Walking on Broken Glass - Christa Allan [12]
I watched, through the curtain of water that framed my face, as he reached for the white towel. It slithered off the bar on the shower door, caught between his two hands. He clutched it and leaned against the linen armoire.
Carl waited. Waited for me. Again.
The pelting drops couldn’t dissolve the revulsion that snaked from my bare feet into my stomach and wound its way to my throat. I grasped the handle; the water stopped. Only heaviness of the inevitable separated us.
“If you’re going to that place for a month, then you’re taking care of me first.” The edge in his voice ripped the stillness.
I accepted my defeat.
6
The drive from our house to the Brookforest Center the morning of July 4th was an eight-mile Jerry Springer episode. All bets were off once the suitcases landed in the car.
Carl opened the passenger door of the Range Rover for me, but the intensity of his closing it practically propelled me into the driver's seat. Before he slammed his own door, I grabbed the dashboard and braced myself for another carnival ride.
“You’re determined to do this, aren’t you?” He hit the brake pedal. “And you’re leaving all the dirty work for me. I’m the one who has to call your dad. Call my parents. Did you do that? Of course not.” A horn blew behind us, and Carl used primitive sign language to communicate with the driver.
He ranted from the red light to the green light and beyond. I didn’t answer. I focused on collecting pictures. With every block we passed, I opened and closed my eyes like a camera lens. Click. The duck pond. Click. Starbucks. Click. Rows of crepe myrtles and pear trees. Click. Joggers. Click. Carl. His mouth opened and closed and opened and closed. Click. My reflection in the car window. A diluted Monet water-color of auburn hair, olive skin, green eyes, rose-shaded lips. Papa Hemingway was a part of all he met. I was reflected in all I passed.
“Are you even awake?”
Who wouldn’t want to be the audience for a one-man performance of my wrongdoings and shortcomings?
One mile to go. One word. “Yes.”
Minutes later, the car lurched into the parking area like a bulldozer had plowed into the back. My head almost separated from my neck. I thought my admission would change to the emergency room where I’d be treated for brain trauma. So, Mrs. Thornton, were you an alcoholic before or after the dashboard permanently waffled your forehead?
“Is it safe to open the door?” I’m poised to take off my seatbelt, but Carl still hadn’t turned off the car. He looked like a figure in the Wax Museum: a splotchy red-faced unhappy one.
“You are coming in with me, aren’t you?” I wondered if he intended a drive-by, and he’d reappear in thirty days. “Pretend you’re dropping me off for summer camp.” I slid forward to grab my purse off the floor where it had landed during one of Carl's Daytona speed-racing turns.
“You know,” he shifted into park and turned the key, “you always do that.”
Wax figures don’t last very long in this heat. I wondered if he’d considered that. “What do I always do?”
“Make jokes when there's obviously nothing funny going on,” he said.
“That's why I make jokes. Because there's nothing funny happening.” I scooted out the door before he had time to restart the car and headed for the entrance.
We lived in one of those shiny ad-attractive, oil-corporation-planned, Stepford communities not yet gobbled up by the city of Houston. One could be born and die in Brookforest and never know an entire world waited beyond the front-and back-gated entrances. Schools, hospitals, entertainment, supermarkets, offices, gas stations, all demurely tucked into lush wooded spaces.
Careful zoning assured residents they wouldn’t be unduly offended by the sight of golden arches rising from stately pine trees or flashing signs altering the moonlit, star-studded sky.
And, with what I came to appreciate as tremendous foresight on the part of these urban planners, accommodations had been made for a treatment center for the addicted and psychologically impaired