Broken (10 page)

"Do tell me dearest. Why is that?" She
rolled her eyes at me.

"Because he hardly knows his own mother. Because
he never spends any time with you at all. He is growing up thinking Sarah is
closer to being a mother than you are. It's sad, Heather. It's really sad. And
I am sick and tired of making excuses for you. Telling him 'Mother is not
feeling well, Mother can't come to your graduation or your soccer-game because
she is passed out.' How do you think he feels?"

I stared into her empty blurry eyes. How I detested
her when she was drunk, when she was constantly sedated like this. This wasn't
the Heather that I knew. This wasn't the woman I had married. How had she
become this ... this ... this sad excuse of a woman. This addict. I kept asking
myself these same questions. Why had she chosen this life for herself? Why
couldn't I get her to stop it? Why did she insist on continuing this abuse,
this addiction? Why? Why couldn't she choose her family? Choose to be a mother?

In the beginning I had thought it was just a phase,
something she was going through. It had started right after the birth of
William. Post-partum depression I thought it was. And one excuse soon followed
another. She was having a hard time adjusting to being a mother, she was
fighting with her mother over something, she had been under pressure from being
alone this much, I had abandoned her. I didn't love her enough or show her
enough affection. The excuses were many, but there were never any solutions. No
improvement. She wasn't even trying. Then I started telling lies on her behalf
when she didn't show up to family dinners at her parent's house or at dinner
with friends. She wasn't feeling well, probably a stomach-flu 'there is a lot
of that going around lately.' Lies like that. Then she started acting out at
home when she was drunk. Yelling and screaming at me. At one point she even
attacked me and tried to strangle me with her hands. I fought her off but it
left a mark that I had to say came from playing too wildly with William. Not
sure anyone bought that one. I even made excuses for her behavior to myself.
'It will soon be better. Maybe if I was a better husband towards her. Maybe if
I showed my appreciation more.' So I bought her gifts, expensive things, like a
new car and jewelry.
 
She liked it
and it kept her happy for a few hours but it wasn't enough for her to stop
drinking and taking her pills that the doctor just prescribed like they were
candy. Some for her nerves, others to calm her down. Sleeping pills, sedative
pills, she was a goddamn walking pharmacy.

"I don't know how that feels, Chris," she
said. "And frankly I don't care. I can't be your shrink right now. I can't
take care of your problems."

"No, you can't take care of anyone, not even
yourself. Why do you insist on ruining yourself like this? Why are you trying
to destroy our family?"

"What family?" she asked.

"Our family. Us. You and me and William. We are
right here. Pleading with you to stop this. Asking you to be a wife and a
mother. Asking you to love us." My voice was trembling as I was screaming
at the top of my lungs. I had never raised my voice at Heather like that.
Never. I was way too afraid of conflicts to ever show even anger.
 

"You want to talk about love, do you? How about
me, Chris? How about you begin with loving me?"

"I do love you Heather and you know it. You are
my wife. You are the mother of my child. But that isn't enough for you is it?
Us. We are not enough for you. What is it you want, Heather? I’ll give it to
you. You know that. If only you'd come back to me, if only you'd return to who
you used to be."

Heather was crying now shaking her head. "I don't
know if I can do that Chris. It's not as easy as you think."

"Why? Why is it harder than I think? Explain it
to me. Let me help you."

"It's not something you can just fix. I am not
something for you to fix like you fix your patients. You can't pay your way out
of this, Chris."

"But maybe we could fight this together. As a
couple, as husband and wife, as family." I said hearing my voice getting
more desperate by the minute. I wanted her to understand how important this was
to me. I wanted her to be the mother I knew she could be. I didn't want William
to grow up without a mother. Not like I had.

"I am afraid this will end up killing you,"
I continued. "Your body won't be able to keep this up. Your heart will
fail. Mixing medicine with alcohol is a really bad combination. It will destroy
your body slowly from the inside out. Your organs simply can't sustain it. Look
at how sick you have just been. Your body is slowly giving up. You can't keep
doing this."

Heather looked at me. Then she laughed. "Listen
to the big doctor," she said mockingly.

I drew in a big sigh and threw my arms resigned in the
air. "Fine," I said. "Do what you want and kill yourself. I have
work to do." With big steps I walked in the shower slamming the bathroom
door behind me.

"Fine!" I heard her say just before I turned
on the water and drowned all sounds coming from outside the bathroom. I slammed
the palm of my hand in the wall a couple of times trying to release some of the
anger that had been building up through many months. Why was it so? Why
couldn't I fix her? Why wouldn't she listen? I was trying so hard to make
everything work here, to make this family work, and all she did was to destroy
it. Couldn't she see what she was doing to herself? What she was doing to all
of us?

When I came out of the shower Heather was gone. Her
car wasn't in the garage either.

Chapter 12

Heather
stayed away for
three days. Where she was I never
knew. Meanwhile I decided I no longer wanted to excuse her behavior so I flat
out told William that I had no idea where his mom was and that I didn't know if
she would ever come back again. He seemed to accept that explanation since he
had no choice. I even told her parents when they called on the second day that
she had left the house and that I hadn't heard from her. Mrs. Kirk - her mother
- was very upset and wanted to call the police.

"Maybe something happened to her," she said.
"Something terrible. Have you called all the hospitals?"

"No, I haven't. We had a fight two days ago and
then she left. I don't think anything has happened to her. She'll be
back."

"But we need to at least do something," Mrs.
Kirk said.
 

