Chapter Three

Chapter Three

 

 

 

 

    The day that the woman who would become my mother re-entered my father’s life was one of the strangest days of anyone’s life. After they left the construction site they went and planned their crime, a crime that would never come to fruition. A crime that, even if it had to happen, never would’ve occurred. A crime that my mother never had the stomach for, a crime that my father salivated at the chance to commit. Murder is a funny thing, my father once told me, it’s so easy to get away with. But impossible to get away from.

    “How do you want this done Colleen?” he asked her back at his place. My mother was very nervous. “What’s wrong?”

    “Thom, I don’t think we should do this.”

    “Why not? I thought you wanted him dead?”

    “No, Thom, you want him dead. I want him out of my life.”

    “Colleen, the only way that’s going to happen is if he is dead.”

    “Go on.” She said as she sighed.

    “Okay. What time does he get off of work?”

    “Five o’clock.”

    “I’ll wait outside the building in the backseat of his car. When he gets in, I’ll let him drive for a while. Now, are you sure that he always goes thru the alley to get to the highway?”

    “Yes, he goes thru it every night.”

    “That’s when I’ll hit him. I’ll hit him in the back of the head, not hard enough to raise suspicion, but hard enough to knock him out. I’ll take over at the wheel, and I’ll drive to the top of the mountain. I’ll stop the car and push it over, the fall should be enough to kill him.”

    “And if it’s not? What then?’”

    “He won’t live Colleen, he will die. I promise you, he will be dead by this time tomorrow. He’ll be dead and we’ll be together. And that’s what you want isn’t it?”

    “Yes, more than anything.”

    “I can’t believe that we’re going to be together again.”

    “Are you sure that killing Ian is the only way? I could ask him for a divorce.”

    “Colleen, this son of a b***h raped you, then forced you to marry him. He’ll never give you a divorce, he beats you, he has to die. This is the only way.”

    Ian McEwing was found at the bottom of the cliff the next evening. He had died from massive head and neck injuries, the odd thing about this was not how he died but the way he died. He had not been hit on the back of the head, he had not been drinking, and no drugs were found in his system. The coroner’s office ruled his death a suicide. Just as it was planned, with one major exception, my father had nothing to do with it. Ian McEwing actually killed himself. At least that’s what my mother believed, she had to.  She had to live with the thought in the back of her head that the man she loved had murdered her husband. It was a thought that she could never shake, a fear that lingered. Lingered until the day that she died.

    That night they met in a park about a mile from the hotel that she and her family were staying in until their house was completed.  The very first thing she asked him when she saw him was:

    “Did you have anything to do with it?” He looked her in the eyes and he told her exactly what she wanted to hear.

    “No.” she sighed and he held her close to him. “I couldn’t go through with it. I can’t believe he did it himself. At least now we can be together.”

    “Not yet we can’t.”

    “Why not?”

    “If people saw us together so shortly after the accident, then they might suspect.”

    “Suspect? Suspect what? Colleen, nothing happened. Ian killed himself.”

    “I know, but still-.”

    “Is it that you don’t want to be with me? Isn’t that funny?”

    “What?”

    “You asked me that very same question on another day in another park. And do you remember my answer?”

    “You said yes.”

    “So, what’s your answer?”

    “I told you last night, yes. I want to be with you.”

    “Then be with me. Who gives a damn about what people think? Colleen I have loved you ever since I met you. We are meant for each other.”

    “I know. But what about Andrew?” My father had not thought about him, about how he would be affected by the death of his father. And by the introduction of a man he had never met, a man who may very well have murdered his father.

    “I will raise Andrew as if he were my own son.” And he did, he treated Andrew the same way Claudius treated Hamlet. But again it was what she wanted to hear, what she needed to hear. They kissed, and they married about two months later.

    Three years later I came along.

    Let me bring you back now to the day after I saved Alison’s life.

    Neither one of us went to school that day, but word spread (as ii has the habit of doing) about what I did. People made me out to be a hero, I wasn’t a hero I just did the right thing. I spent most of that day with Alison, she spent most of the day in bed. Standing on a retaining wall and almost jumping to your death kind of makes you want to stay in bed. I took good care of her that day; I made her feel a tiny amount of joy. I made her laugh and I made her smile. She never mentioned what I had said to her as she stood on that wall, perhaps it was for the best. Or perhaps she forgot, or maybe she didn’t want to hurt my feelings by telling me that there was no way that she could ever possibly love me back. But I didn’t want to dwell on it; I didn’t want to be that amazingly selfish. To think about myself after what had happened the night before. After taking care of her that day she put her hand on my leg and said to me, in that softly sweet voice of hers.

