Before his fists and feet could find themselves another target, a thick arm wrapped around his neck from behind, holding him in a vise. Bill.
“Now, Benny, we’re gonna settle down, alright? You hear me?” The giant dark-skinned man squeezed his throat a little harder. Benny felt his fists slowly give up as the oxygen drained from his head. Bill weighed over three hundred pounds. Bill was paid by the state of Ohio to help his mother keep Benny. If Benny didn’t behave, they’d take him away again. Away from his window. Away from Rawlingswood forever.
“Good man,” Bill said, but he didn’t let go. Instead, he made some secret gesture to his mother that even the watcher couldn’t see.
Benny’s mother nodded and stood up on wobbly legs. She left the room.
Wait, Benny tried to say, even though his words never came out as more than a groan. A drowning creature’s voice. “Waa!”
He didn’t want the needle, but the needle was coming. He wanted to ask about his road outside, about his cars and his people. Why are they late? Is there construction on the road somewhere? Are they okay?
“Easy, Benny. That’s right. You know the rules.” Bill had loosened the grip on his neck and hauled Benny up into a sitting position on the floor. Out the window, all Benny could see was sky. He was too low to see the road. He tried to get up, but Bill held him fast. “We don’t have to do this every time, Benny. You know what to do.”
And he did know. He knew from all the times at the hospital and all the home visits. The doctors and nurses and social workers would study him with veterinarian eyes, talking in slow, stupid words. When Benny mad, Benny squeeze the balloon . . . Benny breathe like this . . . Benny count to ten. You know ten?
They didn’t know how much he could understand them, because Benny could never make his mouth say the words, so they figured he was stupid. Some even figured he might be deaf. He liked those ones the best because they talked to each other in front of him like he couldn’t hear. Like he wasn’t there. Cerebral palsy. Nonverbal. Unknown mental capacity. Dystonia. Seizures. Spasticity. Medication. Institutionalization. Incompetence. Permanent guardianship. Severe autism?
If he behaved himself, he was allowed to live at home. Bill was explaining this fact to him again. Bill always talked to Benny like he was a person. It made it harder sometimes. It made Benny notice how everyone else didn’t. Not even his mother, even though the watcher whispered in his ear that she wanted nothing more than for Benny to be a person. The watcher saw how sad her eyes looked and the way her skin sagged gray and heavy whenever she talked to him. The watcher knew the way his father had left five years ago, even though she’d never tried to tell him.
“Here, baby.” She was kneeling at his side with the needle.
Benny tried to shake his head, but Bill held him still. “Easy, champ,” he said. “Your muscles are too screwed up right now. You gonna hurt yourself for real.”
The watcher told him Bill was right. Every other part of Benny screamed when the cold steel bit through his skin. Then his body and mind went limp. Not a person. A jellyfish. Soft and floating in a black, black sea.
Hours later, Benny heard voices and cracked open his eyes. 1:32 p.m., the clock said in a gauzy blur. The room had gone pink, and his body was still washed away somewhere else.
“You sure you’ll be alright?” Bill was talking in a low voice outside his door.
“Of course!” Benny’s mother tried to sound cheerful, but she never really did. “Go. Go get some lunch and go to your appointment.”
“I’ll stop in before I head home. Around five. Okay?”
“Thanks, Bill. Really. It’s been such a help having you here. I don’t know what I would’ve done if . . .” Benny could hear the tears in her voice. She’s ready to give up, the watcher whispered.
“You’re doin’ fine. It’s harder when they grown, that’s all. He’s strong, that Benny. Just talk to him, and he’ll be alright. You’re a good mother. Don’t forget that.”
Frannie cleared her throat and said nothing.
A minute later, the door to his bedroom opened. Benny willed his eyes shut and his body still. Don’t see me. Don’t see me. But the watcher felt her eyes on him. Sad eyes. Pained eyes. Tired eyes. Broken eyes. And in that moment, Benny was glad for the needle. His body lay still, lost to the ocean. It couldn’t do anything wrong.
The door clicked shut again, and he heard the shunk of metal on metal as the dead bolt slid home.
17
The Spielman Family
July 29, 2018
The next morning, Margot padded her way into the kitchen and turned on the coffee maker. She leaned against the counter and rubbed her eyes. Her head pounded as though being beaten with a hammer. She hadn’t slept well the night before. The liquor had kept her tossing and turning as terrible thoughts pulsed through her veins. Things she shouldn’t have said. Embarrassments. Worries. The idea of Hunter trapped in the big house all alone, drinking whiskey, chatting with predators. The horrifying graffiti that still lingered on the walls, buried under layers of paint.
Murder House!
The kitchen would never be finished. She scanned the white marble and boxes of white cabinets and shivered involuntarily. In the harsh morning light, it all looked so cold. Sterile. The exact opposite of the warm, wooden, cozy niche it had once been.
Margot stared out the window into the overgrown backyard. She wore her weariness on her face heavier in these private moments with no one watching. It was in the downward cast of her eye, the grim set of her lips, the fine lines of her forehead she’d tried so hard to conceal. She wasn’t a happy woman. From the withered look of her, she hadn’t been happy in years.
The comforting aroma of coffee lifted her spirits enough to grab a mug from the folding table in the corner and her favorite vanilla creamer out of the refrigerator. Another day. She breathed in her acceptance of it and poured the coffee before the percolator was done, refusing to wait a second longer. It will be alright, she told herself as the coffee dripped and hissed onto the exposed burner. It sizzled in protest as she shoved the pot back into its place. Everything will be fine. Breathe. Imagine yourself on a white, sandy beach . . .
A flutter of white silk caught the corner of her mind’s eye, and Margot’s head snapped around to the short archway between the kitchen and the foyer. An imbalance in the air tickled at her skin. The sense of movement just beyond the wall. Margot set her coffee down and followed it. The morning sun streaming in through the leaded glass overhead sprayed the foyer with dancing light as the trees outside shuddered in the wind. Nothing seemed still, yet nothing was really moving. Above her, a shadow drifted down the second floor hallway just out of sight. Or was it a shift in the trees?
Margot stared after it a moment, taking the time to convince herself it was nothing. Just nerves. Just the stress of a bad night’s sleep. The walls seemed to tilt ever so slightly above her. She did a slow turn, surveying each room, and stopped at the sight of the white cat in the window next to the front door.
“Was that you, kitty?” she whispered.
The cat just flicked its tail.
Margot went back to the kitchen and emerged again a few seconds later with a bowl of milk. She cracked open the door, and the cat shot under the hydrangea bushes at the sudden rush of cold air from the house. She set the bowl down on the stoop while the cat watched her from a safe distance.