Camouflage(25)
“The only one. Francine was real sweet most of the time, you know?”
* * *
Charlene Kepler, out.
Now he had nothing to tell Bryn.
10
BRYN DARBY
She stood looking at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, fingering the vial of Xanax and wondering how many of the little white pills it would take to put her out of her misery.
A dozen or so would probably do it. This was a new prescription, the vial almost full—more than enough. Wash them down with a couple of glasses of wine, throw in four or five Vicodin to make sure, and when she started feeling the effects lie down in bed with the lights on to wait for the dark. Easy, painless. Just go to sleep and no more hurt or fear or black depression, no more looking at what she was looking at right now.
The face in the mirror was like one of those split theatrical masks, only hers wasn’t half tragedy and half comedy; it was half living and half dead. That was how she thought of the left side, not as paralyzed or frozen, the euphemisms used by the doctors and everybody else, but as dead. Part of her already dead. Pale waxy flesh, the corner of the mouth puckered so that she couldn’t open it all the way, couldn’t eat or drink in a normal fashion, dribbled and drooled like a baby. Puckered lines around the eye, too, and the optic nerve damaged so that she had cloudy vision out of it. The muscles and nerves already atrophying, no way to stop it, no chance of recovery. Most of the time she had no feeling on that side, but sometimes, and now was one of them, there was a faint burning sensation as if she were standing too close to a stove or heater. Her doctor claimed that this was psychosomatic, a phantom sensation, because of the extent of the nerve damage. Dead tissue has no feeling. Death has no feeling. Except that it did. The dead side of her face burned.
How many times had she stood here like this, thinking these same thoughts? More than she could count after the stroke and before she met Jake. Only a couple since he’d come into her life, the one good thing that had made living bearable the past few months. Somebody she could lean on, take strength from; somebody to drive away the loneliness and despair for short periods; somebody she cared about beside Bobby, at a time when she believed she would never care about anyone else again. If it hadn’t been for Jake and Bobby, she would have mixed the Xanax and Vicodin and wine cocktail by now. And the rest of her would be as dead as the left side of her face.
The depression was bad tonight, as bleak and overpowering as it had ever been. Worrying about that bitch Francine hurting Bobby again, really hurting him, putting him in the hospital, putting him in a coffin … it was maddening because there was nothing Bryn could do short of giving in to her impulses and destroying the woman. Running away with Bobby to some place where he’d be safe wasn’t an option. She didn’t have enough money to travel very far or hide for very long; wherever she and Bobby went, Robert had the money and the resources to find them. And then he’d make sure she never saw her son again.
Jake was doing everything he could—he’d already found out that Francine had a probable history of abuse with her two sisters—but it wasn’t enough. The sister in Berkeley had mental problems and wouldn’t talk about the abuse; the sister in Ojai wouldn’t, either. How could they expose Francine for what she was before she hurt Bobby so badly that his father could no longer deny the truth? All Robert could or wanted to see now was that falsely sweet young face.
Still, Jake was the only hope she had. Keep the faith in him, pray for Bobby’s safety … otherwise, the despair would consume her. And then she really would mix and swallow that last cocktail.
Bryn put the Xanax back into the medicine cabinet, turned away from the mirror. Her hands and face were sweaty; she dried them on a towel, then retied the scarf over the dead half. Even when she was alone in the house, she’d taken to hiding it behind cloth. Out of sight, out of mind—that was the idea, anyway, even if it didn’t always work.
In the kitchen she poured another glass of wine. How many did this make today? She’d lost count. But it would have to be the last. She had to walk a fine line with alcohol. Just enough took the edge off her anxiety, allowed her to continue functioning; too much made the depression worse.
She lifted the glass, then set it down again. She really didn’t need another drink—she’d had too much already. The last glass was what had led her into the bathroom, to remove the scarf and stand there wallowing in her misery. Already there was a dull ache in her temples and her mouth was dry and sour tasting; any more alcohol and she’d suffer for it in the morning.
She took a small funnel out of the utility drawer, poured the wine back into the bottle, and returned the bottle to the fridge. The house held an empty kind of silence, broken only by an occasional settling creak and the humming and rattling of the wind outside. She’d had a CD of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance playing earlier, spritely music in an effort to ward off the demons, but it had run through and stopped. She thought about starting it again, decided she was no longer in the mood for comic opera. Another CD? Something on television? They didn’t appeal, either.