    “Neil, I want to thank you for saving my life. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t shown up and said-said what you said.” I didn’t even want to think about what would’ve or could’ve happened. They didn’t happen, there was no reason to even consider them anymore.

    “Alison, what I said-it’s not important.”

    “Yes, Neil, it is. It was. If you hadn’t told me…then I would’ve jumped.” There was that word again, would’ve.

    “Yeah well, the important thing is that you didn’t. Not what I said, or what I did. It’s that you are still here, that I-that everyone didn’t loose you.” She smiled as she began to cry. “Oh don’t cry. After all the cheering up I did for you today? You’re going to start crying now? If you keep crying, then I’m going to cry. And believe me, you don’t want to see me cry.” She laughed thru her tears.

    “It can’t be that bad.”

    “Are you kidding me? It’s a production that should be on Broadway.” She laughed. “I start trembling then I whimper.” I began to tremble and whimper. “Oh no. Oh, here I go.” I said in a rising cadence. “And then-then the blubbering starts.” I began to blubber, as she laughed harder. “It’s not funny Alison, it’s a serious medical condition. Then the stammering and then the complete breakdown happen.” I let loose with a screaming fit of crying, it was a sight to see. I bounced around her room making blubbering sounds as she laughed hysterically. When I finally sat down on her bed, I composed myself. “Do you still feel like crying?”

    “No.” she said as she continued to laugh. “You were right, that was a production fit for Broadway. I can see the marquee now: Neil Stewart in ‘The Crying Man’.” She laughed some more. To hear her laugh and to see her smile it was hard to believe that the night before she was about to take her smile from us all.  Her father walked into the room, he had just come home from work. “Hi dad.” I stood up.

    “Hello Mr. Matthews.”

    “Hi Neil.” He said as he made his way to my daughter. “I could’ve sworn that I heard laughter coming from in here. Was that you Ali?” he said, we could tell he was kidding.

    “Yeah, Neil was cheering me up all day.” He looked at me with gratitude. “He made me feel so much better.”

    “That’s good, Alison.”

    “Uh, I better be getting home.” I said as I scratched the back of my head in embarrassment.

    “Neil, please stay for dinner.” Alison asked.

    “Sorry, but my dad-he wanted me home by seven. So, I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

    “Okay.” I leaned in and gave her a hug. I walked out of her room and out of the house, a few seconds later I heard Mr. Matthews calling for me.

    “Neil! Wait a minute.” He came up behind me. “Uh, I want to thank you for saving my little girl’s life.”

    “Mr. Matthews, that’s not necessary.”

    “Yes it is Neil. If it wasn’t for you, then I would’ve lost her. Nothing I do can ever repay you for what you’ve done. She told me how you did it too.” I became even more uncomfortable.

    “Uh, Mr. Matthews I-.”

    “She won’t admit this but she feels the same way about you.” I got the same feeling that my father must’ve gotten the day Davis told him that Colleen was in Bakersfield. A feeling of unimaginable proportions, a feeling that words don’t do justice for.

    “I don’t understand, are you telling me that your daughter is in love with me, Mr. Matthews?”

    “That’s exactly what I’m telling you Neil.”

    “But, sir, she can’t be in love with me. She was in love with that Curtis guy for-.”

    “Neil, you are all she ever talks about. I don’t remember her mentioning Curtis once. Not one time. She even told me that if you hadn’t moved here, then she never would’ve had the strength to tell me about my wife. Neil, you keep my daughter safe. Every time she is getting hurt by someone, or all those times her heart has been broken, you’ve been there for her. Every time she breaks up with someone she always says, thank God I have Neil. She loves you, she’s just afraid to admit it.”

    “Why? Why is she afraid?”

    “That I don’t know. You better get home now, I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

    “Thank you Mr. Matthews.”

    “No son, thank you.” And so off I went with the biggest smile on my face that I had ever had. When I got home, my father became inquisitive for the first time in a long time.

    “What are you smiling like that for?” he said as we sat down to eat.

    “Mr. Matthews just gave me the best news I’ve ever heard.”

    “Really? And what might that be?”

