Not until I got to the kitchen.
Enid wasn’t there, and neither was her chair. But Vince lay on the floor, the back of his shirt red with blood.
“Vince,” I said, kneeling down next to him. “Jesus, Vince.” I thought he was dead, but he let out a soft moan. “Oh God, man, you’re still alive.”
“Terry,” he whispered, his right cheek pressed to the floor. “She had a…she had a fucking gun under the blanket.” His eyes were flirting with rolling up under his lids. There was blood coming out of his mouth. “Fucking embarrassing…”
“Don’t talk,” I said. “I’m going to call 911.”
I found the phone, snatched the receiver into my hand, and punched in the three numbers.
“A man’s been shot,” I said. I barked out the address, told the operator to hurry, ignored all her other questions, and hung up.
“He came home,” Vince whispered when I knelt down next to him again. “Jeremy…she met him at the door, didn’t even let him come in…said they had to go right then. She phoned him…after she shot me, said step on it.”
“Jeremy was here?”
“I heard them talking….” More blood spluttered out of his mouth. “Going back. She wouldn’t even let him come in and take a piss. Didn’t want him to see me…Didn’t tell him…”
What was Enid thinking? What was going on in her head?
At the front door, I could hear Clayton shuffling his way into the house.
“Fuck, it hurts….” Vince said. “Fucking little old lady.”
“You’re going to be okay,” I said.
“Terry,” he said, so softly I almost couldn’t hear. I put my ear closer to his mouth. “Look in…on Jane. Okay?”
“Hang in there, man. Just hang in.”
43
Clayton said, “Enid never answers the door without a gun under her blanket. Certainly not when she’s home alone.”
He’d managed to make it into the kitchen and was using the counter for support as he looked down at Vince Fleming. He was taking a moment to catch his breath. The walk from the truck around to the front of the house and inside had worn him out.
Once he had a bit of strength back, he said, “She can be easy to underestimate. An old woman in a wheelchair. She’d have waited for her moment. When he had his back to her, when he was close enough that she knew she couldn’t miss, she’d have done it.” He shook his head. “No one ever really stands a chance against Enid.”
I still had my mouth close to Vince’s ear. “I’ve called for an ambulance. They’re coming.”
“Yeah,” Vince said, his eyelids fluttering.
“But we’re going to have to take off. We have to go after Enid and Jeremy. They’re going after my wife and my daughter.”
“Do what you gotta do,” Vince whispered.
To Clayton, I said, “He said Jeremy came home, that Enid wouldn’t even let him in the house, made him turn around and head back right away.”
Clayton nodded slowly. “She wasn’t trying to spare him,” he said.
“What?”
“If she didn’t let him see what she’d done, it wasn’t to spare him from an ugly scene. It was because she didn’t want him to know.”
“Why?”
Clayton took a couple of breaths. “I need to sit down,” he said. I got up off the floor and eased him into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “Look in the cupboard over there,” he said, pointing. “There may be some Tylenols or something.”
I had to step over Vince’s legs and detour around the gradually expanding pool of blood on the kitchen floor to reach the cupboard. I found some extra-strength Tylenols in there, and in the cupboard next to it were glasses. I filled one with water and worked my way back across the kitchen without slipping.
The Tylenols had a childproof lid that was beyond Clayton. I opened the container, took out two tablets, and put them into his open hand.
“Four,” he said.
I was listening for an ambulance siren, wanting to hear it, but also wanting to get out of there before it arrived. I shook out two more tablets for Clayton, handed him the water. He had to take them one at a time. Getting the four pills down seemed to take him forever. When he was done, I said, “Why? Why wouldn’t she want him to know?”
“Because if Jeremy knew, he might get her to call it off. What they’re planning to do. With him here, shot, with you heading off to the hospital to see me, you knowing who he really is, he’d realize it’s all starting to come apart. If they’re off to do what I think they’re going to do, there isn’t much hope now of getting away with it.”
“But Enid has to know all that, too,” I said.
