that I would simply have to cross the line; slip through a window or the rear sliding door to the family room (the lock had been broken for years and Catherine had even given up on bugging me to fix it). Money was pretty tight, and there was no telling how long we would have to stay at the hotel or more importantly how soon we could reoccupy the crime scene which was our home. I didn’t have any local family to speak of. My parents were dead and I had no siblings, so the only family I had for hundreds of miles was Catherine’s parents. Staying there was obviously not an option. I didn’t want to spend what little cash I had or the limited available balance on my credit cards on clothes knowing that we might be in desperate straights before long.
Outside of our room we made our way down the long poorly lit hallway decorated with outdated and dingy red and gold wallpaper and stained and worn royal red carpeting. The light fixtures were the plastic globed sort with the grooved lines through which you could easily make out the pot-bellied outline of the incandescent light-bulb. Sarah pressed the elevator button with the down arrow and I could hear the elevator bellow and grunt from a distant place below us before finally opening. From inside the elevator we could hear long cumbersome groans, very much like a recording of whales under water I’d heard on the nature channel, as we descended to the lobby. The Lobby was the only modern aspect of the building. The carpet was hunter-green near the elevators and the lobby itself had ivory marbled floors and bright white and gold walls with newer crystal sconces and a large brass chandelier which towered before the twin glass exit doors. The beauty of the lobby was basically a lie, foretelling of lavish updated rooms which might well be in the offing but were obviously not. A clerk with a round boyish face and a curly mop of black hair in a hunter-green uniform stood behind a long Corian topped desk with an absent minded look on his face and he seemed almost startled when Sarah rang the little bell on the counter even though he had watched us as we approached.
I checked out of our room, optimistic that we could return home before nightfall. In television detective shows it seemed that crime scenes were often tied up for days, weeks or months. That couldn’t be the case in real life, I thought. I often worked from home after-all and I was basically out of business without my computer. I needed to work to pay the bills. They couldn’t deny me the provision of income for my family, I thought.
Sarah and I climbed into my car. We put our seatbelts on and, as usual, she held my hand while I drove. Her face looked tired, but she was smiling a little.
“Are we going to see mommy now?” “No honey, we’re going home to get some clothes.”
“When will we get to see mommy?” “Not for a long time.”
Her upper lip rolled into a pout and she started to cry. I squeezed her little hand.
“I want to go see mommy in heaven.” Given that she was already crying I didn’t want to upset her further. “We’ll see.”
“Will she be normal in heaven?” She tried to control the tremor in her voice.
“What do you mean?”
“Will she be blue, like she was on the bed?”
I squeezed her little fingers again, “No, sweetheart, she isn’t blue anymore.”
Sarah undid her seatbelt and looked up at me to see if I would protest. Normally I would have forced her to buckle it right back up. But her face was begging me to let her crawl under my arm so I lifted my arm and she slid beneath it and up against me. I held her tight. I wanted to make it all better for her, but there was no way to do that. I felt so helpless.