Jack Ketchum - I'm Not Sam

Connection: foot to blood.

And while all this is spinning around in my head, while I’m trying to take in and make sense of all this violence to our lives and property not to mention what’s happened to my body, I realize that I’ve missed something so incongruous as to be almost surreal. Lying propped up on the couch, looking undismayed and undisturbed, is a big stuffed dog I’ve never seen before, bright red, a life-sized baby doll, also unfamiliar to me, and Teddy, my very first stuffed animal.

If this is Oz, I want no goddamn part of it.

I run shuddering back into the bedroom, sit down beside Patrick on the bed, place my hand on his shoulder and shake him gently. I don’t want to startle him but I need to have him awake. He needs to help me. I need to have someone explain all this.

“Patrick. Wake up.”

He squints at me and runs his tongue over dry lips.

“Lily?”

“ Lily? Who’s Lily?”

His eyes are open wide now. He rises up on one elbow.

“Sam? Is that you?”

“God, Patrick. Of course it’s me. Look at me. I mean really look at me. What the hell’s happening to me? And what’s gone on out there in the living room?”

It seems at first he can’t say anything. Then he shakes his head. He looks puzzled. Then he smiles. Then he laughs. Then he reaches for me and takes me in his arms, hugs me tight.

“Oh, jesus, Sam. You’re back! Thank god!”

I feel like somebody’s taken my head and shaken it, hard. I’ve never been so confused and so scared in my life. I never thought it was possible. Something is so terribly, terribly wrong here.

“What do you mean, back? Back from where?”

What I really want to ask him is, have I gone crazy, Patrick? Is that it? Have I?

I feel his body go rigid suddenly. It’s as though he, too, is scared of something now. And then I feel him start to cry.

Patrick never cries.

It starts off slow but soon this is big, deep, whooping crying, like he can’t even get his breath.

“Patrick, what…?”

For some reason just the sound of my voice seems to hurt him even more. He’s bawling, unrestrained as a hungry baby. I hold him tight. I notice Zoey, our old arthritic tuxedo cat, watching us wide-eyed from the windowsill.

“What? What’s the matter? What’s going on?”

His body’s wracked with sobs. He’s scaring me further.

“Patrick, you have to talk to me!”

He won’t.

We must be fifteen, twenty minutes like this. He clutches at me like he’s drowning, like the sea is beating at him and I’m the only rock around. His fingers are digging into my shoulders. His tears are rolling down my collarbone, cooling over my breast. He wipes away snot with the back of his hand. He’ll go quiet and then start all over again. I’ve never seen him like this. I don’t say another thing. I hold him, rock him. I’m calmer somehow. Maybe it’s simple exigencies — I need to take care of this first. I need to take care of him.

But he can’t seem to stop. He’s mumbling something into my shoulder, the same thing over and over.

Finally I make it out. What’ve I done? What the hell have I done?

“What do you mean? What are you talking about, Patrick?”

He shakes his head and clutches me even tighter. It’s hurting.

“Patrick, who’s Lily?”

Lily. On top of all the rest of this, is he talking about some fucking affair?

“I… you were… I couldn’t…” That’s all I can make out. The rest is incoherent, muttering, sobbing.

I’m thinking that no, it’s not an affair. I know my husband. An affair he could admit to. This is something else.

I can hardly breathe. He’s got to let go of me.

“Patrick. Patrick listen to me. You need to rest. You need to let go. I’ll make us some coffee and we’ll talk, okay? About…everything. Let me go, Patrick. Please. Let go.”

He eases up slightly.

“Okay. Good,” I tell him. “You’re okay. You’re going to be fine. Let me make us some coffee.”

I have to use both hands to pry us apart.

His face is bathed in tears, his lips pulled away from his teeth as though frozen in some painful simulation of a smile. For a moment our eyes meet and I can’t say what I see in his, whether it’s pain or relief, joy or grief. It crosses my mind that he looks like some crazy religious penitent in the throes of ecstasy. And I wonder who’s gone mad here, him or I or both of us.

I get up off the bed and go to the closet for my bathrobe. It’s there all right, but not where I left it. It’s pushed aside, as are my skirts and jackets for work, and for the first time I notice that there are clothes strewn all over the bedroom floor — my clothes — my red satin dress, my faux Hermes silk scarf, a pair of mismatched woolen knee-socks, my long white gloves.

Connection: clothes on the floor, my wedding dress destroyed in the living room.

I have no idea what this means but I think, leave it go for later. Get the coffee. Patrick needs the coffee and probably so do you. I slip on the bathrobe and knot it around my waist.

The coffeepot’s in the sink and there are grounds in the bottom so I wash it out and fill it with water to the ten-mark, because this could be a multi-cup morning, and turn to the Krups machine on the counter and at first I don’t register what I’m seeing. It’s bright purple and has a clock and a dial and it’s shaped sort of like an old-fashioned radio. Then I see the Easy-Bake logo.

Connection: Easy-Bake oven, stuffed toys on the sofa.

Is there a child here?

I think, the guest room. Coffee can wait.

The answer is yes. There is indeed a kid around here somewhere — or at least there has been.

It’s a little girl.

How do I know?

Forget the oven. There’s a beading set on the dresser and a half-made knotted multicolored quilt on the floor by the bed next to something called a Stablemate Animal Hospital. I see a small bandaged mule out front. On the other side of the bed near the door my entire collection of Barbies are outfitted in bikinis and lying on lounge chairs in front of a plastic pool and slide. There’s a pink convertible waiting out front.

On the night-table next to the bed is a half-finished glass of milk.

Tossed on the unmade bed there’s a pink pair of pajamas in a smiling-monkey pattern.

A little girl’s been here recently all right, but where is she now? Not the living room, kitchen or either bedroom. Maybe the office.

I check the office. No.

Possibly outside.

I take a turn around the house. It’s already unseasonably warm even at this early hour though the grass feels refreshingly cool and damp against my feet. It’s the first remotely pleasant sensation I’ve felt all morning. I walk all the way out to the dock by the river and back again. I walk over to the old slide and swing set.

No little girl — though the slide is polished smooth, the rust all gone, the seats on the swings have been sanded down and I notice there’s been some soldering work done on the chains and hangers. Patrick? It’s got to be.

Enough of this, I think. I don’t care what he’s going through. I need to talk to Patrick.

I march into the bedroom. He’s dead asleep.

I take his shoulder and shake him. There’s no response.

“Patrick?”

I shake him again, a lot less gently this time.

“Patrick, wake up.”

I shake him a third time. His eyes flash open and his arm flies up and smacks my hand away, bats it so hard it hurts.

“Go away!”

I stand there, stunned.

This is not my Patrick. My Patrick would never do this. My Patrick would never dismiss me like some huge annoyance and certainly he’d never hit me. The Patrick I know and love is the gentlest man I’ve ever met. After eight years of marriage he still wants to hold my hand in public or drape his arm over my shoulder or around my waist. He still wants that one last kiss before we sleep.