The Night Strangers - Chris Bohjalian [91]
You wonder what time it is and scan the hospital room for a clock. There doesn’t seem to be one amidst all those pinpricks of light. But you presume that your girls are sound asleep right now. As is Emily.
At least you imagine that they are sound asleep. In your mind, however, you don’t see them in their rooms on the third floor of the house. You hope, when you think about it, that they are not even in the structure: You like to believe that they have gone to a motel or an inn. That they are with John and Clary Hardin. Anywhere is better than that despicable place you now call your home. Three floors of malevolent timbers and plaster and pine board. Knob-and-tube wiring, every inch of which is as ominous as a snake. Rooms and corridors that are claustrophobic, wallpaper designed to make a man despair. Those sunflowers. The foxes. Weapons and cigarette lighters hidden throughout the house like Easter eggs, but evil. And then there is the basement. The pit of despair. Doors that lead nowhere. Whatever led you to nearly take a knife to a child was spawned in that pit. You need to get out. You need to get your family out.
Or is this just the morphine or whatever painkiller they’re giving you? Are you being melodramatic, trying to shift blame? It’s a house. It’s not alive. Actually, it’s a place that you are painstakingly making your own. You know people in Pennsylvania who would kill for a house just like this. The truth is, you are the problem. Not the house.
You have known all along that your future began to diminish last summer, on August 11. That was when the possibilities began to narrow. And now? Look at the way you are giving sentience and breath to bricks and mortar. You are becoming estranged from the world of the sane. You deserve nothing, and you have nothing.
You contemplate going home tomorrow and realize that you are afraid. The idea of being alone with your children terrifies you. What might you do when they climb off the school bus tomorrow afternoon—or the day after, or the day after that—while Emily is at work? Everyone fears you will hurt yourself. That should be the least of their concerns. Still, you find the notion of suicide growing real in your mind. You killed thirty-nine people back in August and nearly a fortieth this evening. You know this has to end. You tried to end it this evening, but wouldn’t your death at your own hands scar your sweet girls even more? Of course it would. And look at the emotional wounds you have inflicted upon them already. Or would your death be a relief for everyone? In the long run, might it save your children’s lives? Emily could take the girls back to Pennsylvania. Or raise them right here in Bethel with the help of Reseda and Holly and Anise. With John and Clary, with Peyton and Sage. Everyone here adores your daughters. They adore Emily. They say it takes a village to raise a child; well, this village loves your girls. So be it.
But you love them, too. You love Emily.
You stare at the horizontal blinds in the window and try to focus. A thought: You fly the plane until, pure and simple, you can’t. Aviate. Navigate. Communicate. It’s what you do. It’s all about concentration.
Yes, tomorrow you will go home. You will try to stay away from the basement. You will try not to curl into a ball in the bone-ridden dirt in your own little pit of despair.
Outside your hospital room, you hear the nurse with the goatee laughing gently with another of the nurses, the stout woman with the button mushroom for a nose. She seemed very kind. They all seem very kind.
Yes, yes, the poor, dead Ashley Stearns does deserve friends. She does. But you can’t do what it takes. You won’t.
Aviate. Navigate. Communicate. Fly the plane until you can’t.
You close your eyes against the stars in your hospital room, and eventually you fall back to sleep.
Chapter Ten