Chapter 16: Chain Letter by Stephen Simpson
Sometimes he feels at the rate they are going they will
never have a child of their own, and when do you realize you have enough
solidity and safety measures set in place to create a stable home.
He had given her an ultimatum and a period of grace to set up her advertising agency with Carl, and this morning she said if this presentation is successful, they could start making babies. So now, Stephen has hope and delight in his heart as he drives to his mom's house. He sees the sun rise over the mountains in the distance, the sky clear and blue. Already it feels like it is going to be a hot, sweltering day.
He stops in front of his mother's house. Everything is as it
is every Tuesday, for the last eight months.
When he gets to the front door, he turns the handle and
bumps into the door with his shoulder, so used to the fact that when he usually
turned the knob, the door would give way and let him in. Not this Tuesday - the
door stays firmly shut.
He considers maybe she had overslept. Normally he would just
go in and smell the freshly brewed coffee all the way down the hall as he
walked to the kitchen. Now he knocks and waits.
After a while, he knocks again. He hears Bobby and Beth on
the other side of the door, their toenails clicking on the floor as they walk
up and down the hall. He hears them lamenting softly and then one of them start
to scratch on the door.
A sudden panic starts at the pit of his stomach and soon it
feels as if that same feeling of dread is going to choke him. He feels his air
passages squeezing closed slowly, as if he is having an asthma attack. Through
the fogginess of fear now clouding his thoughts, he remembers he has a spare
key for her door in his car.
He turns away from the door reluctantly, expecting her to
open the door at any minute, her hair dripping wet, freshly dressed and making
excuses, laughingly that she had overslept, perhaps saying, “Give an old woman
a break, nice to sleep in once in a while.”
He knows how she hated going to work these days, how unhappy
she was at work. How she found it difficult to motivate herself enough to get
out of bed on a weekday, so that would be the reasonable explanation - she just
overslept.
He walks to the car, takes the spare key for her door out of
the cubbyhole and walks back to the front door, without even realizing that he
had done so.
He unlocks the door, feeling appalled because he is
intruding on his mom's privacy. Although he knows it is ridiculous and she
would have no problem with him just coming in whenever he wanted to, but to him
it still feels wrong.
Bobby immediately rushes towards him, moaning softly and
then turning back towards the hall, wanting Stephen to follow him.
Beth waits at the end of the hall, in the entrance to his
mom's room, looking at him suspiciously.
He speaks to them in a calming voice, terror intruding his
thoughts. The dogs are behaving as if something is very, very wrong.
Stephen walks faster, almost falling over Bobby in the
process. He stops himself from snapping at the dog.
Just outside his mom's door, he hesitates for the briefest
moment and then looks around the door.
His mom is lying on the bed on her back, her eyes staring
fixedly up at the ceiling. If not for the ghastly look on her face, the way her
mouth contorted in a scream of terror and frozen this way for all of time, he
would have thought she is just lying there, staring up at the ceiling.
He sinks down onto his knees, grief overcoming him swiftly
and sweeping through him in one blow. The tears well up in his eyes and
silently run down his cheeks.
He is the youngest and he is not ashamed to admit that his
mother has always cosseted and protected him. Loving her with an unconditional
love that was unmeasured by the number of stars in the evening sky. She was his
confidant, his best friend from when he was only a little boy, even before his
father just upped and left them one day.
Stephen knows now he left his family for another woman, but
when he was young his mom never hinted or mentioned the reason for him leaving,
always letting Stephen believe his father was a super-hero. Lisa told him when
he was twelve, out of spite. His mom then sat with him, they spoke late into
the night and she made Stephen realize and repeat after her, that his father
leaving never had anything to do with a little boy of five. It was never
Stephen's fault.
All these thoughts rush through his mind simultaneously and
he has blanked off. It is as if he is somewhere else, not here in this room
where one of the two most important people in his life is lying lifeless in her
bed.
Some might think it is sad for a grown man to think of his
mother as his best friend, an important factor in his life. A wife should have
replaced her, but for Stephen it never worked out that way. He loves Adèle with
a passion bordering on obsession and they can discuss things, they can talk for
hours, they are married, share everything they do, know every irritating thing
about each other, but they remain individuals. Stephen suddenly realizes in
this room with the faint smell of death that Adèle has never been his friend.
With this thought still mulling in his mind, he takes his
phone from his jacket pocket and phones Adèle.
After the second ring, she answers, “Hey, sweet lips,” and
she laughs.
He is unable to say anything because he does not want to
seem weak to her. He does not want to burst out crying over the phone, although
afterwards he will think that he had a particularly good reason, most probably
the best reason he would ever have.
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