Stephen King: Duma Key

I was home by then. Pam came in with my morning snack and must have seen the look on my face, because I could see her steeling herself for an outburst. But even though I’d forgotten the name of the fluffy red rage-doll the psychologist had given me, I remembered how I was supposed to use it in this situation.

“Pam,” I said, “I need five minutes to get myself under control. I can do this.”

“Are you sure—”

“Yes, now just get that hamhock out of here and stick it up your face-powder. I can do this.”

I didn’t know if I really could, but that was what I was supposed to say. I couldn’t remember the fucking doll’s name, but I could remember I can do this . That’s clear about the end of my other life, how I kept saying I can do this even when I knew I couldn’t, even when I knew I was fucked, I was double-fucked, I was dead-ass-fucked in the pouring rain.

“I can do this,” I said, and God knows how I looked because she backed out without a word, the tray still in her hands and the cup chattering against the plate.

When she was gone, I held the doll up in front of my face, staring into its stupid blue eyes as my thumbs disappeared into its stupid yielding body. “What’s your name, you bat-faced bitch?” I shouted at it. It never once occurred to me that Pam was listening on the kitchen intercom, she and the day-nurse both. Tell you what, if the intercom had been broken they could have heard me through the door. I was in good voice that day.

I began to shake the doll back and forth. Its head flopped and its synthetic I Love Lucy hair flew. Its big blue cartoon eyes seemed to be saying Oouuu, you nasty man! like Betty Boop in one of those old cartoons you can still see sometimes on the cable.

“What’s your name, bitch? What’s your name, you cunt? What’s your name, you cheap rag-filled whore? Tell me your name! Tell me your name! Tell me your name or I’ll cut out your eyes and chop off your nose and rip out your —”

My mind cross-connected then, a thing that still happens now, four years later, down here in the town of Tamazunchale, state of San Luis Potosí, country of Mexico, site of Edgar Freemantle’s third life. For a moment I was in my pickup truck, clipboard rattling against my old steel lunchbucket in the passenger footwell (I doubt if I was the only working millionaire in America to carry a lunchbucket, but you probably could have counted us in the dozens), my PowerBook beside me on the seat. And from the radio a woman’s voice cried “ It was RED! ” with evangelical fervor. Only three words, but three was enough. It was the song about the poor woman who turns out her pretty daughter as a prostitute. It was “Fancy,” by Reba McEntire.

“Reba,” I whispered, and hugged the doll against me. “You’re Reba. Reba-Reba-Reba. I’ll never forget again.” I did — the following week — but I didn’t get angry that time. No. I held her against me like a little love, closed my eyes, and visualized the pickup truck that had been demolished in the accident. I visualized my steel lunchbucket rattling against the steel clip on my clipboard, and the woman’s voice came from the radio once more, exulting with that same evangelical fervor: “ It was RED! ”

Dr. Kamen called it a breakthrough. He was excited. My wife seemed a good deal less excited, and the kiss she put on my cheek was of the dutiful variety. I think it was two months later that she told me she wanted a divorce.

By then the pain had either lessened or my mind had made certain crucial adjustments when it came to dealing with it. The headaches still came, but less often and rarely with the same violence; it was no longer always midnight in the world’s biggest clock-shop between my ears. I was always more than ready for Vicodin at five and Oxycontin at eight — could hardly hobble on my bright red Canadian crutch until I’d swallowed those magic pills — but my rebuilt hip was starting to mend.

Kathi Green the Rehab Queen came to Casa Freemantle in Mendota Heights on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I was allowed an extra Vicodin before our sessions, and still my screams filled the house by the time we finished up. Our basement rec room had been converted into a therapy suite, complete with a handicap-accessible hot tub. After two months of torture, I was able to make it down there on my own in the evenings to double up on my leg exercises and begin some abdominal work. Kathi said doing that stuff a couple of hours before bed would release endorphins and I’d sleep better.

It was during one of these evening workouts — Edgar in search of those elusive endorphins — when my wife of a quarter-century came downstairs and told me she wanted a divorce.

I stopped what I was doing — crunches — and looked at her. I was sitting on a floor-pad. She was standing at the foot of the stairs, prudently across the room. I could have asked her if she was serious, but the light down there was very good — those racked fluorescents — and I didn’t have to. I don’t think it’s the sort of thing women joke about six months after their husbands have almost died in accidents, anyway. I could have asked her why, but I knew. I could see the small white scar on her arm where I had stabbed her with the plastic knife from my hospital supper tray, and that was really the least of it. I thought of telling her, not so long ago, to get that hamhock out of here and stick it up her face-powder. I considered asking her to at least think about it, but the anger came back. In those days what Dr. Kamen called inappropriate anger was my ugly friend. And hey, what I was feeling right then did not seem inappropriate at all.

My shirt was off. My right arm ended three and a half inches below the shoulder. I twitched it at her — a twitch was the best I could do with the muscle that was left. “This is me,” I said, “giving you the finger. Get out of here if that’s how you feel. Get out, you quitting birch.”

The first tears had started rolling down her face, but she tried to smile. It was a pretty ghastly effort. “Bitch, Edgar,” she said. “The word is bitch .”

“The word is what I say it is,” I said, and began to do crunches again. It’s harder than hell to do them with an arm gone; your body wants to pull and corkscrew to that side. “I wouldn’t have left you, that’s the point. I wouldn’t have left you . I would have gone on through the mud and the blood and the piss and the spilled beer.”

“It’s different,” she said. She made no effort to wipe her face. “It’s different and you know it. I couldn’t break you in two if I got into a rage.”

“I’d have a hell of a job breaking you in two with only one amp,” I said, doing crunches faster.

“You stuck me with a knife.” As if that were the point. It wasn’t, and we both knew it.

“A plastic rudder knife is what it was, I was half out of my mind, and it’ll be your last words on your fucking beth-dead, ‘Eddie staffed me with a plastic fife, goodbye cruel world.’”

“You choked me,” she said in a voice I could barely hear.

I stopped doing crunches and gaped at her. The clock-shop started up in my head; bang-a-gong, get it on. “What are you saying, I choked you? I never choked you!”

“I know you don’t remember, but you did. And you’re not the same.”

“Oh, quit it. Save the New Age bullshit for the… for the guy… your… ” I knew the word and I could see the man it stood for, but it wouldn’t come. “For that bald fuck you see in his office.”

“My therapist,” she said, and of course that made me angrier: she had the word and I didn’t. Because her brain hadn’t been shaken like Jell-O.