Thanksgiving Day
The last three and a half weeks had been a furious whirlwind of unexpected events. After a brief hospital stay in Spokane, Washington, she had flown back to LA where she faced a battery of local and national news reporters. Within days she had been contacted by “Dateline,” “Nightline,” “Entertainment Tonight,” and even Oprah Winfrey booked her for her show. It had been almost too much to take in.
Despite all the attention, all she really wanted to do was take a bath. But there didn’t seem to be enough soap and disinfectant to cleanse the filth from her body, and her mind. She had vowed to do everything she could to get out alive. And she had done so. But the worst part, as she had feared in the warehouse during the rape, was that she would spend the rest of her life faced with the knowledge of what, because of her own pride, had happened to her. What she couldn’t have known then was the carnage that her naivety brought on those who got in the path of Tony’s insanity.
“What’ll happen to him, Amy?” Cindy asked.
Amy glanced at her sister. Since the last time she had been home, Cindy had a new series of piercings on her ears and one in her lower lip, evidence of the Goth influence her mother had been so critical of just last month. They sat on the front porch glider and looked out over the front lawn. An early snow had hit Iowa and covered the yard with a pure white blanket. Amy, glad to be with Cindy again and with dinner preparations at a lull, they bundled in heavy jackets and went outside for a talk.
“He’ll probably spend the rest of his life in a federal prison. The irony is he didn’t want that. He wanted me to kill him, you know? But the best I could do was force him to live the rest of his life as a mute quadriplegic. I suppose that’s justice. He’ll have to depend on someone else to feed him and change is diapers until the day he dies.”
“He’ll have to live with his thoughts, too,” Cindy said. “I for one hope they’re tormented. After what he did to you, that only seems fair.”
“After what he did to all those people, I’m not so sure. Do you know what a psychopath is?”
“Sure, someone who doesn’t care what he does to people.”
“Well, I saw it in his eyes. I know I should feel vindicated, but I take no solace in destroying his life even though he deserved it.”
Amy blew out a breath and watched the steam fade into the icy afternoon air. Cindy did the same and laughed. Amy remembered as children that when the air chilled, she and Cindy would pretend to smoke cigarettes, something forbidden around their house. They both laughed then. But now, after nearly three days locked up with a murdering chain smoker, smoking didn’t seem so funny anymore.
“So why didn’t you leave him to burn?”
“I learned something that week, Cindy. For one thing, our world is a screwed up place. And one of its causes is because we focus our energy on vengeance. But the truth is, when you take forgiveness out of humanity, that void is filled with something ugly, often hatred. I don’t want to live in that world. So saving him saved me from the emotional weight of knowing I could have done more but didn’t. It also saved me from toting that burden to my shrink’s couch for the rest of my life. I’ll have enough baggage with the rape and everything else. I don’t need that, too. At least there’s some good that may come out of it, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, now that people recognize my name, I’ve been contacted by the Office on Violence Against Women to act as a spokesperson. After the first of the year, I’ll be helping to raise national awareness of the brutality against women epidemic in our county. It may not be much, but if I can help one woman avoid the kind of trap I fell into, then maybe it’s worth it.”
Behind her Amy heard the sound of her dad’s work boots scuff against the hardwood living room floor. Even on this holiday, he had started the day at work on the tractor in the barn. The front door opened and he spoke through the screen door.
“Amy, you have a phone call.”
“Who is it Dad?”
“Don’t know, he just asked for you.”
Amy looked at Cindy and shrugged. “Didn’t think anyone but you guys and my friend Maggie in LA knew I was here.”
Amy shifted off the glider, pulled the screen open and stepped inside. Cindy walked two steps behind her.
Amy breathed in deep the aromas of the Thanksgiving feast as she stepped into the kitchen. For a while she thought she would never smell turkey, stuffing, fresh cranberries and rolls hot from the oven again. She shrugged out of her coat, hung it on a hook next to the wall phone, and picked up the beige receiver which lay on the hutch.
“Hello?” she answered with a question in her voice.
“Amy Westerhill?”
“This is Amy.” Natalie had fought so hard to forget Amy Westerhill for the last two years, but the events of that week and the fire in the barn seemed to purge her desire to be anyone else.
“You’re a hard girl, well woman, to track down.”
Not only the Aussie accent but the line “well woman” tickled at the back of her memory. She scrunched her eyebrows and looked at Cindy trying to bring it forward. “I’ve … been kind of busy lately.”
“So I’ve noticed. Look I won’t take much of your time. I know it’s a holiday and your home with your family, but I’m wondering when you’re planning on coming back to Hollywood?”
“Is this who I think it is?”
_____
©
Jearl Rugh 2012
All
Rights Reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment