Rainy Days

Petiet

            "A lot has happened since that day." The girl sat down in the overstuffed blue armchair by the window- her usual seat. "I am trying to accept what my life has become," she went on, busying herself with the complicated task of unzipping her raincoat. It hadn't rained like this since a day many years before. That was the day that everything had fallen apart.

            "I have been working a lot... I try to keep myself busy. That's the only way to mask the pain... I have to push it all aside. I can't feel it. It hurts too much." She turned her head a few inches to the left, gazing out through the checkered window. The fog was so dense that she could make out nothing past the potted plants on the balcony.

             "Weather's horrible. I've never seen anything like it here before." The young man knew what she was thinking about. She could not be thinking about anything else. He could feel her distraction. It wasn't normal. Yes, she was never truly anywhere. She always had an aloof air about her that could only be the result of something like what had happened to her. Today, however, she was much more focused. Distracted, yes, but focused on what was distracting her. He could see a whole new person emerging in front of him. Maybe today would be the day that she would actually want to examine what had happened. Maybe, after seventeen years, she had finally decided to make a change. Maybe.

            "It used to rain like this all the time when I was a kid." She wanted to start from the beginning. In the beginning things had been good. She liked the beginning. She had been happy in those days.

            "We would cuddle up by the fire to keep warm. I would be holding a mug of hot chocolate, and she a mug of hot coffee. We would listen to the rain falling, with Frank Sanatra just audible above the tumult. We would sit by the fire and laugh. That's all we did. We just laughed." She smiled a bitter smile, full of the hatred of a woman now wise enough to know that life was not a game. Neither life nor time could be measured by the laughter of loved ones anymore. It was now measured in ounces of scotch. One. Five minutes. Two. Ten minutes. Three. Fifteen minutes. Four. Sixteen minutes. Five. Seventeen minutes. Six. Sleep. One. Five minutes...

            Even the compulsive drinking was beginning to wear off now, though. First she had started with coffee. But eventually the effect of that began to wear off, too. Then it was Brazilian tea, punching her with five times more caffeine than the coffee. Then it was liquor. Cold hard liquor. She was never drunk, never incapacitated. Just numb. Always numb. That was the way she liked it. No room for feelings of any sort. No room for thought. But she was never drunk. No matter how much she drank, she could never enter that happy drunken stupor which she had imagined to be so simply delightful. Now her method of escape was cocaine. She had discovered the perfect recipe for survival: Wake up. Four ounces of coffee mixed with twelve ounces of kahlua. A line. Eight ounces of scotch. Another line. Take train to work…

            She had a column in the city newspaper. Writing was not difficult. Venturing into her thoughts? That was an area into which she never entered. Thoughts were dangerous. They tore at her soul with the jagged fingernails of a demon. She just wrote. She didn't think. She only remembered. No thoughts. Just memories. She never thought about what she remembered. Thoughts were too dangerous.

            Thoughts meant examination. She hated examination... except today. Today she was not in her body. Today she could look at herself from a completely foreign point of view. Today she wasn't scared. Today there had been no coffee. No kalua. No scotch. Just a few lines. Eight. She still wasn't happy. She hadn't been happy in seventeen years. She was only reflective. That was all.

            "We did that every time it rained like this. It was our tradition. We used to have a lot of them... traditions."

            The young man let her talk. This was unusual. Usually he was the one talking, hoping to evoke something out of her. He always failed. She was the only one who he had failed. But now? She had begun talking, reflecting, maybe even thinking, and all of her own free will.

            "She taught me how to laugh. How to play. How to have fun. How to be happy. She taught me everything. She was the light in a world that didn't have much of... anything."

            The girl wondered why it was all happening today. She still wasn't thinking. That was too dangerous. But reflecting was becoming easier. She was able to do it today. Her mind was unusually clear. More room for remembering.

            "It's hard to remember everything. I was so young. I do remember her smell. Chanel º5 gracefully hung like pearls on her neck no matter the time of day. I remember the way she glided across the wood floors of our old house, draped just perfectly in her cream silk robe. I remember her hair. How each brown thread curled perfectly around her delicate face. I remember her eyes. Crystal clear. Icy blue. Arctic. Commanding. Loving. I remember her nose, perfectly straight and just the right size for that delicate face. She was just so... elegant." The girl was still looking out of the window at the rain. She saw each drop of wetness crashing down to its definite destruction.

            "If I didn't force myself to imagine her face every single day, I would forget it." She rested her right hand on her chin, her thumb on her bottom lip, moving it back and forth, a centimeter one way, and centimeter the other way, back and forth, back and forth.

            "When I was seven a new person sat with us by the fire while it rained outside. Back then he would gaze up at my mother with the most awestruck face, as though he couldn't believe how lucky he was to even be in her presence. I'm not sure if she was in love with him. Yes, she loved him. But I don't think she was in love with him. She liked the extra help. She liked not having to do everything all by herself." She shifted a few inches back to the right, now looking directly into the young man's eyes. She noticed how very grey they were.

            "He was nice. I liked him well enough at first. However, as time went on I began to resent my mother for thinking that she needed anyone other than me. Up until then, it had just been the two of us. We had had a great life. I didn't understand why she needed anyone else. I-"

            "What about him?" The young man wanted to know everything. This was what he had been waiting for. This was why he had listened to week after week of her nonsense. Now they were getting somewhere. This was it.

            The girl was startled by his unexpected enthusiasm after so many minutes of silence. She guessed that he was just interested. After all, this was the first time she had ever said anything substantial about what had happened.

            "I think she was just happy to have someone other than a small girl thinking that she was the most amazing person in the world. She was the most amazing person in the world. She really really was." The girl turned her head slightly to the left again. She looked out of the checkered window, now focusing on the flowers outside. She saw each drop of rain running smoothly over each rose's petals. She saw each drop of rain cost each rose a tremendous amount of energy. Even still, the roses shawn with bright and vibrant colors that would not fade, no matter how much strain was put on them. Eventually, though, after days and days and days and days, the roses would have to give up. They would have no choice.

            "About a year after they were married, he began acting very different. He would argue with her about everything, even when he knew she was right. He hated that she was a greater person than he was. He hated always having to look up to her. He hated how much she loved me. He hated how she didn't love him, how she only depended upon him. She changed slowly, too. She was not as happy as before, not as vibrant or colorful as she once was. She was tired. The person who she thought she could fall back on was adding to her stress, her age. Eventually, she begged him for a divorce. He wouldn't go through with it. He finally had some control over her. He could finally say No. He could finally stare down at her, stare down at her weeping on the grimy floor that had once shown with brilliance." The girl's smile was back, that bitter smile. It came for an instant, and then it was gone, replaced by a small frown that was only decipherable from the two small wrinkles that appeared between her perfectly shaped brows.    

            "He was still in love with her, though. He would terrorize her for a couple of days, and then apologize, say he'd never do it again. A week later, he would do it again. It would all happen over and over again. Her beautiful, perfect face, became his canvas, always ready for the next blow, the next hit. There were times when I could hardly recognize her. She got a lawyer. He was kind and understanding. She fell in love with him. Her husband didn't know what was going on at first. He thought that she was just working. She was a writer."

            "But he found out in the end, didn't he?" the young man said with an evil glint in his eyes that the girl did not see.

            "Yes, he did find out in the end. After a while he wondered if all the excuses she was spouting out about working late were true. So, he hired a private investigator." The girl delicately slid off her heels and brought her legs onto the blue chair with the rest of her body. This part, this was the hard part. This was the part where she had to think.

            The young man saw a bit of himself in this girl. Like her, he had grown up only with his mother, never knowing his father. He still was not quite sure what had become of his father, but he had worked hard over the years to try to find out. The only thing that he had of his father was a piece of a letter that had been written many years before. The young man had been doing everything he could think of to find out what it all meant. He felt a twinge of sorrow as he listened to the girl describe what she had been through. There were much more pressing matters at stake, however, and they could not be interfered with by such meaningless emotions. He was close. He could feel it.

            "He came home from work one evening, saying that my mom was going to be late again, and so we were to go out for dinner. I didn't think much about the idea at the time." The girl removed her hand from her lip, preferring to rest it on her right leg now.

            "We took the train into the center of Manhattan and entered into a building I had never seen before. It was raining as hard as it had been on those days that we used to all sit happily by the fire. I asked what we were doing. I had thought we were going out to eat. He said he needed to get something first, and then we would go. We took the elevator up to the top floor. I remember how everything in that building shown with the type of brilliance I had never seen before. Once out of the elevator, we walked down a beautifully lit hallway, passing door after door, each with a different name on it. As we approached the very last door, he removed a key from the inside of his black suit. I had no idea how he had managed to get a hold of it. I knew where we were then. I looked up, only to read the name on the door we were about to enter: Lawyer."

            The young man knew it would be soon. He had spent his entire life working up to this point, and now, finally, he was going to find out what it all meant. He discretely slipped his right hand into his right pocket. Any second now. Any second.

            "He unlocked the door and turned the nob as quietly as he could, then, with the force of a bullet, went barging inside, pulling me along. What I saw made everything else in the world melt away. There she was... my mother... Lawyer on top of her... right there on his desk." A tear slid down the girl's cheek. The truth was, she could understand this part. She could understand why her mother had had the affair. What she couldn't understand was why her mother hadn't been able to get a divorce, hadn't been able to get her husband in trouble for beating her, hadn't been able to get away from him.

            "That was the moment I realized that my mother wasn't always capable of doing everything. She had been a... super hero. Then she had gotten married. It was after the initial shock that I noticed what was really going on. My stepfather had a gun pointed at my head. He was ordering his wife and Lawyer to stand up next to each other. If they didn't do what he said, he would shoot... me." The girl brought her legs down and slipped her feet back into their respective heels. She turned again to look out the window. It was raining harder than ever now. The potted roses had disappeared behind the fog.

            "He told both of them to put their hands on their heads. They were both naked. Then he turned to me. He told me that if I didn't do exactly what he told me to do, he would kill me. He pulled another gun out of his pocket and handed it to me. He moved so that he was standing directly behind me. He put his hands over mine, which were holding the gun. God, he had big strong hands." The girl was crying. The young man was on the edge of his seat.

            "He told me to aim the gun at Lawyer. I wouldn't, so he moved our hands in that direction. He told me to put my finger on the trigger. I did. He put his finger over mine. He pressed my finger down. Lawyer was dead. He moved our gun towards my mother. I was bleeding from the inside. I couldn't think. I couldn't see. He pressed my finger down. My mother was dead." The girl was shaking now, with tears streaming down her perfect face. The young man could guess what had happened next. However, it was vital to listen to her whole story; it would give her a sense of security. Then he would act.

            "He grabbed the gun away from me, putting it back inside his jacket. He kept the other one pointed at my head. He walked over to the desk and began to write something- a letter- laughing as he did so. He grabbed me, threw me down on the floor, and raped me. There was blood everywhere. He held the gun to my head the entire time. Finally, he pulled the trigger. Nothing. It was out of bullets. As he rummaged around to find some spare ammunition, I forced my knee in between his legs. He crumpled in pain, and I was able to swipe the second gun from his pocket. I shot him between the eyes. That was not enough. I found his knife. I slashed it in between his legs. That was not enough. I tore his letter to pieces and let them fall to the floor. I left." There was silence for a time. The young man wanted to act. His instinct still told him to wait. It was an internal battle. Before he had made up his mind: "It was a few days before the FBI finally tracked me down. I told them what had happened. I had been defending myself, they concluded. I was not punished. One of the agents handed me a piece of paper. It was the letter, taped back together. As soon as they left, I began to pack. I needed to get out of there. I burned all of my stepfather's possessions. I took everything that had not been his. I left, leaving only half of the letter behind." She absentmindedly glanced up at the clock. They were out of time. She grabbed her purse, and moved to stand up.

            "Wait," said the young man. "Do you know what happened to that house after you left?"

            The girl shook her head, "No."

            "Would you like to?" The girl stared at him. She didn't understand. The young man stood, and paced back and forth between the girl and the door.

            "My mother moved into that house. She was pregnant with me at that time. She had known the house well. Oh, how many times she had been there. Your mother wasn't the only one having an affair. No, no." The young man pulled the second half of the letter out of his back pocket, continuing, "I was his son. And you murdered him."

            The girl's head was spinning. What the hell was going on? How could this be happening?

            "I’ve made it my life's mission to find you. I knew you would always be in therapy. That was a given. I have risen to the top level in this field only to find you. To find out what really happened on that cold and rainy day." His hand was still in his pocket, and from it he pulled out his own gun.

            "Now," he continued, "I know the whole story. You were weak enough to show me all of your emotions, weak enough to trust me."

            "But I am not afraid of death. I died long ago. Don't you remember?"

            "Then you will welcome the relief, I dare say," and he shot. Almost as if in slow motion the girl fell to the floor, dead before her body hit the carpet. The young man put the second half of his father's letter on the girl's chest. He left the room, smiling a bitter smile, full of the hatred of a man now wise enough to know that life was not a game. Neither life nor time could be measured by the laughter of loved ones anymore. It was now measured by the number of bullets he left in bodies. One. Six months. Two. Six and a half months. Three. Seven months. Four. One year. Five. Thirteen months. Six. Revenge.

Epilogue

            ...and to my son, I give these words of advice: Never marry. For if you do, you will be driven to do what I have done, and you will like it. You will like causing pain. You will crave the pleasure it brings. You will never be able to go back. But should the time come when you feel that you must do what I have done, I pray you do it on a rainy day. Those are the most satisfying days on which to kill.

Yours Forever More,

            Husband