Clayton gave me a half-smile. “You don’t understand Enid. All she can see is that inheritance. She’ll be blinded to anything else, any problems that might deter her. She’s somewhat single-minded about these sorts of things.”
I glanced up at a wall clock, the face made to look like the cross section of an apple. It was 1:06 a.m.
“How much of a head start do you think they’ve got?” Clayton asked me.
“Whatever it is,” I said, “it’s too much.” I glanced over at the counter, saw a roll of Reynolds Wrap, a few brown crumbs scattered about. “She’s packed the carrot cake,” I said. “Something for the road.”
“Okay,” Clayton said, gathering his strength to stand. “Fucking cancer. It’s all through me. Life’s just nothing but pain and misery, and then you get to finish it off with a mess like this.”
Once he was on his feet, he said, “There’s one thing I have to take with me.”
“The Tylenols? Some other medicine?”
“Sure, grab the Tylenols. But something else. I don’t think I have the energy to go downstairs to get it.”
“Tell me what it is.”
“In the basement, you’ll find a workbench. There’s a red toolbox sitting on top of it.”
“Okay.”
“You open up the toolbox, there’s a tray in the top you can lift out. I want what’s taped to the bottom of the tray.”
The door to the basement was around the corner from the kitchen. As I reached for the light switch at the top of the stairs, I called over to Vince.
“How you holding out?”
“Fuck,” he said quietly.
I descended the wooden steps. It was musty and cool down there, and the place was a mess of storage boxes and Christmas decorations, bits and pieces of disused furniture, a couple of mousetraps tucked into a corner. Along the far wall was the workbench, the top of it littered with half-used tubes of caulking, scraps of sandpaper, tools not put away, and a dented and scratched red toolbox.
A bare bulb hung over the bench and I pulled the string dangling from it so I could better see what I was doing. I unlocked the two metal clasps on the toolbox, opened the lid. The tray was filled with rusty screws, broken jigsaw blades, screwdrivers. Turning the tray over would make a hell of a mess, not that anyone would notice. So I raised the tray up just above my head to see what was under it.
It was an envelope. A standard letter-sized envelope, dirtied and stained, held in place by some yellowed strips of Scotch tape. With my other hand I peeled the envelope off. It didn’t take much.
“You see it?” Clayton called down wheezily from the top of the stairs.
“Yeah,” I said. I set the freed envelope on the bench, put the tray back into the toolbox, and relocked it. I picked up the sealed envelope, turned it over in my hands. There was nothing written on it, but I could feel what I guessed was a single piece of paper folded inside.
“It’s okay,” Clayton said. “If you want to, you can look inside.”
I tore open the envelope at one end, blew into it, reached in with my thumb and forefinger, gently pulled out the piece of paper, opened it.
“It’s old,” Clayton said from the top of the stairs. “Be careful with it.”
I looked at it, read it. I felt as though my last breath was slipping away.
/> When I got to the top of the stairs, Clayton explained the circumstances surrounding what I’d found in the envelope, and told me what he wanted me to do with it.
“You promise?” he said.
“I promise,” I said, slipping the envelope into my sport coat.
I had one last conversation with Vince. “The ambulance has to be here anytime now,” I said. “Are you going to make it?”
Vince was a big man, a strong man, and I thought he had a better chance than most of hanging on. “Go save your wife and girl,” he said. “And if you find that bitch in the wheelchair, shove her into traffic.” He paused. “Gun in the truck. Should have had it on me. Stupid.”
I touched his forehead. “You’re going to make it.”
“Go,” he whispered.
To Clayton, I said, “That Honda in the driveway. It runs?”
“Sure,” Clayton said. “That’s my car. I haven’t driven much since I took sick.”
“I’m not sure we should take Vince’s truck,” I said. “The cops are going to be looking for it. People saw me drive away from the hospital. The cops’ll have a description, a license plate.”
He nodded, pointed to a small decorative dish on a buffet near the front door. “Should be a set of keys there,” he said.
“Give me a second,” I said.
I ran around to the back of the house and opened up the Dodge pickup. There were quite a few storage compartments in the cab. In the doors, between the seats, plus the glove box. I started looking through all of them. In the bottom of the center console unit, under a stack of maps, I found the gun.
I didn’t know a lot about guns, and I certainly didn’t feel confident tucking one into the waistband of my pants. I already had enough problems to deal with without adding a self-inflicted injury to the list. Using Clayton’s key, I unlocked the Honda, got into the driver’s seat, and put the gun in the glove compartment. I started up the car, drove it right up onto the lawn, getting the car as close to the front door as I could.
Clayton emerged from the house, took tentative steps toward me. I leapt out, ran around the car, got the passenger door open, and helped him get inside. I pulled out the seat belt, leaned over him and buckled it into place.
“Okay,” I said, getting back into the driver’s seat. “Let’s go.”
I drove right across the yard and onto the road, turned right onto Main, heading north. “Just made it,” Clayton said. An ambulance, followed closely by two police cars, lights flashing but sirens silent, sped south. Just past the bar where Vince and I had stopped earlier, I headed east to get us back on the Robert Moses.
Once on the highway, I was tempted to floor it, but was still worried about getting pulled over. I settled on a comfortable speed, above the limit, but not high enough to attract that much attention.
I waited until we were past Buffalo, heading due east to Albany. I can’t say that by then I was relaxed, but once we’d put some distance between ourselves and Youngstown, I felt the likelihood that we would get pulled over for what happened at the hospital, or what the police found at the Sloan home, diminishing.
That was when I turned to Clayton, who’d been sitting very quietly, his head leaned back and resting on the headrest, and said, “So let’s hear it. All of it.”
“Okay,” he said, and cleared his throat in preparation.
44
The marriage was predicated on a lie.
The first marriage, Clayton explained. Well, the second one, too. He’d get to that one soon enough. It was a long drive back to Connecticut. Plenty of time to cover everything.
But he talked about his marriage to Enid first. A girl he’d known in high school, in Tonawanda, a Buffalo suburb. Then he went to Canisius College, the one founded by the Jesuits, took business courses with a sprinkling of philosophy and religious studies. Wasn’t that far away; of course, he could have lived at home and commuted, but he got a cheap room just off campus, figured even if you didn’t go far away for college, you at least had to get out from under your parents’ roof.
When he finished, who was waiting for him in the old neighborhood but Enid. They started dating, and he could see that she was a strong-willed girl, used to getting what she wanted from those around her. She used what she had to her advantage. She was attractive, possessed a terrific body, had a strong sexual appetite, at least during their early courtship.
One night, teary-eyed, she tells him she’s late. “Oh no,” Clayton Sloan says. He thinks first of his own parents, how ashamed they will be of him. So concerned about appearance, and then something like this, their boy getting a girl pregnant, his mother would want to move out so she wouldn’t have to hear the neighbors talking.
So there wasn’t much else to do but get married. And right away.
A couple of months after that, she says she’s not feeling well, says she’s making an appointment to see her physician, Dr. Gibbs was his name. She goes to the doctor alone, comes home, says she lost it. The baby’s gone. Lots of tears. One day, Clayton’s in the diner, sees Dr. Gibbs, goes over to him and says, “I know I shouldn’t be asking you this here, that I should make an appointment, but Enid, losing the baby and all, she’ll still be able to have another one, right?”
And Dr. Gibbs says, “Huh?”
So now he has an idea what he’s dealing with. A woman who’ll say anything, tell any kind of lie, to get what she wants.
He should have left then. But Enid tells him she’s so sorry, that she thought she was pregnant, but was afraid to go to the doctor to have it confirmed, and then she turned out to be wrong. Clayton doesn’t know whether to believe her, and again worries about the shame he will bring on himself and his family by leaving Enid, starting divorce proceedings. And for a while there, Enid takes sick, is bedridden. Real or feigned, he’s not sure, but knows he can’t leave her when she is like this.