    “He says that Alison is in love with me.” He glared at me.

    “Love? You’re only 15, you don’t know what love is yet.”

    “Yes I do, dad. And I love Alison.”

    “No, you don’t. You think you do. But you don’t.”

    “Like mom, right dad?”

    “Don’t you talk to me about your mother.”

    “How old was she when you met, 16?”

    “What’s your point?”

    “That’s only a year older than me. Did she just think she was in love with you or-.” He banged on the table.

    “I told you to never talk to me about your mother! You don’t know what we had to go through to be together!”

    “Yeah, I do dad. Andrew told me everything before he killed himself.”

    “And what did he tell you?”

    “He told me that you killed his father.”

    “His father killed himself! How many times must I say it before someone believes me?! Your mother never believed me either! I did not kill him, I swear it, I have sworn it dozens of times! And I will not speak on this again.” And that was the end of that. We didn’t speak again for most of that year.

    Let me take you back to 1974.

    I was ten years old when my half-brother Andrew McEwing killed himself at the age of 24. I loved Andrew, my mother loved him. She cherished him, he was her first born. He was the one that she had all the dreams for, all the plans. One of those dreams was for Andrew to be a doctor. He went to college, and when he failed out he came home. He began to take a lot of drugs in the summer of ’74. Heroin was his main vice, there were times I caught him shooting up in the bathroom. I had no idea what he was doing, all I knew was that it was killing him. Slowly killing him. By October of that year he had wasted away, he looked more like a zombie  than a person. His condition was not lost on anyone, with the exception of my father. My father at this point was still a decent man, if you discard the way he treated Andrew. For some reason he hated Andrew, I suppose it was because he viewed him as an unnecessary link to a man long dead. It was a horrible way of thinking, but you can’t change a man’s mind can you?

    I remember the night Andrew killed himself. October 25, 1974. He came home at around three in the morning, drunk, as was a common occurrence. My parents were waiting for him. My father tore into him right away.

    “Where the hell were you?! Do you have any idea how worried you’ve made your mother?!”

    “Nice to know that she’s the only one that cares about me.”

    “Andrew, no one said that.” My mother chimed in.

    “It sure as f**k seems that way mom!” he shouted.

    “You watch your mouth in front of your mother.” My father demanded.

    “Don’t you f*****g tell me what to do! You f*****g b*****d!” my father slapped him to the floor.

    “Thom! What the hell is wrong with you?!” my mother yelled as loud as she could. “Don’t you ever lay another hand on my son!” she said as she cradled him.

    “Of course, take his side again! Like you always do! Well this is my house! And I want you gone by the morning!” he stormed off and went back to bed. About 45 minutes later, after I had gotten back to sleep, I heard a rustling in my room. It was Andrew.

    “Andy?” I said. “What are you doing?” he turned to me, the moonlight caught his face. There was a red mark where my father had struck him, tears on his cheeks.

    “Neil, I’m going to tell you something about your dad, okay?”

    “Okay.”

    “He murdered my father. He threw him off a cliff, so he could be with our mother.” I didn’t believe him.

    “Why are you making up stories Andy?” he lowered his head.

    “Just remember what I told you. You’ll see that it’s true, one day. Now go back to sleep.” He fixed the covers on my bed and he kissed my forehead. “I love you Neil.”

    “I love you too Andy.” That was the last time I saw him alive. Not long after he talked to me, he snuck out of the house. He went to this abandoned place that the drug fiends always went to. There he went into a bedroom on the top floor, he filled a syringe with as much heroin as he could afford and she jammed it into his arm. He was dead in two minutes. His heart had literally broken. The next morning a police officer knocked on our door, the sound of my mother screaming woke me up. I went out into the living room to see her in my father’s arms crying, he had no kind of emotion at all. None.

    “Mom? Why are you crying?” I asked. She came over to me and she held me.

    “Neil, something’s happened to your brother.”

    “Is he hurt?”

    “Andrew is dead Neil.” I could feel the tears well up in my eyes, but I didn’t want to cry. I wanted to be strong, like my father. How naïve I was. I thought that he was being strong when he was probably singing on the inside. This was when I began to question everything I thought I knew about my father. And when I said to him what Andrew told me, I didn’t know if it was true, I just knew it would hurt the son of a b***h.  As the years went on though, it became harder to question if it was true or not. Slowly I began to realize that it was, my father was a murderer. Andrew knew it, I slowly found out, and my mother knew it. She knew it all along.

