Page 31 of The Family Across the Street
It takes no time at all to mix up the muffins, and Gladys slides the filled tray into the oven, anticipating the delicious smell of chocolate that will soon be floating through the house.
‘How about that crime series? There’s one on now,’ Lou says when she returns to the living room.
‘Yes, good idea,’ she agrees, knowing he’s being kind. It’s an episode she’s seen already but it doesn’t matter as she’s unable to concentrate as she waits for the timer on her phone to go off. She’s never felt like this before – well, once, when Rebecca was in Europe. She remembers waking one morning and wondering which country Rebecca was in as the tour was moving to a different place almost every day. She felt terribly uneasy about her niece, and after waiting until she could no longer stand it, she called her sister, Emmaline. ‘I’m worried about Rebecca,’ she said.
‘Well, you must have a sixth sense,’ Emmaline replied. ‘I’ve just had a call. Their bus crashed on the way up the mountains and she’s hurt her wrist. They don’t think it’s broken but she’s having an X-ray just in case.’
Rebecca was fine but Gladys had been right about something not being well. She feels the same way about Katherine now, even though she’s certainly not as close to her neighbour as she is to her niece.
She watches the timer on her phone, willing the minutes to pass. In the episode, someone shoots someone else, startling Gladys, who hasn’t been concentrating.
‘Why are we watching this violence?’ she asks Lou.
‘It’s a good story and you like it, you always say you like it,’ says Lou, and Gladys checks her phone again. She knows he only suggested the series for her but if he’s enjoying it and managing to stay awake, she supposes that’s a good thing.
Picking up her phone, she checks the timer again, and then, with one eye on the television, she looks at the news site she likes to read. The top story is about a man in America being sentenced for killing his wife and children. Gladys remembers the man on television months ago when his family went missing, crying and begging for help in finding them. He claimed to have no idea where they were, but it was all an elaborate lie. Gladys had known not to trust him as soon as she saw him. He had shifty eyes and he cried too much.
A small shiver runs through Gladys. How well does she know John really? Not very well. She’s never had more than a casual chat with him. She reviews the facts she has. This morning John screeched off and then returned, and he isn’t at work. The blinds are closed, the house silent. The children are home and one of them put a sign in the window asking for help. Katherine wouldn’t let her in. It all adds up.
Gladys does not want to be one of those neighbours who claims that they didn’t think anything was going on when something dreadful happens in their street, does not want to be one of those people on television who claims they are shocked and horrified. She knows something is going on – she knows it.
The timer on her phone goes off and Gladys leaps up, relieved that her excuse for going over again is ready. Katherine might think she’s interfering – or she might be eternally grateful that Gladys wouldn’t leave well enough alone. Either way, she is taking the muffins over.
As she pulls the tray out of the oven, the man that the police are searching for crosses her mind. The red hat is just a red hat and it’s hard to tell anything other than the colour from the CCTV footage, but for some reason she knows that on the front is a Nike logo in raised stitching in the same red. Gladys puts the muffin tray on top of the stove and takes a deep breath. She’s seen that cap before. She saw it yesterday.
‘There must be hundreds of those caps,’ she mutters. It must be just a coincidence. It has to be.
15
There is too much blood. It turns my stomach. It’s dribbling out of her mouth and onto the towel George got for her and dripping onto her T-shirt, and truthfully, I’ve never liked the sight of blood. Especially not my own. It’s interesting watching the kids and how protective they are of her. Sophie is mostly afraid, but George wavers between being afraid and furious with me. Now he is watching me, his green eyes narrow and focused on my face. If looks could kill…
I have no idea why they thought I wouldn’t catch them trying to send a note to… well, there’s no one who would see something like that, and it wasn’t in the window long enough anyway. But still, they tried. You have to give them credit for trying, and I had to do what I had to do.
I didn’t think I had hit her that hard, but the gun was in my hand and it gave the blow some extra impact. My hand is hurting now. I rub my fist slowly, keeping the gun trained on the three of them.
I have so much to say, so many things to tell her. ‘Do you want to hear a story about when my father died?’ I ask.
‘I know that story,’ she says but the words are a little garbled because her mouth is filled with blood.
‘What?’
She spits some blood into the towel and I check myself for feelings of guilt or remorse but I am pretty sure I feel nothing. The ability to shut down my feelings about other people is probably something I inherited from my father. In the end the only person he really cared about was himself.
My father got worse and worse as the months went by after he lost his job. A lot of the time I came home from school and found him asleep on the sofa. But sometimes I came home and he would be awake and he would ask about my day. When he asked me what I had learned at school, I always told him, ‘Nothing.’
Usually, he let it go, but once his anger flared up out of nowhere and he leapt off the sofa and grabbed my shirt, pulling me towards him. ‘Now you listen to me, son, because I know what a harsh world it can be,’ he said. I was fifteen and tired of his shit so even though his hands were twisted in my school shirt, his breath too close to avoid, I rolled my eyes and sighed loudly. He twisted harder, his nails scratching my skin. ‘You think you’re so clever, don’t you?’ he spat and then he delivered a hard slap to my cheek. It wasn’t the first time he hit me. He liked hitting me. Sometimes it was hard enough to leave a slight bruise, but it was never hard enough to make me see him as anything other than pathetic. I wonder now if I had shown fear, real fear, if he would have felt better about himself. Their fear, the fear that I can see in the way they watch me, in the way they keep trying to move further back into the sofa, squashing the soft fabric cushions, lets me know I’m the one in control. Things have gotten messy but I still have control.
The blood has stopped seeping from her mouth now. I can see her moving her tongue around the inside, checking for a broken tooth. There is a cut on the side of her cheek that’s oozing a little and I squelch a desire to tell her to get some ice for it. I used to want to take care of her.
‘Do you know that when my father died, I waited two days before calling the police?’
Her brown eyes widen in horror. ‘No, you never told me that.’
‘Well, I did.’
‘I’m so—’
‘Please don’t tell me you’re sorry for me. I am so tired of hearing the word “sorry” from you.’
