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Comfortably Numb

Michael Summerleigh

    I’m not going to cry.
    She kept repeating it to herself, like a mantra, hoping that if she said it enough times it would work. She could feel something much worse, like a volcano, inside her. Tears were nothing compared to the feeling that she was filling up with something so horrible that it would tear her apart if she acknowledged it; that if she began to cry she would begin to howl, and after that...she couldn’t imagine it...the violence...the blind rage that had been hiding...waiting to come out.
    She closed the image file on the desktop monitor in front of her. Martinique, less than a year ago. White sand castles and sunshine. Lazy intoxication and lovemaking late at night once the girls were in bed. Now a different lifetime. A different life. No longer hers at all. She shut the computer down and closed her eyes, wishing she could simply stop. Disappear. Not be herself anymore.
    I’m not going to cry.
    But some kind of sound must have escaped. She heard Daphne’s claws clicking across the tile floor in the kitchen. When she opened her eyes the Corgi was camped on the rag rug at her feet, looking up at her with unnerving doggy concern.
    “It’s okay, Daffy,” she said slowly...softly...carefully. “You don’t have to worry. I promise.”
    Daphne’s new expression was one of complete skepticism. The day before it would have made her laugh. Today she didn’t dare. She looked away, just far enough to see her perfectly manicured fingers clawed on perfectly brand-new denim-clad knees, nails in perfect ovals, polished to a glistening all-natural healthy-looking perfection.
    “I’m not going to cry, Daffy,” she said aloud, and stood up...so suddenly the Corgi jumped up along with her...startled...worried again...following her into the TV room where the pompous idiot with the beard was silently informing her of What we know... for the twentieth time in the last hour, in what would have been his pompous idiot newsman voice if she had turned the volume up...
    “...And we’ve just received word...McDonald’s has announced a new crispy octopus sandwich, with only four calories and no fucking cholesterol...”
    ...As the tape at the bottom of the screen scrolled news of mayhem and disaster in between winning lottery numbers and pre-season baseball scores from Florida.
    She picked up the remote and clicked the off button, watched the 72-inch screen go blank, turned, and through the archway caught the reflection of a stranger in the mirror on the other side of the entry hall. She whispered her mantra one last time and fast-balled the remote into the reflection, felt vicious pleasure as the stranger disintegrated into a hundred shards of herself, all over the antique desk and the marble floor of the foyer.
    She heard a car pull into the driveway, recognised the sound of the Beamer’s engine. Daffy was gone, scared off by the smash of the mirror. She took a couple of steps forward, just far enough so she could see and be seen by him when he came through the front door....heard him pounding up the walk...stood quietly...waiting...
    He was wide-eyed and frantic, his tie rucked off to one side suddenly quiet when he saw her, closing the heavy oak door behind him his eyes never leaving hers...
    “Char...thank God,” he breathed.

    Charlotte nodded. Stood silently. Waiting. She could hear her heart beating beneath her breasts, measured like thunderous armour, protecting her from the thing snarling inside.
    “Yes, Kevin,” she said. “Thank God.”
    “You’re all right.”
    “Of course I’m all right.”
    “What are you doing here? I went t’the school. Libby Dandridge said you’d been there, but then you’d gone home.”
    Charlotte nodded.
    “I did. I was there.”
    “They said he was Hispanic.”
    “Yes. They said he’d escaped from one of our concentration camps. Went looking for his four-year old daughter.”
    She looked at him as if seeing him for the very first time, so smooth and so handsome and so upwardly mobile, the perfect Ivy League husband to give her a beautiful home and beautiful children and a life utterly free from care or worry. Except for today, because Reality had come calling, invaded their perfect little world, and he still didn’t have a clue.
    “Concentration camps?” he said. “What are you talking about?”
    “I packed your bag for you this morning. Your big weekend, isn’t it? Golf in New Jersey with all your friends...and him...”
    He looked at her like she was crazy.
    “Charlotte I’m not playing golf this weekend.”
    She smiled.
    “Of course you are, Kevin,” she said. “Why on earth not? This is a golden opportunity. Do you think he’s going to call it off?”
    Kevin noticed the splinters of broken mirror all over the floor, looked up at her, waiting for some kind of explanation. Charlotte smiled.
    “They wouldn’t let anyone in, Kevin,” she said, “so I just came home...”
    “But the girls are all right.”
    “Of course they are,” she said, and even though there was a tape loop in the back of her head telling her she wasn’t going to cry she could feel tears welling up in her eyes.
    “They’re someplace where no one will ever hurt them ever again...”
    “They’re upstairs.”
    “No.”
    “Charlotte where are they? Why aren’t you with them?”
    She smiled and felt the rage churning up through her guts.
    “D’you really think I’d be here if Molly and Cassandra were alive? D’you think I’d’ve let anyone keep me away from my babies if they were alive...hurt...terrified? Are you a fucking idiot, Kevin? They’re dead, you sonofabitch. They’re dead because you and that turtle-faced piece of shit you work for have stood in the way of every effort anyone has ever made to keep this from happening over and over and over, and still all you motherfuckers ever have to offer are your thoughts and your prayers so the bastards who make the guns can keep on making them. You’re like hookers in three-piece suits, except whores have more integrity.”

    She walked towards him...slowly...never felt the shards of glass in her bare feet... never looked at the smears of blood on the white marble tiles...picked up her purse... called for Daphne...scooped her up before she could cross the wasteland of broken mirror.
    “Move your damned car, Kevin,” she said. “When you’ve got all your thoughts and prayers sorted out you can send some to me at my sister’s house. I carried my little girls inside me for nine months. I brought them into the light. I fed them and bathed them, changed their diapers and kept them safe while they taught me all over again what it was like to be innocent and happy. But I’m not putting them in the ground, Kevin. You and those heartless greedy bastards masquerading as our leaders are the ones who killed them, so you can do it...and between now and then...go fuck yourself. Fuck all of you.”

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