I breathed deeply while watching William. He was sitting
on the floor doing a puzzle. I didn't want him to hear us talk about his mother
like this. I didn't want him to worry. "Listen, Mrs. Kirk. I am sure
everything is just fine. She is a grown woman and perfectly capable of taking
care of herself. I'll have her call you as soon as I hear from her, okay?"

"Well ... okay then. Keep in touch."

"Bye."

"So you really think Mom is okay?" William
asked when I put down the phone.

I nodded slowly. Then I walked towards him and sat
next to him on the floor. I found a piece of the puzzle and placed it where it
belonged. "I am certain, son. Mom is just fine."

And she was, at least for
a while. She came home on the third day, well actually I found her in the
driveway, sitting in her car, sleeping in the front seat. It was almost morning
and I was on my way back from the swamps where I once again had met up with
Aiyana
and gone hunting by her side. I was becoming
accustomed to this new life of mine where I was one thing during the day and
something completely different at night. The transformation occurred more
smoothly now and was less painful. I had come to enjoy my nightly hunts with
Aiyana
so much that I was looking forward to it every night
and welcoming the transformation so the small pain I felt didn't matter anymore.
It was a pain followed by extreme pleasure and happiness that I - even after
only three days - now knew I could never live without again. This was already a
huge part of me and I was never going to let go of it again. I loved everything
about it. I loved what I became, I loved what I was capable of, what it enabled
me to do and most of all I loved the hunt. I loved the taste of animal blood
that I got to have every night. It was like a drug. I could never go a night
without it again.

I waited for the transformation to wear off before I
opened the door to the car. It was parked halfway on the lawn and had gone
through the beautiful Peruvian lilies that Heather loved so much. On the floor
of the car I found empty bottles of prescription medicine on top of empty
bottles of strong alcohol. Gin, vodka, wine-coolers. Heather smelled like a
bar. Her clothes were a mess and reeked of alcohol and cigarettes.

"Dear God. Heather. What have you done to
yourself?" I mumbled as I tried to wake her up. I felt her neck and found
a pulse, but a weak one. She was alive but heavily sedated. With much
difficulty I got her out of the car and carried her into the house in my arms.
She started moaning as I went up the stairs.

"I know I'm a bad mother. I know I'm horrible
..." she said.

I opened the door to the bedroom and laid her on the
bed. She opened her eyes for a second. "I am so sorry, Chris," she
mumbled just before her eyes shut again. "I am so sorry, I’ve ruined
everything. I’m a terrible, terrible person," she repeated with her eyes
closed.

"
Shh
. Get some sleep
and then we'll talk later," I whispered while I stroke her gently over the
head.
 
I watched her for a few
minutes after she fell asleep. "I know you are in there somewhere," I
whispered just before I left her. "I know you are."

I called Heather's mother
from the office just before I took my nap that I had become addicted to as well
as the hunting. This half an hour a day was still all the sleep I got but
somehow it seemed to be enough for me. My body no longer needed more than that.
It was thrilling to me this superior being I had become, who hardly needed
sleep.

As a doctor I was quite amazed with what my body had
become capable of. The incredible night vision, the strength I had as a jaguar,
and the hearing. Ten years ago, I had been able to hear Heather's thoughts and
now I had the idea that if I practiced it I might be able to do it again. It
was like
Aiyana
had said, I needed to take care of my
abilities, and I needed to nurse them. Like her sister
Halona
who had become able to move things with the will of her mind by continually
practicing it and perfecting it. My theory was that I could do the same with my
hearing. I could become like
Aiyana
and hear people's
thoughts if I only perfected it. So I wanted to try it out.

After my nap I called my secretary Julie in to take a
memo. She sat in the chair in front of my desk with her notepad on her lap and
a pencil in her hand. I smiled and started dictating my letter. As she wrote it
all down I focused my thoughts on her. I fixated everything on her. My eyes, my
every thought. I remembered how
Aiyana
used to say
that she needed to be still in order to distinguish my voice from the many
others she heard in her head. I had thousands of voices talking and whispering
at this very moment. In the beginning they had almost driven me insane but
after ten years I had gotten used to them and they faded into the background,
except when they were persistent or especially insistent in a way I could no
longer ignore. Then I was forced to listen. Now I wanted to be in control. I
wanted to be the one to decide which voice to listen to, and I chose Julie who
was sitting in front of me as I spoke and she wrote on her pad. I closed my
eyes and listened until I found it. The thoughts, the words that sounded just
like her voice. It was a mess at first, a lot of words just coming at me with
no sentences or structure or anything. Then somehow I figured out a way to
decipher the words and little by little they started to fall in place creating
sentences like 'wonder if he ... how shall I be able to afford... what if I
asked my parents for help?'

I opened my eyes and stared at her. Suddenly I felt a
deep doubt. What if I listened in on something I had no business of knowing.
After all she was my secretary. I was her boss. There were many things I didn't
want to know about her. This might just have been a very bad idea.

But soon I realized that once I had opened her chain
of thoughts it wasn't so easy to shut it down again. It just kept coming. All
those words kept floating inside of my head. Then pictures, images of the man I
knew as her husband but couldn't remember the name of at a table in a dark
casino, a gambling table playing cards, losing, then on to playing something
else, losing again, his hands shaking because he knew this was his last chance.
If only he could win this one time, that was all it took, just one more win
like the one he had had in the beginning. Then I saw the kids, the two small
girls of only four and six. 'Needs new shoes' Julie thought. 'How will I pay
for their school next year?'