    When my mother died, my father told me that she died in her sleep. In the spring of 1979 I began to question, began to wonder how a 50-year-old woman can die in her sleep. I had no idea just how horrible the answer to that question would be.

    But let me take you back to 1979, the day after Mr. Matthews’ revelation.

    Alison came back to school and she received sympathy from everyone, even people that she had never even met. I suppose that’s a good thing, to know just how may people care about you. And to see that they are glad that you didn’t throw yourself off a wall. I didn’t see her until lunch that day, when she sat next to me I tried to think of something to say.

    “How are you today, Alison?” simple, effective, and more importantly not giving away the fact that I knew how she felt about me.

    “I’m better, having you with me yesterday really helped me out.”

    “Well, I’ll always be there for you.”

    “I know.” Not much else was said that day, or the next. As a matter of fact the next few weeks were mostly silent ones. And then came the last day of school, the last lunch period.

    She sat next to me with her head down, she looked like she was about to cry again.

    “Alison, are you alright?”

    “No, Neil I’m not.”

    “What’s wrong?”

    “I’m going away.” I didn’t fully understand what she meant at first.

    “Okay, I’ll see you when you get back.” She looked at me and right as the bell rang she said:

    “I won’t be back.” It was like someone had ripped my chest open, pulled out my heart and threw it on the floor. I can’t remember feeling any worse than when she said those words. Not when Andrew died, not even when my mother died. I tried to think of a way to express this pain.

    “What do you mean you won’t be back?” I said with a crushed spirit.

    “Two weeks ago, my dad found out that he was being transferred.”

    “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you wait?”

    “I don’t know, I don’t know. I didn’t want to break your heart.”

    “Well, where are you moving to?”

    “Baltimore, Maryland.” I had heard of both of those places, the main thing I knew about them was that they were three thousand miles away.

    “When-when do you leave?”

    “Tomorrow.” It had become the worst day of my life.

    “This can’t be happening. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.”

    “I know.”

    “Especially after what your father told-.” I knew that I shouldn’t have even began that sentence, but when your heart has been torn to pieces you don’t really think that well. She looked curious.

    “Told you what? Neil, what did my father tell you?” I knew it had to be done, it was my only hope.

    “He told me that you-that you-.”

    “I what?”

    “That you love me.” Her jaw dropped like a weight too heavy to be carried.

    “Oh my God. He told you that?” I nodded my head. “When?”

    “The day after I-after I got you off of that wall.”

    “I can’t believe that he told you.”

    “Is it true?” Those three words may have been the three most important words I had ever spoken up to that point of my life. She looked at me and she smiled.

    “Of course it’s true.” I began to feel the semblance of a heartbeat again.

    “You love me?”

    “Yes. I love you.” I had to make it clear.

    “You love me the way I love you?”

    “Yes, I do.” It was beautiful yet altogether awful, miracle yet tragedy. The single greatest thing I had ever heard as well as the worst. It was too late now for anything between Alison and I. The window had been closed, the curtains drawn. The sun had set on our time, there would be darkness for a long time afterwards. We both knew it, and we both knew that there wasn’t a single thing we could do to change it. Fate had brought us together and now fate was tearing us apart. We said nothing for minutes, she stood up and began to leave.

    “Alison?” she turned around the tears flowing yet again. I walked over to her.

    “Neil.” I took her in my arms and I kissed her lips, nothing had ever felt as sweet as good as that kiss. I could actually feel her heartbreaking, and she could feel mine. We separated and she told me to come by the house the next afternoon, so we could see each other one last time.

    The next day I went to her house at around two, there was no truck outside, no furniture inside. I was too late.

    “Oh God, no.” I said to myself as I saw the emptiness inside. I walked up to the door, there was a note taped on it. It had my name on it so I took it off and opened it up.

    “Neil-,” it began. “This is not the end, just a new beginning. It’s not like we’ll never see each other again, we both graduate in three years, so maybe we could try to go to the same college. I’ll call and write you all the time, I want you to do the same. My address will be 246 Vista Boulevard, Annapolis Maryland. I don’t know the zip code yet, sorry. I don’t want you to be sad Neil, be happy. We will see each other again. I promise. I love you. Alison.” I put the note in my pocket and sighed.

    “Goodbye Alison. Have a good life.”