The longer he stays, the harder it seems to be to leave. He learns quickly that what Enid wants, Enid gets. When she doesn’t, there’s hell to pay. Screaming fits, smashing things. One time, he’s sitting in the bathtub, Enid’s in there with her electric hair dryer, starts joking around about dropping it into the water. But there’s something in her eyes, something that suggests that she could do it, just like that, wouldn’t have to think twice.
He puts his business education to use, gets a job in sales, supplying machine shops and factories. It’s going to have him driving all over the country, a corridor running between Chicago and New York that skirts past Buffalo. He’s going to be away a lot, his prospective employer warns him. That’s the clincher for Clayton. Time away from the harping, the screaming, the odd looks she sometimes gives him that suggest the gears inside her head aren’t always meshing the way they’re supposed to. He always dreads the drive home after a sales trip, wondering what list of grievances Enid will have prepared for him the moment he walks through the door. How she doesn’t have enough nice clothes, or he’s not working hard enough, or the back door squeaks when you open it, it’s driving her mad. The only thing that makes returning home worthwhile is seeing his Irish setter, Flynn. He always comes running out to greet Clayton’s car, like he’s been sitting on the porch from the moment he left, waiting for the second he returns.
Then she becomes pregnant. The real deal this time. A baby boy. Jeremy. How she loves that boy. Clayton loves him, too, but soon realizes it’s a competition. Enid wants the boy’s love exclusively, and begins, when Jeremy is barely walking, her campaign to poison the father’s relationship with his son. If you want to grow up strong and successful, Enid tells him, he’ll need to follow her example, that it’s too bad there’s no strong male role model under this roof. She tells him his father doesn’t do enough for her, and how it’s a sad thing that Jeremy has his looks, but that’s a handicap, over time, he can learn to surmount, with effort.
Clayton wants out.
But there’s something about Enid, this darkness about her, that to even hint at the subject of divorce, even
some kind of separation, there’s no predicting how she’ll handle it.
Once, before leaving on one of his extended sales trips, he says he needs to talk to her. About something serious.
“I’m not happy,” he says. “I don’t think this is working out.”
She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t ask what’s wrong. She doesn’t ask what she could do to help the marriage, to make him happy.
What she does is, she gets up close to him, looks deep into his eyes. He wants to look away, but can’t, as though mesmerized by her evil. Looking into her eyes, it’s like looking into the soul of the devil. All she says is, “You will never leave me.” And walks out of the room.
He thinks about that on his trip. We’ll see about that, he tells himself. We’ll just see.
When he returns, his dog does not run out to greet him. When he opens the garage door to put away the Plymouth, there is Flynn, a rope drawn tightly around his neck, hanging from the rafters.
All Enid says to him is, “Good thing it was just the dog.”
For all she loves Jeremy, she’s willing to let Clayton believe the boy’s at risk should he ever decide to leave her.
Clayton Sloan resigns himself to this life of misery and humiliation and emasculation. This is what he’s signed on for, and he’s going to have to make the best of it. He’ll sleepwalk through life if that is what he has to do.
He works hard at not despising the boy. Jeremy’s mother has brainwashed him into thinking his father is unworthy of his affections. He sees his father as useless, just a man who lives in the house with him and his mother. But Clayton knows Jeremy is as much a victim of Enid as he is.
How can his life have turned out like this? he wonders.
There are numerous occasions when Clayton considers taking his own life.
He’s driving across the country in the dead of night. Coming back from Chicago, rounding the bottom of Lake Michigan, doing that short stretch through Indiana. He sees a bridge abutment up ahead and bears down on the accelerator. Seventy miles an hour, then eighty, ninety. The Plymouth begins to float. Hardly anyone wears seat belts, and even if they did, he’s unbuckled his, thereby assuring that he’ll go through the windshield and perish. The car eases over onto the shoulder, spewing gravel and dust behind it, but then, at the last minute, he veers back onto the highway, chickens out.